Richmond Press, Inc.                          Richmond, VA                          1938

The Shockoe Hill Cats

The most determined battles of all were fought by this gang with their prime enemies, the Butchertown cats.  These went on for many years, as witness the following excerpt from Mordecai's "Richmond in By-Gone Days" (page 290).

"Butchertown requires no explanation as to its origin.  Its juvenile citizens accustomed to the sight of blood and slaughter, are a belligerent race and if they see any young mountaineers (Hill Cats, as they call them), descending towards their valley, they immediately raise the war-cry and a battle is apt to ensue, in which stones are hurled by the combatants, until one or the other party retreats with its wounded; or the civil authority (like Austria & Co.) puts an end to the war."

I will give one of my earliest memories.  My father and mother were driving out one afternoon in the late summer and this small personage was with them.  I must have been very small, indeed, for I remember that I had on kilts, not having as yet attained my fourth birthday, when I was to assume the manly garb.

We drove to Shockoe Hill and the carriage stopped, so that we might take the view.  There were no houses there at that time, save that one in which had lived the President of the late Confederate States and that other in which had dwelt the Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens.  The hill had a flat top and precipitous sides.  Some boys were playing at a distance from the brow of the hill; and at another point, two or three larger boys - they seemed like grown young men, to my small eyes - were shooting bull bats.

Of a sudden came the Butchertown cats, swarming up the hillside and throwing rocks.  The boys on top the hill stopped their game and ran to the brow of the hill to defend the position.  And a sharp battle developed in a few seconds.  I remember that many of the Butcher cats had slings.

One of the Butcher cats drew a pistol - it was a single-shot, breech-loading, .22 calibre, nickel-plated pistol.  I had seen another such at a store one day, where I had gone to buy a stick of peppermint candy and so knew exactly what it was.  He fired a shot, but seemed to do no damage. At once two of those who were shooting bull bats came running over to our position and began to shoot at the Butcher cats with their shotguns.  Thereupon, my father, very wisely, told the driver to drive away from there - much to my chagrin, for I was perfectly charmed with the combat.

These two gangs, the Shockoe Hill cats and the Butchertown cats, used to fight for the possession of the flats at the foot of the hill.  The Butchertown boys said it was theirs, because the territory was not on the hill; while the Shockoe Hill boys contended that it was theirs because it was on their side of the creek; which are arguments as sound as those that are used by the most powerful nations of Europe.

ome of the old boys of the Shockoe Hill gang were: Reid and Irving Carrington, Courtney Sheild (who once lifted, all by himself, one of the Turkish stone cannon balls at Seventh and Marshall, from the gutter, where it had been tumbled, and put it in place again atop its pedestal), French McCann the redoubtable, Herbert Ezekiel, Fairfax Christian, Phil Powers, the handsome Spencer Gilliam and Louis, his brother, Ashby Jones (the auburn-haired Ashby, not the blackhaired, afterward a minister of the Gospel), Wythe Davis, Wythe White, Willard Sweeney, Mel Hughes and Allen Black.

Spencer Gilliam, by the way, was a noted boy, handsome, soft-mannered, and never had a fight on his own account; but if one should do anything to a friend of his, or say anything against him, there would be a fight on the instant.

Some of the cats of a later period were: John Pizzini, George Wilson, Charlie Petticolas, Herbert Lawton, Joe Davis, Dorsey Mountcastle, Mouse Cary - now Senator Hunsdon Cary - John Dorset, Bill Davis, John Tiller, Webb Sydnor, Bob Crawford, Eddie White, Wallace Lawton, Jim Richardson, Eddie Burch, Tom Marshall, George Christian, John Lamb, Frank Powers, Hullie Williams, Ben Wilson, Tom Christian, Harvie Taylor, Carroll Eubank, Gil Butler, John Kendrick, Saggie Taylor, Peter Wilson, Jenks Richardson, Eddie Barbour, Winthrop Crenshaw, Herbert Taylor, and Clark Bledsoe, all warriors bold.