Raise a glass to Georgian hospitalityfor

It was the failed social experiment that drove people to drink. visits the Prohibition Museum in beautiful Georgia

IT was an issue that divided the nation – drinkers versus die-hard Temperance supporters. To booze or not to booze? That was the question, back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Temporarily, the USA’s temperance movement succeeded. Just after Christmas a hundred years ago, the sale of drink was banned during the era known as Prohibition.

A little over 13 years on, on December 5, 1933, the law was repealed – and America has been hitting the bottle ever since.

The whole story is told in graphic detail as you tour America’s National Prohibition Museum in the heart of old Savannah, down on the Atlantic Coast in ‘Deep South’ Georgia.

And very fine it is too: you can even have a drink there.

What a wonderful irony that the place dedicated to the temperance initiative has its very own Speakeasy bar.

In many ways, the ‘Noble Experiment’ of the inter-war years was done with the best of intentions, but it was doomed to fail.

Unintended consequences included a rise in organised crime, the burgeoning state apparatus needed to deal with the policy, a massive loss of tax revenue, and illicit Campaigners attacked boozers drinking their wages away drinking on a major scale.

Never mind that national drink consumption went down dramatically with consequential health improvements, the public cost was too just high to sustain.

But why is the museum in Savannah? The charming old Southern cotton port seems a million miles from rough-tough Chicago and New York, the epicentres of organised crime. The iconic names of Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Machine Gun Kelly and

Bugsy Moran were never associated with the more genteel and sedate style of Savannah.

But this was a natural entry port for illicit rum from the Caribbean, a drinks haven in a state that went teetotal ten years before Prohibition.

The museum itself is fascinating, taking you right through the Roaring Twenties, complete with wax dummies of Flappers, hoods and illegal drinkers. As you enter, you’re confronted by a group of middle-class women protesting about a lorry load of spirits Wormsloe Park, Savannah Become a gangster for the day River Street, Savannah

being delivered to a saloon, setting the scene for the fascinating story that follows, featuring protagonists from both the ‘wet’ and the ‘dry’ sides.

Drunken men are portrayed pouring out of a drinking den; the axe-wielding protestor Carry Nation is featured in all her glory, as she goes about smashing up saloons; and you can join a line-up of mobsters for a photo opportunity, complete with Tommy Gun in hand.

You learn that Abraham Lincoln felt he had “a constitutional right to get drunk,” whereas politician Herbert Hoover thought Prohibition was “a great social and economic experiment”.

In the end, the ban on booze was seen as an affront to America’s ethos of personal freedom, and when President Franklin Roosevelt declared it dead, he probably spoke for the nation when he said: “What this country needs right now is a drink.”

But let’s raise a glass to one of the prettiest cities in the US. If Georgia is ‘the Peach State,’ then Savannah is the ‘Peach of Georgia’.

Nearly 14 million visitors beat a path to its door each year, with most of the internationals coming from the UK and Germany.

With a population of just 175,000, Savannah was spared being razed to the ground in the Civil War, and it escaped being pulled down wholesale during the Brutalist 1960s, thanks largely to the ‘Magnificent Seven Ladies of Savannah’.

This was a group of strong-willed women who thwarted an attempt to demolish a particularly beautiful building – and set the pattern for preservation ever since.

The city’s early grid system has been replicated throughout the States, but the principle of having huge town squares for leisure and socialising has given Savannah its distinctiveness. People congregate in the squares, sitting on benches underneath the boughs of the live oak trees, dripping with Spanish moss.

And despite the large numbers of tourists, it is not a town of tat.

Characterful hotels have set up in old cotton warehouses, like the East Bay Inn, just adjacent to the wide Savannah River. Each evening, early on, there is a wine and cheese nibbles meet-up for guests in the ■ LINDSAY SUTTON flew with United Airlines from Manchester to Washington Dulles and on to Savannah. He travelled via Dublin, where you can clear US Customs on Irish soil. Flights are from £725 return, and also available from Heathrow. See united.com

■ East Bay Inn, Savannah, offers rooms from £103 a night. Protesters outside a saloon as a drinks delivery arrives sofa-decked lobby: the tradition of conviviality and civility goes on.

That same relaxed togetherness carries over to Mrs Wilkes’ restaurant in a residential row of houses. You can’t book: you queue and chat in a line outside, and if you are in the queue by 2pm then you will be served. Seated at tables of 12, you’re served 21 different choices of vegetable and four of meat, with two choices of pudding. No alcohol, just iced tea, and all for £18 a head. It’s different, it’s magnificent.

Above all, it’s in-keeping with old Savannah principles of wholesomeness, hospitality and community – and you won’t want anything else to eat that day. See eastbayinn.com for details.

■ Walks with Noble Jones Tours, including Savannah Saunter for two hours, cost around £20 for adults (noblejonestours.com).

■ For further information visit the following websites: visitsavannah.com; explore georgia.org; visittheusa.co.uk