100 years ago in Spokane: City puts to work those found guilty of public drunkenness

Spokane police were rounding up drunks on the city streets and putting them to work on the city’s rockpile.

“There is far too much drunkenness here and officers have been given strict instructions to arrest everyone who appears at all under the influence of liquor,” said the city’s commissioner of public safety.

He said the first three days “have shown good results” – 21 drunkenness cases on the court docket for Monday and 19 for Tuesday.

Police judge Fred Witt indicated that he would not be inclined toward clemency.

“Drunks are going to get a lot less sympathy here in the future,” said the judge. “There are going to be fewer fines and more jail sentences.”

Jail sentences included daily labor on the new city rockpile.

Keep in mind that Prohibition was in full force in 1922. Yet police appeared to have little difficulty in finding plenty of Prohibition violators.

From the housing beat: Spokane was facing a problem familiar to us today: a shortage of housing.

“Every modern house is occupied,” said the Spokane Daily Chronicle.

The paper said a building boom was needed for 1922.

This was a significant turnaround from the World War I years, in which Spokane’s population dropped and “many houses were left vacant.”

Also on this date

(From Associated Press)

1965: Civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began their third, successful march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.