Disposal of Illegal Contraband in 1927
The Miami News shares the story of the disposal of confiscated booze that had been seized and stored in and around Miami by federal, city, and county prohibition law enforcement personnel.
On July 13, 1927, the headline in the Miami Daily News read “$250,000 Rum is Poured Out in Gulf Stream.” A joint effort by federal, city, and county law enforcement led to the disposal of the quarter million dollars of wine, champagne, whiskies, and gin seized over the prior months. By 1927, the City of Miami had confiscated so much alcohol that law enforcement had to store and guard more than 20,000 sacks of liquor in different storage facilities around the city. On this day, prohibition agents were tasked with destroying 2,000 of the 20,000 sacks of liquor in their possession.
The sacks referred to the gunny sacks that bottles of liquor were hidden and shipped into the United States during the prohibition era. Generally, the sacks would store between 6 to 8 bottles of liquor. If the sacks were confiscated as part of an intervention on the seas, or a raid on a speakeasy, they would be marked with the rumrunner’s name who formerly owned the burlap satchel and then placed in one of the many storage facilities around the city.
The writer for the Miami Daily News had fun with the first paragraph when they wrote “federal, city and county governments Wednesday were having first class liquor parties.” One of the key figures on this day was ‘Uncle’ Charlie Water Standau, who was a veteran prohibition raider in South Florida, and was given the order to destroy a significant portion of the stored inventory. Standau provided the deputy U.S. marshal, J.C. Cooper, a bundle of 2,000 bottles which were promptly disposed of in the city incinerator.
Given its proximity to the Bahamas, Miami was one of the leakiest places in America during prohibition. While National prohibition went into effect in 1920 for most of the nation, Dade County voted itself dry in 1913, giving South Florida a head start in finding creative ways to circumvent the will of the temperance warriors. In total, the confiscated illegal bottles of booze stored in Miami were valued at over one million dollars by July of 1927. It was estimated that it would take weeks to destroy all of the seized rows of sacks, or ‘hams’ as they were sometimes called, which were stored in and around Miami warehouses.
What did not get destroyed in the incinerator was dumped in the ocean by coast guard and prohibition agents. The writer made note of a recent sighting by the SS Munorleans of a school of whales in the area nearby where the offices choose to dump the liquor in the Gulf Stream, which prompted the following passage in the news article:
“From all reports the whales are in for a whale of a party under the auspices of the government and at the expense of hundreds of bootleggers.”
While the ban on the distribution and consumption of liquor was not taken very seriously by many Miami residents in the 1920s, the enforcement of the Volstead Act was dead serious to the prohibition officers who were charged with trying to find and arrest the violators of the law. It also had a significant impact on those who found themselves serving a prison sentence for violating the law.
The Volstead Act, which was ratified as the Eighteenth Amendment, outlawed the production, sale, and distribution of alcohol in the United States beginning in 1920. It became the only constitutional amendment to be overturned with the ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment, which was signed into law on December 5, 1933, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Resources:
Miami Daily News: “$250,000 Rum is Poured Out in Gulf Stream”, July 13, 1927.