Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Spokane County was ready to institute its new “lazy husband” law.

It would force male heads of households to work.

“I have the number of several and have them on my list,” said a county official. “We also have a place for them to work right away.”

That place was the county poor farm, which was to be torn down and a new infirmary constructed. Their wages of $1.50 a day would be paid directly to their wives.

The county official said the law allowed him to put a lazy husband on the list without waiting for the wife to make a complaint. He called that a useful aspect of the new law.

“Usually when the wives get the spunk to make the complaint, they back out and want the spouses let off when it comes to punishment,” he said.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1533: Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, was crowned as Queen Consort of England. … 1915: The T.S. Eliot poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” was first published in “Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.” … 1933: In a scene captured by news photographers, Lya Graf, a female circus dwarf, sat in the lap of financier J.P. Morgan Jr. during a recess of a Senate hearing on the stock market crash of 1929. … 1967: The Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released.