100 years ago in Spokane: ‘Bluebeard’ mugshot from San Quentin reaches readers

The Spokane Daily Chronicle ran the San Quentin mug shot of prisoner No. 33755, aka James R. Watson, aka “Bluebeard” Huirt.

San Quentin is where Bluebeard would “spend the rest of his days,” said the caption, because of his life sentence for murdering “10 or a dozen” of his wives — even Bluebeard himself didn’t seem to be certain of the exact number.

The mug shot was accompanied by a photo of the prisoner being led into the prison.

From the university beat: A feature story by Mildred Perry chronicled the history of Washington State College in Pullman, beginning in 1890.

“Back in the days of the youth of the state college, when the buildings consisted of a wooden shack or two on a small farm, the front of which was called the campus, on which then grew cabbage and corn, the handful of faculty members carried their lanterns to faculty meetings, which were held at night,” wrote Perry, who was on the college’s English faculty. “Those were the days of pioneering, when foundations were being laid, and today’s state college of Washington is monumental evidence that the foundation was good.”

Those early years were “tempestuous,” she wrote, as “one governor after another” had to pull it out of a financial hole.

From those foundations grew a campus with “eight acres of classrooms and laboratories, 650 acres of rich Palouse land, and a score of buildings whose worth now reaches $2 million.” Besides its teaching faculty and its Washington Experiment Station, the college also oversaw a vast agricultural extension staff, spreading farming knowledge throughout the state.