ST. LOUIS • On Jan. 16, 1919, the Prohibition amendment was passed, making St. Louis and all cities officially dry despite widespread flouting of the law. The last brave bartenders had shut their taps by 12:01 a.m. Jan. 17, 1920, the official start of constitutional Prohibition. Federal agents drove the streets and couldn’t find any lawbreaking.

The Post-Dispatch noted dryly, “Prohibition has had an erratic career in St. Louis.” So it would remain, sometimes rattled by machine guns, for 13 long years.

History remembers the first day under the 18th Amendment, but Congress had imposed partial prohibition the previous summer. Prohibitionists, or “drys,” had seized upon saving grain and fuel for World War I, even though the war ended before they got their wish. Lower-alcohol beer (2.75 percent) flowed pending court challenges, but New Year’s Eve 1919 was more damp than wet — revelers had to bring their own hard stuff from dwindling household stocks.

The federal Volstead Act, the law intended to enforce the 18th Amendment, made it illegal even to carry a pocket flask outside one’s own home. On Jan. 19, John Goheen, proprietor of a rooming house on South 10th Street, was caught on the sidewalk hauling two suitcases filled with whiskey bottles.