POCOMOKE — The Worcester County Historical Society will hold its annual spring dinner meeting at the Pocomoke Community Center on Market Street, Friday, May 5.
Dinner guests will learn about gambling in Ocean City in the early to mid-20th century while enjoying a delicious meal of chicken and dumplings with all the fixings prepared by the Ladies Auxiliary.
Joe Moore, a practicing attorney in Ocean City, will give a presentation about the gambling at the resort, which went on until the early 1950’s. During his talk, he will show pictures of the night clubs up and down the highway, such as the Ricks Raft, The Sandbar and the Brass Rail, that once offered the slot machines. The machines were also present at locations along the Boardwalk.
Sources of his information for his talk will be newspaper reports about the gambling. Some of the reports concerned the raids by a young state’s attorney, William G. Kerbin Jr., who raided the locations in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, along with his “flying squad.” He served in that position from 1938 to 1946.
In the early days at the resort, before 1933, arrests were made not only for gambling but also for bootleg liquor. One story in The Baltimore Sun discusses hauling bootleg from a Canadian ship to the shore.
Jack Sanford, who was elected state’s attorney in 1950, shut down gambling for good a short time later, in 1951.
Moore credits the Ocean City Lifesaving Museum for the pictures and Newt Weaver, president of the society, for much of the information from two articles Weaver wrote for a newspaper.
A practicing attorney at the resort since 1969, Moore also served as state’s attorney from 1978 to 1982.
Doors will open for the event at 5 p.m., dinner at 6 p.m. Tickets are $25 per person and can be purchased by sending a check to Judi Menavich, 9 Drawbridge Road, Berlin Md. 21811. The deadline for reservations to the dinner, which is open to the public, is Friday, April 28.