Antifreeze drinking party kills five, 1931

Even eyewear advertisements warned about the danger of wood alcohol in the 1930s (Courtesy State Journal-Register)

Just after Christmas 1931, a dozen ne’er-do-wells huddled in a boxcar parked along Springfield’s 10th Street railroad line, passing around a bottle of white lightning. Over the next couple of days, passersby found seven of the drinkers – sick, dying or dead already – in nearby alleys and makeshift shelters.

The final toll came to five deaths, plus two men who lived but were sick enough to be hospitalized. Authorities said the bottle had contained wood alcohol, which poisons as it intoxicates.

The dead men were:

• Fred Baxter of Pennsylvania, age 64. His body was found in a shed near 10th and Edwards streets.
• George Graham of Springfield, age 63. Graham fell ill the day after the boxcar party. He died at St. John’s Hospital.
• James C. Houston of Tulsa, Okla. His body was in a boxcar – perhaps the one where the party was held – near 10th and Clay streets.
• Mike Lynch of East St. Louis.
• Fred Olsen of Minneapolis, Minn. He was discovered near death in a lumber yard; he died a few minutes after arriving at St. John’s.

James Duffy of St. Louis lived but was blinded, apparently permanently, by the poisonous alcohol. The seventh victim, John Connor of Farmingdale, fully recovered. According to a Dec. 31 report in the Illinois State Register:

Shortly before his death, Graham told Lee Ensel, assistant state’s attorney, that he and a number of transients had been drinking Tuesday night in a Wabash boxcar. One of the party furnished the liquor, he said, which turned white when diluted with water. Analysis of the stomachs of the victims revealed that they had been drinking denatured alcohol such as is commonly used to prevent automobile radiators from freezing. A partially filled pint bottle containing the poison liquor was found in Baxter’s possession.

Wood alcohol (methanol) was commonly used in antifreeze, paint thinner and similar substances in the early 20th century. It was also known to be extremely poisonous. Desperate drinkers nonetheless turned to it disturbingly often during Prohibition, which lasted until 1933.

Wood alcohol poisoning was common enough that in September 1931, just two months before the boxcar drinking spree, the state of Illinois ordered every container of wood alcohol to be labeled with a skull and crossbones, along with the warning “Deadly Poison. Wood Alcohol.”

The men in the boxcar presumably thought they were drinking some kind of bootleg liquor, intoxicating but not poisonous. The man who provided the bottle – probably Baxter – may somehow have missed all the wood-alcohol safety messages. Authorities suspected Baxter bought the alcohol at a filling station or paint store, but the source was never discovered.

Graham and Baxter are buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery, Houston in Duluth, Minn., and Lynch in East St. Louis. Olsen’s burial place is not known.* The only one of the seven victims whose occupation was reported in newspaper stories was Olsen, “section boss of the dirt gang on the Panhandle Illinois pipeline project.”

*Hat tip: To reader Elizabeth Rutherford for her research into the burial places of James Houston and Mike Lynch. See comments.

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