Prohibition: Daring women of the rum-running empire

 

Miami liquor raid 1925
Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

Women played a part (or tried to) in rum-running from the Bahamas to South Florida during Prohibition (1920-1933).

Gloria de Cesares, 29, reportedly born in Argentina and educated in England, founded the Gloria Steamship Company to run her illicit enterprise. An accomplished navigator, she bought a British five-masted schooner, the General Serret, and loaded it with liquor for a trip to the Bahamas.  She didn’t get far. The cargo of the General Serret was discovered, perhaps by a tip from its unhappy captain, before the ship left port, ending de Cesares’ rum-running career.

“Spanish Marie” Waites was far more successful; she headed up a “rum-running empire” after her husband was killed during one murky mission. Some say he was shot, others say he drowned after Marie pushed him overboard.

The tall, darkly attractive woman “strutted with a revolver strapped to her waist, a big knife stuck in her belt and a red bandana tied round her head.”  Spanish Marie commanded a fleet of 15 to 20 radio-equipped speed boats that outran U.S. Coast Guard vessels for years. She delivered rum from the Florida Keys to Palm Beach. In 1928 she was caught unloading liquor with the help of her crew in Coconut Grove. A $500 bail was posted then raised to $3,000 when she failed to appear in court. She disappeared leaving no other traces to history.

By Oscar E Cesare, Puck Magazine 1915
Criticizing alliance of women's suffragettes 
and Prohibition advocates

Gertrude Lythgoe, a Californian who went to New York and then worked for a London liquor distributor, became known as the “Bahama Queen” for her efforts. At the behest of her employer, she set up shop in Nassau where she became the only woman to hold a wholesale liquor license.  Lythgoe’s reputation as a comely, well-read, tough (she threatened to shoot one of her critics), liquor distributor grew. She later wrote about her exploits in Bahama Queen: the Autobiography of Gertrude “Cleo” Lythgoe. Copyright © 2011. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Tags: Prohibition, women's history, Florida history

Sources:

Behr, Edward. Prohibition: Thirteen Years That Changed America. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996.

Ling, Sally J. Run the Rum In: South Florida During Prohibition. Charleston: History Press, 2007

Willoughby, Malcom F. Rum War at Sea. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964.

Prohibition arrests leave Broward, Fort Lauderdale high and dry without local law enforcement

Man raising his glass in a toast. 19--.
 State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory.

By Jane Feehan

Liquor flowed to and from South Florida during Prohibition (1920-1933) and according to Jacksonville-based Federal Prohibition Administrator P.F. Hambsch, many across the nation knew about it.

In 1926 Hambsch decided to clean up that reputation.

In April that year, he wrote to Broward Sheriff Paul C. Bryan outlining the problem and asked for monthly reports on arrests of bootleggers and seizures to refute the widely-held notion that little was being done to enforce the law. According to Broward County Sheriff historian, William P. Cahill, Bryan said he “was ready to cooperate.”

Cooperation included Bryan’s invitation to send agents so he could get to know them. Unbeknown to Bryan, two agents were sent to work undercover as bootleggers for three months, gathering evidence for arrests. They paid $750 to the sheriff and his men in weekly installments of $5-$15.  

With protection payments, bootleggers enjoyed full police protection to make and then distribute booze to Miami, Palm Beach and other east coast resorts. There was evidence a few bootlegging rings were financed by some wealthy and respected citizens of Broward County and Fort Lauderdale. (And so evolved the moniker, Fort Liquordale).

In January 1927, raids were conducted by 18 agents, and a few Coast Guardsmen and customs inspectors, resulting in 41 (some say 32) arrests, including Sheriff Bryan, Broward County’s second sheriff, all six of his deputies, Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Bert Croft and eight patrolmen. The raiders seized eight large stills, 10,000 gallons of mash, 300 gallons of moonshine and a quantity of bottled beer.

The arrested lawmen were brought to the Coast Guard Station (near today’s Bahia Mar). They were heavily armed but their weapons were confiscated. Bail was set at $5,000 for Bryan and Croft; for the others, $2,000. The arrests left Broward County and Fort Lauderdale without local law enforcement, but according to Cahill, Bryan served out his term until 1929.The Broward Sheriff’s website states he served until 1927.

Paul Bryan, son of Louis H. and Elizabeth Bryan, was born in Volusia County in 1891 and came with his family to Fort Lauderdale in 1900. His father helped lay out the town of Fort Lauderdale. After Paul left the Sheriff’s Office, he helped run the Dania café owned by his wife, Maude Henson Bryan. Bryan died in 1942; his wife died in 1988 at age 90. Local history is framed (and here, peppered) by Bryan family civic contributions.

Sources:

The New York Times, Jan. 28, 1927

William P. Cahill, Broward Legacy, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2004)

www.sheriff.org

Roots Web



Tags: Prohibition, Broward County, Florida, Jane Feehan, Fort Lauderdale history

Al Capone and "Capone Island" Deerfield Beach: facts and folklore

Capone in 1930 (FBI) see below*

By Jane Feehan

Al Capone folklore in Florida is nearly as ubiquitous as that of George Washington visiting towns during America's War for Independence.

The storied visits of our first president were based on fact. Not so with gangster Capone. Yes, he did live and die on Miami’s Palm Island. He did drive up the South Florida coast for recreation and to seek business opportunities during the boom times of the 1920s. But he did not buy what became known as “Capone Island” in the Intracoastal Waterway off Deerfield Beach.

During 1928 or 1929, the gangster and a few friends stopped at a speakeasy just south of Boca Raton, where Capone viewed a peninsula jutting out into the water off the north bank of the Hillsboro Canal west of the Intracoastal Waterway. The secluded, vacant property probably looked like an ideal place to conduct some bootlegging biz during Prohibition. Capone made an offer for the southeast portion of the peninsula.

A Saint Petersburg, FL, newspaper reported in 1930 that Judge Vincent C. Giblin, “chief of Al Capone’s legal staff in Miami,” was going to buy the property where Capone was to build a residence for $250,000 and a pool for $125,000. This was, no doubt, hyperbole. The Chicago gangster had paid only $40,000 for his Miami Palm Island digs in 1928. The reporter editorialized that Capone’s “presence in Miami is destructive; his presence in Broward County, close to the Boca Raton Club in Palm Beach County, will be destructive to the club and both counties.”

The state was willing to make a deal but the transaction never materialized for two reasons: Boca Raton residents did not want Capone in the neighborhood and the state wanted a road to be built on the property. The road was the deal breaker; Capone walked away. Anyway, he would not have had much time to enjoy it.  In 1932, at 33 years old, he was convicted of tax evasion and sent to Alcatraz for seven years.

Today the 53-acre property is Deerfield Island, operating as a Broward County park since 1981 after it was leased from the state for 99 years. Waterway dredging during the 1960s created a canal, which turned the peninsula into an island (Capone's vision?) The park serves as a popular Boy Scout camp, wildlife refuge and recreational area for boaters and hikers. Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

See more on Capone on this blog.

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Sources:

Evening Independent, Saint Petersburg, FL. July 19, 1930

The Day, New London, CT, Jan. 25, 1985

Broward County

Wikipedia - Al Capone in 1930" by Wide World Photos, Chicago Bureau (Federal Bureau of Investigation)  Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - 

Tags: Al Capone, Capone in Florida, Deerfield Island, Broward County history, Fort Lauderdale historian, Miami historian

Bruce Stanley Bethel, Bimini Rum King

Barely visible, Bimini is in The Bahamas
West District
40 miles off Florida

By Jane Feehan

Prohibition (1920-1933) proved to be a financial boon to organized crime as well as to the adventurous. Illicit liquor trafficking also benefited The Bahamas where much of it was traded and stored before it made its way to the speakeasies, warehouses and alcove hideaways along the South Florida coast.

About forty miles off Miami lies the small island of Bimini, part of the Bahamian archipelago. Today it is known more for its game fishing opportunities than for its role during the Prohibition era when its dangerous shoals provided cover for smugglers. Before the 1920s, island inhabitants made a subsistence living off the “wracks” or wrecks of ships that met their demise atop those shoals.

Bimini shoreline
Florida State Archives

After 1920, things changed with Bruce Stanley Bethel, a quiet, retired British soldier. A polite man who was said to have attended church regularly, “Bethel of Bimini” helped island inhabitants, mostly blacks, make a comfortable living from the brisk export liquor trade. A veteran beset with debilitating war wounds, Bethel welcomed smugglers with a few heavily padlocked warehouses of liquor. His business was licensed.

A long, spindly dock made of twisted mangrove roots pointed the way to the first of several warehouses

NASA photo of the boomerang-shaped island

Bethel built for the liquid gold.  Some said the amount of liquor stored there was impressive—enough to “bewilder the mind.” A bar was installed in the first one, where conviviality reigned and customers were encouraged by one of Bethel’s minions (he rarely entered the warehouses) to sample rather than buy. Today we’d call that good marketing.

Bethel probably picked up some of his marketing skills in Nassau where he and his brother operated a liquor store. When the Volstead Act of 1919 opened the window to Prohibition, Bethel saw opportunity. He looked at a map and pointed to the boomerang-shaped Bimini. A supply of liquor close to the Florida coast could reap profits. He loaded up two chartered schooners with liquor and set sail for the tiny island. The liquor salesman opened a business within hours of his arrival.  Within a few years, Bethel’s prestige among the island’s 300-500 British subjects was rivaled only by that of its resident commissioner.

Besides building warehouses, Bethel converted a concrete ship, the SS Sapona into a warehouse. He purchased the ship from Miami Beach developer Carl G. Fisher in 1924. Its engines were stripped out and sold; Bethel had the ship towed to Bimini where he used it for liquor storage. It sunk in the hurricane of 1926. Rather than serving as a tangible reminder of rum running days,  the old ship today serves as an artificial reef, attracting divers from around the world. (For years it was used for military target practice; most of the concrete on its hull is gone.)

A case of liquor from one of those warehouses purchased for $18 could be sold as high as $100 in Florida. By 1928, Bethel estimated that he had sold more than $3 million – at island prices – of liquor.  But, in a few short years it was over for Bimini.  Traffic had shifted, according to W.T. Cleare, the island’s commissioner, to Gun Cay. The glory of Bimini as smugglers’ paradise faded into history. Bruce Stanley Bethel died penniless in 1950.

Sources:

The New York Times, Aug. 5, 1925.

The New York Times, 18, 1928.

www.concreteships.org

Tags: Florida rum running days, Prohibition and the Bahamas, smugglers in Bimini, Bimini bootleggers, Bruce Stanley Bethel, historical researcher, Florida film researcher, SS Sapona 

Whence the name Fort Liquordale?

By Jane Feehan

Some link the rollicking Spring Break days on Fort Lauderdale beach in the 1960s and 70s with the city’s nickname, “Fort Liquordale.” Others associate it with the city’s partying reputation among some tourists today.

In fact, the name came about during Prohibition (1920 -1933) when bootlegging – carrying liquor by boat from the Bahamas, Cuba and other places to Florida – was a way to earn a living during the mean days of the Depression.

Rum raids were conducted periodically in Broward County to enforce the 18^th Amendment (in effect January 16, 1920, repealed by the 21^st Amendment December 5, 1933). One such raid netted Broward Sheriff Paul Bryan, his deputies, the assistant chief of police Bert Croft, and his men - 32 in all. The arrests grabbed headlines throughout South Florida. One article article above declares: Every Dry Enforcement Agency in the U.S. Takes Part in Huge Mopping Up Drive in Fort Lauderdale District.

The officers, including Bryan, were cleared in a 1929 trial. News accounts of the era describe “fruitful rum raids” and “rum sleuths” ... and thus we have the name, Fort Liquordale. Rum Runners, anyone? 

Copyright © 201, 2022 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

For more on Prohibition, see:

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2020/11/prohibition-daring-women-of-rum-running.html

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2015/12/prohibition-arrests-leave-broward-fort.html

https://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2014/03/prohibition-and-only-legal-hanging-in.html

Sources:

Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia (2004).

Weidling, Philip J. and Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966

Miami News, Jan. 27, 1927

University of Houston - digital collection

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Tags: Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale beach, Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale restaurants, Fort Liquordale, Prohibition