Henry Virkula of Minnesota

I had something else planned but, given events, I thought it would be useful to bring Henry Virkula to your attention.

LIQUOR GUARDS KILL A MINNESOTA MAN; Merchant Was Driving Home With Family in Automobile Near the International Border. [NYT June 1929]

INTERNATIONAL FALLS, Minn., June 2.—Henry Virkula, a 41- year-old merchant of Big Falls, Minn., was shot and killed by border patrolmen near here last night while riding home in an automobile with his wife and two children.

The merchant failed to stop, at the command of the patrolmen, who were assigned to liquor smuggling duty.

Virkula, a family man and well-known community leader, had taken his wife Selma and children, Bernice Elaine (8) and Marice Alice (10) on a jaunt. They were to spend a week on holiday in a cottage at Lake Kabetocama in Canada. The Virkulas headed up in their Packard tourer to see the place and make final arrangements. This was an age before phone lines, never mind the internet; arrangements of this kind had to be done face to face, and the Virkulas decided to make a virtue of a necessity. They returned home because Selma had a ton of laundry to do before they started their vacation.

They were on their way home when the Customs agents, E. J. White and E. V. Servine, intercepted Virkula's vehicle. It was a lonely road; a nearby farm was the closest habitation, and the farmer became witness to the shooting.

The agents challenged Virkula shortly before midnight, while his daughters were asleep in the back of the car. The stop took place close to the Canadian border, at Little Fork, near a spot where liquor smugglers were known to cross into the United States. It was about 15 miles south of the border.

When Virkula failed to stop immediately on being challenged, the agents opened fire. They used shotguns. Servine shot to incapacitate the car, while White aimed higher. Virkula's car was peppered with shot, and one of White's rounds took the back of Virkula's head off. 

According to Virkula's wife, the car travelled less than a car length between the time of the challenge and the first shot being fired. 

Emmet J. White was a little over a month on the job at the time of the shooting, having joined the service on 1 May. He went to trial for the killing a year later, in February 1930.

THERE was nothing in the least facetious or insincere in the prophecies that have appeared in these pages  [the Houston Gargoyle] more than once to the effect that the attempt to impose upon a free people such an unpopular and unwise law as Prohibition, especially in its Volsteadian form, might eventually result in armed rebellion, and it would not require many more "incidents" of the kind we are talking about to prove us correct. Let a few more Virkulas be slain in such cowardly and unjust fashion, particularly if on the next occasions a miracle does not save the wives and children, and consider the possible consequences. Angry reprisals by the citizens of the affected community are countered by the government with an attempt to seize and punish those who had taken vengeance on its officers, and that in turn results in an even greater flare-up of popular indignation against "oppression" It might be necessary to send troops to quell the disturbance, when the disturbance might spread, bringing neighboring communities to the aid of the original one, until the startling picture might confront us of an entire state up in arms against the federal government. 

Accounts vary as to what White said in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. At trial, it was alleged that he said to Virkula's wife, 'Don't cry, lady; I didn't mean to do that.' Other versions include 'I have a wife and children and it makes me feel bad' and 'I done my duty.'

Virkula's wife Selma testified that Virkula was hard of hearing and didn't have his glasses on when the agents challenged him.

White was acquitted of the killing.

The Atlanta Constitution has a portion of the testimony given by White's partner Servine, as follows:

The officers had received orders to shoot at cars that failed to stop at their command. 

Q. Are these orders printed? 

A. I don't know. 

Q. Where did you get your orders?

A. I never received them. Other Patrolmen Got Verbal Orders. 

Q. The firing of a gun at an automobile is a matter assumed by the patrolmen themselves?

 A. The other patrolmen have received these verbal orders. 

Q. Would you give an instance? 

A. Both the new men, White and Ammerman, have received them, 

Q. From whom? 

A. Deputy Collector of Customs N. A. Linderberg. 

Q. Have you ever carried a gun in connection with your patrol work? 

A. Yes. 

Q. Would it be your opinion that in cases similar to this you would be justified in shooting at the car? 

A. Yes. 

Q. Are you trained in the use of firearms in connection with your work? 

A. One of the regulations of the service is that men shall have six months' experience in a combat unit of the army or experience in police work, or as a sheriff, Texas Rangers, or State Constabulary of Pennsylvania.

Q. Are the officers of your department instructed relative to methods of shooting. at a car? 

A. Yes. 

Q. What are the general instructions given you? 

A. A car refusing to stop when the signal is given, we are to shoot with an effort to dismantle the car, the tires, gas tank, or radiator, We are authorized to shoot to injure a person in case he is attempting to injure us, if we assume he is trying to injure us. 

Q. Was any injury attempted by Virkkula? 

A. Well, he attempted to run over us, at least I interpret it that way.

I did a quick Google for Emmet White, Minnesota and found this photograph. I do not know if it is the same Emmet White. Judging by the photo White was working for Ewart's Golden Guernsey, a popular Minnesota dairy. Judging by the comments he did so for most of his adult life.

The Prohibition Bureau received little, if any, firearms training. It was assumed that those brought on board already had sufficient knowledge of firearms to be issued armament. 

It was the first Federal agency to ever carry guns and have arrest powers, as well as the power to search and seize. The FBI - then known as the Bureau of Investigation, and the senior service by twelve years - did not initially have arrest powers. Their role was to Investigate, not police. Nor was there a standard armament policy. BOI agents appear to have been allowed to use their own judgement when it came to weapons. Until 1934, when the BOI adopted its official policy. It's been said that this was a deliberate strategy by J. Edgar Hoover, to avoid any public comparison between his BOI and the Prohibition Bureau.

The Prohibition Bureau's weakness for gunplay became its besetting sin. It was known as a shoot first and ask questions later agency. According to historian John Kobler the Bureau admitted to killing 137 persons but were probably responsible for well over a thousand deaths, and the total does not include those wounded or otherwise injured as nobody at the time bothered to keep count. 

After Prohibition's end the Bureau became the genesis for what is now the ATF. It's my understanding that no official record of the Bureau's activity exists, and that the Bureau's records were ordered destroyed a little over a decade after the end of Prohibition.  

Speaking as someone with an interest in history, I've often wondered why nobody's ever tried to write a history of the Bureau. The closest we have is a book published in 1929, which I've read, but nothing subsequent to that. Nor, to my knowledge, has any historian explored the career of Wayne Wheeler and the Anti-Saloon League, which is remarkable given the influence it had over the government and presidency of the United States. It literally drove the United States government to adopt and keep a policy which was incredibly unpopular and, despite all evidence of its failure, kept the experiment going for over a decade.

Over a decade of federal bloodshed.

Ethyl and Methyl (Trail of Cthulhu)

This week's post is inspired by this article over at the Guardian. (Fair warning: it's nasty stuff.)

For Bethany Clarke, poison tasted like nothing. There was no bitter aftertaste, no astringent sting at the back of the tongue. If anything, she thought in passing, the free shots she and her friends were drinking at a hostel bar in Laos had probably been watered down ...

This has all been done before. Written down, part of the historical record.

Ethyl - 
and Methyl!
Like Ike and Mike
Strangely you look alike
Like sisters I have met
You're very hard to tell apart - and yet
The one consoles more gently that a wife
The other turns and cripples you for life. 

         ---

Sits the plumber, man of metal
Joining Gas pipes to a kettle
Neath the bed his wife is lying
Rather silent - she is dying
From some gin her husband gave her
Too busy now to save her,
'Things,' he sings, 'Are looking upward; 
I am making stills
Soon we'll cook the stuff by wholesale
Running twenty mills;
What we make and how we make it
Doesn't cut no ice.
Anything we sell in bottles
Brings the standard price.'

Wallace Irwin, Owed to Volstead, from the 1922 Nosenseorship collection  

During Prohibition there was no legal means of supplying alcohol. The people doing the supplying didn't care so much what happened to the buyer, so long as whatever was in their bottles had some kind of kick. 

If you, as the buyer, wanted some kind of reassurance you could buy right off the boat, newly smuggled in. But there was no guarantee that what you bought was, in fact, the real deal. From the seller's perspective, it was just as easy to sell fake liquor in a real-seeming bottle. Easier, in fact. Which might explain the Guardian's report on gin sold in Brazil:

... a number of recent outbreaks have also been linked to contaminated official alcohol supply chains, where methanol is being added to sealed bottles of spirits and finding its way on to the mass market ...

Ideally, you should test before you drink. God knows how you manage that when you're at a beach bar in Indonesia. To my mind, you can't beat the test proposed by H.I. Phillips in the March 1926 Collier's article, The Book Of Bootlegging Etiquette:

Take a rabbit (which should always be part of the complete kitchen equipment in the modern home) and drop ten drops of the liquor down its throat. If the rabbit dies, it is bad liquor. If the rabbit lives, it is a bad rabbit. 

Taken from Wikipedia: 

Methanol toxicity (also methanol poisoning) is poisoning from methanol, characteristically via ingestion. Symptoms may include an altered/decreased level of consciousness, poor or no coordination, vomiting, abdominal pain, and a specific smell on the breath. Decreased vision may start as early as twelve hours after exposure. Long-term outcomes may include blindness and kidney failure. Ingestion of as little as 3.16 grams of methanol can cause irreversible optic nerve damage, and the oral LD50 for humans is estimated to be 56.2 grams ... Early treatment increases the chance of a good outcome. Treatment consists of stabilizing the person and using an antidote. The preferred antidote is fomepizole, with ethanol used if this is not available.

During Prohibition, since alcohol is used in a number of industrial processes there was still a need for significant quantities of the stuff, which the Federal Government produced by denaturing (that is, adding poisonous methyl) to the ethanol supplies destined for manufacturing uses. Except, people being what they are, some of that denatured alcohol was diverted for illicit booze manufacturing. Since the Feds hadn't told anyone about their denaturing program, nobody had reason to believe this was a bad idea until the first poisoning cases surfaced. 

This caused a scandal, made worse by Prohibition mouthpieces blithering that people shouldn't be drinking alcohol anyway, and those who did deserved everything they got. 

Let's talk RPG usage.

Prohibition is a fact of life both in Trail and Call of Cthulhu, since between them the two RPG settings cover the US during the 1920s and 30s. However, I'm just going to focus on Trail today. 

In Trail terms, Prohibition runs up till repeal on December 5, 1933. However, Prohibition's been an unpopular policy since inception, made worse by the Depression which started October 1929. People could stomach an unpopular domestic policy so long as everything else, particularly the economy, was more or less okay. The minute the country faced unfavorable economic headwinds, unpopular domestic policies became untenable. 

Prohibition became an easy target, made even easier because rich people hoped that making liquor legal, with all the sales tax benefits that implied, would reduce the need for an income tax, letting them off the hook. They bankrolled the popular movement favoring repeal. As luck would have it sales taxes didn't wipe out the income tax burden, but the country was wet again.

Bad Rabbits In Arkham

The Arkham Prohibition Bureau is a standing joke. It wasn't very successful before 1929, but since the Depression its activities became deeply unpopular, made even worse when it raided a high-end restaurant the Mayor favored. Now it's reduced to a couple of agents working out of cheap offices on the corner of College and Peabody streets. These two, Leroy Washburn (a local boy happy to hang off the federal tit) and Martin Keys (an out-of-towner with blunted and disappointed ambition) are all that's left of a much larger unit, dispersed after the Anton's Restaurant incident. 

Keys approaches the University with a problem. The investigators may become involved as members of Miskatonic's staff or student body, or they may be hired by the University to assist.

Keys' problem is an outbreak of what looks like Methyl poisoning in some of the cheaper places in Arkham. Several people have been permanently injured and two have died. However, a small number of those poisoned report unusual side effects that don't match the usual toxicity profile, and Keys wants to know if this is something to do with the methyl or if there's something else at work.

Streetwise, Cop Talk or similar Interpersonal, 0 point, indicates the poisoning outbreaks largely affect Lower Southside. 1 point finds a local contact, Dr. Malkowski, who occasionally skirts the law but who can point out four or five gin mills or cheap speaks where the stuff, colloquially called Smoke, is sold. 

Pharmacy, 0 point, indicates quantities of Methyl in the stuff sold as Smoke. 1 point spend isolates something else in the mix, a substance commonly seen in embalming fluid. 2 points identify it as Rectifol Corrective, an embalming fluid not manufactured or sold for over 20 years.

Biology or similar Investigative indicates that, in a small percentage of the imbibers, the subject loses their sight for at least 24 hours and, when sight returns, they begin seeing things which aren't there. This causes panic, erratic behavior, and in at least one case, suicidal behavior.

Option One: Funeral Blues. The Depression didn't decrease demand for alcohol but did ensure few in Lower Southside could pay for it. Enter funeral director Jaspar Elizar, who got hold of some bottles, a cheap label maker, and churned out Smoke in convincing gin form. What Elizar didn't realize is his preferred booze substitute contains chemicals best not imbibed, because the visions they induce cause the subject to gain 1 Cthulhu Mythos. This Mythos gain affects people in different ways and causes insanity in particularly sensitive subjects.

Option Two: Occult Blues. The Smoke epidemic is the brainchild of occultist Jason Gaspard, who stole the substances he's been using to make Smoke from funeral director Elizar. Gaspard's goal is to create a visionary. He knows, through his studies, that he can scry into the future so long as he can induce someone of sufficiently sensitive nature to hallucinate under the right conditions. Gaspard, having released Smoke into the 'wild', is now waiting to see which of his unwitting test subjects is best suited to become a mystic future-seer. Once he knows which is the best subject, he'll draw that person into the fold with promises of a cure.

Option Three: They Are There. The Smoke epidemic is just another crime spree, put together by a bunch of low-effort goons desperate for a buck or two. They stole what they needed to make Smoke and are running a cheap gin mill in Lower Southside. What they don't realize is the visions that a small portion of those who drink it (eg. those with In The Blood) see aren't visions at all; those are real creatures which exist and aren't happy about being perceived. These inter-dimensional creatures dimly perceive those Smoke drinkers who can (temporarily) see them and will attack, leaving behind drained and hideous husks of their victims. This will come to an end once the last Smoke drinker dies but perhaps the investigators can come up with a way to save the unfortunate victim(s) before that happens. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!  

The Stork Club (Trail of Cthulhu)

I'm off to NYC this week so there shall be no post next Sunday.

As a nod to the excesses of the Apple I thought I'd talk about the New Yorkiest place of all, at least according to Walter Winchell - the Stork Club.

PBS

Winchell gave the Stork that tagline thanks to a boost from nightclub hostess Texas Guinan, who suggested to the columnist and newsman that her buddy Sherman Billingsley's new joint could do with a boost. This was 1929 and Billingsley, a bootlegger from Oklahoma, had just set up his place on West 58th Street, with financial backing from mysterious sources. It wasn't the Stork's final home; it would move a few times in its career, before finally settling on 3 East 53rd Street.

This last move coincided with the end of Prohibition, which brought about some odd changes for the liquor business. Yes, you could sell alcohol, at table. Not at some smoky, sin-filled bar. Billingsley's solution was to remove his old bar, which had been in the middle of the room, and rebuild it along one wall. He then added lots of tables, each at the same height as the bar. So technically he was serving at table - it was just that the tables were bar height.

This lasted until he had to move to 3 East 53rd, after a police raid. Then Billingsley settled in for the long haul. 

By now he was successful enough he didn't need mysterious financial backers, certainly not backers mysterious enough to attract unwelcome comment. However, he never quite escaped the reputation of being a mobbed-up guy. Partly this was due to his bootlegging background, and partly to his relationships with people like Owney Madden and Frenchy DeMange. For a long time Billingsley had to fight off union incursions backed by Dutch Shultz, until Shultz was shot to death in October 1935.

The Stork was known as a bastion of cafe society, a place for the well-heeled and socially privileged to gather. It helped that the likes of Winchell stuck around the place, along with theatrical star Ethel Merman, Billingsley's girl, who had a waiter stand by her side constantly just to light her cigarettes. According to the guy on the front door Merman wore no underwear, and frequently flashed him in lieu of a cash tip. "I can't put food on the table with that," he complained. 

The Stork was famous for its promotions and iconic chotchkes like its signature ashtrays, its always-on-call photographers, and its balloon nights. On balloon nights a host of balloons would fall from the ceiling each of which contained a prize, often a hundred-dollar bill. The sudden descent of these balloons set off a popping frenzy as guests and staff competed to collect as many prizes as possible. 

The Stork was also famous for sex. Billingsley's relationship with Merman was well-known. Despite being married he and Merman were about as public as it was possible to get. Once, Merman turned up at the Stork glowering, injured, and upset. It turned out she and Billingsley had been enjoying themselves in his car. One of them dropped a lit cigarette and Merman found it by sitting on it, bare-arsed. 

Even without Shultz's intervention Billingsley would have union troubles. He believed in being boss of his empire, and no union, whether straight or crooked, would ever tell him what to do. When he fired a raft of union waiters and they took him to court Billingsley fought tooth and nail, finally taking it to appeals court. The court ruled he had to take the waiters back on staff and pay back wages. He and the waiters reached a quiet compromise; he'd take them on, pay the wages, so long as they didn't squawk when he discreetly fired them again. Billingsley resisted unions till the bitter end; by the time the Stork imploded his union problems cost him his friendship with Winchell. By that point the Stork was losing money hand over fist.

Trail is a 1930s game and as luck would have it the 1930s are the Stork's glory years. Soon the jet age would come and with it would go New York's cafe society, and Billingsley's business model. That, and Billingsley's notorious and ill-fated clash with Josephine Baker in 1956 sealed the Stork Club's fate. 

Borrowing from Night's Black Agents Resource Guide: Locations:

The Stork Club

New York's high-and-mighty mix with the lesser folk, so long as the lesser folk are theatrical, literati, or otherwise famous. It's not unusual to see Broadway stars and Hollywood celebrities mingling with the children of the rich. In some cases literal children; Billingsley lets under-age rich kids play in his playground, so long as they don't drink. You might see almost anyone at the Stork; they say madame Polly Adler came here once and, when she and her escort refused to leave, Billingsley took away all the other tables near them so they sat on their own, completely exposed. Until they slunk away.  Disgraced mayor Jimmy Walker came here after his return from self-imposed European exile and Billingsley threw out the boat for his good friend Walker, only to discover - when the next day's papers made no mention of Walker's return - that the King of New York had been permanently dethroned. 

Extras

Mobsters, rich folk, folk on the make, detectives, theatrical stars, writers, newsmen, photographers - anyone who has an interest in fame and riches. Or who wants to be seen with the famous and wealthy. Or who actually is famous and wealthy. 

Clues

Bargain can get you almost anything from this crowd, but it's even better used on the waiters and staff who can get you special privileges, or a table next to the people you really want to talk to. Flattery is practically currency in a place where the brightest stars and rich kids mingle. Cop Talk works well on unionized staff in bed with mobsters, as well as Sherman himself, who knows very well which side his bread is buttered.  Evidence Collection might notice that peculiar little item so-and-so dropped on the floor. They might be too toasted to notice you took it.  

Rules Effects

Spending a night at the Stork and being seen to do so gives temporary boosts to Credit Rating. Oral History spends at the Stork gives you temporary Intimidation against a well-heeled target of your choice; nobody wants those stories spread. Being there on Balloon Night can earn you unusual allies or enemies, depending on how successful you were collecting prizes. You need to be careful who you go about with or you might catch something nasty - just ask Tallulah Bankhead, a Broadway star and Stork habitue famous for her varied sex life.  

That's it for this week. Enjoy!

Secret Room - The Contractor (RPG All)

This week's post is loosely based on the recent case of Timothy and Tracy Ferriter, who allegedly had a secure room built to 'house' their adoptive son.

A contractor tipped the police to the existence of the room. He'd been asked to build a small, lockable room in the Ferriters' garage, 8 by 8 ft, with no way to open the only access door from the inside. It had electricity, a window air conditioning unit and a camera in the ceiling, and the Ferriters insisted it be built within two days. The whole thing felt off, so as soon as the contractor finished the job he told the cops, who discovered that the Ferriters were using it to keep their son in secure lockdown when he wasn't at school. 

The case is ongoing.

Secret or secure rooms are fairly common in fiction. There was a time when you couldn't write a cozy cottage murder mystery set in England without at least one 'priest's hole,' and the trope is very common in cobwebbed ghost stories too.

Harvington Hall

Secret rooms turn up now and again in pulp crime novels, particularly those that have some connection with Prohibition, when there were very good reasons for hiding the booze store, or making sure that your tunnel to the outside world wasn't easily spotted by curious onlookers. Some, like the cellar of the 21 Club in New York, still exist.

PIX11 News

The principle is sound enough. You need somewhere secure, concealed and relatively easy to access. To do this, you take a portion of the existing structure and wall it off from the rest of the unit. You want to make sure that the space isn't so large that it's easy to spot by cursory inspection, but it can't be so small as to be useless. The priest's holes were built to accommodate one person, perhaps two, and then only for a few hours. The 21 Club's cellar wasn't meant to be secure housing for anyone; it just had to be big enough to store a restaurant's worth of booze, and convenient enough that the waiters didn't have to schlep all over the block to get another bottle. 

However this example introduces a new element - the contractor. Someone has to build that room, after all, and construction is a fairly specialist job. Particularly if you want that secret room to have electricity, or plumbing, and especially if you want it to be undetectable. The man who built the 21 Club's cellar was an expert in his field, and he had to be. The whole point was to make an actual brick wall, with all the weight that implies, slide shut noiselessly, with minimal effort, and without leaving any tell-tale scuff marks. This is not a simple feat of engineering. This wants effort, and skill.

You know who else has a particular set of skills? Player characters.

Let's talk gamification, and for once in a way let's talk Fantasy. I'm not going to specify setting, except to say that it could as easily be Ravenloft as Swords of the Serpentine.

Command Performance

The group is hired by a suitably mysterious client, who calls themself Lord Bardwell, owner of Bardwell Hall. Lord Bardwell wants the adventurers to build a secret room at the Hall, to these specifications:

• It must be south-facing.
• It must have a window or some kind of view port that allows Lord Bardwell to see a particular constellation, at certain months of the year.
• It must be undetectable by ordinary means.
• The people currently living at the Hall - Lord Bardwell's family and servants - can't know the room is being built.

That last part's the kicker. The group might have all manner of architectural or magical talents that will help them build that room. How can they do it without being spotted by the people living there?

Complicating factors:

1. 'Lord Bardwell' isn't really Lord Bardwell at all. Their actual employer, who prefers to remain incognito and is working through magical disguises or some kind of third party, is the second eldest child of the current Lord Bardwell, the scholarly one who has esoteric and peculiar tastes. Hence the need to look at a particular constellation. Best not to ask what their obsession is really all about. Or why they need to be so secretive.
2. There are several possible locations for the south-facing room, but the best one is in the old Tower, sometimes called the Green Tower after the green cupola at its top. It's one of the oldest sections of the Hall, and houses a forgotten cellar as well as a seldom-used guest bedroom. The reason why few people go there is because it's supposed to be haunted ...
3. Lord Bardwell - the real one - spends most of his time in his bedroom, as he's a complete invalid. An ever-changing procession of doctors and other parasites visit every month, each with their own cure. This means new faces come and go regularly, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on how clever, and how much of an interfering busybody, the latest batch of doctors are. To get access to the Hall the player characters can disguise themselves as quacks - probably not much of a stretch for them.
4. Lord Bardwell's spouse, the beautiful (and licentious) Baroness, spends most of her time in sunnier climes, working her way through the servants and hotel staff. However, Lord Bardwell unexpectedly cuts her off at the wallet, forcing her sudden return to Bardwell Hall complete with a menagerie of card sharps, eccentric swordsmen and other lackies who are hoping for a sniff of the Bardwell loot.   

That's it for this week. Enjoy!