Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

A crew of bold bandits made plans to establish a “robber’s roost in Montana,” so they stole two horses from a Hillyard stable and outfitted them with “all of the impedimenta of guerilla warfare,” including knives.

They didn’t get far, mainly because they were all between the ages of 10 and 13. Police sent two of the boys to the state training school at Chehalis and placed the other three on probation.

One boy, 12, had a lock of his mother’s hair concealed in his breast pocket. He had clipped it from her head while she slept. He told police he got the idea from a motion picture show.

Yet these were apparently not a bunch of charming scalawags. They had been apprehended just weeks before for robbing a Hillyard grocery and some of their parents “despaired of being able to do anything with them.”

From the murder trial beat: The daughter of the city marshal of Springdale sprung to his defense during his trial for murdering a saloon keeper.

She took the stand and accused her father’s antagonists of being “all drunks and hoboes.” 

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1941: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Edwards v. California, unanimously struck down a California law prohibiting people from bringing impoverished non-residents into the state.