100 years ago in Spokane: A baby was reported kidnapped from her crib by ‘two well-dressed young women’

A citywide search was underway for Lucille Norris, age 8 months, who was snatched from her crib at a home on North Walnut Street.

Police were trying to “unravel a mysterious mesh enshrouding the case.”

“Two well-dressed young women” arrived at the home of Mrs. E. Kinnson while she was out shopping. Leona Shaffer, 14, answered the door. One of the women said she had come to see the baby at the request of the mother. She walked to the crib, put the tot under her coat, and walked toward the door.

“You are not going to take her with you?” asked Leona, alarmed.

“You’re just right, I am,” said the stranger, as she fled though the door.

The most likely theory was one of the two women was the baby’s mother.

Two months earlier, her mother had brought little Lucille to the Kinnson home. The mother was divorced, had no money and was answering an ad that offered room and board to children.

Mrs. Kinnson said the mother had called a few times since then with a “hard-luck story.” Recently, she told Mrs. Kinnson she had a job and might be able to take Lucille back. But no arrangements had been made.

No one knew for certain whether Lucille’s mother was involved, so police were sparing no effort to find her.

From the marriage beat: A “matrimonial epidemic” had broken out on the third floor of the YWCA hotel in Spokane.

Of the six girls married or engaged in recent days, five of them were residents of the third floor, reported the hotel secretary.

The result? A number of residents on other floors had made requests – “sometimes giggling and sometimes serious” – to transfer to the third floor.