National stories blew pals’ fight into inflated tale

Well, maybe it had, considering that the news folks back then apparently had a lot of time to imagine all kinds of things. They certainly didn’t have to contend with the unending stream of information — and misinformation — that editors and journalists have to sort through in these modern times.

Back in the day, local newspapers had to make do with the news at hand. If a reporter learned that so-and-so was visiting a relative in Charlottesville, that tidbit could easily become front-page copy.

And it wasn’t unheard of for a reporter to take poetic license and embellish an otherwise banal event to make it a tad more palatable to the readership. Of course, when one newspaper caught another committing such an egregious sin, it was quick to pounce.

The redoubtable Vera V. Via discovered a wonderful example of this while poring through some old editions of the Jeffersonian, a long-defunct Charlottesville broadsheet. She was always on the lookout for interesting things to write about for her “Looking Back” history column, which appeared in The Daily Progress during the 1950s and ’60s.

Reports of a knife fight

In the fall of 1882, a number of newspapers were picking up a story about a knife fight that was said to have occurred in Charlottesville. The gist of the account was that two young men, Peter Dick and Charles Roads, had engaged in a duel to the death with butcher knives.

The combatants were clerks in a Charlottesville hardware store. Business must have been slow, because, the story said, Dick and Roads, along with several of their friends, started playing practical jokes on each other.

Dick thought it would be funny to throw cayenne pepper in Roads’ eyes. Not surprisingly, Roads failed to find any humor in being blinded by searing pain and, understandably, demanded an apology.

Instead of saying he was sorry, Dick suggested they engage in mortal combat. Roads was said to have accepted the challenge, and they started looking for a couple of pistols with which to shoot each other.

Elaboration in excess

Quickly frustrated in that search, the men decided to fight with knives. A good choice, because there were some fine examples of cutlery right there in the store where they were supposed to be working.

The newspaper story reported the two men then went at it in “true Texas style.” The dance of death was said to have lasted for several minutes before Dick spotted an opening and cut Roads from “the lower abdomen across the chest.”

The account wraps things up with Roads being taken to the hospital and his friends hoping he would live to clerk another day. The final words told of how both men deeply regretted the affair ever happened.

The Jeffersonian ran the entire story so its readers could see for themselves what newspapers around the country were publishing. Fearing that “our town will get a bad name,” it was decided to publish a truthful account of the story as gleaned from an eyewitness.

To begin with, the two clerks had gathered “after work” with some of their friends. While shooting the breeze about events of the day one of the fellows, as a joke, sprinkled pepper on an apple.

We now go to the written account of what actually happened next, as it appeared in the Nov. 29, 1882, edition of the Jeffersonian.

“Now it so happens that one of these boys was father fiery by nature, and he took a big bite of the aforesaid peppered apple,” the Jeffersonian’s reporter wrote.

“The pepper (whether red or black our informant did not say) was too much for him, and so it is rumored he allowed the cuss words to flow thick and fast.

“After a few words it was decided that two of them should fight a duel with butcher knives. Ah! Bloodthirsty boys! After the preliminaries were arranged, the parties repaired to the vacant field in the rear of Sinclair’s shop.

“There in sight of the tree upon which Jim Rhodes was hung [Rhodes was lynched the month previously for his suspected part in the axe murder of an elderly couple], the bright silvery moon looking down upon the scene, the sharp keen knives were glittering in the cool frosty air — when one of the bystanders, not willing to allow two friends and fellow workers to join in fierce blood and mortal combat, proposed that the two shake hands.

“This they did, and the heartrending story of Charles Roads and Peter Dick as published above [in other publications] has a body in the imagination of a newspaper reporter.”

The Jeffersonian writer might have gotten the story right. But if he had handed his melodramatic copy to a modern-day editor, he would have likely been joining Mr. Rhodes on yonder hanging tree.