“Noble Experiment” of Prohibition led to increased gang activity, several shocking murders, and widespread defiance in the Nutmeg state.
By Philip R. Devlin.
Noted film makers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick debuted their latest documentary in October of 2011 on PBS: Prohibition – a three-part film running 5 ½ hours. The Era of Prohibition itself began on January 17, 1920, exactly one year after the ratification of the 18th Amendment, which prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors…within the United States.” Congress passed the Volstead Act in October of 1919, despite the veto of President Woodrow Wilson (former varsity football coach at Wesleyan University in Middletown.) Two states in the Union did not ratify the 18th Amendment: Rhode Island and Connecticut. In fact, the reaction of the people of Connecticut to Prohibition can be summed up in one word: hostility.
The Connecticut state senate had defeated ratification of the 18th Amendment by a vote of 20-14 (see photo), prompting the New Haven Journal Courier to say: “Connecticut is alone entitled to raise the flag of freedom in her hands and wave it aloft.” The Hartford Courant called the 18th Amendment a “highly dangerous invasion of the rights of individual states.”
Violations of Prohibition in Connecticut were widespread and led to an increase in both gang activity and violent crime. In October 1920, Joseph Renaldino was found murdered in a car in Farmington after trying to collect $2,000 in “booze money.” Renaldino was known to have had ties to organized crime in New York City. In 1927, a bootlegger named Harry Kitone was murdered in West Haven after allegedly doublecrossing his gang. Another bootlegger named “Big John” Costanzo was killed execution-style in his car in Waterbury.
Though citizens could legally get alcohol in a pharmacy for medicinal purposes with a doctor’s prescription, most found it very easy to obtain alcohol illegally from coastal rumrunners or from stills within the state. In May of 1923, state police seized four 100-gallon stills run by moonshiners in Stafford Springs. Four years later, police seized a boat in the Branford River containing 100 barrels of whiskey.
The Castle Inn at Old Saybrook was widely known to serve alcohol to its guests. Owned by Otto and Margaret Lindbergh, relatives of aviator Charles Lindbergh, the inn concealed liquor behind false walls and in large closets in guest rooms. Some of the more famous visitors during this period included Charlie Chaplin, Helen Hayes, and Ethel Barrymore, who actually acted in a play at the Old Saybrook Town Hall Theater.
The Castle Inn, however, was hardly the only place in Connecticut where illegal liquor could be obtained. An October 14, 1921, article in the Bridgeport Telegram quotes state prohibition director Harry MacKenzie as stating that there were an estimated 1,500 saloons still operational in Connecticut – 400 in New Haven alone! In addition, Mackenzie estimated that there were at least a dozen active breweries in Connecticut.
Prohibition was not enforced beyond three miles off the coast; therefore, many ships offshore unloaded liquor onto speedboats which then transported the cargo to shore, especially in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Another smuggling technique was to simply float barrels of liquor ashore with the tide.
Easily obtained liquor fueled the party atmosphere of the Roaring 20s. No one represented the excesses of that decade better than Stamford native Lois Long. Educated at Vassar, Long wrote about the party scene in New York City under the pseudonym “Lipstick” for a brand new magazine called the New Yorker. “Lipstick” summed up her approach to life in the Roaring 20s this way: “Tomorrow we may die, so let’s get drunk and make love.”
It is clear that the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in Connecticut did little to stop its consumption in the Nutmeg State. Enforcement of the Volstead Act by the paltry squad of 13 federal prohibition agents assigned here was ineffective. The same could be said for other states as well. The Burns film, for example, estimates that over 30,000 saloons served alcohol in New York City during the 1920s! By 1930 more than 3/4ths of Americans wanted Prohibition repealed. Its nullification was part of the Democratic Party’s platform with FDR in 1932, and in 1933 the 21st Amendment repealed Prohibition effective December 5th of that year. Termed by President Herbert Hoover a “noble experiment,” Prohibition received a chilly reception in Connecticut from beginning to end.
Photos in the public domain.
