100 years ago in Spokane: A woman was ordered to pay alimony to her husband, an ‘unusual’ move in 1922

“The wheels of justice spun in an unusual course” when Judge Joseph Lindley ordered alimony to be paid from a wife to a husband.

John Jacobson said that he and his wife Agnes owned the Ross Apartments in Spokane and some real estate in Valleyford as community property.

John suffered a health crisis and had to go, alone, to California for his health. Agnes served divorce papers on him while he was in the county hospital in Los Angeles. Now, he was broke and destitute without the income from the real estate.

The judge noted that John would be reduced to “an object of charity” without alimony. He said if the position were reversed, the wife would “certainly be entitled to alimony.”

He ordered Agnes to pay John $60 a month and certain fees, at least temporarily.

From the hospital beat: Spokane stood a good chance of getting a regional Shriner’s children’s hospital. The proposed hospital would have a complete suite of operating rooms, X-ray apparatus and living quarters for nurses. It would handle charity orthopedic cases from the entire Intermountain region, including parts of Canada.

A final decision would be announced in June 1922.

Also on the date

(From Associated Press)

1919: Oregon became the first state to tax gasoline, at 1 cent per gallon.

1957: the Supreme Court, in Butler v. Michigan, overturned a Michigan statute making it a misdemeanor to sell books containing obscene language that would tend to corrupt “the morals of youth.”