Booze Thieves Destroy Congressman's Umbrella

1921

Booze Thieves Visit Longworth

Washington. — "Hootch" thieves broke into the office of Representative Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, in the House office building and ransacked his desk and filing cases, for the fourth time in the past few months.

They didn't find what they were after.

In their rage and disappointment, they took their spite out on his favorite umbrella, completely demolishing it.


"Seek and Ye Shall Find"

Santa Rosa.—Prohibition enforcement officers are seeking the operators of a large still which was seized on the Martin ranch south of this city. The haul also included a large quantity of illicit brandy and some mash and other materials used in distilling.

—Mountain Democrat, Placerville, California, October 29, 1921, page 10.

Plenty of "Kick" in Grocer's Brew; Still Blows Up and Wrecks Store

1920--

NEW YORK, N.Y., May 20. -- The plate glass windows of a grocery store in South Brooklyn were blown out a moment after Policeman Francis Smith had passed the building at 2 a.m. By the time Smith and Policeman McMahon had climbed through the jagged aperture and made their way through the store's tumbled heaps of cans and green goods, scores of residents of the neighborhood were pouring into the street.

In a back room of the grocery were found two stunned men, who later at the police station, where they are held for the Federal authorities, described themselves as Dario Santeveshl, 35, proprietor of the grocery, and Tony Petitschi, 49, the grocery man's friend.

The police say the explosion was of a home-made still. Apparently a milk can filled with "mash" had been put to boil on a gas stove. From the top there had been a spiral copper pipe running to a barrel. The lid of the milk can was clamped down so tightly that the steam supposed to condense in the pipe, and run into the barrel as "hootch," blew up. There was little left of the can and windows in several other buildings in the neighborhood were broken. The residents for a time attributed the explosion to a "blackhand" bomb.

According to the police, they found near the wrecked apparatus a forty-gallon barrel of wine and a three-gallon jug of alcohol. The two prisoners suffered only from shock.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, May 22, 1920, page 4.