100 years ago in Spokane: Spokane Valley soldier charged with stealing government funds escapes

Captain Harry Holland of Spokane was in a heap of trouble with U.S. Army authorities – but first they had to find him.

Holland had been arrested earlier in the week at his farm in the Spokane Valley and charged with having stolen government funds while serving in a battalion in Alabama, the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported. He was also charged with desertion, because his discharge had been revoked.

Agents from the Department of Justice turned Holland over to army authorities at Fort Wright, where he was held for two days. Then they put him on an eastbound train to stand trial, accompanied by guards – and apparently accompanied by his wife.

When the train stopped in Chicago, he and his wife somehow “duped” the guards.

“Details of his escape at Chicago are lacking,” said the Chronicle, but now both he and his wife were missing.

From the tobacco beat: The cigarette (or cigaret, as the Chronicle spelled it) was denounced as “a little imp of hell” by the gathered ministers of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ at a Spokane conference.

They also condemned John Barleycorn (alcohol) and expressed the wish that the world would be finally freed from the “curse of intoxicating liquor, whether it be one-half-percent beer or 50 percent whisky.”

One minister deplored the breaking of the sabbath, and noted that “the devil” was running trains and streetcars on Sundays.