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100 years ago in Spokane: A woman chronicled her trip to a boxing match to observe ‘the sports editor’s domain’
An anonymous feature writer, apparently a woman, ventured “into the sports editor’s domain” and attended a Spokane “boxing bee,” i.e., a prizefight.
She boldly entered this masculine arena after noting that in New York, Miss Anne Morgan, daughter of J.P. Morgan, had recently staged a prizefight. In Chicago, Mrs. Marshall Field III had promoted a “wrestling carnival.” Boxing had acquired, said the writer, “a new place in social esteem.”
Not necessarily in Spokane, though.
“Spokane’s fighting has been carried on without the formality of evening dress,” she wrote. “The crowd comes in its everyday garb.”
She was amused by a lot of what she saw. When a tall boxer meets a short one, “the long fellow is inclined to swing his arm like the proverbial barn door.”
“Then the shorter fellow ducks and the gloved fist swishes through the air,” she wrote. “There is something funny about it.”
She overheard a nearby spectator say, “If there isn’t a knockout this time, there’s going to be a murder around here.”
The spectator got his wish in an ensuing bout when a boxer sank to the floor.
“The crowd was silent for a moment. … Then the crowd roared.”
On this day
(From Associated Press)
1861: Abraham Lincoln was officially declared winner of the 1860 presidential election as electors cast their ballots.
2000: Charles Schulz’s final “Peanuts” strip ran in Sunday newspapers, the day after the cartoonist died in his sleep at his California home at age 77.