March 12, 2025 • 42 mins
Organized crime, speakeasy gin, and jazz impresarios stole headlines in the 1920s, but behind the scenes boiled a bizarre government plot rooted in the first American culture war. In New York City, a pair of scientists sees the devastation written on the wall, and they try to put a halt to the mayhem before it's too late.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey there, it's your host ed helms.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Here.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted
to remind you that my brand new book is coming
out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive
Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre
order it right now at snafudashbook dot com. Trust me,
if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
(00:24):
It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we
just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker.
I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right.
I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago,
San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've
ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q
(00:46):
and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting
turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head
to snafoo dashbook dot com to pre order the book
and check out all the tour details and day, or
just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay,
that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snafu Season
(01:08):
three formula six. November thirtieth, nineteen twenty eight, Cleveland, Ohio.
The city has just opened a new music hall downtown.
It's nineteen twenties opulence from top to bottom, arched ceilings
in an Italian style, columns and balconies glowing with gold leaf,
(01:31):
a giant plaster eagle looking down over the stage. Maybe
not how I would do the decor, more into tasteful
minimalism myself, but the folks in Cleveland are eating it up.
A massive sparkling chandelier spills light over a crowd of
thousands who are all losing their minds hearing for the
Paul Whiteman Orchestra playing their hits. They're the most popular
(01:55):
band in America, and they have a talented young coronetist
blowing sweet notes from his that's Bis bider Beck on
the coronet. How many folks named Bix nowadays? I'd say,
you know you're in the twenties, baby. He's standing in
the back row of the band doing his thing. Bix
(02:16):
is a small, dapper fella, dressed in a tux with
slicked brown hair parted down the middle like an open
Faulkner novel. A few songs into the performance, something strange happens.
Bix's eyes rolled back, He slumps over on the stage
and falls to the ground completely unconscious. A band mate
(02:39):
jolts him awake, helps him backstage, and eventually he takes
him back to his hotel room. That night, Bix has
a freak out in his hotel room. He yells hysterically,
he destroys furniture. This surprised everyone who knew him. He
was a jazz musician, I a member of led Zeppelin.
(03:02):
His bandmates would later describe it as a fit of delirium.
They said he cracked.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Up Yon Jo or Yon.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
True.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
Just a little song Keep Georgia on my Mind.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Georgia on My Mind, That Little Diddy is the American
songbook classic Georgia on My Mind. Maybe you know the
iconic Ray Charles version, but this is an original recording
with the composer Hogy Carmichael from the last recording session
of Bix's career. In his solo, you can still hear
(03:46):
Bix's genius, and though you might not be able to tell,
Bis reportedly didn't have enough breath to finish some of
the gorgeous phrases in his solo Towards the end of
the song, Bix is struggling. He never really recovers. A
(04:08):
year later, Bis is home in his queen's New York apartment.
By now, he's bedridden, down to just one hundred and
fifty pounds, complaining of constant headaches, dizziness, memory loss, and blackouts.
This summer night, a neighbor visits and finds Bix in
bed under the sheets, hallucinating. Bix dies that night. He
(04:31):
was just twenty eight. What happened to him? That question
haunted Bix's family and his fans. Sure they knew Bix
wasn't well, and they knew that, like a lot of
touring musicians, Bicks was a heavy drinker. That had been
true since his teens, But it would take years for
anyone to see how this all fit into a larger story.
(04:56):
In the nineteen twenties, taking a drink put Bix, along
with me millions of Americans, right in the middle of
the decade's bitter divide over alcohol. In the end, the
war between the wets and the dryes would have a
massive human cost. I'm ed Helms and This is Snaffo,
a show about history's greatest screw ups. Last season, we
(05:19):
told the story of the burglary that exposed Jay Edgar
Hoover's secret FBI. This season, we go back a little
further in time, all the way to the nineteen twenties.
We're bringing you a dark tale from the heart of
the Prohibition era. As we all know, Prohibition did not work.
It was what you might call a snaffoo. Within that
(05:41):
snaffo is another snaffhoo, one you probably haven't heard about.
How a lot of Americans started dying mysteriously and the
unlikely duo who tried to figure out why and save them.
On this season of Snaffo, the story of Formulas. How
prohibitions wore on alcohol went so off the rails the
(06:04):
government wound up poisoning its own people. I thought I
had a pretty good handle on prohibition. The nineteen twenties,
(06:27):
the era before the Great Depression, when we felt like, hey,
world War One is over, what better to do than party?
The Harlem Renaissance, jazz votes for women. America was feeling
a burst of new energy. We were trying out cars,
trying out radio. Heck, we were trying out movies. And
(06:48):
as a Georgia boy, I can't help loving how much
love Georgia was getting in that decade. In addition to
Georgia on my mind, another classic emerged, Sweet Georgia Brown.
And the background to all of that was, of course, Prohibition.
It's just kind of part of our mental furniture. Right.
(07:11):
For me, the word Prohibition takes me back to all
the great portrayals in classic American cinema, like The Untouchables,
two straight hours of mafia set pieces. Who could forget
when elliot Ness faces down Al Capone in a hotel lobby?
Come on, you can't discern up a pitch? Do you
talk to me like that in front of my son?
If you didn't sneak out to hear de Niro drop
(07:32):
f bombs in an Italian accent, were you even thirteen?
The summer the Untouchables came out. I mean, just listen
to that, macho chest thumping cops and mobsters, good guys
and bad guys going toe to toe. It's classic Hollywood
stuff that just reels you in. But then, well, I
heard the story of a Prohibition snafo that genuinely surprised
(07:53):
me because it wasn't part of the Prohibition story that
I knew. It was the story of Formula six and
a devastating Prohibition era program by the federal government. Hey, honey,
have you ever heard of Formula six?
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Now?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, almost no one had. So I called up someone
who really brought Prohibition into focus for me, along with
millions of TV fans like me. Hey, so good to
meet you, man, it's so so great to meet you.
That's Terence Winter, creator of the epic TV series Boardwalk Empire.
I put the question to him, I'm curious if you're
(08:31):
if you hit on in your research, are you familiar
with Formula six? I am not, And that was wild
to me because his show is stacked with the kinds
of details that made nineteen twenties Atlantic City come to life.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
Even though it's one hundred years ago, it's still felt modern.
People dressed in suits, they went out to restaurants, they
talked on telephone, they drove in cars.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
You know, it's still felt cool. It still felt like excessive.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Well this was modern. You know you could wear some
of those clothes today.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
I mean, I gotta say, I do look pretty good
in a pair of spats. But the sense we have
that we already know prohibition, it can actually lead us astray.
A little, because cliches about life in the nineteen twenties
are so thick, we assume we know what it's all about.
You know, liquor was made illegal. It was a big mistake.
(09:24):
There was a bunch of mobsters and Tommy guns, and
then it got repealed. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
I mean, every time you ever see anything in the twenties,
everybody's doing the fucking Charleston. I was like, did they
do any other songs written between nineteen twenty and nineteen thirty?
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Obviously, yes, I mean we're talking about the birth of jazz.
We're talking about Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Eddie Lang Earl Hines.
I could go on. The point is we tend to
paint history with broad brushes, like Terry says, when we
think about the Prohibition era, our minds probably go immediately
to the cliches we know best, and the real complex
(10:01):
human lives that ordinary people lived in the past don't
always come through when we talk about history. But this story,
the story of Formula six, reveals something bizarre that was
happening all along. Underneath all the organized crime and speak
easy gin and temperance moralizing, a shocking government plot rooted
(10:22):
in the first modern American culture war. It starts with
a pair of scientists, investigators who happened to see it coming.
In fact, they tried to stop it. It's nineteen eighteen
(10:44):
in New York and the city is facing a problem. Okay,
the city is facing a lot of problems, but here's
a tricky one. A record number of murders are going unsolved.
A city report lays blamed squarely on one government office,
in particular, the office of the coroner. The coroner was
(11:04):
essentially the city's chief death investigator. He issued death certificates
and performed autopsies for all murders, suicides, and accidental debts.
A pretty grim but important job, and yet the city's
coroners were either horribly unqualified or terribly corrupt, or quite
often both.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
They made coroners out of anyone who needed a job,
who the party machine owed them a favor.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
That's Deborah Blum, author of the Poisoner's Handbook, Murder and
the Birth of Forensic Medicine. In jazz Age, New York.
She describes how at the time, the police essentially used
coroners to rubber stamp false reports and sometimes even cover
up murders. And when she says anyone could become a coroner,
(11:53):
she means it.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
There were sign painters that were milkmen. There were funeral
home operators, there were lawyers, and there were notably doctors
who were such terrible doctors that they had lost their practices.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
And if you think that's bad, let me introduce you
to the head corner of New York in nineteen eighteen,
a guy who showed up to crime scenes completely hammered.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
There are death certificates that literally say could be diabetes
or possibly an auto accident. Right, I mean, you're just
going seriously.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
After stories like that started coming to light, the mayor
had no choice but to make some changes. It was
time to find someone who could get to the bottom
of all these crimes, someone who is less Homer Simpson
and more Sherlock Holmes or I don't know, maybe anyone
who could stand upright. City officials decided the coroner's office
(12:51):
was a joke, an embarrassment, and a waste of taxpayers money,
so they shut it down. But they couldn't just ignore
the reasons people died in New York. They had to
replace it with something. Their idea, a new system for
the city and a new position that would be filled
by a qualified doctor who would appoint a trained staff
(13:14):
to examine cases and rule on causes of death. This
new lead position was chief Medical Examiner of New York City.
So they announced the job opening and in walk de
fella named Charles Norris. H no love Walker Texas ranger
Chuck Norris, and god knows, I'm scared of him. But
(13:37):
just to be clear, this is doctor Charles Norris of
New York, New York.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
He was a really big guy and he had one
of those kind of classic spade like beards. He had
a big booming voice and a a Yale football player's presence,
and he used it when he needed to.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
That's right. This particular Norris was a yalely with the
appropriate aristocratic roots.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
He was a descendant of the Norrises who founded Norristown, Pennsylvania.
So they were a long time, well established, important American family.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Which means that yep, Norris was rich rich. He didn't
hide it. Norris was a public servant who rode around
like Bruce Wayne.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
He never went anywhere without his being driven by his chauffeur.
And even when he went to crime scenes, you know,
his chauffeur would take him to the crime scene and
he would get out in his Kashmir coat and his
expensive hat.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Not exactly a man of the people, you'd think, but
money bags aside. It turns out public service actually ran
deep in Norris's blood. Norris's ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War.
Ever heard of it. They stripped lead gutters and rain
spouts from their house to make bullets for the Continental Army. Yeah,
(14:57):
the house is flooding again. Smoking chair will be ruined.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
My beloved.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
It is the sacrifice we make to bring forth a
new nation.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
And then in the Civil War, Norris's grandfather negotiated the
first one hundred million dollar loan financing the Union government's
war against the Confederates.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
All of the all of the.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Norris took the do gooder spirit of his ancestors and
studied medicine, became a doctor, And now as the Great
War raged in Europe, he was looking to do his
part to keep the people of New York safe. So
he made a real run at the position of Chief
Medical Examiner when the job opened up, an actually qualified
doctor who wanted to use his position for the public good. Well,
(15:48):
it turns out that even for someone who wanted to
do good, even after he started his job as chief
medical Examiner, the odds were stacked against him because it
turns out there were plenty of officials who simply liked
the old way of doing things. Norris's budget for his
staff and his workspace was laughably small that drunk corner
(16:12):
had left him in office literally in shambles.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
At one point, he was actually forced to buy the
clocks on the walls of the Medical Examiner's office because
the mayor the budget is such an agree that they
couldn't even afford clock.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Before, police officers used corners to play their political games,
but now with Norris in charge, they were in for
a surprise. Like when a few officers brought Norris a
body to examine, which happened to be riddled with bullet holes.
They asked for a simple John Hancock on a let's say,
pre filled out death certificate that said the cause of
(16:53):
death was suicide. Norris looked at the corpse and said
that I don't think.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
So out of the question, in my opinion, to even
consider the possibility of a suicide on account of the
number and situation of.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
The bullet wounds.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
There were four bullet wounds spray across the corpse.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
In other words, seems impossible that this poor guy shot
himself in the heart, shoulder, leg, and arm. Norris was
serious about his work. He was serious about building the
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner into an effective research
team that could get to the bottom of all the
deaths in New York City. But to do that he
(17:33):
needed help. Norris was a doctor, not a chemist, who
could detect toxins or poisons in a dead body. And
during this time, there were more and more poisons surrounding Americans.
Morphine and teething, medicines for infants, opium and sedatives, arsenic
and everything from cosmetics to pesticides. And don't even ask
(17:54):
about how much formaldehyde they were mixing with cowbrains and
putting in milk. And I thought that micro plastics and
my water bottle were bad. And it's not like it
was harmless. People were dying from this stuff so often,
in fact, that it was hard to keep up. But
here's the thing about poisons. They're just not quite as
obvious as bullet holes. And so Norris had a crazy
(18:18):
idea to create a dedicated lab where chemists could work
on determining causes of death. Call it a toxicology lab.
At the time, no other city in America had one,
and you know Norris and his cashmere, he always had
to have the best. This lab would be installed at Bellevue,
(18:38):
a New York hospital perched along the East River since
eighteen eleven.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
As he thinks about organizing his department, the first thing
he thinks is, we need a chemist.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Norris just needed to pick the right brainiac for the job.
Fortunately for him, there was someone who fit the bill
right down the hall, an assistant professor at the Bellevue
Medical College, and the award for Forensic Toxicologist for the
newly established New York Office of Chief Medical Examiner, where
the clocks don't even work, goes to doctor Alexander Gettler.
(19:14):
Come on down, alex you're the lucky winner, uh, Doctor Getler,
Doctor Geedler. Well, when Norris approached him, this Alexander Gettler
fellow wasn't convinced that playing robin to Norris's batman was
his dream job. You see, Alexander Getler was already in
(19:36):
a position that was nothing to sneeze at in those days,
and well, if you looked at where the invitation was
coming from, Let's just say it was pretty clear. The
Medical Examiner's office was in the build the plane as
you fly stage of its existence. Not to mention, Getler
was from a completely different world. He was quite different
from Flash the cash Norris.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
He was trim, yeah, dark hair, he had a long
angular face, chomping on a cigar all the time.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
From what I understand, that's Dorothy Atsel, Alexander Gettler's granddaughter.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
Every picture we have of him, he's in a suit.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
And that's Vicky Atsel, Alexander's great granddaughter.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
He's got like a pretty serious expression, which I think
was kind of his m He was a pretty serious guy.
He just kind of like went to work as anyone
would go to work with his suit jacket on.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
He wasn't from wealth or Ivy League education or anything
like that. He just kind of pulled himself up and
followed what he wanted to do, got the education he needed,
worked nights so he could go to school during the day.
Speaker 7 (20:41):
Tickets, please all right, have a nice day.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Gettler worked as a ticket taker for the thirty ninth
Street Brooklyn to Battery Ferry and took the overnight shift.
During the day, he earned himself a PhD in biochemistry
at Columbia. Those brains and you know, fairly intense work
ethic got Gettler his teaching job. He had put in
the hard yards and he had earned it. But outside
(21:05):
of work, he lived like a lot of other people
in his Brooklyn neighborhood, tucked snugly in a brownstone with
his wife's son and more than a half dozen Irish
in laws.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
He raised his kids in the middle of this kind
of chaos of the Irish American life in Brooklyn. I
think that hugely influenced also his sense of the world
because he was so connected to her family.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
But going back and forth between a busy home and
a busy hospital, he saw the difference medicine could make
in the lives of everyday people. So even though he
had turned down Norris's offer, he couldn't put it out
of his mind. Maybe if he joined the Medical Examiner's
office he could do some good. So when Norris came
around again, Getler was ready to consider the job. But
(21:53):
Norris was also completely honest with Getler. This was nothing
like a cushy job in academia. Gettler would have have
to design the lab from scratch. You would have to
figure out for himself how to do the work of
detecting poisons. There were no training programs in forensic toxicology.
He would have to blaze his own trail. That was
all right, though, because Gentler loved nothing more than a
(22:16):
challenge and cramming more chemistry work into his days. He
agreed to take the position, but only if he could
keep teaching at the medical College. That's how much he
believed in his grind. Norris looked around at the backlog
of bodies stacking up in Bellevue and said, sure, man,
whatever you want.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
My grandfather was tapped to be the chief toxicologist. It
just felt almost like they were like superhero crusaders as well,
you know, like starting something and actually not just starting it,
but turning the page on a system that didn't work,
wasn't fair and was corrupt.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
It's funny what you said, I was gonna say, you said,
mom about them being like superheroes that have just like
it feels like it was. They're like like a Buddy
cop movie of like these two scientists in the trenches together.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
And while the scientific trenches of New York may have
been metaphorical, there's no question that our dynamic duo had
a very real fight on their hands, because it turned
out that even though the city was moving on from
the flu epidemic and the war in France was winding down,
a different kind of war was just getting started, and
(23:31):
Norris and Gettler had gotten together just in time for
the shit to hit the fan.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
It's been in the big baggie, in the box, in
a closet, and if you look at each of the pages,
they were all like sort of frayed and chipping.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Dorothy Atsel is at at her kitchen table.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I'm hesitating separating the pages, yeah, because every time I
open it there's pieces of paper that just kind of
flake off.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
She's meeting with one of our writers, Albert Chen. She's
very very carefully handling a dusty blue, hard bound book
that's older than my mom's wedding China. The book is
a collection of typed reports written by Alexander Getler over
the course of three decades.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
His dissertation was the balance of acid forming and base
forming elements in food and its relation to ammonia metabolism.
I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah, it's been a while since tenth grade chemistry for
me too.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
And then like this one, which was from nineteen twenty one,
a method for the determination of death by drowning. So
now I understand.
Speaker 7 (24:49):
What this is about.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
It's easy to understand. Back in the day when he
was doing all of his work, they were pulling bodies
out of the and you, how do you know if
they drowned or they died by another means?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, a great question that before Getler and Norris came along,
no one had any clue how to answer. But Dorothy's daughter,
Vicky says Getler figured it out.
Speaker 6 (25:16):
People would come to him with problems that they like
didn't even really know the cause of. Just like all
of these people who work in the same place are
having the same issue. They're all getting weird tumors and cancer,
transit workers or subway workers who were all feeling really
like sluggish and like cognitively fuzzy. And he would first
figure out like the cause of the problem and then
(25:36):
solve it.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
That blue book contained all the detective work that Gettler
and Norris pursued in their day, and that work kept
them busy, very busy.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
They were so like focused on their work and they're
trying to do things. They didn't want to leave the
lab to use the bathroom, so they just urinated in
the big sink they had in the lab, which I'm like, Okay,
I guess if you're really focused on your work and
you really don't want to take the time, I get it.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
But despite what you may be thinking, the apparent lack
of nearby urinals was not the biggest public health crisis
Norris and Gettler were facing. By early nineteen nineteen, the
deadly wave of influenza was finally passing, but Norris and Gettler,
we're seeing a concerning uptick in victims reporting similar symptoms,
a sudden sense of weakness, severe abdominal pain and vomiting, blindness,
(26:32):
a slip into unconsciousness, heart failure, and even death. But why.
They had a hunch it had something to do with
a ubiquitous substance floating through the streets of New York
City in nineteen nineteen. And no, I'm not talking about
all the urine flowing from Gettler and Norris's big laboratory sink.
We're talking about liquor. Alcohol is everywhere.
Speaker 8 (26:54):
The term that New York never sleeps is true of
the nineteen twenties, like there are nightclubs on every single corner.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That's Leshawn Harris, historian of New York City's underground economy.
Even in black and Tan clubs.
Speaker 8 (27:10):
Inter racial clubs in New York City in the early
twentieth century, African Americans are going to these clubs, both
middle class and working class people and are drinking. Alcohol
is something that black churches use for various different ceremonies.
We also know that alcohol is something that different social
(27:32):
groups are engaging and whether they be light beer or
cocktails or a little bit of rum, it's something that
one can engage in while at church. It's a part
of your social life.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Light beer, cocktails, a little bit of rum. Not if
you were part of the Anti Saloon League. Let me
tell you about these folks. Their mission state wasn't exactly
hard to get at. It's kind of right there in
the name anti Saloon. They wanted to hammer the bung
back into America's whiskey barrel. To them, drinking was a
moral outrage, a sin, and the root of all society's ills.
(28:15):
From small beginnings, they grew into the most powerful lobbying
group in America. In Ohio, where they started, they ran
a pressure campaign that beat a popular governor. Ohio was dry,
but why stop there? They got ambitious. They wanted to
ring every last drop of liquor out of the whole
wet nation. So as their next target, they set their
(28:37):
sights on Gettler and Norris's stomping grounds, New York City.
You see, by their account, New Yorkers drank a dozen
pints of alcoholic beverages a week for every man, woman,
and child, a per capita consumption that was more than
three times the national average. One saloon for every six
(28:57):
people in New York, the League said, as doctor Harris says,
New York City at the end of World War One
was bursting with working class saloons, chandeliered hotel bars, and
wine soaked bohemian cafes. The Anti Saloon League called it
the liquor Center of America. To them, the Big Apple
had fermented into a sidery slush of drunkards and degenerates.
(29:21):
They had the nation, and especially the nation's politicians, running scared,
and then came World War One. It was exactly what
they'd been waiting for. The Anti Saloon League saw the
chance to justify a national ban on liquor as a
wartime measure. That was easy. No politician wanted to be unpatriotic.
(29:43):
But the wartime measure was just the first step. What
they really wanted a permanent ban on liquor enshrined in
the US Constitution. The US House of Representatives has voted
in favor of the proposed eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
which prohibits the petra sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
The amendment will now make.
Speaker 8 (30:04):
Its way for the fifty states.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
January seventh, nineteen eighteen, Mississippi.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Becomes the first state to ratify the eighteenth Amendment.
Speaker 7 (30:11):
Georgia becomes the thirteenth state to ratify the eighteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
One by one, lawmakers and state houses across the country
fell in line California as the twenty second state to
ratify the eighteenth Amendment, But New York City was, as
one paper called it, Satan's last stronghold.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
An apple did the trick in the garden of Eden.
Imagine what I can do with the big apple in America.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
The Anti Saloon League, they were a lot of lawyers
and Methodist ministers from like Ohio. New York City, meanwhile,
was a lot of working class, immigrant, Black, and Catholic
neighborhoods constantly evolving. These New Yorkers weren't exactly interested in
test driving someone else's moral spearmint and turning the city
(31:01):
dry as a kale chip, But when a band hit
the whole country, they had no choice. The entire commercial
beer supply in New York City, from the warehouses to
the grocery stores to the cabinets of every legitimate business,
got poured down the drain. But you might be surprised
(31:23):
to hear despite all that beer, saying goodbye New York
nightlife wasn't changing. The alcohol fueling it, however, was with
the beer taps, dry saloons were now serving stiffer and
more mysterious concoctions, this time with distilled liquor.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
As the amendment is circulating and moving forward to when
it actually goes into place around New York City, people
are starting to prepare for it by making sure they
have their own little home stills or backyard stills or
you know what people used to call beathtub jent. Even
if they can't get it legally. They want those systems
in place. And they were using wood or other materials
(32:07):
that they could easily access in an urban area, and
they were making wood alcohol.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Wood alcohol known to those of us who passed tenth
grade chemistry as methyl alcohol. It was used as a
solvent to make varnish and as a fuel, and unfortunately,
sometimes to mix cocktails. From the taste, you couldn't tell
exactly what was in those drinks, but you might find
out the next day when you woke up in the hospital.
(32:36):
Your body loaded with methyl alcohol, a very toxic substance,
and that's if you were lucky enough to wake up.
More and more people from all parts of the city
were ending up on a gurney outside Gettler's lab.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
Bellevue was this sort of gothic brick building on the
sort of mid to lower East side of Manhattan. There
was something about that brick ivy gothic look of the place.
There was something about, you know, the fact that so
many deaths occurred there. It had a kind of mythology
(33:22):
about it. For a number of reasons. Right, they saved
a lot of lives, but a lot of people died there.
That it just had this kind of reputation of being
a slightly haunted place.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
In nineteen nineteen, Bellevue just opened a new pathology building
six stories high made of solid granite with long arched windows.
Inside is the city Morgue and the medical examiner's offices.
There are autopsy rooms and a forensic chemistry laboratory for
Charles Norris and Alexander Getler to study the dead. Gettler's
(33:58):
laboratory is a layer of blue flames leaking out of
bunsen burners, hissing heating systems, boiling dishes. The wood floorboards
are discolored by chemicals and burns. When Noris and Gettler
see a rise in cases of people who've been crippled
by blindness just before death, they have a hunch that
the reason is poisoning due to toxic liquor wood alcohol.
(34:22):
But no test exists to detect wood alcohol in cadavers,
So Getler does what he always does in cases like this,
He creates one. Gettler's test is grinding up a chunk
of tissue into a flask and then boiling it into
a dark sludge. He measures the formaldehyde bubbling out. Most
(34:43):
alcohol would release just a trace of it. Wood alcohol
releases an overpowering amount.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
They're really trying to get to the bones of this, right, literally,
how much poisoned alcohol is out there?
Speaker 1 (34:57):
A fair amount actually. For generations, people had been making
their own liquor and getting sick doing it. Moonshine, white lightning, liquid, courage,
call it what you want, but this cheap homemade stuff
mostly stayed at the margins of American society. Now, however,
it was becoming the mainstream. So in nineteen eighteen, Gettler
(35:18):
wrote an article for the country's leading medical journal to
get word out to doctors and public health officials. He
saw prohibition coming, and he knew exactly what it would mean.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
He titles this article, would alcohol Poison It? He's not
messing around. He puts the word poison right in the
actual article title. So he says, the prohibition by our
government of the manufacture of distilled liquors will unquestionably lead
to much moonshining, adulteration, and dilution of the liquors offered
(35:51):
to the public.
Speaker 7 (35:52):
It is quite evidence given the recent poisonings in the
city of over thirty persons, six of whom died with
a whiskey sold in the poor sections of the city
that's on analysis, was believed to contain a considerable amount
of wood methyl alcohol. What alcohol pastes like ethyl alcohol
and morova. It is considerably cheap. Hence the adulterate buys
(36:12):
the latter ignorant. That's a via poisoning, blindness and often
death lurks with it.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
He's saying to doctors around the country, you know, let
people know this is dangerous, this is coming, and arm yourself.
He said, I want to send up a signal flayer.
Please take this as a warning. Where at the very
start of this, essentially what that piece says, in a
beautifully scientific way, is I'm not talking about alcohol. I'm
(36:42):
talking about poison.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Gettler connects the dots. What he sees in nineteen eighteen
makes him think that people aren't going to be drinking
less because prohibition is the law of the land. Instead,
they're going to be drinking a much more suspect, much
more dangerous supply this message. It didn't land, but he
was right. By the winter of nineteen nineteen, more than
(37:08):
sixty New Yorkers died from drinking wood alcohol. Another one
hundred were blinded then almost that same number of alcohol
related deaths, only this time just in the month of
December alone. So Getler sat down at his desk, picked
up his pen, and tried again.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
The Critical Study of Methods for the Detection of methyl
alcohol by Alexander O.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
Getler.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Don't get confused here, wood alcohol, methyl alcohol, and methanol.
Those are just three different names for the same nasty beast,
and you should never ever drink it. As Getler's granddaughter
Dorothy says, says.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Here, during the years nineteen eighteen and nineteen nineteen, I
have had occasion to examine over seven hundred human organs
for alcohol. In addition to this, about two hundred and
fifty liquors of various descriptions were analyzed.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
In this report, Getler begins to identify the presence of
wood alcohol in an alarming number of cases. On the
day after Christmas in nineteen nineteen, Gettler and Norris switch tactics.
Just writing for America's doctors wasn't going to save the
country's direction. Sorry, doctors, I mean, you've been telling us
(38:27):
it's all diet and exercise for like ever, and we
just don't listen. So with two major reports reaching too
small of an audience. Norris and Gettler take this story
straight to the general public. They called a press conference.
They invite a throng of reporters from the New York
(38:48):
papers into their offices in Bellevue. The news hounds file
in passed broken chairs and over the blood spattered carpet
left behind by the drunk coroner as a parting gift.
Then Gettler and Norris deliver their message.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Anything that passes for whiskey and the saloons is dangerous.
The first symptom is a mere pain in the stomach,
but one teaspoon of wood alcohol is enough to cause blackness.
Drinking a tumble of it will kill you within hours.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
Sure, what does it smell like?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Complete blindness?
Speaker 2 (39:19):
What's in this booze?
Speaker 5 (39:20):
Have you thought it yourself, doctor Doris?
Speaker 7 (39:24):
Prohibition is not going to make alcohol disappear. It's instead
going to create numerous substitutes for whiskey that I have dead.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
Before prohibition really takes off. He's looking the federal government
right in the eye and saying, I want to let
you know that we're looking at this now, We're seeing
people starting to die. This is a terrible idea. Whatever
you know, politics and morality you think is behind what
(39:54):
you're doing. The bottom line of what you're going to
do is kill people.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
They issued that warning in December nineteen nineteen. Charles Norris
and Alexander Getler were now on the case, a case
that would consume them across the next decade and expose
the killer of Bis bider Beck, remember him, the jazz
musician who collapsed in Cleveland at age twenty eight. It
(40:18):
would take our dynamic duo to the heart of a
cruel and misguided scheme, a snaffoo that led to the
mass poisoning of thousands and the people behind it. The
US government this season on snaffo, the fact.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
That there were only twenty six hundred prohibitionations covering the
entire Canadian border, of the Mexican border, and both coasts.
Speaker 8 (40:47):
It's ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
When we're five years into prohibition, the government is starting
to go, Okay, this isn't working. What is wrong with
the American people.
Speaker 7 (40:57):
The bartender took some brass metals and the other two
patrons held him down and well to beat the crap
out of him.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
He said, if I ever get out and the two people,
I'm going to go get the DA and that son
of a bitch Gettler.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
If I made that up, You've got come on and
this absolutely all happened.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Did people die?
Speaker 3 (41:13):
They died.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Daily Snapfu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment,
and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio.
It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo,
Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl
(41:38):
Nellis and Alyssa Martino. This episode was written by Albert Chen,
Carl Nellis and Nevin Callapoly, with additional writing and story
editing from Alissa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from
Stephen wood. Tory Smith is our associate producer. Our story
editor is nicki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapoly
and a kimminy Ekpo. Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our
(42:00):
creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing music and sound design
by Ben Chug Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley
Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by
Dan Rosatto. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and
ben Ryizak,
Hey there, it's your host ed helms.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Here.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I wanted
to remind you that my brand new book is coming
out on April twenty ninth. It's called Snaffo, The Definitive
Guide to History's Greatest screw Ups, and you can pre
order it right now at snafudashbook dot com. Trust me,
if you like this show, you're gonna love this book.
(00:24):
It's got all the wild disasters spectacular face plants we
just couldn't squeeze into this podcast. And here's the kicker.
I am also going on tour to celebrate. That's right.
I'm coming to New York, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago,
San Francisco, and my hometown Los Angeles. So if you've
ever wanted to see me stumble through a live Q
(00:46):
and A or dramatically read about a kiddie cat getting
turned into a CIA operative, now's your chance again. Head
to snafoo dashbook dot com to pre order the book
and check out all the tour details and day, or
just click the link in the show notes. That'll work too. Okay,
that's it, on with the chaos. This is Snafu Season
(01:08):
three formula six. November thirtieth, nineteen twenty eight, Cleveland, Ohio.
The city has just opened a new music hall downtown.
It's nineteen twenties opulence from top to bottom, arched ceilings
in an Italian style, columns and balconies glowing with gold leaf,
(01:31):
a giant plaster eagle looking down over the stage. Maybe
not how I would do the decor, more into tasteful
minimalism myself, but the folks in Cleveland are eating it up.
A massive sparkling chandelier spills light over a crowd of
thousands who are all losing their minds hearing for the
Paul Whiteman Orchestra playing their hits. They're the most popular
(01:55):
band in America, and they have a talented young coronetist
blowing sweet notes from his that's Bis bider Beck on
the coronet. How many folks named Bix nowadays? I'd say,
you know you're in the twenties, baby. He's standing in
the back row of the band doing his thing. Bix
(02:16):
is a small, dapper fella, dressed in a tux with
slicked brown hair parted down the middle like an open
Faulkner novel. A few songs into the performance, something strange happens.
Bix's eyes rolled back, He slumps over on the stage
and falls to the ground completely unconscious. A band mate
(02:39):
jolts him awake, helps him backstage, and eventually he takes
him back to his hotel room. That night, Bix has
a freak out in his hotel room. He yells hysterically,
he destroys furniture. This surprised everyone who knew him. He
was a jazz musician, I a member of led Zeppelin.
(03:02):
His bandmates would later describe it as a fit of delirium.
They said he cracked.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Up Yon Jo or Yon.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
True.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
Just a little song Keep Georgia on my Mind.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Georgia on My Mind, That Little Diddy is the American
songbook classic Georgia on My Mind. Maybe you know the
iconic Ray Charles version, but this is an original recording
with the composer Hogy Carmichael from the last recording session
of Bix's career. In his solo, you can still hear
(03:46):
Bix's genius, and though you might not be able to tell,
Bis reportedly didn't have enough breath to finish some of
the gorgeous phrases in his solo Towards the end of
the song, Bix is struggling. He never really recovers. A
(04:08):
year later, Bis is home in his queen's New York apartment.
By now, he's bedridden, down to just one hundred and
fifty pounds, complaining of constant headaches, dizziness, memory loss, and blackouts.
This summer night, a neighbor visits and finds Bix in
bed under the sheets, hallucinating. Bix dies that night. He
(04:31):
was just twenty eight. What happened to him? That question
haunted Bix's family and his fans. Sure they knew Bix
wasn't well, and they knew that, like a lot of
touring musicians, Bicks was a heavy drinker. That had been
true since his teens, But it would take years for
anyone to see how this all fit into a larger story.
(04:56):
In the nineteen twenties, taking a drink put Bix, along
with me millions of Americans, right in the middle of
the decade's bitter divide over alcohol. In the end, the
war between the wets and the dryes would have a
massive human cost. I'm ed Helms and This is Snaffo,
a show about history's greatest screw ups. Last season, we
(05:19):
told the story of the burglary that exposed Jay Edgar
Hoover's secret FBI. This season, we go back a little
further in time, all the way to the nineteen twenties.
We're bringing you a dark tale from the heart of
the Prohibition era. As we all know, Prohibition did not work.
It was what you might call a snaffoo. Within that
(05:41):
snaffo is another snaffhoo, one you probably haven't heard about.
How a lot of Americans started dying mysteriously and the
unlikely duo who tried to figure out why and save them.
On this season of Snaffo, the story of Formulas. How
prohibitions wore on alcohol went so off the rails the
(06:04):
government wound up poisoning its own people. I thought I
had a pretty good handle on prohibition. The nineteen twenties,
(06:27):
the era before the Great Depression, when we felt like, hey,
world War One is over, what better to do than party?
The Harlem Renaissance, jazz votes for women. America was feeling
a burst of new energy. We were trying out cars,
trying out radio. Heck, we were trying out movies. And
(06:48):
as a Georgia boy, I can't help loving how much
love Georgia was getting in that decade. In addition to
Georgia on my mind, another classic emerged, Sweet Georgia Brown.
And the background to all of that was, of course, Prohibition.
It's just kind of part of our mental furniture. Right.
(07:11):
For me, the word Prohibition takes me back to all
the great portrayals in classic American cinema, like The Untouchables,
two straight hours of mafia set pieces. Who could forget
when elliot Ness faces down Al Capone in a hotel lobby?
Come on, you can't discern up a pitch? Do you
talk to me like that in front of my son?
If you didn't sneak out to hear de Niro drop
(07:32):
f bombs in an Italian accent, were you even thirteen?
The summer the Untouchables came out. I mean, just listen
to that, macho chest thumping cops and mobsters, good guys
and bad guys going toe to toe. It's classic Hollywood
stuff that just reels you in. But then, well, I
heard the story of a Prohibition snafo that genuinely surprised
(07:53):
me because it wasn't part of the Prohibition story that
I knew. It was the story of Formula six and
a devastating Prohibition era program by the federal government. Hey, honey,
have you ever heard of Formula six?
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Now?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, almost no one had. So I called up someone
who really brought Prohibition into focus for me, along with
millions of TV fans like me. Hey, so good to
meet you, man, it's so so great to meet you.
That's Terence Winter, creator of the epic TV series Boardwalk Empire.
I put the question to him, I'm curious if you're
(08:31):
if you hit on in your research, are you familiar
with Formula six? I am not, And that was wild
to me because his show is stacked with the kinds
of details that made nineteen twenties Atlantic City come to life.
Speaker 5 (08:48):
Even though it's one hundred years ago, it's still felt modern.
People dressed in suits, they went out to restaurants, they
talked on telephone, they drove in cars.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
You know, it's still felt cool. It still felt like excessive.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Well this was modern. You know you could wear some
of those clothes today.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
I mean, I gotta say, I do look pretty good
in a pair of spats. But the sense we have
that we already know prohibition, it can actually lead us astray.
A little, because cliches about life in the nineteen twenties
are so thick, we assume we know what it's all about.
You know, liquor was made illegal. It was a big mistake.
(09:24):
There was a bunch of mobsters and Tommy guns, and
then it got repealed. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
I mean, every time you ever see anything in the twenties,
everybody's doing the fucking Charleston. I was like, did they
do any other songs written between nineteen twenty and nineteen thirty?
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Obviously, yes, I mean we're talking about the birth of jazz.
We're talking about Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Eddie Lang Earl Hines.
I could go on. The point is we tend to
paint history with broad brushes, like Terry says, when we
think about the Prohibition era, our minds probably go immediately
to the cliches we know best, and the real complex
(10:01):
human lives that ordinary people lived in the past don't
always come through when we talk about history. But this story,
the story of Formula six, reveals something bizarre that was
happening all along. Underneath all the organized crime and speak
easy gin and temperance moralizing, a shocking government plot rooted
(10:22):
in the first modern American culture war. It starts with
a pair of scientists, investigators who happened to see it coming.
In fact, they tried to stop it. It's nineteen eighteen
(10:44):
in New York and the city is facing a problem. Okay,
the city is facing a lot of problems, but here's
a tricky one. A record number of murders are going unsolved.
A city report lays blamed squarely on one government office,
in particular, the office of the coroner. The coroner was
(11:04):
essentially the city's chief death investigator. He issued death certificates
and performed autopsies for all murders, suicides, and accidental debts.
A pretty grim but important job, and yet the city's
coroners were either horribly unqualified or terribly corrupt, or quite
often both.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
They made coroners out of anyone who needed a job,
who the party machine owed them a favor.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
That's Deborah Blum, author of the Poisoner's Handbook, Murder and
the Birth of Forensic Medicine. In jazz Age, New York.
She describes how at the time, the police essentially used
coroners to rubber stamp false reports and sometimes even cover
up murders. And when she says anyone could become a coroner,
(11:53):
she means it.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
There were sign painters that were milkmen. There were funeral
home operators, there were lawyers, and there were notably doctors
who were such terrible doctors that they had lost their practices.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
And if you think that's bad, let me introduce you
to the head corner of New York in nineteen eighteen,
a guy who showed up to crime scenes completely hammered.
Speaker 4 (12:21):
There are death certificates that literally say could be diabetes
or possibly an auto accident. Right, I mean, you're just
going seriously.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
After stories like that started coming to light, the mayor
had no choice but to make some changes. It was
time to find someone who could get to the bottom
of all these crimes, someone who is less Homer Simpson
and more Sherlock Holmes or I don't know, maybe anyone
who could stand upright. City officials decided the coroner's office
(12:51):
was a joke, an embarrassment, and a waste of taxpayers money,
so they shut it down. But they couldn't just ignore
the reasons people died in New York. They had to
replace it with something. Their idea, a new system for
the city and a new position that would be filled
by a qualified doctor who would appoint a trained staff
(13:14):
to examine cases and rule on causes of death. This
new lead position was chief Medical Examiner of New York City.
So they announced the job opening and in walk de
fella named Charles Norris. H no love Walker Texas ranger
Chuck Norris, and god knows, I'm scared of him. But
(13:37):
just to be clear, this is doctor Charles Norris of
New York, New York.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
He was a really big guy and he had one
of those kind of classic spade like beards. He had
a big booming voice and a a Yale football player's presence,
and he used it when he needed to.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
That's right. This particular Norris was a yalely with the
appropriate aristocratic roots.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
He was a descendant of the Norrises who founded Norristown, Pennsylvania.
So they were a long time, well established, important American family.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Which means that yep, Norris was rich rich. He didn't
hide it. Norris was a public servant who rode around
like Bruce Wayne.
Speaker 4 (14:21):
He never went anywhere without his being driven by his chauffeur.
And even when he went to crime scenes, you know,
his chauffeur would take him to the crime scene and
he would get out in his Kashmir coat and his
expensive hat.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Not exactly a man of the people, you'd think, but
money bags aside. It turns out public service actually ran
deep in Norris's blood. Norris's ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War.
Ever heard of it. They stripped lead gutters and rain
spouts from their house to make bullets for the Continental Army. Yeah,
(14:57):
the house is flooding again. Smoking chair will be ruined.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
My beloved.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
It is the sacrifice we make to bring forth a
new nation.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
And then in the Civil War, Norris's grandfather negotiated the
first one hundred million dollar loan financing the Union government's
war against the Confederates.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
All of the all of the.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Norris took the do gooder spirit of his ancestors and
studied medicine, became a doctor, And now as the Great
War raged in Europe, he was looking to do his
part to keep the people of New York safe. So
he made a real run at the position of Chief
Medical Examiner when the job opened up, an actually qualified
doctor who wanted to use his position for the public good. Well,
(15:48):
it turns out that even for someone who wanted to
do good, even after he started his job as chief
medical Examiner, the odds were stacked against him because it
turns out there were plenty of officials who simply liked
the old way of doing things. Norris's budget for his
staff and his workspace was laughably small that drunk corner
(16:12):
had left him in office literally in shambles.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
At one point, he was actually forced to buy the
clocks on the walls of the Medical Examiner's office because
the mayor the budget is such an agree that they
couldn't even afford clock.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Before, police officers used corners to play their political games,
but now with Norris in charge, they were in for
a surprise. Like when a few officers brought Norris a
body to examine, which happened to be riddled with bullet holes.
They asked for a simple John Hancock on a let's say,
pre filled out death certificate that said the cause of
(16:53):
death was suicide. Norris looked at the corpse and said
that I don't think.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
So out of the question, in my opinion, to even
consider the possibility of a suicide on account of the
number and situation of.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
The bullet wounds.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
There were four bullet wounds spray across the corpse.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
In other words, seems impossible that this poor guy shot
himself in the heart, shoulder, leg, and arm. Norris was
serious about his work. He was serious about building the
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner into an effective research
team that could get to the bottom of all the
deaths in New York City. But to do that he
(17:33):
needed help. Norris was a doctor, not a chemist, who
could detect toxins or poisons in a dead body. And
during this time, there were more and more poisons surrounding Americans.
Morphine and teething, medicines for infants, opium and sedatives, arsenic
and everything from cosmetics to pesticides. And don't even ask
(17:54):
about how much formaldehyde they were mixing with cowbrains and
putting in milk. And I thought that micro plastics and
my water bottle were bad. And it's not like it
was harmless. People were dying from this stuff so often,
in fact, that it was hard to keep up. But
here's the thing about poisons. They're just not quite as
obvious as bullet holes. And so Norris had a crazy
(18:18):
idea to create a dedicated lab where chemists could work
on determining causes of death. Call it a toxicology lab.
At the time, no other city in America had one,
and you know Norris and his cashmere, he always had
to have the best. This lab would be installed at Bellevue,
(18:38):
a New York hospital perched along the East River since
eighteen eleven.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
As he thinks about organizing his department, the first thing
he thinks is, we need a chemist.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Norris just needed to pick the right brainiac for the job.
Fortunately for him, there was someone who fit the bill
right down the hall, an assistant professor at the Bellevue
Medical College, and the award for Forensic Toxicologist for the
newly established New York Office of Chief Medical Examiner, where
the clocks don't even work, goes to doctor Alexander Gettler.
(19:14):
Come on down, alex you're the lucky winner, uh, Doctor Getler,
Doctor Geedler. Well, when Norris approached him, this Alexander Gettler
fellow wasn't convinced that playing robin to Norris's batman was
his dream job. You see, Alexander Getler was already in
(19:36):
a position that was nothing to sneeze at in those days,
and well, if you looked at where the invitation was
coming from, Let's just say it was pretty clear. The
Medical Examiner's office was in the build the plane as
you fly stage of its existence. Not to mention, Getler
was from a completely different world. He was quite different
from Flash the cash Norris.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
He was trim, yeah, dark hair, he had a long
angular face, chomping on a cigar all the time.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
From what I understand, that's Dorothy Atsel, Alexander Gettler's granddaughter.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
Every picture we have of him, he's in a suit.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
And that's Vicky Atsel, Alexander's great granddaughter.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
He's got like a pretty serious expression, which I think
was kind of his m He was a pretty serious guy.
He just kind of like went to work as anyone
would go to work with his suit jacket on.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
He wasn't from wealth or Ivy League education or anything
like that. He just kind of pulled himself up and
followed what he wanted to do, got the education he needed,
worked nights so he could go to school during the day.
Speaker 7 (20:41):
Tickets, please all right, have a nice day.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Gettler worked as a ticket taker for the thirty ninth
Street Brooklyn to Battery Ferry and took the overnight shift.
During the day, he earned himself a PhD in biochemistry
at Columbia. Those brains and you know, fairly intense work
ethic got Gettler his teaching job. He had put in
the hard yards and he had earned it. But outside
(21:05):
of work, he lived like a lot of other people
in his Brooklyn neighborhood, tucked snugly in a brownstone with
his wife's son and more than a half dozen Irish
in laws.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
He raised his kids in the middle of this kind
of chaos of the Irish American life in Brooklyn. I
think that hugely influenced also his sense of the world
because he was so connected to her family.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
But going back and forth between a busy home and
a busy hospital, he saw the difference medicine could make
in the lives of everyday people. So even though he
had turned down Norris's offer, he couldn't put it out
of his mind. Maybe if he joined the Medical Examiner's
office he could do some good. So when Norris came
around again, Getler was ready to consider the job. But
(21:53):
Norris was also completely honest with Getler. This was nothing
like a cushy job in academia. Gettler would have have
to design the lab from scratch. You would have to
figure out for himself how to do the work of
detecting poisons. There were no training programs in forensic toxicology.
He would have to blaze his own trail. That was
all right, though, because Gentler loved nothing more than a
(22:16):
challenge and cramming more chemistry work into his days. He
agreed to take the position, but only if he could
keep teaching at the medical College. That's how much he
believed in his grind. Norris looked around at the backlog
of bodies stacking up in Bellevue and said, sure, man,
whatever you want.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
My grandfather was tapped to be the chief toxicologist. It
just felt almost like they were like superhero crusaders as well,
you know, like starting something and actually not just starting it,
but turning the page on a system that didn't work,
wasn't fair and was corrupt.
Speaker 6 (22:59):
It's funny what you said, I was gonna say, you said,
mom about them being like superheroes that have just like
it feels like it was. They're like like a Buddy
cop movie of like these two scientists in the trenches together.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
And while the scientific trenches of New York may have
been metaphorical, there's no question that our dynamic duo had
a very real fight on their hands, because it turned
out that even though the city was moving on from
the flu epidemic and the war in France was winding down,
a different kind of war was just getting started, and
(23:31):
Norris and Gettler had gotten together just in time for
the shit to hit the fan.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
It's been in the big baggie, in the box, in
a closet, and if you look at each of the pages,
they were all like sort of frayed and chipping.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Dorothy Atsel is at at her kitchen table.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I'm hesitating separating the pages, yeah, because every time I
open it there's pieces of paper that just kind of
flake off.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
She's meeting with one of our writers, Albert Chen. She's
very very carefully handling a dusty blue, hard bound book
that's older than my mom's wedding China. The book is
a collection of typed reports written by Alexander Getler over
the course of three decades.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
His dissertation was the balance of acid forming and base
forming elements in food and its relation to ammonia metabolism.
I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah, it's been a while since tenth grade chemistry for
me too.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
And then like this one, which was from nineteen twenty one,
a method for the determination of death by drowning. So
now I understand.
Speaker 7 (24:49):
What this is about.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
It's easy to understand. Back in the day when he
was doing all of his work, they were pulling bodies
out of the and you, how do you know if
they drowned or they died by another means?
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Yeah, a great question that before Getler and Norris came along,
no one had any clue how to answer. But Dorothy's daughter,
Vicky says Getler figured it out.
Speaker 6 (25:16):
People would come to him with problems that they like
didn't even really know the cause of. Just like all
of these people who work in the same place are
having the same issue. They're all getting weird tumors and cancer,
transit workers or subway workers who were all feeling really
like sluggish and like cognitively fuzzy. And he would first
figure out like the cause of the problem and then
(25:36):
solve it.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
That blue book contained all the detective work that Gettler
and Norris pursued in their day, and that work kept
them busy, very busy.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
They were so like focused on their work and they're
trying to do things. They didn't want to leave the
lab to use the bathroom, so they just urinated in
the big sink they had in the lab, which I'm like, Okay,
I guess if you're really focused on your work and
you really don't want to take the time, I get it.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
But despite what you may be thinking, the apparent lack
of nearby urinals was not the biggest public health crisis
Norris and Gettler were facing. By early nineteen nineteen, the
deadly wave of influenza was finally passing, but Norris and Gettler,
we're seeing a concerning uptick in victims reporting similar symptoms,
a sudden sense of weakness, severe abdominal pain and vomiting, blindness,
(26:32):
a slip into unconsciousness, heart failure, and even death. But why.
They had a hunch it had something to do with
a ubiquitous substance floating through the streets of New York
City in nineteen nineteen. And no, I'm not talking about
all the urine flowing from Gettler and Norris's big laboratory sink.
We're talking about liquor. Alcohol is everywhere.
Speaker 8 (26:54):
The term that New York never sleeps is true of
the nineteen twenties, like there are nightclubs on every single corner.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
That's Leshawn Harris, historian of New York City's underground economy.
Even in black and Tan clubs.
Speaker 8 (27:10):
Inter racial clubs in New York City in the early
twentieth century, African Americans are going to these clubs, both
middle class and working class people and are drinking. Alcohol
is something that black churches use for various different ceremonies.
We also know that alcohol is something that different social
(27:32):
groups are engaging and whether they be light beer or
cocktails or a little bit of rum, it's something that
one can engage in while at church. It's a part
of your social life.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Light beer, cocktails, a little bit of rum. Not if
you were part of the Anti Saloon League. Let me
tell you about these folks. Their mission state wasn't exactly
hard to get at. It's kind of right there in
the name anti Saloon. They wanted to hammer the bung
back into America's whiskey barrel. To them, drinking was a
moral outrage, a sin, and the root of all society's ills.
(28:15):
From small beginnings, they grew into the most powerful lobbying
group in America. In Ohio, where they started, they ran
a pressure campaign that beat a popular governor. Ohio was dry,
but why stop there? They got ambitious. They wanted to
ring every last drop of liquor out of the whole
wet nation. So as their next target, they set their
(28:37):
sights on Gettler and Norris's stomping grounds, New York City.
You see, by their account, New Yorkers drank a dozen
pints of alcoholic beverages a week for every man, woman,
and child, a per capita consumption that was more than
three times the national average. One saloon for every six
(28:57):
people in New York, the League said, as doctor Harris says,
New York City at the end of World War One
was bursting with working class saloons, chandeliered hotel bars, and
wine soaked bohemian cafes. The Anti Saloon League called it
the liquor Center of America. To them, the Big Apple
had fermented into a sidery slush of drunkards and degenerates.
(29:21):
They had the nation, and especially the nation's politicians, running scared,
and then came World War One. It was exactly what
they'd been waiting for. The Anti Saloon League saw the
chance to justify a national ban on liquor as a
wartime measure. That was easy. No politician wanted to be unpatriotic.
(29:43):
But the wartime measure was just the first step. What
they really wanted a permanent ban on liquor enshrined in
the US Constitution. The US House of Representatives has voted
in favor of the proposed eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
which prohibits the petra sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors.
Speaker 5 (30:02):
The amendment will now make.
Speaker 8 (30:04):
Its way for the fifty states.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
January seventh, nineteen eighteen, Mississippi.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Becomes the first state to ratify the eighteenth Amendment.
Speaker 7 (30:11):
Georgia becomes the thirteenth state to ratify the eighteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
One by one, lawmakers and state houses across the country
fell in line California as the twenty second state to
ratify the eighteenth Amendment, But New York City was, as
one paper called it, Satan's last stronghold.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
An apple did the trick in the garden of Eden.
Imagine what I can do with the big apple in America.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
The Anti Saloon League, they were a lot of lawyers
and Methodist ministers from like Ohio. New York City, meanwhile,
was a lot of working class, immigrant, Black, and Catholic
neighborhoods constantly evolving. These New Yorkers weren't exactly interested in
test driving someone else's moral spearmint and turning the city
(31:01):
dry as a kale chip, But when a band hit
the whole country, they had no choice. The entire commercial
beer supply in New York City, from the warehouses to
the grocery stores to the cabinets of every legitimate business,
got poured down the drain. But you might be surprised
(31:23):
to hear despite all that beer, saying goodbye New York
nightlife wasn't changing. The alcohol fueling it, however, was with
the beer taps, dry saloons were now serving stiffer and
more mysterious concoctions, this time with distilled liquor.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
As the amendment is circulating and moving forward to when
it actually goes into place around New York City, people
are starting to prepare for it by making sure they
have their own little home stills or backyard stills or
you know what people used to call beathtub jent. Even
if they can't get it legally. They want those systems
in place. And they were using wood or other materials
(32:07):
that they could easily access in an urban area, and
they were making wood alcohol.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Wood alcohol known to those of us who passed tenth
grade chemistry as methyl alcohol. It was used as a
solvent to make varnish and as a fuel, and unfortunately,
sometimes to mix cocktails. From the taste, you couldn't tell
exactly what was in those drinks, but you might find
out the next day when you woke up in the hospital.
(32:36):
Your body loaded with methyl alcohol, a very toxic substance,
and that's if you were lucky enough to wake up.
More and more people from all parts of the city
were ending up on a gurney outside Gettler's lab.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
Bellevue was this sort of gothic brick building on the
sort of mid to lower East side of Manhattan. There
was something about that brick ivy gothic look of the place.
There was something about, you know, the fact that so
many deaths occurred there. It had a kind of mythology
(33:22):
about it. For a number of reasons. Right, they saved
a lot of lives, but a lot of people died there.
That it just had this kind of reputation of being
a slightly haunted place.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
In nineteen nineteen, Bellevue just opened a new pathology building
six stories high made of solid granite with long arched windows.
Inside is the city Morgue and the medical examiner's offices.
There are autopsy rooms and a forensic chemistry laboratory for
Charles Norris and Alexander Getler to study the dead. Gettler's
(33:58):
laboratory is a layer of blue flames leaking out of
bunsen burners, hissing heating systems, boiling dishes. The wood floorboards
are discolored by chemicals and burns. When Noris and Gettler
see a rise in cases of people who've been crippled
by blindness just before death, they have a hunch that
the reason is poisoning due to toxic liquor wood alcohol.
(34:22):
But no test exists to detect wood alcohol in cadavers,
So Getler does what he always does in cases like this,
He creates one. Gettler's test is grinding up a chunk
of tissue into a flask and then boiling it into
a dark sludge. He measures the formaldehyde bubbling out. Most
(34:43):
alcohol would release just a trace of it. Wood alcohol
releases an overpowering amount.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
They're really trying to get to the bones of this, right, literally,
how much poisoned alcohol is out there?
Speaker 1 (34:57):
A fair amount actually. For generations, people had been making
their own liquor and getting sick doing it. Moonshine, white lightning, liquid, courage,
call it what you want, but this cheap homemade stuff
mostly stayed at the margins of American society. Now, however,
it was becoming the mainstream. So in nineteen eighteen, Gettler
(35:18):
wrote an article for the country's leading medical journal to
get word out to doctors and public health officials. He
saw prohibition coming, and he knew exactly what it would mean.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
He titles this article, would alcohol Poison It? He's not
messing around. He puts the word poison right in the
actual article title. So he says, the prohibition by our
government of the manufacture of distilled liquors will unquestionably lead
to much moonshining, adulteration, and dilution of the liquors offered
(35:51):
to the public.
Speaker 7 (35:52):
It is quite evidence given the recent poisonings in the
city of over thirty persons, six of whom died with
a whiskey sold in the poor sections of the city
that's on analysis, was believed to contain a considerable amount
of wood methyl alcohol. What alcohol pastes like ethyl alcohol
and morova. It is considerably cheap. Hence the adulterate buys
(36:12):
the latter ignorant. That's a via poisoning, blindness and often
death lurks with it.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
He's saying to doctors around the country, you know, let
people know this is dangerous, this is coming, and arm yourself.
He said, I want to send up a signal flayer.
Please take this as a warning. Where at the very
start of this, essentially what that piece says, in a
beautifully scientific way, is I'm not talking about alcohol. I'm
(36:42):
talking about poison.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Gettler connects the dots. What he sees in nineteen eighteen
makes him think that people aren't going to be drinking
less because prohibition is the law of the land. Instead,
they're going to be drinking a much more suspect, much
more dangerous supply this message. It didn't land, but he
was right. By the winter of nineteen nineteen, more than
(37:08):
sixty New Yorkers died from drinking wood alcohol. Another one
hundred were blinded then almost that same number of alcohol
related deaths, only this time just in the month of
December alone. So Getler sat down at his desk, picked
up his pen, and tried again.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
The Critical Study of Methods for the Detection of methyl
alcohol by Alexander O.
Speaker 4 (37:34):
Getler.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Don't get confused here, wood alcohol, methyl alcohol, and methanol.
Those are just three different names for the same nasty beast,
and you should never ever drink it. As Getler's granddaughter
Dorothy says, says.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Here, during the years nineteen eighteen and nineteen nineteen, I
have had occasion to examine over seven hundred human organs
for alcohol. In addition to this, about two hundred and
fifty liquors of various descriptions were analyzed.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
In this report, Getler begins to identify the presence of
wood alcohol in an alarming number of cases. On the
day after Christmas in nineteen nineteen, Gettler and Norris switch tactics.
Just writing for America's doctors wasn't going to save the
country's direction. Sorry, doctors, I mean, you've been telling us
(38:27):
it's all diet and exercise for like ever, and we
just don't listen. So with two major reports reaching too
small of an audience. Norris and Gettler take this story
straight to the general public. They called a press conference.
They invite a throng of reporters from the New York
(38:48):
papers into their offices in Bellevue. The news hounds file
in passed broken chairs and over the blood spattered carpet
left behind by the drunk coroner as a parting gift.
Then Gettler and Norris deliver their message.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Anything that passes for whiskey and the saloons is dangerous.
The first symptom is a mere pain in the stomach,
but one teaspoon of wood alcohol is enough to cause blackness.
Drinking a tumble of it will kill you within hours.
Speaker 5 (39:15):
Sure, what does it smell like?
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Complete blindness?
Speaker 2 (39:19):
What's in this booze?
Speaker 5 (39:20):
Have you thought it yourself, doctor Doris?
Speaker 7 (39:24):
Prohibition is not going to make alcohol disappear. It's instead
going to create numerous substitutes for whiskey that I have dead.
Speaker 4 (39:34):
Before prohibition really takes off. He's looking the federal government
right in the eye and saying, I want to let
you know that we're looking at this now, We're seeing
people starting to die. This is a terrible idea. Whatever
you know, politics and morality you think is behind what
(39:54):
you're doing. The bottom line of what you're going to
do is kill people.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
They issued that warning in December nineteen nineteen. Charles Norris
and Alexander Getler were now on the case, a case
that would consume them across the next decade and expose
the killer of Bis bider Beck, remember him, the jazz
musician who collapsed in Cleveland at age twenty eight. It
(40:18):
would take our dynamic duo to the heart of a
cruel and misguided scheme, a snaffoo that led to the
mass poisoning of thousands and the people behind it. The
US government this season on snaffo, the fact.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
That there were only twenty six hundred prohibitionations covering the
entire Canadian border, of the Mexican border, and both coasts.
Speaker 8 (40:47):
It's ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
When we're five years into prohibition, the government is starting
to go, Okay, this isn't working. What is wrong with
the American people.
Speaker 7 (40:57):
The bartender took some brass metals and the other two
patrons held him down and well to beat the crap
out of him.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
He said, if I ever get out and the two people,
I'm going to go get the DA and that son
of a bitch Gettler.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
If I made that up, You've got come on and
this absolutely all happened.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Did people die?
Speaker 3 (41:13):
They died.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Daily Snapfu is a production of iHeartRadio, Film, Nation Entertainment,
and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio.
It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo,
Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl
(41:38):
Nellis and Alyssa Martino. This episode was written by Albert Chen,
Carl Nellis and Nevin Callapoly, with additional writing and story
editing from Alissa Martino and Ed Helms. Additional production from
Stephen wood. Tory Smith is our associate producer. Our story
editor is nicki Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Kalapoly
and a kimminy Ekpo. Fact checking by Charles Richter. Our
(42:00):
creative executive is Brett Harris. Editing music and sound design
by Ben Chug Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley
Andrew Chug is Gilded Audio's creative director. Theme music by
Dan Rosatto. Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and
ben Ryizak,
Host
Ed Helms
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