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The bricked-over facade at 1812 main hides the former location of D.M. Carey's drugstore. |
Continuing the series on the Prohibition era in Kansas City, 1920 to 1933, about surviving buildings and other structures with stories to tell about moonshine, bootlegging, speakeasies, "wets" and "drys," and associated events, activities and personalities.
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One was Union
Drugs and Sundries at 1812 Main, operated by a man named D.M. Carey. Before
Prohibition Carey had run an east-side saloon. In the 1920s he found greater
success with a series of drugstores and joints where he became familiar to
police as a “well-known bootlegger.” One, City Hall Drugs, was in the original
Gillis Theater building at Fifth and Walnut. After the Gillis burned down in
1925, he opened this much-raided-and-padlocked place on Main. He paid fines but
did no jail time. Carey’s son, a wounded World War veteran who went by “June,”
partnered in the stores, ran the Music Box cabaret at Fifteenth and
Locust and another speakeasy at Fourteenth and Main.
In August
1929 an explosion and fire in a drugstore at 69th and Prospect
killed three firefighters, and fixtures in the store were traced to the Careys.
Police determined they were part of a ring of arsonists collecting insurance
payoffs. As a grand jury was hearing testimony that also implicated Carey
senior in the earlier fire that killed six and destroyed the Gillis Theater, he
was in a dingy room at the Majestic Hotel, near 12th and Baltimore, putting a bullet in his
head. His suicide note blamed “the KC Star paper – drunkards – blackmailers and backbiters.” June Carey was charged with murder in the Prospect blast but went free
after a principal witness disappeared.
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