The hidden caves of a rum-runner
They are one of Hamilton’s best kept secrets: Dark and musty rooms — belonging to notorious bootlegger Ben Kerr — that housed illicit booze and fuel for fast boats to “outrun the feds.”
As The Spectator’s Mark McNeil reveals, changes at the West Harbour will provide a rare glimpse into the city’s infamous Prohibition era.
FOR DECADES, THEY HAVE SAT
in obscurity and musty neglect behind a West Harbour marina building, three crumbling concrete rooms in the side of a hill, overgrown by weed trees and burrs, and littered with junk.
They’re known as the “Rum-runner’s Caves” and with MacDonald Marine closing down and moving out this summer they will become more visible than they have been for decades.
It’s all a glimpse into the wild Prohibition years in Hamilton nearly a century ago, a time of speakeasies and fast wooden boats packed with booze racing across the lake. The city eventually plans to turn the caves into some kind of “Rum-runners Heritage Interpretive Feature” as part of a shoreline redesign that will remove docks and boat storage facilities from the area.
But what is the story behind the holes in the hill? What secrets did they keep so long ago?
They were part of a former marina that boats used to run illegal liquor into the U.S. It’s believed that two of the caves stored gasoline and marine supplies. There are doors leading into those ones. But the third room — with a crawl space entrance hidden behind a building that no longer stands — was clearly a hiding spot for illicit booze.
PEOPLE TEND TO CONNECT the name of infamous mobster Rocco Perri with bygone bootlegging in the city. But the caves are actually associated with another prominent figure from the Prohibition years, a dapper fellow named Ben Kerr (1884-1929) who — like Perri — died a mysterious death.
Kerr was a plumber and popular piano player who had a fondness for boats. He built a marina, where Sandy MacDonald’s marina is now, and when Prohibition began in the U.S. in 1920, he saw a way to make some quick money — and pay off some major debts — by running liquor across the lake to places like Rochester or Oswego, N.Y.
He used to brag: “I can out run the feds any time.”
While liquor was also banned for sale in Ontario, it could still be manufactured and exported.
And sometimes, booze that was supposed to be shipped outside the province was illegally routed back into the Ontario market.
There were lots of people in the illicit booze trade in the 1920s but Perri and Kerr were the most successful in the Hamilton area. PERRI
CAME FROM HUMBLE beginnings as an immigrant from Plati, Calabria, in Southern Italy. Bootlegging for him — and his common-law wife Bessie Starkman — was part of a large empire of illegal activities that included prostitution and gambling.
Kerr, however, came from solid upper-middle-class Anglo Saxon roots and was born in Hamilton. His brother George was vice-president of Canadian Westinghouse. He had a nephew who was president of Trans Canada Pipe Lines. Another was a physician. And Hamilton’s longest serving mayor, Bob Morrow, who died in February this year, was Kerr’s great nephew.
Perri disappeared one day in April, 1944, after going for a walk to try to shake off a headache. He was never seen again.
Some say his body was dumped in Hamilton Harbour and others believe he slipped away to the U.S., and later onto Mexico.
Fifteen years before, Kerr, along with another man named Alf “Gunner” Wheat, disappeared as well. They were on a bootlegging run to Rochester in February 1929 on a boat called the Pollywog and never returned.
Six weeks later, two badly mutilated bodies were found washed up on the shore near Colborne and Presqu’ile. They were identified as Kerr and Wheat.
Most believe it was an accident in the cold and icy conditions but others think it was murder made to look like an accident.
Some have even pointed to Perri as having a hand in it, that perhaps he was seizing on an opportunity to do away with a rival. But nothing was ever proven.
Nevertheless, Perri and Kerr definitely knew one another, and according to the book “Whisky and Ice” by now deceased author C.W. Hunt, the two were sometimes allies and sometimes adversaries.
Hunt contends that Kerr used at least one of his secret rooms for temporary storage of alcohol that he would pass on to Perri for use in Hamilton.
According to Hunt’s book, Kerr had relatives “watch for the Hamilton police from the top of the hill on Bay Street, which overlooks the harbour and Kerr’s marine garage. If the police were in the area, the brothers would signal Kerr, who would be out in the harbour waiting for the allclear signal before coming in ... Once in his marina, he could stash the alcohol in one of the three secret rooms he had built into the hill at the back of his garage. Perri’s men would later pick it up and distribute it.”
Interesting, Kerr and Perri actually lived on the same street but in different parts of the city. Perri — who was known as the “King of the Bootleggers”— had a mansion at 166 Bay St. S. and Kerr — known as the “King of the Rum-runners” — lived in grand style at 433 Bay St. N.
A highrise apartment building now stands where Perri used to live with Starkman (who was shot and killed in the garage of the house in August 1930). Whereas Kerr’s two-and-a-half storey double-brick house that he built with his rum-running money still stands, looking out onto Hamilton Harbour.
After he died, Kerr’s widow, Louisa May, and daughter, Helen Binks, continued living at the house. Binks, who died in 1986, worked at CHCH as a makeup artist and was active in community theatre. In 1944, she married John Binks, who also lived at the house until his death from a heart attack in 1961. They had no children.
SO KERR’S
ASHAMED OF bootlegging, Ben Kerr’s name was not included on the grave stone marker at the family plot where he was buried in Hamilton Cemetery. More recently, according to Hamilton Cemetery “Stories of the Stones” tour guide Robin McKee, a stone went up for Binks saying her father’s name was John B. Kerr, a name for which Ben Kerr was never known.
“The family disowned him,” says McKee. “On the tour I say that ‘Ben Kerr disappeared twice — once in Lake Ontario and once in Hamilton Cemetery.’ ”
He built a marina, where MacDonald’s marina is now, and when prohibition began in the U.S. in 1920, he saw a way to make some quick money. There were lots of people in the illicit booze trade in the 1920s but Perri and Kerr were the most successful in the Hamilton area.
When Louisa May died in January, 1979, there was no mention of Ben in the obituary notice in The Spectator.
Instead, it said she was “the beloved wife of the late Charles J. Kerr,” Ben’s father’s name. After her daughter Helen died in 1986, her newspaper death notice made the same name switch for her dad.
“That’s one thing about Helen; she never discussed what her father did. She’d mention him but never would talk about the rum-running days,” says George Urban, 74, who was a friend of the family and owned the Kerr house from 1986 till 2012 with his wife Elly and five children.
When he was a teenager, Urban remembers hanging around the caves.
“I used to go down there and snoop around. I knew about the two caves but it was later on that I stumbled upon the third one. I must have been 16 or 17 at that time. I remember it was mucky around it. I looked through the crawl space but I couldn’t see much. I remember there was an old mattress in there,” says Urban.
Urban says over the years he lived in the house, he found all kinds of photos of Kerr and his family and believes repairs done to a pantry floor at some point were a result of damage from police lifting floorboards to try to find Kerr’s stash.
Apparently, the police didn’t find anything at the house or the secret cave by the marina, says Urban.
Urban says there was a gasoline line between the top of the hill and the caves.
In Kerr’s day, gas engines for boating were becoming prevalent and he needed a way to get gasoline from the street to the waterfront.
But that’s all he found relating to Kerr.
“For years people said there was a tunnel from the house, but I could never find any evidence of it. As far as I am concerned, there is no tunnel,” says Urban.
As for the City of Hamilton’s plans for the caves, the head of waterfront development Chris Phillips says, “we’re at very early days ... it’s all premature. We haven’t got the details yet.”
MacDonald, whose marina lease expires May 31, is slowly vacating the property. He says he won’t be able to meet that deadline.
Philips says there will be a “transition plan” through the summer that will continue to clean up the property.
Over the next couple of years, Phillips says, all traces of a private marina will be removed or repurposed. The shoreline will be naturalized to create fish habitat and public access will be enhanced.
Also, in an interesting twist of fate, the Hamilton Police Marine Unit will relocate to the site.
No doubt the ghost of Ben Kerr would find that very amusing.
Once in his marina, he could stash the alcohol in one of the three secret rooms he had built into the hill at the back of his garage.