Big raid nets big cigar haul

Friday, 10 September 2010 00:00

September 9, 1898. In raids in four provinces, police made record seizures of smuggled cigars, reports the Lindsay, Ontario Victoria Warder.

All over Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia today, Inland Revenue officers are searching the stores of tobacconists and grocers and the barrooms of hotels for contraband cigars, which make up one of the biggest seizures of smuggled tobacco ever brought into Canada.

The goods were made in Porto Rico and were landed somewhere around Halifax, but just where the Revenue officials have not been able to learn. They first made their appearance in the grocery store of A.E. Lawlor of Halifax, and from there were distributed over the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. So well and systemat was the enterprise organized that the goods were distributed by express and freight over the Intercolonial and other railways, and payments collected by draft through the banks.

The first trace of the goods was secured by Edward Floody, the well known Toronto preventive officer, at Hastings, Ont., and so well did he follow up this clue that he secured not only the name of Lawler, the distributor of the cigars, but got a list of all the people to whom the stuff had been sold and the amount they bought.

It is one of the biggest smuggling exposures ever made in Canada.