Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

A burly French lumberjack arrived in Spokane from the lumber camps with six months wages in his pocket.

He began his holiday by drinking copious amounts of whiskey, and then he strolled into an Italian boarding house and “started a riot” by taking swings at everyone within reach.

Then he engaged in a 20-minute fight with two police officers. At one point, he ripped the badge off the coat of an officer and used it to slash open the officer’s chin. When all else failed, the Frenchman resorted to kicking their shins.

They finally wrestled him into police wagon and were able to subdue him by sitting on him all the way to the station.

From the arts-and-culture beat: The newly reorganized Spokane Orchestra gave its first concert at the Auditorium Theater. The Spokesman-Review’s critic said that the orchestra demonstrated some “roughnesses here and there.”

Over at the Spokane Theater, a critic praised the forceful and powerful performance of a play titled “Israel,” by French Jewish playwright Henri Bernstein.

It was a play exposing anti-Semitism in France, but this nuance apparently escaped the paper’s headline writer, who wrote, “Anti-Jewish Play Given in Spokane.”