Norway, June 1882. Five-year-old George Remus watches his father carry their belongings up a gangplank bound for America. Frank Remus — an orphan who married his mentor's daughter — is leaving everything for the promise: work hard, build something, give your children a better life.

It won't work out that way.

Prussia, 1849. Frank Remus orphaned as an infant when cholera swept Friedeberg. Taken in by a wool miller. Frank fell in love with the miller's daughter Marie and married her in 1872.

They boarded the Fitlington for America. New York to Baltimore to Milwaukee — highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the country. Then Chicago when George was eight. No matter where they went, Frank couldn't hold a job. Nine to eleven dollars per week when he found work. Beer gardens became an escape. George watched his father wither.

At fourteen years old, George dropped out and became the family's main support. His three sisters. His brother Herman, who'd die in an asylum at just 22. All of it fell on George.

He distanced himself from his alcoholic father. Found substitute connection in obsessive endurance swimming. Swore off alcohol after seeing what it did to Frank.

A physician later diagnosed George as "emotionally unstable" and "devoid of normal emotional reaction."

This reveals the origin of the mind that built a bootleg empire. The weight either breaks you or forges you. For Remus, it taught him you rely only on yourself, rules are negotiable, and loyalty runs one direction — up to those who depend on you, never down to those who failed.

Within five years, he owned two pharmacies. Within ten, he was one of the nation’s most heralded criminal defense attorney. Within thirty, he had built an illegal bourbon empire worth hundreds of millions...billions in today’s money.

Tales of the Bourbon King is based on the research and writing of Bob Batchelor, Assistant Professor of Communication, Media, & Culture at ⁠Coastal Carolina University⁠.

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TALES OF THE BOURBON KING

Chicago. 1884. The Remus family steps off a train into the fastest-growing city in America. Foundries hammering. Construction crews shouting in a dozen languages. This is the world that forged George Remus — and it was brutal.

This episode, hosted by award-winning cultural historian Bob Batchelor, shows you the Gilded Age America Remus inhabited. The era of unprecedented wealth and crushing poverty existing side by side, separated by two miles and an impossible gulf.

When George arrived at age eight, Chicago was exploding. Population grew 118 percent in a decade — five times faster than New York. Nearly half a million residents had German heritage. Fifty-six percent of the workforce was immigrant.

But the American Dream came with a price. George's father earned $9-11 per week when he could find work. The family lived in a one-room "rear house" — a wooden shack on posts with no plumbing. Twenty percent of boys under 15 worked full-time instead of attending school. Six hundred seventy-five workers died every week in industrial accidents nationwide.

Economist Henry George captured the era: "This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times."

George Remus saw it all. The grind. The desperation. The way the system crushed people who couldn't keep up. And at 14, working behind his uncle's pharmacy counter, he decided: He would not be one of them.

This episode is essential context for everything that follows. You need to understand the world Remus inhabited to understand the empire he would build — and the violence that would end it. This is social history from the bottom up, using one immigrant kid's story as a lens into Gilded Age America.

Tales of the Bourbon King is based on the research and writing of Bob Batchelor, Assistant Professor of Communication, Media, & Culture at Coastal Carolina University.

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TALES OF THE BOURBON KING

Episode Three: "The Last Man in the Water"

Lake Michigan. August 1907. Five hours into a brutal ten-mile swimming marathon, George Remus is the last man in the water.

Most competitors have been pulled out — delirious, hypothermic, nearly drowning. Remus is still out there, treading water, eating sandwiches from a boat. Race officials finally drag him out. Not because he's in danger — a reporter described him as "still in first-class condition." They pull him out because the race is over and he won't stop.

This is Episode Three — where you understand who George Remus actually was. The courtroom theatrics, the poison stunt, the empire he would build during Prohibition — none of it makes sense unless you grasp this: George Remus did not know how to quit. He was constitutionally, psychologically incapable of it.

This episode traces that refusal back to its roots. Growing up poor in Chicago's German immigrant neighborhoods. Watching his father spiral into alcoholism. Taking over as family breadwinner at fourteen, working his uncle's pharmacy. Sleeping in the back. Studying at night. Building two pharmacies by twenty-one. Putting himself through law school while running both stores.

The same endurance he brought to Lake Michigan — refusing to be pulled out until someone dragged him into a boat — would make him a legend. It would make him one of the most feared attorneys in Chicago. It would make him rich beyond imagining during Prohibition. And it would destroy almost everything he touched.

A physician who examined Remus later wrote: "He is emotionally unstable. He is devoid of normal emotional reaction." That diagnosis cuts to the heart of the man who would become the King of the Bootleggers.

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