A New York City girl steals money from a shoe shop and spends it on the seven children of a poor family. Newspaper describes her as playing the role of “Lady Bountiful.”
Girl Steals Money to Help Poor Family
Sobbing as though her heart would break, pretty 15-year-old Margaret McGonigal, an East Side tenement girl, today told the judge in the children’s court that she stole $131 from a Greek shoe repairing shop yesterday so that she could play “Lady Bountiful” for a day.
And a true “Lady Bountiful” she proved. After abstracting the money when the proprietor was out, the girl went straight to the home of the Jacobs family, where there are seven children. Father Jacobs doesn’t earn much money and the children go very poorly clothed and are often very poorly fed.
Margaret McGonigal took all seven to a big department store. There she bought them new clothes and fed them sweets and ice cream. From there they went home. Margaret told Mrs. Jacobs that she must have new clothes, too, and she gave her what money she had left. Not a cent of the whole money did she spend on herself.
The girl may be freed on a suspended sentence.
Source: The day book. (Chicago, Ill.), 28 July 1914.
