Official pledged to dry up Bangor

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EVERY LIQUOR DEALER WILL GO TO JAIL!” thundered a bold, black headline on top of Page One of the Bangor Daily News on Dec. 2, 1904.

Maine had elected a Republican governor in September dedicated to the enforcement of the state’s 50-year-old prohibition law. The saloonkeepers had been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since.

Democrats had predicted the Republicans wouldn’t have the courage to back up their rhetoric. Many of the people who said they supported the law didn’t want it enforced.

Even the battle-weary editors at the NEWS were taken aback by the vehemence of the “startling statement” issued by Penobscot County Attorney-elect Hervey H. Patten.

Under the headline was a photo of the man in a high starched collar and deftly knotted tie with a tight little smile and a gleam in his eye. He named his initiative “the campaign for purity.”

Hypocritical public officials had turned the famous first-in-the-nation Maine law into a joke, enforcing it sporadically against the lower classes to appease a small group of genuine prohibitionists. Now Hervey Patten and a host of other newly elected Republicans were launching a new campaign against sin.

Patten declared there were more than 250 liquor dealers in Bangor. He promised they were all going to jail unless they canceled their federal liquor stamps, which allowed them to transport liquor into the state, before Jan. 1, when he took office.

City police and county deputies would soon be asked to “pay their respects to the various gambling dens, the low barrooms, the vicious dives, the illicit clubs, the delusive slot machines and other blots on the fair name of the city,” promised the Bangor lawyer.

The humor in all this was evident even then, and it is hard to find a newspaper story on the various raids and other developments that were conducted that is not full of tongue-in-cheek wit combined with a weary cynicism.

While Patten was thundering, the outgoing county attorney, Bertram L. Smith, was campaigning to be appointed attorney general based on his record prosecuting liquor violators!

His fame was far and wide. Even the Boston Globe sang his praises. Noting that Penobscot County was “the fever spot in Maine for open traffic in liquor,” the paper said Smith had “collected more fines and sent more men to jail for violating liquor laws than all his predecessors for the past 25 years.”

But if Smith had been so effective, how come there were still 250 liquor dealers polluting Bangor’s morals?

The reaction to Patten’s “sensational statement” was swift. The dealers rushed to unload their federal revenue licenses. On Christmas Eve, an estimated 125 dealers mobbed the post office in an effort to file written applications to have the stamps canceled. About half were told to come back because the office couldn’t handle the workload.

Raids soon began, but frequently they didn’t yield much. One night Chief of Police John C. Bowen and Capt. James L. Fahey set out “on the Bowery by gas-light,” a headline writer rhapsodized. “They found many a place where once lights shown brightly and the doors swung freely to the thirsty; where once white-coated purveyors of that which is forbidden to be sold under the laws of Maine were busy in concocting the seductive hot Scotches, the satisfying Tom and Jerrys and hot whiskey punches; where there was only a short time ago laughter and perhaps song with the whir and click of the fascinating but insatiable slot machine – all dark and silent with the snow drifted against the doors.”

A few were operating on what the reporter called “the pitcher plan,” as opposed to “the Bangor plan,” the infamous system by which liquor dealers were fined each year, as if they were paying a tax, and then reopened the next day. The pitcher plan meant all the liquor was kept in a pitcher and as soon as the police showed up, the barkeep smashed it in a sink and washed the booze down the drain.

In the weeks ahead, some of the usual suspects were arrested operating in the usual lunchrooms and seedy hotels near the river front. Occasionally, police hit a bulls-eye, as they did at William A. Withee’s place on Broad Street, seizing enough booze “to float the first, second and third Baltic fleets.”

The vigorous actions of County Attorney Patten and others, however, weren’t enough to slow the anti-liquor juggernaut rolling over the state from Augusta, threatening the jurisdiction of locals.

The papers announced yet another regulatory bombshell. Sen. H. Herbert Sturgis, a Republican, of course, from Standish, announced he was introducing a revolutionary bill to establish a state liquor commission that would have the power to appoint deputies to enforce the liquor law, if locals didn’t do it.

A Bangor Daily News story on Jan. 21 called the bill “the most important act to be introduced at this session of the legislature, and the most sweeping in its effects concerning enforcement of the prohibitory law.” In fact, the draconian measure would have wide-ranging repercussions, contributing to a decline in the popularity of the Republican Party in upcoming elections.

Then came what a NEWS headline writer called “the last nail in the lid.” Bangor’s aldermen voted to close the city’s liquor agency, where respectable people could go and buy booze to treat their illnesses.

Recently, city officials had passed an order requiring purchasers to acquire a prescription from a “reputable” doctor. Physicians, however, found the practice to be “a lot of bother,” and the agent asked for a list of “reputable” doctors.

So without much comment, the aldermen voted to close the agency. Perhaps they had decided not to let the legislature and Sen. Sturgis have all the glory of “drying up the world,” speculated a reporter.

The agency closed on Feb. 1, but not before people lined up to buy big quantities of everything from “old Medford rum” to fine wines.

“If anybody wants alcohol or liquor from now out it is a case of sending away for it. For there’s none in Bangor. Not of civilized quality,” commented a reporter who most likely had first-hand knowledge of several places that were still serving.

County Attorney Patten went into high gear in February. Of 200 indictments passed down by a grand jury, 160 were for liquor violations. By the end of the month, 15 dealers had been sent to jail, dozens had appealed their cases or they were continued, and 17 dealers had jumped bail. The columnist known as Rambler in the Portland Sunday Times reported having seen a dozen Queen City bartenders sadly roaming the streets of the Forest City.

Patten’s aggressiveness appeared to have dried up Bangor for the time being. But a story datelined Portland and featuring the headline “Maine still wet in places” appeared on Page One of the NEWS on March 20. It reported that drunkenness and debauchery still existed in places like Rockland, Brunswick and Saco. In Lewiston, it was reported “saloons are doing business as usual.”

But Gov. Cobb had just signed the Sturgis bill, which took effect immediately. The liquor war was far from over.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.