The kind-hearted philanthropist who had come to their aid was none other than “Public Enemy Number One,” Al Capone.
Many Chicagoans, however, had more pressing concerns than organized crime in the year following the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
Capone’s soup kitchen served breakfast, lunch and dinner to an average of 2,200 Chicagoans every day.
Inside the soup kitchen, smiling women in white aprons served up coffee and sweet rolls for breakfast, soup and bread for lunch and soup, coffee and bread for dinner.
Gangster Al Capone's Chicago soup kitchen provided three meals a day during the Great Depression.
Although the press never spotted Capone in the soup kitchen, newspapers ate up the soup kitchen story.
“If anything were needed to make the farce of Gangland complete, it is the Al Capone soup kitchen,” it editorialized. »
