Bathhouse John and the elephant

 

In Chicago's inglorious heyday one of the city bosses was Alderman 'Bathhouse John' Coughlin, supposedly reponsible for, inter alia, first hiring Al Capone. Coughlin inveigled the city into building a zoo, which featured an elephant called Alice of whom he was very fond.

 

Sadly, Alice lost part of her trunk in an incident with a railway engine, and Bathhouse retired the animal, which could no longer pick up peanuts in the zoo, to his private estate as a pet. There she caught a bad fever, and Bathhouse ordered she be given a quart of whiskey. The whiskey worked, and Alice recovered but at the cost of becoming alcolohic, to the extent that she would use her part-trunk to sniff hip flasks out of people's pockets.

 

This went merrily along until Prohibition,which apparently also forbade the consumption of alcohol by animals. Bathhouse couldn't be daunted, so he went to court for an exemption claiming she required the whiskey as medicine.

 

And the case of "John Coughlin DBA Bathhouse John in loco parentis for Alice, an elephant, vs the United States of America, a country' was born.

 

If you can tell me how it came out I'd be much obliged, since I can't find a record.

 

Data from Nicholas von Hoffman's 'Organized Crimes', mostly confirmed by googling on "Bathhouse John" and "elephant".