Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

A 23-year-old Spokane woman was trying desperately to break a morphine habit, and she knew there was only one place to do it: in jail.

She had been arrested a week earlier in her home. She said she had been addicted since age 14 when a doctor prescribed it for pain. 

She was given a 10-day sentence. Yet in the middle of her incarceration, local Christian Science devotees convinced authorities to let her out of jail so that they could cure her through “psychic suggestions.”

It didn’t work. After one day, the young woman begged her helpers to take her back to jail. They reluctantly complied. She jumped from the auto and ran into the police station.

“I couldn’t stand it another minute,” she told police. “It’s the only thing that does me any good. I want to break the habit, but I have to be somewhere that I cannot get any of the stuff.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1894: Hockey’s first Stanley Cup championship game was played; home team Montreal defeated Ottawa, 3-1.

1933: During Prohibition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure to make wine and beer containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol legal.

1941: Washington’s Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam went into operation.