Prohibition and the Liquor License Question

Type	Government
Date	1881 to 1933

For half a century before national Prohibition, Billerica was a "no-license" town, and it stayed one through the 1920s. Under the Massachusetts local option law every town voted each year on the question "Shall licenses be granted for the sale of intoxicating liquors in the Town of Billerica? Yes or No," and Billerica answered No every year on record from the 1890s to 1925. When the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act took effect in January 1920 the town had long been dry by its own choice; the change it brought was federal and state enforcement, liquor raids by the town police and a long argument at the polls over the state's own prohibition law. By 1928 a majority of the town's voters wanted the amendment repealed, and in 1933 Billerica voted for repeal and then for licensing beer, wine and spirits.

The town's dealings with liquor law began well before local option. Under the state prohibitory law of the 1850s a town could sell liquor only through an appointed agent, for medicinal and mechanical uses. In the year to February 1865 the Billerica liquor agent, O. M. Blodgett, sold $464.17 worth of liquor, was paid $50 as agent and turned $85.17 over to the treasurer; the next year his sales came to $813.37. The local option law of 1881 replaced this system with the annual vote. At the town meetings of the 1890s the question drew small and lopsided votes: 28 Yes to 105 No, 16 to 135, 26 to 107 and 25 to 122. In 1891 a warrant article asked the town to appropriate $300 "for the suppression of liquor selling," and in 1895-96 the town's two police officers, Martin Conway Jr. and Everett W. Livingston, made fifteen arrests for drunkenness, one "for keeping liquor for sale" and two liquor seizures.

As the town grew the votes grew larger but the answer did not change. The license question was 35 Yes to 221 No in 1900, when the town voted to keep the polls open on it as long as for the election of officers, and 39 to 290 in 1902; on the official ballot it was 145 to 294 in 1906, 195 to 340 in 1908, 140 to 321 in 1912, 168 to 417 in 1915, 195 to 362 in 1916, 172 to 423 in 1917, 121 to 343 in 1918 and 154 to 371 on February 8, 1919. The village of North Billerica, with its mill hands and, after 1914, the men of the Boston and Maine car shops, was always less dry than the Centre: in 1912 Precinct 2, which voted at Union Hall, gave 88 Yes to 151 No, while Precinct 1 at the Town Hall gave 52 to 170.

National Prohibition began on January 17, 1920, and four weeks later, on February 14, 1920, Billerica cast its closest vote ever on the old question, 317 Yes to 342 No, though licenses for intoxicating liquor could no longer be granted. In 1921 the vote was 348 to 810. From 1922 the warrant asked instead, "Shall license be granted for the sale of non-intoxicating beverages in the Town of Billerica?", meaning drinks under the legal limit, and the town still said No: 390 to 730 in 1922, 296 to 482 in 1923, 383 to 598 in 1924 and 430 to 734 on February 14, 1925, the last time the question appeared on the annual ballot.

The state's own enforcement law was fought out in four elections. On November 7, 1922 the voters were asked to accept Chapter 427 of the Acts of 1922, "An Act to carry into effect, so far as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is concerned, the Eighteenth Amendment"; Billerica, as the returns appear to show, approved it by only 506 to 489, the Centre for it 260 to 159 and North Billerica against it 246 to 330. A second enforcement act, Chapter 370 of the Acts of 1923, carried in the town 663 to 270 at the election of November 4, 1924. Four years later the tide had turned. On November 6, 1928 the ballot asked whether the senator from the district should be instructed to vote for a resolution "requesting Congress to take action for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment," and Billerica voted Yes 1,040 to 771, North Billerica 529 to 318. On November 4, 1930 the town voted 970 to 559 to repeal the state enforcement act of 1923.

Enforcement in town fell to the small police force under Henry D. Livingston, deputy chief in charge from 1922 and later chief. The annual police reports show it. In 1922 there were nine arrests for illegal keeping of liquor; in 1923 nine search warrants "for Liquor Raids," eight arrests for illegal keeping, two for illegal sale and one for "maintaining liquor nuisance," with $550 in fines; in 1925 four arrests for illegal manufacture and two for transporting, with $1,060 in fines for liquor offenses. The busiest year was 1929, with eighteen search warrants, ten arrests for illegal transportation, four for manufacture and fines of $2,625 for transportation alone. Arrests for drunkenness rose from 14 in 1920 to about fifty a year in the mid-1920s and 79 in 1929, and arrests for driving under the influence of liquor from two in 1921 to nineteen in 1929. The police budget of 1928 carried an item of $46 for "Liquor Investigations."

Repeal came in 1933. On June 13, 1933 Billerica voted for delegates to the state convention called to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment: the three candidates pledged for repeal received about 600 votes each, those against about 111. On the same ballot the town voted 607 to 141 to license the sale of wines and malt beverages, and the selectmen, Maurice A. Buck, Frank A. Kelley, Arthur R. Hallenborg, George S. Gracie and Albert Warren Stearns, began issuing beer licenses that year. Ten days after national repeal, at a special election on December 15, 1933, a light turnout voted 339 to 178 to license all alcoholic beverages and 342 to 154 for wines and malt beverages. The town took in $3,866 for beer and liquor licenses in 1933, $3,733 in 1934 and $4,522 in 1935. Local option survived as a ballot question under the new state law, and the town kept voting to license: 1,275 to 915 for all alcoholic beverages on November 6, 1934, and 4,042 to 1,725 in November 1956.

People

Martin Conway: Police officer (then Martin Conway Jr.) who with Everett W. Livingston made the liquor arrests and seizures of 1895-96.
Henry D. Livingston: Deputy chief and then chief of police who led the town's liquor raids and arrests through the 1920s.
Charles H. Eames: Town moderator through the Prohibition years, who presided at the special town meeting held with the license election of December 15, 1933.
Maurice A. Buck: Selectman who signed the warrants for the June 13 and December 15, 1933 repeal and license elections.
Frank A. Kelley: Selectman in 1933 when the town voted for repeal and first licensed beer.
Arthur R. Hallenborg: Selectman in 1933 when the town voted for repeal and licensed all alcoholic beverages.
George S. Gracie: Selectman in 1933 who signed the repeal and license election warrants.
Albert W. Stearns: Selectman in 1930 and 1933 who signed the warrants for the 1930 repeal of the state enforcement act and the 1933 votes.
John P. McBride: Selectman who signed the 1928 and 1930 state election warrants with the repeal questions.
Roland G. Wright: Town clerk who certified the 1928 and 1933 returns on repeal and licensing.

Prohibition and the Liquor License Question

Prohibition and the Liquor License Question

People

References