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

From our archives, 100 years ago

Mrs. Wood was fed up with the incessant drinking of Mr. Wood, the financial secretary and business agent of the Hodcarriers Union in Spokane.

She made him swear on the family Bible that he would never touch another drop. He solemnly vowed to stop, but just two weeks later, he was out carousing in a Washington Street saloon. So she embarked on a different kind of cure.

She packed a horsewhip in her purse, marched to the saloon, and started whipping him “violently against (the) shoulders and arms.”

He had been whipped more than a dozen times when an officer arrived and made her stop.

“I horsewhipped him tonight because I had been advised by a high-up city official that that was the only way to cure him,” she told the officer. “It’s hell living with a drunkard and I’d rather go to jail than have to put up with this sort of thing any longer.”

Mr. Wood, a little bit unsteady, had this to say for himself: “I think I’ll light a cigarette and go right home to bed now.”

He also begged the officer to take the whip away from her.

Also on this date

From the Associated Press

1813: An American naval force defeated the British in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. … 1846: Elias Howe received a patent for his sewing machine.