KinSource - Tale of the Week - A Tenement Vixen

KinSource

Minnesota Tales

The Minneapolis Evening Journal, August 6, 1885, page 1

A TENEMENT VIXEN.

A Danish, Irish and Negro Rumpus Aired in Court.

The "up and down stairs" tenement row, in which Mrs. Anna Hendrickson appeared against Mr. and Mrs. John Fitzgibbons, charging assault and battery, had a hearing in the municipal court this morning. The scene of the difficulty is No. 237 Tenth avenue south. The complainant, with her husband and five children, reside up stairs, while the Fitzgibbons occupy the lower part of the house. The testimony in the case was one round of side-splitting fun. Three nationalities - Dane, Irish and negro - were represented, which only added to the confusion and merriment. Three of the parties exhibited black eyes and other signs of assault. The Hendrickson woman insisted on showing to Judge Mahoney the condition of her breast, which she said was black and blue; "And if you don't believe it, you can just look." But the modest magistrate only smiled as he remarked, "No, madam, I'll take your word for it." The witness answered to the question whether or not she hit the Fitzgibbon's woman; "No, because I couldn't get a chance." Maggie Olson boarded with the complainant, but worked in the Chinese laundry across the street. She saw Mrs. F. strike the Danish woman so fast that she couldn't count the blows. Hendrickson himself appeared on the stand much worse for wear, testifying that his wife was assaulted with a file and a stick of wood. He had

Mingled in the Melee

just long enough to get a pair of patched eyes, a lame arm and a sore side from one of Mrs' F.'s male relatives. Mrs. Fitzgibbons next swore that she was not outside her own door, but that Mrs. H. accused her of stealing some plants and struck her in the face with a piece of mill wood, to which there was evidence in a mournful looking optic. The genuine picnic began when Amos, formerly the colored cook at the St. James, came to testify. He had previously lived in the same house with Mrs. Hendrickson and could not get along with her. "But did you see this trouble?" asked the judge. "No, sah, but my wife did, an' she's given away. 'Spected her heyar to-day, but she 'ant. All I see'd was this yer lady (Mrs. Hendrickson) cussin' and swearin' after der fight was all ovah." The court, from other disinterested witnesses, found that the Hendrickson woman was a "vixen" in the neighborhood, and that she was to blame in this case and dismissed the defendants. It appeared in the evidence that this was the woman with whom Nora Sexton had the difficulty some weeks ago, when the latter was arrested for shooting a man, but which proved to have been done by the man himself, accidentally. The court gave instructions that the police keep watch of this woman in the future and see that she doesn't raise any more trouble.