100 years ago in Spokane: Man just released from jail steals 85-cent meal; circus elephant dies

From our archives, 100 years ago

“A fat man with the general appearance of hobo” ate some pork chops at the Union Station restaurant. When the waiter presented him with a check for 85 cents, the fat man did nothing but “stick out his tongue.” On the end of his tongue was a dime.

“That’s my limit,” he saucily replied.

Four waiters grabbed him and held him until police arrived. They arrested him and took him to headquarters. “A search at the station failed to reveal the coin. It is believed to have followed the meal.”

The man told police that his name was John Wilson, 30, a cook.

However, a Spokane police detective knew better. The detective apparently recognized him and informed him that he was actually William Barry, and that he had been released from a Seattle jail the day before. Barry admitted it, and said he had just arrived in Spokane on the first-class train.

From the circus beat: The Sella-Fioto Circus arrived in Spokane, but it got started on a somber note.

Little Miracle, the circus’s 162-pound baby elephant, died while the train was being unloaded in Spokane. Little Miracle had been exposed to rain and cold in Wallace the day before and his keepers had been unable to get the tent erected quickly enough. The elephant caught cold and succumbed to lung trouble.

The body was presented to The Spokesman-Review, which arranged for it to be presented to the museum at Whitworth College, where it would be stuffed.

The elephant was named Little Miracle because his mother “kicked him 30 feet from the pen soon after his birth” and it was a little miracle that he survived.