Police: No More Coffee and Bread for Vagrants

Janesville and Grand Island, Wisconsin, 1915--

STOP FEEDING VAGRANTS AT CITY POLICE STATION

Chief Champion this morning discontinued the practice of giving the transients and city police station lodgers coffee and bread for breakfast. It was decided the demand for labor was sufficient for the men to find jobs if they cared to work, and the "vags" will be "drilled" out of town each morning after being released. A report will be made on the number received at the station and the cost of feeding them by Chief Champion within a fortnight.

The begging evil is promised to be checked by the energy of the police department in preventing "panhandling," and the heavy jail sentences that have been given offenders for vagrancy in the municipal court.

--Janesville Daily Gazette, Janesville, Wisconsin, March 30, 1915, page 2.



POLICE ARE LOOKING FOR A MAN WHO LOST COFFEE

One day last week John Wollach bought a large can of coffee from a stranger, and he bought it so cheap that the police were under the impression that the coffee had been stolen. He was interviewed on the subject and he described the man he had bought the coffee of, and it was decided that the man was James Wilson, a fellow had been released from the county jail only a day or two before. Wilson was rounded up, and notwithstanding that he denied all knowledge of the coffee, he was identified by Wollach as the one who had made the sale.

The police were unable to discover anybody who had lost about ten pounds of roasted coffee, but Wilson plead guilty to a charge of vagrancy and was given twenty days in the county jail.

The police are under the impression that the coffee might have come from the circus that was in the city on Friday, a friend in the cooking department having set it out where it could be picked up a passing stranger without exciting any suspicion.

--The Grand Rapids Tribune, Grand Rapids, Wisconsin, July 21, 1915, page 2.

Comment: The circus that was in town on Friday was the Sells-Floto Circus, including Buffalo Bill's Original Wild West, Friday, July 16.