Marietta Daily Times, December 14, 1922
Seventeen prisoners took breakfast on Thursday morning at the county jail and immediately thereafter John W. Britton, a bootlegger, was given a new pair of shoes and his liberty. He kept his agreement to leave Washington county and took the first train for Chillicothe where his home is located. Britton was arrested in a raid staged at Reno one night last summer and had served an even four months in jail. He was sent up by Mayor Sandford.
Eight of the seventeen men and boys in jail on Thursday morning are doing time for violating the different provisions of the Crabbe act and a majority of them have been sent over from the court of the mayor. Fred "Blinky" Hendershot is the "dean of the prison," having been confined for almost six months. He was sent up by Mayor Sandford on the 26th of June and his time will not be up until some time in February, if he serves it all.
When Sheriff Roberts came into office four years ago, the outgoing sheriff turned over to him seventeen prisoners. Within a few days that number was reduced and on Thanksgiving Day of 1920 the prison was entirely empty and the big doors stood open. They continued that way for two weeks, during which Sheriff Roberts spent several days at his Waterford township farm. Then the juvenile court committed a delinquent boy to the jail and it is recalled that he made a vain attempt to destroy the courthouse and jail by setting fire to his bed.
From that until the present time the prison never has been empty and the number of prisoners has fluctuated, dropping to a bare half-dozen, then climbing back to seventeen. About a year go, on the day that Sheriff Roberts took a party of eight boys to the Mansfield reformatory, the number of prisoners on the books mounted to eighteen, but several of them did not enter the jail, merely coming to the sheriff's office to surrender. Therefore, seventeen is the high record for the past four years - a number that has been twice attained.
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