A Funeral Panic at the Salvation Army Barracks
A tragedy in Spokane leads to a funeral service so crowded that the church building began to buckle and crack, nearly causing a second disaster.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The body of Ida Bennett, the Salvation Army captain, who was murdered in Spokane on Friday by John W. Hoskins, who then suicided, was shipped to San Bernardino. The funeral services were conducted at the M. E. church under the auspices of the Salvation Army. The streets were thronged during the progress of the procession. The crush in the church was awful, and in the midst of a hymn, the edifice began to settle and the walls to crack. Hundreds rushed out into the street and there was almost a panic. The church was built on an insecure foundation, and the building settled four inches owing to the great weight of the mourning crowd.
“The crush in the church was awful, and in the midst of a hymn the edifice began to settle and the walls to crack.”
Building safety and structural integrity in rapidly growing boomtowns like 1890s Spokane often played second fiddle to rapid construction. This near-tragedy at a funeral illustrates the fragility of public infrastructure in an era where thousands of people would pack into buildings not designed for such density.
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