100 years ago today in Spokane: Draft evaders sent to jail
Tue., April 17, 2018

Four slackers (draft evaders) were sentenced to jail with time ranging from five days to four months.
The man who received the five-day sentence had the most plausible excuse. He told the judge he was working on a Grant County cattle ranch and did not know about the draft requirements.
From the hospital beat: The Spokane Daily Chronicle displayed the drawings of the proposed new hospital at Edgecliff, “one of the very latest tuberculosis hospitals of the country.”
The beautiful three-story, fireproof, building would be built of reinforced concrete with brick facing. It would include an X-ray room, a mortuary, an autopsy room and sterilizing room.
Today, it is Brookdale Park Place, a senior living facility.
From the war beat: A soldier in a machine-gun unit made up of Spokane national guardsmen wrote home to tell about life on the front line trenches.
“It’s a great life” wrote Sgt. Walter A. Russell. “I have often heard, or rather read, that it is more fascinating to hunt a man than an animal, and I never believed it, but now I do. … You ought to see me with my steel helmet on, head shaved so my gas mask will fit, gas mask slung around my neck so as to be handy at a minute’s notice, big rubber hip boots on, an automatic on one hip and a bayonet on the other. It’s great sport.”
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