Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The Spokane Daily Chronicle ran a heartfelt Christmas letter asking Spokane residents to please remember the “1,000 inmates of the Eastern Hospital for the Insane at Medical Lake.”

Superintendent Alfred S. Oliver Jr. said his patients were greatly in need of the community’s generosity. He said some people were under the false impression that “the insane are incapable of joy.”

“This is a mistaken idea, for the greater number are as appreciative and as easily amused as the normal individual, and anything that will direct the minds of many of them from their morbid delusions is the best medicine we can give them,” Oliver wrote.

He said many had “no friends or relatives” to buy them anything for Christmas.

“It is our wish that each patient receive a present,” he wrote. “Often something of little value will afford them much pleasure. Books, magazines, neckties, handkerchiefs, articles to do fancy needlework with, and games of simple kind are always appreciated.”

He added that in past years, the community’s magnanimity has helped “lessen the monotony of life” at his institution.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1944: A single-engine plane carrying bandleader Glenn Miller, a major in the U.S. Army Air Forces, disappeared over the English Channel while en route to Paris.