Jim Kershner’s This day in history » On the Web: spokesman.com/topics/local-history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Spokane was titillated by the story of Mrs. Margaret Armstrong Howell, a wealthy Spokane woman and business owner, and her marital troubles.

This “little gray-haired woman of 49” had met a man named George Howell, a Helena businessman who had assisted her in the sale of her florist business. She and Howell went to Los Angeles, without telling most of her family, and were married.

Unfortunately, marital bliss lasted less than a week. She fled the marriage and was reported to be “secluded in Los Angeles or its suburbs under an assumed name.” Yet she phoned The Spokesman-Review, which had run a front page story the day before, and told her story.

“I knew him and respected him,” said the beleaguered Mrs. Howell. “For months he wanted me to marry him. I thought I knew him well enough to be sure I could respect him as a wife and to care for him as a wife should; but, oh, I didn’t really know him.”

She didn’t go into details about the exact nature of the problem. She did say she took steps to make sure he had no access to her property. Her husband, meanwhile, was still “insisting that she return to him.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright conducted the first successful manned powered-airplane flights.