In the 1920s Prohibition Era, a significant amount of alcohol and beer were confiscated from various establishments such as hotels, taverns, pool halls, and speakeasies.
To store the confiscated items, Prohibition agents used two merchant warehouses in Wilkes-Barre – one on Bennett Street and another on East Northampton Street.
Following several weeks of raids in the Wyoming Valley in 1921, about $400,000 worth of alcohol and beer was moved to the Bennett Street warehouse by the Prohibition agents.
The warehouse became a target for those interested in the alcohol and beer.
On March 14, 1921, there was one watchman at the Bennett Street warehouse, and the thieves took advantage of the situation.
According to the Wilkes-Barre Record on March 15, 1921, the warehouse was entered between 4:30 a.m. and 7 o’clock, and residents reported hearing trucks in the vicinity as early as midnight.
The owners of the warehouse and the Prohibition officials suspected that the seized alcohol and beer were the target of the thieves.
The thieves were unaware of the situation with the warehouse elevator.
The elevator became inoperable after the workers' shift ended at around 8 or 9 o’clock when the electricity was turned off at a fuse box.
The thieves broke a small window facing Bennett Street and Pennsylvania Avenue to gain entry. Once inside, they navigated through the stored goods intended for local merchants and reached the third floor where the confiscated alcohol and beer were kept, according to the Record.
Using a crowbar, they forced open steel barn doors leading to a large room filled with confiscated barrels of beer and wooden cases of liquor bottles. They placed several barrels of beer and four cases near the elevator.
The Wilkes-Barre police suspected that the thieves planned to use the elevator to transport the seized alcohol to waiting trucks.
However, the elevator did not function.
As per the Record, the practice was to disable the elevator, lock the doors leading to each floor, move the elevator to the third floor, lock it, and remove the fuses when work ended for the day.
Prohibition Agent Grover C. Hollister had the routine of taking the elevator key and two required fuses home each night.
To the public, Prohibition agents would publicly dispose of the alcohol by pouring it into drains outside the merchants' warehouse once a month.
Following the attempted burglary and theft on March 14, 1921, the alcohol destruction practice became a weekly occurrence.
