Shhh… There's A Bar In Here: The Curious Story Of Speakeasies

Imagine you are looking for a drink in New York in the 1920s. You have dressed for the occasion, perhaps put on a feathered headband, and followed a friend down a dimly lit street. There is no signboard, no welcoming neon, and certainly no bartender waiting to take your order. Instead, you find an unassuming door, knock a certain number of times, whisper a password, and hope that whoever answers knows you.

Inside, a jazz band is playing, couples are dancing, and someone is pouring you a rather questionable gin cocktail. Welcome to the speakeasy, where getting a drink was once an exercise in discretion, ingenuity and, occasionally, survival.

Today, you might find yourself looking for a sandwich shop, walking through a telephone booth or wondering whether that suspiciously ordinary cupboard really leads to a bar. But before secret entrances became a hospitality gimmick, they were a matter of keeping the police away from your liquor. To understand how a clandestine drinking den became one of the most enduring ideas in cocktail culture, we must go back to a time when America decided that perhaps the best way to deal with drinking was to ban it altogether.

The Business Of Speaking Easy

The word speakeasy has a history that is almost as intriguing as the establishments themselves. Its linguistic ancestors can be traced to Britain, where a slang dictionary published in 1823 referred to a "speak softly shop", meaning a smuggler's house. A British naval memoir from 1844 used the phrase "speak easy shop" for an establishment selling liquor without a licence.

The term itself appeared in print as early as 1837, in an Australian newspaper referring to illicit drinking dens known as sly-grog shops. In America, however, the word found its footing in the late 1880s.

The earliest known American newspaper reference appeared in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in March 1889. It described a "speak easy" as a saloon selling liquor without a licence in the Pittsburgh-area town of McKeesport.

By June that year, the Pittsburg Dispatch was reporting that such establishments had previously been known as "holes in the wall", among other less poetic descriptions. The new name stuck.

One popular account attributes the phrase to Kate Hester, who allegedly ran an unlicensed bar in McKeesport and told her rowdy customers to "speak easy" to avoid attracting attention. Whether Hester really coined the expression remains uncertain, but the instruction itself made perfect sense. Discussing your favourite illegal bar at full volume was hardly a sound business strategy.

And the speakeasy was not the only establishment to develop a colourful name. There were also blind pigs and blind tigers, terms that emerged in 19th-century America.

These establishments had a rather creative arrangement: customers paid to see an attraction, perhaps an animal, and received a complimentary alcoholic drink. The drink was technically not being sold, you see. The law was being given a rather generous interpretation.

But these were still relatively small, local operations. The real golden age of the speakeasy was yet to begin.

When America Went Dry

On January 17, 1920, the United States ushered in Prohibition. The 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act outlawed the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcoholic beverages across the country.

Thousands of formerly legal saloons shut their doors. Those who still wanted a drink had to get creative. Some obtained liquor from licensed druggists for medicinal purposes or clergymen for religious use. Others turned to bootleggers, who smuggled alcohol into the country or produced it illegally.

And then there were the speakeasies.

The establishments multiplied, particularly in urban centres. They could be found behind legitimate businesses, in basements, private rooms, apartments and establishments that looked entirely ordinary from the street. Entry might require a password, a knock, a trusted introduction or simply the knowledge of where to find the door.

The scale of the operation was staggering. Estimates for New York City alone range from 20,000 to 100,000 illicit drinking establishments, with thousands more in cities such as Chicago. By the late 1920s, New York was estimated to have around 32,000 speakeasies.

The range was equally remarkable. Some were little more than backrooms with a bottle and two chairs. Others were elaborate clubs with jazz bands, ballroom dance floors, gambling tables and fashionable clientele.

The Mayflower Club in Washington, D.C., offered both liquor and gambling. The Bath Club in New York brought musicians into its establishment, a practice that soon spread across the speakeasy business. And in rural Midwestern towns, smaller, family-run drinking dens known as beer flats operated from residential spaces. The speakeasy had become a business that could be as modest or as extravagant as its owners imagined.

A Little Jazz, A Little Rebellion

There was, however, a more significant change taking place behind those closed doors.

Before Prohibition, many legal saloons catered almost exclusively to men. The new underground drinking culture began to bring men and women together in public drinking spaces, often without the restrictions of the old saloon.

Restaurants offering illicit alcohol began targeting women who were uncomfortable sitting at a bar, providing table service instead. The speakeasy became a place where people could drink, dance and socialise with greater freedom.

Women also entered the business themselves. Texas Guinan, a former screen and stage actress, opened several speakeasies, including the 300 Club and El Fey. Known for greeting customers with "Hey Suckers", Guinan openly acknowledged that Prohibition had made her career. Her competitors included Helen Morgan and Belle Livingston.

The era also helped popularise the flapper, the young woman associated with shorter skirts, bobbed hair, dancing and a more independent social life. The speakeasy, with its jazz music and late-night parties, became a natural setting for this new cultural mood.

Organised crime, meanwhile, had spotted an opportunity. Supplying illegal liquor was an enormously profitable business, and criminal networks quickly moved in. Al Capone, leader of Chicago's Outfit, reportedly made an estimated $60 million a year supplying beer and hard liquor to thousands of speakeasies under his control in the late 1920s.

New York became a centre of organised crime, with figures such as Salvatore Maranzano, Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello building their empires around the liquor trade. The speakeasy was now much more than a place to drink. It was a social institution, a cultural hub and, in many cases, a cog in a criminal enterprise.

The Cocktail Gets A Makeover

If you imagined that the speakeasy era was all about perfectly balanced cocktails made with premium spirits, it might be time to reconsider.

The quality of illicit liquor varied considerably. Some establishments sourced excellent spirits, while others sold cheap, poorly distilled alcohol. Bootleggers diluted good whiskey and gin with water to increase their profits. Others resorted to homemade moonshine, bathtub gin or industrial alcohol.

Some of the latter was dangerously poisonous. Wood alcohol, grain alcohol and even chemicals such as carbolic acid found their way into illegal drinks. A concoction known as "Smoke", made from pure wood alcohol, reportedly killed or maimed thousands of drinkers. So how did bartenders make these drinks palatable?

They reached for the mixers.

Ginger ale, Coca-Cola, sugar, mint, lemon, fruit juices and other flavourings helped mask the harsh taste of rough spirits. The cocktail, in many ways, became a practical solution to an unfortunate problem.

This also marked a shift away from the 19th-century cocktail tradition, which often celebrated the flavour of the spirit itself. New drinks were designed to disguise the liquor rather than showcase it. The Bee's Knees and French 75 are closely associated with the Prohibition era, although cocktail histories are rarely quite so straightforward. Some recipes predate the ban, while others evolved over time.

Not every drink was a masterpiece, of course. Some were simply an attempt to make questionable gin taste less questionable.

The Art Of Not Getting Caught

For all their glamour, speakeasies operated under constant threat of police raids and federal Prohibition agents.

Their owners developed elaborate systems to stay one step ahead. Some bribed police officers to look the other way, while others paid them to warn of impending raids. Secret escape routes, false walls, hidden liquor stores and concealed entrances became part of the business.

The famous 21 Club in New York took the idea to another level. Located at 21 West 52nd Street, the establishment was part of a series of businesses run by Charlie Berns and Jack Kriendler. Their earlier ventures included The Redhead in Greenwich and the Puncheon Club, which later moved to West 49th Street.

At the 21 Club, the owners commissioned a custom camouflaged door and a secret wine cellar hidden behind a false wall. The bar itself had a mechanism that, at the push of a button, sent liquor bottles down a chute into the cellar, where they would crash and drain before authorities could seize them as evidence.

It was an ingenious arrangement. The police could arrive to find a perfectly ordinary establishment, with very little alcohol left to prove otherwise. Other famous New York establishments included the Stork Club, the fashionable venue run by former bootlegger Sherman Billingsley; Club Intime, near the notorious Polly Adler brothel; Chumley's in the West Village; and O'Leary's on the Bowery.

In Harlem, the city's Black district, hooch joints operated from apartments, while the famed Cotton Club, owned by gangster Owney Madden, became a major entertainment destination. The speakeasy had become Prohibition's worst-kept secret.

The Party Ends, But The Idea Stays

By the early 1930s, the mood around Prohibition was beginning to change. The stock market crash of 1929 had brought unemployment and economic hardship. The government also needed tax revenue. Meanwhile, the violence and corruption associated with organised crime had made the ban increasingly unpopular.

In 1933, the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment, bringing Prohibition to an end. The original speakeasy had lost its reason to exist. Legal bars returned, alcohol became subject to federal regulation and taxation, and many of the underground establishments faded away.

But the idea of the speakeasy was not quite ready to disappear. The secrecy, the intimacy, the sense of discovery and the feeling of being part of a world that not everyone knew about had left their mark on drinking culture.

By the 2000s, the concept was making a comeback. New York's Milk & Honey, which opened in 2000, helped popularise the modern speakeasy-style cocktail bar. The trend soon travelled beyond America, inspiring establishments such as PDT and Attaboy in New York, Handshake Speakeasy in Mexico City, Florería Atlántico in Buenos Aires, Candelaria in Paris and Ulysses Lisbon Speakeasy in Lisbon.

The contemporary speakeasy borrowed the aesthetics of its predecessor: low lighting, vintage interiors, carefully crafted cocktails and, of course, the occasional secret entrance. But there was one important difference. Nobody was trying to hide from the law anymore.

From Prohibition To Passcodes: India's Speakeasy Story

India's modern speakeasy movement began taking shape around 2012, when cocktail culture was still finding its feet outside hotel bars, lounges and conventional nightlife venues. Two establishments helped introduce the format to a wider audience: PCO in New Delhi and Cocktails & Dreams, Speakeasy in Gurugram.

PCO, short for Pass Code Only, was founded by siblings Rakshay and Radhika Dhariwal. Its premise was simple: a discreet entrance, a secret code and a bar that placed cocktails at the centre of the experience.

In a city where travelling specifically for a well-made drink was still becoming commonplace, PCO introduced a sense of theatre to the evening. Its telephone-booth-inspired entrance and passcode-led access brought a little of the Prohibition-era mystique to Delhi.

Around the same time, bartender Yangdup Lama and Minakshi Singh opened Cocktails & Dreams, Speakeasy in Gurugram. Tucked into an unassuming market, the bar occupied a basement beneath a café space. Its vintage-inspired interiors nodded to bootleggers and moonshiners, while its cocktail programme focused on classic drinks, customised creations and the craft of bartending.

These early establishments helped make a case for a different kind of night out. The bar was no longer an afterthought to dinner or dancing. It could be the destination itself. Over the years, India's cocktail scene has grown considerably more adventurous. The speakeasy has evolved alongside it, borrowing from Japanese listening bars, secret societies, regional ingredients and theatrical hospitality.

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