WEBVTT - S3E3: Battle Lines 0:00:00.920 --> 0:00:02.920 Hey there, it's your host ed helms. 0:00:02.920 --> 0:00:03.120 Here. 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:06.320 Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:09.440 to remind you that my brand new book is coming 0:00:09.440 --> 0:00:13.360 out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:16.920 Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:21.799 order it right now at snaffoodashbook dot com. Trust me, 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:24.520 if you like this show, you're gonna love this book. 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:28.639 It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.360 just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker. 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:36.800 I am also going on tour to celebrate that's right. 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:40.519 I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:44.480 San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:46.720 ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:49.520 and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting 0:00:49.520 --> 0:00:53.920 turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:57.520 to snaffoo dashbook dot com to pre order the book 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:01.040 and check out all the tour details and dates, or 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:04.200 just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay, 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:07.959 that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snaffou Season 0:01:08.040 --> 0:01:15.440 three Formula six last time on Snaffou, the temperance movement 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:21.560 swept America. Every abolitionist was a teetotal Mabel Walker. Willebrandt 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:24.000 was hired to lead prohibition enforcement. 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.000 There's one way it can be done, get at the 0:01:27.120 --> 0:01:28.039 source of supply. 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:33.240 And much of prohibition enforcement falls strangely to the US 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:35.280 Treasury Department, which. 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:36.440 Is another way of saying we're going to use it 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:40.280 for political payoffs. 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:52.680 It's nineteen eighteen in France, the Western Front. Yep, we're 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:55.920 a long way from the speakeasies of New York, but 0:01:56.000 --> 0:01:58.800 we're here in the rolling French countryside to meet a 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:02.680 new character in our He's sitting inside a combat tank 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:07.920 clattering across the bloody battlefield. His name George Cassidy, and 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:13.880 he's under attack. The tank rolls down a slope as 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.520 shells explode around it, and then it sinks into a 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:23.040 crater of mud. Its steel armor shields George and his 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:27.640 crew from the bright yellow bursts of artillery flame, but 0:02:27.720 --> 0:02:31.240 it can't protect them from the mist that's engulfed the field. 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:39.919 World War one's most insidious weapon, mustard gas. On the battlefield. 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:43.640 Poison gas was turning war into a new kind of nightmare. 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:47.959 Both Germany and the US were experimenting with lethal gases 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:51.840 that were quickly becoming the deadliest instruments in the history 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:56.960 of warfare. The Great War had a nickname the Chemist's War, 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:03.280 and now Mustard gas seeps into George Cassidy's tank and 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:07.600 into the eyes, noses, and lungs of the tankers. George 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:09.800 and his two crewmates choke at the controls as the 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:14.400 machine grinds to a halt. The deadly mist causes the 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:19.080 tankers to go blind, vomit, and start losing consciousness. The 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:23.200 other two men pass out. George holds on, but poisoned 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:26.120 by the gas. George is too weak to move, blinking 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:28.760 and struggling to breathe while the battle rages around him. 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:36.320 His crewmates have fallen silent. Finally, footsteps approach the tank. 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:40.880 George hears hands banging on the outside, shouts shadows over 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:45.000 the viewport as men peer inside. George's heart stops. Is 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:48.880 it the enemy? The door swings open, and thank god, 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:53.520 it's the Yanks. George is rescued, carried up out of 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:56.120 the crater in the pool of gas. George makes it 0:03:56.160 --> 0:03:59.880 off the battlefield alive, but He's devastated to find out 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:09.160 he's the only survivor from his crew. In nineteen nineteen, 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:12.520 when a million American soldiers in France begin the journey home, 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:16.240 George is among the troops packed like sardines into fleets 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:20.080 of liners and cargo ships, leaving the blood soaked trenches 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:24.040 of the Western Front behind them. As he gazes across 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:28.520 the Atlantic, George coughs. His lungs are pocked with chemical burns. 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:31.520 For the rest of his life, every cough reminds him 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:34.400 of the horrors he'd faced in the war, horrors that 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:38.480 showed how scientific advancements could be co opted to create 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:43.320 weapons of mass murder. But now George is heading home, 0:04:43.640 --> 0:04:46.320 and soon he'll be starting a new life. As the 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:48.960 shores of the good old us of A come into view, 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:54.520 George is pondering a very important question, Where the hell 0:04:54.600 --> 0:05:03.719 can he get a drink back home? That question was 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:07.080 at the center of another raging war, one in which 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:10.680 he would soon find himself smack dab in the middle. 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:22.160 I'm Ed Helms and this is Snaffo, a show about 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:26.640 history's greatest screw ups. This is season three, The story 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:30.880 of Formula six. How Prohibition's war on alcohol went so 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:36.279 off the rails the government wound up poisoning its own people. 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.919 Today we're riding shotgun with the bootleggers, because men like 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:43.679 George Cassidy didn't come home from the fight in France 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:47.440 just to take the new laws laying down. As Mabel 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:52.200 Walker Willebrandt became prohibitions champion, George Cassidy would become one 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:56.159 of its greatest defires, and the two sides they represented 0:05:56.480 --> 0:06:19.160 were about to clash. In nineteen twenty two, two years 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:22.799 into Prohibition, Mabel Walker Willebrandt was settling into her gig 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:26.120 as head honcho of Prohibition Enforcement to get a sense 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:30.120 of how the new US Assistant Attorney General approached her job. 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:32.320 There are a few things about her you should know. 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:37.719 Little Mabel grew up crisscrossing the Great Plains in a 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:41.880 nine by twelve foot tent pitched in the fields of Kansas, Missouri, 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:46.000 and Oklahoma. Her family was always on the move, fleeing 0:06:46.040 --> 0:06:50.160 the latest natural disaster, tornadoes, ice storms, that kind of stuff. 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:54.200 Mabel's earliest memory from childhood was of a flash flood 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:57.119 rushing through their tent, her mom taking the kitchen table 0:06:57.120 --> 0:06:59.320 and using it as a raft to keep her daughter 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:03.159 Afloat alive. A little like that time my cub scout 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:06.240 trip got rained out, except I had a home to 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:10.200 go back to. That experience had quite an impact on 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:10.960 young Mabel. 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:13.280 She was a very serious woman. 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:16.720 You don't say, Daniel, okrint. She woke up every day. 0:07:16.760 --> 0:07:19.120 The first thing she did was taken an ice cold bath, 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:21.880 which gives an indication. I think of how tough she was. 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:25.080 Cold lunging is all the rage these days. I guess 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.680 Mabel was just ahead of the curve. In any case, 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:30.960 the Ice Queen didn't get to become the highest ranking 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:33.440 woman in the United States government by waking up each 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:36.680 day to whistling birds opening her bedroom shades and the 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:40.000 soft glow of the morning sun. No, she woke up 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:45.680 every morning with her goddamn game face on. For starters, 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.280 it wasn't just Satan's last stronghold, New York City that 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.560 was flouting the law. In Mabel's backyard, the supposed Dry 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:58.640 Citadel speakeasies were popping up on every corner. By some estimates, 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:02.600 there were three thousand in the nation's capital. But Mabel's 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:07.760 headaches extended well beyond the metropolises. Of the Northeast. Also 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:12.320 thumbing its nose at Prohibition was the fine city of Savannah, Georgia, 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:16.480 which had turned into an unofficial headquarters for illegal drinking. 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:22.120 Booze was flowing, and so were the criminals delivering it. Bootleggers, 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:24.360 as they were called. The term goes back to the 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:28.080 eighteen hundreds, when traders slid their flasks of liquor into 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:34.920 their boots. During Prohibition, bootlegging became a household term banks 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:38.040 in no small part to the notorious Georgia syndicate, the 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.800 Savannah Four. Their leader was a guy named Willie Harr. 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:44.840 Willie owned and controlled a fleet of ships that transported 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:48.760 liquor from Scotland and France to another British territory, the Bahamas. 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.760 From there it was shipped to a dozen different states 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:54.840 in the US, often hidden in secret man made caves 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.280 up and down the US coast. Willie Harr didn't exactly 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.280 keep a low profile. His nick name was the Admiral 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:05.800 of Bootleggers, and his Savannah Four had a recreational baseball squad. 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:11.360 Their team name presumably slapped across their uniforms, the Bootlegger Team. 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:13.640 I assume they were part of an all criminal baseball 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:18.080 league along with the tax Dodgers. Sorry, I had to 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.920 go there. Mabel was determined to bust them up and 0:09:22.000 --> 0:09:25.920 even sent a dozen Prohibition Bureau agents to Savannah to 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:30.199 do the job. But Willy Harr's ring had judges politicians, 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:34.720 and it turns out prohibition agents on its payroll, and 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:38.080 those agents, convinced to look the other way, came back 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:41.400 from Savannah empty handed. I hope they at least brought 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:45.120 back some bootlegger team swag for Mabel. Willie Harror would 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:47.760 have a future run in with Mabel. Put a pin 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:50.720 in that for a second. But as brazen as Horror 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:53.920 in the Savannah four might have been, the most brazen 0:09:54.000 --> 0:10:00.240 bootlegger of all was operating right under Mabel's nose, which 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:02.480 brings us back to good old George Cassidy. 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:07.320 On the ship coming back, they had a poll about 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:09.840 who was in favor of prohibition, and out of the 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.679 two thousand, five hundred guys on the troop carrier, only 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:15.760 ninety eight wanted prohibition. 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:19.520 After George got off the ship from France, he headed 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.280 home to Virginia, and he had plenty of stories for 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:23.000 his pals. 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:25.240 He was just so damn gregarious. 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:27.560 That's Fred Cassidy, George's son. 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.120 He didn't give a shit who you were, where you were, from, 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:34.480 what you did, or any of that stuff. Come on up, 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:36.160 have a drink with me, you know, and we'll have 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:38.480 a good time. We'll talk about all kinds of stuff. 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:40.280 George party then style. 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:43.000 He was a dapper dude. If you ever saw him 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.680 in his Irish War Veterans' National Commander's uniform, you would 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:50.200 have thought he was a general of the most powerful 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:51.720 army in the world or something. 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:56.160 George also had a signature greenfelt hat that gave him 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:59.920 an unmistakable look. A snappily dressed party animal with a 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.640 trove of war stories, Georgie was one of a kind, 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:08.280 but he struggled to transition back to civilian life. Why 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:14.199 poison The mustard gas George had sucked in destroyed his lungs, 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:16.920 which made it hard for him to find work. Before 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:20.079 the war, George had been a brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad. 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:23.120 When he came back, he couldn't pass their physical to 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:23.920 get rehired. 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:28.040 George couldn't find a steady gig anywhere else either. He 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.360 put his body on the line for his home country, 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:34.720 and now it was letting him down. When he finally 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:37.040 did find work, it wasn't the kind of job that 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:41.400 had his parents bursting with pride. You see, George didn't 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.480 grow up in a household of drinkers, really the opposite. 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:48.240 George's Irish American father had been sober for decades. His mom, 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:51.000 a brit made herself at home in the USA by 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:54.160 becoming a proud card carrying member of the Women's Christian 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:57.800 Temperance Union. But none of that rubbed off on George. 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:02.720 He liked to imbibe. Everybody around my dad liked to imbibe. 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:05.760 Which isn't a surprise given George was from the moonshining 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:07.000 capital of the world. 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:11.680 There was a ton of moonshining going on in Virginia. 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:15.880 A lot of the Virginia farmers have their stills out 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:17.720 in a discrete. 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:21.800 Area in Appalachia. Moonshining had been prevalent since the Civil War, 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:26.079 when moonshiners distilled illegal liquor at night, and then drivers 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:31.000 or bootleggers smuggled it across the region. When prohibition passed, 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:34.319 this was all supposed to get shut down right. Well, 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.160 turns out it ain't so easy. To change an entire 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:41.200 culture overnight. But that was essentially the task facing the 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:45.680 prohibition agents under Mabel Walker Willebrandt a tall order in 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:49.160 a place like Franklin County, Virginia, nestled in the beautiful 0:12:49.160 --> 0:12:52.880 Blue Ridge Mountains, where ninety nine out of every hundred 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:57.240 people were connected to the moonshine business. One agent reported 0:12:57.240 --> 0:13:00.720 back to DC on the pointlessness of even bothering the rests. 0:13:01.360 --> 0:13:03.840 I'm sorry to report that at this time it is 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:06.559 almost impossible to get a conviction. 0:13:06.320 --> 0:13:07.120 In any case. 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.679 Juries are in sympathy with the bootlegger and the moonshiner. 0:13:12.720 --> 0:13:16.880 And you know when the moonshiners themselves included judges, politicians, 0:13:17.000 --> 0:13:20.320 and the local police, how are you supposed to stop that? 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:24.160 People like George came back from the war looking for 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.800 work and saw an opportunity. Here's one American artillery captain 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.080 who was in the Reserve Corps writing to his fiance. 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:33.560 It looks to me like the moonshine business is going 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:36.160 to be pretty good. Some of us want to get 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:38.800 in on the ground floor. At least we want to 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:40.760 get in there in time to lay in us alive 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:41.920 for future consumption. 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:47.000 That's thirty four year old future president Harry Truman. Fellas 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:51.160 Like Harry saw bootlegging as a lucrative investment opportunity, George 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.760 Cassidy saw it as something else, a lifeline. You see, 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:57.880 George was running out of options. He was a disabled 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:00.760 veteran out of work, which is why ship liquor from 0:14:00.760 --> 0:14:04.640 his neighborhood to money drinkers across DC felt like a 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:11.080 necessary career choice. He started small, just a couple of 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:14.959 bottles for friends and friends of friends, then a few more, 0:14:15.440 --> 0:14:19.600 and a few more. His Blue Ridge Virginia product must 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:23.320 have been pretty good, because pretty soon the orders were 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:27.440 flowing one way, and George kept the moonshine flowing the other. 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:34.440 George's lifeline was becoming a gold mine because George's clients, well, 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:36.360 they were the kind of people who liked to meet 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:41.760 at the Hotel Varnum in Washington, d C. The Varnum's 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:44.320 a grand old hotel at the corner of C Street 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:50.480 in New Jersey Avenue, a meeting place. Outside, George sees 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:53.360 two well dressed white men. He gets out and shakes 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.880 their hands, then heads around back to make a delivery. 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:02.920 He hands off a small paper package for his next delivery, 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:05.840 George grabs two bags out of his trunk, one in 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:09.240 each hand. George walks along New Jersey Avenue, nodding and 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:13.640 smiling to passers by. He was the friendly sort. George 0:15:13.680 --> 0:15:17.680 then crosses the street at Independence Avenue towards his next stop, 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:23.320 a white building with a very large, very conspicuous dome. Yeah, 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:25.640 it's probably the one you're thinking of. That would be 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:31.200 the US Capitol building. George's delivery route doesn't take him 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:34.960 into the Capitol itself, but rather into the surrounding buildings 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:39.120 where members of Congress have their offices. Stepping into the 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:42.040 House Office building, George gives a nod to the security 0:15:42.080 --> 0:15:47.360 fellaws at the door, and with his bags full of booze, 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:53.240 walks right in. That's right. Among the buyers for George's 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:57.400 top quality of Virginia hooch are the nation's lawmakers. His 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:02.239 clientele are powerful men of every political party and persuasion. 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:07.720 You see, George isn't just any bootlegger. He's become the 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:16.440 go to bootlegger for Congress. And Congress well they're pretty thirsty. Now. 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.280 Mabel's not blind to this. She makes regular visits to 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:22.400 the Capitol. Sometimes she even sits in the gallery of 0:16:22.400 --> 0:16:25.720 the Senate Chamber room to hear the nation's lawmakers present 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:26.400 their plans. 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:29.720 During the closing days of a recent session, a senator 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:33.800 objected to and prevented the passage of important legislation while 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:36.800 in such a condition of intoxication that he had to 0:16:36.840 --> 0:16:40.360 hold his desk to keep himself upright. I have become 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:43.520 well acquainted with the fact that many Congressmen and senators 0:16:43.640 --> 0:16:46.960 who vote for the bills designed to aid prohibition enforcement 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:49.800 are persistent violators of the law. 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:53.600 As people across the country were now drinking more than ever, 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:58.080 and bootleggers across the Eastern Seaboard were running wild, Congress 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:01.440 was too shitfaced to even pretend that they were going 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.880 to do something about it. Mabel's corrupt bureau agents were 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:08.040 proving to be just as worthless. It was time for 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:10.800 Mabel to take things into her own hands. 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:24.320 The early twentieth century is a uniquely poisonous time for 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:25.480 a number of reasons. 0:17:26.040 --> 0:17:29.840 That's historian Deborah Blum. She says that everywhere across the country, 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:32.800 from Mabel's DC to New York all the way to 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:36.919 San Francisco, industrial chemistry was becoming more and more a 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:40.720 part of everyday life for everyday Americans. 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:44.359 We're seeing the rise of industrial chemistry, and there's a 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:49.480 telluge of new chemical compounds created by industries in the 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.480 United States, which is, you know, one of the countries 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:56.880 that really takes the forefront of the industrial manufacturing age chemistry, 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:00.000 figuring out that they can take all of these poisonous 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:04.200 substances that occur in nature and recreate the mental. 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:09.159 Laboratory arsenic mercury, chloroform, carbolic acid. I would go on, 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:11.280 but the last time I had a close encounter with 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:15.480 a beaker, I was watching the Muppets. No no, no, no, Beaker. 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:17.800 I told you never to talk to me like that, 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:23.280 because I can't understand it. That's a little shout out 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:26.320 to my eighties kids out there. Point is, products of 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:33.040 rapidly advancing chemistry were everywhere in pharmacies, doctors' offices, grocery stores, kitchens, 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:38.199 and of course also in bars, where speakeasy back rooms 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:41.520 were starting to look a lot more like chemistry labs. 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:46.600 The reason classy clubs were hiring actual chemists to make 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:49.040 sure that the illegal liquor they were serving to high 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:53.120 end customers wasn't toxic and was only going to fuck 0:18:53.160 --> 0:19:02.800 you up the right way. This is the prohibition, you know, 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.719 the razzle dazzle of the flappers under the electric lights, 0:19:06.960 --> 0:19:09.200 where the big band served up bouncy rhythms and the 0:19:09.240 --> 0:19:13.960 bartenders served up potent cocktails. At least that's the front room. 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:16.760 But the back room it was all chemistry. 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:17.080 Baby. 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:21.080 Remember, clean and legal alcohol had all been poured into 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:25.240 the sewers at this point what was left could be dodgy. 0:19:25.840 --> 0:19:30.080 So to keep their customers safe, top speakeasy managers would 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:31.320 turn to chemistry. 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:35.920 Hello, I'm here to interview for the chemist position. 0:19:36.440 --> 0:19:40.879 I require one dollars payment. Oh, wise guy, A, so 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:42.600 you want your patrons dead? 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:44.399 I'll take you to the bus. 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:48.240 But what if you were running a bar and couldn't 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:52.360 afford the high fees of a newly in demand chemical brainiac, 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:55.600 Or if you were a drinker who didn't have pockets 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:58.359 deep enough to order your cocktails in the main dining 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:01.320 room of the Cotton Club and plenty of New York 0:20:01.359 --> 0:20:05.119 neighborhoods back alley liquor was flowing just as freely, But 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:08.800 no lab coated expert with a safety checklist was looking 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:13.480 out for you. As Deborah Blum says America's poorer drinkers 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:16.960 would rather overlook the dubious origins of their booze and 0:20:17.080 --> 0:20:21.600 literally stomach the risk. People were seemingly so eager for 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:24.040 a drink that they just didn't care there was a 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:25.879 chance it could land them in the hospital. 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:30.119 Unless you're rich, you're drinking whatever you can get your 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:33.960 hands on. So one of the cocktails of the Bowery, 0:20:34.080 --> 0:20:36.359 which is a really poor neighborhood in New York, was 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:40.000 called smoke, and that was fuel, alcohol and water. 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:42.920 You could get your smoke in the back of drug 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:45.720 stores or paint stores. I know the scene in Lower 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:48.320 Manhattan has always been a bit edgy, but even without 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:52.120 the spiky hair and the dog collars, this was grizzly stuff. 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:54.760 There was also the infamous ginger jake. 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:59.760 You see ginger Jake, which was another formula genda by 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:04.919 bliggers that actually mimics the symptoms of Parkinson's. Or you 0:21:05.160 --> 0:21:08.800 see the cocktail called d Rail in which they were 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:13.040 siphoning off some of the industrial alcohols from the railroads 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:15.280 and serving it up in drinks. 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:20.040 These drinks could kill during one stretch over a few months. 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:24.159 Debts from Smoke averaged one a day. When prohibition agents 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:26.960 managed to track down the suppliers for the deadly cocktail, 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:30.960 they discovered the drinks were served straight from cans stenseled 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:33.240 with the word poison on them. 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:37.360 This acceptance of risk that came with prohibition at these 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:40.679 levels is kind of horrifying, but it was there, and 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:41.280 it was real. 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:46.000 It's that risk big spenders were paying to avoid pay 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:48.879 the cover charge to get into a big club. You 0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:51.800 were betting the owner had paid a nerdy chemist to 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:54.919 make damn sure your gin and tonic was not a 0:21:55.040 --> 0:22:00.880 gin intoxic. These back room chemists were clearly breaking the law, 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:05.320 but a lot of them actually saw themselves as humanitarians. 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:08.240 Every time they caught a dangerous tocsin and a gallon 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:10.840 of hooch and kept it out of a drinker's mouth, Well, 0:22:12.040 --> 0:22:12.720 what'd you get. 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:13.800 That under the seat? 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:17.400 Can you believe it? It's still half full. They had 0:22:17.480 --> 0:22:20.400 done some good, and in part because they were so 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:23.600 successful at keeping the party going in New York City 0:22:23.640 --> 0:22:27.040 and state officials started to ask themselves, why don't we 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:28.520 just stop pretending here? 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:35.080 New York repealed its version of the amendment in nineteen 0:22:35.160 --> 0:22:39.320 twenty two, so from that point forward, New York officially 0:22:40.000 --> 0:22:41.520 was not supporting prohibition. 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:46.800 So yeah, under the eighteenth Amendment, any state could just 0:22:46.920 --> 0:22:50.080 stick their middle finger up to prohibition if they had 0:22:50.119 --> 0:22:53.000 the votes to repeal it, which is exactly what New 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:56.879 York state lawmakers did. They weren't going to do any 0:22:57.000 --> 0:22:59.480 cracking down. New York cops weren't going to be making 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:02.200 any arrest and even if they did, New York judges 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:04.320 weren't going to throw the book at any club owners. 0:23:05.080 --> 0:23:07.680 Better a law or no. There was simply too much 0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:10.680 money in the liquor game. So in effect, New York 0:23:10.760 --> 0:23:14.560 became a sanctuary city for American drinkers. And if you 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:16.919 were a chemist in the city breaking the law on 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:19.880 a daily basis, you could rest easy knowing that your 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:23.600 community had your back, not only that they were downright 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:27.560 grateful to you for saving them from ginger Jake and derail. 0:23:28.160 --> 0:23:31.000 Even the cops, the mayor, and the governor were on 0:23:31.040 --> 0:23:34.520 your side. And the good liquor it was still there 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:37.679 for the drinking if you had the right chemists in 0:23:37.720 --> 0:23:38.240 your pocket. 0:23:38.840 --> 0:23:44.280 Bobby, just believe of worries on the whole move and. 0:23:44.400 --> 0:23:45.720 World may go dry. 0:23:47.040 --> 0:23:49.200 Her dad made as well. 0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:52.680 As they left the old sales to the bootlegger. 0:23:52.280 --> 0:23:56.960 Daughter down in Washington. When news reached the office of 0:23:57.000 --> 0:23:59.840 the Department of Justice that the Big Apple was flipping 0:23:59.920 --> 0:24:06.200 on off prohibition, Mabel Walker Willebrant was you guessed it pissed. 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:24.880 A Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn, I can picture our pal 0:24:25.080 --> 0:24:28.520 Alexandra Getler in his favorite living room chair, dressed in 0:24:28.560 --> 0:24:31.240 a suit and tie. Of course, the number one song 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:34.560 from the most famous band in America, the Paul Whiteman Band, 0:24:34.920 --> 0:24:38.280 is buzzing in the background. Gettler's smoking a stogie as 0:24:38.320 --> 0:24:42.000 he scans baseball box scores from the morning paper, knowing 0:24:42.000 --> 0:24:44.320 Hew he probably had some skin in the games too. 0:24:44.960 --> 0:24:47.840 A bit of a gambler, Getler couldn't resist a juicy 0:24:47.920 --> 0:24:50.040 over under, and he had a regular card game with 0:24:50.119 --> 0:24:54.080 his pals. His other second home besides the lab was 0:24:54.119 --> 0:24:58.600 the horse track. Getler was also a ruthlessly competitive bowler, 0:24:58.920 --> 0:25:02.640 a spirit also brought to his work at Bellevue. When 0:25:02.640 --> 0:25:05.880 a new mystery arrived at his doorstep. He couldn't stand 0:25:05.960 --> 0:25:09.800 the idea of a poisoner outwitting him and his sleuthing partner, 0:25:09.920 --> 0:25:14.480 Charles Norris. On this beautiful spring afternoon. Perhaps Alexander is 0:25:14.520 --> 0:25:17.240 scribbling down his latest betting card, when all of a 0:25:17.320 --> 0:25:21.840 sudden he gets a call from Norris. There's a new case, 0:25:22.480 --> 0:25:29.040 and oh is al gonna love this one. In nineteen 0:25:29.080 --> 0:25:32.880 twenty two, our Sherlock and Watson have been a very 0:25:32.920 --> 0:25:36.199