Prohibition
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, A RAID TO REMEMBER
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO TODAY, FEDERAL “DRY” AGENTS RAIDED THE HOME OF ELISE AND ROY OLMSTEAD. Roy was Seattle’s infamous “King of the Bootleggers” and Elise was the much younger woman for whom Roy divorced his first wife. Elise also was a very successful informant for the government at the start of their relationship! The house, located in the prestigious Mount Baker neighborhood of Seattle, at 3757 Ridgeway Place, looks very much the same as it did when Roy bought it in 1924 on the heels of his divorce, scandalously moving in with Elise who was not yet his wife!
The raid came at 7:30 p.m., as the Olmstead’s entertained a dinner party of sixteen guests. Elise was wrapping up her evening radio broadcast of children’s bedtime stories from the station installed in the upstairs bedroom of their home. Fifteen federal agents, some armed with pump action shotguns and sledgehammers, surrounded the house as lead Prohibition agent William Whitney knocked on the front door, search warrant in hand. They proceeded to look for liquor and, finding none, seized Roy’s personal papers and business documents. The sledgehammers were for the purpose of destroying the radio equipment had they found any liquor. As it was, the agents made a mess of the place anyway.
Elise tried to call the local police to remove the agents after the search turned up no alcohol, but Whitney yanked the telephone from her hand and slapped Elise in the face. Whitney and, incredibly, his wife Clara who had no government position at all, began calling known associates of Roy and telling them to bring over the booze! When they arrived, they were arrested. Clara made calls too, pretending to be Elise.
Remarkably, at two o’clock in the morning, with everyone hungry and tired, Elise’s cook prepared a big breakfast of ham and eggs for everyone. Then, they all left with the agents to be booked. Roy and Elise rode with Whitney and his wife Clara who reportedly, facing backwards in the car, laughed and waved around Whitney’s .45 caliber pistol at them. Roy, Elise and sixteen others were taken into custody and held overnight.
The next day, the story was front page news. Though neither Roy nor Elise probably knew it at the time, the raid marked the beginning of the end of Roy’s bootleg empire and the start of a long, slow march to multiple trials and prison for Roy, and disappointment and adversity for Elise. Still, her extraordinary story is one of triumph and loss, resilience and doubt, and you can read it all in Elise Olmstead: The Myth and Mystery of Seattle’s “Queen of the Bootleggers,” available through Amazon here.
ELISE OLMSTEAD: THE MYTH AND MYSTERY OF SEATTLE’S “QUEEN OF THE BOOTLEGGERS”
Seattle had a different Prohibition experience than the rest of the country. Largely free of violence, bootlegging was conducted like a business, peacefully, with appropriate bribes and graft to get the Feds to take a sip and look the other way. The bootleg organization was run by Roy Olmstead, Seattle’s notorious “Gentleman Bootlegger.” A former police lieutenant caught red handed in 1920 landing a load of booze, he went on to build an empire importing fine liquor from Canada along the entire Pacific Northwest. His story had been told many times, including being featured in Ken Burn’s documentary on Prohibition.
But it was his second wife, Elise, who stole the show. A young, vivacious, London girl who immigrated to Canada at just 18 years old, she became the endless object of fascination, speculation and interest for newspaper reporters. They crowned her Seattle’s “Queen of the Bootleggers.” But there was so much more to her. This is the first book to look at the life and times of Elise Olmstead to discern what was myth and what was merely mystery.
Did she leave behind a dark secret when she immigrated from England to Canada? Did she illegally enter the U.S.? Was she an informer for Prohibition agents before she married Roy, or, did she become the brains of Roy’s business after? Was it true that she used her radio show to send coded messages to Roy’s rum-running ships while reading bedtime stories for children over the air?
Who was the real Elise? On trial with Roy and dozens of his cohorts for violating Prohibition laws, she was acquitted, but Roy went to jail for four years. How did she survive? Why didn’t their marriage last? This is the true story of an independent woman, ahead of her time, an entrepreneur running a radio station and bringing live orchestra music to the airwaves. An intensely private and secretive person, Elise’s story has never been fully or accurately told until now.
The book is available on Amazon here or you can support your local bookstore and ask them to order it for you.