Mayor Draws a Full House
The Fort Dodge Messenger: April 11, 1905
Mayor Draws a Full House
Is Confronted by Three of a Kind and a Pair in Police Court This Morning.
Was Liberal With Justice
Fines Were The Largest That Have Been Assessed in Police Court For Many Months. – Will Have a Most Discouraging Effect on Graft.
Mayor Bennett drew a full house in police court this morning. When the moment arrived for the doling out of justice, there were three of a kind and a pair ranged on the penitential bench before him. It was with no miserly hand he ladled out the big bunches of fines and costs. The freedom with which he piled it on them was certainly discouraging to the bum, the vag, the thief.
Peter Coyne and John Lowery, both of whom were caught while in the act of stealing overalls from in front of one of the local stores, were given a fine of $100 and costs each or thirty days in the county jail. Neither of them having a cent of money they were sent to jail where they will have a chance to dwell on the evils of their ways for a month.
The three remaining in the line were given fifty dollars and costs each and allowed a chance to sweat it out in the county jail, a job that will occupy their vagabond minds for a period of fifteen days. The three vags were Frank Jones, Charles Wright and Luke O’Brien.
The theft of the overalls took place on Monday afternoon. Peter Coyne took the garments from a box in front of one of the stores on South Sixth street and ran with them to a nearby corner where he secreted them in a buggy and made his get-away. It was then Lowery’s turn to play his part in the deal, so getting the bundle from the buggy he made his way through an alley to the rear of one of the lunch counters of the city where his brother is employed, and there hid them in a box.
He was seen to do this by one of the high school boys who reported it to the police and the two arrests followed with the resulting convictions.
Both of the parties to the game plead guilty to the charge entered against them and there was no delay in meting out their punishment. Coyne has been implicated in other petty thieveries about the city, and was arrested a few months ago as one of the parties engaged in the burglary of the Cochran saloon. At that time, however, the evidence against him was not sufficient to hold him to the grand jury and he was released.
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