The Heroic Gangster_The Story of Monk Eastman, From the Streets of New York to the Battlefields of Europe and Back

by Neil Hanson

  Like New York, the outside world was also changing. The war that had broken out in August 1914 had consumed all of Europe, burned through the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, and drawn in armies from across the globe. Before the war Britain and Germany had been each other’s principal trading partners. With the war that came to an abrupt end and it became imperative for both countries to find alternative sources of supply of food, raw materials, and finished goods, and—insofar as war production allowed—alternative potential markets for their own exports. No markets for goods were greater and no industrial bases larger and more productive than those of the United States, and the European war had brought rising employment and growing affluence to New York’s manufacturing and dockside districts. The rail-yards, roads, and docks were busy around the clock; manufacturing, shipping, construction, finance, and the wholesale and retail trades all benefited; and textile mills and engineering factories in particular were working flat-out, producing uniforms, arms, ammunition, and military equipment for export. There was work aplenty, and at least some of those traditionally vulnerable to the lure of the gangs must have opted for a perhaps less glamorous and lucrative, but undeniably quieter and safer, life in paid employment.

  Although the United States still remained aloof from the fighting in Europe, Americans could not isolate themselves from the emotional impact of daily newspaper reports of battles, death, and destruction on an industrial scale, nor from the propaganda and psychological warfare waged by combatants seeking to influence American opinion and draw the United States into the conflict on their side.

  Britain shared a common language and heritage with many Americans, but British power, imperialism, and arrogance were probably resented by even more of them. Germany, too, had links of culture and language to a substantial minority American population but was also widely perceived as militaristic and overly aggressive. The two sides adopted very different approaches to wooing the American public. German propaganda, largely disseminated through the bunds—German-American societies—across the United States, was targeted directly at the public but tended to be blatant, even crude, and its often strident and hectoring tone did not sit well with Americans.

  If such an approach was often counterproductive, the British waged a much more subtle and delicate campaign, run by a propaganda bureau so secret that even most members of Parliament were unaware of its existence. Although there had been little prewar planning, Britain’s first offensive action, within a few hours of the declaration of war, was the severing of the direct undersea transatlantic cables linking Germany with the United States. As a result, London had a monopoly of direct cable and telephone traffic with the United States and used it to take the initiative in the struggle for American public opinion.

  American war reporters relied on the cables that Britain controlled, and that control was extended to the content passing through them both by direct censorship—a regular source of friction with the United States—and by skilled selection and manipulation of news content. Rather than making direct appeals to the American public—who in any case were unlikely to take kindly to being lectured by Englishmen—Britain devoted its efforts to influencing American opinion makers and providing the carefully chosen raw material from which columnists and editors selected the stories they would feature. As a result, the vast majority of stories about the war—including leaflets, cartoons, and features as well as hard news—that were put before the American people had originally been selected, modified, or created by British propagandists.

  Their task was made easier by German actions. The unprovoked aggression against Belgium and France, and particularly the invasion and occupation of “poor little Belgium,” had already cast Germany in an unsympathetic light even before atrocity stories of nuns being raped and babies bayoneted began to circulate. In the carnage and chaos of war, it was impossible to immediately disprove or verify such stories—many of which later proved to be false—but they had an undeniable impact on American public opinion.

  On May 7, 1915, the sinking of the Lusitania, with the loss of 128 American lives, signaled a sea change in attitudes toward the war and dealt a devastating blow to German hopes of keeping America neutral. In October of that year, the Red Cross nurse Edith Cavell was executed in German-occupied Belgium, and the reaction around the world was even more critical than it had been after the sinking of the Lusitania.

  Although President Wilson still held back, and would even campaign in the 1916 election on the slogan “He kept us out of war,” the die was now cast. American industry and finance were providing huge and still-expanding material support for the Allied war effort; the public—though horrified by the slaughter that had already seen millions killed—was increasingly on the Allied side; and among a growing number of American politicians, the question was no longer whether the United States would go to war, but when.

  How much impact the march to war had on Monk at the time is not clear, but as the war clouds gathered over the United States, Monk’s downward spiral continued. On May 17, 1915, the Albany chief of police flashed a warning over the wire, alerting police throughout the state to be on the lookout for an automobile in which a burglar was escaping with the proceeds of at least one robbery in the city. The thief was reportedly making hot tracks for New York, and the automobile was a very distinctive one: a Peerless seven-seater with a New York license plate and a coat of arms above the radiator cap.32

  Three Bronx detectives and two motorcycle policemen were stationed at the 242nd Street entrance to Van Cortlandt Park to intercept the thieves. By five o’clock in the afternoon they had watched at least fifteen thousand automobiles go past—then they caught sight of a seven-seater automobile with a coat of arms on the radiator cap, keeping close behind a trolley car.33 One of the motorcycle policemen flagged down the chauffeur, telling him he was breaking the speed limit, and the detectives, revolvers drawn, then jumped on the running boards on opposite sides of the car and pulled open the doors. Taken by surprise, the two men inside surrendered without a fight.

  “Well, if it isn’t Monk Eastman,” one of the detectives said.34

  The two men were taken to the Bronx detective bureau, where Monk identified himself as William Delaney, a plumber, forty years old, but refused to give his address. His companion said he was Charles Murphy, thirty-eight years old, an “agent,” of Albany, “known to the police in this city as a tin-horn gambler and tout.” In the tonneau of the car the police found a suitcase containing at least a thousand dollars’ worth of silverware, and some small pieces of jewelry. When detectives confronted him, Monk’s only comment was, “Well, you have the silver, so go as far as you can, but you can’t expect any help from me.”35

  After word was sent to Albany of his arrest, Detectives Ryan and Mullen visited Monk’s house at 71 Hamilton Street. There they found a woman—almost certainly Worthy—who gave her name as Mary Williams, but was recognized by Ryan as Monk’s wife.36 Questioned at police headquarters, she admitted to a passing acquaintance with a man she knew as William Delaney, but denied that she lived with him, or that he stayed at the apartment, even though detectives found several pawn tickets for watches and jewelry bearing the name of Delaney. They also discovered a Colt .380 revolver and a box of cartridges.

  Other incriminating articles found in the apartment included electric wires, drills, fuses, braces, flashlights, and other equipment used to blow safes or force entry into houses. When asked about them, “Mary Williams” denied all knowledge of them and insisted that they had been left there by workmen who had been making improvements to the house. Despite the “complete yegg [burglary or safe-cracking] outfit” found in the apartment, Albany police said that they did not believe that Monk had been actively engaged in the spate of burglaries that had hit the city and its neighborhood, but had acted more as a fence and a mastermind.37

  More than a thousand people crowded into Grand Central Terminal on May 19, 1915, to see the former “king” of the East Side gangs
ters and his codefendant taken under police escort to Albany. Another huge crowd was waiting at the Albany Union station, but detectives dodged it by taking their prisoners out through the subway and the American Express office. Only a month before, when brought before Chief Hyatt at police headquarters, Monk had pledged not only to “do right himself but to stop any ‘suckers’ from ‘pulling jobs’ in this city if he heard about them.”38 Now he remained tight-lipped, though he did deny having ever lived at 71 Hamilton Street, where the revolver, burglary equipment, and pawn tickets had been found.

  No one came forward to meet the three-thousand-dollar bail, and Monk and Murphy were held in custody. At their trial, Murphy was sentenced to one and not more than two years for his part in the burglary. Monk, who pleaded guilty to charges of grand larceny, second degree, and burglary, third degree, made an impassioned plea for a suspended sentence, swearing that he would reform and never again be found in the criminal courts, and that he had well-to-do relatives in the West—a reference to Monk’s sister Ida in California, Worthy’s family in Texas, or, just possibly, to one of his wealthy uncle’s children—who had promised to care for him if he reformed.39 The judge was unmoved and, after a brief deliberation, handed down a sentence of two years and eleven months in “Little Siberia”—Clinton Prison, Dannemora. On July 7, 1915, Monk passed through the steel gates to begin his sentence as prisoner number 12,151. He still refused to give an address and listed his occupation as plumber’s helper.

  Monk avoided further trouble while in jail and was released on September 11, 1917, after serving two-thirds of his sentence. In the time he had been away, the East Side had continued its evolution. Spurred on by Reform politicians, police had made huge inroads into the gangs and had jailed many gang leaders, but two other, more subtle factors were also at work. Trade unions, Jewish groups, and other social, political, and welfare organizations were increasingly influential on the Lower East Side, countering “the ethic of raw competition and predacity which had hitherto held sway and from which the underworld culture had drawn its strength and justification.”40 The Jews of the Lower East Side no longer depended on Tammany and the gangs for work or protection; that era was over.

  Even before the direct involvement of the United States, the First World War had also played a huge part in transforming the Lower East Side, bringing unprecedented prosperity to the garment industry and other Jewish trades, and to the docks, through which torrents of military and other goods were being shipped to Europe. The exodus of Jews uptown, to the Bronx, or across the East River to Brooklyn and Queens was also accelerating. At its peak the Lower East Side had been home to at least 500,000 Jews. By 1916, that had already been reduced to 313,000, and even that figure hid the aging of the remaining Jewish population, whose members were less and less susceptible to the overtures of the remaining gangs.41

  Returning to the rapidly changing streets of his old domain, Monk was at once subject to relentless police harassment, and within ten days was again before the magistrates’ court, this time on a probably trumped-up charge of brawling. He was held overnight and discharged the following morning. He left no record of the thought processes he went through during that night in jail, but he had spent two-thirds of the previous thirteen years in prison, time enough in which to reflect on the path he had chosen and the course his life might take in the future. If he remained in New York, he would continue to drift from jail sentence to jail sentence, for even if he turned his back on crime, he must have known that he would never be treated with anything other than suspicion, hostility, and brutality by the police.

  Whatever battles he fought with his conscience during that September night, by daylight Monk had made his decision. Until that moment, his whole adult life had been shaped by greed, crime, and gang violence. He had committed an endless string of robberies and assaults; lived off the earnings from theft, protection rackets, gambling, and prostitution; sold his brawn and his army of thugs to the highest bidder; and never once appeared to consider the consequences or the victims of his actions. Now, for almost the first time in his entire adult life, he made a decision that was not motivated—or not solely motivated—by self-interest.

  Since April of that year advertisements pasted on bulletin boards and appearing in the Brooklyn newspapers had announced that the “Twenty-third Regiment of Brooklyn, now in Federal Service, desires recruits eighteen to forty-five years of age.42 Report at Armory, Bedford and Atlantic Avenues, Brooklyn, for physical examination and enlistment. Men of good moral character required. Men with dependent relatives not wanted.” Monk fit at least some of those requirements, and at nine o’clock on the morning of September 21, 1917, he presented himself at the recruiting office and volunteered for active service, perhaps seeking in the army the sense of common purpose that he had once known with his gang.

  Now forty-three, Monk deducted four years from his age to improve his chances of acceptance.43 He had no skills that were usable in civil society, but in one area he was an unequaled expert: he had seen more action than even the most grizzled U.S. Army veteran. The question that the New York National Guard—into which the 23rd Regiment of Brooklyn was to be merged—now had to answer was whether the violence and killing that had seen Monk stripped of his citizenship and sent to the United States’ most notorious penitentiary could become acceptable when placed at the service of the state.

  Tammany politicians had never troubled their consciences over that, and if there were any doubts in the minds of the recruiting sergeant and his superiors, they were quickly resolved. Monk had “showed that the quality of patriotism was not lacking even in the heart of a gangster.”44 His criminal convictions for violence and gunplay were seen as no bar to service in war, and perhaps even a qualification for it; Monk Eastman was duly accepted as a doughboy in the New York National Guard.

  Part II

  11

  O’RYAN’S ROUGHNECKS

  When President Woodrow Wilson committed his country to war, the U.S. regular army was the same size as those of Chile, Denmark, and the Netherlands—countries with only a tiny fraction of the United States’ population and wealth.1 The United States was even more deficient in artillery, aircraft, tanks, mortars, machine guns, rifles, grenades, shells, ammunition, steel helmets, and gas masks than it was in manpower; most Europeans—including the German High Command—assumed that America’s major contribution to the Allied war effort would be to increase still further its supplies of credit, equipment, food, and munitions.

  However, Americans took a different view, and new recruits like Monk were certainly not joining the army merely to load supplies for others to use. A collection of reasons for enlisting, assembled by an army newspaper, revealed diverse motivations, showing that simplistic notions of patriotism and duty were far from the whole story.2 One young man had enlisted because he wanted to have a chance to ride on a train, never having done so before; another wanted to learn self-control; another to get some excitement; and yet another, perhaps far from unique, had joined up “because the girls like soldiers.” However, one reason might have been given by Monk himself: “I never did anything worthwhile on the outside, so I dedicated my life to my country, that I might be of use to someone.”

  Christened “Pop” by his army buddies, most of whom were at least twenty years younger, Monk became Private Edward Eastman, serial number 1207906, Company G, 2nd Battalion, 106th Infantry.3 4 He was one of the oldest men on active service with the American Expeditionary Force. The form that, like every recruit, he had to complete delved deep into his personal health, covering not only height, weight, eyesight, heart, nose, throat, and teeth, but also whether he “ever since childhood wet the bed when asleep … spat up blood,” or had “convulsions, gonorrhea, sore on penis, hemorrhoids, flat foot.”5 Surprisingly, syphilis as indicated by a positive Wassermann test—the first effective test for syphilis, devised by a German bacteriologist in 1906—was not in itself sufficient reason to reject a recruit, if other requirements were me
t, though syphilitics with open lesions or mental symptoms were refused. Perhaps fortunately for Monk, there was no question on the form relating to criminal records.

  The 106th Infantry was a regiment composed entirely of men with Brooklyn connections; Monk had given his home address as 13 Union Avenue, Brooklyn—and for the first time in his adult life, it might even have been his genuine address.6 Whereas the sister regiment, the 107th Infantry—the “Silk Stocking Regiment”—included many sons of New York’s wealthy, educated elite, almost all of the recruits to the 106th Infantry were workingmen; a breakdown of their occupations showed 390 clerks, 110 bookkeepers, 110 salesmen, 67 chauffeurs, 45 machinists, 25 electricians, 23 cooks, and 20 plumbers.

  With the 105th and 108th Infantry and their supporting units, the 106th and 107th formed the 27th Division, soon christened “O’Ryan’s Roughnecks” or “O’Ryan’s Traveling Circus” after their commanding officer, Major General John F. O’Ryan. A “slight, soldierly erect figure, blue eyes steeled to keen observing, a firmly set mouth half-hidden by his closely cropped mustache,” O’Ryan was a fervent advocate of improving the National Guard regiments to match the standards of the regular army.7 He demanded “trained dependability, disciplined initiative, and the Spartan spirit to ‘will’ success, no matter what the opposition,” and imposed rigid training that closely simulated actual combat, including the use of live ammunition.

  While the recruits began their basic training in the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park, the more experienced National Guardsmen from the regiment had already been put to work in upstate New York, guarding bridges, aqueducts, and water treatment plants thought vulnerable to sabotage. The dangerous combination of darkness, tension, paranoia, and “spy fever” led to a series of incidents with suspicious persons near the Croton aqueduct and on the dark hillsides of the Catskills.8 More than a thousand German and Austrian seamen had already been interned on Ellis Island, and paranoia about enemy spies was so strong that even an innocuous organization like the Austro-American Naturfreunde Tourist Club, whose aims were “to bring to its members a healthier and happier life by leading them from the city’s tumult into the quiet, clear invigorating country air,” found their country walks interrupted by troops who suspected them of being saboteurs.