100 years ago in Spokane: Jurors sign petition asking for pardon of McDonald sister they convicted

A petition signed by 75 Spokane citizens requested that Gov. Louis F. Hart grant a full pardon to Marie McDonald, one of the infamous McDonald siblings.

She had previously been acquitted of murder in the slaying of W.H. McNutt, yet later she was convicted of forgery and sentenced to one to 20 years for forging a check taken from McNutt’s corpse.

The most surprising thing about the petition? It included the signatures of “practically every member of the Superior Court jury which found Miss McDonald guilty,” including the Rev. John Ovall, who had been the jury foreman.

The petition was prompted by her recent diagnosis with “incipient pulmonary tuberculosis.”

Several doctors said that “any close confinement will materially shorten Miss McDonald’s life.”

From the rainmaking beat: Time was running out on professional rainmaker Charles M. Hatfield, who had been hired by Ephrata wheat growers to produce a certain amount of rain by early June.

A day earlier, Hatfield had confidently predicted that rain would begin the next day by noon. However, a correspondent in Ephrata subsequently informed the Spokane Daily Chronicle that not a drop had fallen by noon.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1919: Congress approved the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing citizens the right to vote regardless of their gender, and sent it to the states for ratification.