The News-Democrat reported that the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union planned to celebrate the departure of John Barleycorn and the advent of constitutional Prohibition, Jan. 16, 1920.
Actually, it turned out, it celebrated a day early. And Belleville Mayor P.K. Johnson prohibited the group from ringing any bells at midnight to celebrate the beginning of a new era.
What the group celebrated was the beginning of a 14-year experiment that would fail miserably, making a mockery of law enforcement and spreading illegal breweries all over the place. In the metro-east, few really supported Prohibition.
Early on the newspaper reported that the two local breweries, Stag and Star, would continue operations. Star would vanish; Stag did make it through.
There were 80 saloons licensed in Belleville when Prohibition began. The newspaper estimated that by the middle of the decade, there were more than 1,000 illegal soft drink parlors and home-brew joints serving liquor of some sort.
A week after the beginning of Prohibition, the newspaper reported that the police had made no arrests but ``the advent of Prohibition has also depleted the usual crowd that has been accustomed to resting its foot on the brass rail at local quencheries.''
Mayor Johnson promised strict police enforcement, but in 1926 Mayor Joseph J. Anton stated that police would not radically enforce Prohibition. He did have to order policemen to stop drinking while on duty.
There were many raids, including two in one day on a tavern in Mascoutah. The first raid confiscated plenty of liquor and the second raid also found an equal supply of liquor on hand.
There were illegal stills raided on islands just off the Illinois shore in the Mississippi River. Agents worked to close the New Athens Brewery and a brewery in Mascoutah was seized and equipment auctioned off.
By the end of the decade, an advisory vote in Belleville found 25,000 voting for the repeal of Prohibition and 7,000 voting against it.
Prohibition actually ended Dec. 5, 1933.
