Mickey Finn , now part of the general language, began in the 1910s as bartender’s slang for either a powder or liquid put into a patron’s drink to render him or her incapacitated, or, by extension, the drink containing the incapacitating agent. The use of “knock-out drops” (usually chloral hydrate) to incapacitate intoxicated saloon patrons dates back to the 1890s, if not earlier. Usually, however, it was administered by a third party, with or without the collusion of the bartender, and the victim was the robbed elsewhere. However, Michael “Mickey” Finn (1871–?), who operated the Lone Star Café and Palm Garden in Chicago’s notorious Levee District from 1896 to 1903, preferred to administer the drug himself, in his “Mickey Finn Special,” and rob the customers in the back room. His bar was closed in 1903, but evidently his dedication to the practice attached his name to it in bartender circles. In 1918, a number of Chicago bartenders and waiters were arrested for putting “Mickey Finn Powder,” as the packages read, in their customers’ drinks, either to get rid of them or to punish them for perceived misbehavior. This time, the powder was tartar emetic and its operation gastric rather than systemic. This type of Mickey Finn remained in use throughout Prohibition, fading in the years after. Fortunately, it is not one of the pre-Prohibition bartending practices revived in recent years.
Asbury, Herbert. Gem of the Prairie. New York: Knopf, 1940.
“Waiters Taken for Drugging Nontippers.” Chicago Tribune, June 23, 1918, 1.
By: David Wondrich