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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

100 years ago in Spokane: Newspaper celebrates Prohibition; severed human hand found at lumber company

The Spokane Daily Chronicle on June 8, 1920 celebrated what it believed was the final triumph of Prohibition. A new court ruling upheld the Volstead Act, ensuring that Prohibition would be enforced in every state. (Spokesman-Review archives)

The Spokane Daily Chronicle celebrated what it believed was the final triumph of Prohibition. A new court ruling upheld the Volstead Act, ensuring that Prohibition would be enforced in every state.

“The last hope of the saloon man is gone,” said an editorial. “The final straw, to which the liquor advocates in America had been clinging, has been wrested from his grasp, and he has been left to sink in the pool of a dry America.

“… The liquor question in this country is settled. But there will be more kicks, more complaints, more grumblings heard. Receive them as the rantings of the man who hasn’t yet learned of the benefits of Prohibition. Tell the ‘wet’ advocate that the race has been run and he has lost.”

But had he really lost?

In 13 years, Prohibition would be repealed.

From the lost-and-found beat: E.C. Wader of Spokane was sorting through a load of stove wood from the McGoldrick Lumber Co. when he made a gruesome discovery: a human hand.

Shocked, he notified a police officer who took the severed hand to the police station. Police were baffled.

The next day, Milton Kirwin, a worker at McGoldrick, arrived at the police station with his arm in a sling and cleared up the mystery. He said he was working a saw when his hand got caught in the blade and was fully severed. In the ensuing pain and confusion, he did not know exactly what happened to his hand, but he believed that it had been “carried away by the carrier (conveyor belt) to the slab pile.” Kirwin reclaimed the hand as his own.