The Blind Tiger was a speakeasy during prohibition, perhaps so named because patrons would hand over money to peek at a fictitious blind animal, but also receive illegal booze as part of the bargain. The terms blind tiger and blind pig eventually came to describe a kind of liquor—one so powerful it could make you go blind, at least for a while. A Tallahassee, Florida, caller says one of his ancestors was gunned down by a gang called the Blind Tigers. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Blind Tiger Speakeasy”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha. This is John Cooler from Tallahassee, Florida.
Hey, John. Welcome.
Thank you. It’s a pleasure to talk to you and Grant today.
How are you doing there?
Well, I have an ancestor that was inducted into the South Carolina Law Enforcement Hall of Fame.
He was gunned down in March of 1913, and the paper of the day wrote that he was assassinated by the blind tigers.
And in that article, it’s unclear whether they’re referring to the sellers of illegal alcohol, whether they’re referring to the product itself, or whether that’s a production and distribution rate.
So I’m wondering what you can tell me about the term blind tigers.
Where was he gunned down?
This is in coastal South Carolina.
We’re from the low country of South Carolina, and this was on St. Helena Island.
Okay.
We always ask about geography on the show because sometimes it matters.
I don’t think it does here.
Just to catch everyone else up, a blind tiger was basically a kind of speakeasy.
And there’s a really excellent quotation that’s been uncovered from the newspapers.
A variety of different sources have it.
I got it from the Oxford English Dictionary, but you can find it a bunch of other places.
It really describes the blind tiger perfectly.
So I want to read this to you.
I seize a kinder pigeonhole cut in the side of a house and over the hole in big writing, blind tiger, 10 cents a sight.
That blind tiger was an arrangement to evade the law, which won’t let him sell liquor there except by the gallon.
So the whole point, it was a place with literally a hole in the wall, and supposedly you were going over there to see a blind tiger, and you’d put your money in and they’d hand you liquor back out through the hole.
Basically an old-fashioned walk-up liquor store.
But later the term was generalized to mean any kind of speakeasy that was hidden from the authorities or sold homemade rot gut.
There’s always kind of the notion there with the blind that sometimes this liquor was so bad it’d make you blind.
I don’t know if that was actually true, but that was always the joke about it.
And you’ll see that come up again and again.
Now, whether or not these folks who assassinated your relative were the bootleggers themselves, I wouldn’t know.
But it’s entirely possible.
It was a violent trade.
But what it sounds a little bit to me, a reason I asked about geography, it sounds a little bit like some of those classic gang names that showed up in Boston and New York and Chicago and Philadelphia.
In the 1800s and then through the early 1900s where they all took these fanciful names and sometimes would wear some kind of symbol or mark to show that they belonged to this game, like a particular color of top hat or a patch of ribbon or carry a rabbit’s foot or that sort of thing.
And the Blind Tiger easily, I could easily see that becoming the name of a gang.
Excellent. Well, I did see it on the name of a bar and restaurant in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
And so that’s kind of what rekindled my interest in the name.
Yeah, it’s an interest.
And also Blind Pig is another variation.
The people who run a blind pig were called Blind Piggers.
And I suspect that’s kind of by variation of Blind Tiger.
So anyway, that’s the most that we know about this.
By the 1930s and 1940s, Blind Tiger, to refer to the alcohol itself and the place that it was sold, they both existed, but it becomes so generalized that you would find it in glossaries of slang included inside the sleeves of records that teenagers were buying.
It was no longer really this back alley thing where it was only known to the police and the criminals themselves.
So, John, is your relative really in a hall of fame or was that a figure of speech?
No, they just did an induction ceremony about a year and a half ago.
And I think he and several others were inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Like I say, his death was in 1913.
So it was almost 100 years that they went back to put those folks into the Hall of Fame.
Wow. Well, that’s fascinating stuff.
Thanks for calling, John. Really appreciate it. All right.
Well, thank you so much. Your information has been invaluable and I love the show.
Thank you. Great. Thanks for sharing your story.
Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Speaking of blind pig, I found this old sheet music from 1908 that has lyrics involving a blind pig and a spelling bee.
May I share them with you?
Yes, please.
Okay, this is a song about a spelling bee, and the teacher asks the kid to spell the term blind pig.
And so it goes, B-L-N-D-N-P-G. That spells blind pig, don’t you see?
Teacher said with some surprise, oh my, you’ve left out both eyes.
So then I whispered, teacher, dear, will you kindly listen here?
Blind pig has no eyes, you see.
You’re right, the teacher said to me.
It’s like that joke, you know, what do you call a deer with no eyes?
What?
No idea.
Terrible.
I thought you’d like that.
I do.
For once.
A little bit, kind of, because it’s coming from you.
Once a week I have to take it.
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