Prohibition in the North Country — deadline reporting
This is the latest in an occasional series of posts.
The Post-Star was pushing deadline to report the breaking news.
“No arrests were made, but at 2:30 o’clock this morning the agents had not concluded their work,” The Post-Star reported on June 4, 1920.
Federal agents had seized seven barrels of whiskey from an unoccupied building at 35 West Street, and agents were searching elsewhere in the city.
“In addition to seizing the liquor in the West Street place they made a search of a downtown hotel, where it is said they found no liquor. The agents traveled in two or more automobiles, one of them a large limousine, and after making the search of the hotel they started out in other directions,” The Post-Star reported. “The seized liquor was taken to the basement of the federal building (post office?) on Warren Street on an automobile truck driven by Barney Sullivan of South Glens Falls.”
It was estimated that 25 or more federal agents were in Glens Falls, based on multiple counts of strangers spotted downtown.
“Local men who are to be seen in the downtown district the greater part of the night are generally known and several comments were heard concerning the number of strangers that were about the street.”
Later in the day George Duschane was arrested at 3 p.m. on charges of forgery.
“The accused man was arrested while at work as a laborer on a cement sidewalk job in Murdock Avenue,” The Post-Star reported.
Duschane had a license to sell liquor for non-beverage purposes.
Duschane and an accomplice, an Albany bartender, had allegedly altered the license to read 34 barrels instead of four barrels.
A local man, “prominent as a gambler,” was believed to have bankrolled the operation.
“That man is said to have left town, and the last heard of him was in Boston, Mass.”
The Post-Star reported on July 21 that the seven barrels of whiskey were stored in the basement of the Glens Falls post office on Warren Street since the seizure and had been taken to Albany.
Click here to read the most recent previous post in the series.
