(Source of image: Florida State Archives)

Is this one of the bedchambers into which Carry Nation burst on Valentine's Eve, 1908?  This photo was snapped in Bedroom #14, and its adjoining parlor can be seen through door. 

During her four day sojourn in Jax, Mrs. Nation drew big crowds.  More than 1,000 people heard her speak at a local ostrich farm.  At this rally for the Women's Christian Temperance Union, she railed against whiskey, tobacco, and the pictures of nude women that hung over the River City's saloon bars.  She also addressed listeners at First Christian Church, Bethel Baptist Institutional, and Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal. 

Mrs. Nation felt almost as strongly about tobacco as alcohol.  Woe betide a smoker who crossed this firebrand!  Frequently, she would walk up to a man in the street, yank a cigar from his mouth, toss it on the ground, and trample it.  Said she in 1901, "(It is) the rudest thing ...  a man throwing his smoke into the face of women and children as they pass up and down the street.  Have you a right to throw in my mouth what you puff out of yours?  That foul smoke and breath!  And you would like to be called a gentleman."  (For more info about the famous saloon smasher, CLICK HERE for several fascinating webpages from the Kansas State Historical Society.)

Jax residents may've turned out to hear Mrs. Nation's impassioned lectures, but as with prostitution, their city bucked the trend regarding prohibition.  Until the U.S. entered into World War II in 1917, Duval County remained one of only two Florida counties to remain wet.  According to James B. Crooks in Jacksonville After the Fire, 1901-1919, Duval didn't ban the sale of liquor due to two reasons:  (1) Prohibition largely depended on support from white evangelical Protestants, yet Jacksonville contained a relatively large number of Catholics, Jews, German Lutherans, and Episcopalians, who sometimes proved anti-prohibition.  (2) As it had with prostitution, money talked in the Gateway to Florida.  Prohibition met opposition from merchant mariners, hotelkeepers, restaurateurs, and other business people who dealt with trade or tourism.  According to critics, Mayor J. E. T. Bowden, who had reopened the city's brothels, did not enforce the local laws that did exist in regard to liquor.

Source of quotes:  "... the rudest thing..." is from the website for the Kansas Historical Society, at http://www.kshs.org/exhibits/carry/carry6.htm

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