Answering a question about doctors, longevity and the fashions of medical opinion, Neville recalls that back in the thirties -- during Prohibition -- his father was asked by a family friend to find the man's estranged son in New York City. Neville and his father found the son, Ken, drinking himself into ruin in the gutter near Coney Island, and it fell to Neville to get the hopeless alcoholic aboard the boat home to Barbados, a memorably difficult journey through every speakeasy along the way.
Date (happened)
between 1930 and 1933
unresolved
between 1930 and 1933
estimated · probable · preferred
Why
M7 dating pass (529; 525's readers, packet 006)
Reasoning
Intersects this event's 'back in the thirties' account with event 7020's independently certain Prohibition-era bound (ending 1933), which corroborates the same episode but lacks the friend's name Ken that this event supplies.
between 1930 and 1939
estimated · possible
Why
Also stated in the passage: these were Prohibition days, before Prohibition ended (1933), narrowing the range in practice though not stated precisely enough by Neville himself to write as the claim.
Reasoning
'Back in the thirties' is a decade-level approximation with no finer detail available in the passage, so the range is bounded to the full decade 1930-1939 rather than a single year.
between 1920 and 1933
stated
Reasoning
The passage directly anchors the event within United States Prohibition, conventionally 1920-1933. No narrower year is stated.
Told / reported
14 January 1966
estimated
Reasoning
Two independently-sourced claims on this lecture -- the legacy catalog entry and a chrome dateline harvested from the transcript's own title line -- agree exactly, with no conflicting claim tied to this delivery. Told date is written at full certainty.