Two Main Street: The Evansville Prohibition

From the WNIN Tri-State Public Media Center in downtown Evansville.

I'm David James and this is Two Main Street.

Now.

Long before there was a bridge across the Ohio River, a ferry carried passengers, vehicles and cargo between Evansville and Henderson.

And in 1919, with alcohol sales banned in Indiana but still legal in Kentucky, before the national prohibition, there was an instant market for booze in Evansville on those ferry trips, gallons of bootleg spirits were hidden in car trunks under tarps and in barrels destined for saloons, hotels and private clubs.

And ironically, booze also arrived on a patrol boat designed to catch the smugglers.

There was big money to be made and a rush to cash in.

So began the whiskey ring conspiracy that involved public officials, notably the police chief of Evansville.

In his book Wide Open Evansville, Author Erick Jones takes us back in time to meet the colorful characters involved, including his own great grandfather, an Evansville police captain who was convicted in the conspiracy case.

And also joining us is Stan Schmitt, Vanderburgh county historian, to give us some perspective of the prohibition times in the city of Evansville.

So, gentlemen, welcome Two Main Street.

Good to have you here.

Now, before we meet the key players in this whiskey conspiracy, can you guys kind of give us a snapshot of Evansville in the early 1900s?

We had saloons, breweries, clubs, a large German-American population and a temperance movement.

So, Erick, let's start with you.

Well, in my book begins in 1913 and I consulted the city directory for that year and it talked about how there was 75 miles of paved road here in Evansville and I think they said there was maybe 80,000 citizens that lived in Evansville at that time.

How had not yet been annexed into Evansville.

And that's the west Side community.

Yes.

And what else?

Well, I know there were a lot of saloons in town.

There were I think there was like 210 union saloons.

Of course, there was a big brewery here in this town at the time.

It was, uh, Cook Brewery.

So Evansville was a big brewery town and Stan, a big German-American population here at that time period, two thirds to three fourths of the people of Evansville had some kind of German relatives there.

There were actually two large breweries at the time.

Stirling was the other on the west side.

But you have to remember too, when this all starts, Evansville and then the whole country of the United States has just gotten into World War One.

So as Prohibition in Indiana kicks in in April 1918, a lot of other things are going on here, Right about the same time German was banned.

Pretty much totally schools, churches.

The German newspaper in Evansville was forced to shut down.

You're also coming almost into the time when the Spanish flu hits Evansville there in the summer of 1918.

People are being encouraged to be super patriotic.

I guess it's because of the German background.

Two of the famous phrases at the time were were there no hyphenated Americans?

There were all Americans.

And then you were 100% American.

And if you weren't hundred percent American, you were pro Kaiser.

So people are trying to prove their patriotic patriotism, especially with the German background here.

Mm hmm.

And, of course, the tradition of brewing in Germany, which carried over to America.

Yeah.

When you get in the time period, like, right, post-Civil War, there were like ten or 12 breweries in Evansville.

By this time, there were just two very large ones.

And when prohibition comes in, it's not just the Brewers breweries that shut down.

It's all the associated businesses was there, the boxes, the bottling, the barrels, the, you know, capping glass, you know, like that.

So prohibition in Evansville isn't just people losing their jobs at the brewery.

There were all kinds of trades involved with who like the Coopers and make the barrels.

I mean, they all had really strong unions at that time.

Yes.

Yes, they sure did.

Now, Erick, of you have a special relationship to this story because of a relative.

Tell us about your great grandfather, who was Captain Andy Friedel.

Yes.

So my grandmother, Jones always told us that we had a high ranking police official, that her father was a high ranking police official.

But it wasn't until later on as an adult that I learned that it was Captain Andy Friedel who was involved in this whiskey ring, the booze going incident.

And so he for the longest time, he and Schmidt were motorcycle officers.

Schmidt was the chief and Schmidt, yeah, Edgar Schmidt, who later became the police chief of police?

Yes.

They were both motorcycle officers under Highlands administration and in 1913, when Mayor Hileman was when there was the mayoral mayoral race, vice and spread from the red light district into the residential areas.

And so there was a real push to replace Hielman And even though even though Edgar Schmidt and my great grandfather were under his administration as as policemen, they were vocal supporters of Bosse.

And so they both ended up getting suspended.

And they used that time to campaign for Bosse and they were credited with swinging the Seventh Ward for for Bosse Mayor Benjamin Bosse, who also was a key figure in all of this.

And now stand.

What was the police department like in the early 1900s?

The Evansville police Department, like the fire department, were changing.

They were becoming more professional, but they were still largely political.

Administrations would change and everybody would, you know, be replaced with political people from the winning party.

So you do have these people that really aren't trained in some cases, or they had been on the police department, you know, years earlier.

You know, when the administration was the same party like that.

So it's not the civil service, you know, the testing where you do it now, though.

But I think one of the postscript to all this, after all the scandal and everything, Mayor Benjamin Bosse wanted a more of a merit system.

Get away with the kind of the patronage system.

I mean, both the police and the fire department.

We'll talk about that later.

So now there's a there's an infamous boat mentioned in this story.

Yeah, the Fanolia, And this is the boat that was transporting the bootleg liquor back and forth and that funnel.

Tell us about the Fanolia.

Yeah.

Well, Erick Jones.

When the, when the Fanolia was built by a C Pete Minxed who was of the Evansville Gas engine works.

And Friedel claimed that he helped build the hull of the boat.

But this boat came into the story when the chief of police decided that they needed to have a boat to patrol the river for rum runners.

What you discover in the book is that he really did that to kind of placate the women's temperance, I guess it was the YMCA or YWCA, I should say.

They were dissatisfied with his with the way he was.

I'm sorry, I’m having a blank.

He wasn't aggressive enough?

Yes.

In the in the way that he prosecuted or enforced the the liquor laws.

So he figured to placate them that he would buy a boat and patrol the the river and that that would foster the perception that he was really striving to to crack down on the liquor violators.

So he told the city or he he told the newspaper that he was going to ask the city for a boat.

And so far as I know, he never did ask the mayor or the the commissioners for a boat.

But he one day went to see C Pete Minxed, and he saw this boat and he determined that it was fast and that it would be suitable for his purposes.

And he ended up buying the boat.

Now, the money for the boat, though, came from Van Pickerel, who was a liquor distributor who had, you know, moved his business from Evansville, Indiana, over to Henderson, Kentucky.

And so why would a whiskey contributor and distributor fund a boat that's going to mess up his business?

Well, yeah, in theory doesn't make any sense.

Right.

So right there is a red flag.

Exactly.

And another red flag is he paid $750 for the boat or he put up the money for it for the chief to buy the boat.

But that boat, the boat was still mortgaged in the name of Lamb to kind of conceal who when the owner of it was.

But so this boat was used by the police department to catch rum runners.

And what I found amazing is that he never asked the city or the city council for the boat yet.

One day he just had a boat and everyone seemed to accept that.

So I thought that was pretty interesting.

But the boat, the boat's name was the Fanolia.

And we know- what's the name mean?

We don't know.

And so in my research, the bulk of the records referred to it as the Fanolia.

But there were some spots, particularly in the transcript of the trial, where there tended to be a lot of names that were misspelled.

And I have seen it spelled as the Fanny-Ola, and I think maybe there was one other name, but I think the name, the real name was the Fanolia.

It was the case 66 is how it was licensed through the Customs house.

But how large a boat was this?

Well, it was enough to accommodate nine people because there they would often take trips with the chief, the captain, Carl Dreish who was the the secretary to Bosse and a few other policemen.

So it was it was fairly large.

Have you heard any research on that, Stan Schmidt?

It made the newspapers quite a bit at the time like that, especially the Journal, which was the Republican paper, because the Journal there, you know, you would talk about stopping booze coming across from Kentucky or they didn't know that it was occurring.

And the journal would just list last night at 9:00 there, the car came up from, you know, the Henderson old Henderson Road there, and it had booze on it.

And, you know, here's another one there.

So it was one of those at the same time, the Coast Guard stationed a brand new steamer at Evansville.

And ostensibly it was for flood work, navigation work.

But one of the things there when they brought the USS Kankakee here in 1920 was they touted the electronics, the radio equipment on it there, that the boat could also be used, you know, in stopping booze.

The rum runners then like that coming across the river.

And you mentioned the a Republican newspaper.

Of course, the Bosse administration was a Democratic administration.

Yeah.

So when you look at the papers at the time, the courier was originally the Democratic paper.

The press was an independent kind of a crusading paper.

So at that time, with the three papers, you can read an article about the same event in all three papers, and you start wondering if any of them were at the same place when they wrote this.

That is true.

I can testify that doing your research, I'm sure you said yes, you could find different versions of the same story.

I wondered often which one was the correct one.

Now, you mentioned that, of course, the mayor Bosse.

He was committed to cleaning up the city.

Of course, he wants to be reelected, too, you know, and was was pressured by these these groups.

And even the police chief at the time.

There was a quote from Edgar Schmidt in the Evansville Journal in 1919.

And this is a quote, I wish we could have capital punishment for anyone violating the liquor law.

Yes.

And eventually he is convicted of doing the same thing.

So that's interesting.

Okay.

And Mayor Bosse, because, he was a possible candidate for governor.

He was so, so popular across the state.

Right, uh, Stan Schmidt?

Yeah.

In the Democratic Party, not just locally, but, you know, statewide.

There there were, you know, talk about and, you know, suggestions that he should run for higher office than just Evansville mayor.

Mm hmm.

Because he won by, what, 70% in one election.

Incredible landslide victory.

Yes.

This was also when Fred Ossenberg the Republican, switched to the Democratic Party and threw his support to Bosse.

So he showed, Bosse showed that he can win both the Democrats and the Republicans.

Now, in your in your book, Erick Jones’s book, Wide Open Evansville, you say the story you've always heard is that Captain Andy Friedl and other police officers were caught by the sheriff using the Fanolia to smuggle booze from Kentucky to Indiana.

And after the investigation, Police Chief Edgar Schmidt was implicated as the ringleader.

But there's another version that Mayor Benjamin Bosse was, in fact, the ringleader and Chief Schmidt, the fall guy.

So that's kind of a question mark that if people read the book, you kind of come away with.

Yeah, well, when I was doing my research, I came across some oral histories that were taken by Dr. Darrell Biggam at the University of Southern Indiana.

And one of the oral histories that he did was of Representative Charles LaFollette and and in his in his oral history, he said that he thought that Chief Schmidt was I think he used the word scapegoat.

So based on my the research that I found, I believe that is the case.

And C Pete Minxed’s niece was Charles- Owner, owner of the boat, right?

Yes.

He was the owner of the well, he was the original owner of the boat and the manufacturer of the boat.

All right.

His niece was married to Representative Charles LaFollette.

So I tend to believe that he had some inside information about that that could be relied on.

Mm hmm.

But Chief Schmidt never really turned on Mayor Bosse, did he?

He didn't.

In fact, he corresponded quite regularly with him while he was in prison.

And there was a there's two letters that he wrote to his wife that, for whatever reason, remained in his prison file.

And in those in both of those letters, he expressed how he his wish was that he would win his third term.

And he was instructing his wife to say, you know, if anyone asks, let them know that I would still vote.

Then if I were out, that I would be voting for Benjamin Bosse.

So, yeah, and there was there appeared to be no fallout.

Benjamin Bassey was among the people that met him at the train station upon his release from prison.

As near as I can tell, there was no falling out between the two.

You know, reading the book, there's a lot of names that are still prominent in Evansville history.

You got the Austin Bergs, you got the Bosses.

So but the Mayor Bosse legacy kind of survived the scandal, didn't it?

Stan Schmidt?

Yeah, he came out of that because there were other people in the administration that were kind of implicated in with that, too.

And then, you know, when you get he died 100 years ago this year, 1922.

But right before he passed away, there was there was insinuations that he was involved with what was just coming into Indiana at the time, the Klan revival there.

And there's been stories about that, too, that, you know, there's no proof there or nothing, you know, you know, concrete like that.

But he's he's come through all those kind of things there.

And everybody, you know, remembers, you know, the push and stuff he did for the city and, you know, uniting people.

Yeah.

You know, his slogan there like that, you know, to you know, everybody work for the city they're in for the, you know, the improvement of the community like that.

Everybody boosts.

Everybody wins.

And your take on that, Erick Jones was when everybody when everybody boozes, everybody wins.

That's that's another take on the on the Bosse legacy.

Okay.

We got another character in this of Van Pickerel the the booze manufacturer moved from Evan- and kind of knew what was going on.

Even knew it was going to be prohibition in Indiana for so long and moved operations over in Kentucky and made a killing there for a while, didn't he?

He did his when he moved to Henderson, his business was located right across from the Henderson Ferry so people can just ride the ferry over, make their purchases and take the ferry back.

So Indiana enacted prohibition.

The states could do it on their own before the national prohibition and before Kentucky.

So that that definitely opened the door for some nefarious activity and incredible amounts of liquor crossed over from Kentucky, Indiana, Indiana, by ferry and by train and by motorboat.

Yeah.

So incredible.

Now, what about the the the the private clubs in the saloons in Evansville at the time, Stan, of this business thing?

It started out there because you've got to remember it's postwar then by, you know, fairly quick here.

Oh, celebrating celebrating.

Soldiers are coming back.

There you have the West Side Germans looking for beer.

You know, if nothing else, then so the the either bootlegging or, you know, make it yourself.

Business started to boom really quickly then like that Now Baptist Town Tell me about Baptist Town Erick Jones.

Well, Baptist Town was very important as far as elections go.

And so there was a Democratic Equality League.

Yeah, of Baptist Town that was deeply involved in the vice.

There were several people that were officials of that committee who were involved in crap games and liquor.

And during a few elections, they used alcohol.

Well, even prior to prohibition, alcohol was used to to win votes.

But as you can imagine, once prohibition came, that was even more effective.

But, yes, there were the names that come to mind.

One of the big ones is also mentioned in Jeffrey Bosse’s book about the mayor is a minor he's had or not had, but he was on the street department for the city, but he was also in the Democratic Equality League.

And as Jeffrey Bossie noted in his book, he was caught violating the liquor laws several times, yet was able to retain his job with the city.

So now Baptist Town’s the African-American community in the early 1900s.

And we, a large African-American community at that time, didn't we Stan?

Yeah, uh, and it was in other places, too.

But the main center was Baptist Town, which was near downtown, over to the Lincoln and governor area there.

We talked about a lot of pressure to crack down on the saloon keepers and bootleggers, including the local newspapers, got involved.

Mayor Benjamin Bosse defended his chief, Edgar Schmidt, on charges of turning a blind eye to the corruption, and he encouraged Schmidt to sue one newspaper for libel, that being the Evansville Courier.

Right, gentlemen?

Yes.

My recollection was that he encouraged Chief Schmidt to sue them after there were two article well, one article in particular that the Courier printed, but also a statement that Henry C. Murphy, who was the principal owner of the newspaper, a statement that he had made.

And so, yes, he did.

He did sue the newspaper.

And it was it that lawsuit wasn't resolved until sometime after the newspaper was sold.

And Henry Murphy was no longer the owner, ironically, sold to Mayor Benjamin Bosse.

Mm hmm.

Interesting, right, Stan?

Yeah.

The courier had long been the Democratic newspaper and had supported Bosse and almost, you know, any issue just lauded anything major Bosse did.

And there's this falling out between the two.

The for a while the press became kind of the one that supported Bosse, but they were also critical of certain things like Ossenberg to drink to you know him bringing them into support him but yeah after after this goes on there you know, Bosse ends up there owning the courier, then and all of a sudden this this kind of disappears from the headlines.

The paper wasn't purchased directly by him.

It was purchased by a Republican that had a Republican newspaper in Louisiana.

And his name escapes me.

But he was involved with the company that also did the street paving for the city.

But at some point, I want I want to say it was within a few months the paper was transferred to Bosse and and yes, once that paper was sold, all of the criticisms of Bosse.

And were they they just suddenly stopped.

So all this was not ignored by the federal government.

Apparently all this information gets out and a prosecutor started checking into things.

Prosecutor Frederick Van Nuys.

Who was Van Nuys?

Well, Frederick Van Nuys up until the Whiskey Ring conspiracy, he he started to start off as an attorney.

He was also a state senator and a state government senator.

But he was he was the Democratic state.

He was head of the state Democratic organization.

In fact, he came to I think it was in 1918, he came to Evansville to start the boom for the mayor to become the governor for the state.

And when we talk about the beginning of the prohibition, the violations in the investigation by the government, it was actually US attorney Ellert Slack who was the lead prosecutor.

In fact, he was the principal prosecutor all the way until sometime in 1919, just before the grand jury takes a look at all of this.

So all of the paperwork that I found was done by Ellert Slack and his two agents.

The local agent was Charles Smith, and the agent in Indianapolis was I think his first name was William Green.

So I thought was interesting to these all of these characters seem to have some political ambitions.

And he's getting a lot of attention with this this investigation.

Yeah, well, you know, it was an interesting time.

It was not uncommon for any of the politicians or public officials to also hold office or businesses in private business.

You know, for instance, the mayor Bosse you know, he had banks.

He was head of the Bosse World Club Furniture Company, and he was on the board of directors for the Vendome Hotel.

And so, yes, it didn't seem like a I guess looking back, it seems like a conflict of interest maybe, but that's just the way they did things back then.

You know, you held business, you had your private business and then held elected office.

Now, the Vendome Hotel, that was quite a hot spot, wasn't it?

Stan Schmidt?

Yeah, that was one of the early big hotels and it was a place where people went, you know, it was, I guess, along with the McCurdy that was coming in like that too.

You had the grand hotels in Evansville at the time where people stayed, and it wasn't necessarily the overnight people lived in these, you know, that you had your rooms and you did your business, you know, and it was, you know, like that that would be, you know, where on your business card, you know, you were at, you know, room whatever in the Vendome there.

So yeah, hotels, the restaurants, the bars that you know they were decorated, you know, it was the place where you met people, you know, important events.

There wasn't just, you know, you spend a night somewhere.

So this would be the elite of the community.

Yeah.

At these places.

Yeah, yeah.

The rest of them, they're movers and shakers.

Yeah.

You went through there and then.

And then, you know, people from out of state, out of, you know, or down from Indianapolis, places like that then.

And of course the liquor flowed freely and those places and they even flowed even after the prohibition.

That's true.

And that's got him into trouble.

Yes, there were several employees, you know, so when the grand jury probe began, of course, they interviewed everyone and including former employees of the Vendome Hotel.

So they they told how they would clandestinely fill liquor requests from customers that the money for the liquor was kept in the safe behind the desk and that the money was given to Bertha Boff the bookkeeper, and that the money was just put in with the mixed with the regular money that the hotel would take in when they're doing their normal operations.

And there's one story about a female reporter was invited up to one of the rooms and what happened there.

So you're referring to May Cameron, who was a Courier, I can’t remember if she was a Courier or a Journal and Press reporter, and she she reported for two newspapers, can't remember which two it was, but she she would cover or she would often cover the liquor law violations.

Incidentally.

But she was in a party.

She was at a dance at the Vendome with fellow reporter Helen Graves, Loy Miller and two other fellows, and one of them was a gentleman with the last name of Frissy who was known to Bosse, to have worked for the city for Bosse during this dance that they were at.

They were invited by their party, was invited up to a room by Bosse.

And when they went to that room, there was highball drinks being served.

Carges, uh, Mr. Carges.

One of the hotel executives was up there also running a crap game.

And yes, he ended up signing a statement.

Her statement was the only one that was signed.

But yes, it's covered in the book.

You can see the actual statement where she signed it.

But there the party was up there in a room with Bosse and others participating in crap games and drinking liquor.

Okay.

All right.

Now, Fred Ossenberg who was Fred Ossenberg, Stan Schmidt?

Fred Ossenberg, was a local Republican wheeler and dealer.

He I mean, his family was involved in other businesses there.

But but politics was one of his really his forte there.

He became involved with Earnest Tindrington, an African-American Baptist town person who who also had major influence in the Republican Party at that time.

Ernest Tindrington there it was said there that for an Election Day, he could bring out 5000 votes in Baptist town there in an election there.

But the two of them, you had.

Ossenberg You know, the the white upfront person and then you had Tindrington the black local person.

There just for years there, uh, the Democrats had complained every election about vote buying and stuff down in Baptist town there with Ossenberg there now in in 1913.

Then you get their dispute with Mayor Heilman who was Republican there.

The two of them then switched to the Democratic Party.

They backed Mayor Bosse then and was largely influential, you know, of him getting elected there like that.

But but he continued then in the Bosse administration, in the public safety and other things there.

So and both of them then you know same thing you get somebody elected, you get party work then so a lot going on here back and forth.

So okay, we finally get some indictments returned.

A big long list of indictments of people involved, saloon keepers and some public officials, and including your great grandfather.

Yes, there was over 78 defendants.

It was predominantly saloon keepers, also policemen, that, of course, Chief Edgar Schmidt and Ossenberg was also indicted.

And when I went through the records, honestly, I found more there was more evidence against Mayor Bosse than there was against Ossenberg.

There was just not very much in the record.

One thing there was an accusation that it was made by Pickerel.

You know, Pickeral was the star witness for the government because he was the the liquor dealer.

He was the one that was supplying everyone with booze.

So he knew who was making the purchases.

But he, of course, was paying graft to chief, the chief of police.

But it turns out he also was paying graft to Ossenberg or at least there was an attempt by Ossenberg to extract some graft from him.

He talked about how he went to Ossenberg’s house to discuss, you know, making graft payments and how much it was.

And he talked about how grand his library was in his study.

He lived over in Bayard Park, the Bayard Park area, but he was one of the defendants.

Also the sheriff Sherrif Males who was the one that caught the the he was the one that made the arrest during the booze boat incident.

But here he was also charged.

And it appeared to me that some of that was just because they were Republicans.

Ossenberg in particular was was hated, of course, by the Democrats, but but also by the Republicans after having switched parties to the Democrats.

So, yes, surprisingly, Ossenberg and Sheriff Males, both Republicans were defendants in this case.

God, and Ossenberg, he gets convicted.

And then there's a whole new story about how he gets his he's exonerated and his his convictions expunged.

Yes, political.

He and he was actually he received a pardon from from the president.

And I guess one of the stipulations to getting a pardon is, is you have to at least start serving your sentence.

So that's part of why he filed the appeal, led to me being able to find a transcript of the case.

I think he was out while this appeals processing for like two years, but he eventually did go to the Atlanta prison.

I don't recall how long he was there, but he he did receive a pardon from President Coolidge.

Yeah.

Now, your great grandfather did go to prison.

My great grandfather actually did not go to prison.

Oh, he didn't.

He was found guilty, along with two of the.

So most of the people, of course, they pled guilty.

So they didn't have to face the judge in court.

But there was about, I would say, about a dozen or so that that maintained their innocence all the way to the trial.

But by the end of the trial, the remaining ones were it was the chief of police, Schmidt, my great grandfather, Andy Friedel, uh, two liquor distributors.

Not, not Van Pickeral.

I can't remember their name.

I think they were the Coen brothers or something like that.

The Kleiman brothers, Mose and Abe Kleiman.

Well, how did your great grandfather escape going to prison so I think the judge felt sorry for him because he was going to rely on Schmidt's attorneys to help him during the trial, but they didn't do anything for him.

And he ended up taking the stand three times.

You know, the first and second time he denied everything.

But he finally, after he was found guilty, decided that he wanted to say one more thing.

And he got up before the judge and actually made a tearful plea saying that he was sorry.

And the judge, you know, probed a little further and asked, you know, if you were actually guilty.

Right.

He admitted to it.

And in the end, the judge said, you know, I think you were sinned against more than you sinned.

You- Fear not much, much in the way of of a sentence, but go back to work and wait to hear from the chief prosecutor to call you back.

And the chief prosecutor never called him back.

There were several of the two vice squad attorneys or the two vice squad officers who admitted guilt.

They were permitted to continue working.

They all pretty much retained their jobs, except, of course, the chief of police, My- So they got their pensions?

My great grandfather got his pension.

That was one of the one of the vice officers.

Trautwein, he did not get to retire.

And he while he was able to go back to his job, he eventually was let go and.

They cited the reason they cited was that he no longer lived within the city, which was a requirement.

But yeah, the status of their pension was really in question for a long time.

But he not only did he get to retire and earn a pension, but he was later promoted to a detective.

He but yes, he retired and got a pension.

Good.

So what was the reaction back in Evansville at all this, Stan?

Did the newspapers cover this trial?

And this was yeah, this was the the main story in the papers.

And depending on which party you were backing, then you know how it was covered and.

It's one where, you know, if you were a good Democrat, it was like, oh, well, you know, Mayor Bosse didn't know anything about this.

And and these people were kind of rogue, you know, rogue cops you'd call today there and, you know, or they were just they were just, you know, seduced by these liquor people like that there.

And, you know, got in where they shouldn't have been.

You know, if you went to the Republican paper, then, you know, it's one of those all of this goes all the way up to the top.

And everybody was involved.

And, you know, they should all be, you know, put out.

But but it goes the other way, too.

Sheriff Males gets implicated in this.

You know, in some way, they're and, you know, he he comes out, then he's he's the next mayor of Evansville, then, you know, after after this.

So it stuff didn't necessarily stick.

And he was a Klan member and he openly admitted it there back in the twenties when the Klan made this nationwide resurgence then.

And that brought other, you know, other issues in, you know, like that then to that.

But well, now in the book, when everybody boos, everybody wins.

Jeff Bosse the great, great nephew of Mayor Bosse, he writes, Despite Bosse’s efforts, illegal alcohol sales and vise conditions persisted throughout his tenure and for at least 20 years after his death, Bosse never succeeded in ending alcohol sales and vice that existed in Evansville.

And the inability to stamp out these vices continually embarrassed and frustrated him, Chief Schmidt proved to be a disappointment.

And Bosse’s failure with the police force was one of the reasons he strongly supported a civil service system for both the police and fire departments.

So it looks like the mayor was doing some damage control after all this.

You'd get that.

And I mean, there were even initiatives to put the police and stuff under instead of the mayor's authority for certain things there, it would go to, you know, like that to the state would have some control over there to kind of make a separation and like that.

And Bosse you know, kept pushing back against that.

You know, that you know, that his reforms and stuff, we're going to take care of this.

You didn't need outsiders to come in and you know, take over there to to make things work the way they should be working.

At the book signing tours that you've been on, Erick, that your book is available at Your Brother's Bookstore in downtown Evansville.

Plug there.

There's an old tunnel under the store and there's a possible connection to the bootlegging days.

Is that correct?

Yes, it's Sam and Adam Morris own a bookstore called Your Brother's Bookstore.

And I think they've only been in business maybe a year.

But while they were renovating the bookstore, they found a hole in the floor.

I say a hole, it’s a- Is this on Main Street?

On Main Street, I think it's a five or three Main Street somewhere in that area, the 500 block of Main Street, they found a hole that led to a big tunnel that runs under Main Street.

And they had some they had a historian from the Evansville Museum come out, or I guess he's actually from the African-American Museum now.

And they found some artifacts that they believe were from the Prohibition era.

They found some bottles, some tubing that was connected to a still, I'm not sure, and they don't they're going to eventually have a display in their store.

They don't have the stuff yet.

It's being looked at and worked on by the museum folks.

But so this is probably going on when actually the prohibition was the crackdown was underway.

And so they actually went underground.

Right, Stan?

Yeah.

They got very creative during prohibition there on speakeasies and clubs like that.

And you usually don't find anything unless they got raided there.

There's another one I can think of downtown.

When you went upstairs, the only thing in the room there, there was a sink with the faucet and they finally figured out there.

The booze was next door in their room there.

The sink was attached not to the water system.

It was when you bought your drink.

They went over and turned on the tap.

And so if the place was raided, there's nothing there's no booze in there like that.

So you just had to get creative on where the booze was and how you distributed it.

Now, the confiscated booze, when they did actually enforce the laws it was stored at the was a police station.

Yes.

Both Sheriff Males and Chief Edgar Schmidt kept the confiscated booze in it, locked away in the cellar.

I imagine that was the safest place to keep such large boxes.

Not all.

Not all the booze stayed there, did it?

It didn't.

And, well, you know, and I want to say that they did make legitimate busts, but it was so that they had a supply of booze to sell out of the police station.

So, yes, the booze did not stay there.

Benjamin Bosse’s secretary, Carl Dreisch was accused of many people were, but Carl Dreish was accused of taking booze out in suitcases.

And Jim Boner was known to take liquor out of the booze cellar and sell it around town or supply saloons or speakeasies with the booze as a Carl Connect cake in a cartoon of that person going into there with an empty suitcase and then lugging this heavy suitcase out with all the liquor.

Yes, Yes.

So I have to believe that it must have been common knowledge or, maybe not common knowledge, but but, you know, a lot of people weren't aware of that.

And for him to have a cartoon about it and I think it was interesting, too, in your book, you talked about when prohibition was established, a lot of these these breweries turned to making soft drinks.

What was that all about?

Stan When they weren't allowed to do any kind of alcohol production anymore?

Stirling They went into soft drinks, they went into ketchup sauces, they had the bottles, you know, for the beer, and you know, they were trying to, you know, come up with something else to stay in business.

Now Cooks got, they didn't go into that, Cooks during prohibition their ice house and stuff, they went in the ice business on a large scale between what they were making themselves and what they brought in and so they didn't try to come up with alternate products.

They're like Sterling did.

And it wasn't until later.

Then, you know, then, you know, you even had the, you know, near beer, which which did not go over well there.

But it was they were trying to come up with something else, though, to sell.

So, you know, so the business stayed afloat.

You have to remember for Indiana and the Evansville things prohibition last 15 years like that before, 1933 when beer was available again from the breweries here.

So how many people were able to keep their job?

Not a lot.

I mean, you know, you were talking I know in June of 1933 when Cook's reopened the first day, they sold 4000 cases of beer like that.

So, I mean, I mean, that was kind of and I mean beer from Evansville.

It was a regional here down, down into the south I mean, so this isn't just local consumption.

And I mean, the breweries here competed with other, you know, other areas like that in the F.W.

Cook Brewing Company, when when Prohibition first came, they actually fought back and filed a lawsuit against the three people.

The chief of police, the prosecuting attorney for the county and the sheriff's office.

And they actually won for a short while, but then so for maybe a year or so, the police department was enjoined from enforcing prohibition, at least as as it pertained to the Cook Brewing Company that was later overturned by the state Supreme Court.

But during that period, Chief Schmidt cited that as his reason for not cracking down on the alcohol.

No, I know your research took you to was a U.S. district court in Chicago requested separation from them?

Yes.

So back then, when you violated the liquor laws you first faced prosecution by the either the circuit court or the city, depending on who got you, either the sheriff or the police.

But then you also faced prosecution for violating the Reid amendment, which was prosecuted by the federal courts.

So I. I contacted the National Archives in in the they’re divided into regions.

And the one that handles Indiana is in Chicago.

And surprisingly, they had this case.

And when I looked through those records, that's where I learned that there was an appeal in the case.

And then I got a copy of the appeal, which had the transcript that was, you know, that was the best that I was hoping for because I had never met my great grandfather, my father never met my great grandfather.

So to have a transcript, which we were able to read his testimony and get some sense of his personality.

But but once I found that I just started poking around all kinds of records, but predominantly the records were in the National Archives, either in Chicago or in Atlanta.

So any unanswered questions that you still have?

I still have some of the answered questions, Yes.

Probably the big one that everyone still has is why did the courier turn on BOSSIE?

You know, I in my book I mention some hypotheses, but I'm still not certain why.

And I have to imagine that it's probably something political, because John Nolan, who was the 1913, who also sought to be the the Democratic mayoral candidate in 1913, he had his own Democrat folks.

And I think he around that time was also against Bosse.

So that was one question that's unanswered.

Another unanswered question is where, when?

What was the final resting place of the final year?

I know that when Chief Schmidt this the patrol boat, the patrol boat, when he went to jail, he ended up selling the boat to raise money for his defense.

And I know who he sold it to, but I was not able to find any records to indicate whether he still had it or just what happened to the boat.

So any theories from you, Stan Schmidt on why the courier turned on Mayor Benjamin Bosse.

Just briefly there, Nolan had been the party leader for the Democratic Party in Evansville, and over time, Bosse kind of eased him out of that position when it came down a little bit later there when when Bosse’s running for office.

And again, there, he he he's he he was one of the Democratic leader.

I mean, he had aspirations to be mayor, too.

And then Bosse comes in.

But but when it comes down to the end.

Bosse you know, it seems like they eased Nolan into the position in a federal job as postmaster here like that.

And it was it was one of those things where Bosse just kind of, you know, eased into the position local party leader, local, and then, you know, is is going toward mayor like that.

But so you have that going on.

So there's some changes there.

But of the courier had before just always backed almost anything Bosse you know said there I mean it was it was gospel then there some criticisms for different things.

And he didn't take it well.

At one point, he even, you know, he he said, well, he would just leave Evansville and move him and his businesses to Terre Haute there.

And then like that, you have that lawsuit afterwards there.

The courier, they sold part of it first, then a half interest, and then, you know, within a short time, then, you know, Bosse actually owns the paper again and, you know, and becomes the Bosse organ like it had used to be.

But but yeah, there wasn't any one thing there.

It when it happened there, it got where no one from the courier was even allowed to come to, you know, to the mayor's office, you know, to an interview stuff.

I mean, it was that kind of he cut him off completely.

All right, guys.

My thanks to Erick Jones, author of Wide Open Evansville.

Well-researched a lot of photos in there, letters, official documents, even lists of what the convicted took to prison with them.

So it's a great read with a lot of familiar Evansville names and that.

Thanks a lot, Erick.

You're welcome.

Thanks to Vanderburgh County historian Stan Smith for his expertise on taking us back to Evansville during the 1920s, the Prohibition era.

Thanks, gentlemen.

Thank you.