Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Rhetoric was heating up in the Spokane city commissioner race. At a rally for candidate Leonard Funk, a speaker referred to former Spokane Mayor N.S. Pratt as a “gelatine-spined shrimp.”

He accused Pratt of practicing “damnable politics, abominable and disgraceful.”

Pratt had earlier written a letter that said “the political record of Leonard Funk is not such to commend him to those citizens who prefer decent conditions in the city.”

From the divorce beat: Peter Anderson, a wealthy Chewelah rancher, accused his wife, Marie, of wearing a risqué “slit skirt.” 

Mrs. Anderson told the judge that the skirt in question was a “modest dress of ordinary fabric.”

Mr. Anderson also said his wife declared that the “country about Chewelah is too slow for me.” She made him leave his valuable ranch and come to Spokane, where he had to get a job making beds at a hotel, while his wife associated with other men.

She accused him of getting angry because she wanted him to go to a dance.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1885: Poet Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho.

1945: The U.S. government announced the end of shoe rationing, effective at midnight.