Tacoma’s Plan to Deter 'Tramps' with Forced Hygiene
Facing a seasonal rise in homelessness, Tacoma city officials considered a mandatory daily shower ordinance for jail inmates to keep the city unappealing to vagrants.
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.
Tacoma, Sept. 11.—In anticipation of the usual winter swarm of vagrants and hobos, the city council has under consideration an ordinance providing that inmates of the city jail shall be given a shower bath daily, and that officials shall provide towels, soap, etc., and see that the baths are taken. Before breakfast every prisoner in the jail will be given this shower bath. It is expected that the tramps on the coast will avoid Tacoma this winter if this ordinance becomes a law. There is still another reason for the adoption of the law: it is believed that if the prisoners are not kept clean in the close quarters of the new city jail, some disease will break out. However, the principal object of the ordinance is to secure personal cleanliness among prisoners with a view of inducing them to keep away from the jail and out of the city.
“The principal object of the ordinance is to secure personal cleanliness among prisoners with a view of inducing them to keep away from the jail and out of the city.”
The practice of using municipal ordinances to make life uncomfortable for transient populations—often framed under the guise of public health—is a tactic that has persisted in Pacific Northwest civic policy for over a century.
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