The Gangs of New York

by Herbert Asbury

  All of these dives were havens of grace compared to Billy McGlory’s Armory Hall at No. 158 Hester street, for McGlory’s was probably the most vicious resort New York has ever seen. McGlory was born in a Five Points tenement before that district had been regenerated by the Five Points Mission and the House of Industry, and was reared in an atmosphere of vice and crime. In his youth he fought with and captained such famous gangs as the Forty Thieves and the Chichesters, but in the late seventies removed to Hester street, where he opened his dance hall and drinking den in the midst of a squalid tenement district which fairly swarmed with criminals and harlots. Armory Hall became the favorite haunt of the gangsters of the Fourth and Sixth Wards and the Bowery, and of the thieves, pickpockets, procurers and knockout drop artists who flourished throughout the city. Scarcely a night passed that the resort was not the scene of half a dozen gory fights; and it was not unusual to see a drugged and drunken reveller, his pockets turned inside out by the harpies who had fawned upon him but a few minutes before, dragged from a table by one of McGlory’s capable bouncers and lugged into the street, where his pockets were searched anew by the lush workers. Frequently the latter stripped the victim of his clothing and left him naked in the gutter. The thugs who kept the peace of McGlory’s were all graduates of the Five Points and water front gangs, and included some of the most expert rough-and-tumble fighters of the period; throughout the night they strode menacingly about the dive, armed with pistols, knives, brass knuckles, and bludgeons which they delighted to use.

  McGlory’s place was entered from the street through a dingy double doorway, which led into a long, narrow passageway with walls painted a dead black, unrelieved by a gas light or splash of color. Fifty feet down the passage was the bar-room, and beyond that the dance hall with chairs and tables for some seven hundred persons. A balcony ran around two sides of the hall, with small boxes partitioned off by heavy curtains and reserved for the best customers, generally parties of out-of-town men who appeared to be willing to spend considerable money. In these boxes were given exhibitions even more degraded than at the Haymarket. Drinks were served by waiter girls, but as an added attraction McGlory also employed half a dozen male degenerates who wore feminine clothing and circulated through the crowd, singing and dancing. Music was provided by a piano, a cornet and a violin. A night in McGlory’s was thus described by a writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer, who went slumming, or as it was then called, elephant hunting, among the dives of New York in the early eighties:

  There are five hundred men in the immense hall. There are a hundred females—it would be mockery to call them women. The first we hear of them is when half a dozen invade our box, plump themselves on our laps and begin to beg that we put quarters in their stockings for luck. There are some shapely limbs generously and immodestly shown in connection with this invitation. One young woman startles the crowd by announcing that she will dance the cancan for half a dollar. The music starts up just then, and she determines to do the cancan and risk the collection afterward. She seizes her skirts between her limbs with one hand, kicks away a chair or two, and is soon throwing her feet in the air in a way that endangers every hat in the box. The men about the hall are all craning their necks to get a sight of what is going on in the box, as they hear the cries of ‘Hoop-la!’ from the girls there.

  Some of my companions have been drawn into one of the little boxes adjoining ours. They come back now to tell of what depravity was exhibited to them for a fee. ... It is getting late. Across the balcony a girl is hugging her fellow in a maudlin and hysterical manner. Another girl is hanging with her arms around the neck of one of the creatures I described some time ago. His companion joins him—^a moon-faced fellow—and they come around to our box and ogle us. They talk in simpering, dudish tones, and bestow the most lackadaisical glances on different members of our party. . . . Billy McGlory himself is at the bar, to the left of the entrance, and we go and take a look at him. He is a typical New York saloon keeper—nothing more, nothing less. A medium sized man, he is neither fleshy nor spare; he has black hair and mustache, and a piercing black eye. He shakes hands around as if we were obedient subjects come to pay homage to a king. ... I have not told the half, no, nor the tenth, of what we saw at his place. It cannot be told. . . . There is beastliness and depravity under his roof compared with which no chapter in the world’s history is equal.

  Many of the most depraved of the downtown dives were in the vicinity of Police Headquarters at No. 300 Mulberry street. Half a block from Headquarters was a gambling house which catered only to policemen, and at No. 100 Mott street, a short distance away, was a saloon kept by Mike Kerrigan, better known as Johnny Dobbs, who served an apprenticeship with the river pirates of the Fourth Ward and then became a celebrated bank robber and fence. Dobbs is said to have handled more than $2,000,000 in stolen money, of which probably one-third went to him as his

  share of various adventures. But he ran through it, and eventually, in the middle nineties, was found unconscious in the gutter, and died in the alcoholic ward of Bellevue Hospital a few days later. It was Johnny Dobbs who, when asked why the crooks flocked to the neighborhood of Police Headquarters, replied, “The nearer the church the closer to God.”

  Tom Bray operated a similar resort at No. 22 Thompson street, but he was a more intelligent man than Dobbs, and banked his money, so that when he died he left an estate of more than $200,000. The House of Lords and the Bunch of Grapes, neighboring dives at Houston and Crosby streets, were much frequented by English thieves and confidence men. Among them were such famous crooks as Chelsea George, Gentleman Joe, Cockney Ward and London Izzy Lazarus, who was killed by Barney Friery in a dispute over the division of a plug hat full of jewelry, which London Izzy had stolen from a jewelry store after smashing the show window with a brick. The St. Bernard Hotel at Prince and Mercer streets was one of The Allen’s resorts, and along Broadway from Chambers to Houston streets were at least fifty basement drinking dens, of which the Dew Drop Inn was the most famous. At Broadway and Houston street, near Harry Hill’s concert saloon, was Patsy Egan’s dive, where Reddy the Blacksmith, a celebrated Bowery Boy, killed Wild Jimmy Hagerty, a Philadelphia gangster who had tried to make Reddy the Blacksmith stand on his head. Reddy was a brother to Mary Varley, a notorious shoplifter, confidence woman and fence, who kept a house in James street.

  Peter Mitchell amassed more than $350,000 in two years, from the profits of a saloon and assignation house at Wooster and Prince streets, but hanged himself to a whiskey tap before he could spend his fortune. He is said to have become religious in his middle age, and thereafter was afflicted with remorse over the way he had acquired his fortune. Johnny Camphine kept one of the most notorious dives in the city at Mercer and Houston streets, and in lieu of whiskey commonly sold colored camphine, or rectified oil of turpentine, which had its legitimate uses as a solvent for varnishes and as a fuel for lamps. It has been said that at least a hundred men were driven insane by drinking Johnny Camphine’s beverage, and over a long period an average of two men a night were taken out of the place, howling with delirium tremens. Within a few doors of Johnny Camphine’s place was a resort owned by a thief and gang leader called Big Nose Bunker, who was accounted one of the great brawlers and rough-and-tumble fighters of his time. But at last he became embroiled in a fight with a water front gangster who chopped off four of his fingers and stabbed him six times in the stomach. Big Nose carried his fingers to the police station in a paper bag and asked that a surgeon be sent for to sew them on, but before an ambulance could arrive he collapsed and died. There was great sorrow throughout the underworld.

  The reputation of the Bowery and the Five Points did not suffer from the fame of the resorts around Headquarters and in Satan’s Circus along Sixth avenue. Owney Geogheghan operated his celebrated dive at No. 105 Bowery, and next door at No. 103 was the Windsor Palace, owned by an Englishman and named in honor of the residence of Their Britannic Majesties. Both of these places were hells of ex
ceptional fragrance, wherein raw whiskey was sold for ten cents a drink and crowds of lush workers, pickpockets and blackjack artists waited for a visitor to fall unconscious so they could rob him. Murders were frequent in both Geogheghan’s and the Palace. Gunther’s Pavillion was another celebrated Bowery dive, and Bismarck Hall, at Pearl and Chatham streets, was noted for its annex, a series of cave-like rooms under the sidewalk, which were used for immoral purposes. The Hall acquired further renown when the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia visited it in the seventies and recognized one of the waiter girls as a Russian countess who had fallen into misfortune. The legend goes that he bought her freedom from the owner of the dive, to whom she had bound herself for a term of years, and took her back to Russia. Accounts of the incident do not divulge her name. Bismarck Hall and the House of Commons, nearby, were also the haunts of a Bowery character called Ludwig the Bloodsucker, who quaffed human blood as if it were wine. Ludwig was a very squat, swarthy German, with an enormous head crowned with a shock of bristly black hair. Huge bunches of hair grew out of his ears, and his unusual appearance was accentuated by another tuft which sprouted from the end of his nose.

  Milligan’s Hell was at No. 115 Broome street, and on Center street, near the Tombs, Boiled Oysters Malloy ran a basement resort called the Ruins, where three drinks of terrible whiskey were sold for a dime. Mush Riley added to the fame of the district with a dive only a few doors away. Riley acquired his nickname because of a fondness for corn meal mush dipped in hot brandy. He once gave an elaborate dinner to Dan Noble, Mike Byrnes, Dutch Heinrichs and other famous criminals, and served a Newfoundland dog as the pièce de résistance, a fact unknown to his guests until they had eaten heartily and praised the unusual flavor of the roast. Noble was chief of a gang of bank robbers and burglars, and to insure the success of his operations cannily obtained places for twenty of his men on the police force. They stood guard for their fellow criminals, and received shares out of the common funds. Noble finally reformed and invested his money in apartment houses.

  THE dives which flourished around Police Headquarters and along the Bowery were favorite resorts of the pickpockets, sneaks, panel thieves, badger game experts, lush workers, and knock-out-drop artists who operated in great numbers throughout the city. They also offered excellent business opportunities to the gangs of banco, confidence, and green goods men, for this was the period when countrymen actually bought gold bricks and counterfeit money, and were easy prey for the accomplished city slickers. The gold brick game, perhaps the most celebrated of all swindles, is supposed to have been invented by Reed Waddell, who was born in Springfield, Illinois, a few years before the Civil War. Waddell was a member of a prosperous and highly respectable family, but the gambling fever was in his veins, and even in his boyhood he acquired considerable local fame because of his willingness to

  Owney Geoghegan’s and the Windsor Palace

  take chances and the recklessness with which he played for high stakes. His family soon cast him off, and in 1880, when he was but twenty-one, he appeared in New York with the first gold brick ever offered for sale. Waddell’s brick was of lead, but he had it triple gold-plated wth a rough finish, and in the center sunk a slug of solid gold. It was marked in the manner of a regulation brick from the United States Assayer’s office, with the letters “U.S.” at one end and below them the name of the assayer. Underneath the name appeared the weight and fineness of the supposed chunk of bullion. When Waddell caught a sucker he was taken to an accomplice who posed as an assayer, with an office and all necessary equipment to delude the victim. This man tested the brick, and if the prospect was still dubious Waddell impulsively dug out the slug of real gold and suggested that the dupe himself take it to a jeweller. The latter’s test, of course, showed the slug to be actually of precious metal, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the sale was completed. Waddell sold his first brick for four thousand dollars, and thereafter never sold one for less than three thousand five hundred dollars. Sometimes he obtained twice that amount. In ten years he is said to have made more than $250,000 by the sale of gold bricks and green goods, for he branched out into the latter scheme after a few years of concentrated effort on the bricks. The green goods swindle, which was also called the sawdust game, first made its appearance in New York in 1869. It required two operators, who simply sold the victim a package of genuine money and then exchanged it for a bundle of worthless sheets of green or brown paper, or, if the currency was packed in a satchel, for another bag filled with sawdust. The green goods man first obtained the names of people who were regular subscribers to lotteries and various gift book concerns, and agents were sent over the country to look up the most promising. In due time those chosen for the sacr rifice received one of several circular letters which were in general use, of which the following was the most popular:

  Dear Sir: I will confide to you through this circular a secret by which you can make a speedy fortune. I have on hand a large amount of counterfeit notes of the following denominations: $1, $2, $5, $10 and $20. I guarantee every note to be perfect, as it is examined carefully by me as soon as finished, and if not strictly perfect is immediately destroyed. Of course it would be perfectly foolish to send out poor work, and it would not only get my customers into trouble, but would break up my business and ruin me. So, for personal safety, I am compelled to issue nothing that will not compare with the genuine. I furnish you with my goods at the following low price, which will be found as reasonable as the nature of my business will allow:

  These circulars, as well as follow-up letters and other literature, were sent boldly through the mails. Some of the green goods swindlers prepared elaborate booklets, illustrated with photographs of bank notes, which the prospective victim was told were counterfeit.

  In time Reed Waddell extended his operations to Europe, and was killed in Paris in March, 1895, during a dispute over the division of earnings with Tom O’Brien, a banco man whose only peers were Joseph Lewis, better known as Hungry Joe, and Charles P. Miller, who was called King of the Banco Men. Miller began his career as capper for a New Orleans gambhng house, but came to New York when he had saved thirty-five thousand dollars, and opened a small house of chance which was notorious as a skinning dive. Within a few years he was chief of a gang of banco and green goods men who worked principally in the Astor House and the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Miller’s headquarters were a lamp-post on the southwest corner of Broadway and Twenty-eighth street, against which he could generally be found leaning. In later years the term banco was confused by hurried writers with Buncombe or bunkum, and so degenerated into bunco, and was applied indiscriminately to every type of swindler; but originally it referred only to the operator of banco, an adaptation of the old English gambling pastime of eight dice cloth. Banco was introduced into the United States by a noted sharper who played it with great success in the western gold fields, and brought it into New York about 1860, after he had been driven out of San Francisco by the Vigilantes. Sometimes it was also called lottery. A variation of it was recently introduced in Chicago, but it has been unheard of in New York for many years.

  The game was played either with dice or cards. If the former, a layout of fourteen spaces was used, but if the latter the layout contained forty-three spaces. Of these forty-two were numbered, thirteen contained stars also, and one was blank. Twenty-nine of the numbers represented prizes ranging from two dollars, to five thousand dollars, depending upon the size of the bank. The cards were numbered from one to six, and eight were dealt to each player. The numbers were then counted, the total representing the number of the prize drawn on the layout. If the victim drew a star number, which had no prize, he was allowed to draw again on putting up a specified sum of money. He was usually permitted to win at first, and eventually the bank owed him from one hundred dollars to five thousand dollars. He was then dealt a hand which totaled twenty-seven, the number of the conditional prize, the condition being that he stake a sum equal to the amount owed him and draw again. Then, of
course, he drew a blank or star number and lost all he had put up. The banco steerer, who performed an office similar to that of capper for a gambling house, lost also, and it was his duty to cause such an uproar that the woes of the victim were overwhelmed. The swindle sounds a bit silly to our modern ears, but it was much in vogue for years throughout the United States and many of the banco men amassed fortunes. Hungry Joe, Tom O’Brien and Miller specialized in bankers, wealthy merchants, and other people of prominence, for not only did they have more money to lose, but were less apt to complain to the police. Hungry Joe scraped acquaintance with Oscar Wilde when the English author visited the United States on a lecture tour, and after dining with him several times at the Hotel Brunswick, inveigled him into a banco game. Wilde lost five thousand dollars, and gave Hungry Joe a check on the Park National Bank, but stopped payment when he learned that he had been swindled. Hungry Joe’s own boastful account of the affair, however, was that he took one thousand five hundred dollars in cash from the writer.