Otto Cobb, prisoner number J2440, has a sinister-looking smirk in his March 1908 mugshot. His expression is halfway between a scowl and a grin—somewhere on the edge between disgust and cockiness. He may look the part of a Goodfella, but his grand crime consisted of stealing…chickens! For this crime, the twenty-one-year-old “rail road man” from Corning, New York, spent ninety days behind bars.
His booking card, or “Bertillon card,” provides an interesting glimpse into a yesteryear without supermarkets, Tyson Chicken nuggets, Kentucky Fried Chicken, or refrigerators.
Without refrigeration, chicken spoils fast; in order for Americans to satisfy their yen to nosh on fried chicken, they kept live poultry on their property. Early drawings and photographs indicate that they kept their henhouses and chicken coops (and all of the foul smells) along the back property line, as far from the house as possible.
They used the eggs, and when they wanted to put poultry on the table, they beheaded the chickens. My mother used to tell a story about her grandmother, who slaughtered live chickens in her kitchen. On one particular occasion, she didn’t strike low enough, which led to a comic scene of the old hen, cleaver in hand, chasing a headless chicken around the room.
For Cobb, the pilfering of chickens represented just the opening scene in a biography marked by a nearly continuous chain of arrests and imprisonments.
The son of farmer Charles Cobb, Otto spent much of his youth around the Martin Thompson boarding house, a brothel also known as “Ranch 101.” When he wasn’t rubbing elbows (and other things) with prostitutes, young Cobb stole things, perhaps for money to visit one of the boarding house rooms.
Months after his 1908 chicken caper, he was pinched for grand larceny, which landed him in the Elmira Reformatory. In 1909, he spent three years in Auburn after another grand larceny conviction.
He wasn’t at liberty for long when he ripped off the train station at Adrian in 1912. He made away with the ticket agent’s entire cash drawer, which contained $8 in cash, 400 tickets, and some negotiable papers. He pocketed the greenbacks, but in his haste, he tossed aside the tickets and the papers, which were worth far more than the money. Quickly captured, Cobb confessed, which led to yet another stretch in Auburn prison, this time for five years. He was released in 1917.
Cobb, it appeared, had sticky fingers. REALLY sticky fingers. Drafted for service in 1917, his registration card notes “Held at Bath fail for action of Grand Jury.” The incident in question was yet another theft. This time, he stole two blankets. They were expensive—they cost him another six months behind bars.
Cobb served in WWI and lived to tell about it, but he didn’t return an entirely changed man. He went right back to stealing things. A 1922 theft of two robes led to another short prison term.
Throughout his life, Cobb played chicken with the law…and lost.
He died in 1961 at the age of seventy-four.
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