The most famous of the independent gangs was that captained by Humpty Jackson, whose activities centered around an ancient graveyard in the block bounded by First and Second avenues and Twelfth and Thirteenth streets. Jackson was a unique figure in the underworld of his time. He was fairly well educated, and was seldom to be seen without a book in his pocket. His favorite authors were Voltaire, Herbert Spencer, Darwin, and Huxley. He owned a good library, comprising principally works on philosophy, and is said to have had more than a casual knowledge of Greek and Latin. His disposition, however, was anything but philosophical; he was morose and quick-tempered, and would shoot at the slightest provocation. He carried no less than three revolvers, one in his pocket, another slung under his hump, and a third in a special rack built into his derby hat. His gang numbered some fifty thugs, including such celebrated heroes as Spanish Louie, Nigger Ruhl, the Lobster Kid, and the -Grabber.
These worthies met in the cemetery at regular intervals, with Jackson sitting on a tombstone like a crooked little gnome, while his followers disposed themselves upon the graves. They were so at ease one summer evening when Crazy Butch and a score of Eastman gangsters pounced upon them, trussed them up and plundered them of their money and weapons. The police never made a charge of homicide against Humpty Jackson, but they arrested him more than a hundred times and sent him to prison for twenty different offenses. At one of his trials it was shown that he had accepted one hundred dollars from a stranger to blackjack a man he had never seen before. But Humpty himself, of course, did not do the slugging. A gang leader seldom demeaned himself so, any more than a boss contractor shovels dirt or a civilized ruler goes to war. He pocketed his fee, pointed out the prospective victim to a blackjack or slung-shot artist if the affair was to be a mere matter of bruising, or to a gunman if permanent results were desired, and then retired to his favorite dive to await the report of his henchman. Some of the gangsters insisted upon making written reports; one of Monk Eastman’s most efficient blackjackers always turned in a formal, type-written document, designating the victim as the subject and himself as the operative. Oddly enough, this man’s ambition was to get on the police force.
Next to Jackson himself, the most celebrated of the gangsters who haunted the old graveyard was Spanish Louie, also known as Indian Louie. There was much uncertainty about Louie’s ancestry; he talked vaguely, on occasion, about his noble Spanish and Portuguese forefathers, and also let it be known that the hot blood of Indian chieftains flowed in his veins, and that he had inherited all of the vices and none of the virtue of the red man. He was also said to have been in the army and navy, although rumor failed to name the regiment or the ship. Tall tales of his prowess drifted into the dives of Chinatown and the Bowery, where he was most often to be seen, and Spanish Louie neither denied nor affirmed them, for he had a genius for mystery, and so contrived that everything he did played upon that note. He carried a brace of heavy Colt’s revolvers, the most massive artillery in gangland, and supplemented this armament with a pair of eight-inch dirks, which he thrust into special scabbards built into his trousers. His clothing was solid black, and was topped by a great sombrero of funereal hue, while instead of a shirt he wore a black sweater drawn close up to his chin. As he strode the streets, with his piercing black eyes glaring from beneath his black-brimmed sombrero, he was a figure calculated to inspire awe and respect; but his fellows could never make up their minds whether he was all that he pretended to be.
He always had money, for no fewer than three girls walked the streets for him, and when he was finally killed he had one hundred and seventy dollars in his pocket, seven hundred dollars in his shoe and three thousand dollars in the Bowery Savings Bank. But he performed no exploits of great moment and acquired no police record; and after he had been about the lower East Side less than a year his bullet-ridden body was found in Twelfth street near Second avenue. His murderer was never found, but the underworld suspected the Grabber, for it was known that the latter had accused Spanish Louie of withholding his share of the proceeds of a social function which the pair had sponsored in Tammany Hall. But at any rate the death of Spanish Louie dispelled the mystery about his ancestry, for a man from Brooklyn claimed the body and gave it orthodox Jewish burial.
Northward along the East Side to the Harlem River a large number of independent gangs ruled their kingdoms with a ferocity equal to that of the downtown groups. The Red Peppers and the Duffy Hills engaged in constant and bitter warfare for the privilege of plundering East 102nd street and adjacent territory, while the Pansies, under the inspired leadership of Rags Riley, maintained a rendezvous at Avenue A and Eighty-first street and looted the East River water front, as well as a considerable area inland. Still further north, the Italian gangs of Harlem’s Little Italy held forth, most of their murders being committed in the vicinity of the famous Murder Stable in East 125th street, which became noted as the scene of more killings than any other spot in America, with the exception of the Bloody Angle of Doyers street, in Chinatown. But a majority of these homicides were the result of feuds transplanted from Sicily, and had little to do with ordinary gang operations. The most celebrated of the Italian gangs was that captained by Ignazio Lupo, better known as Lupo the Wolf, who was one of the most desperate and blood-thirsty criminals this country has ever seen. And his followers were just as ferocious. They were greatly feared by their simple countrymen, for not only were they amazingly proficient in the use of the bomb, revolver and stiletto, but were reputed to be able to cast the evil eye, and to possess other magical powers. Whenever an honest
Italian so much as heard the name of Lupo the Wolf he felt impelled to cross himself, and to extend his crossed fingers to ward off the spells which the evil man might throw about him. Frantic men who had been marked for slaughter or robbery frequently appealed to their priests to protect them against Lupo’s magic, but the holy men had scant success. Besides participating in the vendettas of the Mafia and the Black Hand, Lupo the Wolf hired his killers and thugs out to other Italian secret orders, and was also an expert counterfeiter. His principal lieutenant was Giuseppi Morello, whose eighteen-year-old stepson was tortured and murdered because he was suspected of betraying gang secrets. William J. Flynn, Chief of the United States Secret Service, traced sixty murders to Lupo’s gang, including the killing of Detective Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino in Palermo, Italy, whither he had gone to collect information about the records of Itahan criminals in this country. Practically every victim of the Italian gangs was found with his tongue slit in approved Sicilian fashion, and the gangsters also showed a fondness for cramming bodies into barrels, trunks and baskets, and shipping them to other cities. Most of the barrel murders which were so common during the first ten years of the present century were the result of this custom.
AS rapidly as the ranks of the gangs were depleted, either by death or by the occasional activity of the police, they were filled by the street boys and by recruits from the young men’s social clubs which abounded throughout the East and West Sides, bearing such names as the Twin Oaks, the Yankee Doodle Boys, the Go-Aheads, the Liberty Athletic Club, the Round Back Rangers, the Bowery Indians, the East Side Crashers, the East Side Dramatic and Pleasure Club, the Jolly Forty-eight, the Soup Greens and the Limburger Roarers. These organizations were patterned after, and in many instances controlled and supported by, the political associations which had been formed in large numbers by the Tammany district leaders, who thereby strengthened their hold upon the voting masses. Such societies had been an important source of Tammany’s power since the early days of New York politics, but it was not until the nineties that they approached the full flower of perfection. They generally bore the names of the district leaders or local bosses, who dominated them and provided funds for their frequent social functions, for the outings upon which the poor women and children were taken during the summer months, and for the gifts of coal, shoes and other necessities which were showered upon the tenement population in the winter. It was usua
lly through these organizations, also, that arrangements were made with the gang leaders for thugs to black-jack voters at the polls, act as repeaters and, on occasion, remove opponents who had made themselves obnoxious and dangerous.
Under the patronage of the political associations, the young men’s clubs appeared during the early nineties in greater numbers than ever before, although they had for many years been a feature of life in the congested tenement districts, where there was little opportunity for legitimate pleasure. Some remained respectable, but a majority were composed of young hoodlums and petty sneak thieves, all of whom were potential if not actual gangsters. They greatly admired such redoubtable heroes as Monk Eastman, Paul Kelly and Humpty Jackson, and hundreds had no higher ambition than to win commendation from the reigning monarchs of the underworld. Sometimes their women friends were admitted to full membership privileges, and names were chosen which complimented the ladies. Hence the Lady Locusts, the Lady Barkers’ Association, the Lady Flashers, the Lady Liberties of the Fourth Ward, and the Lady Truck Drivers’ Association.
Many of the clubs made their rendezvous in tumbledown barns, in the basements of tenement houses, or in halls and auditoriums, but others met at regular intervals in the back rooms of saloons or dives, where certain corners were set apart for their business and carousing sessions. All gave frequent social affairs, which they called rackets, resorting to intimidation to compel merchants and other business men to buy tickets. These methods were generally adopted by the gangsters, for they were typical gang practices, and it became customary for a gangster who was widely known as a desperado and a killer to organize an association of which he was the only member, and then give as many rackets in the course of the year as the traffic would bear. One of the most successful of these was the Biff Ellison Association, composed solely of Biff Ellison himself, which sponsored three rackets a year at Tammany Hall. From these affairs Elhson received an annual income of some three thousand dollars, no mean sum in those days, which enabled him to live a life of leisure. But eventually he became weary of such easy graft and opened a sink of sin in the Bowery near Cooper Union, which he aptly named Paresis Hall. It was closed after a few months.
Many of the rackets given by the gangsters, the social clubs and the political associations were held in Tammany Hall, but even more popular were Walhalla Hall, better known as Walla Walla, in Orchard street near Grand, and New Irving Hall in Broome street, successor to the old Green Dragon resort which was wrecked by the Dead Rabbits during their fight with the Bowery Boys in 1857. For a few hours the functions were always conducted with great decorum, and the utmost care was taken to observe the niceties of correct social intercourse. But the bar was always well patronized, the ladies were beautiful and amiable, and the gentlemen hot-blooded, and it was seldom that an East Side ball did not end in a free-for-all fight. Sometimes a battle started because members of one club attended the affair of another wearing dress suits; and their rivals were frequently so demoralized by the spectacle that they forthwith, in order to obtain money, embarked upon a clumsy robbery of which the police were compelled to take notice. Such an incident marred the ball of the William J. Sullivan Association at New Irving Hall in the middle nineties, and prevented several members of that organization from attending the festivities. The Cherry Hill Gang announced that its members would attend en masse wearing dress suits, and five members of the Sullivan Association, who were also shining lights of the Batavia Street Gang, felt that it was incumbent upon them to equal if not excel the display. Led by Duck Reardon and Mike Walsh, they cast about for ways and means, and after much cogitation two of them sneaked a watch out of Herman Segal’s jewelry store in New Chambers street. They raffled the time-piece at Coyne’s saloon in James street, and so manipulated the drawing that one of their own number won it. But their work was crude, and when they again attempted to dispose of the watch they could sell no raffle tickets. So they returned to Segal’s, where they smashed a show window with a brick and carried away forty-four gold rings, valued at from four to forty-five dollars each. These were sold, but the thieves were captured by the police while trying on dress suits in a Division street tailor shop. On the night of the ball they languished in the Tombs, and the honor of the Batavia Street Gang was trailed in the dust by the elegant heroes of Cherry Hill.
THE PRINCE OF GANGSTERS
THE MOVING pictures and the stage have always portrayed the gangster as a low, coarse person with an evilly glinting eye, a chin adorned with a rank stubble of unkempt beard, a plaid cap drawn down over beetling brows, and a swagger which in itself was sufficient to inform the world that here was a man bent on devilment. It is true that there were many such, and in the lore of the gangs there are numerous tales of their mighty exploits, but in the main the really dangerous gangster, the killer, was more apt to be something of a dandy. He dressed well, he shaved daily, he kept his nails manicured and his hair oiled and plastered to his skull, and when his gang gave a racket he generally contrived to grace the festivities in all the glory of a dress suit. In the days of the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys, and later when Dandy Johnny Dolan of the Whyos was the fashion plate of gangland, the gangster was a big man; but in the course of years the misery and congestion of tenement life took their toll, and police and prison records show that the average gang member of the time of the Gophers, the Eastmans and the Five Pointers was not more than five feet and three inches tall, and weighed between 120 and 135 pounds.
Such noted followers of Paul Kelly as Eat ’Em Up Jack McManus and Louis Pioggi, better known as Louie the Lump, who was but a slim and beardless boy when he acquired a reputation as a murderer, followed the fashions with great care; and even Biff Ellison, for all his hugeness and great strength, was a fop in matters of dress. Ellison dearly loved to sprinkle himself with scent, of which he had his own private blend especially compounded by a druggist sworn to secrecy. Johnny Spanish was always arrayed like a lily of the field, as were Kid Twist and Richie Fitzpatrick, the most famous of Eastman’s heutenants; and Razor Riley, a noted Gopher who weighed less than a hundred pounds, but made up for his lack of heft by an amazing proficiency in the use of revolver, blackjack, and a huge razor which gave him his nickname. And Paul Kelly, who is now reformed and honorably occupied as a real estate broker and business agent for labor unions, was a perfect example of this type of gangster. Throughout his long career as chief of the Five Pointers Kelly exercised power second only to that of Monk Eastman, yet he was a dapper, soft-spoken chap who seldom engaged in rough-and-tumble fighting, although in his early youth he had been a bantam-weight pugilist of more than local renown. He resembled a bank clerk or a theological student more than a gang chieftain, and his dive, the New Brighton, was one of the flashiest palaces of sin in the city. Unhke most of his fellows, Kelly was fairly well educated. He spoke French, Spanish, and Italian, and with his well-bred manner could have moved at ease in relatively cultured society.
The story is told of a woman who went to New Brighton in Great Jones street, under the protection of a Headquarters detective, for the express purpose of seeing Paul Kelly, who had been mentioned in the newspapers in connection with some particularly sensational gang affray. For some time they sat in the midst of thieves and gangsters, literally surrounded by the current of miserable humanity which boiled up in the Bowery and Chatham Square and swirled through Chinatown and the East Side. Meanwhile they chatted with a dark, quiet little man who had been sitting at a table when they entered. He entertained them for half an hour with a dissertation on art, and then the woman and her escort departed. As they stepped out of the place the woman said:
“I am sorry we did not get to see Paul Kelly.”
“Why,” said the detective, “that was Paul Kelly you were talking to.”
“Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “I thought he was slumming, too!”
But no one would ever have mistaken Monk Eastman, a worthy successor to Mose the Bowery Boy and as brave a thug as ever shot an enem
y in the back or blackjacked a voter at the polls, for a bank clerk or a theological student. So far as looks were concerned, and actions, too, for that matter, Eastman was a true moving picture gangster. He began life with a bullet-shaped head, and during his turbulent career acquired a broken nose and a pair of cauliflower ears, which were not calculated to increase his beauty.
He had heavily veined, sagging jowls, and a short, bull neck, plentifully scarred with battle marks, as were his cheeks. He seemed always to need a hair cut, and he accentuated his ferocious and unusual appearance by affecting a derby hat several sizes too small, which perched precariously atop his shock of bristly, unruly hair. He could generally be found strutting about his kingdom very indifferently dressed, or lounging at his ease in the Chrystie street rendezvous without shirt, collar, or coat. His hobby was cats and pigeons—animals have always seemed to possess a fascination for gangsters; many of them, after they reformed, or had been compelled by the police to abandon the active practice of thuggery, opened bird and animal stores and prospered. Monk Eastman is said to have owned, at one time, more than a hundred cats and five hundred pigeons, and although they were offered for sale in his bird and animal store in Broome street, it was seldom that he could be induced to part with any of them. He sometimes went abroad, on peaceful missions, with a cat under each arm, while several others trailed along in his wake. He also had a great blue pigeon which he had tamed, and which perched on his shoulder as he walked.
“I like de kits and boids,” Eastman used to say. “I’ll beat up any guy dat gets gay wit’ a kit or a boid in my neck of de woods.”
When a reporter once asked Eastman, a few months before his death, how many times he had been arrested, the gang leader replied that he would be damned if he knew; and at Headquarters the police said that they had lost count of the number. “What difference does it make?” asked a detective who had often performed the thankless task. “The politicians always sprung him. He was the best man they ever had at the polls.” Nor could Eastman number his marks of battle. He had at least a dozen scars from knife wounds on his neck and face, and as many more on other parts of his body. He boasted that he had been shot so often that when he climbed on the scales he had to make allowance for the bullets imbedded in his body. When he enlisted in the New York National Guard at the outbreak of the World War and stripped for examination, the physicians thought they had to do with a veteran of every battle since Gettysburg. They asked him what wars he had been in.
The Gangs of New York Page 25