25 Images That Perfectly Capture the People and Events of Prohibition

10. Searching Women

Police tended to leave the management of women to their fathers and husbands at the time. They were less likely to pull over a woman, but almost no police officer would search a woman. It was illegal in many states. One journalist, Jack O’Donnell, in 1924 had this to say of female bootleggers: “[They] come from all stations and ranks of life – from the slums of New York’s Lower East Side, exclusive homes in California, the pine-clad hills of Tennessee, the wind-swept plains of Texas, the sacred precincts of exclusive Washington. Some are bold, brainy and beautiful, some hard-boiled and homely, some white, some black, some brown. All are thorns in the sides of Prohibition Enforcement officials.”



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