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A video of a police raid of bootleggers in the 1920

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1920s USA Prohibition, Police Raid Bootleggers

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Meredith Allison- Female Bootlegger, Murder and Showgirl

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Meredith Allison- Female Bootlegger, Murder and Showgirl

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The story of a female bootlegger who was more than just a bootlegger. The beautiful showgirl and murder, was more than anyone would ever expect.

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Meredith Allison - Murder, Bootlegging and a 1920s Showgirl | ManyBooks

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Meredith Allison is a writer (and reader) of many kinds of fiction, but in particular historical organized crime and dark thrillers. A native of Li...

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Women Bootleggers and Prohibition Agents

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Women Bootleggers and Prohibition Agents

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Women being used to help the distribution of alcohol because they could not be searched; there were many women who benefited from bootlegging as well, it was not all men.

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Women bootleggers were often very clever. A good example is the Henhouse Bootlegger. You'll learn about her shortly.
Overview
I. Women Bootleggers

II. Women Prohibition Agents

III. Summary

IV. Resources

On the other hand, women prohibition agents could be very effective. You'll discover how and much more below.

I. Women Bootleggers

Women bootleggers enjoyed many advantages over men. Many states had laws protecting women from search. Sometimes they would hide alcohol on themselves and taunt police to search them. They threatened to sue officers if they did.

She was a moonshiner, but he loved her still.

Some thought there may have been far more women than men who were bootleggers. They may have sold as much as five times the quantity. A female agent said that they were much harder to detect than men.

Juries were also reluctant to convict mothers and grandmothers of bootlegging. Thus, they were much less likely to suffer from their illegal acts.

Big Profits, Light Punishments

In 1925, a woman in Milwaukee admitted earning $30,000 a year bootlegging. That's over $400,000 in today's dollars. The court only fined her $200 and gave her to a month in jail. Another court sentenced a 22-year-old bootlegger in Denver, Esther Matson, to attend church every Sunday for two years. The President of the U.S. pardoned a Michigan woman bootlegger. Similarly, the governor of Ohio reduced a woman bootlegger's sentence to only five days.

Officials were less likely to suspect women of bootlegging. Police arrested Susie Gallagher Kerr along with two men. She admitted that the still they found was her operation. Yet they refused to believe her.

Women bootleggers tended to keep a lower profile. They were less likely to boast or to become confrontational. And in any conflict with police, they were much less likely to be a target of gunfire.

Bootleggers sometimes hired women simply to ride along. Police were less likely to stop and search the vehicle. One newspaper reported that no 'self-respecting' prohibition agent liked to stop a vehicle with a woman in it.

A Few of the Many Women Bootleggers

Maggie Bailey

Maggie Bailey of Clovertown in Harlan County, Kentucky, was the 'Queen of the Mountain Bootleggers.' She began bootlegging during Prohibition at age 17. The "Queen" lived simply and often gave food and other help to families in need. Because of this, juries often looked kindly on her. A U.S. District judge described her as an expert on search and seizure laws.

Stella Beloumant

Stella Beloumant was the leading bootlegger in Elko, Nevada. Her case warranted an entire task force. It included the U.S. Attorney General, the Prohibition Bureau 's second in command plus two of its agents, and the district attorney. The sheriff's office put her under 24-hour stakeout. Her arrest netted an enormous quantity of illegal alcohol.

Bertie (Birdie) Brown

Bertie (Birdie) Brown was an African American woman who homesteaded in Fergus County, Montana. She made moonshine that was the 'best in the country.' Bertie Brown died from burns when her still exploded in 1933.

Esther Clark

Esther Clark was a bootlegger in rural Kansas. She stored moonshine in her chicken coop. For this reason, she was the Henhouse Bootlegger.

Gloria de Casares

Gloria de Casares was bootlegging wife of a wealthy Argentinean. In 1925, her five-masted ship was preparing to depart from London to the U.S. Officials seized it with 10,000 cases of Scotch. After that, she and her ships were constantly under suspicion of further bootlegging.

Josephine Doody

"The Bootleg Lady of Glacier Park," Josephine Doody was a former dance-hall worker. Her best customers were railway workers. A train would stop at Doody siding. Each toot of the horn indicated an order for one gallon of moonshine.

Nora Gallagher

Nora Gallagher was a widow in Butte, Montana. She brewed in her kitchen. Her explanation was that she needed the money. And for what purpose did she need money? She said it was to buy Easter outfits for her five children.

Edna Giard

Edna Giard married a man she knew was a bootlegger. They moved alcohol for Al Capone from Chicago to states in the upper Mid-West. She loved the money, excitement and glamor. Once she spent the afternoon with Capone's wife in Florida playing tennis and having a "great time."

Lavinia Gilman

Lavinia Gilman was an eighty-year-old woman who was running a three-hundred-gallon still. The judge who heard her case didn't think she was the 'real culprit.' Perhaps he was sexist. In any case, he preferred to believe that it was really her son.

Mary Ann Moriarity

Mary Ann Moriarity washed clothes for residents living in a boardinghouse. Then she had her teenage daughter deliver the moonshine hidden among the clean clothe. She charged fifty cents for a pint and two dollars for a gallon.

Willie Carter Sharpe

Willie Carter Sharpe was a bootlegger in Franklin County, Virginia. She hauled more than 220,000 gallons of moonshine between 1926 and 1931. At her trial, spectators focused on the diamonds in her teeth.

Mary Wazeniak

Moonshiner Mary Wazeniak was a Polish immigrant in La Grange Park, Illinois. She made and served moonshine out of her home. At the end of a night, one of her customers was staggering home. He fell into a bog and died from the toxic brew. At her trial, the press called her 'Moonshine Mary.'

Diversity of Women Bootleggers

Barely four years into Prohibition, journalist Jack O'Donnell described women bootleggers. He said they "come from all stations and ranks of life - from the slums of New York's lower East Side, exclusive homes in California, the pine-clad hills of Tennessee, the wind-swept plains of Texas, the sacred precincts of exclusive Washington."

Continuing, "Some are bold, brainy and beautiful, some hard-boiled and homely, some white, some black, some brown. All are thorns in the sides of Prohibition Enforcement officials." ¹

How right he was.

II. Women Prohibition Agents

Women Prohibition agents could be uniquely valuable. That's because many states had laws preventing male agents from frisking or otherwise searching female suspects. And even if they didn't, convention prohibited it.

Women bootleggers would sometimes hide alcohol on themselves and taunt male agents. An Ohio 'Dry Agent' described such an event to the Hamilton Evening Journal in 1924. 'A painted-up doll was sitting in a corner. She had her arms folded and at our command she stood up. But then came the rub. She laughed at us . . . then defiantly declared to bring suit against anyone who touched her.' ²

Bootleggers would often hire women to ride with them when transporting alcohol. "'No self-respecting federal agent likes to hold up an automobile containing women,' according to The Boston Daily Globe." ³

Although useful in law enforcement, there were never many female Prohibition Bureau agents. The Bureau hired a dozen in 1922. ⁴ However, it added others soon after. ⁵

Two Pioneer Women Prohibition Agents

Georgia Hopley

Women Prohibition agents played varying roles. After Georgia Hopley became an agent, she worked in local enforcement in Washington, DC. She then developed, implemented, and lead the Prohibition Bureau's publicity efforts.

Georgia Hopley became a one-person public affairs office. She traveled across the country speaking at churches, schools, and other groups. Agent Hopley wrote newspaper articles, gave interviews, and discussed prohibition enforcement problems with political and business leaders. Her job was to strengthen public support for the enforcement of Prohibition. She worked on that with determination and persistence. ⁶

Daisy Simpson

Much more visible was Prohibition Agent Daisy Simpson. Her home base was the San Francisco office. However, she also worked in other cities across the country.

Early on, Daisy Simpson received much coverage in the press. They called her the 'Lady Hooch Hunter.' She often used disguises. She had a hundred different ones. Often, using a disguise, she would spend a few nights in a speakeasy, hotel or restaurant. Then she would arrest those who served her any alcohol.

Disguises

In her use of disguises she was similar to the well-known Izzy Einstein & Moe Smith. Like them, she was clever. She would pretend to become ill outside speakeasies. Then she would arrest bartenders who would bring whiskey to help her.

Daisy Simpson was responsible for the seizure of 8,000 gallons of wine in a single raid. But most of her arrests were for petty crimes.

For example, she arrested a bellboy who brought her medicinal whiskey after she'd complained about stomach pains. She arrested a man who had a single jug that 'smelled like moonshine.'

Several judges chastised her about the trivial offenses for which she would arrest people. Judges also had to dismiss many cases because of her illegal entrapments. More important, the Prohibition Bureau wanted to arrest major moonshiners and bootleggers.

Former Delinquent

Daisy Simpson had been a delinquent in her youth. She had spent much of her time in dingy bars and hanging around criminals. In addition, she was doing illegal drugs. She then reformed and joined the morals squad of the San Francisco Police during World War I.

Simpson left the Prohibition Bureau because she became ill and confined to bed. She relapsed and again began using illegal drugs. In Texas authorities arrested her for receiving drugs through the mail.

She became deeply depressed over her failed marriage and her destroyed reputation. Having managed to smuggle a gun into jail, she shot herself in the stomach. She failed to kill herself but the wound became infected.

After a long, painful recovery, she borrowed money to bail herself out of jail. She pled guilty and received a suspended sentence. Simpson then returned to California and back into obscurity. ⁷

III. Summary

Both Georgia Hopley and Daisy Simpson served the Prohibition Bureau. But both did so in different ways. And both came from very different backgrounds. Hopley's father was a newspaper publisher and her brother was a senator. On the other hand, Simpson's family appears to have been of very modest means.

After their service with the Prohibition Bureau they followed very different paths. Georgia Hopley continued with civic activities. Daisy Simpson sank into anonymity.

A baseball team needs players with very different skills. Similarly, the Prohibition Bureau needed agents with very different skills. It found those in both Georgia Hopley and and Daisy Simpson.

IV. Resources

Resources on Women Bootleggers

Baumler, E. Parlor of Birdie Brown 'legendary.' Great Falls Trib, July 14, 2017.

Funderburg, J. Bootleggers and Beer Barons of the Prohibition Era. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014.

Hewlett, J. "Queen of the Mountain Bootleggers" dies at age 101. Herald-Lead, Dec 6, 2005.

Minnick, F. Whiskey Women. Lincoln, NE: Potomac, 2013. (Ch. 8 is on women bootleggers.)

Murphy, M. Bootlegging mothers and drinking daughters. Am Q, 1994, 46(2), 174-94.

O'Donnell, J. The ladies of rum row. American Legion Weekly, 1924, 6(20), 1-9.

Sanchez, T. The feminine side of bootlegging. LA Hist, 2000, 41(2), 403-433.

Sutton, K. Female Moonshiners & Bootleggers in South Dakota. U South Dakota, 2014.

Resources on Women Prohibition Agents

Death Ends Career of Georgia Hopley. Toledo Blade, July 1, 1944, p. 2.

Graham, L. Governor's Wife Demands Women Prohibition Agents. The Spokesman-Rev, May 12, 1923, p. 20.

Mrs Hannah Brigham Appointed Prohibition Agent. Cambridge Trib, Feb 4, 1922, p. 1.

References

1. O'Donnell, J. The ladies of Rum Row. Am Legion Week, May 16, 1924, pp. 1-9.

2. Minnick, F. Women's History Month. Huffington Post.

3. Minnick, ibid.

4. Women Dry Agents Named. New York Times, May 7, 1922.

5. More Women Prohibition Agents Appointed. Eve News (Harrisburg, PA), Oct 6, 1922.

6. Untitled article about Georgia Hopley. AFT, March 24, 2016. Miss Georgia Hopley, Revenuer.

7. Kratz, J. On Exhibit: 'Lady Hooch Hunter.' Nat Archives, April 7, 2015. Genthon, M. Prohibition Part Two. Women on the Frontline - Daisy Simpson. Connecting Women, Sept 8, 2015. Tragic Ending to Woman Dry Agent's Career. Daisy Simpson, Held on Drug Charges, Is Dying. Lewiston Eve J, March 22, 1926, p. 7. (Despite story, Simpson survived.) Funderburg, J. Bootleggers and Beer Barons of the Prohibition Era. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014, pp. 291-294.

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Women Bootleggers and Women Prohibition Agents

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Women bootleggers were often very clever. A good example is the Henhouse Bootlegger. You'll learn about her shortly. Overview I. Women Bootleggers II. Women Prohibition Agents III. Summary IV. Resources On the other hand, women prohibition agents could be very effective. You'll discover how and much more below.

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Music of the Bootlegging Era

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The men who were major bootleggers in the 1920's, that today are still talked about for going against prohibition.

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George Remus - A lawyer who broke the law and became known as “King of the Bootleggers,” Remus even served as the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character Jay Gatsby. By buying bonded...

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What it is like to be a bootlegger in 1920 trying to avoid getting arrested by the law. As well as making and distributing their own alcohol.

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For every good idea a man or woman has ever had, it seems like there were at least a hundred really dumb ones. Some of those ideas didn't just languish in a corner until they faded into the shadows, as they should have - some became dumb mistakes that impacted the course of history.

Prohibition was definitely one of those dumb ideas. It was driven by the temperance movement, which preached about the evils of alcohol and tried to convince people that the occasional drink would lead to things like spontaneous combustion and genetic defects that would be passed on through generations. They were a fun crowd.

Regardless, Prohibition got passed - for a bunch of reasons - but there were a whole lot of people who decided they weren't going to stand for any of that. They were, of course, the bootleggers.

The term bootlegger can be used for anyone who produced, transported, or sold liquor while it was illegal under the incredibly unpopular 18th Amendment of the United States Constitution. What was it like to break the law for the sake of a drink? Let's find out!

There were little operations, and big ones

When it comes to bootlegging operations during Prohibition, there was no one-size-fits-all job description. The Mob Museum says that some bootleggers were tiny family businesses with a few industrious people making liquor by the gallon in personal-size stills. This is where the idea of bathtub gin came from - it wasn't gin made in a bathtub but gin made using the bathtub faucet.

Some families worked together with small-time mobsters supplying their kit. The Genna gang in Chicago, for example, supplied the stills and raw materials - along with a daily stipend - to families who made the liquor they collected and sold.

Then, there were the giant operations. Legendary bootlegger Al Capone alone ran a massive, multi-million dollar booze and gambling empire with countless people on his payroll, and History says he pulled in between $60 and $100 million a year just in the alcohol trade. This wasn't a small-time, low-key distillery set up in a few basements - it's been described as a paramilitary organization, with everything from bribery and threats to outright violence used to make a lot of booze and a ton of cash.

There was a massive number of bootlegging trade routes

There were many different kinds of bootleggers. After all, wherever there are people, there are people who want a drink. During Prohibition, bootleggers were found all across the Good Ol' US of A, with hot spots in cities including Chicago and New York.

Not all illegal liquor was made in the country, and there were a number of illicit trade routes bringing in booze by land and by sea. Whiskey was a major import and often came to the east coast and Gulf Coast from Great Britain via - appropriately - the olde-timey pirate capital of Nassau. Canada was another great source, with illegal shipping routes from British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and through Nova Scotia and St. Pierre.

It was secret, sure, but it wasn't top secret. The biggest, baddest, non-secret was Rum Row, a line of big boats anchored in international waters along the east coast. They transferred their goods to lighter, more mobile crafts called contact boats. According to The Mob Museum, bootleggers also used souped-up cars, sailboats, schooners, and even school buses. Vehicles of all kinds often had hidden compartments and, sometimes, came with a child or two to help throw law enforcement off the scent.

Sometimes, you just fall into being a bootlegger

So, how exactly did someone get into the business? There was no application process or even a guild. People got into bootlegging in ways as varied as the practice itself.

Let's take a couple examples, starting with George Cassiday. Known as The Man in the Green Hat, the U.S. Senate says Cassiday became a bootlegger servicing a very select market: the U.S. Capitol, including Senate and House members who had voted in favor of Prohibition. He kind of fell into the gig. Upon returning home from World War I, a friend asked him for a few bottles of liquor for a pair of House representatives. It snowballed from there, and pretty soon he was making 25 deliveries each day, all in his trademark green hat.

Others seemed to fall into the business too. In 1926, an anonymous bootlegger penned an article for the New Yorker, explaining that he had been working as a waiter for years before Prohibition suddenly made times very tough. Until, that is, the doorbell rang. The man on his step "just laughed and said one of my very good friends had sent him to see me," the future bootlegger revealed. The man said he knew a guy who had the goods, the one-time successful waiter had the contacts, and guess who was working for who now?

You needed to be able to pull off a good swindle

Being a successful bootlegger wasn't just about the making and selling of alcohol - the really successful ones needed to be part con man, too.

An anonymous bootlegger wrote an expose for the New Yorker, saying that real Scotch would be watered down and that even when quality of liquor deteriorated, he wouldn't lower the price for fear of customers realizing they were not getting the best goods. He wrote, "As long as they were paying higher prices for their liquors than their friends, I knew they would think they were getting better stuff." One of his higher-ups in the distribution chain explained it this way: "Of course, we are not delivering genuine Scotch liquor or genuine anything else. We cannot get that stuff any longer. ... But, of course, the customer ... likes to think that he is getting the real stuff. And ... it helps business to make him think so."

It was all in the experience - some bootleggers discovered that using the same bottles as big brands with reproduction labels would allow them to charge top dollar for "the real thing," even if the contents had been made unprofessionally. The anonymous source explained, "People seem to have lost their taste, as far as liquor is concerned. They can't tell the genuine article from a good imitation any time."

You'd better be ready to name-drop

Getting busted kind of went along with the territory when it came to being a bootlegger. But there was often a benefit in being part of a larger crew - the higher-ups tended to take care of the guys doing the dirty work. Take Al Capone, for example. History says he spent a whopping half a million a month just paying bribes to everyone from law enforcement to politicians, and that went a long way in keeping the booze flowing.

In a 1926 piece written for the New Yorker, an anonymous bootlegger revealed that he was often given a name to drop as a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card. He was told the name of a "big politician [who was] very much respected by every cop I ever met" - but only needed to use it twice. Once was for one of his employees, who was stopped while making a delivery, and the second was for himself. In the latter incident, he was heading to Montauk Point with a car full of whiskey when he was stopped by uniformed police. After openly admitting that the car was full of liquor, he dropped the name. The two officers called back to New York, confirmed that the bootlegger was associated with this influential man, and waved him on his way. At the next town, he was pulled over again but just told not to drive too fast or he'd likely be picked up by a cop who wouldn't understand.

You could buy supplies from the local grocery store

Some bootleggers went the independent route and made their own booze from scratch, and it wasn't as difficult as it might sound. Why? A lot of the equipment and ingredients could be bought at the neighborhood grocery store.

According to The Mob Museum, law enforcement confiscated around 697,000 stills between 1921 and 1925, and a lot of those had been purchased from local hardware stores or assembled from widely available parts.

Buying the raw materials was easy too. Corn, hops, and corn sugar were widely available in bulk. So was malt syrup, a popular ingredient in homebrewed beers. Anyone could walk into a grocery store - including A&P and Kroger - and buy cans of it. The higher the demand, the more the supply chain ramped up. It's estimated that by 1927, enough malt syrup had been made to allow enterprising homebrewers to make about 6 billion pints of beer, give or take.

Wine wasn't any more difficult. According to Smithsonian, many vineyards and wineries started manufacturing wine bricks during Prohibition. These were grape juice concentrate that came with written "warnings" about how consumers should absolutely not dissolve the concentrate in water then keep it in a cool, dark place for 21 days. That would make wine, which certainly wouldn't be the intention, would it?

Bootleggers literally went underground

Anyone hoping to make it as a bootlegger in a big city would have to have no problems with claustrophobia. Many big-city bootleggers relied on the secrecy afforded by tunnels to get around, so they had to be comfortable in cramped, dark spaces.

Take Chicago. Northwestern University professor Bill Savage says (via Mental Floss) that many of the buildings were built with interconnected basements - not tunnels per se, but underground passages that were useful for moving liquor and as escape routes during police raids. The Uptown tunnels are one example. This network of passageways connects the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, and possibly several theaters including the Uptown Theater and the Aragon Ballroom, as well as other businesses in the city's North Side.

KCET says there are similar tunnels under Los Angeles. They were originally built for underground trolley cars, but by the time Prohibition rolled around, the cars weren't running as much, and bootleggers made good use of the tunnels.

Interestingly, when Prohibition went nationwide in 1920, North Dakota had already been a dry state for 31 years. With this history, it's not surprising that Minot had a jump on the nation, with underground tunnels and secret rooms scattered across the city. Traveling Midwestern says many were only revealed during a 2011 flood, alongside some jars of moonshine that had been hidden for a very long time.

Bootlegging took some serious driving skills

The Mob Museum says that the early 1920s were the golden years of rumrunning, because after that, law enforcement started to catch up and made bootleggers' lives much more difficult. Consequently, bootleggers couldn't just be okay drivers - they had to be really, really good no matter what they were driving.

Smithsonian reports that vehicles were often outfitted with heavy-duty shocks and springs to prevent the booze from breaking on bumpy mountain roads. The seats in the back were often removed to make room for more alcohol, and engines were modified to make it easier for bootleggers to outrun cops. Negotiating narrow dirt roads at night with no lights is bad enough, but add in the extra weight of the liquor and the need to handle punctured tires and any other mechanical problems that might happen without drawing attention, and it's definitely not a job just anyone could handle. It's no wonder that NASCAR was born from bootlegging.

According to Defense Media Network, the fledgling Coast Guard added hundreds of boats to its fleet during Prohibition, and bootleggers needed to take extra precautions. It wasn't long before cargo wasn't carried on boats but dragged behind in case it needed to be dumped quickly. Add in the fact that these boats were often moving through shallow waters and rocky shoals at night with no lights, and the need for evasive maneuvers like setting fuel on fire in the boat's wake at any second, and it's easy to see how boat pilots needs to be really good at what they did.

You couldn't stay little

There's something romantic about the notion of the little guy making his backyard hooch and selling it on down the road to make a living for himself and his family, but as Prohibition rolled on, that was less often the case.

Take Rum Row, the line of ships that floated just off the coast and provided a supply of booze via contact boats. Defense Media Network says that when Prohibition was implemented, the recently created Coast Guard was sorely out-gunned by dozens of big ships and even more contact boats. (In an instance of "We should have seen that coming," many of the contact boats had motors that had been sold by the government as surplus after the war.) But later, the Coast Guard got an upgrade and by the later years of Prohibition included over 10,000 officers and 25 re-assigned naval ships.

About the same time, many small-scale bootleggers found themselves fighting a losing battle. The rise of organized crime meant that many of the independent brewers and distillers were being either welcomed into the fold, run out of business, or worse. Not all bootleggers saw being connected to a larger organization as a bad thing. When the anonymous author of a 1926 piece for the New Yorker talked about the big boss who brought him into a larger organization, he said, "He would guarantee me protection. ... he would show me how to expand my business. ... It was my first step toward really big business in the bootlegging industry."

It wasn't a case of us vs. them

There are huge sections of bootlegging history that are, of course, undocumented, but "Smugglers, Bootleggers and Scofflaws" recounts enough recorded incidents to make it clear not all bootleggers banded together on the same side against Johnny Law.

Piracy was not uncommon, and sometimes it turned bloody. Incidents include a boat captain who was robbed of tens of thousands of dollars' worth of whiskey off the coast of New York and a boat crew who ended up washing up on Martha's Vineyard after (authorities believe) their boat had been rammed and their cargo stolen.

Stakes were incredibly high. In another well-documented example, American bootleggers took the agent of a French ship to Manhattan for a night on the town while their associates headed into the waters, took the French crew hostage, and spent the next 10 days stealing a whopping $800,000 worth of liquor from the ship using 10 small boats.

New Yorkers were also behind an incident in which a British ship from the Chelsea Trading Company had about $700,000 of merchandise (i.e., liquor) plundered. Bottom line? Anyone who wanted to be a bootlegger needed to be very good at watching their back.

What happened to bootleggers after the repeal of Prohibition?

Franklin D. Roosevelt ratified the repeal of Prohibition on December 5, 1933, and there was much rejoicing. But what happened to all of the people who had been arrested for bootlegging?

Indiana University professor Ruth Engs says (via VinePair) that few individuals were released after Prohibition was repealed. She explains that since they had committed their activities while they were crimes, they were still held responsible for breaking the law. Engs also says that while bootleggers could petition their state governors for their freedom based on the repeal, it's unknown how many were successful.

There's another consideration, too: many bootleggers were jailed on multiple offenses that often had nothing to do with the actual liquor, like gun crimes, cross-border smuggling, or tax evasion. As a result, many bootleggers who were cooling their heels behind bars weren't nearly as excited for the end of Prohibition as much of the rest of the country.

Bootleggers had to live with hundreds of thousands of deaths

You could argue that bootleggers just wanted to make it possible for people to relax with a whiskey after a long day at work, but there was a very dark side to bootlegging - anyone who manufactured or traded homebrewed liquor needed to be okay knowing that they were killing people.

Iowa PBS explains that there were many health risks associated with drinking bootlegged alcohol, and that there were a ton of terms for the symptoms, including terrifying-sounding ailments like "swell head," "limber neck," and "Jake paralysis." The Mob Museum says that a Boston brew called Ginger Jake was found to be responsible for crippling up to 100,000 people, hence the name "Jake paralysis." How did that happen? The manufacturers added a plasticizer used to make celluloid film and explosives, known as Lindol, to their drink to hide the alcohol. But Lindol was toxic to nerve cells and caused paralysis below the waist, which was usually permanent and included impotence in men.

The U.S. government also caused thousands of deaths. Knowing that bootleggers were using industrial alcohol to make booze, federal officials ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States. The aim was to scare people into giving up bootlegging and covert drinking, but, Slate points out, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program had killed at least an estimated least 10,000 people and permanently damaged the health and lives of countless more.

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What It Was Really Like Being A Bootlegger During Prohibition - Grunge

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For every good idea a man or woman has ever had, it seems like there were at least a hundred really dumb ones. Some of those ideas didn't just languish in a corner until they faded into the shadows, as they should have - some became dumb mistakes that impacted the course of history.

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Bootleggers from the state of Kentucky would smuggle alcohol into Cincinnati, Ohio to distribute and sell in more communities.

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Bootlegging started when for the greater good the government banned the sale and use of alcohol. However Americans would not abide by the new law but instead would make and sell their own alcohol illegally.

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All photos from (google images,2022)
Links from (youtube,2022)