100 years ago in Spokane: Vaudeville ‘king of newsboys’ to entertain his vassals

Spokane’s newsboys – numbering in the hundreds – were about to get a special treat.

“Noodles” Fagan, the uncrowned “king of the newsboys,” was coming to town as part of the vaudeville bill at the Pantages Theater.

The Spokane Daily Chronicle was going to treat every newsboy in the city to be guests of the paper at the Friday night performance.

The Chronicle promised “all sorts of noise and general excitement.”

From the flu beat: The Spokane Daily Chronicle’s editorial page noted that some critics had complained about Spokane’s flu quarantine by saying, “New York City didn’t close the churches, schools and theaters because of the flu. And look at New York.”

Those people weren’t saying that any more.

The annual death statistics were out, and they told a grim story for New York. That city’s death rate jumped in one year from 15.2 per thousand to 18.8, an increase of 3.6 in 1918.

Spokane’s death rate went from 8.09 to 10.23, an increase of 2.14.

“To make it a little plainer: If Spokane had followed New York’s plan with New York’s results, among 120,000 people there would be 175 more graves in the city’s cemeteries than there are today,” said the editorial.