Last month, I gave you a little sneak peek into Breton Bay Booze, Book 5 in my Heart of St. Mary’s County series, by sharing the opening scene with you. Hope you enjoyed it. I thought that this month, I’d talk about some interesting Prohibition facts I’ve discovered in my research.
“People Can Have the Model T in Any Color, So Long as it’s Black”—Henry Ford
The Ford Model T was a favored vehicle for bootleggers. Why? It was affordable, reliable, offered a decent-sized hiding space for booze, and it was ubiquitous. All of them were painted black, too. Thus, they were less noticeable to the pesky federal agents searching the roads for contraband.
The Real McCoy
Ever heard the phrase, “the real McCoy”? It’s based on Bill McCoy, a bootlegger who was credited with the “Rum Row” system of waiting offshore to have smuggled liquor from Canada and Europe offloaded by small boats. He was known for selling only the highest quality booze, thus his product was “the real McCoy.”
It’s Medicinal, Honest!
Alcohol, typically whiskey and brandy, were allowed under the Volstead Act if they were to be used for medicinal purposes. They had to be prescribed by a licensed, practicing physician. In many rural areas, doctors became the preferred source of a desired beverage.
Prescriptions for alcohol were required to be written on a form provided by the federal government. The completed prescription was taken to the pharmacist, where the form was canceled and the prescription filled. Both the pharmacist and the physician profited from the sale of liquor by prescription.
Some doctors genuinely believed that whiskey could be a cure for many ills, taken in prescribed quantities. Other medical men were basically bootleggers with a nice veneer on them.
During the Roaring Twenties, physicians earned an estimated $40 million from prescribing alcohol for their patients, nearly one-half of a billion dollars in today’s dollars. Wow!
Being a Prohibition Agent was Dangerous Work
St. Mary’s County, where Breton Bay Booze is set, was a hotbed of bootlegging and other nefarious activities. But it wasn’t just in St. Mary’s County that Maryland life was dangerous. In 1927, a Boonsboro, Maryland, federal “dry” agent named Hunter Stotler, was shot and killed, allegedly by moonshiners in the mountains around Boonsboro. Given the strife between bootleggers and federal agents it was a common enough occurrence to be believable to the community.
However, as the story unfolded, the public learned that Stotler was having an affair with the wife of an underling, Reginald Walters, who was ultimately discovered to be the murderer. One Prohibition agent slayed another Prohibition agent. Walters received life in prison.
(My thanks to my virtual assistant, Ruth Martin, for info on the story about Agents Stotler and Walters. One of Ruth’s great-grandfathers, as well as his father-in-law, made moonshine in the Boonsboro area.)
I recently binged Boardwalk Empire, a 2010-2014 HBO series set in Atlantic City during the Prohibition era. If you can get past the graphic violence (whew!) and excessive nudity (yikes), it was a very interesting story. I think the series did a great job of getting the little details right, and many of the characters were either real historical people or based on historical personages.
If you’ve seen this series, I’d love to hear what you thought about it. Just reply to this e-mail.
Breton Bay Booze releases on July 20, 2027.
The publishing industry has been full of news lately. Most interestingly, you may recall that back in my January newsletter, I talked about how “mass market” paperbacks (those small books you’d find at the grocery store and in airports) were being completely discontinued. Born in 1939, the format had simply been overtaken by e-books and larger, “trade” size paperbacks.
Well, to my great surprise…the mass market format is returning!
According to a press release from publisher Simon & Schuster, they have hired Anh Schluep to revive and reimagine their small-sized paperback “Pocket Books” line. Schluep was an Associate Publisher at Amazon, having published Colleen Hoover, Sylvia Day, and other mega best-sellers. It will be interesting to see what Schluep does to breathe new life into this book format.
You can read more about the change here: https://www.simonandschuster.biz/p/pocket-books-relaunch
In whatever book format you enjoy, thank you for continuing to buy and read my books. I’m so grateful for my readers.