New York Hospitals Treat Dozens Poisoned by Tainted Holiday Liquor

On Christmas Eve sixty people were taken to Bellevue Hospital in New York after drinking tainted liquor, and eight died before Christmas, according to National Geographic’s history of the episode. The toll later rose to 23 dead, with dozens more blinded. A separate account in JSTOR Daily says nearly 100 people died from drinking industrial alcohol in Christmas week 1926, without saying where; the two figures cannot be reconciled from these sources, and the full count is not known.

Charles Norris, the city’s chief medical examiner, called the press together and said the government must be charged with the moral responsibility for the deaths that poisoned liquor causes, National Geographic reports. He has been a leading critic of the practice of denaturing industrial alcohol, adding toxic chemicals such as methanol and benzene so it cannot be drunk. Manufacturers received tax exemptions for the additives, and bootleggers redistilled and diluted the product. JSTOR Daily says criminal syndicates stole industrial alcohol and resold it as cheap liquor, and that the administration gave tax breaks to manufacturers who denatured their alcohol, a step it describes as meant to discourage illegal drinking.