100 years ago in Seattle: Judge sets aside conviction against former Spokane woman found guilty of being ‘lazy husband’

From our archives, 100 years ago

Robert Gaffney, a woman who passed as a man for decades, was released from a Seattle jail.

Gaffney was convicted for failing to support her family under the Lazy Husband Law. But the judge set aside the conviction after learning that Gaffney was a woman and not, in law, the husband of the woman making the complaint. This was despite the fact that they had been married in Spokane six years earlier.

From the jail beat: Prisoners in the Spokane County Jail numbered only about half the number from the previous year.

Why?

Statewide prohibition. The sheriff said, jokingly, “It is hard to keep boarders over here since the state went dry.”

A jailer said that men were now “paying their grocery bills and buying meat instead of liquor.”

From the flood beat: Wilson Creek north of Moses Lake,was devastated by a record-breaking flood.

Crab Creek raged through town and “flowed through the windows of the Douglas Hotel.”

Many families had to “take refuge in the Presbyterian Church, which is on higher ground.”

Washouts were reported throughout central Washington.