As you look at the daily blotter from the newspaper in the late 1800’s and early 20th century you can see that about half the arrests on a given night were for the crime of intoxication. As you look at fines ranging from $3 to $10 in 1887 and given that one dollar then was roughly equivalent to $20 now, there was little chance of avoiding incarceration for most of the down and out drunks. So the majority were sent to the penitentiary.

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The penitentiary was located at the corner of South and Highland while the Insane Asylum was at the corner of South and Elmwood . In between was the poor house. So one would expect to find drunks in the pen, alcoholics too feeble to take care of themselves in the poor house and wet brains in the Insane Asylum . In 1984 there was an evacuation of the land formerly behind the penitentiary and the remains of some 900 unclaimed bodies of these institutions were found buried in unmarked graves. About 300 of these bodies were relocated to Mt. Hope Cemetery and the rest, some buried on top of one another, were deemed to be buried deep enough and remain there today. Such was the fate of the alcoholics and the mentally ill at that time. The practice of burying unclaimed dead was discontinued here in 1873 and a memorial plaque and “Remember Garden” now marks the location of this burial ground

After that, he (Dr. Bob) told me I was headed for one of three things—death, an asylum, or the penitentiary—if I didn’t stop drinking. He told that right off the bat to anyone he ever talked to. And you had to make up your mind right then and there whether you were serious or not. Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers . p. 117, A.A. World Services 1982

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There were those in the criminal justice system who saw that there had to be a better way to deal with the drunks. Police Justice Willis Gillette was the former Sheriff of Monroe County and went on to become a New York State Supreme Court Judge. In a 1915 newspaper article he was quoted as saying…

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James Scott was a policeman on Front Street. An excerpt from this 1936 article on his retirement reads…

Sadly, and as kind as Patrolman Scott seems to have been, it is clear that many alcoholics were still ending up in the South Avenue Institutions.

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Another judge in favor of rehabilitation rather than incarceration was Judge Jacob Gitelman citing the cost to the taxpayer in 1939 …

Others in the probation department and police court were also recognizing the problem of alcoholism as an illness and seeing the value of the newly formed AA group in Rochester. This 1943 article references appreciation of Rochester AA and announces the formation of a potential new AA group in Fulton.

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Chief Probation Officer Porter VanZandt went on to become a vice chairman of the Rochester Committee for Education on Alcoholism and a crusader for AA. In this 1947 article he is quoted as saying that a much more enlightened education on alcoholism as a disease in all it’s, psychiatric, legal and medical facets is needed before the stigma of receiving aid is removed.

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Other including Police Officer William Guillod were compelled to help. Working at first on his own time he reached out to struggling drunks with the help of AA. Because of his compassion and success in 1949 Officer Guillod was assigned these duties as his full time work.

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Meanwhile, Mrs. Eleanor Auble, the night matron for the city jail, had been on her own crusade to save the women from the problem of alcoholism which she saw was responsible for the arrests of the majority of women coming into the jail every night. In her words, the solution was to “join Alcoholics Anonymous” not for herself but for the prisoners. Her story is told in two issues of November 1951 D&C.

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Finally, because of the success of AA and it’s early supporters in the community. In 1951, Alfred Treat, Superintendent of the Penitentiary granted permission for AA to bring meetings to the inmates. The article reads…

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