100 years ago in Spokane: Officers swooned over the ‘gorgeously colored opium smoking jacket’ they seized from a suspect

Police confiscated a “gorgeously colored opium smoking jacket” in a hotel room downtown.

They also confiscated an opium pipe and some “dope,” but the jacket was the most spectacular haul.

“The jacket is one of the bright colored affairs used by opium smokers to add fantastic ideas to their dreams,” a detective said. “A beautiful pair of colored slippers was also found.”

The owner of the jacket denied being a drug user, but he was arrested on a vagrancy charge.

From the bank robbery beat: A posse chased the robbers of the Addy State Bank all night, through Lincoln County and into Grant County.

The posse lost the trail near Almira, where a road forked three ways.

“Not since the days of Harry Tracy (a notorious bandit) has there been this much excitement in this section,” a correspondent from Davenport said.

The hunt began in earnest when Stevens County deputies captured an alleged accomplice on the Colville Reservation. The other suspects fled under a fusillade of bullets, and an eight-hour chase ensued.

From the arson beat: A jury was selected in the arson trial of Louis E. Lilge, suspected of starting the arson fire that badly damaged the landmark D.C. Corbin home.

Many of the prospective jurors were dismissed after they stated that they had already “formed opinions” about the sensational case.

Some of the questions hanging over the case would soon be answered. Would the widow, Anna Corbin, testify? Would she repudiate her confession, in which she said she and Lilge planned the arson to get insurance money?

She was facing an arson trial of her own, scheduled for later in the month.