James Alderman, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetJames Alderman
American alcohol smuggler
Date of Birth: 24-Jun-1884
Place of Birth: Hillsborough County, Florida, United States
Date of Death: 17-Aug-1929
Zodiac Sign: Cancer 
About James Alderman
- James Horace Alderman (in some sources Aldermon) (June 24, 1884 – August 17, 1929) was a pirate alcohol smuggler during the Prohibition era in the United States.
- He became known in the press by names like the "King of the Rum Runners" and the "Gulf Stream Pirate."Alderman was born in 1884 near Tampa, Florida.
- He spent several years in the Ten Thousand Islands area of southwest Florida as a farmer, fisherman, and field guide.
- With his wife Pearl and three daughters, Bessie, Ruby, and Wilma, Alderman lived variously in Chokoloskee, Caxambas, Palmetto, and Tarracia Island before settling in Fort Myers around 1911.
- After World War I and the passing of the National Prohibition Act, Alderman began smuggling illegal immigrants and alcohol from Cuba and the Bahamas to Florida.
- In the 1920s, he set up a base of operations in Miami.On the afternoon of August 7, 1927, Alderman and his associate Robert Weech were intercepted by a Coast Guard cutter in the waters between Florida and Bimini.
- After a series of events, Alderman killed U.S.
- Coast Guardsman Sidney C.
- Sanderlin and Secret Service agent Robert K.
- Webster.
- The cutter's machinist, Victor A.
- Lamby, was seriously wounded and later died.Alderman was tried under Sections 272, 273, 275 of the U.S.
- Criminal Code.
- In January, 1928, he was sentenced to death by U.S.
- District Judge Henry D.
- Clayton.
- President Herbert Hoover declined clemency.
- Alderman was hanged on August 17, 1929, on newly erected gallows built by Chief Carpenter's Mate Olaf Tobiason in a metal hangar at Coast Guard Base Six near Fort Lauderdale, the site of Bahia Mar Marina today.
- Media witnesses were barred from watching the execution.
- It was the only hanging ever carried out by the Coast Guard, the first hanging in Fort Lauderdale, and the only legal execution in Broward County.
- It is also the only known occasion where a man was hanged in a hangar.Alderman's execution had initially been scheduled to be carried out in the Broward County jail, but the County Commissioners declined, insisting that a federal hanging should occur on U.S.
- property (from 1924 all executions by the state of Florida were carried out by electric chair).
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