The Forgotten History of the Jake Leg

In the 1920s and 30s, Jake (Jamaican Ginger Extract and ethyl alcohol) provided a cheap and legal way for the poor to get around Prohibition. While researching its use several years ago, Dr. John Morgan of the City University of New York noticed that a number of blues songs from that era referenced a phenomenon called the 'Jake Leg' ("I can't eat, I can't talk, drinking mean Jake, Lord, I can't walk") as a kind of distinct paralysis of the lower legs. From the lyrics, Morgan figured that there must have been a major contamination of Jake sometime in 1930 that caused this, and he was right. It turns out that a pair of amateur bootleggers had developed what they thought was a non-toxic additive to the Jake they were importing. But it was actually a potent poison that caused paralysis of the lower legs. The result left potentially tens of thousands of victims without use of their feet - and a peculiar gate. "The Jake Leg story is almost completely about class", Morgan said, "if someone had poisoned the Canadian source of bonded Scotch, something would have been done."