Welcome to another blog about prohibition. I am now pretty sure that I will make serial of blogs about this period of American history. I personally like that period very much, it is very interesting to me, and because of that I would love to share some interesting things, that have happened during that period, with you. I hope that you guys are interested in those things.

I call them 'the other side of history', because those are things that really happened in the past, but you will not study about them in schools. Those things are very interesting, much more than things you were listening about in schools, but they are not very important. For you is important to know that between 1920 and 1933 alcohol was prohibited in United States of America, and that during that period many people were producing it illegally. But, you do not have to know their names, biographies, interesting stories from their lives... That is why professors are not talking you about those people. Luckily for you, I know that you are very interested in those things, and I will talk you a lot about them in the future. 

(First I need to tell that I will write about police in this period, about some famous inspectors, about some other criminals, about some legends... I still do not know will I be writing only about prohibition in the future, until I write everything what I would love to write, or I will write about some other things between blogs about prohibition, but that is not very important now. If you like this serial, let me know that, if there is any legend or person that you have heard for, and you would love to find out more about that person or you would love to know is that only a legend, or it really happened, let me know that, I will try to investigate, and to make a post about it.)

So, this intro is already too long. 

Let's start.

'Lawless' movie

Credits: JoBlo Movie Trailers via YouTube

I am pretty sure that you have heard about this movie. Main role is playing handsome Tom Hardy, so, I recommend you to see it, if you have not already. 

This movie is following lives of three brothers who are living in a small town in United States during the prohibition. They are making lots of great alcohol, and they are selling it. It seems that they are living great life, until evil inspector arrive to their town. Of course, in the movie you are going to see love between brothers, love between them and their wifes, their personal desires and fears... but, point of this movie is prohibition, and to show us what people were ready to do to make alcohol. Of course, they were earning a lot of money, because when something is prohibited, it is always expensive. This movie is brutal, it is showing us explicit violence, and that is something what was reality during this period. People were killing each other. Everywhere, by everything, guns, bats, knives, broken bottles...

Credits: Slobodna Dalmacija

Some characters from this movie are not real, and some things that you can see in this movie have never happened, but three main characters, Bondurant brothers were real.

Who were brothers Bondurant?

Credits: Find a grave

 Those guys were living in Franklin, Virginia, United States, during the period of prohibition. Actually, they were living there for the whole life, but that is not interesting to you. We will focus on period of prohibition, and you can guess from the description of movie, they were producing, transporting and selling alcohol. All those things were illegal. 

In their home in Franklin they had a small, well hidden factory for producing alcohol. Every single day they were making lost of alcohols our of various plants and sugar. That alcohol was very strong, it was not tasty at all, and it was very, very dangerous. 

Why dangerous?

Well, in period of prohibition no one was taking care about ingredients of alcohols. No one was measuring how many percents of methyl alcohol was in the drink. And, as you know methyl alcohol is very dangerous, it can lead to blindness and even to death, if person drinks a lot of it. 

So, we can conclude that those guys actually killed many people with their alcohol, and they were never arrested for that. 

People could not report those guys, because buying and drinking alcohol also was a crime. So, you could not just walk into some court and say that you became blind, because you were drinking someone's alcohol. 

So, we can tell that those guys were really very brave, and at the same time they were rude. I guess that you also think that people who disrespect the low are very rude. 

Legends about bothers Bondurant

Credits: On Screen Fashion

If you decide to see the move, you will hear a lot of legends about those guys in that movie. Movie is was inspired by a book that was written by their cousin. Those legends in the movie and legends in the books are not same. There are some differences between them. Of course, we can not know is any of them true, because no one of us was there, no one of us have seen that. We can believe or not. 

But...

There is not any legend about me. I am just an ordinary person who is living an ordinary life. What I am trying to tell is that those guys were everything except normal and ordinary. They survived a lot of very dangerous things, they have been doing dangerous things, and they were producing problems. 

Period of prohibition

Those three young men are typical people from prohibition. At the beginning of the movie that  I was talking about we can see a gangster who is shooting with his 'Thompson', he is destroying one car, and killing two men. And what happens? Nothing happens. He leaves like nothing has happened. 

That scene is showing us hos dangerous prohibition really was. It is similar to wild west, just with much less rules. On wild west you had rules for killing, and in prohibition rules were setting gangsters who had enough money to pay to authorities. And that was terrible because everyone could be a victim, even some ordinary people who were not even drinking alcohol. 

When someone is living in time like this, and doing things like producing and selling alcohol, that means he is not naive, he is not kind, and he is not weak.

In whole my serial about prohibition you will see many violent scenes, you will read many scary and even creepy stories, but I just want to tell you the truth. I want to explain to you how it really was. 

 

 

I hope that you guys enjoyed this blog. In this one you got much less information than in previous one, that one was about Lucky Luciano. But, it is not my fault, you an not find a lot of information about those guys. You can find them only in one movie and in one book. 

I just wanted to tell you, that they were real, and that their crimes were real. 

Thank you all for reading this.

Love you all, and see you next time.