100 years ago in Spokane: During a series of talks on morality, a speaker said roadhouse patrons should be ‘ostracized from society’

People who patronize roadhouses should be “ostracized from society,” said Wilbur F. Crafts, a moral crusader “recognized as the champion reformer of the nation.”

Crafts was in Spokane to give a series of talks on moral reform, which he believed was imperative in a country that was on a Roaring ‘20s spree.

“The average roadhouse should be recognized as a place unfit for people who wish to mingle with society,” Crafts said. “The county authorities should tackle the problem of wiping out these places, and the people of the city should take steps to provide a recreational program that will make the operation of such places unprofitable.”

He also believed that dance halls should be regulated, but he admitted that he might as well talk of “regulating a cyclone.”

From the court beat: Marie McDonald, convicted of forgery in one of Spokane’s most sensational cases, was still nowhere to be found.

Her $2,000 bond on appeal was declared forfeited and the bondsmen were planning to pay up.

McDonald was sentenced to serve from one to 15 years at Walla Walla, but neither her lawyers, her friends, nor her relatives could say where she was. According to one rumor, she was in Seattle, and, according to another, she was in Mexico.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1804: The Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory as well as the Pacific Northwest left camp near present-day Hartford, Illinois.