The Oregonian: July 9th, 1918

Posted on July 10th, 2008

A tiny bit of research from the July 9th, 1918, issue of the Oregonian:

  • 3 year old boy killed

    I won't provide details of the accident, like the newspaper of the day did, but it happened between Prescott and Skidmore. The streetcar was running at twelve miles an hour when the accident happened, and Motorman Silas Knudson was at the helm. Witnesses indicated that it was "unavoidable", meaning that the child was at fault.

  • Lippman & Wolfe: July Clearance Sale

    Aprons are priced from $1.69 to $2.98. "Art needle novelties" can be had for the low price of twenty-five cents.

  • The "Newsboys Mid-Summer Carnival" opened at NW 25th and Raleigh. The Great Wortham Shows (I don't know what that means yet) will benefit an organization called the Oregonian Night Hustler's Club. Popular "riding devices" include the Whip, the Ferris wheel, and the merry go-round, which the newspaper reports are enjoyed by both the young and old. A special circus sideshow featured Bluey Bluy, a "clever midget entertainer". The fun goes on all week.

  • A fire broke out at the Lion Restaurant at Sixth and Everett, damaging the nearby Fairmount Hotel and Hotel Richelieu. The cause was determined to be a range that was positioned closer nearer to the wall than the fifteen inches that the city had recently mandated. The article points out that the owner, T. Hudrimura, was Japanese; at this point in time, Japanese were not allowed to be citizens of the United States (look here for an enlightening timeline). The fire chief goes out of his way to note that this tragedy could have been prevented if the city codes had been paid attention to. A crowd of onlookers disrupts traffic on the streets.

  • A gentleman by the name of Theodore Roehling led the coroner to the remains of a body that he'd found a week earlier while berry-picking on Hayden Island. It was noted that most of the flesh was gone, but there was clearly a bullet hole in the skull. It was noted in the article that this would be investigated as either a suicide or a murder (although no gun was mentioned as being found).

  • V.W. Knight was fined $20 and six hours in jail for riding his motorcycle at the rate of 40 miles an hour on Killingsworth. E.W. Finley got a $25 fine for doing 32 on Hawthorne. Bootleggers in the same issue were paying $40 to $50 fines.

  • My Favorite

    I forgot to write down the title to this one, but it's so important to Portland to-day, it's worth it. In this article, Mayor George Baker (possibly my favorite Mayor) has just returned from "East Coast cities" and he comes back with revolutionary ideas: convert certain streets to one-way grids. His suggestion of streets to convert end up being streets that we now recognize as one-way streets (Alder, Morrison, Yamhill, etc.), but he also suggests the completely weird idea of removing curb-side parking and replacing it with in-the-middle-of-the-road parking.

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