The Gangs of New York
Page 21
In the morning newspapers of November 8, Attorney Hilton announced that a reward of twenty-five thousand dollars would be paid for the return of the corpse and the arrest and conviction of the ghouls. The crime aroused a tremendous sensation throughout the East, and for months amateur sleuths busily searched barns and out-houses, and pried into the interiors of suspicious-looking carts and wagons. A score of new graves were opened in the belief that they might contain the missing body, and the newspapers printed many pages of comment and speculation. A double guard was placed over the grave of Commodore Vanderbilt at New Dorp, Staten Island, while armed men patrolled cemeteries throughout the city. The police soon learned where the shovel and lantern had been purchased, but there all clues ended, although more than a hundred professional criminals were summoned to Headquarters and compelled to furnish accounts of their movements on the night the body was stolen.
For the theft of the corpse of a great and powerful merchant was quite different from the ordinary crime, and it was generally understood in the underworld that the ghouls need not expect the usual protection from police and poUticians.
But nothing developed until the following January, when General Patrick H. Jones, of No. 150 Nassau street, a lawyer who had formerly been postmaster, called upon Superintendent Walling and displayed the knobs and two of the silver handles from the Stewart casket, together with a small strip of velvet and a triangular piece of paper, all of which he said he had received by express from Canada. He also showed several letters signed by Henry G. Romaine, asking him to act as intermediary in arranging for the return of the corpse, which Romaine said would be promptly done upon the payment of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash. General Jones was further requested to conduct the negotiations by personals in the New York Herald. In one of the letters Romaine said:
The remains were taken before twelve o’clock on the night of the 6th and not at three o’clock on the morning of the 7th. They were not taken away in a carriage but in a grocer’s wagon. They were not taken to any house near the graveyard, but to one near 160th street. They were then enclosed in a zinc-lined trunk and left on an early morning train. They went to Plattsburg and from there to the Dominion. There they were buried. Except that the eyes have disappeared, the flesh is as firm and the features as natural as on the day of interment, and can therefore be instantly identified. The enclosed piece of paper is exactly the size of the piece of velvet taken from the coffin, while the small strip sent you will prove to be of the same piece as that of the coffin.
After a conference with Hilton and Superintendent Walling, General Jones was instructed to publish a personal in the New York Herald on February 5, offering to open negotiations. On the 11th a reply, postmarked Boston, was received, in which Romaine offered to deliver the corpse on the following conditions:
1. The amount to be paid shall be $200,000.
2. The body will be delivered to yourself and Judge Hilton within twenty-five miles of the city of Montreal, and no other person shall be present.
3. The money is to be placed in your hands or under your control until Judge Hilton is fully satisfied, when you will deliver it to my representative.
4. Both parties to maintain forever an unbroken silence in regard to the transaction.
Hilton would not agree, and refused to continue the negotiations. Romaine then instructed General Jones to communicate with Mrs. Stewart, but the General refused to do so. About the middle of March Hilton offered twenty-five thousand dollars for the body or bones of Stewart, but Romaine “respectfully but firmly” declined. There the matter rested for more than a year. But late in the winter of 1880, Mrs. Stewart, who had been fearfully upset by the theft of her husband’s body, approached the ghouls on her own account through General Jones, and Romaine wrote that he would return the corpse for one hundred thousand dollars. Mrs. Stewart favored the immediate payment of this sum, but General Jones countered with an offer of twenty thousand dollars, which Romaine accepted, but again laid down stringent conditions for the payment of the money and the delivery of the body. He directed that the funds, in currency, be placed in a canvas bag, and that a messenger leave New York alone at ten o’clock of a designated evening in a one-horse wagon, and drive into Westchester County along a lonely road which was indicated on a map of the district. Romaine wrote that some time before morning the messenger would be met and given further directions.
A relative of Mrs. Stewart volunteered to act as messenger, and at the appointed hour drove into the country. Several times during the night he thought he was being watched, but it was not until three o’clock in the morning that a masked horseman appeared and directed him to turn his cart into a lane. At the end of a mile the messenger came upon a buggy drawn across the road, from which two men clambered and approached him. Both were masked, and one carried a heavy gunny sack. A triangular strip of velvet was offered to the messenger as proof of identity, and the money was promptly paid over, whereupon the ghouls dumped the gunny sack into the wagon and drove northward in their own vehicle. The messenger hurried back to the city with the bones of the merchant rattling in the sack beneath his feet. An undertaker packed them into a trunk, and the next night they were taken in a special freight car to Garden City, L. I., where an empty coffin had been prepared in the burial vault of the Garden City Cathedral. In it the sexton and the messenger deposited the bones, and the coffin was then hidden in an inaccessible place beneath the dome of the Cathedral. There they remain to this day, and for many years were protected by a hidden spring which, if touched, would have shaken a cluster of bells in the church tower and sent an alarm throughout the village.
The Return of A. T Stewart’s Bones
THE WHYOS AND THEIR TIMES
THE GREATEST of the gangs which came into existence in New York after the Civil War was the Whyos, as vicious a collection of thugs, murderers, and thieves as ever operated in the metropolis; they were at least the peers of the fierce river pirates of the old Fourth Ward. The origin of the name is unknown, but is believed to have arisen from a peculiar call sometimes employed by the gangsters; the gang itself appears to have been an outgrowth of the Chichesters of the old Five Points, who thus outlived the Dead Rabbits, Plug Uglies, Shirt Tails, and other combinations of the Paradise Square district. The Whyos maintained their principal rendezvous in Mulberry Bend, slightly north and east of the Five Points proper, although during the summer many
“Hell’s Kitchen,” NewYork.—[Drawn by Charles Graham]
of them could always be found lounging in a churchyard at Park and Mott streets. The principal thoroughfare of the Whyo domain was Baxter, the Orange street of the old Five Points, which later became famous for its secondhand clothing shops and the pullers-in who dragged customers in from the sidewalks by main strength. Baxter street was the home of the original Harris Cohen, who opened a store and achieved such a tremendous and immediate success that at least a dozen other enterprising Jewish merchants quickly flung out signs bearing his name, so that all the shops for more than a block were apparently operated by the original Harris Cohen. One of the Cohens kept a cage filled with English sparrows in his window, because to his delighted ears their song was “cheap! cheap! cheap!” The money spent for bird seed was his advertising appropriation.
Although they were at home in Baxter street and the other thoroughfares of Mulberry Bend, the Whyos extended their operations throughout the city, and made some of their most celebrated raids along the lower West Side and in the Greenwich Village district. They fought many desperate battles with other gangs and with the police, and were not finally exterminated until the middle nineties. The last haunts of these eminent thugs were an Italian dive at Worth and Mulberry streets, and a Bowery drinking place called the Morgue, the owner of which boasted that his product was equally efficient as a beverage or an embalming fluid. It was in the Morgue that the Whyos had their last great fight, which began when English Charley and Denver Hop quarrelled over the division of loot and started
shooting at each other. Soon a score of men were blazing away with revolvers, but all were drunk and no one was injured. The proprietor of the Morgue said they were very silly to expect to hit anyone after drinking his liquor.
The Whyos were at the height of their power during the eighties and early nineties, when the membership of the gang included many celebrated criminals, among them Hoggy Walsh, Fig McGerald, Bull Hurley, Googy Corcoran, Baboon Connolly and Red Rocks Farrell. These heroes were not only thugs and brawlers of the first water, but a majority were also expert sneak thieves, burglars and pickpockets, and many owned dives, panel houses and places of prostitution. Big Josh Hines became famous as the first man to hold up a stuss game, a gambling pastime which in later years became an important source of revenue for the Jewish and Italian gangs. Stuss made its appearance in New York about the middle eighties, and games soon dotted the area east of the Bowery from Chatham Square to Fourteenth street, and westward to Broadway.(
“Them guys must be nuts,” he peevishly told a detective. “Don’t I always leave ’em somethin’? All I wants is me share!”
It has been said that during their period of greatest renown the captains of the Whyos would accept no man as a member until he had committed a murder, or at least had made an honest effort to thus enroll himself among the aristocracy of the underworld. This legend probably grew out of a remark made by Mike McGloin, an early Whyo who was hanged in the Tombs on March 8, 1883, for the murder of Louis Hanier, a saloon keeper of West Twenty-sixth street. Hanier protested when he came upon McGloin robbing his till, and the indignant gangster promptly killed him with a slung-shot. Said McGloin the day after the murder: “A guy ain’t tough until he has knocked his man out!” The later Whyos were devout believers in McGloin’s dogma; many of them eagerly accepted blackjacking, murder and mayhem commissions, and advertised by means of printed and written price lists their willingness to maim and kill. The pioneer in this method of procuring clients was Piker Ryan, who appears to have been a thug of exceptional enterprise. When he was at length brought to book for one of his many crimes, the police found this list in his pocket:
Punching ............................$2
Both eyes blacked ...................... 4
Nose and jaw broke.....................10
Jacked out (knocked out with a blackjack) .... 15
Ear chawed off.........................15
Leg or arm broke.......................19
Shot in leg............................25
Stab ................................25
Doing the big job ......................100 and up
Ryan made good use of his opportunities, as was apparent from a notebook which was also in his possession. One page was headed “Jobs,” and below the heading were half a dozen names. Some had check marks after them, which Ryan explained meant that the tasks had been completed to the satisfaction of his clients.
The greatest leaders of the Whyos were Danny Lyons and Danny Driscoll, who exercised joint dominion over the gang.
Appropriately enough, they were hanged in the Tombs within eight months of each other. In 1887 Driscoll and John McCarthy became involved in a quarrel over a Five Points girl named Beezy Garrity, and in the furious gunfight which followed a bullet struck and killed her. Driscoll was convicted of the crime, and was hanged on January 23,1888. Lyons was probably the most ferocious gangster of his period, a worthy rival of the earlier Mose the Bowery Boy and the later and equally eminent Monk Eastman. He was also one of the first of the great gang leaders to avail himself of feminine counsel. He frequently consulted his girls, Lizzie the Dove, Gentle Maggie, and Bunty Kate, all of whom proudly walked the streets for him and faithfully gave him their earnings. But Lyons was not satisfied with the manner in which they maintained him, and added a fourth girl. Pretty Kitty McGown, to his entourage. He expelled her lover, Joseph Quinn, who vowed eternal enmity, and for several months he and Lyons went gunning for each other. Both celebrated the Fourth of July, 1887, by drinking heavily, and when they met next morning at the Five Points their dispositions were even more murderous than usual. They blazed away at each other across Paradise Square, and Quinn fell dead with a bullet in his heart. Lyons went in hiding for a few months, but was finally captured, and was put to death on August 21,1888. Bunty Kate and Pretty Kitty shrugged their shoulders and obtained other lovers immediately, but Gentle Maggie and Lizzie the Dove aroused much comment in the underworld by donning widow’s weeds and refusing to accept any business engagements until they had observed a decent period of mourning. However, they occasionally went out for refreshments, and met one night in a Bowery dive, where they undertook to decide whose sorrow was greatest, and to whom Lyons had been more affectionate. Gentle Maggie finally settled the argument by stabbing Lizzie the Dove in the throat with a cheese knife, and Lizzie died. Her last words were that she would meet Gentle Maggie in hell and there scratch her eyes out.
Another shining light of the old Whyos, before the time of Driscoll and Lyons, was Dandy Johnny Dolan, who was not only a street brawler of distinction, but a loft burglar and sneak thief of rare talent as well; nothing was too great or too trivial for him to steal. His fellow gangsters regarded him as something of a master mind because he had improved the technique of gouging out eyes; he is said to have invented an apparatus, made of copper and worn on the thumb, which performed this important office with neatness and dispatch. His invention was used by the Whyos with great success in their fights with other gangs. He was also credited with having imbedded sections of sharp axe blade in the soles of his fighting boots, so that when he overthrew an adversary and stamped him, results both gory and final were obtained. But ordinarily Dandy Johnny did not wear his fighting boots. He encased his feet in the finest examples of the shoemaker’s art, for he was the Beau Brummel of the gangland of his time, and was extraordinarily fastidious in his choice of raiment and in the care of his person. Under no circumstances, not even to take part in a brawl or raid that promised to be rich in loot, would he appear in public until his hair had been properly oiled and plastered against his skull, and his forelock tastefully curled and anointed. He had a weakness for handkerchiefs with violent red or blue borders, and for carved canes, especially if the handle of the stick bore the representation of an animal. Of these he owned a great store, to which he added as opportunity offered; he frequently promenaded the Five Points and Mulberry Bend with a vivid kerchief knotted about his throat and others peeping from his pockets, while he jauntily swung a handsome cane.
It was his passion for these adornments that cost him his life. James H. Noe, a brush manufacturer, decided to enlarge his business during the summer of 1875, and began the erection of a new factory at No. 275 Greenwich street. It was his custom to walk to the property each Sunday morning and observe the progress of the work. On Sunday, August 22, 1875, he entered the structure as usual, and climbed the ladders and temporary stairways to the roof. There he came upon Dandy Johnny Dolan, his eye gouger upon his thumb and a blue bordered handkerchief knotted about his throat, ripping away the lead of the gutters. Mr. Noe marched him downstairs, but when they reached the ground floor Dandy Johnny struck the manufacturer on the head with an iron bar.
Dandy Johnny Dolan Surprised by Mr Noe
inflicting injuries from which Mr. Noe died in a week. With his victim unconscious. Dandy Johnny proceeded to rob him, taking a small sum of money and a gold watch and chain, and also carrying away Mr. Noe’s cane, which had a metal handle carved in the likeness of a monkey. Then Dandy Johnny very foolishly tied his own handkerchief about the manufacturer’s face. The story goes that the thug appeared in the haunt of the Whyos in Mulberry Bend with one of Mr. Noe’s eyes in his pocket, bu
t the tale is probably apocryphal.
Detective Joseph M. Dorcy was put to work upon the case, and within a few days learned that the watch and chain had been pawned at a small shop in Chatham street, the present Park Row. Some time later two women who had walked the streets for Dandy Johnny, but had been dismissed in favor of younger and handsomer girls, recognized the handkerchief as his, and reports were received by the detective that Dandy Johnny had been seen about the resorts of the Bend and Five Points proudly displaying a cane with a monkey’s head in metal for a handle. He was immediately arrested, and at his trial was identified as the man who had pawned the watch and chain. On April 21,1876, he was hanged in the courtyard of the Tombs. His captor, the astute Detective Dorcy, became one of the most celebrated sleuths of his time. Another of his famous exploits was the capture of Canon Leon L. J. Bernard, who had embezzled $1,400,000 of the funds of the See of Tournai, Belgium. Dorcy pursued the reverend scoundrel to Vera Cruz, and not only arrested him but recovered $1,200,000 of the stolen money.
ABOUT the time the Whyos were coming into prominence the gangsters of the Hartley Mob, who made their rendezvous in the dives around Broadway and Houston street, were attracting much attention by using a hearse and carriages to transport their plunder through the streets. The vehicles proceeded like a funeral, with the stolen goods concealed behind the black drapings of the hearse and on the floors of the carriages, in which rode the gangsters heavily armed and dressed in funereal garments. The Hartley Mob chieftains also employed the hearse to haul their battlers. Once some twenty members of the gang set out to avenge an insult which had been offered to them by one of the Five Points gangs, and the latter gathered in force in Mulberry street to repel them. But the Five Pointers divided their ranks to permit a hearse and funeral carriages to pass, and were surprised and overwhelmed when the Hartley Mob thugs suddenly swarmed out of the vehicles and attacked them. The Hartley Mob numbered among its members some expert burglars and thieves, but was broken up by the police within a few years, for its leaders were never able to make proper political connections and so received scant protection.