Prohibition Era Crime in Kennebunkport
A high-speed car chase down North Street, during which 5 shots were fired by law enforcement officers, ended on the lawn of South Congregational Church at about 7:30 in the evening of October 25, 1925. Okay, the pursued vehicle was actually traveling at 60 miles an hour, but that was a pretty high speed for the 1925 Buick Sedan prominent Kennebunkport hotelier and horse trader, George H. Bayes was driving.
Four officers in two automobiles had been lying in wait for George Bayes on suspicion that he was handling wet goods on the regular. One car broke a spring after deputies Michael J. Morgan and George F. Moulen fired ineffectually at the fugitive but Sheriff Bradon and Deputy Boothby continued the chase.
As the Bayes car drove up on the church lawn, Sheriff Bragdon turned the North Street corner just in time to see the lights go out on the car ahead. He quickly blocked it in with his vehicle. According to the Eastern Star coverage, search of the Bayes car netted 48 quarts of whiskey, and a five-gallon can of alcohol. The Biddeford Journal reported two five-gallon cans of alcohol were found on the back seat of the suspect’s sedan.
George Bayes was taken to Kennebunk and locked up. “I was framed!”, he protested. He was later released on $500 bail furnished by W. C. Berry. Meanwhile the sheriff procured a search warrant from Judge Harold Bourne and went to Bayes home on School Street where seven additional quarts of Scotch whiskey were found in a suitcase. The sheriff went to arrest Mr. Bayes again but he had slipped away during the search out the front door of his house.
The next morning Judge Bourne found Mr. Bayes guilty on both counts, and ordered him to pay fines of $200 and costs and serve 60 days in jail. Bayes appealed to the Supreme Judicial Court. He pleaded guilty to the sale of intoxicating liquors and search and seizure, at the January 1926 session at Saco City Hall. He was sentenced to serve two months in Alfred jail and fined $300 and costs. If unable to pay the fine and costs he would be required to spend six months in jail.
In 1922, George bought Fred Tuck’s Kennebunkport Antique Shop and the Chinese Laundry lot in Union Square. He hired Architect Joy Wheeler Dow to design an enormous new movie playhouse. He promised it would have an “air of refinement and “bienseauce” which is not present in most local places of entertainment”, whatever that means. It was to be 160’ x 50’ with one corner of the building perched on pilings in the Kennebunk River.
On June 1, 1924, the following announcement was printed in Star. “Contractor Ezra Wells was killed instantly when about to hoist a bundle of shingles to the roof of Bayes new moving picture theatre on Tuck’s wharf. One of the long and heavy timbers that held the tackle and falls became unfastened and descending struck Mr. Wells in the head.”
The venture opened nonetheless but was not the grand success George Bayes had anticipated. The project was bankrupt by the end of 1924 and later sold to Island Ledge Casino Co. who changed the name to The Strand Theatre. Moving pictures were shown there but by the 1930s it was mostly used for Kennebunkport High School graduations and large public gatherings.
The A.M. Wells Hardware Store next door collapsed into the river on September 11, 1942. William Nedeau took down the Strand Theatre, which had become unstable, and Nedeau & Thompson’s Quonset hut was put up in its place in 1945.
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