100 years ago today in Spokane: Draft evaders sent to jail

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.”