In December 2003, Francis Sheeran died and was buried underground.
In these early years of the twenty-first century, the Irish American gangster is mostly a thing of the past.
All that remains are the demons.
—Thomas Joseph English
January 2005
sources
Interviews
The early chapters of this book chronicling events that took place in the nineteenth and early twentieth century derive mostly from archive research in libraries, museums, and city crime commissions, as well as from the books, articles, essays, manuscripts and reports listed below. The latter chapters, where participants of some events are still alive, I relied, when possible, on interviews. Given the nature of the subject matter, many contemporary sources insisted on anonymity. The following is a partial list of names that I am able to identify: Patrick Nee, James Martorano, Eddie MacKenzie, Kevin Cullen, Raymond Flynn, Ciaran Staunton, Michael Patrick MacDonald, Joe Coffey, Frank McDarby, Richie Egan, James Tedaldi, Tom McCabe, Greg Derkash, Jeffrey Schlanger, Lawrence Hochheiser, Kenneth Aronson, Gerald Shargel, Jim Nauwens, Mickey Featherstone, Marcelle Feathersone, Bud Schulberg, Edward McDonald, and Peter Quinn.
Books
Abbott, Shirley. The Bookmaker’s Daughter: A Memory Unbound. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1991.
Allen, Oliver E. The Tiger: The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1993.
Anbinder, Tyler. Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum. New York: Free Press, 2001.
Arnesen, Richard. Waterfront Workers in New Orleans, 1860–1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Asbury, Herbert. The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928.
———The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936.
———Sucker’s Progress: An Informal History of Gambling in America. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1938.
———Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940.
———The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950.
Beatty, Jack. The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1992.
Berger, Meyer. The Eight Million: Journal of a New York Correspondent. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1942.
Bergreen, Laurence. Capone: The Man and the Era. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Blumenthal, Ralph. The Stork Club: America’s Most Famous Nightspot and the Lost World of Café Society. Boston: Little, Brown, 2000.
Brandt, Charles. “I Heard You Paint Houses”: Frank “the Irishman” Sheeran & the Inside Story of the Mafia, the Teamsters, & the Last Ride of Jimmy Hoffa. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2004.
Brill, Steven. The Teamsters. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978.
Bulger, William M. While the Music Lasts: My Life in Politics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.
Butler, Richard J. & Driscoll, Joseph. Dock Walloper: The Story of “Big Dick” Butler. NY: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1933.
Cagney, James. Cagney by Cagney. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976.
Callahan, Bob. (ed.). The Big Book of American Irish Culture. New York: Viking, 1987.
———Who Shot JFK? A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories. New York: Fireside Books, 1993.
Carroll, James. The City Below. Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
Clarens, Carlos. Crime Movies: From Griffith to the Godfather and Beyond. New York: W.W. Norton, 1980.
Coffey, Michael & Golway, Terry (eds.). The Irish in America. New York: Hyperion, 1997.
Cohen, Rich. Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons and Gangster Dreams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
Collins, Max Allen. The Road to Perdition. New York: Pocket Books, 2002.
Curley, James Michael. I’d Do It Again: A Record of My Uproarious Years. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1957.
Davis, John H. Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. New York: McGraw Hill, 1989.
Delap, Breandán. Mad Dog Coll: An Irish Gangster. Dublin: Mercier Press, 1999.
Dewey, Thomas E. Twenty Against the Underworld. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974.
Doctorow, E.L. Billy Bathgate. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.
Downey, Patrick. Gangster City: A History of the New York Underworld, 1900–1935. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade, 2004.
English, T.J. The Westies: Inside the Hell’s Kitchen Irish Mob. New York: Putnam, 1990.
Farrell, James T. Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy. New York: Random House, 1935.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner’s, 1925.
Fowler, Gene. Beau James: The Life and Times of Jimmy Walker. New York: Viking, 1949.
Fried, Albert. The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980.
Gambino, Richard. Vendetta: The True Story of the Largest Lynching in U.S. History. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977.
Giancana, Sam & Chuck. Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America. New York: Warner Books, 1992.
Goddard, Donald. All Fall Down: One Man Against the Waterfront Mob. New York: Times Books, 1980.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga. New York: St. Martin’s, 1987.
Gosch, Martin & Hammer, Richard. The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano. Boston: Little Brown, 1974.
Hersh, Seymour M. The Dark Side of Camelot. Little, Brown, 1997.
Higgins, George V. The Friends of Eddie Coyle. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.
Hurley, John W. Irish Gangs and Stick Fighting: In the Works of William Carleton. Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2000.
Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Jackson, Kenneth T. (ed.) The Encyclopedia of New York City. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
Johnson, Curt with R. Craig Sautter. Wicked City Chicago: From Kenna to Capone. Highland Park, IL: December Press, 1974.
Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons: The Classic Account of the Influential Capitalists who Transformed America’s Future. Harvest/HBJ, 1962. Originally published in 1934.
Katcher, Leo. The Big Bankroll: The Life and Times of Arnold Rothstein. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1958.
Keefe, Rose. Guns and Roses: The Untold Story of Dean O’Banion, Chicago’s Big Shot Before Al Capone. Nashville: Cumberland House, 2003.
Kelly, Thomas. Payback. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
———The Rackets. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001.
———Empire Rising. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005.
Kennedy, Robert F. The Enemy Within: The McClellan Committee’s Crusade Against Jimmy Hoffa and Corrupt Labor Unions. New York: Harper & Row, 1960.
Kennedy, William. Legs. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1975.
———O Albany!: Improbable City of Political Wizards, Fearless Ethnics, Spectacular Aristocrats, Splendid Nobodies, and Underrated Scoundrels. New York: Viking, 1983.
———Roscoe. New York: Viking, 2002.
Kessler, Ronald. The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded. New York: Warner Books, 1996.
Kobler, John. Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone. New York: Putnam, 1971.
———Ardent Spirits: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Putnam, 1972.
Kogan, Herman & Wendt, Lloyd. Lords of the Levee: The Story of Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink. Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1943.
Lardner, James & Reppetto, Thomas. NYPD: A City and Its Police. New York: Henry Holt, 2000.
Larsen, Lawrence H. & Huston, Janice J. Pendergast! Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.
Lehr, Dick & O’Neill, Gerald. Black Mass: The Irish Mo
b, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal. New York: Public Affairs, 2000.
———The Underboss: The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.
Levine, Gary. Jack “Legs” Diamond: Anatomy of a Gangster. Fleischmanns, NY: Purple Mountain Press, 1995.
Lewis, Norman. The Honored Society. New York: Putnam, 1964.
Lindberg, Richard. To Serve and Collect: Chicago Politics and Police Corruption from the Lager Beer Riot to the Summerdale Scandal. New York: Praeger Press, 1991.
———Chicago Ragtime: Another Look at Chicago 1880–1920. South Bend, IN: Icarus Press, 1985.
Loftus, John & McIntyre, Emily. Valhalla’s Wake: The IRA, MI6, and the Assassination of a Young American. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989.
London, Jack. The Iron Heel. New York: Macmillan, 2000. Originally published in 1908.
MacDonald, Michael Patrick. All Souls: A Family Story from Southie. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.
MacKenzie Jr., Edward J. et al. Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger & the Boston Irish Mob. NH: Steerforth Press, 2003.
Maloney, Eddie & Hoffman, William. Tough Guy: The True Story of “Crazy” Eddie Maloney. New York: Pinnacle, 1997.
McCabe, John. Cagney. New York: Knopf, 1997.
Miller, Kerby. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Mitgang, Herbert. Once Upon a Time in New York: Jimmy Walker, Franklin Roosevelt, and the Last Great Battle of the Jazz Age. New York: Free Press, 2000.
Moldea, Dan. The Hoffa Wars: Teamsters, Rebels, Politicians, and the Mob. New York: Paddington, 1978.
Morris, Ronald L. Wait Until Dark: Jazz and the Underworld, 1880–1940. Green, Ohio: Bowling Green Press, 1980.
Niehaus, Earl F. The Irish in New Orleans 1800–1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965.
Norwood, Stephen H. Strikebreaking and Intimidation: Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
O’Connor, Edwin. The Last Hurrah. Boston: Little Brown, 1956.
O’Connor, Richard. Hell’s Kitchen: The Roaring Days of New York’s Wild West Side. Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott, 1958.
O’Connor, Thomas H. The Boston Irish: A Political History. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995.
O’Dwyer, William. Beyond the Golden Door. Jamaica, NY: St. John’s University Press, 1987.
O’Flaherty, Liam. The Informer. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980. Originally published in 1925.
Patrick, Vincent. The Pope of Greenwich Village. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978.
Peterson, Virgil. Barbarians in Our Midst: A History of Chicago Crime and Politics. Little Brown, 1952.
———The Mob: 200 Years of Organized Crime in New York. Ottawa, IL: Green Hill, 1983.
Pileggi, Nicholas. Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
Porrello, Rick. To Kill the Irishman: The War That Crippled the Mafia. Cleveland: Next Hat Press, 1998.
Quinn, Peter. Banished Children of Eve. New York: Viking, 1994.
Rakove, Milton. Don’t Make No Waves Don’t Back No Losers: An Insider’s Analysis of the Daley Machine. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975.
Raymond, Allen. Waterfront Priest. New York: Henry Holt, 1955.
Reddig, William M. Tom’s Town: Kansas City and the Pendergast Legend. Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott, 1947.
Reedy, George. From the Ward to the White House: The Irish in American Politics. New York: Scribners, 1991.
Reppetto, Thomas. American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power. New York: Henry Holt, 2004.
Riis, Jacob A. How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. New York: Hill & Wang, 1957. Originally published in 1890.
Riordon, William L. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics. New York: Signet Classic, 1995. Originally published in 1905.
Rousey, Dennis C. Policing the Southern City: New Orleans, 1805–1889. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997.
Royko, Mike. Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago. New York: Dutton, 1971.
Russo, Gus. The Outfit: The Role of Chicago’s Underworld in the Shaping of Modern America. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2002.
Sann, Paul. Kill the Dutchman!: The Story of Dutch Shultz. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1971.
Sante, Luc. Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991.
Schwarz, Ted. Joseph P. Kennedy: The Mogul, the Mob, the Statesman, and the Making of an American Myth. New York: Wiley & Sons, 2003.
Stoddard, Lothrop. Master of Manhattan: The Life of Richard Croker. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1931.
Thrasher, Frederick. The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1926.
Touhy, Roger with Brennan, Ray. The Stolen Years. Cleveland: Pennington, 1959.
Tuohy, John W. When Capone’s Mob Killed Roger Touhy. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, 2001.
Van Tassel, David D. & Grabowski, John J. (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Walker, Stanley. The Night Club Era. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1933.
Walsh, George. Public Enemies: The Mayor, the Mob and the Crime that Was. New York: W.W. Norton, 1980.
Walsh, Michael. And All the Saints. New York: Warner Books, 2003.
Whyte, William F. Street Corner Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955.
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Perennial Classics, 2003. Revised Edition.
Articles, Reports, Essays, and Manuscripts
Beatty, Jerome. “A Political Boss Talks about His Job.” American Magazine. February, 1933.
Becker, Ed & Tuohy, John William. “The Valley Gang.” Gambling Magazine. Internet (undated). www.gamblingmagazine.com.
“The Bulger Mystique.” The Boston Globe. (Spotlight Team: Gerald O’Neill, Christine Chinlund, Dick Lehr, Kevin Cullen, Mary Elizabeth Knox.) September 18–21, 1988.
Bulger, William. “The Bulger Hearings.” U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform. June 19, 2003.
Cassidy, Daniel. “Breaking the Codes of New York’s Gangs.” New York Observer. January 6, 2003.
Cohen, Henry. “An Ordinary Thug.” Introduction to The Public Enemy (published screenplay). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.
Czitrom, Daniel. “Underworlds and Underdogs: Big Tim Sullivan and Metropolitan Politics in New York, 1889–1913.” Journal of American History 79. 1991.
Daly, Michael. “The Ghosts of Hell’s Kitchen.” New York Magazine. October 11, 1986.
———“Tammany’s Last Stand.” New York Magazine. July 13, 1992
English, T. J. “The Original Irish Gangsters.” The Irish in America. New York: Hyperion, 1997.
———“Featherstone’s Lament.” The Village Voice. September 12, 1988.
———“On Trial—The Wild, Wild Westies.” Irish Voice, December 13, 1987.
Fenton, Patrick. “Still the Same.” Ways to Writing (2nd Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988.
Firestone, David. “Stretching Legs.” New York Newsday. January 3, 1989.
Flynn, Sean. “Good Guys, Bad Guys.” Boston Magazine. September 2000.
Hamill, Pete. “Trampling City’s History: ‘Gangs’ Misses Point of Five Points.” NY Daily News. December 8, 2002.
Geringer, Joseph. “George ‘Bugs’ Moran: His War With Al Capone.” The Crime Library. Internet (undated). www.crimelibrary.com
Goldstock, Ronald. “Corruption and Racketeering in the New York Construction Industry: An Interim Report.” New York State Organized Crime Task Force, 1988.
Kendall, Jon S. “Who Killa de Chief?” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, Vol. 22, 1939.
Landesco, John. “Organiz
ed Crime in Chicago.” Part III of the Illinois Crime Survey. 1929.
May, Allan. “Vannie Higgins: Brooklyn’s Last Irish Boss.” Crime Magazine. Internet (undated). www.crimemagazine.com
———“Frank McErlane and the Chicago Beer Wars.” Crime Magazine. Internet (undated). www.crimemagazine.com
———“Three Thin Dimes: The Demise of Larry Fay.” Crime Magazine. Internet (undated). www.crimemagazine.com
———“Jimmy McBratney: A Footnote to Mob History.” Crime Magazine. Internet (undated). www.crimemagazine.com
“The Mystery of Joe Kennedy.” Newsweek, September 12, 1960.
O’Donnell, Ed. “United Front: The Irish and Organized Labor.” The Irish in America. New York: Hyperion, 1997.
Quinn, Peter. “Looking for Jimmy.” The World of Hibernia. Spring 1999.
———“Farmers No More: From Rural Ireland to the Teeming City.” The Irish in America. New York: Hyperion, 1997.
———Introduction to Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics. NY: Signet Classic, 1995.
Rodann, Curtis. “Big Bill Dwyer—King of the Rum Runners.” True Detective. February 1961.
Rousey, Dennis C. “Hibernian Leatherheads: Irish Cops in New Orleans, 1830–1880.” Journal of Urban History, Vol X. November 1983.
Salemme, Frank. “Statement of Frank Salemme.” U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform. April 10, 2003.
Schulberg, Bud. “Writing On the Waterfront.” Introduction to On the Waterfront (published screenplay). London: Faber and Faber, 1980.
Spillane, Bobby “The Real ‘Road to Perdition.’” NY Daily News. July 21, 2002.
Sullivan, Joseph J. & Gail W. Tears and Tiers (A Product of the State): The Life Story of the Only Man to Ever Escape from Attica Prison. Unpublished manuscript/autobiography (undated).
Sutherland, Sidney. “The Machine-Gunning of McSwiggin and What Led Up to It.” Liberty. July 3–August 7, 1926.
Tuohy, John William. “Joe Kennedy and the Pantages Affair.” Gambling Magazine. Internet (undated). www.gamblingmagazine.com
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