Whiskey in the Old West

I believe that most people are under the impression that whiskey in the Old West was of poor quality and that drinking it was risky business. Yet I have never read a historical account of anyone dying from drinking whiskey ( I'm not talking about drunks) in any one particular saloon.

I can agree that in some of the tent towns the whiskey may have been altered (watered down) so the saloon owner could turn a bigger profit per barrel but I am not buying the notion that it was somehow poisonous. And when permanent towns were established and saloons abound I doubt that it was even watered down because competition was so keen.

To lend support to my position I offer the following list of whiskey makers that were around back then and are still in business today. This list does not include the many whiskey makers that existed back then but are no longer around.

Wild Turkey/1789, Jim Beam/1795, Old Grand Dad/1796, Makers Mark/1805, Old Overholt/1810, Old Crow/1835, Jack Daniels/1866, George Dickel/1870, Old Forester/1870, Old Taylor/1872, Kessler's/late 1870's. There may well be more but you get a sense of how big this business was and by reading there respective histories you come to understand these companies were producing a quality product from the start.

So my question is, did writers feed us another line of crap that we bought hook, line and sinker or was whiskey back then truly a killer ?

Stop by Old West Antiques and look over the selection of saloon and whiskey items.

Gambling & Cheating in the Old West

From just after the Civil War until the turn of the century men worked long and hard hours with few diversions. The few diversions that existed came in the form of drinking ( in men only saloons), chasing after the soiled doves ( working gals were allowed in saloons) and gambling.

The whiskey was of poor quality. The whores young but were looking to turn a quick trick and move on and the gambling was more often then not rigged. Not much has changed over the years, the hard working man is still getting screwed at every turn.

I'll leave the whiskey and women of easy virtue of another day and deal with the gambling cheats today.

I have already written about who did the cheating so now I will address who enabled the cheaters. From various sources I have begun to develop a list of the many manufacturers who openly advertised loaded dice, advantaged cards and gaffed equipment. On the West Coast one of the most famous companies known to collectors, Will & Finck, San Fransisco advertised in the 1880's as the only sporting emporium on the Pacific Coast. George Mason and Company, located in Denver from 1890 to 1910 and then returned to Chicago. He mainly dealt in gaffed equipment. In the midwest you had the following companies; Daley Manufacturing/Minneapolis, A. Ball & Brothers/Chicago, Doctor Cross & Co./New Orleans and on the East Coast there was a host of companies. In New York alone you had ; E. N. Grandine, Bartlett and F. Grote & Co.

No doubt there were many more but with just these you begin to understand just how prevalent cheating was and just how many gamblers must have been cheating to support such an industry. Many, if not all, of these companies printed catalogs and the gamblers who cheated knew where to find such catalogs.

Eventually a few cheaters saw the errors of their ways and exposed the entire industry. You can imagine the uproar. The lucky gamblers found cheating were merely run out of town. The unlucky ones never saw the morning sun rise. From all this came the outlawing of gambling and gamblers. Today, gambling is working it's way back into society but cheaters will again cause a backlash. An area of great concern currently is the Offshore gambling being done over the internet. With no government oversight, there is no way to be assured these games are being played on the "square".

To learn more about Frontier Gambling go to: www.frontiergambler.com