As Mayor of Portsmouth in the 1880s, S. P. Nichols presided over a lawsuit filed by Conrad Gerlach in response to a Board of Health complaint, which charged Gerlach's brewery of creating a public nuisance. During the proceedings, Gerlach's attorney question whether the original complaint was "bona fide," and the term was then "bandied back and forth and tossed up and down" until Mayor Nichols (Nickels) "told the lawyers they would have to conduct the case in English or take it to some other court." According to Joseph Mitchell, it was this exchange that marks the origins of the nickname Boneyfiddle.