100 years ago in Spokane: Hospitals train women to be nurse’s aides at World War I battlefront

All three of Spokane’s hospitals announced plans to train young women as nurse’s aides for the French battlefront.

Sacred Heart, Deaconess and St. Luke’s hospitals had each accepted four young women for an intensive 30-day course, and planned on admitting more.

“Of course, they will not, in this brief period, become trained nurses, in any sense of the word, but they will at least acquire a discipline, a knowledge of the etiquette of the profession and a drill in the ordinary routine of nursing, which will make them immediately useful at the front,” said a local Red Cross official.

The candidates must be between the ages of 25 and 35 and be in “first-class physical condition.” They must also have already completed their Red Cross classes.

From the crime beat: Frank Hatfield, a lumber foreman from Elk River, Idaho, hired taxi driver Charles Speece to drive him and a woman companion around Spokane.

After the woman was dropped off at her home, Hatfield said that Speece offered him a drink from a bottle of whisky. Hatfield took pull on the bottle – and remembered nothing more until he was roused awake by passersby in the dirt at Sinto and Normandie. His watch and $250 in cash was missing.

Hatfield filed a formal complaint charging Speece with drugging him, beating him, robbing him and throwing him out of the taxi.

Speece denied the charge – and claimed he was a victim as well. He said he also took a drink from the bottle, and didn’t remember anything that happened after that.