100 years ago in Spokane: One Prohibition agent was acquitted in a manslaughter trial while the second would face another trial

A Spokane jury acquitted one federal Prohibition agent, John G. Montgomery, and split on convicting a second agent, W.C. Vest, in the shooting of Ernest Emley outside of a Keller dance hall.

The jury reported it voted 7 to 5 in favor of convicting Vest, but there was no possibility of unanimous verdict. The judge then dismissed the jury, partly because one of the jurors was ill with ptomaine poisoning (what we know as food poisoning today) and needed to go to the hospital.

The prosecutor said he would re-try Vest in the court’s next term.

From the race beat: For the first time in the history of the Spokane City Club, “a colored man occupies a room as the guest of the club members,” The Spokesman-Review reported.

That man was Lem Thompson, who had served as the butler of the club for 20 years. Thompson was seriously ill, and “his strength has now failed so that he is unable to leave the room provided for him at the clubhouse.”

The S-R wrote: “Physician-members are doing all that is possible to prolong the life of the veteran and after more than half a century of caring for others’ comforts, he is now receiving the best attention within the power of his friends, who have learned to love him.”

The SR called Thompson “an institution.”

From the baseball beat: Two people required first aid in separate baseball accidents at Franklin Park.

Otto Dalzell, 20, was hit in the eye by a batted ball and his eye was “swollen entirely shut.” A few days earlier, a boy’s nose was broken during a game.