From the July 5 1899 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

“The indelicacy of the police of the Fulton Street station in interfering with the morning ablutions of a woman made Mary Sheridan much more indignant than she was over the simple fact that she had been placed under arrest and hauled before Magistrate Brenner in the Adams Street court this morning. The fact that the ablutions in question had been daily made by Mary at the horse trough on Washington Street, near the bridge, had suggested to the police the necessity of doing something about her case. They had tried to drive her away, for she seemed to be otherwise a very harmless person. She never got tipsy and her inherent cleanliness under other conditions would be commendable. Mary would not be driven away. The habit of washing at the horse trough had become too strong and there was nothing to do about it after a while but to arrest her as a vagrant.”