Forbidden History - Prohibition: Rise of the American Gangster

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

Joined by journalist Dominic Selwood, we uncover the infamous experiment of Prohibition; How one law turned ordinary Americans into criminals, unleashed organised crime, and forever changed the nation. Cast List: Eric Meyers: Narrator Dominc Selwood: Journalist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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In 1920, the United States made a radical decision to outlaw alcohol. It was meant to restore order by protecting the nation's families and improving public health. Instead, many have claimed it helped to create one of the largest criminal economies in modern history. Moonshine was brewed, speak-easies flourished, and the gangsters ruling the criminal underworld became millionaires. The law itself began to break down. So how did a moral crusade turn into a national crisis? Prohibition, it's really important to note, did not end drinking culture, it transformed it. Prohibition produced an enormous illegal market, with high-house.

profits. Supplying alcohol became a central revenue stream for criminal groups. It was a failed 13-year experiment whose main legacy was a sophisticated nationwide criminal infrastructure. The introduction of prohibition through the 18th Amendment reshaped American society almost overnight. To understand how this happened and why many believe it failed so dramatically, were joined by historian and author Dominic Selwood, who will help guide us through its impact and lasting consequences of one of America's great, noble experiments. The eventual impact was on more than just alcohol bans and new restrictions,

shifting the public's attitude towards the laws themselves and fundamentally altering the trust of those in charge. Prohibition was a legal framework. In 1920, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors and import-export. It was implemented by the National Prohibition Act, the Volstead Act, which operationalised prohibition with penalties, procedures,

and the administrative machinery for enforcement. The Volstead Act defined intoxicating as anything that was over 0.5% alcohol by volume, making the ban far stricter than many voters likely expected and creating wide non-compliance pressure. The law also concurrently gave enforcement power to Congress and to the states, which became a key point of friction. The amendment did not, importantly, criminalised government. consumption, which is a frequent public misunderstanding, as the targets were the suppliers, not the end consumers.

But prohibition laws didn't just appear overnight. It was the result of decades of growing pressure. When the law was passed by the U.S. government, it reshaped moral and social reform, and was presented as an advancement of the temperance movement at the time in defense of families and community welfare. Temperance advocates linked alcohol to poverty, workplace accidents, domestic violence, and family instability, making it a major strand of 19th century moral and social reform. It drew heavily on Protestant evangelical networks and voluntary associations

that were institutionally strong in many areas. There were specific groups like the Women's Christian Temperance Union who mobilised Temperance as a defence of defence. families and community welfare, eventually growing into a national political force. Notable among the groups advocating for prohibition were women's groups and particularly Christian women's groups, because it posed an opportunity to reset the harmony of domestic life and move Americans away from bar culture and back into a more harmonious, envisaged domesticity. One of the leaders driving the Women's Christian Temperance Union was Francis Willard,

who pushed beyond the male-dominated boundaries into broader social reforms through her theories of idealism. Women's suffrage, labor rights, and education were all key motivations under her leadership and driving forces of her expansive agenda, known as the do-everything policy. At a time when women had little political power, temperance offered a rare opportunity to influence public life, as well as an escape from a male-dominated world driven by alcohol, helping to protect their family's livelihoods. In their eyes, wages lost at the hands of alcoholism were the difference between family stability and poverty. And new types of semi-professional organizations,

with similar agendas were springing up all across America in no time at all. By the late 1800s, organizations and particularly the Anti-Saloon League professionalized lobbying and electioneering, turning temperance into a disciplined political project. The Anti-Saloon League, specifically, was formed in Ohio in 1893, backed by Protestant churches, and became a national organization just two years later. Its primary target, the Saloon, was demonized as the root of all societal ills. The League was known to have applied intense pressure politics, pushing propaganda such as the American issue

and mobilizing church congregations to vote for the dry candidates. Even its for the children messaging pushed guilt and emotional pressure. by showcasing children as the victims at the hands of the evil alcohol. The propaganda became increasingly extreme, labeling all saloons as monsters and tools of corruption that did nothing but enslave good men, tear apart happy families, cause poverty, and destroy dreams and freedom of the American citizens. And ultimately, equating sobriety with true

American citizenship, and the wheels of government and lawmaking started in earnest. But long before the introduction of the complete prohibition law, many states were trialling the banning of alcohol. Massachusetts was the first state to introduce anti-alcohol legislation, as early as 1838, but it was short-lived. Maine did so more successfully in 1851, but it was the nationwide prohibition that people really remember when it comes to the anti-alcohol legislation. With alcohol widely blamed as the primary catalyst for all societal maladies, the 18th Amendment was finally passed in 1919 to ban it.

However, it wasn't a sudden revelation, but the culmination of decades of experiments coming together. The 18th Amendment applied to the entire United States and all territory under U.S. jurisdiction. But in practice there were wide discrepancies because enforcement depended on local political will, police priorities, juries and community compliance. Many places entered national prohibition with a head start. Those were states and localities that already adopted bans in the 1905 to 1917 wave of state-level prohibitions. But because states retained enforcement responses, and discretion under this concurrent power idea, local officials could under-enforce,

selectively enforce, or aggressively enforce. But almost immediately, the law began to unravel. It was not without a fight back from the American public, and those who did not want to conform. There was a vast number of Americans that did not support the law or the decision. Many viewed it as their personal liberty being snatched away, as they didn't view drinking as a crime. And there was also going to be a persistent demand for alcohol, no matter the regulation. Across the country, resistance began to build.

Unsurprisingly, people found a way to get around this legislation. Urban nightlife reorganized itself around speakeasies and other covert venues that normalized, routine drinking and law-breaking in many communities. Prohibition, it's really important to note, did not end drinking culture. It transformed it. So it took it into a world of cocktails, private drinking spaces, and eroded respect for law and law enforcement because non-compliance was widespread and normalized.

Drinking at the time was deeply embedded in everyday life. in everyday life, and was seen more as a constant than as a reward or a treat, no matter what social class. Wealthy Americans continued to drink, and with relative ease, they were able to stockpile alcohol before the law was passed, purchase liquor through private clubs, and obtain it through medical prescriptions. But for some, prohibition wasn't a restriction. It was an opportunity for many, and one that Charles'

Walgreens recognized early on. Walgreens, which still operates to this day, expanded from just 20 stores, selling pharmaceuticals, medications, and soda fountain products, to over 500 stores across the country by 1930, driven in part by the sales of medicinal whiskey from doctors' prescriptions. The loophole exploited the Volstead Act at the time, claiming it was for medicinal purposes, treating influenza, indigestion, and high blood pressure. The whiskey being sold was known as Spiritus Frumenti, or Spirits of Grain. The prescription alone costs three to four U.S. dollars, which totals to over $100 in today's currency, turning pharmacists at the time into licensed liquor dealers.

It was estimated that there were 11 million prescriptions. written annually during the era. But while the wealthy and entrepreneurs found loopholes, the working class faced a far more dangerous reality. They could not afford the premiums, so had to rely on other more creative and often dangerous methods. Demand for alcohol was met through many networks, smuggling, illegal distilling, hidden distribution, and this was often protected by swathes of bribery and political connections. At home, many people turned to home brewing, making their own substitutes, and exploited legal ambiguities and shifting enforcement interpretations. From this came the rise of new secret drinking spaces. As the primary social and

drinking venue for the lower class, the saloons, were shut down across the country, they were replaced with underground, unregulated private spaces, known as speak-easies. This stems from the need for secrecy and avoiding detection. The locations often required passwords to enter, or secret-coded knocks, and designated songs to warn of police raids. Alcohol was served behind unmarked doors, basements, and back rooms of legitimate businesses, shops, funeral homes, cafes, and private homes. So it didn't result in an end to Americans drinking alcohol.

It just entirely changed the ways in which they did so. Not only did it change how the public were drinking, it also forged a change in how it was supplied, especially by people who operated outside the law. So this begs the question. How did these ways change on the other side? of the coin. How did the criminal underworld exploit prohibition? Prohibition produced an enormous illegal market with high profits. Supplying alcohol became a central revenue stream for criminal groups.

It created a new breed of gangsters, undreamed-of wealth, and astonishing geographic reach. One way in which the crime world was able to keep the liquor flowing on the streets of America was because of Rum Row. Rum Row refers to a line of ships that were anchored just off the U.S. coast acting as floating liquor stores to bypass the amendment. The ships were meticulously placed just outside of federal jurisdiction to sell alcohol to the smaller, faster boats, known as contract boats, which would then smuggle the goods to shore and fuel speakeasies across the nation. famous rum runner Captain Billy McCoy was credited with creating this concept,

selling high-quality, uncut alcohol on his ship, the schooner Arathusa, granting him the name the real McCoy. Organized crime set up large smuggling operations across the Canadian and Mexican borders, as well as managing illegal shipping routes from the Caribbean. In Canada, distilleries like Hiram Walker transported liquor across. across the Great Lakes and the Detroit River along the northern border, with Windsor and Montreal acting as the hubs for trans-shipment points. The Mexican border in the south was also a key entry point for tequila and mescal,

using routes through Juarez and Tijuana to move alcohol to the southwest and California. Such was the success of these smuggling networks, that the Coast Guard had no choice but to expand its fleet to counter them. In the networks they set up, there was real what we would now call vertical integration. Successful gangs controlled production, importation, distribution, retail protection. They turned alcohol into an organized industry substitute from beginning to end, top to bottom. Around that, bribery of police and officials became a campaign. calculated investment to reduce risk, secure territory, and protect supply lines.

And inevitably, violence increased where gangs competed for routes and retail territory. One of the most notorious criminals in American history rose to power as a top Chicago bootleggar, creating a massive criminal enterprise, manufacturing and smuggling alcohol, evading tax and authorities, and committing great acts of violence in order to seize breweries, distilleries, and smuggling routes to dominate Chicago's monopoly. That man is, of course, Al Capone, and he is responsible for one of the most famous mob killings in American history. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre took place on February 14, 1929 in Chicago, when four to six men, including some disguised as Police officers executed seven members of George Bugs Moran's Northside Gang. The victims were lined up against a wall in a garage and killed with Thompson submachine guns.

The hit was largely blamed on George Moran's rival mobster Al Capone, as he aimed to seize control of Chicago organized crime. If you would like to hear more about Chicago's criminal underworld and what became of Al Capone and his empire. Please check out our previous episode, Al Capone, America's most notorious gangster. But the crimes in relation to Prohibition did not just stop there. Very quickly, Prohibition didn't just reshape crime. It reshaped mindsets and culture in many unexpected ways.

At the time, Southern bootleggers were modifying cars, so they were able to transport heavy loads of liquor with upgraded engines for speed to outrun federal agents while transporting illegal alcohol. These were known as the original stock cars. These runners or whiskey trippers were bootleggers with a passion for speed, and this, paired with their expert driving skills, was the perfect combination. To evade police, the cars were designed to look completely ordinary from the outside, hiding their true capabilities. The drivers were highly skilled in navigating the winding dirt roads at speed.

They drove at night, with no headlights to avoid detection, and even developed the bootleg turn, a signature maneuver of a controlled skid to turn the car 180 degrees in mere seconds to escape the onrushing police patrols. This rum-running culture laid the foundations for what would later become known as NASCAR,

the extremely popular, all-American, high-speed motorsport. The criminals began to run circles around law enforcement, and the government was struggling to keep up with the abundance of their new innovations. Prohibition enforcement was collapsing. The federal agents marshalling America had to think of a way to combat this sudden crime wave and lay down some new rules of their own. Enforcement initially sat in the Treasury sphere, the IRS Internal Revenue, creating a prohibition unit bureau with policing tasks and responsibilities that did not fit

its traditional revenue work. There was also a serious absence of initial funding and limited early manpower relative to the scale of national enforcement required. In such a large territory, policing coast coastlines, borders and vast internal markets required capacities the federal government simply did not have in the 1920s, especially against well-funded smugglers. At the same time, enforcement agencies were plagued by corruption and in many places successfully sabotaged. As a result, courts and prisons faced increasing case lows.

Prohibition violations competed with other priorities, reinforcing some of the priorities, reinforcing selective enforcement and plea bargaining at all levels. Not all in government, however, were as trustworthy as their reputations implied. Many officials were also complicit in some major scandals taking place. The federal government allowed for the poisoning of industrial alcohol with a number of chemicals, such as methanol, benzene, and gasoline to deter illegal alcohol consumption. assumption. Bootleggers at the time often failed to redistill the alcohol, selling it on as moonshine or sometimes rot-gut, which in some cases caused blindness, paralysis, and death. Many felt that due to

the laws of prohibition, the U.S. government had sanctioned the poisoning of its own citizens. Critics even went as far as labeling the policy as deadly government coercion. with the medical examiner of New York City, Charles Norris, estimating that the poisonings killed at least 10,000 people. Despite the known dangers, demand for alcohol across the country and the difficulty of removing the toxic chemicals led to high rates of consumption, becoming the major public health disaster of the era.

The government had to put a stop to the illegal bootlegging of alcohol and create an actual sense of alcohol, regulation concerning the laws they had put in place. America had become a free-for-all and was even more dangerous and crime-driven than before the alcohol ban. Something had to be done to restore control and enforce the law more effectively. In response, the government resorted to hiring specialist prohibition agents, among them was Elliot Ness.

Elliot Ness was a federal prohibition agent who led a small all carefully selected enforcement team in Chicago, who became nicknamed the Untouchables. This nickname signalled their relative resistance to bribery in a corrupt environment and was amplified by the press and officials which shaped public memory of them and their legacy. Ness's strategy emphasised targeting breweries and distilleries and disrupting Al Capone's revenue by raids and investigations, rather than street-level saloon raids. And ultimately, Copone's decisive federal conviction in 1931 was for income tax evasion.

Ness's efforts contributed to pressure and publicity, but they were not the principal legal basis for Al Capone's conviction. However, by this stage the tide had turned, and the whole violent experience of prohibition had killed off much popular support. for the Temperance movement. Ness ultimately became a prohibition era symbol, but he was not quite the figure that he was later mythologized as. In stark contrast to Elliot Ness and his team,

as corruption continued to be rife, it had even made its way up to government officials. During this era in the United States, federal and local agents responsible for enforcement that were poorly paid were notoriously corrupt. corrupt. Many accepted bribes, and some were even bootleggers themselves. The prohibition agents, or proes, faced a challenging task with a lack of training and low salaries, which tempted them by the allure of well-paid, yet illegal jobs from the cash-strapped bootleggers. The problem was

institutionally significant, with at least 100 agents fired in New York alone by the end of 1921. Agents at the time were not hired due to meritocracy, but because of their connections, which ultimately led to a collection of political hacks vulnerable to corruption. One of whom was the man in the green hat, George L. Cassidy. He was the primary bootleggar for the members of Congress. He operated with exemption to the law for five years, delivering up to 20, bottles of illegal alcohol daily to House and Senate office buildings. A key phrase at the time was bootleggers and Baptists, coined by economist Bruce Yandel, describing how this dynamic created unlikely political coalitions.

Baptists and other evangelical groups provided the moral high ground for the law, while bootleggers profited immensely from the restricted market and used bribes, to ensure weak enforcement. But the final blow to prohibition didn't come from crime. It came from economic collapse. Repeal eventually became central to democratic national politics

and featured large in the 1932 election context. The Great Depression at the time was biting hard and repeal promised tax revenue and jobs through legal brewing, distilling, regulated sales and distribution. Roosevelt backed early legalization of low alcohol beer and wine up to 3.2% before moving to full constitutional repeal. Black Tuesday, October 29th, 1929,

was the deepest downturn in America's financial history. The stock market had crashed. Banks were failing. There was a loss of consumer demand. People's savings had vanished. Workers were laid off due to mass production of goods, and high tariffs heavily reduced international trade. Millions of Americans were left unemployed without an income, and the unemployment rate had nearly reached 25%.

Homelessness grew, and being on the breadline became a common occurrence. Prohibition ended via the 21st Amendment, which is the only amendment in America's history that entirely repeals another amendment. Congress proposed the repeal amendment on February 20, 1933. Ratification used state conventions, not state legislatures, which is the only time this method has ever been used for a constitutional amendment. It took effect on December 5, 1933, after the 36th state, Utah, ratified, and certification followed the same day. Something needed to change to save America from the Great Depression, and Franklin D. Roosevelt moved to repeal prohibition.

Roosevelt saw it as a way to boost national morale, generate tax revenue, and put a stop to the organized crime that was running the streets of America, and get the nation. out of the financial crisis. Repeal ended the federal constitutional ban, but left major authority over alcohol regulation to individual states, which became the foundation for enduring state-by-state divergence

on their alcohol legislation. Repeal institutionalized a regulatory regime where states hold primary authority, producing lasting variation, control states, licensing systems, local options, dry areas. Regulation institutionalized the modern framework in which states have their own control

over alcohol, licensing and distribution. Prohibition was now over with the introduction of the repeal, but did it actually achieve any of its goals? Public Health Scholarship generally finds substantial initial reductions in alcohol consumption. alcohol consumption, with partial rebound over time as illegal markets adapted. Work on cirrhosis, for example, finds prohibition contributed to reductions in an order of somewhere between 10 to 20% in cirrhosis mortality. On the other hand, prohibition enforcement

is linked to higher violence and homicide, and repeal is associated with homicide declines. Even where health gains existed, widespread routine law-breaking and corruption undercut respect for the law more generally. Along with the noticeable failures, prohibition saw some success. There was reduction in alcohol consumption, as that rate dropped by an estimated 30 to 50% during the period. Alongside this, admissions to mental hospitals for alcoholic psychosis had declined. work-related absences were less common, and there was a general improved productivity in many industries. Street-corner saloons were destroyed, and replaced by the less public but quieter speak-easies, which are now today your typical cocktail bars. However, there were also quite a few failed goals from this experiment.

Prohibition turned America into a hotbed of economic opportunity for criminals, and helped turn them into wealthy, powerful figures. Take Al Capone and his mentor and pioneer of the bootlegging expansion, Johnny Torio, for instance. The widespread corruption brought a very uneasy feeling to the daily life of many Americans. This led to extreme contempt for the law. Instead of temperate behavior, it led to mass civil disobedience and ordinary citizens frequently breaking the law to drink. despite the dangers of unregulated alcohol.

Prohibition era enforcement helped expand federal investigative practice and bureaucratic capacity. Post-repeel America did not go back to its former laissez-faire approach. It moved towards structured regulation, with taxation, licensing and distribution all much more tightly controlled. Another consequence was that bootlegging profits and organizational learning helped strengthen criminal syndicates and normalized corruption problems that later policy and policing had to confront. Prohibition remains one of the most frequently referenced historical examples in debates over drug policy and regulation.

Many policymakers to this day still argue that the prohibition of widely demanded substances can create unintended consequences, including black markets, organized crimes, and reduced product safety. For this reason, the experience of the 1920s is often included in discussions about drug prohibition, cannabis legislation, and harm reduction strategies. Supporters of regulation argue that controlled legal markets with taxation, safety standards, and licensing can reduce crime while protecting public health.

Opponents do still point to the early temperance movement's concerns about addiction, family harm, and social costs. As a result, the debate over prohibition has never fully disappeared. It has simply evolved into new forms over time. Prohibition was not a success. Organized crime set up large smuggling operations across the Canadian and Mexican borders, as well as managing illegal shipping routes from the Caribbean. It was a failed 13-year experiment whose main legacy was a sophisticated nationwide criminal infrastructure.

Prohibition is a canonical case of how broadbands on mass-demand goods can shift supply to illicit markets, affect product safety and fuel crime. It will unfortunately only be remembered for its criminal. connotations, and how it instilled new life into inventive ways for criminals to line their pockets and get away with it, institutionalized right from the very top. It left a lasting shift in how Americans viewed the law itself. For the first time on such a massive scale, ordinary citizens

were willing to ignore, bend, or outright break the law, not out of necessity, but because they fundamentally disagreed with it. When laws are seen as too harsh or out of touch with everyday life, people stop respecting the system that created them. Prohibition showed that legislation without public support is not only ineffective, but can actively fuel the very problems it aims to solve. This leaves us with our final question. How did the failure of this noble experiment transform American's public faith in the law. And are we still falling into the same traps today? Thanks for exploring the past with us today.

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