Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Mrs. Virginia Allen was fed up with what she called the “freak” laws the Spokane city commissioners insisted on passing. She was particularly incensed about the dancing ordinance, which banned “ragtime” dancing and other suggestive dances, and a recent law called the “near-stop order” that changed the location of streetcar stops.

So Mrs. Allen took pen in hand and wrote: “They have changed the names of streets, the numbers of telephones, they have delegated to the mayor and health officer all the hugging and kissing power. … Now, if they will change the tails of the horses and put them on the other end and make the firemen and policemen button their clothes up the back, and next winter have the mayor stand at the street corner and sing, ‘I Want to Be an Angel,’ as the public wades its way half a block to the car, we of Spokane will have another distinction.”

When this letter was read aloud at the council meeting, Mayor Hindley’s only reply was, “I’d like to know when these kissing and hugging powers were delegated. I’d like to take advantage of them.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1910: Suffragists showed up at the U.S. Capitol with half a million signatures demanding that women be given the right to vote.