You are better off avoiding "Mickey Finn"
News News blog
In common parlance, a "Mickey Finn" (or simply a "Mickey") is a drink laced with a psychoactive drug or narcotic (especially chloral hydrate) that is given to someone without their knowledge with the intent to incapacitate them. Serving someone a "Mickey" is usually referred to as "slipping someone a Mickey."
The Mickey Finn is most likely named after the manager and bartender of the Lone Star Saloon and Palm Garden Restaurant, which operated from 1896 to 1903 in Chicago on South State Street in the Chicago Loop neighborhood.
Serving a Mickey Finn Special was a coordinated robbery orchestrated by Finn. First, Finn or one of his employees mixed chloral hydrate into the unsuspecting guest's drink. The incapacitated guest was then carried by one of Finn's employees to a back room, where he was robbed and dumped in an alley. The victim awoke the next morning in a nearby alley with little or no recollection of what had happened.
On December 16, 1903, Finn's saloon was ordered closed. In 1918, he was apparently arrested again, this time for operating an illegal bar in South Chicago.
On June 22, 1918, four people were arrested and more than a hundred waiters were taken into custody because patrons who tipped poorly had received "Mickey Finn powder" in their food or drink. Chemical analysis revealed that this was antimony potassium tartrate, also called "emetic tartar," which not only causes vomiting, headaches, dizziness, and depression, but can be fatal in large quantities.
