The Gangs of New York

by Herbert Asbury

  A score of smaller gangs in Hell’s Kitchen were proud to owe allegiance to the Gophers and fight under the leadership of One Lung Curran and other captains, who had made the name of their gang a synonym for ferocity and Hell’s Kitchen one of the most dangerous areas on the American continent. Chief among these lesser bands were the Gorillas, the Rhodes Gang, and the Parlor Mob. The Gophers also had the support of the Battle Row Ladies’ Social and Athletic Club, better known as the Lady Gophers, which was composed entirely of women whose mettle as fighters had been tested in frequent combats with the police. This organization was led by Battle Annie, the sweetheart of practically the entire Gopher gang, and one of the most popular figures in the history of Hell’s Kitchen. Like her illustrious predecessors, Gallus Mag, Sadie the Goat, and Hell Cat Maggie, she was partial to mayhem, and is said to have held classes in the art, giving her followers the benefit of her experience and researches. Over a period of more than a half dozen years Battle Annie was the Queen of Hell’s Kitchen, and acquired widespread renown as the most formidable female of her time. When the practice of hiring gangsters was begun by the labor unions and employers. Battle Annie earned a handsome income by supplying female warriors to both sides in industrial disputes. For many years there was scarcely a strike in which women were engaged that did not find Battle Annie and her gangsters enthusiastically biting and scratching both pickets and strike-breakers.

  The Hudson Dusters controlled the West Side of Manhattan below Thirteenth street and eastward to Broadway, the western frontier of Paul Kelly’s kingdom, although their right to the latter thoroughfare was bitterly contested by a small gang called the Fashion Plates. They also ranged as far south as the Battery, but their principal theater of operations was the Greenwich Village district, where a maze of crooked, winding streets offered excellent hiding places. There they had displaced the Potashes, the Boodle Gang, and other combinations of the early nineties. The Dusters were friends and allies of the Gophers, many of their leaders having formerly been members of the Hell’s Kitchen gang who had moved southward when the Kitchen became too hot to hold them, but they held aloof from the feuds of the Eastmans, the Five Pointers, and other gangs of the East Side. Their principal enemies were the Marginals and the Pearl Buttons, who disputed with them for the privilege of plundering the docks and shipping along the Hudson River water front. In later years, after the Hudson Dusters had been smashed by the police and their captains had succumbed to the drug habit or had been sent to Sing Sing for various crimes, the Marginals, under the leadership of Tanner Smith, became the dominant gang of the district, subduing the Pearl Buttons and reducing them to the status of vassals.

  The Hudson Dusters were organized in the late nineties by Kid Yorke, Circular Jack, and Goo Goo Knox, who had fled the Gopher domain after leading an abortive insurrection against the reigning prince. Later leaders of unusual notoriety and prowess were Red Farrell, Rickey Harrison, Mike Costello, Rubber Shaw, and Honey Stewart, while Ding Dong became known as the most accomplished thief of the gang. Ding Dong prowled the streets attended by half a dozen young ragamuffins, who clambered onto express wagons and threw off packages to their master. Ding Dong clutched them to his bosom and fled into the crooked streets of Greenwich Village, while the driver of the wagon and the police bent themselves to the hopeless task of catching the boys. When the gang was founded headquarters were established in a building at Hudson and Thirteenth streets, the owner of which, under compulsion, donated two rooms for a club house. As the gang increased in numbers and power these quarters became too small, and the Dusters came into possession of an old house in Hudson street below Horatio, later the site of the Open Door Mission. There they installed a piano, and at all hours of the night danced and caroused with the prostitutes of the water front, becoming a nuisance and an affliction unto the honest householders and merchants of the neighborhood, upon whom they levied for supplies. But few complaints were made, for the Dusters were quick to revenge slights or betrayals, whether fancied or real. Once when a saloon keeper scornfully refused to provide half a dozen kegs of beer for a party, the Dusters invaded his establishment, wrecked the fixtures, and carried away his entire stock of liquors. But the police eventually took cognizance of the situation and made several raids upon the Hudson street house, at length smashing the piano and throwing the furnishings into the street. The Dusters moved into Bethune street, and thence to various points as the Strong Arm Squad searched them out.

  The journalists were very fond of the Hudson Dusters, and their activities were much described, so that they became one of the best known gangs of the period. And while they were never such fighters as the Eastmans, the Five Pointers, and the Gophers, they were a rare collection of thugs and much of their reputation was deserved. Perhaps ninety per cent, of the Dusters were cocaine addicts, and when under the influence of the drug were very dangerous, for they were insensible to ordinary punishment, and were possessed of great, if artificial, bravery and ferocity. They seldom attacked the police in force, but whenever they had a grievance against an individual officer it was well for him to request a transfer, for sooner or later he was assaulted and maimed. Such a catastrophe happened to Patrolman Dennis Sullivan of the Charles street station, who announced during the last years of the Dusters’ power that he intended, single-handed, to smash the gang. He succeeded in arresting ten of the gangsters, including Red Farrell, the leader, and his ambitions were discussed at great length at various meetings of the Dusters in Hudson and Bethune streets. It was finally decided that Sullivan must be taught a lesson, and the decision was approved by a Greenwich Village politician who utilized the Dusters at election time as repeaters and sluggers, and who felt that an attack upon the policeman would prove to the poUtical higher-ups that the Hudson Dusters really controlled their territory. So one night in Greenwich street, as Patrolman Sullivan was about to arrest a member of the gang against whom a tradesman had complained, the Dusters pounced upon him when his back was turned, and he went down fighting valiantly against a score of slugging, kicking thugs. His coat was stripped from his back, his nightstick, shield and revolver taken away, and he was badly beaten with stones and blackjacks. When he had been knocked unconscious the Dusters withdrew, but determined to give him a permanent injury.

  He was therefore rolled over on his back, and four of the gangsters stepped forward and ground their heels in his face, inflicting frightful woimds. police reserves took him to a hospital, where he remained for many weeks.

  The successful attack upon Patrolman Sullivan aroused a sensation throughout gang circles, and the Gophers formally congratulated the Hudson Dusters upon the thoroughness of the job, and especially upon the added touch of stamping. One Lung Curran, who finally succumbed to the affliction which had given him his sobriquet, was in the tuberculosis ward of Bellevue Hospital when he heard the news, and celebrated the exploit in poetry, for he had long been the acknowledged bard of the West Side gangsters:

  Says Dinny, “Here’s me only chance To gain meself a name;

  I’ll clean up the Hudson Dusters,

  And reach the hall of fame.”

  He lost his stick and cannon.

  And his shield they took away.

  It was then that he remembered Every dog has got his day.

  There were half a dozen other verses, describing the assault in great detail. The Hudson Dusters had the poem printed on sheets of coarse paper, and copies were left at every barber shop and drinking place in the Duster kingdom. Especial care was taken to get them into the hands of the police of the Charles street station, and a dozen were sent to Police Headquarters and to the hospital where Patrolman Sullivan was a patient. For months the ditty was sung in the streets by Ding Dong’s juvenile thieves, and by the other gamins who admired the mighty deeds of the Dusters and, as they grew older, joined the gang.

  THESE were the principal gangs of the period, but by no means all of them; they were numbered by the score. Perhaps fifty small groups which operated sou
th of Forty-second street owed allegiance to the Gophers, Eastmans, Five Pointers, Gas Housers, and Hudson Dusters, and in the event of a general gang war rallied under the banners of the great captains. Each of these small gangs was supreme in its own territory, which other gangs under the same sovereignty might not invade, but its leader was always responsible to the chieftain of the larger gang, just as a prince is responsible to his king. The McCarthys, the Batavia Street Gang, the Squab Wheelman, and the Cherry Street Gang, which strove mightily to revive the glories of the old Fourth Ward river pirates, were among Eastman’s free companies. Crazy Butch organized the Squab Wheelman at a time when Eastman rented bicycles and ran a bird and animal store in Broome street, thus paying a compliment to a branch of his chief’s business as well as to his passion for pigeons. Those who would win the favor of the great gang leader were sedulous in their devotion to bicycling, and the Squab Wheelmen were expected to rent a wheel at least once a week, whether they could ride one or not. Crazy Butch maintained his headquarters in a hall in Forsyth street, and one summer night, having received information that the Five Pointers proposed paying him a call in force, he resolved to test the courage of his warriors. Accompanied by three of his closest advisers. Crazy Butch rushed up the stairs and into the hall, blazing away with two revolvers. Some sixty of the

  Wheelmen were playing cards and drinking, and all but two or three promptly went out the windows or down the back stairs. Little Kishky, sitting on a window sill, became so excited that he fell backwards into the street and was killed.

  Another of Eastman’s beloved heutenants was a beetle-browed thug who had been born Charles Livin, but whose great strength and ferocity gave him the sobriquet of Ike the Blood, although so far as the police ever learned he had no notches on his gun. Ike the Blood followed Eastman on many desperate forays, and was always much in demand whenever a stabbing or blackjacking commission came to the chieftain. He was finally killed by the Gophers in a dive at Seventh avenue and Twenty-eighth street, whither he had gone to the rescue of a friend who had been cornered by the terrors of Hell’s Kitchen and was trying to shoot his way to freedom.

  One of the Gophers was also killed, but it was never known whether the bullet that dropped him was fired by Ike the Blood.

  Such noted Five Pointers as Johnny Spanish, Biff Ellison, Eat ’Em Up Jack McManus and Nathan Kaplan, otherwise Kid Dropper (6) who was destined to become the last of the great gangsters, led their own groups and at the same time were loyal to Paul Kelly. McManus began his career as a prize fighter, but was unsuccessful and abandoned the prize ring to become bouncer in McGuirk’s Suicide Hall on the Bowery. Later he became Sheriff of the New Brighton, and was high in the confidence of Paul Kelly. He earned his title of Eat ’Em Up Jack because of his fondness for mayhem; he would have been much at home during the early days of the Fourth Ward. McManus was finally killed as a result of a quarrel with Chick Tricker, who kept a saloon of singular depravity in Park Row. Tricker criticized the manner in which several of the ladies of the New Brighton flung their feet in the dance, and Eat ’Em Up Jack took it upon himself to avenge the insult. After the dive had closed for the night the pair met at Third avenue and Great Jones street, and in the pistol battle which followed Tricker was shot in the leg. Twenty-four hours later, while Tricker was in a hospital and so had a perfect alibi, a gangster crept up behind Eat ’Em Up Jack in a darkened block of the Bowery and cracked his skull with a piece of lead pipe wrapped in a newspaper. It was common knowledge in the underworld that Sardinia Frank had wielded the bludgeon, but he was never arrested. In later years Sardinia Frank became bouncer at the Normandie Grill at Broadway and Thirty-eighth street, and when he was asked what he was doing so far away from his usual haunts, he replied, simply:

  “I’m here to keep out everybody I know!”

  Johnny Spanish, whose real name was John Weyler—he was a Spanish Jew and claimed kinship with Butcher Weyler of Cuban fame—was a slim, undersized youth of seventeen when he first began to make a stir in the underworld. Spanish was very taciturn and morose, and was inclined to brood over his troubles, real and imaginary. For several years he kept strictly to himself, operating as an independent thug and accepting commissions from all who would pay his price, but later he attached himself to the Five Pointers and led a small gang during the final years of the Paul Kelly dynasty. Spanish never stirred abroad without two revolvers stuck in his belt, and when he was on important errands carried two more stuffed into his coat pockets, besides the regulation equipment of blackjack and brass knuckles. One of his chief exploits, which won him favorable mention among the gangsters, was the robbery of a saloon in Norfolk street, owned by Mersher the Strong Arm. Spanish served notice that he would call at a certain hour to empty the till, and promptly on the minute appeared in the doorway with his hat drawn down over his eyes, and with two revolvers in his hands. Another man was behind him, but apparently was serving only as gun-bearer, for although he also carried two guns, he did not offer to use them. Spanish, however, sent a bullet crashing through the mirror over the bar, and then strode into the saloon, where he not only emptied the till but the pockets of some ten customers as well, lining them up against the bar while his assistant searched them.

  Louie the Lump

  Kid Twist

  Humpty Jackson

  Monk Eastman

  It was soon after the adventure in Norfolk street that Johnny Spanish fell in love, and was seized with a burning desire to ornament his adored one with silks and precious stones. But he had not sufficient money, and naturally thought of stuss, and principally of the game operated by Kid Jigger in Forsyth street between Hester and Grand, one of the most prosperous on the East Side.

  Kid Jigger bore a wide reputation as a gun fighter, and the gangsters respected his prowess and left him in peace, but Spanish was blinded by love and avarice, and so was undeterred by Jigger’s renown. He visited the stuss game and calmly notified Kid Jigger that thereafter the profits were to be equally divided, although Kid Jigger could continue to do the hard work of running the game.

  “An’ why,” demanded Kid Jigger, “do I give youse half my stuss graft?”

  “Because,” said Spanish, “if youse don’t I’ll bump youse off an’ take it all.”

  Kid Jigger laughed loud and long, and Spanish glared at him balefully from his brooding black eyes.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll bump youse off tomorrow night.”

  And on the appointed evening, as Kid Jigger stepped from his stuss house into Forsyth street, he found Johnny Spanish waiting for him on the corner. Spanish immediately opened fire with both guns. Jigger scurried back into his castle and escaped injury, but one of Spanish’s bullets struck and killed an eight-year-old girl, who was playing in the street. Spanish fled the city, and when he returned a few months later found that the woman for whom he had gone to so much trouble had abandoned him for the more imposing figure of Kid Dropper. He made no threats against her, but one night bundled her into a taxicab and drove into a marsh near Maspeth, Long Island. There he backed her against a tree and fired several shots into her abdomen. She was found unconscious several hours later, but meanwhile had given birth to a baby, three of whose fingers had been shot away. The police caught Spanish after awhile, and early in 1911 sent him to prison for seven years. Kid Dropper was imprisoned a few months later, receiving a sentence of seven years for robbery, complicated by general cussedness.

  IN addition to the great gangs and their vassal combinations, there were also a large number of independent groups which controlled small areas within the domains of the larger gangs, and vigorously opposed any attempt to absorb or suppress them. As we have recorded, the Marginals, Pearl Buttons, and Fashion Plates laid claim to small portions of the Hudson Duster kingdom; and in the Eastman territory the Fourteenth Street Gang, under the leadership of A1 Rooney, successfully maintained its hegemony for several years, as did the Yakey Yakes, the Lollie Meyers and the Red Onions. The Yakey Yakes
operated around Brooklyn Bridge under the leadership of Yakey Yake Brady. They finally left the field when Yakey Yake died of tuberculosis.