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

100 years ago in Spokane: Roosevelt Hotel landlady arrested after drunken lumberjack escapades

After a party at the Roosevelt Hotel, landlady Jennie Sparby faced a likely prison sentence in January 1921. She’d been previously convicted numerous times of liquor violations.
By Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review

Jennie Sparby, the hotel landlady who presided over Spokane’s wildest holiday party, was facing prison time after she was convicted of three liquor charges.

When police raided the Roosevelt Hotel, they found dozens of drunken lumberjacks, one of whom tried to pull a Douglas Fairbanks act on the hotel chandelier. That is, he tried to swing from the chandelier like a silent-movie action hero.

Unfortunately, both lumberjack and chandelier crashed to the floor.

Sparby was arrested during the raid. Her attempt to hide the booze failed when the jail matron found a flask stashed in her bosom.

Because she had been convicted numerous times for liquor violations, she was considered a felon and subject to a penitentiary sentence.

From the court beat: J. Neilson Barry was the city’s probation officer, but his duties also involved dealing with neighborhood disputes. According to his year-end report, Barry responded to 89 neighborhood squabbles.

Half of those involved animals. He responded to 24 complaints about dogs, 14 about chickens, three about cats, three about cows and one each to rabbits and goats.

The complaints involving neighbors ranged from “playfully squirting a hose at a neighbor,” to “calling names,” to “too much talking over the back fence.”

Two calls involved “flirting with one’s neighbors.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1964: Pope Paul VI began a visit to the Holy Land, the first papal pilgrimage of its kind.