Analysis of the contents of a pint bottle, sold for whiskey, revealed yesterday that at least one negro bootlegger in Goldsboro is selling denatured alcohol. The specimen of the poison, submitted to a local chemist for analysis, was the remains of a pine of alleged whiskey that temporarily paralyzed a well-known citizen of the community earlier in the morning.
The bootlegger, whose name has not yet been revealed, is believed to have been the one who sold the poisoned liquor Saturday that came very near resulting in the death of the purchaser, a man from Durham.
The Goldsboro citizen, whose name not revealed is accustomed to arising about 4 o’clock in the morning. After making a fire in the kitchen stove, he is said to have taken a drink out of the pint bottle, which he purchased the evening before from a negro bootlegger in Little Washington. He had hardly sat down before his body became paralyzed, rendering him unconscious.
His wife, arising about 8 o’clock, fund him in this condition when she went to the kitchen, but after shaking him for several minutes and applying restoratives, was able to arouse him. Convinced that the liquor was poison, since he had taken but one drink, the man brought a specimen of the booze to a local druggist, who is also a chemist, for analysis. The result of his examination showed the alleged whiskey to be a mixture of water and denatured alcohol, used extensively for external applications on the body.
Denatured alcohol, while not so deadly as wood alcohol, it was pointed out, is poisonous, and in large doses usually proves fatal.
From the front page of The Goldsboro News, Thursday morning, March 19, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn93064755/1925-03-19/ed-1/seq-1/
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