100 years ago in Spokane: Spokane Symphony Orchestra Society proves big hit

Nearly all 500 season tickets were already sold out for the newly organized Spokane Symphony Orchestra Society.

A spokesman for the orchestra said that “the citizens of the city show their desire to back any movement for the bettering of music in this city.”

The exact date of the opening concert had not yet been announced, but it was expected to be in late fall.

This orchestra was a short-lived precursor to today’s Spokane Symphony.

Meanwhile, Spokane music stores were advertising an entirely different kind of music on “talking machines” (record players). Popular titles included, “Full of Pep,” “Bluin’ the Blues,” and “Oh, by Jingo.”

From the coroner’s beat: The woman found dead in a bathtub at a Spokane hotel was most emphatically not Mrs. Helen Brock of Memphis.

This was proven to a certainty when Brock walked into the Burns Detective Agency in Spokane, “much alive and blushing,” accompanied by her sister and her brand new husband.

Her sister, Kathleen Pressley, had feared that the corpse might have been her sister for two reasons. Her sister was many days overdue from Memphis. Also, the mystery woman had signed the hotel register as H. Broch or H. Brock. When Pressley viewed the body, she was uncertain.

The issue was finally resolved when Brock arrived from Memphis with a new husband in tow. The reason for the delay was “the little detail of a marriage and a honeymoon.”

“I thought she had met with foul play,” said Mrs. Pressley, with chagrin.

This did not, however, solve the mystery of the identity of the corpse. Authorities were still baffled.