Soapy Smith rescues his future wife, Mary Noonan from an attacker, 1885.

A NEGRO'S NERVE.
Rocky Mountain News
November 4, 1885
Courtesy of NewsBank

(Click image to enlarge)

 

 ary swoons over her rescuing knight. 

In telling of the incident that occurred the first time she met Jefferson Randolph Smith II to her children and grandchildren, Mary Eva Noonan said that she "swooned over her rescuing knight." One fact that she chose to omit from her reciting the story of how Soapy" Smith, her future husband, rescued her honor, was that the attacker was a black man. Not that it matters, except to the accuracy of the history.

As Mary told it, she had finished her singing performance at the Palace Theater in Denver, Colorado, when she was approached by Jefferson Randolph Smith II, notoriously known as "Soapy." In her rehashing of the story she did not mention exactly where the incident took place and future books on Soapy assumed that the scene took place at the Palace Theater. The newspaper article states that the attack took place at John Kinneavy's saloon, a friend of Soapy's, located on the corner of Sixteenth and Holladay (later named Market) Streets, about two blocks from the Palace Theater.

Though the photo-copy of the newspaper article is not very good, I am able to share the entire article as I have a better copy in my files that I obtained in the 1980s-90s while researching through the Rocky Mountain News on microfilm, for the book, Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel. Below is the full text of the article.

A NEGRO'S NERVE.
―
He Tackles a White Woman and Gets the Worst of It.

     About 10 o'clock last night T. Smith, a gambler, was sitting in a back room attachment to John Kinneavy's saloon, corner of Sixteenth and Holladay streets, with a lady friend, a colored man entered and without saying a word seized Smith's companion about the neck and kissed her, Smith naturally took umbrage at this and drawing a revolver struck the Negro over the head with it, inflicting a slight cut in the forehead. As the pistol, which was loaded, struck the negro's head, one barrel went off and the neighborhood was aroused. Smith skipped out, as did also the negro, who's name proved proved to be Arthur Jackson. Captain captain Swain was at once at on the scene and caught Jackson as he was running across the street and took him to the city jail. Arrived here he washed the blood from his face and it was found that he was only slightly hurt. Smith subsequently gave himself up and he is in being retained at police headquarters.
     Colored men who know the man Jackson give him anything but a good name, saying that he has a weakness for attacking white women in the same manner as he last evening assaulted the woman who was with Soapy Smith.
     The report of Smith's pistol caused a good deal of excitement for a few moments, but it soon died down when it was learned that no one was hurt.

―

The newspaper defends Soapy's actions as he is innocently conversing and flirting with Mary when Arthur Jackson assaulted her. In Mary's telling, when Soapy crashed his gun down upon the attackers head, his revolver went off at the same time, and so much blood gushed from the man's head, that Soapy believed he had shot Jackson. Thinking he had killed Jackson, Soapy fled the saloon. The attacker recovered from his wounds, and Soapy was fined $5 for "disturbance" (Rocky Mountain News, November 6, 1885).

Mary Eva Noonan
colorized
wedding photograph
February 1886
Jeff Smith collection

Visit the Soapy Smith Soap Box blog

 

 

Arthur Jackson attacks Mary Noonan: pages 104-105.

"A number of moralists condemn lotteries and refuse to see anything noble in the passion of the ordinary gambler. They judge gambling as some atheists judge religion, by its excesses."

—Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia, 1832