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| Cause of death - Alcohol Poisoning |
In the 1920s through to the mid-1930s, bootlegged whiskey and liquor that was made in homemade stills and gins often made people sick. That's because the liquor produced in these well-hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities.
But on December 24, 1926, it wasn’t tainted gin that poisoned them. It was the U.S. government.
To keep people from drinking during Prohibition, the government reverted to poison: redistilled industrial-grade alcohol. This was liquor that was initially produced for things like cleaning supplies and paint.
When they added unpleasant chemicals so that people wouldn't drink it, they called it "denaturing." It was tactic that had been used once before, back in 1906 for manufacturers who wanted to avoid taxes on spirits.
During Prohibition, people would steal the industrial alcohol and re-process it into a somewhat palatable liquor, then sell it to thirsty Americans, like Antonio Rizzo, who was arrested in Brooklyn in 1922 at the Eureka Chemical Company when he had in his possession 25 gallons of denatured alcohol and a reprocessing machine. They threw him in jail.
But pretty soon, the government decided that jailing these offenders wasn’t enough.
So in 1926, the President Calvin Coolidge's Administration decided to make the booze more toxic in the hopes that this would deter people from drinking the stuff.
The government ordered companies to add even more additives to the industrial alcohol, which actually made it lethal.
The government wanted to scare people into giving up drinking.
It didn’t work.
Instead, by the end of Prohibition in 1933, the federal poisoning program had killed at least 10,000 people.
There was an incident in 1928 in which 33 people in Manhattan died in three days, mostly from drinking wood alcohol.
The government made no attempt to pretend that increasing the denaturing formula wouldn’t lead to deaths.
Seymour M. Lowman, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition, told citizens of the upper echelon of society that drinkers were "dying off fast from poison 'hooch' and that if the result was a more sober America, "a good job will have been done."
Industrial alcohol itself was a deadly cocktail of chemicals. A list of the additives and their uses from studies done by the New York City medical examiner in 1928 included the following:
Kerosene: A fuel made of distilled petroleum used today in jet engines, lamps, and cleaning solvent.
Brucine: A bitter and extremely poisonous alkaloid found in the seeds of the nux vomica plant that is used as an additive in lubricants and local anesthetics.
Gasoline: Refined petroleum used for internal combustion engines.
Benzene: A liquid from coal tar and petroleum that used to be in solvents, but is no longer used because it’s extremely carcinogenic.
Cadmium: A metal that resembles tin that’s used in plating, metal alloys, batteries, and pigments.
Zinc: A metal found in brass and used to galvanize iron and steel to protect against corrosion.
Mercury salts: A chemical compound of mercury and chlorine.
Nicotine: The chief active ingredient of tobacco that is also used in insecticides.
Ether: A highly flammable liquid used as an anesthetic and as a solvent.
Formaldehyde: A compound made from oxidized methyl alcohol that’s used as a disinfectant and preservative in resins and plastics.
Chloroform: A liquid used as a solvent that used to also be used as a general anesthetic.
Camphor: A crystalline compound used in insect repellent, as well as plastic and explosive production.
Carbolic acid: Also known as phenol, carbolic acid is a highly poisonous compound in antimicrobial and anesthetic solutions.
Quinine: A bitter alkaloid used to treat forms of malaria.
Acetone: A liquid made from oxidized isopropanol used as a solvent.
Just reading that list of additives is enough to make you sick. The government added rat poison, which is defies logic how the government didn't think that 'liquor' wasn't lethal enough to kill.
To keep people from drinking during Prohibition, the government reverted to poison: redistilled industrial-grade alcohol. This was liquor that was initially produced for things like cleaning supplies and paint.
When they added unpleasant chemicals so that people wouldn't drink it, they called it "denaturing." It was tactic that had been used once before, back in 1906 for manufacturers who wanted to avoid taxes on spirits.
During Prohibition, people would steal the industrial alcohol and re-process it into a somewhat palatable liquor, then sell it to thirsty Americans, like Antonio Rizzo, who was arrested in Brooklyn in 1922 at the Eureka Chemical Company when he had in his possession 25 gallons of denatured alcohol and a reprocessing machine. They threw him in jail.
But pretty soon, the government decided that jailing these offenders wasn’t enough.
So in 1926, the President Calvin Coolidge's Administration decided to make the booze more toxic in the hopes that this would deter people from drinking the stuff.
The government ordered companies to add even more additives to the industrial alcohol, which actually made it lethal.
The government wanted to scare people into giving up drinking.
It didn’t work.
Instead, by the end of Prohibition in 1933, the federal poisoning program had killed at least 10,000 people.
There was an incident in 1928 in which 33 people in Manhattan died in three days, mostly from drinking wood alcohol.
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| Bootleggers |
The government made no attempt to pretend that increasing the denaturing formula wouldn’t lead to deaths.
Seymour M. Lowman, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of Prohibition, told citizens of the upper echelon of society that drinkers were "dying off fast from poison 'hooch' and that if the result was a more sober America, "a good job will have been done."
Industrial alcohol itself was a deadly cocktail of chemicals. A list of the additives and their uses from studies done by the New York City medical examiner in 1928 included the following:
Kerosene: A fuel made of distilled petroleum used today in jet engines, lamps, and cleaning solvent.
Brucine: A bitter and extremely poisonous alkaloid found in the seeds of the nux vomica plant that is used as an additive in lubricants and local anesthetics.
Gasoline: Refined petroleum used for internal combustion engines.
Benzene: A liquid from coal tar and petroleum that used to be in solvents, but is no longer used because it’s extremely carcinogenic.
Cadmium: A metal that resembles tin that’s used in plating, metal alloys, batteries, and pigments.
Zinc: A metal found in brass and used to galvanize iron and steel to protect against corrosion.
Mercury salts: A chemical compound of mercury and chlorine.
Nicotine: The chief active ingredient of tobacco that is also used in insecticides.
Ether: A highly flammable liquid used as an anesthetic and as a solvent.
Formaldehyde: A compound made from oxidized methyl alcohol that’s used as a disinfectant and preservative in resins and plastics.
Chloroform: A liquid used as a solvent that used to also be used as a general anesthetic.
Camphor: A crystalline compound used in insect repellent, as well as plastic and explosive production.
Carbolic acid: Also known as phenol, carbolic acid is a highly poisonous compound in antimicrobial and anesthetic solutions.
Quinine: A bitter alkaloid used to treat forms of malaria.
Acetone: A liquid made from oxidized isopropanol used as a solvent.
Just reading that list of additives is enough to make you sick. The government added rat poison, which is defies logic how the government didn't think that 'liquor' wasn't lethal enough to kill.
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