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

From our archives, 100 years ago

Spokane police and The Spokesman-Review’s police reporter came up with a bizarre and questionable theory about why it was proving so difficult to catch certain ladies of the evening.

Police said that men were being lured into alleys between Railroad and Second avenues and between Bernard and Monroe streets and then having their pockets picked while they were, well, vulnerable. Police said $1,400 had been pilfered in that way.

In many of these cases, the men reported the thefts and were able to describe the suspects. But then when the men were asked to identify the women in person, the men were no longer certain.

Why?

Because the women had employed a “profligate” amount of “rouge and other cosmetics” to make them look like “raving beauties of the Caucasian variety” during their first encounter, said the paper. But when rounded up a few hours later, the women had removed their makeup and looked like “peaceful, law-abiding” housewives – and certainly not of the Caucasian variety.

The paper called them “dusky-hued beauties.”

The men were utterly unable to identify them without their makeup, said the police.