One of the notorious early groups of juvenile terrorists was the Fourth Avenue Tunnel Gang, which had a rendezvous in the street car tunnels along Fourth avenue, now lower Park avenue, from Thirty-fourth to Forty-second streets. Richard Croker, of Tammany Hall fame, is said to have been a leader of this gang. In later years, before he gravitated through the natural course of events into politics, Croker was a pugilist of parts, and engaged in several formal bouts from which he emerged victorious. Another famous juvenile gang was the Baxter Street Dudes. These lads made their appearance in the seventies under the leadership of an angelic appearing but in reality tough little boy known as Baby-Face Willie. The Dudes operated their own playhouse, which they called the Grand Duke’s Theater, in the basement of a stale beer dive at No. 21 Baxter street. There they wrote and performed plays and musical shows, and produced them at slight expense, for whenever they required scenery or properties they simply stole what they needed from the larger theaters along the Bowery or from the merchants. The theater became a favorite resort of street boys from all parts of the city, and of elephant hunters, or slummers, and the Dudes did a handsome business, dividing the profits on a pro rata basis. The admission charge was ten cents. But other juvenile gangs of Five Points and Mulberry Bend became jealous of their success, and began to bombard the theater with stones every time a performance was attempted, and scarcely a night passed without a fight. The police finally closed the playhouse, partly on this account and partly because the boys persistently refused to pay the regular city amusement tax.
During the reign of Monk Eastman as king of the gangsters, in the late nineties and the early part of the present century, the most efficient gang of youngsters in the city was a group of pickpockets dominated by Crazy Butch, one of Eastman’s henchmen who was finally slain by Harry the Soldier in a fight over a woman, an expert shoplifter known as the Darby Kid. Crazy Butch himself was thrown onto the world at the tender age of eight, and within two years had abandoned the arduous labor of shining shoes and selling newspapers for the larger profits of picking pockets. When he was thirteen he stole a dog, named him Rabbi, and in the course of time trained the animal to snatch a handbag from a careless woman’s hand and race with it through the streets until he had shaken off pursuit. Then he met Crazy Butch at Willett and Stanton streets, and with proudly wagging tail turned over the spoil. In his late teens Crazy Butch assumed the leadership of an East Side gang of small boys, and within a few months had a fleet of between twenty and thirty youngsters prowling the streets snatching purses and muffs. They went abroad on daily expeditions. Crazy Butch riding a bicycle slowly down the street while his young thieves flanked him on either sidewalk. Presently Crazy Butch bumped into a pedestrian, preferably an old woman, whereupon he alighted from his machine and launched into a tirade of abuse which quickly drew an indignant throng. And while the crowd pressed closer to see and hear what was transpiring, the boys flitted into the street, and in a moment their gifted fingers were prying into pockets and handbags. When the crowd had been thoroughly plundered, or if a policeman appeared, the boys scattered, and Crazy Butch suddenly apologized to the victim of his rough riding and pedalled away to the appointed rendezvous, where he collected the stealings of the boys and rewarded each of them with a few cents.
The character of the juvenile gangs changed in proportion to the increased activity of welfare agencies, better housing conditions, greater efficiency of the police and, especially, to reforms in the educational system which permitted effective supervision and regulation of the children of the tenement districts. It is quite likely that there are as many juvenile gangs in New York today as there have ever been, for forming in groups and fighting each other is part of the traditional spirit of play, but in general they have become much less criminal. Until recent years, when the custom has fallen somewhat into disuse, the election-night bonfires were a prolific source of fights between the juvenile gangs, for when one group ran short of material it raided the blazing heaps of wood around which another gang capered. These fights^lways resulted in a more or less permanent enmity, and election nights were followed for several weeks by frequent battles as the despoiled gang sought revenge. In many parts of the city, particularly the Harlem and upper East Side districts, the boys fought with wooden swords and used wash-boiler covers for shields. But invariably the excitement of battle overcame them and they resorted to bricks and stones, with the result that a few heads and many windows were broken.
KINGDOMS OF THE GANGS
THERE WERE two important Democratic factions in New York when the mayoralty campaign opened in 1886—Tammany Hall, and the New York County Democracy, which had been organized in 1880 by Abram S. Hewitt and other prominent Democrats who had become disgusted with the rapacity of the Tammany dictators. Hewitt was nominated for Mayor by the County Democracy, the Republicans took the field under the banner of Theodore Roosevelt, and the Union Labor Party, which had recently been formed and had shown considerable strength, named Henry George. At the behest of Richard Croker, that remarkably astute politician who ruled the metropolis for so many years, Tammany Hall endorsed the candidacy of Hewitt, who was elected by a majority of about twenty-two thousand over George and more than thirty thousand over Roosevelt. But the new Mayor, although he owed his election largely to Tammany, soon displayed an astonishing honesty, and had scarcely been inaugurated before he began to rid the city of some of its wickedness. He closed Billy McGlory’s, the Black and Tan, Harry Hill’s, the American Mabille and other resorts in the lower part of the city, as well as the Haymarket, the French Madame’s and the dives which had made the Satan’s Circus district around Sixth avenue such a noted area of vice and dissipation. He also raided many of the luxurious gambling houses which had hitherto operated under the special protection of the police and the politicians, and launched vigorous campaigns against the gangsters and other criminals.
Mayor Hewitt naturally incurred the enmity of his erstwhile political supporters, and in 1888, when he ran for re-election as the candidate of the County Democracy, Tammany Hall overwhelmingly defeated him with Hugh J. Grant. The Haymarket and other uptown resorts promptly reopened their doors, but only a few were ever restored to their former splendour, for business and residential encroachments caused Sixth avenue to become less and less vicious, and the center of vice and crime soon shifted to the old Tenth Ward. By the early nineties this district had acquired great renown as the most depraved area in the United States, with street after street lined with brothels and dives and infested by prowling thugs. The white slave industry during this period was carried on almost entirely in the Tenth Ward, and the pimps and procurers organized into gangs and boldly held meetings at which they exchanged and sold women as the traders at the old Bull’s Head Tavern used to sell cattle. One of these groups maintained elaborate club rooms in Allen street, where its members met formally twice a week to discuss market conditions and make various business arrangements. For many years the Ward was under the domination of Charles R. Solomon, who called himself Silver Dollar Smith and owned the famous Silver Dollar Saloon in Essex street, across from the Essex Market Court. His handy man and fixer was a lawyer named Max Hochstim, hero of a story which is still related with relish along the East Side. Said Hochstim to a judge with whom he wished to curry favor: “Your Honor, you sure look swell in the judicial vermin.”
Alexander S. Williams was appointed Police Inspector in 1887, and because of the many scandals which had arisen during his administration of the Tenderloin precinct, was transferred to the East Side. Four years later William S. Devery, better known as Big Bill, was appointed to a captaincy and assigned to Williams’ district. He assumed command of the Eleventh precinct, which comprised the nine blocks bounded by Chatham Square, the Bowery, and Division, Clinton, and Houston streets. The Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, as head of the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime, began a crusade against Inspector Williams and Captain Devery during the early nineties, and provided much of the eviden
ce upon which the Lexow and Mazet committees based their respective investigations in 1894 and 1899, through which the extent of the police and political graft was revealed. It was shown by testimony that the influence of Tammany Hall had so permeated the Police Department that the district leaders dictated appointments and assignments, and that practically every member of the force had joined Tammany organizations, and paid without protest the contributions which were levied upon them for the maintenance of the Tammany chieftains. Captain Creedon confessed that he had paid fifteen thousand dollars to political henchmen to obtain his promotion to a captaincy, and Captain Max Schmittberger, later Chief Inspector, who had been a Sergeant in the Tenderloin precinct, admitted that he had collected money from gamblers and keepers of disorderly resorts, and had paid it over to Inspector Williams. Testimony was also produced that Wilhams was interested in a brand of whiskey, and had foisted it upon the saloon keepers, raiding their places if they failed to push it. One woman who owned a chain of houses of prostitution testified that she paid thirty thousand dollars annually for protection, and others said that when they opened their establishments they were called upon for an initiation fee of five hundred dollars, and that thereafter a monthly charge ranging from twenty-five dollars to fifty dollars was placed upon each house according to the number of inmates. Street walkers told the investigators that they paid patrolmen for the privilege of soliciting, and gangsters, sneak thieves, burglars, pickpockets, footpads, and lush workers, all testified that they gave the police or politicians a percentage of their stealings. More than six hundred policy shops paid an average of fifteen dollars a month each, while three hundred dollars was collected from pool rooms, and even larger sums from the luxurious gambling houses.
Entrance to a Tenement-House and Alley The door at the left leads directly into a tenement. The archway at the right is a dark passageway leading to filthy yards and tenements in the rear
Inspector Williams denied any wrong-doing, but admitted that although his salary had been small throughout his career, he had been thrifty enough to purchase a valuable estate at Cos Cob, Connecticut, the dock alone costing thirty-nine thousand dollars, and that he owned a yacht, a house in the city and other property, and had several large bank accounts. He told the committee that he had amassed his fortune by speculating in building lots in Japan. No action was begun against him as a result of the revelations before the Lexow Committee, but within a year he voluntarily resigned from the police force and entered the insurance business, where he soon ran his fortune into the millions. He died in 1910. But the evidence against Big Bill Devery was so strong that the Board of Police Commissioners dismissed him from the force in 1894. He was indicted for extortion a few months later, but was acquitted when tried before a jury in 1896. Meanwhile he had been restored to duty as captain by a ruling of the Supreme Court, and within a few months the Police Commissioners exhumed the old charges and again endeavored to rid the department of him. But Devery promptly obtained another order from the Supreme Court, and the Commissioners were forbidden to bring him to trial. So great was the Tammany influence, and so high did Devery stand in the councils of the Wigwam, that early in 1898 he was appointed Inspector, and within six months became Chief of Police. Devery was a huge man, seldom without a big black cigar tilted in a corner of his mouth, and he possessed a likable personality and various tricks of expression which made him very picturesque and popular.
Robert A. Van Wyck, the last Mayor of New York before the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond were merged with Manhattan to form the present Greater City, was a staunch admirer of Devery, and called him the best chief of police New York ever had. Dr. Parkhurst, however, continued to produce evidence of graft and corruption, and the newspapers conducted extensive campaigns to clean up the city, attributing to Devery’s demoralizing administration practically every crime committed in the metropolis. The New York Herald was especially antagonistic during the race riots of August, 1900, when mobs of black and white men fought for two days through the streets and on the housetops of Hell’s Kitchen. The trouble began when Negro gangsters murdered a patrolman who was searching for a criminal among the tenements along Thirty-seventh street between Eighth and Ninth avenues. He was killed in the afternoon, and that night members of the white gangs assembled on the corner of Thirty-seventh street and Ninth avenue, where they assailed passing Negroes with stones and brickbats, seriously wounding several.
The Negroes soon attacked in large numbers, reinforced by the gangs of San Juan Hill, as the district north of Fiftieth street west of Eighth avenue had been called in honor of the exploits of the Negro troops during the Spanish-American War. The Herald charged that the trouble soon degenerated into a police riot, with patrolmen actively aiding the white gangsters. ‘Tn each case,” said the Herald, “the white youths were the aggressors. After they had started the game several policemen would rush in and complete their work by battering the unfortunate colored men with nightsticks, frequently arresting them. This attitude of Devery’s men was not calculated to stop the turmoil between the races. When the chief ordered his men to clear Eighth avenue many persons attracted by curiosity were hurt. The police made a magnificent charge down Eighth avenue, past Devery’s ‘four corners’ at Twenty-eighth street, injuring many women and children who were gathered there.”
Despite the attacks upon him, Big Bill Devery remained in power until early in 1901, when the Legislature passed a law abolishing the office of Chief of police and reorganizing the Department. The head of the force was thereafter called Commissioner. Devery became a Deputy Commissioner, but his turbulent spirit was restless under the quiet of a desk job, and he soon resigned and went into the real estate business. He died in 1919 and was highly eulogized by the press.
WHILE Inspector Williams and Big Bill Devery waxed fat and prosperous by their despotic rule of the lower East Side, and other police officials emulated them throughout the city, the Whyos and their contemporaries were vanishing and many new gangs were appearing which equalled the earlier thugs in fighting qualities and excelled them in criminal achievement. Their names even yet cause great fear and trembling, and are frequently taken in vain by crowds of upstart young hoodlums. For almost fifteen years Manhattan Island south of Times Square was divided by the gangs into clearly defined kingdoms, and the boundaries were garrisoned and as carefully guarded as are the frontiers of civilized nations. The Five Pointers, successors to the Dead Rabbits, the Plug Uglies, and the Whyos, mustered fifteen hundred members and were lords of the area between Broadway and the Bowery, and Fourteenth street and City Hall Park. Their principal rendezvous was the New Brighton Dance Hall in Great Jones street, owned by Paul Kelly, chieftain of the gang. There they held their social functions and planned raids upon enemy territory. The gang led by that prince of thugs, the great Monk Eastman, could call more than twelve hundred warriors to the colors, and ruled the territory from Monroe to Fourteenth streets and from the Bowery to the East River; including the treasure-laden Red Light district. This gang scorned to adopt an euphonious pseudonym, but called itself, with simple pride, the Eastmans. Its headquarters were in an unsavory dive in Chrystie street near the Bowery, from which the police in an indignant moment once removed two wagon loads of slung-shots, revolvers, blackjacks, brass knuckles, and other implements of gang warfare. For more than two years a bitter feud raged between the Eastmans and the Five Pointers over a delicate question of territorial rights, and the dispute was never settled, although a score of pitched battles were fought and the lives of perhaps thirty gangsters were sacrificed. Monk Eastman contended that the domain of the Five Pointers ended at Nigger Mike Salter’s dive, the Pelham, in Pell street, but Paul Kelly held that the frontier of his kingdom was the Bowery, and that he was entitled to whatever spoil might be found on the eastern side of that thoroughfare.
The Gas House Gang, with about two hundred thugs under its banner, had moved southward from the old Gas House district around East Thirty-fifth street, and ranged
Third avenue from Eleventh to Eighteenth street. In this comparatively restricted area the Gas Housers found much to amuse and enrich them, and when suitable opportunities failed to present themselves, invaded the territory of other gangs. They were especially adroit footpads, and in their heyday averaged about thirty holdups a night.
The Gophers were lords of Hell’s Kitchen, their domain running from Seventh to Eleventh avenues and from Fourteenth street to Forty-second street. They were fond of hiding in basements and cellars, hence their name. The Gophers could put no more than five hundred men into the field, but every man was a thug of the first water, and not even Monk Eastman cared to lead his gangsters into Hell’s Kitchen unless he outnumbered them at least two to one; and on those rare occasions when the Gophers made an excursion in force into the East Side, there was great scurrying among the gangs of the latter area. A favorite resort of the Gophers was a saloon in Battle Row (Thirty-ninth street between Tenth and Eleventh avenues) kept by Mallet Murphy, who was so called because in lieu of a bludgeon or common bung starter, he employed a huge wooden mallet to repel intruders and silence obstreperous customers. The Gophers were so turbulent and so fickle in their allegiance that their leaders seldom retained the crown more than a few months at a time, so that the gang produced no outstanding figure of the stature of Monk Eastman or Paul Kelly. However, many are recorded in police history as desperate criminals and fierce fighters. Newburg Gallagher, Marty Brennan, and Stumpy Malarkey were noted Gophers of their time, and Goo Goo Knox also acquired considerable fame, both as a Gopher and as one of the founding fathers of the Hudson Dusters. Another great hero of the Gophers was One Lung Curran, who, when his girl bewailed the lack of a suitable fall coat, strode into the street and blackjacked the first policeman he encountered. Removing the uniform blouse from the prostrate officer, One Lung Curran presented it to his sweetheart, who stitched it into a smart jacket of mihtary cut which created a fashion, so that every Gopher in Hell’s Kitchen felt impelled to follow One Lung Curran’s example. For some time a constant procession of policemen staggered into the West Forty-seventh street station house in their shirt sleeves. The fad was not checked until the police began to patrol the district in parties of four and five, and the Strong Arm Squad made frequent excursions into the Kitchen and left bruised and battered Gophers in its wake. Still another Gopher of distinction was Happy Jack Mulraney, so called because he always appeared to be laughing. However, the smile was caused by a partial paralysis of the muscles of the face. In reality Happy Jack was a verjuiced person and very sensitive about his deformity; when his chieftains wished to enrage him against an enemy they told him that slighting remarks had been made about his permanent grin. Happy Jack was finally sent to prison for the murder of Paddy the Priest, who owned a saloon in Tenth avenue and was a staunch friend of Happy Jack’s until he asked the gangster why he did not laugh on the other side of his face. Happy Jack then shot him and for good measure robbed the till.
The Gangs of New York Page 23