Saturday, August 03, 2013

PURSUED BY AN IRATE HUSBAND

PURSUED BY AN IRATE HUSBAND
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Exciting Chase After Two Men Who Insulted a Woman—One is Captured and Gets Fined.
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    As Mrs. W. M. Woodall accompanied by Miss Frances Taylor, was returning to her home on Third and Columbia streets, about 9 o'clock Tuesday evening, two strange men accosted them on First street near Jefferson and began to make ungentlemanly remarks to hem.  The first remarks were passed in silence, but when the men became more insolent in pressing recognition, the ladies told them to mind their own business or there would be trouble.


   No attention was paid to this warning and the men went so far as to attempt to take hold of the arms of the women.  This last impertinence so frightened them that they started to run.  The two men also turned the corner on Columbia street and pursued the women to the doorstep of Mrs. Woodall.

   When Mrs. Woodall got into the house her husband had already retired. She however, lost no time in apprising him of her very unpleasant experience, and he at once started in pursuit of the men.  The men were still near the gate when Mr. Woodall appeared at the door and the exciting chase began.  One of the men escaped on a side street, while Mr. Woodall, in hot pursuit of the other, continued the road race down Columbia towards First.

   Upon reaching First street, the pursued man dodged into a saloon, while the enraged husband, in his night clothes and brandishing a large club he had picked up on the way, followed closely after.  The crowd of men who were gather about the bar were so frightened by the flying spectre-like men that some of them dropped their glasses and lost their appetite.  The saloon-keeper, with the instincts of a Trojan warrior, grabbed Mr. Woodall and unceremoniously threw him out of the back door, while the same summary movement was performed with the man whom Woodall was pursing, only the latter was ejected through the front entrance.

   Mr. Woodall, not to be outdone by the action the irate saloon-keeper, ran around the saloon from the rear end to the front, and got there just in time to catch the man he had so vigorously pursued.

   Officer Smith appeared on the scene immediately after and took the man to the city jail, while Mr. Woodall retraced his steps to his home to tell his wife of the capture.

   The man, who gave his name as Alex Leuden, and claimed to be a barbed, working in a Washington Street shop, had an examination in the police court yesterday afternoon.  He denied having made any improper remarks to the ladies, but admitted that his companion did.  The name of this companion he did not know, for he claimed the man was only a casual acquaintance.  As the women, however, positively identified Lueden as the man how accosted them and took improper liberties in addressing them, the court did not place much reliance in his statements.   Leuden was found guilty and fined $30.

 


 
[I like to think that Mr. Woodall was this broad shouldered Bluto-from-Popeye type fellow.  The club he brandished would thus be either a small tree or a lamppost torn summarily from the very ground.  I also like to imagine that the saloon-keeper was an even more broad-shouldered Bluto.]

-Oregonian.  June 7, 1889.

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