The Black Hand

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The Black Hand Page 31

by Stephan Talty


  Some 250,000 people: Radin, “Detective in a Derby Hat.”

  “crack-brained anarchists”: Unidentified clipping, Petrosino newspaper archive.

  Verdi’s Requiem: Author’s email interview with Lt. Tony Giorgio, New York Police Band.

  “If Petrosino had died”: New York Times, April 13, 1909.

  In a courtroom: Unidentified clipping, Petrosino newspaper archive.

  Five and a half hours: Ibid.

  17. GOATVILLE

  he’d been posing: New York World, March 15, 1909.

  “SLAYERS OF PETROSINO”: New York Journal, August 7, 1909.

  “a den of lions”: New York World, March 13, 1909.

  “I only wish”: New York Times, March 14, 1909.

  “He was eager”: Clipping from the New York Times, March 14 or 15, 1909, Petrosino newspaper archive.

  “All of those men”: New York Times, March 16, 1909.

  “The police in Palermo”: Washington Post, March 21, 1909.

  “There is no question”: New York Tribune, March 14, 1909.

  “Had Congress done”: Frank Marshall White, “The Increasing Menace of the Black Hand,” New York Times, March 21, 1909.

  In February 2013: Barbie Latza Nadeau, “Who Really Murdered Joe Petrosino?” dailybeast.com, June 24, 2014.

  “The man who sleeps here”: New York World, March 14, 1910.

  “I live in”: Undated article from the New York Evening Telegram, Petrosino newspaper archive.

  Detective Salvatore Santoro: New York Sun, March 27, 1909.

  “until the agitation”: Washington Post, March 20, 1909.

  “We received every assurance”: New York Times, May 3, 1909.

  “Petrosino is dead”: Quoted in Pitkin, The Black Hand, p. 116.

  “The killing”: Iorizzio and Mondello, “Origins of Italian-American Criminality.”

  “She felt that history”: Interview with Susan Burke.

  More than fifty years: Ibid.

  “Vachris is a bull-necked”: Brooklyn Eagle, October 26, 1907.

  “I feel certain”: Nashville American, March 14, 1909.

  The secrecy of the mission: For details on Vachris’s mission, see White, “The Black Hand in Control.”

  “The Sullivans!”: This account is from Richard F. Welch, King of the Bowery: Big Tim Sullivan, Tammany Hall, and New York City from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era (New York: Excelsior Editions, 2009), p. 129.

  “waste, rascality”: “Bingham Comes Out Against Tammany,” New York Times, October 13, 1909.

  Vachris spent his days: For Vachris’s exile within the NYPD and the cover-up of his mission, see White, “The Passing of the Black Hand.”

  “It is probable”: “The Black Hand Under Control,” New Outlook, June 14, 1916, p. 347.

  “The certificates were suppressed”: Quoted ibid.

  There is: Salvatore LaGumina, Wop! A Documentary History of Anti-Italian Discrimination (Toronto: Guernica Editions, 1999), p. 101.

  “The acceptance”: Ibid.

  “How utterly unjust”: Frank Marshall White, “Against the Black Hand,” Collier’s Weekly, September 1910, p. 49.

  “As he grew older”: Pettaco, Joe Petrosino, p. 193.

  Comito recalled: Comito confession.

  18. A RETURN

  “a tall, dark, pleasant man”: New York Sun, April 8, 1914.

  One of his earliest ideas: Carey, Memoirs of a Murder Man, p. 133.

  “The fat policeman”: Town Topics, June 26, 1916.

  Professor L. E. Bisch: New York Sunday World, August 27, 1916.

  “radiate good nature”: Quotations are from Arthur Woods, Policeman and Public (New York: Arno Press, 1971), pp. 75, 67.

  “branch of Social Service”: The Churchman 31, no. 11 (November 1917).

  The effects were immediate: New York Telegram, August 25, 1916.

  “NOTICE: COPS KEEP OUT”: Carey, Memoirs of a Murder Man, p. 141.

  “Murder can be done cheaper”: New York World, December 2, 1914.

  Three years before: Terence O’Malley, Blackhand Strawman (By the author, 2011), p. 3.

  “was their favorite prey”: “The Nightstick and the Blackjack, Well Handled, Have Driven New York’s Bandmen into Prison or Ways of Decent Living,” New York Herald, September 2, 1917. This long article is the source for most of the account of the gangs of Woods’s era.

  “[The Society] had perpetrated”: White, “The Passing of the Black Hand.”

  That afternoon: For the account of the Longo case, see ibid.

  “Commissioner Woods”: Washington Post, December 14, 1914.

  the profitable world: See Fiaschetti, You Gotta Be Rough, p. 15: “The 18th Amendment endowed the Black Hand with fabulous funds and took it from isolated Italian quarters and bestowed it on the cities at large.”

  “perfect example of detective work”: White, “The Passing of the Black Hand.”

  In the 1930s: See Charles Zappia, “Labor, Race and Ethnicity in the West Virginia Mines,” Journal of American Ethnic History 30, no. 4 (Summer 2011): 44–50.

  Those who’d spent time: For Cascio Ferro’s last days, see Pettaco, Joe Petrosino, pp. 193–95.

  “Men live and die”: New York American, April 13, 1909.

  Select Bibliography

  Bertellini, Giorgio. Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.

  Carey, Arthur. Memoirs of a Murder Man. New York: Doubleday, 1930.

  Collins, Paul. The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars. New York: Crown, 2011.

  Corradini, Anna Maria. Joe Petrosino, a 20th Century Hero. Palermo: Provincia Regionale di Palermo, 2009.

  Critchley, David. The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891–1931. New York: Routledge, 2008.

  Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.

  Dash, Mike. The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia. New York: Random House, 2009.

  Dickie, John. Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

  Ewen, Elizabeth. Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side, 1890–1925. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1985.

  Fiaschetti, Michael. You Gotta Be Rough: The Adventures of Detective Fiaschetti of the Italian Squad. New York: A. L. Burt, 1931.

  Gambino, Richard. Blood of My Blood: The Dilemma of the Italian-Americans. New York: Doubleday, 1974.

  Golway, Terry. Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics. New York: Liveright, 2014.

  Henderson, Thomas M. Tammany Hall and the New Immigrants: The Progressive Years. New York: Arno Press, 1976.

  Hess, Henner. Mafia and Mafiosi: The Structure of Power. Lexington, Mass.: Saxon House, 1970.

  Horan, James D. The Pinkertons: The Detective Dynasty That Changed History. New York: Crown, 1967.

  Jackson, Kenneth T., and David S. Dunbar. Empire City: New York Through the Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

  Kobler, John. Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone. New York: Putnam, 1971.

  LaGumina, Salvatore J. Wop! A Documentary History of Anti-Italian Discrimination. Toronto: Guernica Editions, 1999.

  Lardner, James, and Thomas Reppetto. NYPD: A City and Its Police. New York: Holt, 2001.

  Lupo, Salvatore. History of the Mafia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.

  McAdoo, William. Guarding a Great City. New York: Harper & Bros., 1906.

  Moquin, Wayne. A Documentary History of the Italian-Americans. New York: Praeger, 1974.

  Moses, Paul. An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians. New York: NYU Press, 2015.

  Nelli, Humbert. The Business of Crime: Italians and Syndicate Crime in the United States. N
ew York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

  Painter, Nell Irvin. Standing at Armageddon: A Grassroots History of the Progressive Era. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2008.

  Park, Robert E., and Herbert Adolphus Miller. Old World Traits Transplanted. New York: Harper, 1921.

  Pettaco, Arrigo. Joe Petrosino. New York: Macmillan, 1974.

  Pitkin, Thomas M. The Black Hand: A Chapter in Ethnic Crime. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977.

  Potter, Claire Bond. War on Crime: Bandits, G-Men, and the Politics of Mass Culture. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998.

  Pozzetta, George E. “The Italians in New York City, 1890–1914.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1971.

  Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. Eastford, Conn.: Martino Fine Books, 2015.

  Sante, Luc. Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York. New York: Farrar, Straus and Ciroux, 2003.

  Talese, Cay. Unto the Sons. New York: Knopf, 2006.

  Tonelli, Bill. The Italian American Reader. New York: Harper, 2005.

  Train, Arthur. Courts and Criminals. New York: McKinlay, Stone & Mackenzie, 1912.

  Weiner, Tim. Enemies: A History of the FBI. New York: Random House, 2013.

  Welch, Richard F. King of the Bowery: Big Tim Sullivan, Tammany Hall, and New York City from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era. New York: Excelsior Editions, 2009.

  Werner, M. R. Tammany Hall. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1928.

  Woods, Arthur. Crime Prevention. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1918.

  ———. Policeman and Public. New York: Arno Press, 1971.

  Yochelson, Bonnie, and Daniel Czitrom. Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn-of-the-Century New York. New York: New Press, 2008.

  Zacks, Richard. Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York. New York: Anchor, 2012.

  Zolberg, Aristide R. A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006.

  Index

  A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

  A

  Abate, Francesco, 132–34

  Acena, Vincenzo, 241

  Adams, Henry, 9–10

  African Americans, 160

  Agnone, Italy, 105

  Alabama, 160–61

  Albany Evening Journal, 104

  Alfano, Enrico, 115–16, 118–21

  Alger, Horatio, 6

  American Israelite, 210

  anarchism, 179–80, 213, 232

  Anarchists of Paterson, 171

  Arato, Vincenzo, 186–87

  Asheville, North Carolina, 160–61

  Atlanta Constitution, 203

  B

  Bagnato, Joe, 93

  Baker, William F., 226, 227

  Balstieri, Giuseppe. See Alfano, Enrico

  Baltimore, Maryland, 21–22, 32, 53, 94, 147

  Baltimore Sun, 110

  Bananno, Nicolò, 138–40

  Barberri, Giovanni, 134–35

  Barrel Murder, 25–27, 57, 76, 178–79, 195

  Barroncini, Antonio and Mrs., 36

  Barzini, Luigi, 42–43

  baseball, 145–46

  “Bat Masterson Library” (newspaper serial), 92–93

  Benteregna, John, 90–91

  Berlin, Germany, 206

  Big Pietro, 135

  Bingham, Theodore A.

  appointed as NYPD commissioner, 99–102, 104–5

  assassination attempt, 221

  blind aggression of, 242

  call for vigilantes and, 164

  criticism of, 162

  firing of, 225, 228

  intelligence operation planned by, 172–73, 185

  Italian Squad and, 145

  letter to secretary of state, 218, 222

  official roof tree of, 152

  Pasquale Enea and, 197

  Petrosino’s assassination and, 203, 204, 217, 218, 219

  Petrosino’s cover blown by, 187, 193

  Petrosino’s letter to, 190–91

  at Petrosino’s wedding, 151

  secret service of, 166–75, 204

  Vachris and, 224, 228

  Birmingham, Alabama, 160

  Bisch, L. E., 232

  Bishop, William A., 189, 191, 192, 200, 204, 207–8, 224

  Black Hand. See Society of the Black Hand

  Black Hand (film), 223

  Bonanno, Frank, 119, 145

  Bonaventura, Pronzola, 154–55

  Bonaventure, Max, 89

  Bonnoil, Maurice, 45

  bootblacks, 5, 6

  Borgnine, Ernest, 223

  Boston Daily Globe, 85

  Bozzuffi, Antonio, 120–32, 128

  Bozzuffi, John, 128–32

  “bracing” suspects, 121–22

  Bresci, Gaetano, 72–73, 74, 95

  Brogno, Natale, 19, 20, 22

  Brooklyn, New York, 96–97

  Abate in, 132–34

  Adelina’s move to, 222–23

  Black Hand crimes and criminals in, 34, 47, 50, 52

  fear in, 152

  Francis Corrao as lawyer in, 113

  horse manure in, 8

  Italian immigrants in, 81

  obstacles to fighting Society in, 162

  Petrosino in, 123

  police officers threatened in, 59

  Society’s public debut in, 30–31

  Terrio in, 136

  Tony Mannino kidnapping, 31–33, 35

  Brooklyn Bridge, 9, 68, 69

  Brooklyn Eagle, 36, 163, 223

  Brooklyn Italian Squad, 141–42, 162, 175, 205–6, 221, 223

  Brooklyn Superbas, 145–46

  Burke, Susan, 266 n

  C

  Calabria (ship), 198

  Calabria and Calabrians

  courtship rituals, 107

  earthquake in, 206

  immigrants from, 57, 82, 146, 176

  Irish and, 10

  “Michele,” 230

  monetary value of lives of, 82

  California (steamship), 114–15, 116, 118

  Caltanissetta, Sicily, 197

  Calvary Cemetery, 216, 220

  Camorra, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120–21

  Campania and Campanians, 2, 5, 8–9, 13, 94, 111, 146. See also Naples and Neapolitans

  Campisi (kidnapping suspect), 180

  Campisi, Mr. (grocer), 128, 130, 131

  Candela, Gioacchino, 190

  Candler, Asa G., 87

  Capone, Al, 136–37

  Cappiello, Nicolo, 30–31

  Caputo, Pietro, 135

  carabinieri, 118, 188

  Carbone, Angelo, 19–22

  Carbone Limestone Company, 93

  Carhipolo, Detective (on Italian Squad), 119

  Carlino, Giuseppe, 111

  Carnegie, Andrew, 207

  Caruso, Angelo, 195

  Caruso, Enrico, 98–99, 205, 210

  Cascio Ferro, Vito

  after Petrosino’s assassination, 243–44

  Barrel Murder and, 26, 27–28

  in Sicily, 178–82, 195, 196, 197, 219, 229, 230

  Cassidi, Ugo, 45–46

  Castellano, Paolo, 55

  Catholic Church in Sicily, 182

  Catholic Protective Society, 147

  Catholic Times, 211

  Cavone, Rocco

  Bananno arrest and injury of, 138–39

  Francesco Longo kidnapping and, 237, 238, 239–40

  Petrosino’s death and, 202

  Petrosino’s recruitment of, 62–63

  Cecala (counterfeiter), 230

  Ceola, Baldassare, 191–93, 199–200, 219, 224

  Ceramello, Salvatore, 20–22

  Chadwick, Father (NYPD chaplain), 220

  Chance, Frank, 145

  Chicago, Illinois

  assassination plans in, 196


  Benteregna in, 90

  Black Hand victims in, 48, 98

  Colosimo and, 135–37

  concerned citizens’ group in, 143

  fear in, 83

  Italian immigrants in, 3, 81

  Italians depicted on stage in, 42

  Longobardi as “Petrosino” of, 196, 233

  newspapers in, 32 (See also specific newspaper names)

  Rockefeller’s granddaughter in, 158–59

  Sineni and, 17–18

  White Hand Society in, 146–47, 156

  Chicago Cubs, 145

  Chicago Outfit, 135–36

  Chicago Police Department, 147

  Chick Triggers (gang), 234

  Children’s Aid Society, 213

  Christina, Mr. (cobbler), 128, 130, 131

  Cianfarra (Petrosino family friend), 185–86

  Cincinnati Enquirer, 88

  Cincinnati Reds, 146

  Cito (counterfeiter), 229

  Clearwater, John, 51–52

  Cleveland Plain Dealer, 84

  Clinton, Illinois, 158

  Cohan, George M., 210, 221–22

  Collier’s, 93

  Colombo crime syndicate, 172–73, 179

  Colosimo, Big Jim, 135–37

  Columbia University, 205, 232, 233

  Columbus, Christopher, 111

  Columbus Italian Hospital, 111

  Comito, Antonio, 176–77, 229–30, 238

  Connery, Simon J., 85

  Connors, Frances, 25–26

  contadini, 9, 11–12, 50

  Corrao, Charly, 113

  Corrao, Francis, 113, 162, 219

  counterfeiting operation, 176–77, 229–30, 238

 

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