Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The Spokane police were heading out to the parks on “spooning” patrol.

Spooning was the 1911 term for what we might call making out or necking. Residents near several city parks had reported an alarming increase in moonlight spooning.

So the park commissioners asked for regular uniformed policemen to make routine forays into the parks to root out what The Spokesman-Review called “dark corner love matches” on park property.

This plan, which was to go into effect immediately, would have the added benefit of discouraging another kind of late-night problem in the parks: “thugs, rowdies and park nuisances.”

From the vice beat: Meanwhile, police raided a Spokane “resort,” a euphemism for a bawdy house, that catered to the black soldiers from Fort George Wright.

The landlady and three other women were arrested. The house was at Seventh Avenue and C Street.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1536: Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, was beheaded after being convicted of adultery. … 1967: The Soviet Union ratified a treaty with the United States and Britain banning nuclear and other weapons from outer space as well as celestial bodies such as the moon.