“Oh!” replied Eastman, grinning, “a lot of little wars around New York!”
During his career as a gang chieftain Monk employed a score of aliases, among them Joseph Morris, Joseph Marvin, Edward Delaney, and William Delaney, but it was as Edward Eastman that he was best known. His real name appears to have been Edward Osterman. He was born about 1873 in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, the son of a respectable Jewish restaurant owner. His father set him up in business before he was twenty years old with a bird and animal store in Penn street, near the family establishment, but the boy was restless, and dissatisfied with the monetary rewards of honest toil. He soon abandoned the store and came to New York, where he assumed the name of Edward
Eastman and quickly sank to his natural social level. In the middle nineties he began to come into prominence as Sheriff of New Irving Hall, and is said to have been even more ferocious than Eat ’Em Up Jack McManus, who was making history in a similar office at Suicide Hall and the New Brighton. Eastman went about his duties carrying a huge club, while a blackjack nestled in his hip pocket, and each of his hands was adorned with a set of brass knuckles. In the use of these weapons he was amazingly proficient, and in an emergency could wield a beer bottle or a piece of lead pipe with an aptitude that was little short of genius. He was also a skillful boxer, and was a formidable adversary at rough-and-tumble, although he was not more than five feet and five inches tall, and his weight never exceeded one hundred and fifty pounds.
Within a year after his career began Eastman had cracked scores of heads, and he boasted that during his first six months as Sheriff of the New Irving fifty men whom he honored with his attentions had required the services of surgeons; his clubbings became so frequent, indeed, that the jocose drivers of Bellevue Hospital ambulances referred to the accident ward as the Eastman Pavilion. But Monk was always a gentleman; he was proud of the fact that he had never struck a woman with his club, no matter how much she annoyed him. When it became necessary to discipline a lady for a lapse in manners, he simply blackened her eyes with his fist.
“I only give her a little poke,” he exclaimed. “Just enough to put a shanty on her glimmer. But I always takes off me knucks first.”
Naturally, Eastman became one of the most celebrated citizens of the East Side, and innumerable young men began to imitate him in speech and manner, so that there came into existence a Monk Eastman school of hoodlums and brawlers. They expressed their admiration for the great bouncer by their slovenly appearance, their cHpped, slangy speech, and a wiUingness to fight anybody, any time, and anywhere. Practically all of them enlisted under Eastman’s banner when he surrendered his post at the New Irving and embarked upon a career as a practicing gang leader, and by 1900 he felt powerful enough to claim sovereignty over the domain which later became his by right of might. Then began his feud with Paul Kelly of the Five Pointers over the strip of territory between the Bowery and Nigger Mike’s place in Pell street. Scarcely a week passed in which the gang chieftains did not send patrols into this No Man’s Land, armed with blackjacks and revolvers and with instructions to kill or maim every opposing gangster found within the disputed territory.
The merciless warfare between the great captains kept the Chatham Square, Bowery and Chinatown districts in an uproar of excitement and terror, for not all of the gangsters were good shots, and their wild bullets frequently injured non-combatants and smashed windows. Occasionally the police appeared in force and made spectacular pretence of clubbing both sides, but in general these were meaningless gestures, for both Eastman and Kelly had strong political connections and were in high favor with the Tammany Hall statesmen. Eastman, in particular, became an especial pet of the Wigwam; for years he served the Tammany organization in many ways, and was especially useful around election times, when he voted his gangsters in droves and employed them to blackjack honest citizens who thought to cast their ballots according to their convictions. Whenever Eastman got into trouble Tammany Hall lawyers appeared in court for him and Tammany bondsmen furnished his bail, which was promptly forfeited and the case expunged from the records. In the intervals between his political engagements Eastman did what may best be described as a general gang business. He became interested in houses of prostitution and stuss games, he shared in the earnings of prostitutes who walked the streets under his protection, he directed the operations of his pickpockets, loft burglars and footpads, and provided thugs for men who wished to rid themselves of enemies, graduating his fees according to the degree of disability desired. Eastman himself sometimes led selected members of his gang in raids upon the stuss games which flourished throughout the East Side, and also, on occasion, personally accepted a blackjacking commission.
“I like to beat up a guy once in a while,” he used to say. “It keeps me hand in.”
Eastman had frequently felt the thud of a fist against his flesh while officiating as Sheriff of the New Irving, but it was not until the summer of 1901 that he experienced his first contact with a bullet. Then, having ventured abroad without his body guard, he was assailed in the Bowery, near Chatham Square, by half a dozen Five Pointers who fell upon him with blackjack and revolver. Unarmed except for his brass knuckles and his slung-shot, Eastman defended himself valiantly, and had knocked down three of the attacking force when a fourth shot him twice in the stomach. They fled, leaving him for dead upon the sidewalk, but he scrambled to his feet and staggered to Gouverneur Hospital, closing a gaping wound with his fingers. For several weeks the gang leader lay at the point of death, but in conformity with the code of the underworld he refused to divulge to the police the name of the man who had shot him. Meanwhile the war with the Five Pointers proceeded with redoubled ferocity, and a week after Eastman had been discharged from the hospital the police found a dead Five Pointer lying in the gutter at Grand and Chrystie streets; he had been decoyed from his accustomed haunt by a woman and shot to death.
For more than two years the conflict between the Eastmans and the Five Pointers raged almost without cessation, and the darkened streets of the East Side and the old Paradise Square section were filled night after night with scurrying figures who shot at each other from carriages, or from that strange new invention, the automobile, or pounced one upon the other from the shelter of doorways, with no warning save the vicious swish of a blackjack or section of lead pipe. Stuss games owned by members of the Eastman clan were held up and robbed by the Five Pointers, and Kelly’s sources of revenue were similarly interfered with by the redoubtable Monk and his henchmen. Balls and other social functions in New Irving and Walhalla Halls were frequently interrupted while the gangsters shot out their mutual hatred without regard for the safety and convenience of the merry-mal^rs; and the owners of dives and dance halls lived in constant fear^that their resorts would be the scene of bloody combat, and so subj^t them to unwelcome notoriety. But it was not until the middle of
August, 1903, that the crisis of the war was reached and the gangs met in the battle which marked the end of the feud, for it aroused the politicians to a realization of the needless slaughter of their most valuable assets, and awakened the general public to a knowledge of the power of the gangs.
There had been desultory fighting throughout the hot days of summer, and at eleven o’clock on a sultry August night half a dozen prowling Eastmans came upon a like number of Five Pointers preparing to raid a stuss game in Rivington street, under the Allen street arch of the Second avenue elevated railroad. The game was in Eastman territory and was known to be under Monk’s personal protection, for it was operated by one of his friends who faithfully gave him a large percentage of the take. The indignant Eastmans promptly killed one of the invading Five Pointers, and after a flurry of shots the adherents of Paul Kelly sought refuge behind the pillars of the elevated structure, whence they emerged cautiously from time to time to take pot shots at the Eastmans, who had availed themselves of similar protection. After half an hour of ineffectual firing, during which two policemen who attempted to i
nterfere fled down Rivington street with their uniforms full of bullet holes, messengers were dispatched to the headquarters of both gangs, and within a short time reinforcements began to arrive.
Eastman himself led a detachment of his thugs on the run from the Chrystie street dive, and from the shelter of an elevated pillar in the fore front of the battle directed the fire of his gangsters. The police were never able to learn whether Paul Kelly himself took part in the fight, but it is quite likely that he did, for he was never one to shirk danger, and whenever there was trouble he was generally to be found in the midst of it. At any rate, more than a hundred gangsters, about evenly divided between Eastmans and Five Pointers, had arrived by midnight, and were blazing away at each other with every elevated pillar sheltering a gunman. Half a dozen Gophers, wandering out of Hell’s Kitchen into the East Side in quest of profitable adventure and honorable advancement, came upon the scene, and stayed not to learn the point at issue or even who was fighting, but unlimbered their artillery and went joyfully into action, firing indiscriminately at both Eastmans and Five Pointers. As one of the Gophers later explained:
‘A lot of guys was poppin’ at each other, so why shouldn’t we do a little poppin’ ourselves?”
While the battle raged storekeepers of the district barricaded their doors and windows, and dwellers in the tenements locked themselves in their rooms. Half a dozen policemen arrived after the fighting had been in progress about half an hour, but retired in disorder when the gangsters greeted them with a hail of bullets. It was not until the reserves from several stations charged down Rivington street with roaring revolvers that the thugs left the protection of the elevated railroad structure and fled into their dens. They left three dead and seven wounded upon the field, and a score were arrested before they could get away. One of the prisoners was Monk Eastman, who gave the name of Joseph Morris and said that he had just happened to be passing and heard the shooting. Naturally, he stopped to see what was going on. He was arraigned before a magistrate next morning and promptly discharged.
The politicians suffered excruciating pain when they opened their newspapers and read the accounts of the fighting under the elevated structure. Having provided burial for the dead and proper hospital care for the wounded, they called upon Eastman and Paul Kelly and impressed upon them the obvious fact that such wholesale combat jeopardized their usefulness. The gang chieftains were told that no one objected to an occasional murder or blackjacking if they were strictly in line of business, and that even a little fancy sniping now and then might be overlooked, for everyone knew that gangsters would be gangsters; but that engagements in force terrorized the East Side and must stop. A meeting between Eastman and Kelly was arranged, and a few days later the gang leaders came face to face in the Palm, an unsavory dive in Chrystie street near Grand, Kelly having been guaranteed safe conduct at the request of the Tammany politicians. Tom Foley, a notable figure in the councils of the Wigwam, who had employed Eastman to good advantage during a hot campaign in the Second Assembly district, acted as mediator, and after he had presented the case for peace, with covert threats that both gangs would be smashed if they continued their private feud, Kelly and Eastman agreed to stop the shooting and stabbing. It was further agreed that the disputed strip between the Bowery and Nigger Mike’s should be neutral territory, subject to the operations of either gang. Foley then gave a ball to celebrate the truce, and just before the grand march Eastman and Kelly met in the center of the dance floor and ceremoniously shook hands. Thereafter they viewed the revels of their followers from a box, while the Eastmans and the Five Pointers danced with each others’ girls under the benign eye of Tom Foley; and there was peace on earth and good will toward men.
So far as the actual number of men engaged was concerned, the battle of Rivington street was not to be compared with some of the earlier conflicts between the great gangs of the Bowery and Five Points. But it probably marked the heaviest concentration of firearms in gang history, for the old-timers were inclined to settle their differences with clubs, teeth, fists, and brickbats, and only an occasional gangster sported a pistol. But during the Eastman period there were few thugs who did not carry at least two revolvers; some lugged as many as four, besides the standard equipment of blackjacks and brass knuckles. Before the passage of the Sullivan law early in 1911, which made the possession of a firearm a prison offense, one or more guns was carried openly at the hip or thrust into the belt, while another could generally be found slung by a special harness under the gangster’s armpit. This was a favorite device of the killers; a revolver so carried was easier to draw than if borne in any other position, and there was scant likelihood that it would be snatched by an adversary. Occasionally, when the police were on their infrequent rampages, a gang leader who was temporarily in bad odor with the authorities went about with his pockets sewed up, attended by a henchman who supplied him with cigarettes, matches and other articles which he might require. Prying detectives then not only failed to find a revolver on his person, but could not put one there and so send him to prison on manufactured evidence.
But such a gangster was by no means unprotected. Behind and before him marched his thugs with their pockets Uterally crammed with knives, blackjacks, and revolvers, and if trouble developed the chieftain found the proper weapon immediately ready to his hand. These gun-carriers were frequently arrested but they took the chance gladly in order that they might serve the Master and win favor in his eyes. Often a woman bore the revolver; she carried it in her muff, or in the huge hat of the period, or in a pocket of her jacket. The enormous coiffures called Mikado tuck-ups, which were popular in the nineties, offered excellent places for the concealment of a weapon; and when the pompadour came into vogue, the wire contrivance called a rat, upon which the hair was built up over the forehead, was replaced by a revolver. And sometimes the gangster’s sweetheart carried his pistol smuggled against the bare skin of her upper arm, where it was held in place by elastic bands and was instantly available through a slit in her leg-of-mutton sleeve. Many of the gangsters kept reserve revolvers and blackjacks, which they called Bessies, in cigar and stationery stores throughout their districts.
DEBARRED by the terms of his agreement with Tom Foley from battling the Five Pointers, Monk Eastman sought an outlet for his restless spirits by increasing the frequency with which he attended in person to the various sluggings and blackjackings which had hitherto been largely carried out by his henchmen. Less than three weeks after the battle in Rivington street Eastman and two of his gangsters went to Freehold, N. J., where they assaulted James McMahon, a coachman employed by David Lamar, whose financial operations had earned him much fame as the Wolf of Wall street. McMahon was to have appeared in court against Lamar, but as he and his lawyers walked up the courthouse steps Eastman and his thugs fell upon them, and beat and stabbed McMahon so savagely that he was unable to testify, and the case was dismissed. The gangsters escaped in a cab, but were captured a few hours later and lodged in the Freehold jail, where Eastman gave his name as William Delaney.
The gang chieftain sent word of his plight to Kid Twist, his principal lieutenant, who promptly mustered fifty heavily armed gangsters and loaded them into a string of carriages, intending to storm the New Jersey prison. But before the vehicles could leave the Chrystie street rendezvous Inspector McCluskey swooped down upon them with a large force of patrolmen, and after a fierce fight forced the thugs back into their den. Kid Twist then notified Tammany HaU, and the next morning two of the Wigwam’s most brilliant legal luminaries proceeded post haste to Freehold. There political wires were pulled and witnesses obtained, and when Eastman and his followers were arraigned on a charge of felonious assault they were discharged and returned to Manhattan in triumph. That night Monk held a levee in his headquarters to celebrate his escape from Jersey justice.
The truce between the Eastmans and the Five Pointers was scrupulously observed by both sides for several months, but in the winter of 1903 an Eastman named Hurst
wandered into a Bowery dive and became involved in a weighty argument with a disciple of Paul Kelly, one Ford, the issue being the bravery of their respective chieftains. The dispute ended in a fight, and Hurst was badly mauled; it is related that his nose was broken in two places and one of his ears twisted off. Monk Eastman immediately sent word to Kelly that Ford’s life was forfeit, and that if Kelly did not care to attend to the matter of putting him out of the way, the Eastmans would invade the domain of the Five Pointers and take summary vengeance. As Monk expressed it, “We’ll wipe up de earth wit’ youse guys.” Kelly replied tartly that the Eastmans were welcome to Ford if they could take him, and both sides prepared for war. But again the anxious politicians interfered, and once more a meeting was arranged between Eastman and Kelly, who made no promises but agreed to talk the matter over in the presence of neutral persons. Accompanied by armed body-guards, the gang leaders again met in the Palm. They shook hands with great formahty and then, each with a huge cigar between his teeth and a hand on his revolver, sat at a table and proceeded to discuss ways and means to retain their honor and at the same time keep their thugs from each other’s throats. They recognized that something must be done, for the poUticians had informed them that if another outbreak occurred protection would be withdrawn and the police permitted to wreak their will upon them. And there were many policemen who yearned for just such an opportunity, for the honest members of the force had long suffered at the hands of the gangsters.
The Gangs of New York Page 26