Judge — February 12, 1921 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Deacon Beesley's Home Brew Develops Too Much Pep" This Judge cartoon satirizes Prohibition-era home brewing. The title references "Deacon Beesley," suggesting a respectable community figure engaged in illegal alcohol production. The crowded street scene depicts chaos—children and adults running wild, vehicles colliding, people sprawling about—presumably caused by homemade beer that's dangerously potent or unstable. The joke targets the hypocrisy of Prohibition: ostensibly pious citizens (a "deacon") secretly brewing alcohol, which becomes so volatile it creates public mayhem. The detailed storefronts and community setting emphasize how widespread and disruptive this underground activity was. The cartoon mocks both the irony of prohibition enforcement and the real dangers of amateur alcohol production during the 1920s-30s era.