Jake Leg

“I CAN’T EAT, I CAN’T TALK,” complained blues artists the Allen Brothers in 1930. “Been drinking mean jake, Lord,” they bemoaned. “Now I can’t walk.” The song was titled “The Jake Walk Blues,” and the Allen Brothers weren’t the first performers to address this peculiar, depression-era malady: It’s widely believed that a blues singer named Ishmon Bracey actually diagnosed the source of the infirmity, which consists of potentially crippling paralysis of the legs, in his song “Jake Liquor Blues.” The problem was jake, which was a nickname for Jamaican Ginger extract.

The extract was used for its medicinal qualities since the 19th century in the United States, as it is reputed to help relieve nausea and diarrhea. With the passing of the Volstead Act in 1919, the production of all commercial alcohol was forbidden in the United States, but for one important exception: medicinal products. Jake, which had a 70 percent alcohol content and was available at any corner drugstore, became a popular beverage. It was inexpensive and mixed well with soft drinks such as Coca Cola; additionally it was useful as an additive to bathtub gins and moonshines to mask the harsh, acidic taste of these illicit beverages. Because of jake’s low price, it was particularly popular among White working class and African-American tipplers. These would be the group hardest hit when jake suddenly turned poisonous.

The Food and Drug division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture got wise to the growing popularity of Jamaican Ginger extract. By March of 1930, the extract was no longer legal. But, in the latter days of the Prohibition, illicit alcohol manufacturers took such bans as something of a dare. In particular, Harry Gross, the president of a Boston-based firm called Hub Products, decided that Jamaican Ginger extract couldn’t go by way of the street grates.

In late January, 1930, along with a chemist friend, Gross found that by adding triorthocresylphosphate phosphate, (TOCP) to Jamaican Ginger extract, it would essentially hide any signs of significant alcohol from government tests. TOCP was an industrial chemical, a “plasticizer” added to materials such as plastics to keep them pliable. The addition was tasteless, odorless, and colorless, and thought to be harmless. It wasn’t. TOCP proved to had one significant side effect: It killed cells in the central nervous system, particularly the spinal cord.

The first sign of Jamaican ginger poisoning was a paralysis of the lower extremities known as “Jake leg.” If victims of Jake Leg had to get from one place to another, they strode by way of the “Jake Walk”, a distinctive gait of high-knees and sloppy, ground slapping steps. There are no records of people overdosing or dying as a result of Jamaican Ginger paralysis, but for some the effects never completely wore off. Estimates range between 50,000 and 100,000 people having been permanently crippled with partial paralysis.

The source of the poisoning was quickly tracked down and taken off the market, and Harry Gross himself was punished with a two-year prison sentence. As the victims of Jake Leg were mostly poor and migratory workers, their plight quickly fell from public view, but for a dozen or so blues and folk songs that essayed their condition.

Jamaican Ginger is still widely available and remains a popular folk remedy. Many products are made with it as a defining ingredient, including tea candles and ginger beer. In fact, there is a French cocktail that called for mango, rum, and ginger extract (minus TOCP, of course). This fruity mixture might well cause an embarrassing loss of control of the lower extremities, but we promise this: it’ll be temporary. (MAULT)