The Unlucky Three: A Case of Professional Laziness
Three men in Seattle face a week of hard labor after a judge determines they are unwilling to work for a living.
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.
In the police court today, Judge Trimble decided that Michael McGar, owing to his unwillingness to perform manual labor, and Pat White and F. Robertson, owing to their inability to produce $10 each, will retire to the city's penalty for a week, all due to their lack of desire to partake of honest toil.
“Judge Trimble decided that Michael McGar, owing to his unwillingness to perform manual labor... will retire to the city's penalty for a week, all due to their lack of desire to partake of honest toil.”
This 1887 report captures an era where poverty and unemployment were often treated as moral failures punishable by incarceration. Today's Seattle struggles with the same tension between criminalizing homelessness and addressing the root causes of economic displacement, reflecting a long history of utilizing the legal system to address poverty as a matter of civic nuisance.
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