Ignoring The Prohibition 1920-1933

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By the mid-1920s, as Prohibition had been in place for several years with no sign of repeal, federal officials began to realize that they had a growing problem.

While police had been rounding up the many gangs of male rum runners and bootleggers—the men who smuggled or transported illegal liquor across the border, or even just from one place to another—they had reason to believe that there was another, even more clandestine source of the illegal liquor transport in the country.

And these bootleggers would be much harder to track down and much more complicated to search: women. They were wives, sisters and mothers, after all. And no one, quite literally, wanted to touch them.

A woman demonstrates the use of a Prohibition era book that conceals a liquor flask, 1927.

Woman wearing a floppy overcoat (left) which conceals two tins of booze strapped to her thighs (right).

A woman arrested in Minneapolis on April 10, 1924. Her crime was “dispensing wet goods” from her bootlegger’s life preserver.

Two woman model ways to conceal bottles of rum to get past customs officials during the U.S. alcohol prohibition, March 18, 1931.

This woman shows the vest and pant-apron used to conceal bottles of alcohol to deceive border guards during the U.S. alcohol prohibition on March 18, 1931.

A woman putting a flask in her Russian boot, Washington, D.C.

This woman shows the vest and pant-apron used to conceal bottles of alcohol to deceive border guards during the U.S. alcohol prohibition on March 18, 1931.

A woman using a dummy book, bearing the title 'The Four Swallows,' as a hiding place for liquor during Prohibition, 1920s.

A woman demonstrates the garter flask fad in Washington D.C.

A flapper flouts the Prohibition by carrying a whiskey flask in her garter, ca. 1920s.

Woman seated at a soda fountain table pours alcohol into her cup from a cane. 2/13/1922.

And So It Ends. A woman on beer barrels in 1933.