SIHR Blog A History of Hockey Violence: 1900–1926

[sr edler]

The era in ice hockey from around the turn of the twentieth century and up until the formation of the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1917 doesn’t have a formal name, but it is sometimes referred to as the “pre-NHL era.” Or, up until the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL) disbanded in 1926, and all of the best players gathered in a singular league, in the NHL, as the “pre-consolidation era.”

Most, if not all, ice hockey historians agree on the notion that this particular era was notoriously rough in nature, which culminated in the deaths of Alcide Laurin in 1905, in a game between Alexandria and Maxville, and Owen “Bud” McCourt in 1907, in a game between Cornwall and the Ottawa Victorias. Both being victims of stick-blows to their heads from opponent players.[1][2]

Alcide Laurin and Owen McCourt​

But what are some of the nuances and broader implications of early era hockey violence? Let’s try to find out.

Sometimes, when discussing modern era hockey violence, you will come across the statement that “back in the good old days, players policed themselves,” meaning that neither the leagues nor outside legal authorities would care to interfere much with on-ice violence, and often with the insinuation that the game was also better and cleaner off because of it.

But it isn’t true, in a broader sense, that early era players policed themselves.

While researching the violent aspects of the game during this particular era of hockey, it is inevitable to soon come across a rather lengthy pattern of police presence at games, court cases, fines and players being banned from various leagues.

Outside of the two famous cases with deceased players, regarding Alcide Laurin and “Bud” McCourt, as mentioned in the second paragraph above, there were plenty of other instances where on-ice violence led to off-ice charges:

In 1907 Harry Smith, Alf Smith and Charlie Spittal of the Ottawa Hockey Club were arrested in Montreal for assaulting a trio of Montreal Wanderers players, and while Harry Smith was subsequently acquitted Alf Smith and Spittal were each fined $20.[3]

In 1910 future Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Rusty Crawford, of the Prince Albert Mintos, was found guilty in a Saskatoon police court of assaulting Reg Brehaut of the Saskatoon Strathconas, and he was fined $5 and legal costs.[4]

In 1912 Sprague Cleghorn, then with the Montreal Wanderers, pleaded guilty in a Toronto court of assaulting Newsy Lalonde of the Montreal Canadiens, and Cleghorn was fined $50 by Judge Morgan, with detective Guthrie being present in court describing the assault.

“The police are perfectly right, and I will always punish severely brutality in sport, unless they are mitigating circumstances. Sportsmen ought to act like reasonable people and not like brutes and lunatics.”[5]

– Judge Morgan in Toronto commenting on the Sprague Cleghorn case in 1912​

In 1915 Roy McGiffin of the Toronto Blueshirts and Art Ross of the Ottawa Senators ended up in court together after having fought each other in a game, and they were each fined $1 and legal costs.[6]

And in 1918 “Bad Joe” Hall of the Montreal Canadiens and Alf Skinner of the Toronto Arenas made a similar mutual court appearance, after having hit each other violently with their hockey sticks, and were both handed a suspended sentence.[7]

Joe Hall and Harry Smith​

And this is not a complete list but only a selection of cases from this particular era, where legal authorities felt they had to step in to resolve trouble stemming from on-ice assaults or altercations.

One of the more infamous hockey games regarding over-the-top violence, during the first decade of the 1900s, took place in Winnipeg on December 19, 1907, during a Manitoba Hockey Association (MHA) qualifying contest between the Winnipeg Hockey Club and the Winnipeg Maple Leafs. Particularly the Maple Leafs, with notorious troublemakers Joe Hall and Harry Smith on the roster, exhibited a disgraceful amount of rough-house antics, which eventually led to the Winnipeg Hockey Club players skating off the ice in protest, thus defaulting the game. Both Joe Hall and Harry Smith were subsequently banned from the MHA for their part in the game, and their teammate Barney Holden, himself not a shy player regarding the physical aspects of the game, later described the contest as the roughest game he had ever played in.[8][9]

Winnipeg Hockey Club’s leading player Billy Breen made it clear after the game that his team would not accept such violence:

“Our fellows are purely amateur and cannot afford to appear at their offices with their heads all bandaged up. Their employers object, and so do the men themselves. If they cannot go through a game without being disfigured, they do not want to play. There is no use trying to play with such players as we were against in this game, so we retire from the game entirely. We want no more of it under any circumstances. Such hockey is nothing short of brutal.”[10]

– Billy Breen on the rough antics displayed by the Winnipeg Maple Leafs in December 1907

Billy Breen​

In 1910 Joe Hall was again expelled from a league, this time the National Hockey Association (NHA) while playing for the Montreal Shamrocks, after having attacked referee Rod Kennedy, although he was later reinstated.[11]

Another high-profile case of a player being banned from a league, during the pre-consolidation era, happened in 1919 in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (PCHA) when Seattle Metropolitans right winger Carol “Cully” Wilson slashed Mickey MacKay of the Vancouver Millionaires across the mouth in a game between the two clubs. MacKay suffered a fractured jaw, as well as and damage to five of his teeth, and missed the rest of the season. When the season was over PCHA chief disciplinarian Frank Patrick banned Wilson from the league, and Wilson never played in the PCHA again.[12]

Cully Wilson was widely known as a rough player, while Mickey MacKay was considered a clean player, and the incident between the two players even pitted some Seattle supporters against Wilson:

“Irrespective of how tonight’s match comes out, I would like to go on the record as saying that there are a lot of good hockey fans in Seattle who do not want to see even a championship brought to our city if it must be earned through such behavior as Cully Wilson’s assault on Mickey MacKay. The whole thing occurred in front of me, and I can not bring myself to believe it was an accident. Since coming to Vancouver I have heard this is to be Wilson’s last season with this league. I hope so. Wilson should never have played again after attacking MacKay, and I am surprised that the Patricks, who are generally to be commended for the fine kind of sport they are giving, did not have sense enough to do the proper thing, and rule Wilson off immediately. I am going to the match tonight to yell my head off for Seattle, and I hope we give you a proper trimming, but I want to see it done by clean methods, and without any losing of temper. I would not like Vancouver to think that Seattle as a whole approves of vicious playing.”[13]

– Seattle Metropolitans supporter Walford Beaton on Cully Wilson’s assault on Mickey MacKay

Cully Wilson and Mickey MacKay​

Eight years later, during the 1927 Stanley Cup Finals between the Ottawa Senators and the Boston Bruins, Boston defenseman Billy Coutu attacked referees Jerry Laflamme and Billy Bell, allegedly on a direct order from his bench boss Art Ross. Coutu’s attack on Laflamme and Bell earned him a life-long suspension from the NHL, which is still, as of 2021, the single longest suspension the league has ever handed down to a player.

Even though the pre-consolidation era had its fair share of rough and tumble players, and some over-the-top foul antics, it also had its fair share of clean and gentlemanly players. Among the latter group of players were such high regarded names as Jack Marshall, Jack Walker, Mickey MacKay and Frank Nighbor.

Frank Nighbor’s gentlemanly manners, during the 1924–25 season while playing for the Ottawa Senators, attracted the admiration of Evelyn Byng, the wife of Lord Julian Byng, 1st Viscount Byng of Vimy. Both husband and wife Byng were ardent fans of the game.

Lady Byng, as she was colloquially known as, was so impressed by Nighbor’s sportsmanlike manners that she decided to donate a trophy to the NHL, the Lady Byng Trophy, to be presented each year to the player adjudged to have exhibited the best type of sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct combined with a high standard of playing ability. Lady Byng awarded the first trophy to Nighbor in person at the Rideau Hall in Ottawa at the conclusion of the 1924–25 season.

Lord and Lady Byng​

Naturally it’s hard to get a good in depth read on the more unwritten rules of the time, regarding violence and on-ice policing, i.e. what would effectively be the equivalent of the modern day “code.” But since there weren’t any actual enforcers in the game, it seems the onus of retaliation more often than not fell on the victim himself, or on the league in question, depending on the severity of the circumstances. And rough players most always seemed to feud with other rough players, such as the long-running feud between Joe Hall and Newsy Lalonde, when Hall played with the Quebec Bulldogs and Lalonde with the Montreal Canadiens.

To the extent a general philosophy or code was present between players in the pre-consolidation era, it still didn’t seem that everyone was on board with it. Cy Denneny of the Ottawa Senators, in a 1945 post career interview with Bill Westwick of the Ottawa Journal, claimed that he couldn’t fully understand the motivations of Joe Hall. Denneny, who was friendly with Hall off the ice, claimed that Hall had told him that he didn’t like opposing players who tried to avoid him by shifting sides, but that he had never been dirty towards Denneny because Denneny came in on Hall’s side of the ice minding his own business:

“His philosophy was a little hard to understand, but it seemed he respected anyone who kept coming in his side, and didn’t start avoiding him.”[14]

– Cy Denneny on Joe Hall​

Sources:

[1] Ottawa Journal, Feb. 27, 1905
[2] Ottawa Citizen, Mar. 14, 1907
[3] Chi-Kit Wong, John (2009). Coast to Coast: Hockey in Canada to the Second World War
[4] The Star-Phoenix (Saskatoon), Jan. 19, 1910
[5] Ottawa Citizen, Dec. 30, 1912
[6] Boston Globe, Feb. 22, 1915
[7] Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 30, 1918
[8] Montreal Gazette, Dec. 23, 1907
[9] Vancouver Sun, Dec. 24, 1922
[10] Ottawa Journal, Dec. 23, 1907
[11] Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 14, 1913
[12] The Morning Leader (Regina) Oct. 31, 1924
[13] The Province (Vancouver), Mar. 15, 1919
[14] Ottawa Journal, Dec. 11, 1945


Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)

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[Theokritos]

Very interesting article on a topic that has received some well-deserved attention over the last few years. I'm still not entirely sure I have already seen an explanation for the violence spike of that era that truly satisfies me, but it's handy to have so much benchmark data gathered in one place here.

 

[sr edler]

Very interesting article on a topic that has received some well-deserved attention over the last few years. I'm still not entirely sure I have already seen an explanation for the violence spike of that era that truly satisfies me, but it's handy to have so much benchmark data gathered in one place here.

Right, and it's possible to collect even more data. Question is perhaps how to categorize it all and sort out all of the instances. But I didn't want to make an unnecessary long list of instances in this piece, so I focused on the bigger leagues and cases before court instead, and/or where charges were materialized.

Left out here for instance is James Cushing of Moncton being arrested in Fredericton in 1908 after having assaulted Jack MacDonald in a previous game. Bail was refused at first, but the charges eventually dropped.

Also left out is the Ottawa College vs Cleveland AC riot in Cleveland in 1915 where Ottawa's young goalie Vincent Doran was arrested on a charge of assault to kill after he had struck Elmer Irving in the head. In this case I think it was Irving who didn't want to proceed with the case, so it was dropped.

As for theories of why it spiked around this time, I don't have a specific theory myself, but from what I've read some other people say, this is around the time when the sport first became professionalized and the sport expanded to all social classes. So it wasn't any longer just affluent people who practiced a hobby with a close circle of friends, but also a fight to bring home a livelihood.

But also I think, as with many other things, there could be more than a single factor at play.

 

[sr edler]

Another NHA assault case not mentioned in the article above is the Skene Ronan (Montreal Canadiens) on Alf Skinner (Toronto Blueshirts) case from the 1915–16 season, where Ronan was arrested in Toronto for assaulting his former teammate and then released on a $200 bail. In the later trial Ronan was acquitted.

Another thing sometimes appearing in the newspapers of the time were these "stitch maps" or "stitch surveys" recording or showcasing various players and their injuries. Below are such maps/surveys of Cully Wilson, Moose Johnson & Walter Smaill. Not on Johnson's map is his broken collarbone which appeared in a latter season.

One of Smaill's instances says he was once unconscious for 15 hours after a collision with Lester Patrick.

 

[Theokritos]

As for theories of why it spiked around this time, I don't have a specific theory myself, but from what I've read some other people say, this is around the time when the sport first became professionalized and the sport expanded to all social classes. So it wasn't any longer just affluent people who practiced a hobby with a close circle of friends, but also a fight to bring home a livelihood.

But also I think, as with many other things, there could be more than a single factor at play.

Right. I'm willing to buy that professionalization was the main factor, but I just don't think I've ever seen the specifics illuminated to the degree that I'd like to see. Did players think "I have to take this guy out or we'll lose and I don't get a good paycheck" or were players just willing to play a little rougher against each other and then emotions spilled over and things escalated? And was it a team tactic like with the 1970s Philadelphia Flyers or were it just individuals?

 

[sr edler]

Right. I'm willing to buy that professionalization was the main factor, but I just don't think I've ever seen the specifics illuminated to the degree that I'd like to see. Did players think "I have to take this guy out or we'll lose and I don't get a good paycheck" or were players just willing to play a little rougher against each other and then emotions spilled over and things escalated? And ws it a team tactic like with the 1970s Philadelphia Flyers or were it just individuals?

Yeah, it's an interesting topic to theorize about. I think if you view the whole entirety of organized hockey, you can probably pick out a few peaks and valleys regarding violence in general. It's not that it ever disappeared at any point in time, it just seems that sometimes there were spikes, and sometimes it just appeared in different shapes or forms. I'm thinking the 90s designated goon era for instance, with a lot of staged P.T. Barnum type of fighting and enforcers having WWE type of nicknames like "The Grim Reaper" or "The Algonquin Assassin".

And I think, as @tarheelhockey sometimes have alluded to, different type of eras just had different type of philosophies floating around. And sometimes there were different types of philosophies floating around at the same time, colliding with each other.

 

[sr edler]

And ws it a team tactic like with the 1970s Philadelphia Flyers or were it just individuals?

That's a good question. It was probably both, or one or the other, depending on the circumstances.

I think if you view the early professional years, for instance, let's say the first decade, there was a lot of mercenary team jumping going on. If you look at Harry Smith, for instance, one of the dirtier players of that time period, he did a lot of team jumping, and seldom stayed for more than one or two years with the same club. In his case I'll say it was probably mostly just an individual thing. Players often weren't as tied to just one club as they would become later into the 1910s or 1920s.

But, he (Harry Smith) was also part of that famous incident where three Ottawa H/C players (him, his brother Alf, and Charlie Spittal) assaulted three different Montreal Wanderers players (Moose Johnson, Hod Stuart, and Cecil Blachford) in the same game, so some teams definitely had worse reputations than others. I'm not 100% what team from that era would be the Broad Street Bullies, but that Ottawa team with Alf, Harry & Charlie Spittal was certainly rough.

 

[Sanf]

Another great read!

I´m still on break so not going to my notes, but I remember one article of Garnet Sixsmith of Pittsburgh (it was after IPHL). He was asked whether he rather take a stick to his head or to his leg. He answered something like he would rather take stick to his head because then he may loose consciousness or some blood, but stick to his leg may break his leg and the season is over. (If I remember correct Sixsmith had nasty experience about this with "Lady" Taylor). Overall Sixsmith was from the rougher spectrum of the players.

It really is hard to understand the reasons. It really is hard to get the mindset of the time. Obviously death was overall around much more then (obviously I do understand that even today we live in different worlds). Not just the wars or the spanish flue. Even if I think of the notable hockey players of that time span there was so many dying young. From activity accidents, blood poisoning from cutting toe nail, pneumonia...

 

[sr edler]

Another great read!

I´m still on break so not going to my notes, but I remember one article of Garnet Sixsmith of Pittsburgh (it was after IPHL). He was asked whether he rather take a stick to his head or to his leg. He answered something like he would rather take stick to his head because then he may loose consciousness or some blood, but stick to his leg may break his leg and the season is over. (If I remember correct Sixsmith had nasty experience about this with "Lady" Taylor). Overall Sixsmith was from the rougher spectrum of the players.

It really is hard to understand the reasons. It really is hard to get the mindset of the time. Obviously death was overall around much more then (obviously I do understand that even today we live in different worlds). Not just the wars or the spanish flue. Even if I think of the notable hockey players of that time span there was so many dying young. From activity accidents, blood poisoning from cutting toe nail, pneumonia...

Yeah, Lady Taylor's an interesting figure. I haven't done a ton of research of the IPHL myself, but there's good stuff out there courtesy of Daniel Mason.

But the Sixsmith/Taylor incident was recalled by Sixsmith himself in the Dec. 15, 1931 issue of the Pittsburgh Press. Apparently Taylor told Sixsmith right before the game was about to start "I'm going to break your leg tonight", and after Sixsmith had answered the threat with a Bronx Cheer, when the game went under way, Taylor actually broke Sixsmith's leg in three places. Sixsmith said of that incident, that he was shocked any man could do that to him because he had always been able to take care of himself.

According to Taylor's SIHR notes, he was also fined $500 and posted a $1,000 bond in 1908 after having threatened to kill his estranged wife.

Taylor later fought in WWI with the Black Watch Regiment and came back to Canada with both a bullet and shrapnel in his body, and also had a steel plate inserted in his skull from his injuries.

I've still no idea where the nickname "Lady" came from though.

Lady Taylor and Garnet Sixsmith​

 

[Sanf]

Yeah I don´t have deep knowledge about "Lady" Taylors nickname either.

That Daniel Masons work (which I think you pointed to me) is more than amazing groundwork. I think it may be close or more than 50-50 of the knowledge I have (don´t have the sources across the sea). And regarding the IPHL stats I rely mostly on that.

 

[sr edler]

Illustration below from the January 28, 1907 issue of the Montreal Daily Star depicting Ottawa Hockey Club players Alf and Harry Smith and Charles "Baldy" Spittal in chains.

The Ottawa trio had been arrested by Montreal police for foul play stemming from an ECAHA game against the Montreal Wanderers earlier in the month on January 12, and the Smith brothers played the January 26 game against the Montreal Victorias while under arrest. Harry Smith scored 6 goals, and his older brother Alf added 2 of his own, in a 12-10 victory over the Victorias in Montreal.

 

[kaiser matias]

To follow up on the above discussion about the IPHL:

I'm sure most here are aware that it had a reputation of being a lot more violent than the leagues in Canada. That has been in part attributed to the context of the league (founded to serve a booming mining community, which was a little rough in its own regard), but also that it was a little propagandized by the Canadian media, as a means to stem off the (inevitable) march to professionalism: a way of saying that while the pros in the US would butcher each other for a dollar, "pure" amateurs in Canada would never stoop that low (which as we can see here, is demonstrably false).

Would certainly be an interesting topic to explore further. I know Mason, as noted above, is the dean of IPHL research, but I'll also mention Stacy Lorenz, who has sometimes worked with Mason on some academic articles on hockey history. In particular I'll mention Lorenz's "Hockey, Violence, and Masculinity: Newspaper Coverage of the Ottawa ‘Butchers’, 1903–1906" (I have a copy if anyone's interested). I'll also note that in writing this I found out Lorenz just published (in December 2021), another relevant article: '"Don’t Mess Around with Gordie": Hockey Violence, the 1959 Gordie Howe-Lou Fontinato Fight, and Postwar Masculinity', but I haven't read it yet.

 

[sr edler]

I'm sure most here are aware that it had a reputation of being a lot more violent than the leagues in Canada. That has been in part attributed to the context of the league (founded to serve a booming mining community, which was a little rough in its own regard), but also that it was a little propagandized by the Canadian media, as a means to stem off the (inevitable) march to professionalism: a way of saying that while the pros in the US would butcher each other for a dollar, "pure" amateurs in Canada would never stoop that low (which as we can see here, is demonstrably false).

The Timiskaming (1906–1911) and Cobalt (1910–1914) leagues in north-eastern Ontario were also based around the mining boom, but I can't remember coming across anything particularly egregious regarding violence around those leagues, and they still had some rough customers coming through the league like Harry Smith, Billy Coutu and Duke Keats. So yeah, that explanation seems a little bit far-fetched.

Sure, the IPHL had some rough stuff going on at times, but I don't think it was anything out of the ordinary compared to Canada, and much of it probably stemmed from inconsistent officiating.

 

[kaiser matias]

The Timiskaming (1906–1911) and Cobalt (1910–1914) leagues in north-eastern Ontario were also based around the mining boom, but I can't remember coming across anything particularly egregious regarding violence around those leagues, and they still had some rough customers coming through the league like Harry Smith, Billy Coutu and Duke Keats. So yeah, that explanation seems a little bit far-fetched.

Sure, the IPHL had some rough stuff going on at times, but I don't think it wasn't anything out of the ordinary compared to Canada, and much of it probably stemmed from inconsistent officiating.

Agreed, and like I said, I wonder how much of the perception was a deliberate attempt by the Canadian media or whomever to try and downplay the IPHL, and professionalism as a whole.

The officiating is also worth noting. Hod Stuart famously left the league over officiating, even publishing a letter to a Montreal paper stating as much. I believe Cyclone Taylor (among others) also commented about it at one point, but I don't have the information on hand right now.

 

[Black Gold Extractor]

It's also worth noting that as players were competing for paychecks as professionals, it was also getting harder to score over a fairly short period of time. Players who were already predisposed to more physical play may have turned their growing frustration into violence. Just looking at the pre-consolidation NHA, PCHA, and WCHL:

Season​	NHA goals/game​	PCHA goals/game​	WCHL goals/game​
1909-10​	12.93​	​	​
1910-11​	10.43​	​	​
1911-12​	9.28​	11.35​	​
1912-13​	8.67​	9.52​	​
1913-14​	8.62​	10.04​	​
1914-15​	8.22​	10.38​	​
1915-16​	7.67​	8.00​	​
1916-17​	​	9.77​	​
1917-18​	​	7.41​	​
1918-19​	​	6.07​	​
1919-20​	​	5.79​	​
1920-21​	​	6.53​	​
1921-22​	​	5.64​	7.35​
1922-23​	​	6.16​	6.45​
1923-24​	​	5.53​	5.43​
1924-25​	​	​	6.44​
1925-26​	​	​	5.22​

As competition got stiffer, it got harder to score. What's the easiest way to make it easier to score? I suppose that maiming the guy(s) trying to stop you from scoring is one (desperate) avenue...

 

[sr edler]

Here below is Alf Smith's full sentence from his assault on Hod Stuart from the January 12, 1907 game between Ottawa HC and Montreal Wanderers, by Judge Choquet in Montreal. $20 and $19 in costs, or two months in jail, and a personal bond of $200 to keep peace for one year.

I did a quick google thing regarding dollars and inflation and $39 from 1907 is around $1209 in today's currency.

 

[sr edler]

Agreed, and like I said, I wonder how much of the perception was a deliberate attempt by the Canadian media or whomever to try and downplay the IPHL, and professionalism as a whole.

Accusations of rough play was pretty common standard though even inside of Canada, around this time period, first decade of the 1900s. I think some Canadian actors got annoyed at the IPHL because they felt they took some of their best players, but the Montreal press in particular loved to throw shade at the Ottawas (Hockey Club), Montreal Wanderers biggest rival. I found these clips below from the 1906 season, in the Montreal Daily Star, and they kinda cracked me up. It's after Alcide Laurin in 1905, but prior to both Owen McCourt and the Smith brothers/Charlie Spittal's infamous game against the Wanderers in 1907.

First this one, from February 3, 1906

And then from two consecutive issues on March 7 and 8

And though not directly related to violence, this one also cracked me up, from the 1909–10 season

 

[Smirnov2Chistov]

I'm often amused and quite shocked that stick violence seemed 'common' back in the early days of the league.