John Raines John Raines John Raines (May 6, 1840, Geneva, Ontario County, New York – December 16, 1909, Canandaigua, Ontario County, New York) was an American lawyer and politician from New York. He authored the 1896 Raines Law, which prohibited liquor sales on Sundays, except in hotels, which had the unintended consequence of fostering prostitution. He was born on May 6, 1840 in Geneva, Ontario County, New York, the son of Rev. John Raines (1818–1877) and Mary (Remington) Raines (1815–1889). He was educated at Canandaigua Academy and Albany Law School, from where he graduated in 1861. Admitted to the bar upon graduation,
Raines law may not even have been available at all; in a 1917 novel, the protagonist sees "a Raines Law hotel with awnings, indicating that it was not merely a blind to give a saloon a hotel license but was actually open for business.") Jacob Riis wrote in 1902 of saloon keepers who mocked the law by setting out "brick sandwiches," two pieces of bread with a brick in between, thus fulfilling the legal requirement of serving food. He also writes of altercation in a saloon where a customer attempted to eat a sandwich that the bartender had served just for show;