Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
‘Blue-Eyed Lady’ busts moonshiners
Prohibition was the law of the land 100 years ago, and the enforcement of its ban on alcohol was energetic in Arkansas, if not super effective.
For your amusement today, Old News has a story from the struggle at Hot Springs, which in 1920 was a hotbed of organized and semi-organized criminality. Hot Springs in general was not much afraid of the Volstead Act.
This act was the “teeth” of the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the sale and manufacture of alcohol. Volstead set up penalties and empowered federal officers to enforce them. The “fed” placed in charge of Prohibition in Arkansas was an Arkansan, Major R.B. Keating, who, according to the Congressional Record, had been employed by the Immigration and Conciliation services before his appointment. He’d worked for the Department of Labor.
I found a tantalizing reference to him in the doctoral dissertation of one John Wyeth Scott II. Tantalizing not so much because of Keating but because of the woman the dissertation … uh … dissertates about. That dissertation is archived among Louisiana State University graduate theses, and they are online! Scott wrote it in 1999 while he was in the LSU Agricultural and Mechanical College grad school.
His title is “Natalie Vivian Scott: The Origins, People and Times of the French Quarter Renaissance (1920-1930).”
He tells the story of a vivid woman who was about 30 years old in 1920 and who already had led a dashing sort of life, earning the Croix de Guerre for brave service in France as a ward and surgical nurse as well as an interpreter. When she returned to Louisiana from the war, throngs welcomed her home.
She went to work as a newspaper reporter and society columnist in New Orleans, writing her columns as “Peggy Passe Partout” (Peggy Who Goes Everywhere). And the very day she moved to New Orleans from the smaller city she grew up in, she joined an amateur theatrical troupe.
Why do we care about that? For no reason better than coincidence, probably. Scott writes that, in 1921, R.B. Keating was assigned to enforce the 18th Amendment at New Orleans. Less than three months later, he resigned “in frustration,” Scott writes, and Natalie Scott, as a reporter, covered that.
My point is, this brilliant Louisiana woman, who dabbled in amateur theatricals, knew Keating. Scott’s thesis includes a drawing of Natalie Valerie Scott (see arkansasonline.com/ 1214scott). For — seriously — no reliable reason, I see her face when I think of the “Mrs. Edith Katlin” about whom you are about to read. Mrs. Katlin must have been a woman as daring and interested in acting as Natalie Scott was. And she knew Keating, too.
What follows is the verbatim text of a report from the Arkansas Gazette published Dec. 4, 1920:
Liquor Vendors Trapped by Woman Prohi Officer Major Keating of Government Force Sends a “Beautiful Blue-Eyed Lady” to Hot Springs and What She Does Reads Like a Stirring Scenario
Special to the Gazette
Hot Springs, Dec. 5.—It is reported that an indignation meeting of the “Mountain Dew” Lodge is being contemplated to enter a protest against the action of Maj. R.B. Keating, in charge of prohibition enforcement officers, who, it is said, “switched his play” and sent here a very pretty young woman to make the acquaintance of alleged dealers in “hooch” and ascertain just what the local situation was.
The young woman is Mrs. Edith Katlin. Besides being pretty, Mrs. Katlin is said to possess a very charming personality. She had winning ways, too, and besides fulfilling the traditional standards of secret service sleuths of the feminine gender in fiction and movie scenario, was also a most persistent seeker after facts, as her record proves.
She hit the spa, it is related, in the latest and most stylish gown. She looked like a fashion plate, and as she strolled up Central Avenue there were many admiring glances cast in her direction.
She is “betwixt and between” being a blonde and brunette, has blue eyes, a graceful figure and makes a rather attractive picture.
She arrived a few days ago. It didn’t take her long to get acquainted, either.
As a result of the young woman’s activity in the interest of law enforcement generally, and the upholding of the Volstead Act, in particular, there were four new cases on the docket in United States Commissioner [Tom] Martin’s court yesterday.
HER FIRST PREY
Mrs. Katlin said that among her acquaintances was the proprietor of a well-known rooming house, to whom she appealed for the purchase of liquor. The Boniface was obliging enough, and Mrs. Katlin charged she bought two quarts of “mountain dew” from the defendant. She paid him, she testified, $20 or “10 smackers” a quart.
A little later, Major Keating and a band of officials moved down on the establishment where the transaction had taken place and searched the premises. Among other things discovered was a trunk that leaked. Closer examination showed that the party had “struck oil,” for a rich product of some still was still flowing from the interior of the trunk, the officers said. Nine halfpints and a five-gallon jug that was half-filled with “corn” was confiscated and the proprietor arrested and held on $2,000 bond on the charge of storing and selling liquor.
TAXI DRIVER ALSO “FALLS”
Then, so the story goes, the young woman meandered down the Spa’s main thoroughfare and made the acquaintance of a well known local taxi driver.
To him, she expressed the desire for “a little corn,” and said she “wondered where she could get some.”
The young woman was informed immediately, she said, that she had come to the right person, and was further assured that the taxi driver handled only the best of that product. She purchased a pint from him and then hopped into his car, intending to go to the man’s home, where she said she had been informed that a half-gallon more of the same liquid had been stored.
The trip to the man’s domicile, however, was never completed for officers who were watching the little comedy stopped the car and gathered the taxi knight into their warm embrace, and he was charged with transporting and selling liquor, placed under a $500 bail, and is now wondering how long it will be before he has to relinquish his automobile.
But that isn’t all. There recently arrived here from New Orleans one Joe Nelson, known to many sporting editors throughout the country as a pretty fair lightweight “leather pusher.” Joe said he was going to do a little training, but officers charged that his roadwork was not the kind that would get him into anything but trouble, and that he was too busy soliciting sales of “moonshine.” So they took Josephus in and he was released on $250 bond, charged with soliciting.
It is said Mrs. Katlin has been transferred to the southwestern district. One thing is certain of her activity in this city, and that is she “made good.” Her male colleagues do not hesitate to say that when it comes to making acquaintances and “getting the goods,” Mrs. Katlin is there with bells.
As a result of Mrs. Katlin’s visit here, nine persons were arrested on charges of violating the prohibition laws, and two automobiles were confiscated.