Page of the 1921 indictment of James Dorsey in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts. — Open the full imageJPG, 578 × 925 px, 0.2 MB

Indictment of James Dorsey, U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, Case #3226 (July 1921)

National Archives at Boston featured document: the July 1921 indictment of James Dorsey of Lynn, Massachusetts, for knowingly selling one-half pint of intoxicating liquor. The page says he pleaded guilty and uses the case to show the range of Prohibition prosecutions.

Date: 1921-07
Kind: case-file
Source: National Archives at Boston, featured document
Retrieved: 2026-10-11
Docket: Case #3226 (U.S. District Court for Massachusetts), as printed on the NARA Boston page
Rights: Federal court record (17 U.S.C. § 105) published on a National Archives web page; the page prints no separate use statement.

The National Archives at Boston prints the citation “US vs James Dorsey; US District Court for Massachusetts; Case #3226; RG 021 National Archives at Boston.” The featured document is the indictment of James Dorsey of Lynn, Massachusetts, in July 1921 for knowingly selling one-half pint of intoxicating liquor. The page says Dorsey pleaded guilty, and uses the case to show that Prohibition prosecutions ran from sales of half a pint to large smuggling operations.

This is a web page, not a catalog record, so no NAID is stated. The page says the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified “January 16, 1919”; it was last reviewed August 15, 2016, per its footer. The defendant is a private individual named as the National Archives names him.

itemOrder of Destruction, E.D. Pennsylvania, No. 710 March Sessions 1924 (8 October 1926)National Archives district-court order directing the U.S. Marshal to destroy liquor and property seized from a defendant who had pleaded guilty, because it was not fit for medicinal, mechanical or scientific purposes.

itemInformation, E.D. Pennsylvania, No. 908 September Sessions 1924 (15 September 1924)National Archives district-court information filed by the U.S. Attorney charging that on 7 July 1924, at Philadelphia, a defendant transported forty half barrels of beer above one-half of one percent alcohol, in violation of the National Prohibition Act.