100 years ago in Spokane: The railway strike led to three brutal assaults in one night in Hillyard

A wild and violent night in the Hillyard Neighborhood resulted in three separate assaults, all connected to the ongoing rail shopmen’s strike.

In one incident, a Great Northern car inspector was accosted by two men who stepped out of the shadows in the rail yard.

They forced him into an auto and took him several miles to a remote area near Minnehaha Park. Then he was “beaten and kicked by five men.”

In the second incident, a nonunion shop employee started to get off a streetcar in Hillyard, then changed his mind because a crowd of men, presumably strikers, was loitering nearby.

The crowd, apparently aware that the man was still inside, began hurling stones at the streetcar, breaking windows and denting the sides. The streetcar sped away with the shop worker still in it.

In the third incident, another nonunion shop worker exited a streetcar and was “chased several blocks by a crowd of about 25 strike sympathizers.” He heard one of them say, “If we catch him, we’ll plug him.”

He sought refuge in a woodshed, but the crowd dragged him out and beat him and kicked him.

He was treated for cuts, bruises and a missing tooth.