They didn’t call them the Roaring Twenties for nothing. Across North America after the end of the First World War, the public heaved a sigh of relief – the killing had stopped, the trenches were empty and it was time to stretch out a little. Fast cars, plentiful booze, flappers, dancing the Charleston, bobbed hair – the decade was a non-stop party.
And in 1920s Owen Sound, there was a mini-crime wave. The fall and spring assizes were as crowded with charges as cities of a much larger size. Maybe it was the hangover from the not-so-recent past when the Scenic City was known as Corkscrew City.
In the spring of 1922, Provincial Constable Jones was surprised to find a large, active still with a capacity to make a dozen gallons a run mounted on a coal oil stove. The Constable found two full bottles on the floor. Later that year, Constable Wilson unearthed 35 bottles of bogus booze on 8th Street East. The stuff had been buried four feet deep and was villainous alcohol, 73 percent proof and bearing forged revenue labels.
Crime had increased to such a degree that the county government was now required to pay for its use of Owen Sound’s jail cells. The charge was five dollars for each case. And still the search for illicit rye whisky went on in spite of an increased use of guns around Georgian Bay.
Red Ryan’s gang was robbing Ontario banks, the penitentiary at Kingston was full, and a safe was removed in the dark of night from Keenan’s Wooden Works in Mud Town. At year’s end, Sawyer Cummings, writing in the Sun-Times, noted, “What is needed is the strong arm of the law, and the stronger arm of public sentiment. An hour or two in the cells might be a good tamer for the ill-mannered.”
Originally aired November 3rd 2016
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