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22 - The Prohibition Poisonings · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hi everybody, and
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: welcome to Who Did What Now? The history podcast that
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: is not your history class with me. You're a busy
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: host Katie Charlewood, poison partisan and reader of books. Well,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: it has been a weird couple of days for me,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: so I was pretty happy. I was doing pretty well.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I got a bunch of the Patreon stuff shipped off.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I actually started openly communicating with friends again, and I
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: have been making I haven't been making booz because that's illegal.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Well actually technically I think you can make it if
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  Speaker 1: you make it for yourself. Anyway, that's not important. The
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  Speaker 1: point is, along with the theme of today's episode, I
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  Speaker 1: was making booze. So I have made Currently, I have
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: gorse wine. Gorse is this sort of spiky demon of
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: a plant that just sort of overtakes everywhere, and I
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: was like, listen, if you're going to be a weed
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: in my garden, you may as well be useful.
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  Speaker 2: So I was like, I'm going to make some gorse wine.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: So I've got that currently fermenting, and I've also got
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  Speaker 1: ginger beer, which is going to be fermenting.
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  Speaker 2: I've got two batches.
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  Speaker 1: I've got one which is just like ginger beer, and
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: then I have the other, which is ginger and chili beer.
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  Speaker 1: And then I've got a bunch of alcohol infusing. I
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  Speaker 1: try and use what's like roundabout very exciting for exciting stuff.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Me and my booze and fusions.
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  Speaker 1: So I've got I was like sending pictures to all
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  Speaker 1: my cousins, like have you seen this? As I've got
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: strawberry and basil gin cucumber and mint gin maryberry vodka,
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  Speaker 1: which is just like whatever berries that were about to
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  Speaker 1: go off in my fridge.
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  Speaker 2: I was like, I'm going to shove these in alcohol.
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  Speaker 1: I've also got blueberry and lemon gin vodka. Honestly, I
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: don't know anymore, but I'm gonna. I guess we'll figure
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  Speaker 1: out when I open it up again. And I bottled
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: up my Bramble whiskey, which has been maturing for a
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  Speaker 1: good while now actually, and I don't know. I guess
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  Speaker 1: we'll see how it goes. To be honest, I can
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  Speaker 1: hear It's like I'm actually standing in the room where
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  Speaker 1: I've got the gorse wine from ending and I can
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  Speaker 1: hear it bubbling. I think I may have added too
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  Speaker 1: much enzyme.
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  Speaker 2: But I guess we'll see how it turns out. Yeah yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, And if anybody has any suggestions of like what
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  Speaker 1: infusions I should do or what kind of like booze
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  Speaker 1: I should try and make next, I am all ears.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I'm here for suggestions, you know what I mean. I actually, oh,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I ordered furniture from my bedroom. I actually have a
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: chest of drawers coming, so I will no longer look
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: like I am living in a student's apartment.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: And with that, I want to.
• 2:59
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• 3:02
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• 3:10
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• 3:14
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• 3:18
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  Speaker 3: There's now merch available, actually merch on I think it's
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: spreadshirt dot I slash whoded what now? I actually got
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: myself a Guild of Historical Dissent sweatshirt and I'm so
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: proud of it.
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  Speaker 2: I'll have to post it on my Instagram. Actually later
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: on I'm.
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  Speaker 1: Gonna do Tuesday Wednesday Wednesday because I've got time off
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, I'm gonna do it then, and then Instagram
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  Speaker 1: And and before I forget, actually, I want to thank
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  Speaker 1: everyone for their Apple podcast reviews. You have no idea
• 3:59
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  Speaker 1: really really helps, you know, promote the podcast and get
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: it out there and share information. And I was dinner,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: so yeah, and now for my sad news. So I've
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: had this cat since before my oldest was born, and
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: so she was basically old and blind. So she got
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: on really well with my mom. She's gonna kill me
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: for that. Sammy the cat was a black and white cat.
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  Speaker 1: I think Sammy was like eleven years.
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  Speaker 2: Old or something. She passed away.
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  Speaker 1: She passed away in her sleep last night, and my
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  Speaker 1: wee boy was the one who found her.
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  Speaker 2: And needless to say, and so I've spent most of.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Today talking about death, which is super fun and not
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: at all morbid. And now I have to stage a
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  Speaker 1: cat funeral, which is weird.
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  Speaker 2: But anyway, but.
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  Speaker 1: I hear you going, you're gibber drabbing woman and fact
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  Speaker 1: me and so I shall.
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  Speaker 2: But first source your shit.
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  Speaker 1: We are gonna talk about the prohibition poisonings. My sources
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  Speaker 1: for this episode are the Poisonous Handbook, Murder and the
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Birth of Forensic Medicine, and Jazz by Deborah Bloom, articles
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: from the Canadian Medical Association, Voux dot com, Atlas Obscura,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: and in New York Times. Let me set the scene
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  Speaker 1: for you, my friends. It's Christmas Eve nineteen twenty six
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  Speaker 1: in New York City and a man stumbles into the
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  Speaker 1: emergency room of Bellevue Hospital. His skin is flushed, He's
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  Speaker 1: gasping and panicking. He's telling the nurses he's terrified of
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Santa Claus. He keeps telling the nurses that Santa Claus
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: is just behind him and he's got a baseball bat.
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  Speaker 1: But this alcohol induced hallucination was merely a symptom of
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: what was going on, and before before any of the
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: staff could realize how ill this man was, he died.
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  Speaker 1: But then another person enters the emergency room and he
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  Speaker 1: dies in another person trying to celebrate the Yule Tide
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  Speaker 1: with a merry beverage, and another partier, and another one,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and another one.
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  Speaker 2: As Christmas Day dawned.
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  Speaker 1: Sixty people showed up in the emergency room incredibly ill
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  Speaker 1: from alcohol, and eight had died. Over the next couple days,
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  Speaker 1: twenty three people died in New York City as a
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  Speaker 1: result of partying in the party season. Now, alcohol poisoning
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: wasn't a new thing because doctors and nurses and hospital staff,
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  Speaker 1: they were all very much used to alcohol poisoning, and
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  Speaker 1: not just because the alcohol, but because the alcohol had
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  Speaker 1: toxins in it. Because we are in the midst of prohibition.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: So in the Prohibition era, you've got bathtub gin and
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: bootlegged whiskey and it would make people sick.
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  Speaker 2: You know, You've got.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: People making moonshine in less than hygienic stills. So the
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  Speaker 1: moonshine and the booze that comes from those usually ends
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  Speaker 1: up tainted with you know, metals and other impurities. So
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  Speaker 1: let's go back in time a little bit to nineteen
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  Speaker 1: ninety the United States, as a result of everyone's favorite
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  Speaker 1: buzz kills, the Temperance League banns the manufacture and sale
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  Speaker 1: of alcohol. So probition goes into effect on January first
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  Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, but I didn't stop people from wanting to
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  Speaker 1: drink alcohol. Obviously, alcoholism rates actually skyrocketed during.
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  Speaker 2: The twenties by three hundred percent.
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  Speaker 1: Speakeasy start opening up, and by the end of the
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  Speaker 1: Roaring twenties there were like thirty thousand speakeasies in New
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  Speaker 1: York City alone. The country's response to all of these
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  Speaker 1: restrictive laws genuinely shocked people that thought that this.
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  Speaker 4: Would bring in this staunch new era with extreme morals
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  Speaker 4: and stuff like It's it's kind of like when you
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: restrict access to sexual health and birth control, which then
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: leads to people having back alley abortions and ordering abortificence
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  Speaker 4: online creates a much bigger problem.
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  Speaker 2: I'm just I'm just saying so.
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  Speaker 1: And as such, the alcohol industry, well, the illicit alcohol
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  Speaker 1: industry booms, and you know they try and you know,
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  Speaker 1: secure the borders, but you've then you've got booths coming
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  Speaker 1: up from Mexico and down from Canada. But transport ain't cheap,
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  Speaker 1: so so some bootleggers who wanted to make more money,
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  Speaker 1: they would.
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  Speaker 2: Try and get booze that was made closest to home.
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  Speaker 1: And because the US government could ban making sat making
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  Speaker 1: hard cider, or brewing beer. They couldn't ban industrial alcohol
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  Speaker 1: because it was used to make everything from like paint
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  Speaker 1: to perfume to like stuff for furniture polish. So bootleggers
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  Speaker 1: would distill industrial alcohol in order to make it drinkable.
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  Speaker 1: So the federal government their response to this is to
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  Speaker 1: enforce manufacturers to add more poison and more toxins into
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  Speaker 1: the alcohol.
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  Speaker 2: But here's the thing.
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  Speaker 1: Most manufacturers were already adding poisons to industrial alcohol because
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  Speaker 1: was it nineteen oh six Congress passed a law passed
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  Speaker 1: a lot about industrial alcohol and taxes. Yeah, it was
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  Speaker 1: exempt from taxes because it wouldn't be taxed as long
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  Speaker 1: as it was so poisonous that it would be undrinkable.
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  Speaker 2: And the government literally like federal chemists.
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  Speaker 1: They are put together to make all of these formulas
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  Speaker 1: to donate your alcohol to make it poisonous. But then
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  Speaker 1: you have these chemists working on the side of the
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  Speaker 1: bootleggers would counteract that. Like one of the ways they
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  Speaker 1: did this was boiling industrial alcohol and stills. Most of
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  Speaker 1: the poisons of the toxic additives would evaporate. Unfortunately, for
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  Speaker 1: the people who drank alcohol, they realized that it was
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  Speaker 1: fairly impossible to remove all of the toxic additives, so
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  Speaker 1: bootleggers would sell you this denatured alcohol, and then scores
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  Speaker 1: of Americans would wear well him suspected of dying from
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  Speaker 1: consuming the toxic or poisonous boots. And the majority of
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  Speaker 1: the people who died were from the lower or working classes,
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  Speaker 1: because they're not going to be able to afford the
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  Speaker 1: more expensive smuggled beer and whiskey. So one of the
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  Speaker 1: easiest alcohols to convert was actually called It was a
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  Speaker 1: formula called thirty nine B. It was generally used for
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  Speaker 1: perfumes and cosmetics, so it was actually relatively easy to
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  Speaker 1: turn into drinking alcohol. And with each batch or each
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  Speaker 1: formula that the government would push out, the chemists would
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  Speaker 1: just keep distilling it out.
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  Speaker 2: Every single time.
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  Speaker 1: They'd be like boom boom, boom boom, And by nineteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty six, the government had actually removed three of the
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  Speaker 1: formulas because the bootleggers were just too good at distilling it.
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  Speaker 1: So by nineteen twenty six they can't avoid this crisis anymore,
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  Speaker 1: and the US government orders that all industrial alcohols manufactured
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  Speaker 1: in the United States to add twice as much methanol which.
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  Speaker 2: Is deadly and practically impossible to filter out.
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  Speaker 1: By nineteen twenty seven, by like the middle of nineteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty seven.
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  Speaker 2: These the pot.
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  Speaker 1: But it wasn't just these that they added. So they
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: had kerosene, bruisine, which is like really close to stryckenine, benzene, iodine,
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  Speaker 1: nicotine ether or maldehyde, chloroform, mercury salts, gasoline, carbolic acid,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: camphor quinine, and acetoine.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, the stuff you used to take off your nail polish.
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  Speaker 1: And the amount of methanol, the methyl alcohol that was
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: added was at some points ten percent of.
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  Speaker 2: The total product.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: This would generally be known as formula five and allegedly
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: drinks containing formula five would result in blindness or death.
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  Speaker 1: You know when they make that joke about you drinking
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: booze and then going blind, This is where it comes from.
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  Speaker 1: So this was supported very much by like Temperance League
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  Speaker 1: in the Anti Saloon League and people like that. These
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: dry activists. They thought that, you know, it's very poisonous
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: and it smells repugnant, and so no nobody's gonna drink that. Well,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: clearly they've never met somebody who likes a drink. Insert
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: xenophobic Irish booze joke. Like one of the guys Wayne B. Wheeler,
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  Speaker 1: he was the general counsel of the Anti Silin League.
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  Speaker 1: He said that people who are poisoned by alcohol were
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: committing suicide and like always kind of like activists, they
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: couldn't understand the concept of people needing a drink, people
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: would risk their lives to drink, Like they couldn't grasp
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  Speaker 1: the concept. So like you've got them who are on
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: side with like, yeah, let's poison the booze. And you've
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: got people on the other side who are going like
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: other like senators and shit, and they're like, do not
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: do this because this is legalized murder direct quote legalized murder.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: And Charles Norris, who was the Chief Medical Examiner of
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: New York City during this time, he referred to it
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: as a national experiment in extermination. He said that the
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: government knows it's not stopping drinking about putting poison and alcohol,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: but it keeps continuing the poisoning process. Like he warned
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: citizens to watch out for the whiskey that was circulating
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: in the city and that in nineteen twenty eight, nearly
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: all the booze that was being sold in New York
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: was toxic. And here's the thing, the numbers, they're not
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: small in New York. In New York City, in nineteen
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: twenty six, twelve hundred people that we know of were
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: sickened by poisonous alcohol. Four hundred died. In nineteen twenty seven,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: this goes up to seven hundred. And these numbers are
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: repeating in cities all around the country, and it keeps going,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and it keeps going in by the end of the era.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: By the end of the decade, ten thousand people had
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: died as a result of the Vaulstead Act and prohibition.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: And you have to think, did they think that some
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: people would just stop drinking or did they think this
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: would scare people into giving up drinking. So and at
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: this time as well, federal chemists were trying to develop
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: a disgusting but non lethal substance to add to the
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: alcohol that couldn't be removed, so that it would be awful.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: Awful to drink.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: But you know, anybody who's ever had straight vodka knows
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: that people will drink anything. So by nineteen thirty, these
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: feral chemists, they hit the jackpop alcotate, alcotate, alcate one
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: of those. It is either alsotate or alcotate. Alcotate sounds
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: a bit better, doesn't it. Sometimes you learn words by
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: reading them. So this thing, which was a byproduct of
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: petroleum had a disgusting, repugnant stench of like rotten eggs
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: and garlics, so very sulfurous, and it would make drinkers
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: violently ill without poisoning them. But by then bootleggers were
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: just making their own booze with like yeast and water and.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Sugar, you know, so like at that point.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: It didn't really matter officially officially, on an official level,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the denaturing of alcohol ended on the on when the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: eighteenth Amendment was repealed but December of nineteen thirty three,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: but the process had generally dwindled away and faded out,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: had sort of since the nineteen thirty it already sort
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: of whiddled down and disappeared, and slowly but surely the
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: big boss government officials they used to sort of stopped
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: mentioning it. So prohibition ends, and you know, all the
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: good booze comes back, you know, good green whiskey, vodka,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: gin beer.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Beer makes a comeback. And in this wild.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Era just doesn't really get talked about again, just just
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: very interesting. So, yeah, approximately ten thousand people died due
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: to the d nature program by the US federal government,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: which is such an insane amount when you think of
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: how gruesome like that, how high a death toll that
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: is for a program which was supposedly intended to help people. Yeah,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: and this sort of has like a big, huge chain
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: of events scenario. The nightclub scene sort of starts from
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: this era, and then you've got all of these criminals
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: who made their money via bootlegging and smuggling, they end
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: up smuggling other things like drug And this is why,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: like in the nineteen twenties you had people smuggling alcohol,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: and in the nineteen thirties they start smuggling drugs. Like
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: it just becomes like it really really increases from that.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, the drugs were still getting in the nineteen twenties,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: but the government was so focused on booze they didn't
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: really notice the drugs so much, you know, And it's
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: just this domino effect of just stuff that keeps happening.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: But anyway, so that is the story of the federal
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: government poisoning people during prohibition. So what have we learned today?
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: We learned that even the best of intentions have dire consequences,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: and that the government really has to face up to consequences,
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: and that it's pretty easy to cover up these stories,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: and that religious values should not be used as a
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: basis for government because that's actually against the constitution because
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: you're not supposed to combine church and state.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: But that's neither here nor there. Also, if it smells bad,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: do not put it in your mouth.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: That goes for anything in life, Like, if you do
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: not enjoy the smell of it, you're probably not going
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: to enjoy the taste of it. I'm just saying that's
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: life advice for me to you.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Anyway.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, we learned that you really shouldn't make bathtub gin
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: and don't trust a chemist. Yeah, so that has been
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: this week's episode. Yeah, I really want a ridiculous gin now,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: isn't there I think there's a cocktail which is called
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the bathtub gin.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: I want to I really want one now.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: But yeah, and don't forget if you like stuff, go
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: on and like stuff, get involved, join the community.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: That'll be fun. That's been fun for me. So I'm
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: gonna chat to y'all next time. And remember, if you
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: think it's bad, don't put it in your mouth.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Just don't anyway, I will chat to you next time,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and I will say adios or revoir of Where is
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: It in my friends, Bye bye,