The subject of today’s post was selected by my friend Charlene Nuval, whom you may recognize as the creative genius who produces short videos on the Meow & Moof YouTube channel about her tuxedo cat Milo and mini-Aussie Moxie.

I challenged Char to select today’s mugshot and she came through in a big way, selecting 19-year-old Michael McNally, a sailor who was arrested for breaking & entering and larceny in December 1911.  His story actually began in June of 1911 when he swiped a suit of clothes from the Ideal store, owned by a Mr. Cohen.

McNally was serving on a ship that was ready to depart so he gave the suit of clothes to his aunt, Mrs. Johnson, and represented the clothing as his own–a gift from a Mr. Cohen, in fact. He asked Mrs. Johnson to pawn the suit, which this trusting lady did. In September of that year, Mrs. Johnson gave the pawn ticket to Thomas McNally, the defendant’s brother.

By the time McNally’s ship returned in December, the police had the whole scam figured out, and he was arrested for the theft.

On February 7, 1912, McNally entered a plea of not guilty to a complaint of breaking and entering and larceny. The case went to trial, but McNally never had a chance, once the jury learned that the defendant already had a record for theft. When he was 10 years old, he stole a horse and was sent to the Lyman School for Boys.

Say what you will, being a horse thief has always been considered one of the most low-down things a man can do. In the movie The Westerner, Judge Roy W. Bean tells the defendant, “Mr. Harden, it’s my duty to inform you that the larceny of an equine is a capital offense punishable by death, but you can rest assured that in this court, a horse thief always gets a fair trial before he’s hung.” The jury was out only a few minutes before convicting McNally, who was sentenced to ten months in prison.

If you want to check out Charlene’s channel, I highly recommend watching the latest Meow & Moof video: Hazards of Biscuit Making and subscribing to her channel.