On this day 90 years ago Knox County, Tennessee, Sheriff Hackney and deputies Roger Williams, John Nichols, Sam Thurmer and Bill Rowland, along with several federal agents, raided a home on Cecil Street in Knoxville, north of present day I-40 and the Knoxville Zoo. The reason for the raid was a tip that moonshine was being produced in the house.
They found that shine alright. Where they found it was what surprised the officers.
The owner of the house, Jack McGill, had dug out a secret passage and constructed a sub-basement in which he had placed a 300 gallon still powered by four gasoline burners. McGill had even designed and built a special sewer and air vents to carry odors away from the house. The space the still was in was lined with brick and concrete and the police had to jackhammer their way inside.
And the whole contraption might have gone undetected but for one of McGill’s compatriots, who happened to be emerging from the tunnel through a trap door at the very time that the police were inside the house looking around. The trap door consisted of a large square concrete pillar, about 30 inches around, which was built on a square piece of steel that had rollers attached to its bottom. The pillar was attached on the other end to a heavy workbench so that it looked as if the workbench had been attached to the floor and was immovable. However, a slight bit of pressure on the end of the bench would cause it, the concrete column and the steel plate to rotate, revealing the entrance to the secret moonshine passage.
Mrs. McGill, 26, who was present during the raid, expressed surprise at the discovery of the still and the liquor. According to her,
“Why, I didn’t know there was anything like that going on here. The officers came today with a search warrant, and I didn’t know anything to do but let them search.”
By the way, the very next day those officers found ANOTHER 300 gallon still, hidden in a cellar behind a secret entrance two blocks away from the McGill house. This one was in the home of J. B. Carey, Jack’s brother-in-law.
McGill had been arrested before for being involved in the moonshine trade in nearby Cocke County and had served time in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. He managed to elude authorities in this case for 6 months, finally being captured at his father-in-law’s house in Grainger County on January 22, 1932.
He subsequently pleaded guilty to manufacturing illegal whiskey and was placed in the Knoxville workhouse to serve a six-month term.
He was pardoned by the Tennessee Governor in July.
Based on your previous story about moonshining in Cades Cove and Governor Austin Peay’s extraordinary and friendly attitude toward the makers of illegal whiskey and today’s story about Governor Henry Horton’s pardoning of Knoxville moonshiner Jack McGill, I assume the state’s leading politicians in the 1920s and 1930s must have looked kindly at the illegal moonshine industry in Tennessee.
Possibly. However, in this case, Jack McGill had helped track down some escapees from the workhouse while he was serving his sentence, so that might have been a factor in Governor Horton’s pardon.