The year was 1920; the month January. A fast cutter intercepted a steamship in British waters headed for Bimini in the Bahama Islands. With guns drawn the cutter occupants clambered aboard the ship, confiscated cargo and put a single passenger in chains. No, they were not pirates but American federal officers enforcing National Prohibition just days after it went into effect. The cargo was whiskey; the passenger was Charles Vincenti, a well-known Baltimore liquor dealer, shown here.
To understand how Vincenti had come to this crisis, one must retreat at least 30 years earlier to when he and his brother-in-law, Andrew Ciotta, already with a small store, had purchased an existing Baltimore liquor house from fellow italian Marcello Triaca. According to census data, Vincenti had immigrated to the U.S. in 1890 and Ciotti in 1898. Flasks with their company logo are shown here.
The original names were dropped and the combined businesses became Triaca’s Exchange, located at 312-318 Light Street. Another change occurred in 1906 when the organization was renamed simply the Triaca Company. About 1909 the firm moved to the southwest corner of Pratt and Light Streets. Each location of the company was in the vicinity of the Baltimore wharves where steamboats regularly plied up and down the Chesapeake Bay and beyond, carrying passengers and consumer goods, including cargoes of whiskey.
The partners marketed their whiskey under the Triaca label, selling it wholesale in large ceramic jugs to saloons, restaurants and hotels in Baltimore and south in Washington D.C. They added new brand names to the familiar Triaca label. Among these were “Old Troy Maryland Rye” and “Colgate,” the latter a brand that Ciotti & Vincenti registered with federal authorities in 1907. A shot glass touts Colgate as the “best whiskey bottled expressly for family & medicinal use.” The name suggests that Vincenti and Ciotti were drawing whiskey supplies from the local Colgate Station facility of the Federal Distilling Company.
The Triaca liquor dealership avoided the great disaster that befell many in the Baltimore whiskey trade: The Great Fire of 1904. From February 6 to 8 of that year, a major conflagration in the downtown and wharf area claimed 140 acres, some 70 blocks. More than 2,500 business were burned out, including many of the city’s major liquor houses. Although the conflagration came dangerously close to its location the Triaca Company continued unabated at its address after the fire. Vincenti and Ciotti profited greatly from reduced competition.
That prosperity came abruptly to an end when National Prohibition was imposed, requiring that liquor sales end as of midnight January 1, 1920. Vincenti appeared to be unfazed by the ban. The U.S. Government was allowing distillers and liquor dealers with large remaining liquor stocks to ship them out of the country and sell abroad but set a removal deadline of January 17. On behalf of the Triaca Company, Vincenti boasted to the press that he had leased space in the Bahamas at historic Fort Charlotte, shown below, for thousands of gallons of unsold whiskey. “It was dirt cheap,” he bragged, I got it the whole thing for $100 a month. Think of it!”
He told the newspapers that a “liquor fleet” of three steamships loaded with local and Kentucky distilled liquor shortly would be leaving Baltimore’s docks for the Bahamas. The first to go would be the Steamer Ellersile, followed shortly by the Steamers Adelheid and Maumee. Already on the dock and being loaded were between 18,000 and 20,000 cases of Baltimore-made whiskey and 10 carloads of Kentucky whiskey, he declared.
Vincenti also claimed that Triaca Company had in transit another 20 carloads of whiskey purchased from Kentucky distillers, already gauged for tax purposes and ready for immediate loading aboard ships in Baltimore. He bragged he had no apprehension about getting his whiskey out of the country by the January deadline. How much of this story was fact and how much fiction is unclear. Future events would disclose that Vincenti also had other schemes in mind.
On January 14 Vincenti applied for this passport, using the photo shown above. He said he was going to the Bahamas aboard the Steamer Elsemere for “commercial” purposes on January 16. Was this last minute lurch into the Caribbean occasioned by a holdup of the Kentucky liquor supplies or some other problem? Whatever the reason, Vincenti apparently did not leave with this stash of booze until after the deadline.
The Feds were watching, ready to pounce. After boarding the steamer, a Department of Justice official and two Internal Revenue officers seized the liquor and Vincenti. They delivered him into custody in Miami, heedless of the fact that their operation was a significant violation of international law. The headline in the New York Tribune read: "US agents accused of abducting wine man”. An embarrassed State Department was forced to apologize to the British Government, sovereign in the Bahamas, claiming that the raid had being carried out by rogue individuals who had “had acted on their own initiative and without the knowledge or approval of this government.” The arrest was declared unlawful and Vincenti was released.
By now the liquor dealer had become a major figure in Baltimore and national media, however, and federal authorities began to look more closely into his activities. A Federal “Grand Inquest” (Jury) was convened in Maryland to investigate. Attention initially turned to an alleged earlier attempt to circumvent anti-alcohol laws. Abetted by Triaca Company employees, Vincenti was accused of hatching a scheme in 1917 to bribe Federal officials charged with enforcing restrictions on liquor production during World War One. He was reported to have reaped a profit of $500,000 -- $5 million in today’s dollar -- from selling 95,000 gallons of illegal whiskey.
When investigated by authorities, it also turned out that Vincenti’s 1920 story about his liquor entirely being shipped overseas was a falsehood. He actually had been distributing cases to cooperative households throughout the Baltimore area. Among them was A.T. Cardozza, a wealthy road contractor who maintained a large estate and mansion called Ingleside in Catonsville, Md. Cardozza’s property also contained several tenant houses.
During court proceedings, Cardozza related that around Christmas 1919, Vincenti and his partner, Ciotti, came to his Baltimore residence with a proposition that they store some whiskey in the spacious cellar of his Ingleside mansion. Cardozza refused but said the liquor dealers could use the basement of a tenant house to store 35 or 40 cases. On January 2, ignoring his instructions, they sent 250 cases and followed on January 11 with 320 more cases.
Meeting Vincenti on the street shortly after, Cardozza asked the liquor dealer why he had sent all that whiskey to him. Vincenti, he said, seemed nervous and in a great hurry, and replied: “I cannot talk to you now; it is your whiskey, what do you care, you are not going to pay me for it.” Cardozza, while claiming the whiskey as his own, did not pay for it and subsequently the cases were seized by prohibition agents who also raided other Vincenti-arranged basement stashes.
After seizing the bootleg whiskey, the authorities arrested Vincenti, Ciotti, and other executives of the Triaca Company, along with drivers, salesmen, and those who allowed their cellars to be used. The government put the culprits on trial. The 1922 court proceedings made headlines across America for months, becoming known as the “Million Dollar Whiskey Conspiracy.” Vincenti, as kingpin of the operation, was fined $10,000 (equivalent to $154,000 today) and sentenced to prison, along with many of the others he had suborned. The Triaca Company disappeared.
After his release from prison Vincenti, a confirmed bachelor, had a limited time to live. He died at the age of 53 in October 1930 and was buried in the New Cathedral (Roman Catholic) Cemetery, his plot at Section WW, Lot 143, Grave 4. Wikipedia notes: “It is the final resting place of 110,000 people, including numerous individuals who played important roles in Maryland history.” I doubt Charles Vincenti is counted among them.
Notes: This post was gathered from a wide number of sources, including articles from Baltimore newspapers, the proceeding of the “Grand Inquest,” and the website “pre-pro.com.” I have been unable to ascertain whether Vincenti actually sent some whiskey to the Bahamas for (legal) storage or whether the entire story of the shipments was concocted to hide his conspiracy.
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