Lady Scofflaws: 1920s Prohibition and the Women Who Defied It

This here is the same episode as the one I published in 2023, PLUS a special epilogue where I discuss how I used my research on Prohibition to flesh out the world of my two-book NIGHTBIRDS series. Book 2, FYREBIRDS, is out August 27, 2024!

You follow the flash of your friends’ sparkly dresses as they head toward a familiar green door nestled underneath the stoop of an old brownstone.

Three brutal-looking men sit in front on wooden stools, playing a game of cards. You flash your membership card, and they give you a good looking over. Then one of them takes the gun out of his waistband, and raps the butt against the door in a quick pattern. A blue eye appears in the peephole, glaring. And then, at last, the door swings open.

Once inside, you make a beeline to the crowded bar, dodging tipsy couples doing the Charleston and ignoring the mobsters making deals in the shadows. In the haze of cigarette smoke, your friends find a table close to the stage, where the jazz band is sweating underneath the spotlights. You order a round of Mary Pickfords, a bright red cocktail made with white rum, pineapple juice, grenadine, and Maraschino liqueur, served chilled with a cherry. Alcohol may be illegal, and the police may break down the door any minute, but it can be fun living dangerously. After all, what fun is a girl's night out without a drink or three?

Federal law prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol in America from January 17, 1920 to December 5, 1933. But the national prohibition didn’t magically transform all Americans into teetotalers. Alcohol consumption was simply driven underground, and drinking became the nation’s new favorite clandestine pastime and its worst-kept secret. Most people assumed that women, at least, would abide by the new law, given their active role in the temperance movement. They couldn’t have been more wrong. In the 1920s, women were not only drinking at cabarets, but operating speakeasies, smuggling bootlegged liquor, and even brewing homemade moonshine. Let’s meet some of the women who regularly defied Prohibition for fun and money, thrill, and the pursuit of independence.

Grab your flask, an alibi, and get ready to run from the fuzz. Let’s go traveling.

my resources

Books and Academic Journals

1. Joshua Zeitz, Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern, New York: Crown, 2006. 

2. Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, New York: Scribner, 2010. 

3. Christine Sismondo, America Walks into a Bar: A Spirited History of Saloons, Speakeasies, and Grog Shops, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 

4. Michael A. Lerner, Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 

5. Keven McQueen, Offbeat Kentuckians: Legends to Lunatics, Kuttawa: McClanahan Pub House, 2001. 

6. Joseph Collins, “Social Relevance of Speakeasies: Prohibition, Flappers, Harlem, and Change,” Senior Independent Study Thesis, The College of Wooster, Spring 2012. https://openworks.wooster.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=4819&context=independentstudy

Film

1. Prohibition, directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, written by Geoffrey C. Ward, aired October 2, 2022, PBS, 96 minutes. https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/#watch

Online Sources

1. Elizabeth Sholtis, “Shaking Things Up: The Influence of Women on the American Cocktail,” The Virginia Tech Undergraduate Historical Review, July 23, 2020, accessed January 13, 2023. https://vtuhr.org/articles/10.21061/vtuhr.v9i0.4/

2. Jessie Kratz, “On Exhibit: ‘Lady Hooch Hunter,’” The National Archives: Pieces of History, April 7, 2015, accessed January 13, 2023. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2015/04/07/on-exhibit-lady-hooch-hunter/

3. “Flasks in Stockings of Flappers at Exclusive School Brings Arrest of Church Organist as Rum Seller,” The Washington Times from The Archive of American Journalism, July 23, 1922, accessed January 13, 2023. https://thegrandarchive.wordpress.com/flasks-in-stockings-of-flappers-at-exclusive-school-brings-arrest-of-church-organist-as-rum-seller/

4. Olivia B. Waxman, “The Surprisingly Complex Link Between Prohibition and Women’s Rights,” TIME, January 18, 2019, accessed January 13, 2023. https://time.com/5501680/prohibition-history-feminism-suffrage-metoo/

5. Katie Thornton, “Women Campaigned for Prohibition- Then Many Changed Their Minds,” National Geographic, November 2, 2020, accessed January 13, 2023. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/how-women-overturned-prohibition

6. Ted Richthofen, “Women During Prohibition,” Colorado Encyclopedia, October 25, 2022, accessed January 13, 2023. https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/women-during-prohibition

7. Daniel Okrent, “Prohibition: Speakeasies, Loopholes and Politics,” Interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, May 10, 2010, accessed January 14, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2011/06/10/137077599/prohibition-speakeasies-loopholes-and-politics

8. “Rumunners Delivered the Good Stuff to America’s Speakeasies,” The Mob Museum: Prohibition- An Interactive History, accessed January 14, 2023. https://prohibition.themobmuseum.org/the-history/the-rise-of-organized-crime/rum-running/

9. “Mabel Willebrandt: Prolific Prosecutor of Prohibition Laws,” The Mob Museum, October , 2016, accessed January 23, 2023. https://themobmuseum.org/blog/mabel-willebrandt-prolific-prosecutor-of-prohibition-laws/

10. “Prohibition Agent Hannah Brigham,” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, May 26, 2020, accessed January 23, 2023. https://www.atf.gov/our-history/prohibition-agent-hannah-brigham

11. “History of WCTU,” Frances Willard House Museum and Archives, accessed January 23, 2023. https://franceswillardhouse.org/frances-willard/history-of-wctu/

12. “Carrie Nation, Saloon Wrecker, Whipped By Women,” The San Francisco Call via The Library of Congress Chronicles of America, January 25, 1901, accessed January 23, 2023. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1901-01-25/ed-1/seq-1/#words=saloons+Carrie+Nation+saloon+CARRIE+SALOON+NATION+Saloon

13. “Introduction: Truth-Telling: Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells,” Frances Willard House Museum and Archives, accessed January 23, 2023. https://scalar.usc.edu/works/willard-and-wells/introduction?path=index

14. “Frances Harper and Black Women in the WCTU: Truth-Telling: Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells,” Frances Willard House Museum and Archives, accessed January 23, 2023. https://scalar.usc.edu/works/willard-and-wells/black-women-and-the-wctu

15. Mark Lawrence Schrad, “Hatchet Nation,” Slate.com, September 7, 2021, accessed January 23, 2023. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/09/carry-nation-biography-reasons-for-activism.html

16. “Prohibition Agent Georgia Hopley,” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, August 23, 2019, accessed January 23, 2023. https://www.atf.gov/our-history/prohibition-agent-georgia-hopley

17. Sascha Cohen, “No Unescorted Ladies Will Be Served,” JSTOR Daily, March 20, 2019, accessed January 23, 2023. https://daily.jstor.org/no-unescorted-ladies-will-be-served/

18. Jessie Kratz, “First Lady of the Law: Mabel Walker Willebrandt,” The National Archives: Pieces of History Blog, March 18, 2021, accessed January 23, 2023. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2021/03/18/first-lady-of-law-mabel-walker-willebrandt/

episode transcript

keep in mind that this transcript might not match the episode exactly, as I tend to edit a bit in the booth. Please forgive the spelling errors that are bound to crop up now and then: this was written for audio.

SHHH… IT’S A SECRET. Speak easy.   

As we learned in Part 1 of our Prohibition time travels– which you should go back and listen to if you haven’t already - Prohibition officially goes into effect on January 17, 1920, but enforcing it is another issue entirely. Generations before had tried to make America dry, and it didn’t go well. This isn’t America’s first rodeo with an alcohol ban. In 1844, when the state of Massachusetts passed a law banning the sale of booze, an enterprising tavern owner started charging patrons to come and see a striped pig at his establishment—the drinks were incidental, being free with the price of admission. In 1851, when Maine tried something similar, the working class and Irish immigrant population in Portland led a riot that helped lead to the law’s repeal.

Still, the drys go into this new era armed with optimism. Prohibition is going to root out the evil of drinking in America! There’s only one problem: making booze illegal has made it kind of sexy. Those who do even have a cool-sounding name. In 1924, the Boston Herald asks its readers to coin a word for someone who defies Prohibition and drinks liquor. Two readers split the prize for coming up with the word “Scofflaw.” A lot of people are fascinated by the rising glamor of 1920s drinking culture. And no one seems more charmed by the thrills it can offer than some of America’s women.

WHAT’S A GIRL GOTTA DO TO GET A DRINK AROUND HERE?

American women are drinking more, not less, during Prohibition. But why? Before the law passed, drinking was considered a very gendered activity, particularly drinking in public. Saloons were the place many people did their social drinking, and most of them didn’t welcome women. If a woman wanted to drink, she was expected to do it at home, or in one of the ladies’ drinking rooms out of sight of the men next door. But Prohibition changes the game when it forces male-dominated saloons to shut down.

In the early days of Prohibition, the easiest and cheapest place to get a drink is at a private party at someone’s house. Hence the soaring popularity of cocktail parties: wealthy men and women host intimate gatherings and serve liquor they’ve been saving (or hoarding) in the year before the law came into effect. They serve it alongside finger foods such as lobster canapés, caviar rolls, oyster toast, jellied anchovy molds, and devilled eggs. A good cocktail party is always beloved by cellar smellers, aka the young men who seem to sniff out free booze and appear out of thin air wherever it's being served. You know who you are.

But as bars and saloons are forced to close, more discreet establishments rise up to replace them. Gin joints, blind pigs, speakeasies: they’re all names for illicit bars where you can hang out for a drink and perhaps some entertainment, while blind tigers are legitimate storefronts (usually pharmacies, bodegas, or soft drink parlors) that also sell booze under the counter. Nightclubs and cabarets tend to serve alcohol, but they are still technically legal, because they primarily operate as entertainment venues for singers and dancers.

Where does the name “speakeasy” come from? We think term comes from the 19th century “speak softly” shops in Great Britain. Customers in these illegal drinking establishments were advised to speak quietly to avoid the wrath of the law. Others believe it came from patrons having to whisper or “speak easy” to gain entrance to a hidden bar without fear of being overheard by Bureau of Prohibition agents. Regardless of its etymology, the term “speakeasy” entered common usage during Prohibition, and they’re all about secrecy. Many employ membership cards, passwords, peepholes, and hidden entrances to keep their existence on the down low. Some owners will only admit a patron if they know them personally or could provide a reference. What, I need a letter of recommendation to get zozzled now?

So given all the cloak and dagger, how hard will we need to look to find a speakeasy in the 1920s? Not very, turns out, especially in big cities. New Orleans is widely considered the “wettest city in America,” but New York City could give it a run for its money; in the late ‘20s, it is home to more than 32,000 speakeasies. Part of the reason the Bureau has such a difficult time shutting down such places is that they might pop up anywhere. A 1921 Variety article noted that, “they nest in empty lofts, former dancing studios, the lower floors of old English basements and high stoop houses, in flats and wherever one can imagine.”

Every speakeasy looks a little different once you step inside. At the sketchy end of the spectrum is your dingy, hole in the wall place that serves questionable alcohol. These are bare-bones, makeshift joints in a backroom or in someone’s basement, but they are still charging two to ten times more than saloons ever did… and the liquor is almost undrinkable. More on that later. On the opposite side of the spectrum, you’ve got your super swanky clubs, the high-end places where movie stars and Rockefellers and mobsters are getting chummy over martinis. Most speakeasies fall somewhere between them, but the high-end establishments really set the bar, so speakeasies become places where lavish displays of wealth and extravagant consumption are encouraged. If you wanted to go somewhere really fancy, a nightclub or a cabaret is your best bet. Since they are technically legal, they live longer than speakeasies, and owners can invest more in decor. Many clubs have themes: there are ones decorated like an ocean liner, a pirate’s den, a Southern plantation, and a Parisian cafe. The Aquarium has a giant fish tank, and the Circus has, well, an actual circus. All of them want to bring the ladies flocking in.

Pour One Out for the Ladies

The speakeasy has no problem with women having a tipple. In fact, they are very keen indeed for her to swing by. These are places that allow people to move through anonymously, free from the outside world that demands conformity to societal conventions. After all, if laws are being broken in the speakeasy, why shouldn’t gender norms be poked at as well? Men and women mix freely in these places, as do different races. Some speakeasies are segregated, but many aren’t. In New York, different races mix comfortably at the Catagonia Club and Club Ebony, and integrated speakeasies in places like Chicago and New Orleans are dubbed “black and tan” clubs. At a time in which lynching is still all too common, and the Ku Klux Klan was experiencing a disturbing resurgence, these speakeasies are often the only place in which blacks and whites can socialize without fear. In fact, one newspaper argued that, “night clubs have done more to improve race relations in 10 years than the churches have done in 10 decades.” The speakeasy becomes a place where unlikely crowds mingle. Black and white, men and women, rich and poor can all party together, united in their desire to drink. Police precinct captains drink with famous authors, mobsters chat with movie stars, and robber barons chatted with jazz musicians. One 1927 article claimed of New York’s nightclubs, “never before has there been such a meeting ground of the very highest and very lowest of human society.” We ladies are soaking it in, fueled by alcohol and good music, and the thing is…we quite enjoy it! As one Daily Boston Globe article noted, “It has become socially quite acceptable for the females to inhabit the speakeasy. And they do! In droves, as in hordes, in chattering, gossipy dozens. They bring their dancing partners, their poker parties, their friendships. Nights when there is nothing better to do, they bring their husbands.”

Many are those fun-loving gals we call flappers, which we learned all about a few episodes back. They are the scandalous gals flashing their knees and dancing on tables. Film star Colleen Moore described seeing several flappers at a speakeasy, saying, “They were smart and sophisticated, with an air of independence about them, and so casual about their looks and clothes and manners as to be almost slapdash. I don't know if I realized as soon as I began seeing them that they represented the wave of the future.” But there are plenty of other women drinking there as well. Public drinking has become so popular that both socially decent and indecent ladies are all imbibing at the nearest speakeasy. It’s liberating, being able to go to a place where parental and legal authority is nonexistent. They can mix freely with interesting people, free of judgment. By going to a previously male dominated space, and engaging in a previously male dominated activity, women are asserting their social and political independence. Having a drink at the bar isn’t just a fun thing to do; it’s a political statement. Women are demanding the same rights as men, including the right to drink in public. We are here, and we are thirsty, gentlemen. Get used to it.

Speakeasy owners go out of their way to charm and entice their female customers. Most women aren’t comfortable standing at the bar, or perching on a barstool to order a drink, so many clubs introduce table service. Some install powder rooms, introduce finger food menus, change up their decor to appeal to what they believe is a more feminine design sense. Some even make a point of hiring attractive male bartenders and waiters. I’ll raise a glass to that!

When we sidle up to one of these fabulous bars, what exactly are we going to be drinking? Before Prohibition, it would’ve probably been beer, cider, or wine. Unfortunately, these beverages are pretty scarce after the 18th Amendment is enacted, and most of the available liquor is strong, foul-tasting bootlegged gin. This nosehair-singeing industrial swill is not particularly appealing to women, many of whom are new to drinking. Even old hats like our society writer and bona fide flapper babe Lois Long is hesitant to drink it. As Long will remember later, “We thought brandy was the only safe thing to drink, because, we were told, a bootlegger couldn’t fake the smell and taste of cognac.” Rum, too, is considered safe, as it was being smuggled in large quantities from the Caribbean. But since the most widely available liquor is gin, we’re going to have to learn to live with it. Bartenders begin inventing complex cocktails to dilute and hide the burn.

Cocktails did exist before Prohibition. In fact, lots of women were crafting them at home. Popular household cooking and etiquette books of the 19th and early 20th century had whole sections on making mixed drinks for dinner parties. But the ones being made in saloons tended to be simple, with just 2 or 3 ingredients, with few standard recipes, and most saloons stuck to straight hard liquor or beer. But during Prohibition, the cocktail becomes hugely popular, partially because speakeasies are keen to entice their growing female clientele. Cocktails like the Bee's Knees, the Gin Rickey, the French 75, the Sidecar (one of my favorites), and the Mary Pickford are all the rage, as is the Last Word, which combines gin, green chartreuse, lime juice, and maraschino liqueur. One might also enjoy the Lipstick, Lois Long’s signature cocktail, which mixes champagne, gin, orange juice, grapefruit juice, and cherry brandy. Cocktails are by and large the preferred drink of female patrons, because they are sweeter and more aesthetically pleasing. Speakeasy bartenders take note, crafting colorful cocktails especially tailored for the ladies. Men are usually given credit for most of our most famous Prohibition-ear cocktails, but women played a giant part in making them popular.

QUEENS OF THE SPEAKEASIES

Of course, women aren’t just visiting the speakeasy. They’re also working in, and sometimes running, them. Many work as entertainers in nightclubs and cabarets, though they aren’t technically breaking the law in doing so. Other women work in speakeasies as hostesses, and are mainly paid to fleece unsuspecting customers using their feminine wiles. They are tasked with flirting with men, enticing them to keep buy expensive drinks and get as drunk as possible. This is not an easy, or even safe, occupation.

As one hostess remarked, “It’s tough to sit cold sober and have a lot of tipsy guys trying to paw you over. You’d be surprised at the things men ask us before they have been in the place five minutes, almost before the first drink is on the table. Maybe we feel like slapping their dirty mouths. Or telling them in plain language where they get off. But we don’t dare. We have to stall them along, for fear they will leave the place before they have spent any money. And believe me, we are out for money. We work hard for what we get. Twenty dollars a week is the usual salary of a night club hostess, and to make any kind of a living we have to plug for tips.” Two well-known hostesses are even more ambitious… They manage their own speakeasies, which become wildly popular thanks to the boss ladies who run them. 

Mary Louise Cecilia “Texas” Guinan starts her career as a pioneering Western movie star. She stars as a gun-slinging cowgirl in three dozen silent films before moving to New York in the early 1920s. She is introduced to Larry Fay, a bigshot rumrunner, and becomes the hostess at his famed speakeasy, the El Fey Club. The El Fey plays host to celebrities like Babe Ruth, Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow, Gloria Swanson, and Charles Lindbergh. Texas is known for greeting them all with her signature line, “Hello suckers!” She is charismatic and hilarious, known for her legendary hospitality and for “making people feel at home.” She’s also full of charmingly winning one liners like, “a fight a night or your money back,” and, “you may be all the world to your mother, but you’re just a cover charge to me.”

Texas is also street-smart and quick on her feet. When the feds raided the El Fey on the night the Prince of Wales happens to be there, she stashes him in the kitchen, put him in an apron, and tells him to start cooking some eggs. She tells police that he’s a fry cook to help him dodge a scandal. When the El Fey eventually closes, Texas hops from club to club, becoming an icon of the speakeasy circuit. As one newspaper writes, “Jimmy Walker rules New York by day, Texas Guinan by night.” The Bureau frequently raids her not-so-secret clubs, but Texas takes it all in stride, blowing agents kisses and serenading them with bawdy songs. She appears in court 11 times but is never convicted. After all, she never personally sells liquor. She doesn’t even technically own her clubs…she’s just a hostess . If sexist laws and attitudes have to be a thing, you might as well work it in your favor.

Belle Livingstone is another “Queen of the Night Club”. A showgirl who gains national fame for her perfect Gibson Girl measurements, she makes a career performing on Broadway, then moved to London and Paris, where a journalist wrote her curves made her “the most dangerous woman in Europe.” He wasn’t wrong… she married three times but seemed to prefer the single life. In her autobiography she wrote, “two things happened that made me see that the world, the flesh, and the devil were going to be more powerful influences in my life after all than the chapel bell. First, I tasted champagne; second, the theater.” In 1927, in her early fifties, Belle moves back to New York City, befriends Texas Guinan, and opens an elite speakeasy with a $200 annual membership (about $3,000 today). Unsurprisingly, it folds due to financial trouble, but she soon opens a second speakeasy, then a third, called the 58th Street Country Club. Members of the club are prescreened by Belle, and they have to be either rich or famous. (But preferably both.) The club’s opening night is attended by the creme de la creme of high society, including John D. Rockefeller and the Duke of Manchester, who set about enjoying the ffive-storyclub’s Italian marble floors, ping pong tables, mini golf course, Oriental-themed room, vaulted Florentine ceilings, and even a brook stocked with goldfish. Unfortunately, Belle’s notoriety is a double-edged sword, and the feds raid her club. She attempts to escape arrest whilst wearing red silk pajamas, but she is soon caught and sentenced to 30 days in jail. I hope they let her keep her pajamas.

THE LAST BARRIER IS DOWN

Of course, not everyone loves seeing women infiltrate their local watering hole. A male reporter for the Daily Boston Globebemoans many of the changes, writing, “The speak-easy, preparing for lady customers, is changing its entire outer aspect. The hardest barkeep sheds tears as he leads you through your once-favorite dump, now so gilded and farbelowed as to be hardly recognizable. It is not his fault, he hastens to explain, very, very bitter. The boss is no true artist. He is catering to the women.”

Well, yes, sir, he certainly is. And these bars are the better for it. Women expect much more out of their drinking experience, and speakeasies deliver. The culture around drinking transforms to include things like dancing to jazz, which creates the energetic, glamorous escapism that help define the Roaring Twenties. You’d think these men would be grateful to all these new female drinkers. After all, they’ve rescued them from their boring Friday night sausage fest. But many men do NOT like women crashing what was previously a boy’s club, and some lament the loss of their sacred, private space. One laments, “No longer can honest and toil-weary males have their great escape from female noise, interference and fal-lals. No more can they drink their honest booze in respectable privacy.” Another particularly disgruntled drama king, Don Marquis, moans that, “Women come into this new barroom. They go right up to the bar. They put a foot on the brass railing. They order; they are served. They bend the elbow, they hoist, they toss down the feminine esophagus the brew that was really meant for men. Stout and wicked men. The last barrier is down. The citadel has been stormed and taken. There is no longer any escape, no hiding place where the hounded male may seek his fellow and strut his stuff safe from the atmosphere and presence of femininity. A man might as well do his drinking at home, with his wife and daughters. And there was never fun in that.” Cry me a river, Donny boy.

Many are disturbed simply to see women out and partying unchaperoned. One astonished bartender remarked, “In the old days you seldom saw a respectable lady enter a barroom unescorted… But look at them now. They not only come in alone but order hard liquor.” Others are appalled at seeing women “half cut,” or happily intoxicated, and stumbling out of speakeasies. Prohibition sees a dramatic increase in women arrested for public drunkenness. Which is a problem, another speakeasy employee complains, because: “Women are more apt to be unmanageable when they are drunk. They make too much noise and want to do solo dances, or sing songs.” Oh my. A solo dance? I do hope it’s being done on a table. Some gentlemen attempt to take the situation in hand more forcefully. After dozens of women are caught carrying whiskey flasks into nightclubs, Judge Dan Shea of Montana proposes a city ordinance calling for police to be stationed in all the city’s dance halls. Spoiler: it doesn’t go well.

Some morality watchdogs are concerned about the sexually loose atmosphere that alcohol and speakeasies seem to cultivate. Women aren’t being courted anymore; they’re going on dates, mixing freely and casually with men in these spaces. Women three cocktails in aren’t as worried about guarding their reputations as some people think they ought to be, and some find that deeply disturbing. In 1927, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman complains about this loss of morality in The Washington Post, describing, “girls of the working classes going to questionable dance halls, and those of the more prosperous classes spending the hours of morning in night clubs. Unchaperoned parties… a promiscuous mingling of the sexes, loose flirtations… crude demonstrations of affection publicly in nightclubs, at parties, in automobiles and in public parks…[They have] little reserve and no feeling of shame.” Others see the openly sexual behavior occurring in speakeasies as so blasphemous that they blame clubs for causing a (nonexistent) surge in prostitution!

WE CAN’T ALL BE ROCKEFELLERS

Of course, most Americans in the 1920s aren’t bending elbows at swanky speakeasies. Alcohol prices are consistently marked WAY up due to the unbalanced supply and demand, and to account for the risk involved in selling it. For example, a lager cost 10 cents in 1916 and 80 cents in 1928: a 600% price increase. Gaining entrance to a speakeasy is even more expensive, with their entertainment, fancy décor, the need to pay off the police AND source bootlegged alcohol that won’t kill customers. Annual membership fees at nightclubs range from $10 to $100 at a time when the average (white, male) American earned around $100 a month. Drinking at nice speakeasies is generally the past-time of the wealthy. For the richest people in America, Prohibition doesn’t really exist.

Are we lady drinkers worried about a run-in with the law? Not really. Thousands of speakeasies are raided by the Bureau of Prohibition, but they’re a nuisance for proprietors more than anything else. If your speakeasy is raided, you are arrested, given a court date, and then fined and possibly sentenced to some jail time, depending on whether you are a repeat offender. The worst part about a raid, though, is that the temporary closure of your speakeasy leads to a loss of income, and the thousands of dollars of alcohol you purchased is confiscated to be used as evidence at your trial, and then poured down the drain. Horrors! To avoid this sad fate, some speakeasy owners hide or move their liquor stashes. They often purchase a building or apartment right next to their speakeasy to store their liquor in, as these places are rarely included in search warrants. Secret compartments and intricate chute systems are also common: at the push of a button, a liquor cabinet might drop to the basement, the alcohol emptied into the sewer, leaving nothing behind but a pile of broken glass. The 21 Club in Manhattan has especially stringent security measures. It features hidden compartments that can withstand dynamite in the upper floor closets, and a secret wine cellar in the basement hidden behind a false brick wall complete with a hidden door, a fancy locking system, and no visible lock. The 21 Club does not mess around.

It's the poorest people in America, who are overwhelmingly immigrants and African Americans, who are way more likely to be arrested than are the wealthy businessmen and mobsters managing massive nightclubs and glamorous speakeasies. Your average women in America can’t even afford to get into one.

In many ways, Prohibition exacerbates existing geographic, class, and racial divides in America. If you are a woman in a big city, for example, it’s much easier to find a drink than if you live in a more rural area. In a place like New Orleans, you might grab a drink at the corner grocery store, a blind tiger, a cabaret or nightclub, or a speakeasy, all of which have a variety of drinks to choose from. If you live in Kentucky, you might try your luck at the soft drink parlor, or at a roadhouse, a place that serves as a boarding house, brothel, bar, and dance hall all in one. These places might have a beer or a gin on offer, but your best bet is simply brewing your own moonshine at home. 

Most speakeasies are too expensive for working-class women. Black women have the added indignity of segregation, with many clubs that won’t let them in, despite how many of them employ black men and women as bartenders, waiters, chefs, busboys, hostesses, dancers, musicians, and singers. Black musicians are making jazz an era-defining staple in speakeasies and cabarets, and many open in predominantly black neighborhoods, like New York City’s Harlem or Chicago’s South Side. White Americans start to flood these spaces, and certain businessmen start to capitalize on the fad. In Harlem especially, they craft voyeuristic, racist visions of the Antebellum South for their white-only clientele. The Plantation Club, for example, is decorated with slave cabins and real-life mammies, while the Cotton Club, owned by mobster Owney Madden, features black dancers like Josephine Baker and musicians like Duke Ellington, but barred black patrons. Not a great look, 1920s America!

“Home speaks” are the cheapest and easiest places to grab a drink for most poor or working-class ladies. Men and women sell home-brewed liquor out of their kitchens and invite their friends to come over for drinking and dancing. The type of alcohol usually served at these “home speaks” is…not all that great. It’s often called hooch, a catch-all term for poor quality liquor. You can find it at “hooch joints,” in working class or black neighborhoods, being guzzled by “hooch hounds” or “hiphounds” (those who drink hooch). Home speaks and hooch joints are a popular speakeasy alternative for poor, working class, and immigrant communities in big cities.

There are also rent parties, which are often hosted in the apartments of folks struggling to pay their rent. They invite family and friends, and charge less than a dollar at the door for admission and liquor, then use the money to pay their landlords. People bring food, and musicians were encouraged to bring their instruments. The kind of liquor available at rent parties is usually either homemade corn liquor, dubbed King Kong, or bootleg gin, and drinks are sold by the pint or quarter pint, called shorties. These rent parties are common in black neighborhoods, and allow people to pitch in to help their neighbors, to drink and socialize without paying too much.

DANGEROUS DRINKS

The 1920s aren’t all tipsy dancing, secret passwords, and jazz. Drinking comes with dangers. One of the unintended side effects of Prohibition is the market it creates for dangerous kinds of booze. Industrial alcohol, like the kind found in cleaning supplies, is exempt from the 18th amendment because it contains toxic chemicals that make it dangerous to drink. Most forms of industrial alcohol are mixed with wood alcohol, which attacks the nervous system and can cause blindness, or even death. The government assumed that because it was broadly known to be poisonous, Americans would be smart enough not to drink it. The government was wrong. Gee, when has that happened before?

Enterprising bootleggers will steal about 10 million gallons of industrial alcohol in the 1920s, hoping to disguise it as whiskey and sell it to speakeasies at marked-up prices. Some bootleggers know full well that it contains wood alcohol, and attempt to remove the toxins by boiling it. Helpful hint, that’s not possible. Other bootleggers don’t even bother trying that, selling the stuff to unsuspecting drinkers who can’t afford high-quality liquor. This leads to thousands of accidental poisonings and up to 50,000 deaths across America. In 1926, 307 people die in Philadelphia in just one month from wood-alcohol laced liquor, and about 15,000 people are poisoned in one county in Kansas. Of the 480,000 gallons of alcohol confiscated by the Bureau of Prohibition in new York in 1927, 98% contains toxic additives.

There are plenty of toxic ingredients being added to bootlegged liquor. To simulate the smoky taste of scotch, bootleggers sometimes add antiseptic made from wood tar; to recreate the flavor of bourbon, they leave dead rats or rotten meat to sit in moonshine for a couple of days. YIKES! Some bootleggers make quality liquor, but they cut it with other things to make it stretch further, and thus reap in more profit. That additive might be water, and it might be things like mouthwash, perfume, hair tonic, antifreeze, or embalming liquid, which is why some people call bootleggers the “embalmer”.

The most dangerous drink to hit the streets during Prohibition is a supposedly medicinal tonic called Jamaica Ginger, also known as “jake.” Ironically, jake was legally obtainable with a prescription, but only if manufacturers added a high percentage of bittering agents, like ginger oleoresin, to discourage people from drinking it. A pair of Boston men have the bright idea of adding a chemical used to make film and explosives, having been assured by its manufacturer that it was safe to drink. The powerful neurotoxin ended up attacking the nerves in the feet and legs, causing mostly permanent paralysis below. It give its victims an odd shuffling gait that became known as the “jake leg” or “jake walk.” Between 35,000 to 100,000 people nationwide were poisoned and affected by “jake leg.” Most of them were the poor, who couldn’t afford anything else.

BOOTLEGGING MAMAS AND RUM-RUNNING QUEENS

There are plenty of risks when it comes to drinking during Prohibition, but even more so for the people opening defying the law. But with risks come some significant rewards. Making booze illegal creates a black market, practically overnight, and some women are keen to get in on the action. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from bootlegging, or the illegal manufacture, sale, or distribution of alcohol. Many are men like Al Capone, famous gangster, who is pulling in $60 million a year supplying speakeasies, which is more than $900 million today. Why should the ladies get in on the action?

Let’s start with the women making the liquid contraband, because there are a LOT of them. Lady bootleggers, dubbed “snake charmers”, are way more plentiful than men. Why? Well, first, because the ingredients are pretty easy to come by. In bigger towns and cities, grocery and hardware stores sell most of the perfectly legal ingredients needed to make, say, wine from grape concentrate, or beer from yeast and malt syrup. Women living in rural areas are making bootlegged liquor too, largely moonshine using the crops grown on their farms. (The term “moonshine” originated long before Prohibition, a nod to the process of making illegally distilled alcohol solely by the light of the moon.) They use illegal stills to ferment a “mash” made of corn, fruit, or even potatoes and beets, and then distill it to create high-proof spirits. Then they mix it with glycerin, juniper oil, and water, and voila…gin? I mean if you say so. Moonshine operations are so common that, in the 1920s, the Bureau seizes nearly 250,000 illegal stills a year. This doesn’t stop moonshiners like New Jersey gal Nancy the Moonshiner, who becomes rather well known for her hard cider. She goes out at night and steals apples from a neighboring orchard to make it. Maggie Bailey is a Kentucky moonshiner dubbed the “Queen of the Mountain Bootleggers,” though she never drinks the stuff herself. She started selling moonshine at age 17 to support her family, and although she’s arrested 37 times, she is only convicted once, largely because of her encyclopedic knowledge of search and seizure laws.

Second, because it’s a lucrative side hustle. Women are running mostly small-scale operations, brewing alcohol in the comfort of their home and selling it to neighbors to supplement their husband’s income. It’s perfect for housewives, mothers, and widows, because alcohol can easily be made in the kitchen, which is where some women are expected to be anyway, and the history of alcohol is FULL of women, mostly brewing and distilling at home. It allows mothers to bring in a hefty income while still being able to watch their children. Anna Butler, who sold homemade liquor to her boarding house patrons, made $150 a day (a little over $2,200 today) at a time when the average working woman was making less than $23 a week. For many women, the potential economic gains outweigh any concerns about the law, especially because most (male) judges and agents are unable to believe women capable of engaging in criminal activity. Keep thinking that, guys.

But, as we know, some people are making it because they can’t trust anyone else’s stuff. The unpredictability of bootlegged liquor and the “rotgut” it caused is largely why people started seeking out specific brand names. Before the 1920s, you simply asked for a “gin,”; during Prohibition, a “gin” might kill you, so you were better off asking for, say, Gilbey’s, a quality English gin often smuggled into New York from across the pond. Thus rum running, or the organized smuggling of liquor by land and sea, could be seriously lucrative. Though, often, it’s only America’s gangsters who have the organization, logistical expertise, and manpower to create bootlegging operations around the nation’s borders. Shipments from Canada could be smuggled in by automobile, hidden under false floorboards or in fake gas tanks. Shipments coming in from Europe through the Bahamas and the Caribbean are even harder to police. Captains load bottles into false bottomed boats, then wait at designated points near the coast for small high-speed boats to make the hand off. The stretch of ocean 12 miles into international waters between New York and Atlantic City was such a rum-running hotspot that it was referred to as “Rum Row.” By 1930, the government will estimate that smuggling foreign-made liquor into the country is a $3 billion industry ($51 billion today). The Coast Guard becomes so frustrated with trying to bust the seemingly endless rum-running that the government gives them 200 more cruisers, 90 more speed boats, and 36 WWI naval ships to tackle the problem. Spoiler alert… it doesn’t work.

At least one of these successful rum runners is a woman. Gertrude Lythgoe is known by many fabulous names. There’s “Cleo,” a nickname bestowed because she looks a bit like our favorite Egyptian pharaoh queen, and then there’s “Queen of the Bootleggers.” Cleo once worked in New York as a clerk for a British liquor importer, but after 1920, she decides to put her knowledge of the industry to better use. She moves to Nassau in the Bahamas, commissions her own boats, and sets up a wholesale liquor export shop in the famously shady Lucerne Hotel. Although she doesn’t go out on the sea very often – that’s what minions are for - she carries a gun and quickly earns a reputation as a ruthless, clever businesswoman who only smuggles the highest quality spirits. “She stands alone and fearless,” one smuggler said, “ – a woman who would grace any London drawing room…she has commanded the respect and homage of this motley and dubious throng.”

She is mentored by none other than the most successful rum runner of the day, Bill McCoy, whose name is so synonymous with good alcohol that when someone tastes clean, smooth liquor, they’ll say they’ve found, “The Real McCoy.” Bill greatly admires Cleo’s business acumen and daring, and describes her as “a tall, slender girl with black hair, a brain as steady as her own dark eyes, and a history that was nobody’s business.” And yet Cleo loves giving interviews, and men send her ardent love letters after reading about her in the newspapers. She never married, though, because as she frequently told the press, “I don’t need a man to tell me what to do.”

There are tons of enterprising women out there who sieze on the opportunity to make a little extra money selling alcohol. 22-year-old Lillian Johnson was a bootlegging gal who ran a soft drink stand in New Orleans, selling ice cream, soda…and some other stuff. When agents raided her stand, they found 159 bottles of cold beer concealed beneath the soda. How’d that get there, officer? Josephine Doody was a snake charmer who lived in a remote cabin in Montana’s Glacier National Park. When the Great Northern Railroad train passed by, it would stop and toot the whistle especially for Josephine, who knew that the number of whistles corresponded to the number of gallons of liquor the men wanted. Tiny Josephine would cross the river in a small boat and deliver her bootlegged goods under the cover of darkness. 26-year-old Willie Carter Sharpe of Virginia took a much less subtle approach. She would lead car chases and convoys of bootleggers across state lines, often with the police in hot pursuit. “It was the excitement that got me. Cars scattering, dashing along the streets.” She was arrested more than 13 times for driving offenses, hauled more than 220,000 gallons of bootlegged liquor, and was known for her diamond-crusted dental work. A girl’s gotta look good while breaking the law.

MOONSHINE AND JAIL TIME

So what happens if you’re caught? That depends on who you are, really, and how many times you’ve been caught defying Prohibition. Most of these women aren’t career criminals, and the majority were between 30 and 50 years of age. Many are widowed, divorced, or separated from their husbands, and live in poor, working-class neighborhoods. They are almost always mothers, and many were first- or second-generation immigrants, often of Irish, German, Italian, or Slavic backgrounds.

When you’re caught, your liquor stores and equipment are confiscated, and you have to appear before a judge. Most judges view these women as victims rather than criminals, and so women tend to receive much lighter punishments than men who break Volstead. Other judges just don’t believe that women could be the masterminds behind such crimes. After Catherine Mucks is caught at a dance with a flask full of whiskey, the judge let her go because her flask of booze had a cockroach in it. I mean, she probably probably put it in there herself once she knew the jig was up. The judge said that such a drink was not fit for human consumption and was therefore not intended for illegal recreational purposes. No lady would put such a thing to her delicate lips.

The most common punishments include probation, fines, and jail time, but it’s common for women’s sentences to be suspended or commuted altogether, especially if they are a first-time offender. When Anne Foster and her husband are caught after selling beer to an undercover agent, they both plead guilty. Her husband is fined $200 and serves 90 days in jail. Anne, on the other hand, is simply placed on a five-year probation. Similarly, when 80-year-old Lavinia Gilman is caught with an enormous 300 gallon still in her home, the court gives her a suspended sentence provided she obeys the law for 1 year. Shortly after her court date, agents find yet another still at Lavinia’s. Girl likes living dangerously!

Other women aren’t as fortunate as Anne and Lavinia. One, who had two previously suspended sentences for bootlegging, and when she was caught the third time, was sentenced to 15 months at the US Reformatory for Women and fined $500. When Bernice Oliver’s at-home liquor and bottling plant is raided and agents uncover about $1,000 worth of alcohol ($15,000 today), she receives 4 months in a parish prison, a 12-month suspended sentence, and a fine of $200. Many of the female bootleggers appearing in court defended themselves by saying they’re only trying to provide for their children. When the judge asks 35-year-old Marie Hoppe if she had a good reason for breaking the law, she responded, "Yes Judge, I have six good reasons for making beer. I have six small children." Irma Lackman’s husband was serving two years in jail for bootlegging, and so when she, too, was caught, she told the judge, "I would rather be dead than violate the law…We have two young children though, and I was forced to sell liquor or see them go hungry and without clothes." This is a time when women’s chances of making a good and sustainable living is much harder than a man’s. Irma only turned to bootlegging because she was unable to find another job, and her husband left her with 90 dollars in cash and a $1,000 dollar mortgage. Similarly, Mary Toia, a mother of six and third offender, pleads with the judge not to sentence her husband. “My husband had nothing to do with the liquor,” she said. “He works all right, but we didn’t have enough money to care for the kids, so I just kept on selling it. I knew I would get caught again, sooner or later.” Mary is sentenced to a year in prison and fined $300 dollars, but because of her plea, the judge does not charge her husband.

Even though female bootleggers vastly outnumber their male counterparts, they aren’t caught nearly as often. This was partly because men don’t suspect them, and partly because it’s considered scandalous to subject a woman to a bodily search. Women took advantage of agents’ Victorian moral values, hiding liquor under their skirts and in their aprons. Sime came up with ingenious places to hide their larger stashes. Esther Clark hides her moonshine in the chicken coop on her farm, because gathering eggs is “woman’s work” and thus male agents won’t even think to check there. Mary Ann Moriarity, a washerwoman, hid bottles in baskets of clean clothes when she delivered laundry to her customers.

 THE WOMEN KNEW BETTER

While some women were content to break the law and subvert it, others are beginning to think about changing it. They once successfully helped usher in Prohibition… Why can’t they organize once more to repeal it? In the late 1920s, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s influence begins to wane, as people become fed up with Volstead. It doesn’t help that in 1925, 67-year-old Ella Boole takes the helm as president of the WCTU, and she’s fiercely opposed to alcohol, and smoking, and gambling…and attending movie theaters. Loosen up, Ella. Ella is not a good look, as she seems like an old-fashioned and out of touch curmudgeon, and newspapers delight in contrasting her with the young, glamorous, and attractive Queen of the Speakeasies, Texas Guinan.

But there is also a rather glaring fact: Prohibition isn’t working. People are still drinking. With so much of drinking culture shoved under the table, lots of very toxic booze is being made. The law isn’t being enforced properly, and it’s caused an increase in violence and organized crime. And really, we’re all a little tired of this “Noble experiment.” And there are ladies who aren’t afraid to say so. In 1929, the Women’s National Republican Club takes a sample poll of 1,500 women and finds that 1,393 women wants Prohibition repealed. So, basically, all of them. By 1928, the movement to repeal Prohibition is gaining momentum amongst America’s women. The temperance and suffrage movements gave them political experience and know-how, and with the vote, they’re optimistic about their ability to enact change. Women in the professional classes under the age of 45 are most likely to support the repeal movement. Soon wealthy, urban white women emerge as the most vocal leaders of the campaign to repeal the 18th amendment.  

One of those women is Pauline Morton Sabin, a New York socialite and the heiress to the Morton Salt fortune. Although she had previously lacked an interest in politics, (she hadn’t even joined the women’s suffrage movement), she became passionate about politics in 1921, when she helped found the Women’s National Republican Club. She served as its president for 5 years, built a membership of several thousand women, and earned a reputation as a skilled political organizer and fundraiser. In 1928, Sabin watched as the dowdy WCTU President Ella Boole defended Prohibition during a Congressional hearing. And when Boole proclaimed, “I represent the women of America,” Sabin thought to herself, Well, lady, here’s one woman you don’t represent.

Like many women, Pauline Sabin initially supported Prohibition when it was first enacted. “I felt I should approve of it because it would help my two sons,” she said. “The word-pictures of the agitators carried me away. I thought a world without liquor would be a beautiful world.” But by the late ‘20s, after watching how powerless the government was to stop the unregulated flow of liquor in illegal speakeasies, she officially changed her mind. To her mind, the enforcement of Prohibition has become a bit of a joke and actually encourages criminality. “Children are growing up with a total lack of respect for the Constitution and for the law… The young see the law broken at home and upon the street. Can we expect them to be lawful?”

In 1929, Sabin formed the Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform, a national, bipartisan women’s group dedicated to repealing the 18th amendment. Using her political savvy, her skill in PR, and bankrolled by her millionaire husband, Pauline Sabin builds the WONPR into a formidable political group. In less than two years, 400,000 women have enrolled nationally, easily surpassing the 381,000-strong membership of the WCTU. Sabin and her friends create an image for the WONPR that feels modern, rich, and fashionable. The press love how neatly the group projects a new, smart, sophisticated iteration of the flapper. They aren’t, but they’re bold and opinionated, and that is much more appealing to the women of the later 1920s than Ella Boole sermonizing about temperance.

Pauline is a force to be reckoned with, publishing articles in support of the cause, touring the country, and speaking to sold out crowds, promising to raise, “an army of women so great that its backing will give courage to the most weak-kneed and hypocritical Congressman to vote as he drinks. Women will prove to them that the ballots of an aroused people are irresistible in the achievement of a fundamental project.” By 1932, she’s made the cover of Time Magazine, and soon WONPR will have the support of 1.3 million women.

Meanwhile, Ella Boole and the WCTU are floundering. They attempt to attack Sabin by accusing the WONPR of only representing the views of wealthy women. Unfortunately for Ella Boole, Sabin also turned out to be a masterful debater, and delighted in challenging WCTU leaders to public debates and then humiliating them. Ironically, part of Sabin’s success lay in using tactics that originated with the WCTU, such as campaigning (“Have you impressed upon your senators and congressmen that you demand unqualified repeal? … as citizens—as voters—it is our job,”) and framing her opinions about Prohibition in language associated with motherhood, so as not to be attacked for stepping too far into the “male dominated” political space. One of her most common arguments for repeal is that, “Today in any speakeasy in the United States you can find boys and girls in their teens drinking liquor, and this situation has become so acute that the mothers of the country feel something must be done to protect their children.”

On December 5th, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt will announce the repeal of the 18th amendment, with the ratification of the 21st amendment. Alcohol officially becomes legal once more, and William Stayton, a repeal advocate, credits women like Sabin for their work in helping to end Prohibition. “Anti-prohibition men had been ‘defeatist’...The women knew better. When they went to bat for the 19th Amendment more than 13 states were against them, but they won nevertheless. They believed from the start that they could win again, and they were right.”

conclusion

Prohibition did cause Americans to drink less. During the first few years, alcohol consumption dropped by more than 70%, and although it rose slightly in the latter half of the 1920s, American alcohol consumption wouldn’t reach pre-WWI levels again until the 1970s. In that sense, it worked. In all other senses, it didn’t. Prohibition led to the rise of organized crime, deprived the government of revenue, fostered a culture of bribery and corruption, encouraged criminality, and caused a great deal of alcohol-related poisonings and death. It also embarrassed the country, as Prohibition made it clear that the US government couldn’t control its citizens. When the mayor of Berlin, Germany made an official visit to New York City, he asked the mayor of New York, “When does the Prohibition law go into effect?”

Nonetheless, Prohibition made an indelible mark on the lives of American women. Speakeasy culture made drinking a co-ed activity. Women could now walk through the front door of a bar, order a drink, and not immediately be accused of being a prostitute. Progress? Speakeasies also allowed women to enjoy their independence, to drink and date in a space free of the judgmental eyes of society (or a chaperone). The demand for illicit nightlife and bootlegged liquor also creates more economic opportunities for women to support themselves financially. Prohibition also forced men to acknowledge that women, too, could get drunk, engage in criminal activity, and have political opinions. Gee, who’d have thunk it? But most importantly, Prohibition changed women’s views of themselves and what they were capable of, especially in politics. It proved that women could enact political change when they were passionate about a cause. The 1920s were a decade marked by both temperance and repeal groups fiercely advocating for women to get involved in politics for the first time, and Prohibition proved that extraordinary change was possible once they understood how to wield their own political power. So let’s raise a glass – alcoholic or not – to the women who defended and defied it.