Fingy Conners & The New Century

by Richard Sullivan

  A vicious form of competition was inaugurated in Conners’ saloons as much for sport as for profit whereby Fingy would pit two or more customers against each other for what he claimed was the one remaining work position available, telling each that the other man was ahead in his tally of drinks. Broke, their families starving, Fingy would extend credit to these men in the form of his famous brass checks, effectively guaranteeing their running up a sizable tab to be deducted from their upcoming pay. This system guaranteed that only a minimum of the pay his laborers received would ever find its way past the tills of Fingy’s saloons to the wives and children of the toilers.

  Beginning in the 1880s, striking dock workers and the saloons in which they held their clandestine meetings were terrorized by imported thugs that Fingy scraped up from the gutters of New York, Chicago and Cleveland. These hoodlums would take up clubs, bats and bricks and apply them forcefully to the heads of striking or unionizing laborers, systematically cleaning out the resorts where the union men gathered and destroying the premises to teach the saloonkeeps a lesson about what happens when someone crosses Fingy Conners.

  The Buffalo Police Department did not intervene.

  In 1899 the Grain Scoopers Strike resulted in the first ever defeat for Fingy Conners, dealing a death blow to his extremely profitable saloon-boss system. From the inception of the Scoopers Strike onward, with the event’s inspiring the firing of missiles and bullets, it had become dangerous for Conners to show his face in his First Ward contractor’s office. His army of lieutenants, led by Hannah Sullivan’s brother David Nugent, carried out his commands.

  Conners, having become a millionaire, purchased a stately mansion on Buffalo’s millionaires’ row, Delaware Ave. At this particular time, Buffalo had more millionaires per capita than any city in the world.

  One Saturday late, a street railroad company which had a line crossing Delaware Avenue near Conners’ new mansion was about to make repairs. The company delivered a wagonload of rails to the site, dumping them with a terrific racket in the dead of night to the alarm of the local sleeping residents. Conners’ new neighbor Harry Hamlin, a millionaire more famous for being a Buffalo police officer than for the source of his wealth, remarked to his startled wife, “That must be Fingy Conners moving in.”

  Shortly after Conners had taken possession of his new home, Mrs. Metcalf, one of the social elite of Delaware Avenue, passed Fingy’s house in her carriage. Conners had ordered his gardener to plant his name in letters a couple of feet high in flowering foliage on the lawn in front of his mansion for all to admire.

  “Goodness!” exclaimed Mrs. Metcalf, appalled at the gaudy display. Examining the floral legend through her lorgnettes she called aloud, “The poor man must think he’s a railway station!”

  When enemies smirked over his obvious lack of formal education and mistook his dockworker diction for stupidity, he would challenge their assumption with the retort, “Brains? I can hire all the brains I need for $20 a week. Brains is as cheap as tenpenny nails.”

  At his first public banquet fresh from his dock days, Fingy had quickly gulped a spoonful of scalding hot tomato soup, whereupon he immediately expelled it in a heavy spray all over the white linen tablecloth. The table fell silent, and he knew his act had been a gross breach of table manners. Suppressed laughter rang from both sides, to which Fingy blurted, “I suppose yous fellows woulda swallowt it and burned yer insides out, and said nothing, would yous?”

  By the turn of the century, Fingy Conners’ business interests had expanded to include urban railways, the paving of streets, dominion over three newspapers as well as a state-of-the-art printing plant, ownership of the Magnus Beck Brewery, the directorship of two banks, a 350-acre poultry farm in Angola NY, extensive real estate holdings and various industrial concerns. He sailed a fabulous yacht, which rivaled in luxury that of J. Pierpont Morgan’s, taking it around the Great Lakes to attend to his various enterprises in Detroit, Chicago and beyond. It also served as an instrumental tool in isolating those men with whom he had urgent business dealings, attracting them initially with the Enquirer’s luxurious offerings and a leisurely cruise, but then not allowing the ship anywhere near shore until they had agreed to terms benefiting his own interests. With his move to Delaware Avenue, he abandoned his former customary haunts of comfort and began to frequent the city’s first class cafés and resorts where he established a reputation as a spender and the wearer of large diamonds and loud raiment. He disowned his “Fingy” moniker and demanded that he be addressed as the “Honorable William J. Conners.”

  A new friend from the loftiest of his high-end hangouts, The Buffalo Club, whose members included President Grover Cleveland, took him aside and said, “Jim, you are making a fool of yourself wearing so many diamonds. It’s positively vulgar.”

  “I heard that before,” Conners said testily. “But, b’gosh, I notice that thim wot has thim wears thim, and thim wot hasn’t, doesn’t.”

  But quick to see the wisdom behind the criticism, the gaudy display soon disappeared from his shirts, ties, and most of his remaining fingers.

  Conners had dabbled in politics in the 1880s, seeking the Republican nomination for alderman of the city’s 1st ward in 1881, but was defeated. His Mariners Home saloon on Louisiana Street, inherited from his late father Peter Conners, became the haunt of the small time politicians and ward heelers of the neighborhood, and he used their influence to propel his way upward. Known as a Black Republican, party lines meant nothing to him, and sometime after his defeat for alderman, he turned Democratic. His own explanation for this turn of loyalties was explained in his newspaper the Buffalo Enquirer the day after he bought it:

  He left the Republican party not from personal motives of jealousy or disappointment, but because he believed that the progressive forces of the country were at that time arraying themselves on the side of the Democratic Party, and those are the forces in which he has faith. But Mr. Conners is thoroughly independent and liberal in his political views.

  With his wealth attained and his political ambitions expanded, Conners developed a hankering for power and for the prestige that power bestowed.

  He even began to substitute, when necessary, the pugilist’s use of brute force as his preferred modus operandi with more genteel methods effected through bluffing, shouting and intimidation, for as much as he might be tempted, he knew he wouldn’t get very far by beating the pulp out of the cultured elite. Upon them he would instead be employing less violent but no less fearful methods. The common man was a different story; on them, the older methods continued to work best.

  As a young boy, Jimmy Conners had made no friends except for one: John P. Sullivan.

  Younger, smaller, slighter, lacking in aggression, Conners nonetheless was impressed by JP’s tenacity and his willingness to put up with his moods and patiently suffer his domination and violent outbursts. JP Sullivan had been blessed with the instinctive gift of personality. He was a peacemaker and diplomat by nature, in contrast to Jimmy Conners’ warmonger. JP delighted in making people laugh, whereas Jimmy Conners delighted in making them cry. Some men are born without the ability to hear or see, others with cleft pallets or a club foot. Fingy Conners was born without any need or desire to be liked.

  JP understood Jimmy Conners as did none other. Instead of running away from him like most kids, he quietly backed off just out of arm’s reach until the outbursts and flailing subsided and the bounteous nature that was the texture of many a youth who had known abuse at the hands of adults, a trait which only JP Sullivan was able to discern beneath Conners angry exterior, surfaced. Peerless bully that Conners was, only JP Sullivan was capable of unearthing in the complicated and enigmatic hoodlum the humbling emotions of remorse and regret.

  For the first twenty-four years of his life, up until he married Catherine Mahany in 1881, the one and only person to whom William J. Conners had ever uttered the words “I’m sorry,” was JP Sullivan.

  The Rumor

  “
Do you think you can use your influence to get me a position at the Pan-American, Uncle?” asked Junior.

  They sat side by side on the speeding train, having departed the hospital at Hornellsville for Buffalo. JP cast off his blanket when Junior tried covering him with it.

  “I’m not an invalid, boy!” he blustered.

  “I know you’re not, Uncle, but my mother made me promise I’d cover you so’s to keep you warm, and now I can truthfully say that I tried and failed,” Junior clarified with a conspiring smile.

  “Oh. Hannah said that? Oh well, all right then.” JP then pulled his blanket back up to his chin as there was an unwelcome draft in the car after all.

  “Well, what kind of position are we thinking about here, Junior? Perhaps you might be an assistant to the manager at the New York State building? Or the Art Museum. Yes, that’s it, the Albright! You’re interested in photography now, your father tells me. You could make some good contacts at the Art Museum.”

  The New York State building and the Albright Art Museum were the only two Pan-American Exposition buildings that were being constructed to remain on site permanently after the close of the fair.

  “I was thinking more of a situation in one of the beer gardens,” replied Junior.

  “The beer gardens? What ever on earth for, lad?”

  “For the money. The gratuities. I read a story in Collier’s a while back where at the Chicago Columbian Exposition the waiters at the beer gardens made forty dollars a day in tips. And that was during bad economic times.”

  He had also read in this Chicago veteran’s published account that there was much to be found in the way of frivolity and good times in a position at such a venue as well, but he didn’t want to reveal that to his uncle so as not to give the impression of his being unserious.

  “But son, think of your future. A waiter? Where could that ever lead? No place! The friends you would make at the State building or art museum could well initiate a life-long career!”

  “What kind of career, Uncle John?”

  “I don’t know—a politician, or some other position in government, or a respected artist. I was door-keeper in the State Assembly when I wasn’t much older than you are right now. You might well have the opportunity to meet Roosevelt and all kinds of other influential men. I’m sure President McKinley will be attending the exposition. You could meet him as well.”

  “But what kind of skills do I possess that would garner me such a prestigious position, uncle?”

  JP laughed and nudged his nephew. “Nepotism is the only real skill a man needs at the outset, Junior. You let me worry about the rest once we get your foot in the door.”

  ...

  Hannah Sullivan, in order to ease the discomfort that came from feeling unneeded now that the Alderman was home and Molly Nugent was back with her parents, left the house on Hamburg Street to pay an afternoon visit to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church.

  She left little David next door with Annie’s servant girl Sophie. The elder children were at school. Her housework was done, or at least that portion which would be most noticeable. When it came to housework Hannah believed there were two levels of accomplishment: good, and good enough. As of late, good enough was good enough.

  There in the echoing dimness of God’s house, where the faint zephyr of holy incense from morning Mass still lingered in the air, she found comfort despite her inability to believe. In the afternoons the church was empty save but for a scattered half dozen women, each sitting solitary in an empty oak pew, isolated, desolate, and ensnared by her own singular agony.

  Religion is a testament to the stupidity of humans, she reminded herself as she looked around. She thought she truly believed that, and yet here she was.

  Hannah dropped a nickel into the coin box for the poor and lit a candle in front of the statue of St. Jude, the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes. In recent years when she prayed at all it was exclusively to St. Jude, for God Himself had long since abandoned her.

  She sat in her pew, watching as the flickering of the rows of votive candles at the foot of the various saints projected eerie illuminations upward, manifesting upon their plaster faces animated expressions akin to those of living beings. She detected the mournful sniffling of a woman she had only known previously in passing. She tried to ignore it, but observed that the woman’s burden was so ponderous that her head was weighted down and bowed so low as to almost be cradled in her own lap.

  Other solitary churchgoers cast an errant glance or two her way, but embroiled as they were in their own personal torment, they ignored her. Soon enough two of the afflicted exited the church, and suddenly, being closest in distance to the weeping soul, Hannah found herself drawn to the woman’s suffering. She decided to be charitable and go to her.

  “Are you all right, missus?” Hannah whispered softly.

  The woman, Mary Lambert, looked up in wonder to see that it was the very spirit she considered most kindred who had come to comfort her. God was indeed listening.

  “Oh, Mrs. Sullivan!” Lambert revealed, “My husband is spending his nights away from me with a woman out in Orchard Park. I am all alone now. He has lost all interest in me and in our marriage. Tell me what to do!”

  Hannah was taken aback to be included in Mary Lambert’s humiliating secret, but more so to be asked to provide her a solution.

  “Mrs. Lambert,” she softly murmured, “I am so very sorry. I truly am. But I hardly know you or your husband. I have no right to tell you what to do.”

  Mary Lambert’s eyes flashed at the perceived hypocrisy for one little moment, but then softened, for Hannah seemed at this instant to be her only hope for consolation.

  “But Mrs. Sullivan, what did you do when this happened to you? How could you stand it?”

  Hannah jolted as though knocked hard sideways.

  “Mrs. Lambert, I beg your pardon, but I have had no such experience. You must have me confused with some other.”

  “Why, you’re Detective Sullivan’s wife from Hamburg Street, are you not? Everyone already knows hereabouts, Mrs. Sullivan. It’s common knowledge. No need to be evasive. I sincerely want your advice and encouragement. Please!”

  Hannah’s blood was set to boil.

  “Mrs. Lambert, wherever did you hear such a lie! My Jim has never been unfaithful to me!”

  “Oh, my dear, sweet darling! How could you not know? He sees that young Scots woman from the florist shop on Elmwood Avenue!”

  “Mrs. Lambert! I never! How dare you involve me in your terrible misery! I am sad for what you must be feeling, but do not make the mistake of thinking that my Jim would ever do what you husband has done. I demand that you tell me right now where you heard of this!”

  Hannah was standing upright now, leering contemptuously down upon the crumpled woman. Her impassioned whispering was now audible to the other visitors.

  “Perhaps we should go outside, Mrs. Sullivan.”

  The two left, Hannah so upset that she nearly left her bag behind.

  Mary Lambert revealed that she had heard the story from Evelyn Rundle from Katherine Street. Hannah immediately turned on her heel and headed three blocks over to pay Mrs. Rundle a surprise visit. Rundle was a timid woman who did not suspect why Hannah Sullivan might be knocking on her door, so she opened it with a smile.

  “Why are you spreading vicious lies around the ward about my husband, Mrs. Rundle?”

  Evelyn stood there dumbly, trying to comprehend the situation, stammering for an answer, praying that Hannah would retain her dignity.

  “Why, Mrs. Sullivan. The wanderings of your husband are common knowledge. We all thought you knew!”

  “I know of no such thing! My husband is at home every night, Mrs. Rundle, and he is a good man. How dare you!” Hannah looked good and ready to punch Evelyn Rundle in the eye.

  “But Mrs. Sullivan, I was told this by Jennie McCree, the downstairs maid at Fingy Conners’ mansion on Delaware Avenue! She told me it was common conversa
tion around the Conners’ dining table, spoken by Mrs. Conners herself at a dinner party recently where Alderman Kennedy and your very own brother David Nugent and his wife were guests!”

  Hannah fumed. That filthy bitch! she thought silently, picturing in her red-hot imagination the hardened prim face of Fingy Conners’ second wife.

  Hannah stormed off Evelyn Rundle’s porch and hurried her way toward home, wondering what to do. How could Jim be spending time with another woman without her knowing anything of it? He was home every night, and often stopped in at the house many times throughout the day—even during working hours as he passed that way on his police duties. Then she thought about all the out-of-town errands he had been running in recent months, delivering or taking possession of prisoners on the train to towns and cities across the state, or to Chicago, sometimes being away overnight. Her heart sank a bit. She had never even thought to question Jim’s word.

  She pictured herself immediately storming over to Delaware Avenue to confront the source, but thought better of it for the time being. Before she risked humiliating herself, she needed to confront Jim with the gossip.

  Knowing she had to rid herself of the fearsome burden she now carried, Hannah went next door to see Annie even before stopping at her own house. With a squirming infant refusing the breast writhing in her exhausted arms, Annie looked to be at the end of her rope. Hannah knew the feeling well. Annie asked Sophie the servant girl to leave the room with the older children, including Hannah’s little David.

  “Mama!”

  “We’ll be going home soon, Davey, in just a few minutes. Go with Sophie,” Hannah assured her son.