100 years ago in Spokane: Woman reports that faith healer cured blindness

Mrs. Jennie Collins of Yardley claimed that British spiritual healer James Moore Hickson had restored her sight.

She was one of hundreds of people that Hickson had laid his hands upon, during a three-day spiritual “healing mission” at Spokane’s All Saints’ Episcopal Cathedral.

“I started to go blind 10 years ago,” aid Mrs. Collins, “and gradually got worse until three years ago I went totally blind. And now I can see. I saw the henhouse door at the alley clear from our house. Oh, I am so happy.”

She also said she saw her prayer book, her locket and her hands. She did not claim her sight was restored completely, but she said that “if the Lord can do this for me in two days, I will see again.”

From the fowl crime beat: An “organized gang of chicken thieves” was systematically stealing chickens in the south and west parts of the city and its outskirts.

The chicken depredations had been going on for six weeks, and a sheriff’s deputy called it an “epidemic.” The previous night alone, a large number of chickens were stolen at Moran Prairie.