January 26, 1932 – Winston Churchill gets a doctor’s note authorizing “unlimited” alcohol in Prohibition America

On January 17, 1920, Prohibition officially began in the US. The Volstead Act had been enacted exactly one year before, prohibiting the production, sale, and transport of intoxicating liquors. It was not repealed until December 5, 1933.

During those years, those who wanted to drink found ways to get around the law. One involved visiting a “speakeasy,” or an establishment illegally selling alcoholic beverages. [According to Wikipedia, “they were ‘so called because of the practice of speaking quietly about such a place in public, or when inside it, so as not to alert the police or neighbors.’”]

Smithsonian Magazine reports that the National Prohibition Act, which enforced the ban on selling alcohol, allowed farmers to produce wine for their own consumption and priests, ministers and rabbis to serve it during religious ceremonies.

Another method to get around the act was to obtain a doctor’s prescription for “medicinal” alcohol. As Ohio State University recorded on its history site “Temperance & Prohibition”:

There was one way to obtain alcoholic beverages legally during the prohibition years: through a physician’s prescription, purchasing the liquor from a pharmacy. Physicians could prescribe distilled spirits–usually whiskey or brandy–on government prescription forms. The government was even willing to allow the limited production of whiskey and its distribution when stocks were low.”

 

In December, 1931, Winston Churchill was just completing a 40-stop lecture tour of the United States. Running late for dinner in New York City, he dashed out on 5th Avenue and was struck by a car. A cab took Churchill to Lenox Hill Hospital where he spent two weeks recovering.

Six weeks later, Churchill resumed his tour, but needed help in sustaining his spirits, so to speak, in Prohibition America. Otto Pickhardt, the admitting physician at Lenox Hill, provided him with a note to help him out on this day in history, which read:

This is to certify that the post-accident convalescence of the Hon. Winston S. Churchill necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially at meal times. The quantity is naturally indefinite but the minimum requirements would be 250 cubic centimeters.”

Winston Churchill in 1932, via Hillsdale College Churchill Project