FREDERICKTOWN — Long before alcohol prohibition was tried in the 1920s — and disastrously failed, I might add — the anti- alcohol temperance movement had many advocates.
When those advocates were not able to achieve their ends politically, sometimes they took to dramatic action to score their point.
One of the most remarkable temperance movement moments in Knox County history hit on Sunday, Oct. 25, 1879, when 13 feisty women, fed up with the drunkenness of their husbands and other men in Fredericktown, launched their own liquor raid.
The women tore into Kelley’s and O’Connor’s, both saloons, and tore the places to shreds.
The ladies broke bottles of liquor and serving glasses, poured out jugs, and used hatchets to hack into barrels of booze so they could be dumped. The rather hilarious accompanying illustration was seen all over the US in the National Police Gazette.
The ladies stopped the flow of liquor in Fredericktown briefly, but it wasn’t until 1887 that they were able to get a local law passed outlawing alcohol inside city limits.
