The Men Who Asked to Be Jailed for Shelter
As unemployment rises in the winter of 1886, the city jail becomes the last resort for laborers seeking shelter and a crust of bread.
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.
Officer Jones states that for several nights, past men have come to him and requested that he lock them up in the city jail, where they could have shelter for the night. He has uniformly complied with their requests, and each night the crowd has grown larger. Eleven destitute men, some of whom appeared to be honest laborers, were thus housed during Wednesday night. Jailer Bigert allows them to keep up a fire and make themselves as comfortable as possible, and generally supplies them with bread and coffee if they are hungry. 'Almost every man I have locked up,' said Mr. Jones, 'has told me that he was thus reduced in circumstances by extravagance and imprudence.' These men are here and something must be done to alleviate their sufferings until they can get work. The objection to a soup house is that it holds out an inducement for tramps and bummers to congregate from all the surrounding country like harpies to prey upon the community which supports them.
“The objection to a soup house is that it holds out an inducement for tramps and bummers to congregate from all the surrounding country like harpies to prey upon the community.”
In 1886, Seattle officials feared a 'soup house' would attract 'tramps and bummers' from surrounding areas. Today, the debate over how to provide shelter without creating localized 'magnets' for homelessness remains a central, unresolved friction in Seattle's housing and public safety policy.
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