The Gangs of New York

by Herbert Asbury

  Yoske Nigger, Charley the Cripple, and Johnny Levinsky specialized in stealing and poisoning horses; and by the end of 1913 the invariable satisfaction which their work afforded had given them practically a monopoly of the business. They thereupon shrewdly divided the field and worked in harmony for some two years, on occasion lending thugs to each other to help carry out a particularly ticklish assignment. Yoske Nigger catered exclusively to the produce markets, truckmen and livery stables, while Levinsky confined his activities to the ice cream trade, and Charley the Cripple handled such commissions as developed from the rivalry between the seltzer and soda water dealers and manufacturers. Their fees varied according to the magnitude and danger of the task, but usually were as high as the traffic would bear. A gangster who finally divulged their methods of operations to the police said that these were the average rates:

  Shooting, fatal ...................$500

  Shooting, not fatal .................100

  The shooting items, the gangster explained, referred to human beings. However, these prices were extremely high; the chieftains of many of the East Side gangs were prepared to commit murder for as low as twenty dollars, while lower New York fairly swarmed with thugs who guaranteed a neat and workmanlike job, with no entangling consequences, for from two to ten dollars, depending upon the prominence of the victim and the state of their own finances when they received the commission.

  These groups formed a very small minority of the gangs which sprinkled Manhattan Island during the final years of the gangsters’ rule. By the latter part of 1913, about a year after Big Jack Zelig had passed to his reward, it is likely that there were more gangs in New York than at any other period in the history of the metropolis; their number and the ramifications of their alliances were so bewildering that of hundreds there now exists no more than a trace; they flashed into the ken of the policeman and the reporter and flashed out again like comets, leaving a gaseous trail of blood and graft. But it is improbable that the total number of gangsters was any greater than during the reign of Monk Eastman, for the gangs were smaller; the time when a chieftain could muster from five hundred to a thousand men under his banner had passed with the dispersal of such groups as the Eastmans, the Gophers and the Five Pointers, and there were few gang leaders who could take the field with more than thirty or forty thugs. Consequently an area which in former years had been plundered exclusively by a single great gang became the haunt of innumerable small groups, which constantly fought each other, frequently strayed beyond their own domains, and robbed and murdered whenever the opportunity for gain presented itself. Moreover, their organization was more elastic; there no longer existed the undying loyalty to the captain which had been such a distinguishing characteristic of the old-time gangs, and it was not unusual for a gangster to owe allegiance to three or four leaders at the same time, performing a different sort of thuggery for each. Throughout the city there were also a far greater number of independent thugs who bound themselves to a chieftain only for a definite campaign or for a specific blackjacking, stabbing or shooting assignment. The number of gangsters of this type continued to increase as decency invaded politics, and as the police became more honest and efficient and waged clubbing campaigns against the organized gangs.

  THE gangs which flourished throughout the eastern part of Manhattan during the few years that followed the death of Big Jack Zelig performed any sort of criminal work which their clients required, but their opportunities for enrichment were far fewer than in the old days. The disclosures which followed the murder of Herman Rosenthal had resulted in the closing of most of the gambling houses, and had compelled the remainder to operate with a minimum of police protection; and the gangsters had become such a stench in the public nostril that the politicians dared not employ them to the extent of former years. Consequently it became necessary to develop new sources of revenue, and the gang chieftains found a rich harvest awaiting them in the constant industrial strife with which the East Side was afflicted, especially among the needle and allied trades. Late in 1911 the labor unions began the practice of hiring thugs to murder and blackjack strike breakers and intimidate workmen who refused to be organized, while the employers engaged other gangsters to slug union pickets and raid union meetings. The thugs seldom became strike breakers, for actual physical labor was repugnant to them, but they acted as guards to the workmen who were recruited from the hordes of casual labor which haunted the Bowery and Sixth avenue employment agencies. In time a distinct class of men arose who refused to perform any other sort of work, and went from city to city earning high wages as strike breakers. They were called finks, while the gunmen who protected them were known as nobles. For the most part they are now provided by private detective agencies.

  Within a few months slugging, stabbing and shooting were accepted concomitants of industrial troubles throughout the East Side, and the bulk of the labor union business was carried on by the gangs captained by Dopey Benny, Joe the Greaser, Little Rhody, Pinchey Paul and Billy Lustig, while the employers were compelled to content themselves with the services of less efficient combinations. The chieftains of the important gangs were regularly on the payrolls of the local unions at from twenty-five to fifty dollars a week, and for each gangster assigned to blackjack strike breakers or frighten obstinate workmen they received ten dollars a day, of which they retained two and a half dollars. The remaining seven and a half dollars was the wages of the thug. The union officials also bound themselves to pay all fines, provide bail, engage lawyers and arrange for as much protection as possible through their political and police connections. Dopey Benny further safeguarded himself by retaining a lawyer on an annual fee; and the legal luminary drew up contracts without too much mention of the character of the work involved, but specifying that the gang leader’s salary was to continue if he went to prison. For several years Dopey Benny was constantly attended by a professional bondsman, who not only arranged bail for the chieftain when required, but for his henchmen as well.

  Dopey Benny began his criminal career at the age of ten, when he prowled the streets of the East Side stealing packages from express wagons and delivery carts. From this lowly beginning he became a lush worker and a footpad, then a pickpocket of distinction, and at length the greatest, or at any rate the most successful, gang captain of his time, however unworthy he may have been to wear the mantle of Monk Eastman. Dopey Benny was not a drug addict, but adenoidal and nasal troubles from infancy gave him a sullen, sleepy appearance from which his nickname was derived. As a leader he was far superior to his contemporaries, and in time commanded the allegiance of half a dozen smaller gangs, among them the Little Doggies, the remnant of the Hudson Dusters, a few Gophers who had wandered into the East Side after the private police force of the New York Central had swept through Hell’s Kitchen, and the groups led by Porkie Flaherty and Abie Fisher. Dopey Benny districted the lower half of Manhattan Island, and to each area assigned one of his vassal gangs, which wielded pistol, blackjack and slung-shot for the benefit of whichever side first spoke for its services, although in the main the thugs worked for labor unions. However, it was not uncommon for Dopey Benny to slug and stab for the unions in one district, and against them in another. For some three years there was scarcely a strike in New York in which these, gangsters were not employed, and during this period Dopey Benny’s annual income averaged between fifteen and twenty thousand dollars. So widely was he feared that a group of employers once offered him fifteen thousand dollars if he would remain neutral during a threatened strike. But Dopey Benny indignantly refused, saying that his heart was naturally with the working man, and that he would continue to hold himself and his gangsters at the disposal of the union officials. His methods were thus described in a confession which he made to the District Attorney after he had finally been brought to book:

  My first job was to go to a shop and beat up some workmen there. The men that employed me gave me ten dollars for every man that I had to use and one hundred dollars for
myself. I picked out about fifteen men, and later met the man that employed me and told him that I couldn’t do the job for the money that he wanted to pay—that it took more men than I had calculated on, and that I wouldn’t touch it unless I was paid more money.

  Finally he agreed to pay me six hundred dollars for the job. I got my men together, divided them up into squads and saw that they were armed with pieces of gas pipe and with clubs, but this time not with pistols, and when the workmen came from work the men I had got set on them and beat them up. I wasn’t right there when this was going on. I told the men what to do, and I was near by, but I didn’t do any of it myself. After the job was over I saw the man I had made the agreement with and asked him how he liked the way the job was done.

  He said that it was fine and paid me the six hundred dollars in cash.

  From this time on one fellow would hear from another that I did these jobs, and would come to get me to do a job, and so I was kept busy all the time. Some of the jobs were just individual jobs. I would be told there was a certain fellow whom they wanted beaten up, and they would take me where I could get a look at him, and then when I got a chance I would follow him and beat him up, and afterwards get my pay.

  One time when we were doing a job in a place where there were some girls, who blew police whistles, and policemen came before we could get away. I was caught and got thirty days, and three of the other fellows got fifteen days apiece. All the time I was serving my thirty days my wages of fifteen dollars a day, which I was getting then for doing these jobs, kept on just the same, though some of it wasn’t paid until later.

  After this I did a number of jobs for which I didn’t get any special pay—just my regular payroll, which was then twenty-five dollars a week. At this time I was getting that regularly and wasn’t charging any more for the jobs I did. Afterward I got to doing jobs again as so much a job. I got three hundred and fifty dollars for doing one job.

  That was in addition to the regular twenty-five dollars a week which I was getting. I had thirty men on this job, and a lot of the employes were hurt.

  In January, 1914, I was tried and convicted of assault, and sentenced to state prison for five years, but afterward the conviction was reversed and so I got out. All the time I was in the state prison I continued on the payroll and did several more jobs. Some of them were quiet work, without any weapons at all—just scaring people and threatening them—and some of them were violent work.

  Attracted by almost constant opportunity to display their skill, some of the most ferocious of the independent thugs enlisted under Dopey Benny’s banner, and his cohorts were further augmented by desertions from rival gang leaders. Even Joe the Greaser lost many of his best men, but that astute chieftain prevented his utter downfall by forming an alliance with Dopey Benny, and thereafter accepted the latter as generalissimo of all the gangs, although he continued to operate his own group as an independent unit. Through this alliance Dopey Benny and Joe the Greaser practically controlled the situation, and Little Rhody, Pinchey Paul and Billy Lustig, as well as a score of other minor captains, were ignored by the union officials who assigned the jobs. In desperation the smaller gangs combined, and late in 1913 declared war against Dopey Benny and Joe the Greaser, opening hostilities with a gun battle at Grand and Forsyth streets. But the gangsters were notoriously poor marksmen and no one was wounded, although the indiscriminate shooting smashed several store windows and caused a great scurrying in the crowded thoroughfares. One of the principal instigators of the war, and a constant schemer against the power of Dopey Benny and Joe the Greaser, was a man known as Jewbach, who finally became so obnoxious that Nigger Benny Snyder, a local henchman of Joe the Greaser, was dispatched to silence him. Nigger Benny attacked Jewbach with a knife at Rivington and Norfolk streets, but could only slash his enemy twice before he was arrested. Jewbach loudly proclaimed that he would prosecute Nigger Benny and send him to prison, whereupon Joe the Greaser called upon him with half a dozen of his thugs. While the gangsters held Jewbach down, Joe the Greaser cut a large piece out of his lower lip.

  “Let that learn you,” said Joe the Greaser, “not to talk so much.”

  Jewbach was unable to speak for several weeks, and had been so thoroughly cowed by Joe the Greaser that he failed to appear for the trial, and Nigger Benny was discharged. Subsequently, when Pinchey Paul was found dead. Nigger Benny was accused of the murder, and found himself in such a tight place that he promptly confessed to the District Attorney, shifting responsibility for the killing to the shoulders of Joe the Greaser, who he said gave him five dollars for the job. Nigger Benny was sent to prison for twenty years. Joe the Greaser pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and in December, 1915, was sentenced to ten years in Sing Sing.

  It was this war, though trivial in comparison to those of earlier days, which brought about the final smashing of the gangs. In November, 1913, the rival thugs clashed in front of a hat factory in Greenwich street, where the Dopey Benny gangsters were waiting to assault workmen who had refused to strike, and in December the six-day bicycle race in Madison Square Garden was enlivened by a fight in which one of the gangsters opposing Dopey Benny was shot. Less than a month later, early in January, 1914, some thirty thugs came together in front of Arlington Hall in St. Mark’s Place, where a ball was in progress under the auspices of the Lenny & Dyke Association, of which the leading spirit was Tommy Dyke, manager of Chick Tricker’s Bowery dive. For almost half an hour the gangsters fired at each other from the shelter of tenement doorways, and while none was wounded one of their bullets killed Frederick Strauss, a court clerk who was passing on his way to a lodge meeting. Strauss was a substantial citizen with important fraternal and political connections, and his murder aroused such a commotion that Mayor John Purroy Mitchel, who had only recently assumed office after defeating the Tammany Hall candidate, ordered Police Commissioner Douglas I. McKay to suppress the gangs at all costs. At the same time he revoked Mayor Gaynor’s order against the use of nightsticks, and assured the patrolmen that they would not be brought up on charges if they found it necessary to club a gangster.

  Commissioner McKay promptly suspended the police captain in whose precinct the battle had occurred, and within twenty-four hours the uniformed force, aided by a large squad of detectives under command of Deputy Commissioner George S. Dougherty, had arrested more than a hundred thugs. Many were subsequently sent to prison, for the Tammany Hall district organizations had been temporarily demoralized and discredited by the result of the election which had put Mitchel and a reform administration in City Hall, and the Wigwam politicians were unable to protect their hereditary allies. Arthur Woods, who had been the Mayor’s secretary, succeeded McKay as Police Commissioner in April, and prosecuted the war against the gangsters with even greater vigor, while District Attorney Charles A. Perkins started an investigation of the part the labor unions had played in gang activities. Officials of the United Hebrew Trades Union began to raise a defense fund by levying an assessment of seven cents a week upon its sixty thousand members, and increased this amount to forty cents when the District Attorney’s inquiry developed new and damaging evidence. Late in 1914 Dopey Benny was arrested, and the following May, after he had waited patiently for his political and union friends to procure his release, he became convinced that they intended to sacrifice him. He thereupon struck a bargain with the District Attorney, and in return for slight punishment prepared a confession in which he detailed at great length his connections and activities over a period of some five years. Eleven gangsters and twenty-three union officials were indicted upon the basis of this information, but none of the latter ever went to prison; and in June, 1917, the indictments were dismissed when District Attorney Edward Swann, who had succeeded Perkins, informed the Court of General Sessions that he did not have sufficient evidence to obtain convictions. Six months after his confession Dopey Benny was again arrested, and was tried for the murder of Frederick Strauss in St. Mark’s Place, but the jury disagreed, and in May,
1917, the courts dismissed the indictment. But his successive encounters with the police had broken Dopey Benny’s hold upon the East Side, and he was never able to regain his former power, for his gangsters had been scattered and the labor unions refused to have further dealing with him.

  During the first year of his administration Commissioner Woods procured the imprisonment of more than two hundred of the most eminent thugs in the city; and the gangsters against whom conclusive evidence could not be obtained were fiercely clubbed by the uniformed patrolmen and closely watched by the detectives. By the middle of 1916 the police had completed the smashing of the Hudson Dusters and all of the other gangs which had roamed Manhattan Island from the Battery to Spuyten Duyvil, and as their organizations lost all cohesion the gangsters engaged in honest occupations or became commonplace criminals operating in small groups. A few continued to find employment from the labor unions, although most of the union officials had been badly frightened by the activity of the police and the determination of Mayor Mitchel to put an end to the wholesale stabbing, slugging, and shooting which had kept the city in a ferment for so many years, and had found other means to settle industrial disputes. But there were no organized gangs of any consequence in New York until late in 1917, when Johnny Spanish and Kid Dropper were released from Sing Sing Prison and returned immediately to the East Side, where they attempted to revive their ancient glories, and renewed the feud which had begun when both were members of the old Five Pointers under Paul Kelly. They enlisted followings of perhaps thirty men each, and clashed in several minor affrays, but without doing much damage or attracting much attention from the police. Finally, on July 29, 1919, Johnny Spanish was murdered in front of a restaurant at No. 19 Second avenue by three men who came up behind him and emptied their revolvers into his body.