Ward 8

The Ward 8 or Ward Eight is a cocktail originating in 1898 in Boston, Massachusetts at the bar of the Gilded Age restaurant Locke-Ober.

In 1898 Democratic political czar Martin M. Lomasney hoped to capture a seat in the state's legislature, the General Court of Massachusetts. Lomasney held considerable power in the city for nearly 50 years. The story goes that the drink was created to honor his election, and the city's Ward 8 which historically delivered him a winning margin. Competing, but unfounded myths abound in print and on the Internet. One story reports that it originated in New York in an area known for political corruption, another that the cocktail is a traditional drink of the Scots Guards.