Dry January 1920...the start of the Prohibition era
This week marks 100 years since Prohibition was established in the USA.
On January 17, 1920, the 18th Amendment came into effect and saw a ban on making, selling and transporting alcohol in order to reduce crime and improve health, amongst other reasons. However, it resulted in an increase in the illegal production and selling of alcohol and a rise in gang crime.
State police, who hunt rum runners during Prohibition, in 1924. (AP Photo)
A rum runner in Windsor, on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, watches with field glasses for lookout on the American side to signal that no Prohibition agents are in sight, April 28, 1929. His outboard motorboat, loaded with illegal liquor, is shown beneath pilings. (AP Photo)
Customs officers are familiar with all the tricks of the rum runner who uses an automobile, as this agent on the Detroit side of the border shows as he examines a hidden compartment behind the back seat, Nov. 26, 1929. (AP Photo/DJW)
Prohibition agents uncover about $300,000 worth of liquor concealed in a pile of coal when they boarded the coal steamer Maurice Tracy in New York harbor on April 8, 1932. The inspectors shovelled coal for about an hour before they discovered the 3,000 bags of bottled beverages. (AP Photo)
Rae Samuels holds the last bottle of beer that was distilled before Prohibition went into effect in Chicago, Ill., Dec. 29, 1930. The bottle of Schlitz has been insured for $25,000. (AP Photo)
The largest distillery ever uncovered in Detroit was raided and Prohibition officers are seen inspecting tanks and vats in one part of the plant, on January 5, 1931. Each of these vats have a capacity of 15,000 gallons and there were thirteen on this floor alone. (AP Photo)
U.S. customs agents unload the 700 cases of Canadian Scotch Whiskey from the fishing trawler "Notus," which was captured by the U.S. Coast Guard off Montauk Point, Long Island, N.Y., February 23, 1931. (AP Photo)
Authorities unload cases of whiskey crates labeled as green tomatoes from a refrigerator car in the Washington yards on May 15, 1929. The grower's express cargo train was en route from Holandale, Fla., to Newark, N.J. (AP Photo)
Prohibition agents in Atlanta, May 24, 1931, intercepted a carload shipment of liquor billed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Chicago, as vegetables poking behind a few crates of string beans and potatoes just inside the doors of the car. The Prohibition men found crates of pint bottles of whiskey, several thousand in number, piled five deep in the freight car. Three squads of convicts are shown breaking up the bottles with sledge-hammers. Officers valued the car at $50,000. A telegram from Fort Lauderdale "tipped" the federal men that the car was coming through Atlanta. (AP Photo)
Gangster Al Capone, seen with hand to face, is surrounded by bodyguards whilst leaving the Federal Building in Chicago, around July 30, 1931, after his case had been adjoined until the afternoon session. Capone is charged with Income Tax evasion and conspiracy to violate the Prohibition Laws. (AP Photo)
Bottles of Scotch whiskey smuggled in hollowed-out loaves of bread are pictured, June 12, 1924, location unknown. (AP Photo)
Estelle Zemon, left, and an unidentified woman model ways to conceal bottles of rum to get past customs officials during the U.S. alcohol Prohibition, March 18, 1931. (AP Photo)
Estelle Zemon shows the vest and pant-apron used to conceal bottles of alcohol to deceive customs officials during the U.S. alcohol Prohibition, March 18, 1931. (AP Photo)
A "beer for taxation" rally makes its way in mid-Manhattan, New York, May 14, 1932. The demonstration was led by Mayor James J. Walker. (AP Photo)
Delegates to the convention of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform gather in front of the Capitol Building for a group photo in Washington, D.C., April 13, 1932. The W.O.N.P.R. delegation is on hand to call on their representatives and senators to repeal the dry law. (AP Photo)
Over a decade later support for Prohibition was waning and by 1933 the 21st Amendment saw the end of the Prohibition Era.
At a desk in the cabinet room President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Cullen-Harrison Act, or "Beer Bill", the first relaxation of the Volstead Act in all the years of Prohibition, March 22, 1933, in Washington. With its signature, the new law will permit the sale of beer and wine containing 3.2% alcohol from midnight of April 6. (AP Photo)
August A. Busch, Sr., center, son of the founder of the nation's largest brewery, and his two sons, Adolphus III, left, and August Jr., seal the first case of beer off the line for air express delivery to U.S. President Roosevelt at the bottling plant of the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis, Mo., at midnight on the day of the repeal of Prohibition, April 6, 1933. (AP Photo)
Dorothy Wentworth, right, is shown with a friend at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, Dec. 5, 1933 to enjoy their first legal cocktail party in many years. (AP Photo)
Art students hustling an effigy of Prohibition into a coffin at the Art Students League building in New York on Dec. 4, 1933. A procession trip along Fifth Avenue will follow. (AP Photo)
As soon as the Prohibition repeal was ratified, wholesale houses got busy delivering the goods to anxious customers, as seen in New York, Dec. 5, 1933. The first shipment from the historic winery of Mouquin Inc. in Brooklyn, is shown leaving the warehouse for Roth's. (AP Photo)
A crowd gathers as kegs of beer are unloaded in front of a restaurant on Broadway in New York City, the morning of April 7, 1933, when low-alcohol beer is legalized again. (AP Photo)
This is the scene in one of the Chicago Loop hotels when beer started flowing, April 7, 1933, following the repeal of Prohibition. (AP Photo)