100 years ago in Spokane: Local ‘matron’ patrols modesty in the shrubs

Park “matron” Grace B. Kendall had a solution to immorality in the city’s parks: trim the shrubbery.

Mrs. Kendall had been patrolling Spokane parks for months and found certain areas were “a breeding place for immoralities.”

“Trimming the lower branches from some of the trees in the parks and the trimming of some of shrubbery would allow the light to penetrate some of the now dark places and at the same time not affect the scenic beauty of the park,” she said in her annual report. “The weeping willows and the trees whose branches and limbs bend to the ground are a prolific source of hiding places for young couples, as many times I have pushed apart the lower limbs and the drooping limbs and found young couples secreted and secluded from the public gaze, in absolute darkness.”

Most of them sheepishly moved when she ordered them out from under the branches. However, a few “would be bold and brazen and ask for my authority to request them to move.”

Mrs. Kendall also had one other adamant suggestion: do not allow young women to wear immodest clothing.

She said “low necks and short skirts” were causing an increase in delinquency of both young women and young men. She said that modest dress would enable young men to “live in a realm of purer thought.” She said mothers were complicit in allowing their daughters to wear immodest dress.