Prohibition, juke joints, speakeasys, the 20's were a wild time and I can see someone wearing this outfit to a speakeasies dancing and drinking bathtub gin.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once commented that during
Prohibition, "the parties were bigger..the pace was faster...and the morals were looser." Prohibition engendered public outcry, especially from
German-Americans, many of whom were long dependent on
brewing for income, and the
working class and
immigrants.
Though national
Prohibition was created in hopes of reducing
crime and other problems related to alcohol, it instead precipitated an age of
jazz and
liquor, as well as an age of
corruption, which contributed to the popular image of the "
Roaring Twenties".
[2] Bootlegging seemed respectable. Ordinary people manufactured
liquor in their homes. Speakeasies led to the
corruption of those who owned them, those who went to them, and those who were supposed to enforce laws against them.
For every
saloon that closed, a dozen speakeasies sprang up (Our American Century Jazz Age: The Jazz Age, 114). They were disguised as everything from
funeral homes to regular family basements. This made it easy to find speakeasies because there was generally one nearby. Those who went would see a mixed crowd of people ranging from the rich to the poor. They would see those who were against the prohibition and those who were for it (“Speakeasies, Flappers, and Jazz: The Music of the Prohibition”). People believed the laws of America should reflect the
ethics of
society, not its practices. Because of this, most of the general public had broken the law at some time (The Twenties: the American Destiny, 53).
Those who were best known for hanging out in speakeasies and breaking the law were
flappers. Flappers were easy to spot. They were women with short skirts and bobbed hair, smoked and drank
cocktails. They dared to go where women had not gone before. Their boyfriends wore knee-length raccoon coats and corrupted themselves with illegal activities. They blamed it on the fast paced
jazz music. They were the spokesmen for the corruption the speakeasy caused (“Speakeasies, Flappers, and Jazz: The Music of the Prohibition”).
The speakeasies corrupted the general public by making it easy to break the laws of the prohibition. To get into speakeasies, all one had to do was know the password or have a membership to what the speakeasies called a supper club (The Twenties: the American Destiny, 54). This made it easy to obtain liquor. Many speakeasies had code words for drinks such as a cocktail. They also commonly served alcoholic drinks in tea cups. During raids, many speakeasies would have the band play a certain song or have a code word of some sort to sound the alarm. At that alarm, patrons would get rid of their
alcohol and flee. This made it easy to avoid arrest (The Roaring Twenties Encyclopedia, 37).
Most speakeasies were started by ordinary people who saw an opportunity to make money, and when the money rolled in, so did the
criminals (The Twenties: the American Destiny, 55). Many
gangs took over entire cities and began to control the speakeasies. They had a system of
smuggling the alcohol around. They bribed federal officials to “protect their speakeasy for a cost.” This caused corruption all around, and the mafia was born (The Roaring Twenties Encyclopedia, 37).
