Dec. 24—It wasn’t a good Christmas for Murphy’s Cafe in 1923.

Twice within a week, barrels of “high voltage beer” were seized from trucks making deliveries to the cafe that was located at 58 Public Square, Wilkes-Barre.

Keep in mind, 1923 was the third year in the Prohibition Era, a ban on the production, transportation and sale of most alcoholic beverages.

“One of the largest prohibition seizures made in Wilkes-Barre in recent months was made yesterday afternoon at 12:30 o’clock, when state policemen of Wyoming barracks apprehended a large three-ton Mack truck and thirty-one barrels of high voltage beer,” reported the Wilkes-Barre Record on Dec. 27, 1923.

The precious cargo was being off-loaded from the Butler Alley access to the rear of Murphy’s Cafe. Fourteen barrels of high voltage beer had already been unloaded and taken to the cafe’s basement when two state policemen from the barracks’ “Flying Squadron” converged into the alley.

“The seizure, which is valued at $4,000, was in line with a pro-Christmas crusade instituted yesterday by the state police and was a blow to the central part of Wilkes-Barre,” the Record reported.

The truck driver, John Girmen, of Cliff Street, Pittston, and the cafe’s proprietor, Michael Clark, were arrested on the spot.

Seventeen barrels were on still on the Mack truck and were marked with well known brewery establishments, including, “Lion” and “Schlitz.”

Girman told the state policemen he was instructed to unload the barrels from a train’s freight car and drive the cargo to Murphy’s Cafe with instructions to park in Butler Alley.

Barrels were removed from the cafe’s basement and all were destroyed in the alley as a large crowd gathered. The two state policemen stood guard as the beer flowed into drains to make sure no one gathered any in pails, the Record reported.

Clark confessed to secretly purchasing the barrels of beer in preparations for New Years Eve.

State policemen continued to keep watch of Murphy’s Cafe as they gathered intelligence another delivery was going to be attempted.

One of the state policemen involved in the Dec. 26, 1923, bust was walking on North Washington Street when he saw another flat bed truck with cargo hidden by a tarp turned into Butler Alley on Dec. 30, 1923.

Peaking around the corner from the Capital Theater, the policeman watched as the truck backed up to the rear door of Murphy’s Cafe and its cargo of barrels being unloaded.

The policeman and a constable approached the truck and busted open a barrel spilling its contents of beer. The driver of the truck refused to give his name but said he lived in Pittston.

Eight barrels of beer stamped “Lion” were found on the truck during the Dec. 30, 1923, raid.

And of course, the contents were poured into drains in Butler Alley.