Jim Kershner’s This day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

A man arrested for forgery committed suicide in Spokane’s county jail by cutting his jugular vein with a pocketknife.

The sheriff and the prosecuting attorney were baffled by this development, since the forgery charge was a relatively minor one.

“The fact that he resisted arrest so strongly, combined with this act, leads me to believe that the probable conviction of forgery was not the cause of the suicide,” said the prosecutor. “We may never know the reason.”

Fellow inmates said they were playing cards when they heard a gurgling sound from the back of the cell. They rushed over and found him covered in blood.

The inmates resumed their card game as soon as the body was removed.

From the love and marriage beat: Anna Hansen, 20, told police that Nels Sorenson convinced her to leave her native Sweden three years prior and come to America and be his wife.

When she got here, he told her that “in America, marriages were not considered necessary.” She believed this for while, until he got tired of her, left her and took their baby. Police arrested Sorenson on “a charge of seduction.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1888: Mary Ann Nichols, the apparent first victim of “Jack the Ripper,” was found slain in London’s East End.