Remembering when Rockport women raided over alcohol
On this day in 1856, women of the seaside getaway smashed liquor barrels in the streets.
“There has been exciting times a-going on here today,’’ wrote an unnamed Rockport man wrote in a journal entry dated July 8, 1956.
He wasn’t exaggerating: The man had been an eyewitness to a five-hour raid by 200 Rockport women.
Beyond the size of the crowd in the tiny North Shore village, the events were surely a sight. Some of the women were “wielding hatchets and ranging in age from 37 to 75,’’ according to Mass Moments, an electronic almanac of Massachusetts history created by Mass Humanities.
But why were all these women rioting?
The mob set out through the quaint coastal town to destroy “every container of alcohol they could find.’’ Hundreds of gallons of liquor had been spilled on that day, and alcohol sales dipped for the next decade, according to Mass Moments.
Rockport didn’t approved alcohol consumption in restaurants until 2006, according to the Gloucester Times.
An account of the incident first ran in the Boston Traveller, and was then picked up by the New York Daily Times, who wrote
“…in one place they smashed some thirty demijohns filled with the ardent [spirits]; at another they rolled out two barrels and stove in the heads and emptied their contents; a another place five barrels were emptied; and at still another they destroyed three. Nor was this all; they emptied several smaller places, and were not unsuccessful in destroying small quantities of the poison.’’
No one was arrested, and Rockport went on to be one of the few communities in Massachusetts to remain alcohol-free for more than a century.
Read the full Mass Moments report here.
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