Here's to the Bootleggers of the Bahamas!

by Larry Smith

Here's to the bootleggers of the Bahamas,
Who sit on rye kegs, resting feet on beer kegs,
Singing 'yes, we want no bananas'.
--bootlegger's toast

Ever heard of the Bahama Queen?

Not a mailboat, but a flesh and blood woman who, for a few years during the "Roaring Twenties", became an international celebrity as a bootlegger in Nassau.

Gertrude Lythgoe was the only woman to hold a wholesale liquor license here - at a time when women were to be seen and not heard. Her autobiography has just been republished - along with the memoirs of several other rum-runners - by Flat Hammock Press, which says its mission is to is "to salvage many of the maritime classics of the past and introduce them and the authors to today’s readers."

Most of these accounts have long been out of print. But now they have been updated for modern readers with added insight, information and photographs. For example, Lythgoe's brief memoir (available in local bookstores or from Media Enterprises)includes the full series of newspaper articles that made her famous.

In those days, the Bahamas was considered a "land of rascals, rogues and peddlers" (no comments from the peanut gallery please). And according to the London Daily News, Bay Street was little more than a row of "crazy old liquor stores, unpainted and dilapidated, (that) have given it the nickname of booze avenue."

As you might imagine, liquor smuggling was big business back then - and it attracted a variety of adventurers, renegades and entrepeneurs to little old Nassau. Gertrude Lythgoe, the newspapers wrote, "stands alone and fearless - a women who would grace any London drawing room...she has commanded the respect and homage of this motley and dubious throng, (and) is known in the trade as 'the queen of the bootleggers'."

Buying and selling liquor was never a crime in the British Empire, but the temperance movement in America managed to pass legislation in 1919, over a presidential veto, banning the sale and consumption of alcohol. So for 13 long years the FBI and the US Coast Guard fought a rough and tumble war to stem the flow of illegal liquor from Canada, Mexico, Cuba and the Bahamas.

According to an official Coast Guard history, "Enormous profits were to be made, with stories of 700 per cent or more for the more popular Scotch or Cognac. Probably the only reliable clue to the extent of the trade were the statistics on liquor passing through Nassau en route to the US: 50,000 quarts in 1917 to 10,000,000 in 1922."

Perhaps an even better measure of the demand for alcohol was the fact that American doctors earned $40 million in 1928 by writing whiskey prescriptions. And the legal exception for sacramental wine was equally abused.

Publisher Robert McKenna says the Prohibition period was "so unbelievable that most Americans do not understand what happened. It was brought about by a well-organized movement and led to a polarized political and social climate. The first heroes of this era were the rum-runners, lawbreakers who were viewed as Robin Hood-like figures.”

One was a Florida boatbuilder named Bill McCoy, whose liquor could always be relied upon to be the best, or "the real McCoy." A non-drinker himself, McCoy started out by hauling rum from Bimini to Miami. And Tough Call's grandfather - a strict Methodist teetotaller - was on Bimini at the time as an agent for 'Pop' Symonette's liquor business. He tasted the liquid that arrived in barrels to make sure it was rum - and then spat it out.

But as the Coast Guard became more effective, the rum runners changed their tactics - stationing their British-registered ships just outside the US three-mile limit, waiting for the well-informed to come to them. McCoy was the popularly accepted "founder" of Rum Row, which was a regular sight all along the eastern seaboard until the US extended its territorial waters to 12 miles in the mid-1920s.

McCoy's bootlegging exploits were immortalised by Robert Ripley, in his hugely popular syndicated newspaper column 'Believe It Or Not', during the 1940s . And from her autobiography it is clear that Gertrude Lythgoe carried a big torch for him.

She was the daughter of British immigrants to the US and began her career as a secretary in California. Later she landed a job with a London import-export firm and - when Prohibition was declared - went to Nassau to represent whiskey suppliers. From a rented warehouse on Market Street and a room at the old Lucerne Hotel on Frederick Street she built a thriving business.

The Lucerne was opened in 1913 by Ron Lightbourn's grandfather, Roger Moore Lightbourn. And during the 1920s, it was known as the bootleggers HQ: "All types and nationalities conversed on the front verandah waiting for the ringing of the dinner bell," Gertrude recalled in her memoir. "Many newspaper reporters and feature writers sat by the hour gathering rich material to be woven into fiction."

The characters she knew included champion beer drinker Big Dutch; a representative of an English tobacco firm "who passes directly to his room with a very important and upstage attitude"; Tony, the scion of a wealthy Philadelphia family who spoke seven languages but was rarely sober; a Palm Beach society parasite known as the count; a pompous British army major; and a cowboy called Tex with a weakness for wine, women and song.

At the time - and perhaps appropriately - the Lucerne was run by an American nurse named Dorothy Donnelle, whose previous engagement had been at an insane asylum in Indiana. Her affectionate nickname was "mother".

In her book, Gertrude describes a typical car trip around New Providence shortly after her arrival: "We started from Bay Street, with its row of little shops, on past the site for the 300-room (Old Colonial) hotel, by the esplanade, Fort Charlotte, past beautiful white beaches until we came to the caves...we then passed a stretch of scrub palm trees, sisal and a few houses...We returned by way of the Queen's Staircase...and passed a prison constructed of native stone containing 101 cells...then we passed the quite modern Bahama General Hospital...(arriving) back at the hotel ready for more daiquiri cocktails and dinner."

Perhaps Gertrude's biggest claim to fame was the journey she undertook with the real McCoy to Rum Row, supervising her own whiskey consignment. It was on the Arethusa, a Gloucester-built schooner that McCoy had bought for $21,000 but which took in $100,000 per voyage. Off the New Jersey coast, as many as 60 ships could be seen at one time on Rum Row.

This floating community was completely lawless, and many crews armed themselves against both government enforcers and fellow smugglers, who would sometimes sink a ship and hijack its cargo rather than make the run for fresh supplies. But according to Gertrude, McCoy was ever the perfect gentleman - a man "of the superior business type, he had not time for dissipating or for celebrating when in port," she wrote approvingly.

McCoy retired in the mid-1920s to live on his fortune following a brief prison term, and died in 1948. Gertrude moved to Miami and also lived in New York and Detroit, where she became a pioneer in the car rental business. The Wall Street Journal estimated her worth at millions, but no-one really knew. She died in 1974 at the age of 86.

Meanwhile, the decrepit Lucerne Hotel - site of many a drinking party and "orgy" (as Sir Etienne Dupuch described the goings on there) - was pulled down soon after its owner, Roger Lightbourn, died in 1956. It was replaced by a boring building called Norfolk House.

Nassau as we know it today is largely a creation of the revenue earned from bootlegging. The harbour was dredged in 1923, with the spoil used to create Clifford Park; water was piped from the western well fields to a new tower on Fort Fincastle hill; electricity supply was expanded; roads were tarred and the first sewerage system was installed in 1930.

A nine-hole golf course opened near Fort Charlotte and the new Hotel Colonial was the centre of Nassau's social life. Nearby Paradise Island beach became a major attraction for tourists, many of whom arrived on the first air passenger services from Miami.

But - just as we are experiencing today - there was a seamier side to the prosperity. A government inquiry found that juvenile vagrancy and crime were rampant, accompanied by drinking, bad language and vandalism, leading to the establishment of the Boy's Industrial School in 1928.

When Prohibition ended in 1933, most of the vagabonds and entrepeneurs vanished. But some, like Pop Symonette and George Murphy, parlayed their profits into huge business and political empires. And my grandfather? Well, he stayed on to become a district commissioner at Bimini, and despite meeting a lot of hard drinkers along the way (including Ernest Hemingway), he never touched a drop until the day he died in 1979.

Comments

[Jerome Sherman]

Now thats what I call true bahamian history - always wanted to read more about real bahamians from back in the days.

I wish we can have more memoirs and books both fiction and non fiction based on the life and times of legendary bahamians like Genevieve Sherman( Abbey lafleur ), John & Becky ( Queen Becky )Chipman, Maureen Duvalier, Smokey 007, and others from the arts and entertainment area as well as other areas.

Many of these can become best sellers as bahamians are now getting into the habit of reading; and what is more fun and interesting to read other than stories of ourselves told by us in that colorful way that only we who know ourselves can tell it.

[larry smith]

Yes, but that would require someone with the time and capacity to do original research. Some subjects are fairly well covered by books and newspaper accounts that can be woven together with personal recollections and general background to produce a feature story like this.

[Rick]

...and then spat it out???

[larry smith]

that's what real methodists do

[C.Lowe]

We even had Methodists working in the treasury!!
Imagine that.
But sadly, they were the first to go.

[David Long]

Fascinating Read, would love to buy the book, where would I find a copy?, and what is the name?

TKS

[larry smith]

It's called The Bahama Queen. Media Enterprises wholesales it. Logos and the Island Shop should have it.

[Nicki Kelly]

I would suggest, if you haven't already thought about it, that you compile some of your perspective pieces on Bahamian history into a book.

I particularly enjoyed your last column on bootlegging, which you should include. I happen to have a first edition copy of Lythgoe's book published in 1964, so the article was of special interest.

It is still in excellent condition. No yellow pages, which is a testament to the quality of the paper in those days.

[Myra Smith]

Gertrude Lythgoe is a relative -- great 2x aunt.

I also have her book -- good reading.

If anyone has information on her or her family, I would love to have it as I do genealogy and would love to share with my family.

[JENNIFER L. HELDERMAN]

I LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES AND HAPPEN TO BE THE GREAT NIECE OF GERTRUDE LYTHGOE AND MET HER ONCE WHEN MY GRANDMOTHER PASSED ON IN THE 1960'S.

MY MOTHER WAS A LYTHOGE AS WERE ALL MY RELATIVES SUCH AS JOHN HUGH LYTHGOE, JOSEPH LYTHGOE, MARGARET LYTHGOE AND GERTRUDE LYTHGOE AND ROBERT LYTHGOE. THERE IS SEVERAL LIVING RELATIVES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA. I REMEMBER THAT WE HAD THAT PARTICULAR BOOK AND IT HAS DISSAPPEARED BY SOME REASON AND I NEED TO KNOW WHERE TO PURCHASE IT AGAIN FOR OUR FAMILY.

MY FAMILY HAS ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW JUST EXACTLY WHEN GERTIE DIED, AND WHERE WAS SHE BURIED? NO ONE EVER KNEW. MY MOTHER KNEW THEY WANTED TO MAKE A MOVIE OF HER EXPLOITS BUT SHE REFUSED THE PEOPLE IN CALIFORNIA WHO APPROACHED HER. IF SHE WAS A MILLIONAIRE, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HER MILLIONS? WAS IT GIVEN TO CHARITY? MOM ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW AS SHE KNEW GERTIE WELL.

GERTIE LYTHGOE WAS NOT WELL RECIEVED IN MY MOTHER'S FAMILY AS HER STYLE OF LIFE WAS AN EMBARRESSMENT TO MOST OF THE LYTHGOES IN INDIANA. BUT MY GRANDMOTHER WAS THE ONLY ONE MY AUNT GERTIE LOVED AND THIS IS WHY SHE ATTENDED HER FUNERAL BACK IN THE 60'S. I WILL NEVER FORGET MEETING HER AT THE AGE OF 14. SHE WAS DRESSED AMAZINGLY IN BRIGHT COLORS WITH A TURBAN ON HER HEAD AND LOTS OF BANGLED JEWELRY. I SHALL NEVER FORGET THIS.

WE NEVER SAW HER ONCE AFTER HER BRIEF VISIT THAT EVENING IN OUR SMALL TOWN OF LOOGOOTEE, INDIANA.

[joseph armstroff]

gertie was my mother cleo is how she was refered to as and yes mother was the sole attedant at her funeral. who dare pick at the bones of my dear great aunt