History Café: True Story of Seattle’s Bootlegging Royalty

Elise was the vivacious London girl who came to America and became a Prohibition informant until she married Roy! Government agents caught up to them and the decade of trials that followed put an end to their kingdom. Theirs is a fraught story of resilience and redemption. Gidari’s book, Elise Olmstead: The Myth and Mystery of Seattle’s “Queen of the Bootleggers,” is the first biography of the life and times of this secretive, private, and some would say manipulative extraordinary woman.

Brad Holden is Seattle’s unofficial local historian and author of Seattle Prohibition: Bootleggers, Rumrunners, & Graft in the Queen City. Holden’s book brings Roy Olmstead, the “Gentleman Bootlegger,” to life and reveals Seattle during Prohibition with all its corruption, unquenchable thirst for good booze, and interesting characters like the radio whiz and inventor Al Hubbard. He was the undoing of Roy Olmstead in the end and the subject of Holden’s book Seattle Mystic Alfred M. Hubbard: Inventor, Bootlegger, & Psychedelic Pioneer.

History Café is produced as a partnership between HistoryLink and MOHAI.

ASL Interpretation and CART captioning are available during the program. In addition, a limited number of Assistive Listening Devices are available upon request. For more accessibility support, email programs@mohai.org two weeks before the program.

Grab some food for thought–Gourmondo at MOHAI remains open until 7pm for every History Café.

If you can’t make it to the museum, tune in live on the MOHAI YouTube channel to virtually attend this event.