Skaggs - annie - in court - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

There are some mighty fine people north of Market street and prominent among them are Mr. and Mrs. Bill Bennett. Now it so happens that they reside in the same brown stone front with Mrs. Annie Skaggs, who is a gay lady who loves to surround herself with two or three gay young ladies of a sprightly character and carry on flirtations and pursue scientific studies. Mrs. Skaggs is inclined to be stout, some say fat, but that is an unjust aspersion as she doesn’t weigh a pound over 300 but we can candidly confess that she is stout. Probably it is due as much to her stoutness as to any one other thing that she was unable to climb up the side of the wall when Mrs. Bill Bennett came after her Saturday night with a butcherknife. It was an act of unexcusable rudeness on the part of Mrs. Bennett especially as she had spent the morning sharpening the knife on Mrs. Skagg’s grindstone. There are several versions to the affair. Mrs. Bennett has a story which wouldn’t look well in print but which reflects seriously on both the jocular Bill and the fair, stout Annie. Mrs. Skaggs whose reputation for veracity is rarely questioned except when she is on oath in the Mayor’s court gives the following version. She states that Mr. Bill expects Mrs. Bill to make all the money necessary to keep the wolf from the door and the growler rushing. As to the justice of this expectation there is little to be said but when Mr. Bennett came home from a game of chess when some retired business men Saturday evening and had to kick the wolf from the stoop before he could cross the marble threshold, he was naturally very indignant and used some highly entertaining language which was not of a scriptural character nor in conformity to the rules or polite society. He entered the boudoir of his cute little wife and seizing hold of her just above one of her white satin slippers he rudely yanked her out on the floor. Mrs. Bennett rubbed her houri like eyes for a moment and then opened her jelly lips in expostulation. Mrs. Skaggs on the other side of the door, hearing the noise and thinking that the Bennetts were rehearsing for a private theatrical came walking in and offered a little advice as to stage setting. This from some cause or other incensed Mrs. Bennet and grabbing up a butcher knife she ran right up to Annie and carved several large and luscious slices of her bacon off, enough in fact to supply the whole neighborhood for Sunday breakfast. Annie fainted from loss of blood and one of her young lady protégé stepping over her prostrate body belted Mrs. Bennet over the head with a curling iron and she also became a floor mat.  About this time the officers arrived and both the Bennetts were quickly landed in jail. This morning Mrs. Skaggs was hauled up in a cab to the Mayor’s office and literally swaddled in arnica soaked bandages swore out affidavits against her assailants. Mayor Carr is surely quite hard hearted for after hearing the evidence he deliberately went to work and fined each of the Bennetts $11.35.  They both had their pockets full of greenbacks but were so incensed at the unrighteous conviction that they went to jail rather than pay the fines.  What are things coming to when one can’t carve up a lady neighbor without being hauled before the Mayor like a disturber of the peace?