100 years ago in Spokane: Trouble at stately Wayne Hotel

From our archives,

100 years ago

John Tyrell, 37, from Montana, made two blunders when he arrived at the Wayne Hotel in Spokane late at night.

First, he demanded a room and when told none was available, he went into the hall and started to “batter in a door.” Guests rushed into the hall and a “free-for-all fight” ensued as people tried to tackle the out-of-control Tyrell. The hall “took on the look of a battlefield.”

His second mistake was carrying a satchel filled with illegal items.

When police subdued him and started to open his satchel, he said, “I’m a veterinarian … there is nothing but horse medicine in that satchel.”

Not quite. Police found 42 small bottles of whisky, several bottles of beer, a heavy hardwood “billy” stick filled with shot, and a bottle of white powder believed to be morphine. Tyrell was booked for bootlegging and disorderly conduct.

From the education beat: Spokane’s ministers went on record as opposing a cut in the salaries of public school teachers.

The Spokane Ministerial Association had been studying the situation and was adamant that teachers needed to be treated professionally.

“If we are to have the teachers our schools need, we must enable teaching to become as liberal a profession as law and medicine, so that those who intend to pursue it will take a full college course before entering the school of pedagogy,” said the chairman of the minister’s committee. “In our schools we should have men and women of the highest ability and for that ability, we must pay the price.”