This week in history: Hip flask tips and a warning against bootleg booze

On Dec. 6, 1933, Americans crowded into liquor stores, bars and cafes to buy their first legal alcoholic beverages in 13 years, after the repeal of Prohibition. At Sloppy Joe’s in Chicago, bartenders have their hands full trying to keep up with demand. | Sun-Times files

As reported by the Chicago Daily News, sister paper of the Chicago Sun-Times:

“A furtive bacchanal is going to usher in the new year tonight,” the Daily News reported on Dec. 31, 1919. Illinois lawmakers had ratified the Eighteenth Amendment earlier that year, making the manufacture, sale and transport of alcohol illegal.

But the Daily News predicted Chicagoans would still ring in the new year with “guarded sips of liquor from camouflaged flasks, secretive gurglings behind veiling palms, [and] a sort of pussyfooting of good fellowship” while police sought clarification over the terms for enforcing the new law.

Coroner Peter Hoffman and Dr. John Dill Robertson, Chicago’s public health commissioner, warned of the dangers of “death-dealing concoctions” — bootleg liquor made with unknown and potentially toxic ingredients that likely were being sold to revelers ahead of New Year’s Eve.

Police Capt. Morgan Collins said he was prepared to “clamp the lid down tight on the Loop,” where the Daily News reported most “cafés and cabarets” would have waiters serving “teacups, shaving mugs or mustache cups for people who have brought their ‘own.’”

Chicago Daily News headline on Dec. 31, 1919.