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

100 years ago in Spokane: ‘Drug salesman’ first person sentence to hard labor on city’s rockpile

By Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review

Ed Walker, an alleged “drug salesman,” became the first person sentenced to serve hard labor on the city’s new rockpile.

“Thirty days on the rockpile and an $100 fine,” intoned the judge after hearing the evidence against Walker.

Walker had been arrested the night before on a charge of vagrancy.

The Spokane Daily Chronicle said Walker would spend a month “making little ones out of big ones.”

Another prisoner, charged with becoming intoxicated on “canned heat,” narrowly escaped the same fate. The judge gave him a 30-day sentence, but suspended it.

From the murder beat: A deathbed statement by rancher Charles B. Smith, 45, of Worley, gave investigators a clearer picture of what happened the night he was shot. He said his stepson, 17, had come home late. When Smith confronted him, the boy “said something sassy.”

“I went in and hit him a slap,” said Smith, in his deathbed statement. “I struck him two or three times. He said he would kill me before morning. Kate (the boy’s mother and Smith’s wife) came into the room and made us quit. … I went in the bedroom and the next thing the boy was shooting at me.”

Smith died at Deaconess Hospital hours after dictating that statement.

The boy was in jail in Coeur d’Alene on a first-degree murder charge.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1941: U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull delivered a note to Japan’s ambassador to the U.S., Kichisaburo Nomura, setting forth demands for “lasting and extensive peace throughout the Pacific area.” The same day, a Japanese naval task force of six aircraft carriers headed toward Hawaii.