100 years ago in Spokane: Pharmacist warns citizens about dangers of drinking wood alcohol

Prohibition certainly did not prevent people from drinking alcohol – but sometimes pushed them toward the most dangerous kind of alcohol.

The owner of Columbia Pharmacy said more people were drinking denatured wood alcohol, intended as a solvent or for heating and cleaning purposes. He warned a would-be user that “it may kill him, and if it does not, it will in time blind him and in the long run there is no escaping from death as the result of its continued use.

“I thought at first that those users of this alcohol to drink must have some way of distilling it to eliminate the poison, but I am told that they drink it as is,” the pharmacist added. “I had reported to me the case of a man who drank it through a tube, siphoning it from an automobile radiator.”

The pharmacist recommended that all druggists register the purchasers of wood alcohol, “as a matter of self-protection.”

From the juvenile delinquent beat: Murdock Herrell, 15, “three times an inmate of the state training school at Chehalis,” stole a car from in front of the Tru Blu Biscuit Co. office.

Thomas W. Bailey looked out the window and “saw his machine disappearing” down the street. He dashed out the door and saw his friend, William Kellinger, at the meat market next door. They jumped into Kellinger’s auto and stopped the stolen car a few blocks later.

They yanked the youth out of the car and put him in the back seat, intending to take him to the police station.

The boy suddenly “whipped out a gun” and attempted to shoot, but Kellinger, guarding him in the back seat, knocked the gun out of his hands. At the station he was charged with larceny. His father said he didn’t know “what has gotten into” his son.