A Hundred Years Ago, We Had a Problem with Chicken Thieves

Even at peak prohibition, purloined poultry was a primary problem

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED JANUARY 20, 2025

The work of a police officer in South Bend has always been a busy job, but maybe never more than during America's Prohibition Era from 1920 - 1933. The city's position between Chicago and Detroit and its identity as an ethnically diverse labor town meant that rumrunners were constantly crisscrossing the city, fueling basement speakeasies, and generally keeping the cops on their toes.

Low level mobsters became a presence and a nuisance, and local authorities must have felt they were chasing down a hydra. Whenever they cut down one rumrunner, two more appeared in his place.

So it must have come with some sense of relief when, on February 4, 1925, South Bend's Finest announced that they had brought to conclusion a head-scratching case that had confounded the region for months. This time, they had taken down most of an entire gang, one that they called “well organized” and “provably dangerous.”

But this time, it wasn't the rumrunners that they finally put behind bars. This time, it was an even more pressing public enemy - The South Bend Chicken Thief Gang.

 

 

For months, chickens had been disappearing from local coops without a trace, sometimes 40 and 50 at a time. If it seems to you that it would be difficult to snatch away four dozen chickens without creating the kind of commotion that might stir a suspicious farmer, you're exactly right. That's part of what led the police to describe the operation as a sophisticated one that would prove difficult to crack.

The other part that proved the sophistication of the thieves was that the purloined peckers were always high-end designer chicken breeds - Plymouth Rocks, Leghorn Bantams, Brahmas, Rhode Island Reds. Whoever was ransacking roosters knew what they were looking for and where to find it. It also meant that these were not just trivial crimes. Fifty high-end chickens were worth a lot of money, and stealing them was not just a joke - sometimes it meant the loss of a farmer's ability to make a living.

The thieves operated across a massive area, stealing chickens on both sides of the state line and in St. Joseph, LaPorte, and Elkhart Counties in Indiana. There were too many chicken farmers in that wide a radius to patrol all of them, and every few days, there would be reports of another hijacked henhouse, sometimes 40 or more miles away.

On February 1, 1925, a group of feisty farmers appealed directly to St. Joseph County Sheriff Thomas Goodrick about their poultry predicament. Goodrick assured the pleaders that he would handle this case himself and that he would bring swift justice to the fowl filchers. From then on, the rooster robbers were on notice, and it wouldn't be long until they slipped up.

Goodrick dispatched a deputy to Clay Township to keep a close eye out for suspicious vehicles in suspicious places. The officer was looking for chicken thieves, but that part was supposed to be a secret. If anyone asked, the officer was to say he was looking to arrest bootleggers.

The subterfuge worked. Two of the bantam bandits consented to a search when they were pulled over by the deputy, who told them he was looking to bust rumrunners. They knew he wouldn't find anything that would implicate them in that crime. But when he found a pile of burlap sacks and chicken feathers in their trunk instead, the gig was up. Joseph Wosaski and Timorthy McPherson of Elkhart were both apprehended, and with the nugget nappers arrested, the South Bend Tribune celebrated the next morning:

South Bend's farmers would barely have time to breathe their sigh of relief before the next thing happened. A day after Wosaski and McPherson were arrested, some 50 hens were hooked from the farm of a Mr. Robbins on East Jefferson Avenue. South Bend's cops might have gotten some of the clucker crooks, but they hadn't stopped the gang.

The case went cold for ten days, no leads, no thefts, no action. Perhaps the hen hustlers had wised up amid the increased scrutiny. Maybe South Bend's rooster ranchers were finally in the clear. But without another arrest, it would be impossible to know for sure.

It was February 15 before the next story broke. With South Bend on high alert, a street merchant on Western Avenue noticed a pair of teenage boys selling high-end chickens on the street for prices far lower than their lineage would have been expected to bring. It was hardly proof of a crime, but it was enough to attract the attention of the police who quickly intervened and found probable cause to arrest the drumstick desperadoes. The boys admitted almost immediately to the possession of the misappropriated meatbirds and ratted out everyone else they'd been working with.

Were all of the cock caperers apprehended? It's tough to know, but reports of poached poultry declined sharply once the fowl filchers began to be sentenced for their crimes - terms of imprisonment that lasted anywhere from one to fourteen years. The broiler bosses who owned the chicken farms could finally sleep at peace.

The South Bend Chicken Thief Gang may have been plucked from the streets, but their fowl escapades left a mark on the city's history - proof that even during Prohibition, no crime was too small to ruffle feathers.

Aaron Helman is an author, historian and adventurer from South Bend. You may have seen him around South Bend drinking coffee. Learn more about his work or check out his books at aaronhelman.com.