100 years ago in Spokane: ‘Mystery Man’ clears up mystery; Drama League thrives

Spokane’s “Mystery Man” regained most of his memory and cleared up the mystery, the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported.

He was, in fact, George Raymond of Portland. He said he was working on a cattle ranch near Portland the previous fall.

He remembered everything up until the time he walked into a Portland bank four months ago, intending to transfer his account to a Seattle bank. He was planning to go to Seattle “for an operation,” of an unspecified nature.

He remembers nothing after that.

“I don’t know whether or not I went to Seattle,” he said.

Nor did he remember how he ended up in Medical Lake, where he approached deputies and asked them to help him recover his identity.

His half-brother was en route, intending to take Raymond to his fruit ranch near Boise while he recovered.

From the theater beat: The aim of the Spokane chapter of the Drama League was to allow Spokane “to enjoy drama of the better class,” said Sarah Truax Albert, a leader of the chapter.

She said that a “thriving Drama League is an asset to the metropolitan city, just as much as good schools, fine musical programs or other artistic endeavors.”

The Drama League was preparing to stage three plays with local performers.

The plays “are not the incomprehensible, highbrow classics which some confuse with good drama,” she said. “They have the humor, the appeal and the force of the most entertaining of modern drama, with the additional virtue that they are better written than the ordinary commercial offering of the modern producer.”