Commentary: Anti-Mormonism, polygamy fights, newspaper wars and Salt Lake City’s stinkpot scandal of 1885

I enjoy my job but, like everyone, sometimes must deal with the challenges of, well, let’s just call it workplace excrement. It gets a bit easier, however, when I remember that the men who started my law firm had to dodge the real thing 140 years ago.

Lawyers William H. Dickson and Charles Stetson Varian founded the firm that became Parsons Behle & Latimer. Parsons Behle has deep roots in Utah and in the American West it still serves today.

Dickson was born in 1847 in Canada. In June 1874, he moved to Virginia City, Nevada, and practiced law there for eight years.

A year older than Dickson, Varian left his native Ohio and settled in 1867 in Nevada, where he served as a county official and in the state Legislature. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him the U.S. attorney in 1876.

In 1882, shortly after the shootout at Tombstone’s O.K. Corral and just as Annie Oakley made her first appearance at a Western sharpshooting show, Dickson and Varian relocated their law practice to Salt Lake City.

President Chester A. Arthur appointed Dickson the U.S. attorney for the Utah Territory in 1884. Dickson named Varian as his assistant.

They served together for three tumultuous years and vigorously prosecuted several polygamy cases. They were respected and vilified for enforcing the controversial laws prohibiting the religious practice.

Perhaps the most interesting moment of vilification happened during what I call the Great Stinkpot Controversy of 1885.

The smell of poop bombs in the morning

Early one September Sunday morning, Dickson was asleep in his front parlor near where the Little America Hotel is today. A group of men The Salt Lake Herald described as “reeking beasts” tossed Mason jars filled with human feces at his window.

The crash woke Dickson but hearing nothing further, he went back to sleep. The Herald said a few hours later Dickson discovered that foul waste “besmirched the wall and grass” in front of his home.

After hitting Dickson’s place, according to The Salt Lake Tribune, the “Mormon gang of filth vendors” approached Varian’s house just around the corner. Varian was in Idaho, but his wife, Florence, was home with a sick child.

“Two jars of the nauseous excrement were thrown through a parlor window and broke,” The Tribune reported, “the contents being scattered over the carpets, furniture and walls.”

Florence Varian rushed downstairs — pistol in hand — to confront the ruffians, but they had fled.

U.S. Court Commissioner William H. McKay, who lived a few blocks away, was the last stinkpot victim of the night. The Deseret News reported that “fiendish” vandals launched three poop bombs at his residence.

One defiled the porch, and one landed unbroken on McKay’s sofa. The News said another “broke and bespattered the room pretty thoroughly with its stinking contents.”

Word of the attacks spread through Salt Lake City. Initial reports suggested that anti-polygamy territorial Judge Charles Zane — a former partner at Abraham Lincoln’s law firm — was hit, too, but that proved untrue.

The Associated Press sent a wire story describing how “some persons, evidently Mormons” had attacked three federal officials with “quart jars containing offensive matter.” The AP added, “There is no clue to the perpetrators of the outrage. Much indignation is felt here.”

The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and several other newspapers across the country all shared the story.

The you-know-what really hit the fan, however, when Utah newspapers started flinging their own stinky ink bombs at one another.

‘Whiff of true Mormon malice’

The Tribune fired the first salvo. It said the assault had the “whiff of true Mormon malice” and argued that besides the local Saints, “there probably is not a man who entertains a grudge against the three gentlemen who were raided.”

The Herald took issue with The Tribune’s “damnably atrocious utterances” that Latter-day Saints were silent about the attacks.

‘“There was not a Mormon on the street,” The Herald retorted, “...who did not lift his voice in detestation and horror at the beastly events.”

Perhaps tongue in cheek, The Herald speculated that Tribune reporters were behind the assault, “They are certainly much more accustomed to slinging filth than anyone else in this vicinity.”

In a long story headlined “Stinkpot Subterfuge,” the Deseret News attacked the AP. The paper, owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, pointed out — correctly — that if there were no clues about the perpetrators, then the wire service should not blame Latter-day Saints for it.

The Salt Lake Evening Democrat sided with The Tribune. Ogden’s Standard-Examiner aligned itself with The Herald and the News. Most of the rest of the city picked sides, too.

The Deseret News noted how none of the victims had reported the crimes to the police, suggesting it likely was a scheme to make Latter-day Saints look bad. The News boldly predicted that the “guilty parties” would prove to be “friends of Messrs Dickson, Varian and McKay.”

Calling the alleged plot “the most absurd and ineffectual that could be thought of,” the News also asserted that if a Latter-day Saint really wanted to assault any of the three federal gentlemen, the dirty deed could be done much more effectively.

That unfortunate statement proved prophetic.

The aftermath

Within six months, the sons and nephew of Latter-day Saint apostle George Q. Cannon were arrested for assaulting Dickson at a hotel. Frank Cannon — later Utah’s first U.S. senator, a Latter-day Saint apostate, and a Tribune editor — pleaded guilty and served jail time.

Dickson appeared at the court hearing and urged Judge Zane to suspend the sentence. Frank Cannon declined the offer and spent his jail time helping his father write a book about church founder Joseph Smith.

Unlike the Cannons, the feces flingers were never apprehended. Yet, territorial Gov. Eli Murray (for whom Murray City is named) still mentioned the ugly incident in his annual report to the interior secretary.

Eventually, the raging social fires that fueled the Great Stinkpot Controversy of 1885 calmed.

The church moved away from polygamy with the 1890 Manifesto issued by church President Wilford Woodruff. Utah finally earned statehood in 1896.

Zane — the Congregationalist who sent so many plural marriage practitioners to jail — became Utah’s first Supreme Court chief justice after statehood. Zane administered the oath of office to our first governor, Heber M. Wells, a Latter-day Saint and the son of a polygamist.

Varian, a Unitarian, served as U.S. attorney and left office respected by all of Utah’s various factions. He was one of 29 non-Latter-day Saints picked to serve in the state constitutional convention and later won a seat in the Utah House.

Dickson never served in public office again, but his skills as a lawyer were undeniable and in the years that followed the stinkpot scandal, many clients turned to him for good advice and sage counsel. One of them was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

There are many ways to navigate stinky workplace drama. We probably each need to figure out which method works best for us. Still, I can’t help but admire how my professional ancestors Varian and Dickson handled it.

They turned it into fertilizer and something quite nice grew.

Michael Patrick O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City who frequently represents The Salt Lake Tribune in legal matters. His book “Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks,” about growing up with the monks at an old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, was published by Paraclete Press and chosen by the League of Utah Writers as the best nonfiction book in 2022. He blogs at https://theboymonk.com.