Anything Goes_ A Biography of the Roaring Twenties - Lucy Moore [5]
It was still legal for doctors to prescribe liquor for medical problems, jokingly known as thirstitis. Beer was not considered remedial, but in 1921 drugstore owners withdrew over eight million gallons of “medicinal” whisky from federal warehouses, about twenty times the pre-Prohibition amount.
The final option for thirsty Americans—and the one that carried the greatest risks, less because drinking it might lead to imprisonment than because it might lead to hospital—was moonshine. Throat-burning Yack Yack Bourbon, made in Capone’s Chicago, blended burnt sugar and iodine; Panther whisky contained a high concentration of fusel oil, which was thought to trigger paranoia, hallucinations, sexual depravity and murderous impulses; Philadelphia’s Soda Pop Moon was blended from “rubbing alcohol,” also used as a disinfectant and in gasoline; Jackass brandy caused internal bleeding. Other poisonous ingredients included soft soap, camphor, embalming fluid and bichloride of mercury, a highly corrosive form of mercury used to treat syphilis and to preserve biological specimens in museums. Most notorious of all was jake, a fluid extract of Jamaican ginger, which caused paralysis and ultimately death.
Distributing bootleg on a large scale required police cooperation as well as a highly organized mob. An investigation in Philadelphia in 1928 revealed that after eight years of Prohibition many police officers there had savings of tens of thousands of dollars, and several of them hundreds of thousands—on average annual salaries of just over $3,000. Of the measly three thousand Prohibition agents covering the country in 1930 (one of whom was Al Capone’s brother, inspired by the Wild West and calling himself Richard “Two Guns” Hart), a tenth had to be sacked for corruption.
Prohibition agents were so well known for their laxity that the most scrupulous and successful agent of the early 1920s became a celebrity. Isadore Einstein, a former postal clerk from New York’s Lower East Side whose father had wanted him to be a rabbi, was a short, fat man who looked so unlike an agent that he was forced to protest in his interview that “there might be some advantage in not looking like a detective.” Izzy was a performer at heart. Despite his distinctive appearance he appeared unrecognized in bars as a traveling salesman, a judge, a cattle-rancher; perhaps carrying a trombone, covered in coal dust, extravagantly bearded or clad in a swimming costume at Coney Island. Einstein relished his work, utilizing to the full his linguistic gifts (as well as English he spoke German, Hungarian, Yiddish, Polish, French, Italian, Russian and a smattering of Chinese) in a multitude of farcical disguises. He even went to Harlem disguised as a black man, complete with authentic dialect, and once tossed his badge on to the bar of a saloon in New York’s Bowery district, demanding (and receiving) a drink for “a deserving Prohibition agent.” After he had received his drink Izzy would arrest the barman, carefully pouring the alcohol into a special jar hidden in his pocket to produce as evidence in court. As well as being a committed Prohibition agent, Einstein, like Capone, had a talent for self-promotion. Press photographers were often primed to await his duped victims outside the scenes of their arrests.
Along with his straight-man partner, Moe Smith, Einstein smashed hundreds of home-stills, raided 3,000 bars, arrested over 4,300 people and confiscated five million bottles of bootleg liquor. Despite their staggering 95 percent conviction rate, Einstein and Smith were sacked in 1925, with no explanation given. The most likely reason is that their fame was making it harder for them to escape