Unable to Work but First Class at Kicking Up Rows

   I recently ran onto a few brief news items in Springfield newspapers during the fall of 1893 about a character named Tim Heath that I found interesting, not because the incidents were particularly important but mainly because of the colorful phraseology the reporters used in describing Heath and his misadventures.
   In early September 1893, Heath appeared before a Springfield judge on a charge of disturbing the peace of one of his neighbors, Mary E. Duke for "cussing her and threshing her son." Heath had only recently been released from jail for beating his wife, and now he was convicted on the new charge and sent back to the lockup for three days. Heath, according to the Springfield Leader, seemed disappointed that he got off with such a light sentence. Heath, who was described as "crippled," was "unable to work but (was) first class at kicking up rows and constituting himself the leader and star performer thereof."
   About the middle of September, Heath and his wife, Cordell, were arrested on complaint from another neighbor, Effie Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell, "being especially ornate in her objurgations," claimed the Heaths "exhausted their vocabulary of foul words upon her." The defendants pleaded guilty and were fined $1.00 each. Tim Heath was also sentenced to a unspecified jail term. The Leader observed at the time that Heath "breaks into jail with the regularity of clockwork and seems to prefer the retirement of the county hotel to that domestic felicity which he should find within the purview of his personal vine and fig tree." In this case, however, a stay of execution was granted so that Mr. Heath was "temporarily foiled in his attempt to force himself upon the hospitality of the people." While he was waiting for the sentence to be imposed, Heath had both Mary Duke and Effie Mitchell arrested on charges of "keeping a bawdy house and being guilty of lewd and lascivious conduct." The case against the women was continued, and, meanwhile, all parties were "getting hotter under the collar...boiling over with venom against one another."
   The final disposition of the two mid-September cases is not clear, but in mid-November Heath was once again arrested for beating his wife. He was released from jail on November 21 "to search for more trouble." Presumably he found it, but maybe not, since there seems to be no trace of him after this.