by Bruno, Joe
Yet, the New York City health officials said they indeed had the power to detain Mary Mallon indefinitely. The Health Department confirmed their decision by pointing to the powers vested in them from Sections 1169 and 1170 of the Greater New York Charter, which said, “The board of health shall use all reasonable means for ascertaining the existence and cause of disease or peril to life or health, and for averting the same, throughout the city. Said board may remove or cause to be removed to a proper place to be by it designated, any person sick with any contagious, pestilential or infectious disease; shall have exclusive charge and control of the hospitals for the treatment of such cases.”
The only problem was, Mary Mallon was not sick with any symptoms of the typhoid virus, and it was not known at the time the statute was written that healthy carriers like Mary even existed. Therefore, the above statute should never have applied to her.
Mary pleaded her case to be released from Riverside Hospital.
“I never had typhoid in my life,” she told the press. “And I have always been healthy. Why should I be banished like a leper and compelled to live in solitary confinement with only a dog for a companion?”
In 1907, after Mary had been in confinement for two years, she finally sued the Health Department. For the previous year, Mary had sent her stool samples to a private lab, and they all came back negative. However, when the Health Department did the testing of Mary's stools, 120 of 163 samples came back positive for the typhoid bacteria. So basically, there was a Mexican standoff as to which lab tests were to be believed.
Before she had her day in court, Mary told the press, “This contention that I am a perpetual menace in the spread of typhoid germs is not true. My own doctors say I have no typhoid germs. I am an innocent human being. I have committed no crime and I am treated like an outcast - a criminal. It is unjust, outrageous, uncivilized. It seems incredible that in a Christian community a defenseless woman can be treated in this manner.”
Despite Mary's pleas, the presiding judge in the case ruled in the favor of the Health Department, and the person now called “Typhoid Mary” in the press “was remanded to the custody of the Board of Health of the City of New York.”
Mary went back to her little isolated cottage on North Brother Island, where her faithful dog greeted her with glee. At this point, Mary was fearful she would spend the rest of her life in that cottage.
In February 1910, in an astounding turn of events, a new Health Commissioner was appointed, and the new commissioner inexplicably ordered Mary to be released immediately. The only stipulation was that Mary had to sign an affidavit stating that she “is prepared to change her occupation (that of a cook), and will give assurance by affidavit that she will upon her release take such hygienic precautions as will protect those with whom she comes in contact from infection.”
That being agreed to, Mary was set free after almost four years of confinement.
At this point in time, it would have been a happy ending for everyone if Mary had only stuck to the guidelines in her signed affidavit.
For a while, Mary did menial tasks, like those of a laundress, that did not pay was well as she was paid as a fine cook. It's not clear exactly when, but sometime in 1914, Mary went back to working as a cook. And apparently, her hand-cleaning procedure did not measurably improve.
In January of 1915, the Sloane Maternity Hospital in Manhattan suffered a typhoid fever outbreak. Twenty-five people became ill and two of them died.
Guess who was the newly hired cook for the facility?
Why it was none other than “Typhoid Mary” Mallon herself, working under a fictitious name.
While public opinion was in her favor during Mary's first detention, things were different this time around. Mary, whether she believed it or not, was certified as a healthy carrier of the typhoid bacteria. She knew that was the case, and she defied the Health Department, figuratively ripping up the affidavit she willingly signed. Mary went back to serving contaminated food; food she served to pregnant women. The fact that she used a fictitious name added more weight to Mary's serious transgressions.
Mary Mallon was again shipped off to North Brother Island; to the same cottage she had occupied before (there is no record of her faithful dog being there to greet her this time).
On her second and last visit to North Brother Island (which lasted 23 years until her death), Mary became a “hospital helper,” but she was not allowed to touch or even be near any food served to other people. Mary became a minor celebrity, and she was often interviewed by enterprising journalists, whom Mary was not even allowed to offer a glass of water.
In 1932, Mary suffered a severe stroke which left her partially paralyzed and not capable of working in any capacity. At this point, she was transferred from her cottage to a bed in the children's ward of the hospital.
Mary Mallon, more famously known as “Typhoid Mary,” died six years later on November 11, 1938. She was 69 years old.
An autopsy found evidence of live typhoid bacteria in Mary's gallbladder.
In a classic case of overkill, the powers in charge at the hospital decided that Mary's body, to destroy all traces of the typhoid bacteria, had to be be cremated immediately.
Mary Mallon's ashes were buried at Saint Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx.
Unione Siciliana (Italo-American National Union)
For many years, people have assumed that the Sicilian crime faction called the Mafia and the Unione Siciliana were one and the same. However, this assumption is not entirely true. At least, not in the beginning.
The Unione Siciliana, a fraternal organization of Sicilian-Americans, was created in 1893 in New York City, and almost simultaneously in Chicago, by legitimate Sicilian businessmen. The original concept of the Unione Siciliana was to provide life and health insurance to Sicilians, who had recently immigrated from Sicily. This insurance was needed because the working conditions at that time were abominable for all workers, but especially for the alien newcomers, who were desperate for work of any kind no matter how dangerous.
For a small dues, members were able to receive this insurance, as well as other social benefits desired by strangers in a foreign land, who were, by nature, extremely clannish. These social benefits included dances, friendly card games, and a social network where Sicilian men could meet Sicilian women with the intention of eventually getting married. Soon branches (lodges) of the Unione Siciliana sprang up all over America, in any place that had a sizable Sicilian community. By 1920, Chicago alone had 38 lodges and over 40,000 members.
The Unione Siciliana also had a very sizable voting bloc, which made it attractive to politicians, especially the corrupt political machines in Chicago and the notoriously crooked Tammany Hall hacks in New York City. The Unione Siciliana threw frequent fund-raising activities for politicians in both cities, making these politicians, when elected, deeply indebted to the leaders of the Unione Siciliana, who were increasingly morphing from honest businessmen into criminals of the highest order.
If there was a buck to be made or a politician to be bought, the Mafia, which also originated in Sicily, knew how to take advantage of the opportunity. At the turn of the 20th century, the Mafia advanced, both in Chicago and in New York City, to take control of the Unione Siciliana.
In the early 1900s in New York City, the elected President of the Unione Siciliana was a beast-of-a-Mafioso named Ignazio Saietta, also known as “Lupo the Wolf.” How a man like Saietta could be elected by honest businessmen to a position of such great influence can only be attributed to Saietta and his followers exerting tremendous pressure on the voters to elect Saietta or suffer grave consequences.
Saietta, originally from Corleone, Sicily, was also one of the leaders of a Sicilian extortion group known as the Black Hand, which operated exclusively in New York City. Saietta was so feared in the Sicilian communities, Sicilian immigrants were known to make the sign of the cross at the mere mention of his name. The leadership of the Black Hand consisted of Saietta,
the Morello Brothers - Joe and Nick - and Ciro Terranova, who was known as the “Artichoke King.” So, at the time Saietta became the president of the Unione Siciliana, the Black Hand and the Unione Siciliana basically became one and the same.
Through membership rolls of the Unione Siciliana, the Black Hand gang members were able to ascertain which Sicilian immigrants were generating income, thereby making these members ripe for a shakedown. Before any violence was perpetrated, the Black Hand sent threatening notes to Sicilian businessmen. On the bottom of the extortion notes was the imprint of a “Black Hand,” which was made by a hand dipped in black ink. ( However, due to the inroads law enforcement was making with fingerprinting at the time, the “Black Hand” was later drawn instead.) If the person who was being extorted did not pay the money the Black Hand demanded, they were brutally tortured and sometimes even murdered. If they were lucky, they were not physically harmed, but their place of business was destroyed by explosives.
In 1905, a butcher named Gaetano Costa got a Black Hand extortion letter, demanding $1,000. Costa was instructed to put the $1,000 into a loaf of bread, and to give it to a man who came into his shop to buy meat and pulled out a red handkerchief. Costa refused, and the very next day, two men came into his butcher shop and shot Costa to death. No one was charged with the murder, but the police were sure the orders were given by Saietta.
One of the Italians being extorted by the Black Hand was the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso. Caruso was, at first, given an ultimatum to pay $2,000 for his safety. Caruso, knowing the murderous reputation of the Black Hand, agreed to pay that amount. However, before he could pay, Caruso received another letter now demanding $15,000.
The nemesis of the Black Hand was a short, barrel-chested police lieutenant named Joseph Petrosino. Knowing Petrosino was hot on the trail of the Black Hand, Caruso immediately took the second letter to Petrosino. Petrosino told Caruso to make arrangements to drop the money off at a prearranged place. When two Italian men showed up to pick up the money, Petrosino arrested them on the spot.
The magnitude of the atrocities perpetrated by the Black Hand was uncovered in 1901, when acting on a tip from an informant, Petrosino discovered the infamous “Murder Stables” located at 304 108th Street in Harlem.
Petrosino directed his men to dig up the grounds of the entire stables. After the dig, Petrosino was horrified to discover that 60 bodies were buried there. The landlord of record of the stables was none other than Ignazio Saietta, president of the supposedly respectable Unione Siciliana.
When Petrosino questioned Saietta as to the slight problem of so many dead bodies being buried on his property, Saietta played dumb; saying he was only the landlord and not responsible for the work of his tenants. Saietta provided Petrosino with a bogus list of the tenants’ names, all of Italian decent. But Petrosino was not able to locate any of these tenants, if indeed they even existed.
While investigating the Black Hand's roots in Sicily, on March 12, 1909, Police Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino was shot to death in the piazza of the Garibaldi Garden in Palermo. Petrosino's murder was ordered by the Black Hand/Unione Siciliana members in America and orchestrated by the head of the Mafia in Sicily – Don Vito Cascio Ferro.
Soon after the Petrosino murder, Saietta was not so lucky himself.
Saietta owned and operated, with his partner Joe Morello, a bar/restaurant, at 8 Prince Street, in Manhattan's Little Italy. However, the joint was actually a front for an extensive counterfeiting operation. Counterfeit two-and-five-dollar bills were shipped to the restaurant from Sicily, in containers of olive oil, or in crates of spaghetti, cheese, and wine. These counterfeit bills were sold throughout the United States for as little as 30 cents on the dollar. Soon, the U.S. Secret Service caught wind of their operation, and in 1909, both Morello and Saietta were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
After Saietta's incarceration, the presidency of the New York Chapter of the Unione Siciliana changed hands from one thug to another.
In 1918, the crown settled on the head of Brooklynite Frankie Yale, real name Uale. Yale's ascension to the throne put an end to the misguided impression that the Unione Siciliana was a Sicilian-only organization. Yale was born in the Calabrian town of Longobucco, Italy and had no Sicilian roots whatsoever. Not only was Yale president of the New York Chapter of the Unione Siciliana, but due to the influence of his friend, Johnny Torrio, a Brooklyn boy who was running Chicago with another Brooklynite Al Capone, in 1925 Yale also became National President of the Unione Siciliana.
But more on Frankie Yale later.
While Ignazio Saietta's Unione Siciliana was prospering in New York City, the Chicago chapters of the Unione Siciliana were also going to the wolves.
In 1920, the Chicago boss of the Mafia was Antonio D'Andrea, an ex-priest who in 1902 was also arrested for counterfeiting. After his release from prison, D'Andrea decided to go straight; at least somewhat straight. D'Andrea got a job as a professional translator, and then as a court translator. In 1919, using his legitimate position in the courts, D'Andrea ran for the presidency of the Unione Siciliana. D'Andrea was somehow elected, despite his criminal record, which tells you all you need to know about the crooked path the Unione Siciliana had taken in Chicago.
In 1921, D'Andrea decided to also run for Alderman in the 19th Ward against entrenched incumbent, John “Johnny de Pow Pow” Powers. That turned out to be not such a great idea.
Powers was an incorrigible saloon keeper, who was known for his attachments to Chicago's most infamous Irish criminals. The Chicago hoods loved “Johnny de Pow Pow,” but those not-so-in-love with Powers called him “The Prince of Boodlers.” Powers had been the powerful Alderman in the 19th Ward of Chicago since 1888, when almost all his constituents were Irish.
According to the Chicago Times, “The only way Powers can get votes is by hypocritically posing as a benefactor by filling the role of a friend in need when death comes. He has bowed with aldermanic grief at thousands of biers. He is bloodless; personally unattractive. His demeanor is one of timid alertness and anxiety to please, but he is actually autocratic, arrogant, and insolent.”
One detractor said, “Johnnie Powers distributed turkeys on Christmas Day, but he has robbed the people 364 days in the year, and he can afford to give them a little back on the 365th”.
The Chicago Herald also wrote, “Powers is as fit to be an Alderman as an elephant is to take part in a roller-skating match.”
By 1921, Italian immigrants had steamrolled into Chicago, so much so, Powers' 19th Ward was now eight percent Italian; with equal voting rights with the Irish voters. Powers still was successful in getting out the Irish vote, but until this time he had also been very successful with the Italian community.
“I can buy the Italian vote with a glass of beer and a compliment,” Powers told his pals.
However, running against the Italian powerhouse D'Andrea, president of the Unione Siciliana, changed the equation considerably for Powers. He decided it was time for more drastic action.
The campaigning by both men was exciting, to say the least. As both pleaded to their constituents for votes, bombs started exploding at an alarming rate; one on Power's front porch, another at a D'Andrea rally (seriously injuring five people), two more on D'Andrea's front porch, and a final one at D'Andrea's election headquarters.
Councilman James Bowler, a fast pal of Powers, told the press, “Gunmen are patrolling the streets. Alderman Powers's house is guarded day and night. Our men have been met, threatened and slugged. Gunmen and cutthroats have been imported from New York City and Buffalo. It's worse than the Middle Ages.”
The election was extremely close, but in the end Powers prevailed by a tiny margin of 435 votes.
However, D'Andrea turned out to be a sore loser, and as a result, the body count began to pile up in the Chicago streets.
Paul Labriola was one of the Italians who had backed Powers. On March 9, 1921, Angelo Genna, of the terrible Genna brot
hers and an ally of D'Andrea, shot Labriola full of holes on the corner of Halstead and Congress streets. On that same day, cigar store owner Harry Raimondi, who had switched sides from D'Andrea to Powers, was shot five times in the back behind the counter of his cigar store.
In quick succession, D'Andrea had his men eliminate Powers' loyalists Gaetano Esposito, Nicolo Adamo, and Paul Notte. Powers's faction countered by killing Joe Marino and Johnny Guardino, two of D'Andrea's most capable men.
On May 11, 1921, while D'Andrea was playing cards at a local restaurant, three men drove past the entrance to the apartment building where D'Andrea lived with his wife and two daughters - 902 South Ashland Avenue. After the driver parked the car in a narrow alley on the side of the building, the two other men quietly exited the car. They pried open an alley window with a chisel and then crept through a coal bin to the basement stairs. Up the stairs they went, until they stopped at a vacant ground floor apartment right across the hall from D'Andrea's apartment; an apartment they knew was vacant because they had told the former occupant, Abraham Wolfson, to move out, or die.
Shortly after, they watched from an open window facing the street as D'Andrea's car, driven by his bodyguard Joe Laspisa, pulled up to the entrance of the building. D'Andrea got out and walked into the building as Laspisa drove away.
As soon as D'Andrea reached the front door of his apartment, the two men opened fire with two shotguns. D'Andrea took the two blasts full in the chest, but he would not die without a fight. As his two killers exited the building the way they had entered, D'Andrea, lying in a pool of his own blood, fired five times at the fleeing men. But to no avail.
When the police arrived, they found a note pinned to the floor of the vacant apartment, along with a two-dollar bill.
The note said: “This will buy flowers for that figlio di un cane.”
Translation: “Son of a bitch.”