🏘️ Croton Local History
Blog posts, articles, and community histories by local historians
1,661Passages
207Source Documents
Sources
Passages
crotonhistory.org
that waited . . . door yawning hospitably.” “The pilot paused only long enough to say that he was not badly hurt and to mumble something about going to the village to get some one to care for the plane. Then he entered the car and was whizzed away.”
49 words
crotonhistory.org
McCall called the police and “Captain Warner, Lieutenant Roberts and three troopers piled into an automobile and burned up the miles from White Plains.” When they got to Croton “they found a little group of country folk grouped about the battered
41 words
crotonhistory.org
remains of a once gallant craft, some of them looking quite cheerful over that which the air had provided, others shaking their heads in grief over . . . what had once been perfectly able-bodied whisky bottles.” 3 George McCall (left) and the state
44 words
crotonhistory.org
troopers from White Plains examine the contraband found in the wrecked plane. Speaking “out of professional knowledge, gained in enforcing the prohibition laws in the wilds of Westchester,” Captain Warner said the whiskey was of “excellent quality.”
37 words
crotonhistory.org
The plane had two cockpits. The forward one had been used by the pilot and the other was crammed with burlap sacks of liquor bottles—some broken, many intact. In all there had been some 250 quarts of Scotch and Irish whiskey. All the bottles bore the
46 words
crotonhistory.org
tax stamp of the Quebec liquor commission. According to the Times, the bootleg market price for Scotch and Irish whiskey in New York was then about $15 a bottle, so the cargo would have fetched about $3,750. In Canada the cost per bottle was $3, so
46 words
crotonhistory.org
even if the rum runners paid the pilot $1,000 for his work they would have made a profit of $2,000 for a single trip. Aerial Rum Runners A search of the airplane the next day revealed a “worn chart, which obviously has traveled many hundreds of miles
47 words
crotonhistory.org
pressed between the knees of a pilot” giving officials “tangible evidence of a prosperous rum running business by air. They also saw why Westchester county, with its numerous roadhouses and thirsty, well to do people, has so many aerial visitors.
40 words
crotonhistory.org
Quite a few airplanes have been flying over Westchester lately, some running low and out of gliding distance of the river. It was conjectured that many of these may have been laden with bottles like the mystery plane which fell at Croton.” 4 George
44 words
crotonhistory.org
McCall shows the map he found hidden in the plane. The map was found by George McCall, who connected the arrival of the plane with the appearance two weeks earlier of a mysterious car which halted on the Albany Post Road, near where the pilot had
46 words
crotonhistory.org
tried to land. The car stayed until 4 o’clock in the morning and a few hours later McCall found his watchdog dead. A careful examination of the map revealed that the pilot had flown from Montreal to Glens Falls, NY, where he stopped to refuel. From
46 words
crotonhistory.org
Glens Falls a black line followed the Hudson River to Croton, where the line forked. One branch ran to Briarcliff, across Westchester County to Stamford, CT, then south to the Long Island Sound. The other branch ran south from Croton to Manhattan.
42 words
crotonhistory.org
The use of airplanes to transport illegal liquor to New York was shocking in 1922 and the Croton “rum plane” crash was covered widely in the press. An enterprising reporter in Buffalo—a center for smuggling from Canada—decided to ask the city’s
41 words
crotonhistory.org
“favorite law violators” what they thought. “Very Few Aerial Rum Runners Here,” read the headline, “Only Prices Aviate, Say Bootleggers, Who Surely Know.” Rum runners with the police officers who captured them. “‘In the first place,’ declared one
38 words
crotonhistory.org
bootlegger, ‘we don’t need airplanes in Buffalo. We need boats. In the second place the cost of operating and maintaining an airplane would make the price of whiskey prohibitive. A pilot’s salary is considerably more than a chauffeur’s. Airplanes are
40 words
crotonhistory.org
not so common that they can come and go, landing where they find it convenient. Fields must be provided, and there is slight chance that they would utilize a regular landing to bring in whiskey. I believe that the plane . . . was probably the private
47 words
crotonhistory.org
property of some wealthy man who wanted the booze regardless of cost.’” 5 A schooner used by rum runners. Supporting the bootlegger’s theory was the fact that “the whiskies were of various brands,” which led authorities “to think some chap with
41 words
crotonhistory.org
sporting blood decided to take a plane to Canada and fill an order for half a dozen friends and bring back just the particular Scotch or Irish each one liked. Some of the sheriffs who have had to do with seizures by truck stated that in these
47 words
crotonhistory.org
seizures the goods in nearly every case were of one brand only.” 6 Powder Puff Pilot In addition to the route map the police found “a vanity box, powder puff and several articles of feminine attire,” leading to speculation that the pilot had a
44 words
crotonhistory.org
woman’s aid or—despite George McCall’s eyewitness account—that the pilot was a woman. 7 A police photo of a female bootlegger showing the life-vest-style containers for liquor hidden under her coat. The “powder puff pilot” theory was given credence
38 words
crotonhistory.org
by the extraordinary confession of one of seven rum runners captured on a converted submarine chaser off the New Jersey coast, two days after the rum plane crashed. The ship was seized with a cargo of liquor worth $200,000 from the Bahamas by an
44 words
crotonhistory.org
American “rum cruiser.” The New York Tribune reported that the confession “goes far to explain the female toggery in the captured airplane. According to it, girls and women are regularly employed in an aerial rum running traffic between Montreal and
40 words
crotonhistory.org
New York. . . . Detailed information, including the names of a score or more women rum runners, with registry numbers of planes as well as of auto trucks and marine craft engaged in the trade are said to be included in a document of some 5,000 words
48 words
crotonhistory.org
in length.” 8 A Croton Connection? Was it a mere coincidence that the rum plane crashed so close to the Tumble Inn, one of Croton’s notorious speakeasies? Since the area is so hilly it’s hard to imagine where the plane would have landed, but why was
46 words
crotonhistory.org
a car waiting to whisk the pilot away? Only a few weeks before the crash the Tumble Inn had been raided, after a waiter handed a neatly printed wine list to a diner, Ralph A. Day, who happened to be the Federal Prohibition Director for the State of
48 words
crotonhistory.org
New York. When Day returned to his office he sent several agents to have a nice dinner at taxpayer expense and “dry up” the Tumble Inn. The agents were served several different kinds of wine with their meal and when they were finished they arrested
45 words
crotonhistory.org
the head waiter, John J. Jenkins, and waiter Joe Acerboni. The New York Evening World reported that “although the dining room was crowded with guests when the arrests were made . . . few knew what was taking place.” 9 A month after the crash the
46 words
crotonhistory.org
Nikko Inn was busted by agents who represented themselves as actors. The New York Times reported that “Charles Hase, the owner of the place, asked them to ‘do a turn’ for him. McKay fiddled, Reager sang and Gallante danced. The innkeeper was
42 words
crotonhistory.org
satisfied with their work and was about to hire them, when the agents, after having been served with drinks, as they alleged, at $1.50 a drink, arrested Hase and a waiter, Hero Gotow, on a charge of violating the Volstead act. They gave $1,000 bail
45 words
crotonhistory.org
each for appearance . . . before a United States Commissioner.” 10 Postcard of the Nikko Inn. Across the street from the Nikko was the Mikado Inn, built around 1920 by “Admiral” George T. Moto. A year before the crash Moto was acquitted “after five
45 words