History

Tales of Prohibition on the South Shore

Bellmore library program brings U.S.’s ‘noble experiment’ to life

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“Bottoms up!” an older gentleman in gym shorts and an athletic top said with a chuckle, raising a thermos in the Bellmore Memorial Library Monday evening, as local historian and librarian Regina Feeney took the microphone.

Before a crowd of 30-odd history buffs, Feeney brought the Prohibition era to life, armed with “magic lantern” slides of the temperance movement, a re-cently unearthed whisky still and even arrest records of Bellmore residents caught on the wrong side of the law in the 1920s and ’30s.

Prohibition was not a “momentary freakout session” for the country, Feeney said. Rather, it was the culmination of a number of social movements and problems — a chapter in the United States’ “long, complicated history with alcohol.”

In the 1830s, Feeney said, Americans on average were drinking roughly three times the amount of alcohol they drink today, and temperance movements were pushing back steadily against the tide. At the time, Feeney said, temperance movements did not advocate total abstinence, but rather moderation — and many promoted the virtues of fermented drinks over the vices of distilled spirits.

A group of reformed drunkards created the Washingtonians, an abstinence-dedicated society, in Maryland in 1840 — and a Brooklyn Daily Eagle headline from around that time warned that the group “threatened Freeport,” which was a notably “wet” community, at the time.

Feeney showcased a selection of slides from the magic lantern adaptation of the temperance novel “Ten Nights in a Bar-Room,” which was the second most popular novel of its era, behind only Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” T.S. Arthur’s story painted alcoholism as a form of slavery — with women and children as forces of salvation for the drunken, helpless men in their lives.

In Freeport in the 1850s, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union set up shop, and even built a public water fountain on Merrick Road, to be used as an alternative to taverns for thirsty walkers. But the fountain, Feeney noted, was closed after an outbreak of glanders caused by horses also making use of the water.

Brewers at the time pushed back against the temperance movement, taking out full-page advertisements trumpeting the virtues of beer as a necessary component of sobriety. “Beer is an appetizer,” also declared a print ad for Ruppert’s Knickerbocker.

Anti-German sentiments during and following World War I, as well as wartime prohibition and changing popular morality, however, proved a perfect storm for tipping the country’s relationship with spirits, and on Jan. 16, 1920, Prohibition became the law of the land.

It would last until Dec. 5, 1933 — or 13 years, 10 months, 19 days, 17 hours and 26 minutes, to be more exact, according to Feeney.

Throughout this strange, dark period of history, the South Shore saw more than its share of bootlegging — famed rumrunner Bill “The Real” McCoy was known to loiter in the area’s speakeasies — and bizarre incidents.

Merrick Road at the time was called Bootleggers’ Boulevard, Feeney said, and South Shore residents would often hear gunshots in the night, with the Island’s miles of coastline lending themselves to criminal activity. A Brooklyn Daily Eagle report from the era also told of a young girl on a camping trip in Freeport catching a stray bullet in the arm.

The Daily Eagle called Freeport “the rumrunners’ port,” and, Feeney said, residents are still finding evidence of the area’s Prohibition-era past. One woman recently came to the library and told Feeney about the secret speakeasy she had excavated in her basement, complete with a swing-out bar, a stockpile of bottles and a whiskey still.

When the era finally came to an end in 1933, newspaper records show that South Shore residents couldn’t have been happier, with members of the Freeport American Legion and a 50-piece band shooting an effigy representing the law and parading its corpse through the streets.

“Old Man Prohibition died in Freeport, executed by firing squad on Sunrise Highway,” the Daily Eagle’s headline read.