Alf Reed, “Bad Boy” Saloonkeeper of Portland, Oregon

Alfred F. “Alf” Reed called his drinking establishment “The Bachelor” saloon.”  If the name suggested to the townsfolk of Portland, Oregon, a somewhat disreputable and rowdy lifestyle, the proprietor likely didn’t object.  A bachelor himself while running this drinking establishment, Reed, shown above, lived large “on the wild side.”

That is the conclusion to be drawn from a suit filed against Reed in Portland’s Circuit Court in March 1890 by a man named George Hanlon.  A local bartender, Hanlon sought a judgment of $10,000 against the saloonkeeper — equivalent to $250,000 today — for “alienation of affections.”  Hanlon charged that Reed had plied his wife, Eva Hanlon, with strong drink at the Bachelor Saloon, promised her “costly dresses and other articles of finery,” and she had transferred her affections to the saloonkeeper.

In court documents, Hanlon described his life with Eva in glowing terms.  They had been married in Vancouver, Washington in October 1901.  His wife had made his home “a little heaven” for seven years, he contended, until November 1908 when she had fallen under the spell of Alfred Reed and had gone to live with him at his home at 327 Larrabee Street, Portland.  According to an account of the charges in the Daily Oregonian:  “The willful seduction which is charged against Reed has caused Hanlon great disgrace and distress of body and mind, he says, which he thinks is worth $10,000.”  George apparently preferred cash to getting Eva back.

  

I can find no indication of how this suit was settled, but it must have been an irritant to Reed who had opened the Bachelor Saloon only the prior year.  He had selected a good city for a drinking establishment.  Portland was doing well early in the 1900s.  It had the busiest port north of San Francisco but Seattle was growing just as fast.  Figuring that they needed something to spur further growth, the city fathers decided to hold a world’s fair in Portland.  Three million people came to town in 1905 for the event, entitled the Lewis & Clark Exposition.  More than a few visitors decided to stay.  As a result Portland, shown above, saw its population double from 90,000 in 1905 to 180,000 by 1910.  

Reed was able to capitalized on this wave of humanity, many of them drinkers,  by opening The Bachelor Saloon at 143 Third Street in 1908.  Earlier that space had been occupied by the firm of Olds, Wortman & King, a dry goods store that had vacated to seek larger quarters.  Whether Reed inherited a saloon at the location is unclear.  A glass paperweight the saloonkeeper issued shows a rather narrow, long barroom with an ornate and well-stocked bar.  As for the patrons posing on the weight, all seem well-dressed in suits and hats.  I believe that is Reed himself standing at left behind the bar.

While running his saloon,  Reed produced glass flasks of similar design in half pint and pint sizes.  The half pint, at just under seven inches, is shown here in both a photo and an illustration.  These type bottles are known as “dandy flasks,” a general body shape with parallel sides, a short base pedestal that is almost as wide as the bottle and a highly compressed body from front to back that creates an flattened oval overall shape.  The example shown here likely was mouth-blown in a mold with an applied lip.  The embossing on the bottles read “The Bachelor…A.F. Reed” and gave the saloon’s street address.  The bottles confirm that in addition to selling liquor to the boys along the bar, Reed was bottling his own whiskey to sell at retail for take home use.

Dealing with the “alienation of affections” suit over the wayward Eva Hanlon was only one of Reed’s problems.  Later a gang of burglars hit his establishment, cleaning out the cash drawer.  Much more concerning to him was a November 1, 1909, police raid on The Bachelor, an event that once more put Reed in the headlines of the Daily Oregonian.  On a Thursday afternoon, two detectives entered the saloon and probably acting on a tip made their way to the second floor.  There they found a group of Portland locals huddled around a table, engaged in a poker game.  Reed was among them.  Gambling was an illegal enterprise according to city ordinance. The officers promptly arrested Alf and nine of his patrons.

According to the press account it took two trips of the paddy wagon to get all the prisoners, including the proprietor, to the police station.  Reed was indignant when he reached headquarters, declaring vehemently that his customers were playing cards for fun.  The detectives countered that they were caught playing for money.  In short order Reed was charged with conducting a gambling game and gambling.  The nine patrons were charged with gambling and visiting a gambling house.  The police also seized Reed’s card tables, cards, chips and other paraphernalia.  My guess is that the ten posted bond and, except for the bachelors like Reed, went home to angry wives.

Reed continued to operate the The Bachelor saloon for the next several years. Whatever the outcome of George Hanlon’s suit, Eva seems to have exited the scene.  Alf, however, was about to give up his bachelor’s life.  Circa 1911, he married a woman named Marie and she moved into his Larrabee Street house.  Perhaps it was Marie’s influence that caused Reed in 1912, after about four years in business, to shut down The Bachelor;  Marie may have objected to its checkered past and rowdy clientele.

The former bachelor then opened Reed’s Cafe at 326 Alder Street, a few blocks away from his original location and in a “better” part of Portland.  This establishment is reputed to have been a combination eatery and retail liquor store but was classified in at least one city directory as a “saloon.”  This enterprise also appears to have been successful.  Reed issued a bronze bar token that saved a patron two and one-half cents on a drink or meal, equivalent to about 63 cents today.  But Reed’s Cafe also was fated to be a short-lived. Prohibitionary forces were growing dominant in Oregon and in 1915 a statewide ban was legislated on all alcohol sales.  By 1918 Reed’s 326 Alder Street site was an optometrist’s office, to be followed in 1922 by a flower shop.

As for Reed’s personal life, outside of his scrapes with the law, not much is known.  He seems always to have avoided the census takers.  As a result both his early history and his life after Oregon’s prohibition are shrouded in the mists of time.  For a brief six years, however, this “bad boy” Portland saloonkeeper garnered more than his share of headlines and left us with a rare bottle and a paperweight of note by which to remember his career as a saloonkeeper.

Special Note:  This post marks the 400th entry since the Pre-Prohibition Whiskey Men blog began in April 2011.  The distillers, whiskey wholesalers, and saloonkeepers of the period before 1920 have continued to be a rich source of historical material.  The past year has seen several books published on whiskey that were gracious enough to cite this blog.  The number of “followers” grew in 2015 from 55 to 81, a truly gratifying increase in people regularly checking in.  The number of “hits” on the blog also has jumped and some days is close to 600.  If these statistics were not enough to keep me going, exploratory research indicates that there are many good stories remaining to be told.  Thus I will aim to spotlight one hundred more whiskey men (and women when possible) over the coming months.  In the meantime, when new information and important images become available, I will go back to existing vignettes to correct or add to them.  Thus, comments on individual posts are always welcome and will continue to draw a quick response.

Was Billy Winter Really Portland’s “Promoter of Honesty”?

On May 25, 1907, the Morning Oregonian newspaper headlined:  “Billy Winters, Promotor of Honesty.”  It told of how this Portland “saloon man,” while never posing as an model of propriety, had encouraged “a higher grade of morality and honesty among certain men, and is actually paying a high price for the object lesson he is presenting to the public.”  Another assessment of Winter’s story would substitute the word “honesty” with “tenacity.”

Information about the early years of Billy Winter (sometimes given as Winters), likely the gent shown at right, is scant.  He seems to have avoided the census taker most of his life.  He emerged about the turn of the century as the founder and genial proprietor of a watering hole known as “Billy Winter’s Log Cabin.”  It was located on Third Street near Morrison in downtown Portland, Oregon.  The location was a prudent one as Third Street was a major commercial avenue, elegantly lighted at night, as shown below.   Sources differ about when he opend his saloon,  with dates differing from the late 1890s to the early 1900s.

A trade card exists that appears to show the sales room portion of the saloon.  It has a definite  rustic frontier look.  Two gentlemen appear to be filling containers from an array of about ten large barrels lining one wall.   Each barrel has a number of whiskey bottles around it for a ready sale.  Hanging from one wall is the stuffed head of a deer;  guns and other artifacts are scattered about. 

A similarly cluttered look identifies Billy’s bar on a second trade card where he is standing.  Whiskey bottles, American flags and trophy heads dominate the scene but the most unusual touch is a bar with  a massive aquarium with fish swimming in it.  The finny ones are of several kinds;  I can identify only brown trout.  This unusual feature has caused one observer to wonder whether Winter served fresh fish in his saloon. 

Billy was selling liquor, not just in the quart bottles shown on his trade cards, but also in smaller quantities.   Shown below is a clear glass pumpkinseed flask with his name and a log cabin embossed on it.  Given the expense of creating such a container for his whiskey, Winter (rendered Winters on the bottle) clearly anticipated significant sales .

Like many saloonkeepers of his day, Winter issued bar tokens.  His were of at least two kinds, both worth ten cents in trade, one in white metal and another in bronze.   These would have enhanced his reputation for geniality and liberality.  Even more impressive was a beer stein Winter produced.  Shown below, it was decorated on one side with the sales room illustration and on the other by a stag on the alert.  The handle also is distinctive, with a tree trunk motif.  Most likely these were presentation items, given to Winter’s particularly favored customers.

Although known to the drinking classes of Portland,  Billy came to wider public notice in October 1904 when he reported the theft of a diamond, some rings and a $1,200 wad of cash from the safe of the Log Cabin Saloon. Total value was estimated at $2,500 — equivalent to more than $60,000 today.  The Daily Oregonian headlined “Billy Winters Loses Jewels.”   Suspicion quickly fell on the head bartender, William (aka John F.) Thompson, a man of apparently dubious reputation.   According to the newspaper, Thompson had closed up the bar early that night with the excuse that he was feeling ill.  Patrons said he appeared to be nervous.  After snatching the goods, Thompson hopped the 11:45 p.m. Northern Pacific train for Seattle and disappeared. 

Billy Winters was not a man to take this theft without retaliatory action.   He placed detectives on the trail of the absconder.   They eventually found Thompson in Texas.  The thief offered a compromise:  He would pay back $1,500 in return for Winter calling off any prosecution.  When Billy rejected the deal out of hand, Thompson skipped out again.   Whereupon Winter hired another detective.  A retired Portland policeman, his name was Joe Day.  Day was known in town as a hard nosed cop who had been responsible for solving a number of notorious local crimes.

According to a later press account, Day tracked Thompson from San Antonio, to Mexico City, New Orleans, Montreal, Edinburgh, and finally to Liverpool where authorities caught up with the culprit in the summer of 1907.  When British authorities arrested Thompson, Winters sent Day to England to bring him back.  The assignment proved difficult.  Back in the American West, Thompson eluded Day and jumped from a moving train near Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Soon recaptured, Thompson claimed to be penitent, asserting, according to the Oregonian:  A finer man than Billy Winter, with the exception of Mr. Day, does not live.  He paid me well, trusted me implicitly, and I did him dirt.”   Those expressions of remorse did no good.  Thompson was sentenced to four years in the Oregon penitentiary.

Throughout this saga, a great deal of local buzz surrounded the amounts of money that Winter was willing to spend to bring his former bartender to justice.  In 1907, the Oregonian opined:  “Carping critics may be suspicious of sinister motives in this elaborate expenditure on the part of  “Billy” Winters, but results are what count in this world, and if “Billy” Winters, even at the expense of an expense of a few thousand dollars, lands his man — where he will serve as a shining example of the disadvantages of dishonesty — he will not have spent his money in vain.”

The newspaper credited Winter “in his own way” with encouraging a higher grade of morality and honesty among his fellow men and by being willing to pay a high price for “the object lesson he was presenting to the public.”   Another reading of the situation might have a different slant.  Winter, like many other Western characters, was not a man to be trifled with.  His betrayal by Thompson angered him to his very soul and he was determined that the man would not get away with it.   By that reading, Winter was not so much the “promoter of honesty” as “a tenacious avenger.”

The rest of Winter’s life is lost in the mists of history.  Certainly his saloon was forced to close when statewide prohibition was voted in Oregon in 1916.  There is a William Winter buried in Portland’s Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery but I have been unable to connect the burial directly to “our Billy.” 

Note:  Much of the information provided here is, as noted in the text, from three articles in the Portland Oregonian newspaper.  These were provided through a website maintained by Richard Engeman called “Oregon Rediviva,” covering Oregon, Washington and Pacific Northwest history.  Because such little personal information is readily available about Billy Winter, I hope that a relative or local historian will see this vignette and provide me with additional information.  Billy Winter clearly was a most remarkable man.