Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The Spokesman-Review’s Sunday magazine took on the question of: “Why Women Should Ride Astride,” that is, instead of riding a horse side-saddle.

Dr. J.V. Manning analyzed male and female skeletons and determined “the human female is as well, and even better, adapted to cross-saddle (astride) riding” than the male.

She ridiculed the English press for their “quite unanimous reference to cross-saddle riding as an American cowgirl innovation which can never appeal to English ladies.”

She pointed out that a woman riding side-saddle has to expend a great deal of effort just “to keep her seat,” which is a “criminal waste” of energy. She also ridiculed the overall attempt by “mid-Victorian prudes” to establish the fiction that “women had no legs.”

From the theater beat: Crews were cleaning up the smoky, soggy wreck of the Auditorium Theater, Spokane’s most ornate theater. Management had not made a firm decision on whether to rebuild the theater after a devastating midnight fire. In any event, renovation would take at least six to eight months.

Meanwhile, the theater’s managers made an agreement with the Spokane Theater to take over the Auditorium’s bookings. The Spokane Theater, at First Avenue and Post Street, had been operating as a movie and vaudeville house. Now it would house the legitimate-theater national tours that were the typical Auditorium fare.