Throughout Prohibition, an astounding 8,000 speakeasies in every neighborhood across the city continued to sell beer (compared to about 1,300 taverns today).
City Hall didn't care to spend any money to close them down, so federal agents were sent in to enforce the rules. More often than not, the Treasury men found the bars and breweries were protected by local cops, paid off by racketeers and saloonkeepers.
Beer flowed mainly because many breweries never stopped making it. Kensington's Weisbrod & Hess, now the home of Yards Brewing, was caught at least twice with beer in its tanks.
Others licensed to make near beer with just 0.5 percent alcohol often "forgot" to dilute the batches, producing "strong beer" with the usual 4.5 percent alcohol content.
In 1924, almost five years into Prohibition, President Calvin Coolidge sent in Marine Gen. Smedley Butler to crack down on the illegal booze as the city's director of public safety. A West Chester native and Haverford School grad, Butler was a local hero who dressed in a flowing scarlet-lined cape while leading speakeasy raids.
His task - to clean up "corrupt and contented" Philadelphia - was daunting.
Early on, he uncovered a scam in which a North Philadelphia brewery led entire convoys of beer-filled trucks past unsuspecting cops with a limousine that was identical to Butler's personal car. The brewery had even found a guy who looked like Butler's chauffeur to drive the lead car.
Inevitably, anyone picked up would be released immediately by crooked magistrates. Under Butler, more than 10,000 speakeasy operators were arrested, but only 10 percent were brought to trial and fewer than half of those were actually fined.
Local pols snickered at "Old Gimlet Eye" - till he turned his attention on their own posh clubs. In 1925, after raids on the Bellevue-Stratford, the Ritz-Carlton and the Union League, the mayor fired Butler.
