Born Emasa, called Amasa. Had name changed 10/7/1913 in Portland, ME Probate Court to Emerson because it was so often misspelled by others.

Exerpt from Jan. 1980 newspaper article on 1920’s prohibition:
“Cumberland County had an unusually alert Sheriff’s department, including Deputy Emerson Doughty, an honest but almost fanatical zealot in hunting down puny liquor violators.

It was the times. Most people seemed to want Prohibition as long as it did not interfere with their rights of taking an occasional drink. The Portland Daily Press and Evening Express ran editorials almost every week calling for even stricter enforcement of the law. But there were rumors, with some foundation, that the editors enjoyed their own private stock. Prohibition was for the other fellow.

The other daily paper in Portland at the time, the Eastern Argus, was the lone spokesman for the minority Democratic Party in Maine. It played Prohibition both ways, partly for it, partly against it. The Argus delighted in poking fun at the Press and Express for their rigid “dry” stand.

How come there were so many typographical errors in their two rivals’ columns, it would ask? Perhaps Emerson Doughty should add their “esteemed contemporaries” to his daily beat, the Argus would write.

On the first day I covered municipal court, seven liquor violators received six-month sentences. It almost seemed they were found guilty before their cases were called. The judges liked to get their names in the paper, and they were always good for a few wisecracks when reporters were present. “You won’t have to lay in your winter’s coal,” the judge told one defendant that day.

A coterie of Portland lawyers seemed to represent all the liquor violators.

One notorious case here before my time was the so-called “hearse hoax.” A couple of ingenious bootleggers hit upon the idea of smuggling liquor into Portland on the Boston & Maine Railroad. They hired an antique horse-drawn hearse and drove it to Union Station to meet the noon train from Boston. When it arrived, baggage men transferred a wooden burial case to a small station truck and wheeled it to the waiting hearse. One of the bootleggers even wore a tall hat to carry out the deception.

In those days deputies met every train from Boston, a principal source of liquor. They could require anyone to open luggage or packages and examine them without a warrant.

Deputy Doughty was on duty that day and he had ESP when it came to liquor. “They just didn’t look like undertakers,” he testified in court later.

Doughty ordered the pair to remove the top from the burial case. The box contained about 300 half-pints of a cheap liquor that could have netted the two $1000 profit apiece in those days. It was a macabre episode and showed to what extent violators could go to beat Prohibition.