Prohibition was supposed to bury Johnnie Walker. Instead his label became the one every bootlegger wanted.

On February 11, 1920, three weeks into national Prohibition, Thomas Edison turned 73 and gave the New York papers a line. "Inasmuch as the Prohibitionists have buried 'Johnny Walker' under the Eighteenth Amendment, and he has no further use for his trade mark in this country, I'll borrow it and say I'm 'still going strong.'"

Edison was wrong about the burial. For the next 13 years Johnnie Walker was illegal in the United States and everywhere at once: in a New Jersey truck full of rum, in a Philadelphia bottling plant with forged labels, on the prize shelf of Miami cigar stands, and in a federal case over bottles with the name blown into the glass. There is also a ship off San Francisco whose crew spent their days soaking the labels off one Scotch and pasting on another. The page ends with them.

1906 to 1916: "Walker's Kilmarnock" and the squint label

The Walkers had been in Kilmarnock, Scotland, since John Walker opened a grocery there in 1820, the year in the old slogan "Born 1820, still going strong." In New York in 1906 the whisky was not yet called Johnnie Walker. An importer named Du Vivier & Co., at 22 Warren Street, advertised "Walker's Kilmarnock" in three grades: Old Highland at $12, Extra Special at $17 and Belverness at $21. The ad does not say what those prices bought, but at the time they were almost certainly for a case.

By the company's own account the striding man in the red coat was drawn in 1908 by the illustrator Tom Browne. The American trade mark "JOHNNIE WALKER" was filed with the Patent Office on March 14, 1910 and registered that June 21. Browne died in London that same March. The registration stayed on the books through Prohibition and was not cancelled until 2015.

In January 1913 a full width ad in the New York Sun introduced a new bottle. It had a valve: "Tilt the bottle quickly, nearly upside down." It could not be refilled, and the ad said it "has joined forces with the 'squint' label," the slanted label, so that every drop poured was the same as when it went into the bottle. Red Label was "every drop over 10 years old," Black Label over 12. The importer was now Williams & Humbert, the sherry house, at 1158 Broadway. Seven years before Prohibition, Walker's was already selling Americans a bottle designed to stop fakes.

1921 to 1924: the label everybody wanted

Once Prohibition began, the Bahamas filled up with Scotch. Nassau's merchants paid an average of $15 a case to bring liquor in from Britain, the New York Herald reported in 1921. In Florida, the same paper said, a case of "say Johnny Walker Scotch" went for anywhere from $48 to $125, "without the contents having undergone any change whatever between transactions."

The contents were often not Johnnie Walker at all. In Wildwood, New Jersey, in the summer of 1921, a truck was seized with 152 cases marked "Johnny Walker, Scotch Whiskey, Nassau N. P." In court the prosecutor held up two square bottles and remarked that they were marked like Johnny Walker "but smell like West Indian rum."

In March 1922 a report to the Prohibition commissioner described Miami, where the top prizes on punchboards at cigar stands were bottles of liquor. "Our investigators not only made winnings of Gordon gin, Johnny Walker Scotch and Bushnell rye, but carried away the punchboards as souvenirs."

In March 1923 dry agents in Philadelphia opened two freight cars on a private siding at a bottling plant and found 4,000 sacks, each holding 24 bottles "of supposed Johnny Walker Scotch," all marked "for export only," along with several thousand counterfeit stamps and labels. That is 96,000 bottles.

A year later in Mobile, Alabama, a federal prosecutor put a rum ring's code book into evidence. "Sick" meant Cedar Brook, printed as Cedar Break. "Ill" meant Louis Hunter. "Hurt" meant Johnnie Walker. "Dead" meant White Horse.

1925 to 1929: a merger and a ring

In January 1925 John Walker & Sons combined with the Distillers Company and Buchanan-Dewar, the makers of Black & White, in an undertaking capitalized at 19 million pounds. The companies would keep operating separately, the wire report said, and "all brands will be maintained."

In June 1929 a federal grand jury in Brooklyn indicted 140 people and companies in a bogus liquor ring. Among the charges, glass companies had blown about 50 brand names into bottles for the ring, "Haig & Haig" and "Johnny Walker" among them. The same indictment named the companies that became Schenley, over barrel shavings from Overholt. That story is here.

1933: Repeal, short of labels

When Repeal came that December, the liner Cameronia loaded Scotch at Glasgow for the newly legal American market. The distillers "had the whiskey and bottles but not enough labels, and emergency lots were printed." Johnnie Walker was one of the twelve brands aboard. A New York comparison of Christmas ads that month put it at $5.75, against $3.00 in 1918. By the summer of 1934 its sole American distributor was Canada Dry, the ginger ale company. By 1938 the American ads said Red Label was 8 years old, down from the 10 promised in 1913.

1924: the Ardenza

In December 1924 the Seattle Star told the story of the steamer Ardenza, which sailed from Leith with 25,000 cases of Stewart's whisky and lay off the Golden Gate trying to sell it. American drinkers had never heard of the brands. So the ship's agent, "Mr. X," found a forger to make fake labels, and "the crew was set to work soaking the Stewart 'Cream of Barley' and 'Three Dukes' labels from the flasks and pasting on fake labels of 'Johnnie Walker,' and other favorite brands." It still did not sell. The paper reported that the crew mutinied and that the owner, back in Scotland, shot himself.

If you have an old Johnnie Walker

A bottle from before Prohibition may say Walker's Kilmarnock, or carry the slanted label with Red or Black Label and an age claim of 10 or 12 years. From about 1913 look for the non refillable "Protective" bottle with a valve in the neck. After Repeal the American labels name Canada Dry Ginger Ale, Inc. as distributor. The tax strip and the size give the years: How old is this bottle?

Johnnie Walker in America, year by year

Where the sources disagree

Tom Browne and 1908. The company and later writers say Browne drew the striding man in 1908. No record from 1908 to 1910 tying him to Walker turned up in the American papers.

The square bottle. You will read 1860 and you will read 1870. The 1913 ad shows only that the slanted label existed and was called "squint."

How old Red Label was. Over 10 years in 1913 and 1916. Eight years in 1938. Today it carries no age.

Belverness. It appears only in the 1906 Du Vivier ad. It may have been the importer's own name for a grade.

Who bought whom. A 1923 news item said Dewar and Buchanan had bought control of Johnnie Walker. The 1925 reports describe a combination of three companies instead.

The Ardenza. The mutiny, "Mr. X" and the owner's suicide are as one newspaper told them. They have not been checked against Scottish records.

The 1929 indictment. These were charges. What happened to each defendant has not been found.