Feb 23
U.S. Customs agents unload 700 cases of Canadian Scotch whiskey from the fishing trawler "Notus," which was captured by the U.S. Coast Guard off Montauk Point, February 23, 1931.
Photo: Associated Press
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U.S. Customs agents unload 700 cases of Canadian Scotch whiskey from the fishing trawler "Notus," which was captured by the U.S. Coast Guard off Montauk Point, February 23, 1931.
Photo: Associated Press
Bureau of Prohibition
Prohibition agents pouring alcohol on the street, 1920s.
Enforcement of Prohibition was set to begin at 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1920, and non-teetotalers prepared either by wallowing in denial or by partying until the last midnight. They also seized on a loophole in the 18th Amendment, which prohibited selling or transporting alcohol but said nothing about drinking what you already had.
Boozehounds pulled up to businesses eager to offload their soon-to-be-banned stock and filled their limousines with crates of hooch. One woman in California bought the entire contents of a liquor store and had it transported to her basement. Any alcohol that wasn’t secured could be seized by the authorities and destroyed—like these 749 cases of beer, which were found and smashed on November 21, 1923.
Photo & text: NY Times via Times Instagram
The snow got what New Yorkers couldn't: prohibition agents disposing of beer, 1920.
Photo: NY Daily News
On January 23, 1923, prohibition agents thought they'd hit the jackpot at Luigi's in the Village when they seized $60,000 worth of liquor (around a million in today's dollars). But Luigi walked, having proved that the booze was "pre-Volstead stuff."
Photo: Museum of the City of New York (MCNY)
Prohibition Agent Izzy Einstein, center, with Agents M. W. Smith and Thomas Hughes, raid a liquor storage facility at 110 Bowery, 1920.
Photo: NY Daily News
On January 16, 1920, the Volstead Act went into effect. The 18th Amendment, banning the sale or transport of alcoholic beverages, had been passed a year earlier, but the Act defined the process and procedures for enforcement of the amendment. Prohibition meant an end to the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. And Prohibition agents, some in disguise, stormed cities, dumping booze wherever they found it.
Photo: NY Daily News