Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set

by Bruno, Joe

  The most famous Bowery Boy of his time was “Butcher” Bill Poole, a butcher by trade, and a volunteer at Red Rover Fire Engine Company No. 34, at Hudson and Christopher Streets. Poole was a bare-knuckle fighter of much renown. His arch enemy was John Morrissey, an Irish immigrant and strong-arm-man for Tammany Hall. Morrissey was a prodigious fighter too (he later became World Heavyweight Champion), and he challenged Poole to a bare-knuckles fight. Poole hated the Irish and Catholics with a passion (Morrissey was both), and he gladly accepted the challenge.

  On July 26, 1854, the men squared off at the Amos Street Dock, near Christopher Street. After Morrissey extended his hand, in a symbolic gesture to start the fight, Poole feinted, and instead of fighting, he grabbed Morrissey is a frontal bear hug. Poole lifted Morrissey up into the air, and squeezed the breath out of him for a full five minutes. Before Poole could crush Morrissey to death, wiser heads prevailed, and they separated the men. Morrissey was hurt so badly, he couldn't walk the streets of New York City for six months. When he finally did, it was curtains for Poole.

  On February 25, 1855, Lew Baker, a friend of Morrissey's, shot Poole at Stanwix Hall, a bar on Broadway, near Prince Street. Poole lingered for a little more than a week, but he finally died on March 8, 1855.

  The downfall of the Bowery Boys started during the savage three-day New York City Draft Riots. On July 13, 1863, incensed at the imminent possibility of being drafted into the war down south they wanted nothing to do with, thousands of gang members took to the streets of New York City. These out-of-control maniacs looted and burned down stores, factories, and houses. Then they violently mutilated and killed Negroes, whom they blamed as the cause of their predicament.

  The Bowery Boys, in actions normally adverse to their nature, were an integral part of these deadly riots, in which more than a thousand people were killed and thousands injured. The New York State Militia was called in to quell the riots, and when the dust settled three days later, the drafting of New York City men into the armed forces continued, but only for a short time.

  Many Bowery Boys were drafted into the war. Some died, some returned badly injured, or missing arms and legs; others joined rival gangs. By the end of the 1860's, the Bowery Boys ceased to exist, but other gangs rose from their ashes, to take their place of ignominy in downtown Manhattan.

  Bristol Bill The Burglar

  He was a hardened criminal, who escaped from a British prison in Australia and made his way to New York City. In the 1840's, the New York City Police Gazette wrote that Bristol Bill the Burglar was, “the most celebrated bank robber and burglar of our time.”

  The London police knew his real name, but they never revealed it. However, we do know the following about Bristol Bill:

  He was born in the early 1800's, to an aristocratic family, the son of a Bristol MP. When Bristol Bill was in his second year at Eton College, his family adopted a 16-year old orphaned daughter of a poor cleric. Bristol Bill was the handsomest of men; almost 6-feet tall, with piercing brown eyes and a broad forehead. In no time, he had seduced the young girl and got her pregnant. Bristol Bill's father was so outraged when he found out about the young girl's delicate condition, he beat Bristol Bill to a pulp, then banished the girl from his home. His father sent Bristol Bill back to Eton, but Bristol Bill soon located his love, and they both absconded to London.

  A child was born, and to pay the bills, Bristol Bill got a job at a local locksmith. Soon, Bristol Bill was so adept at key, lock, and tool making, he started selling his wares to a London Gang called the Blue Boys. The Blue Boys were so successful at burglarizing and bank robbing, they soon made Bristol Bill their leader.

  This went on for half a dozen years, until Bristol Bill had accumulated approximately $200,000 in American money. With his newfound riches, and with the police nipping at his heels, Bristol Bill abandoned his wife and child and headed to Liverpool, where he planned to board a ship to America. However, a certain London policeman was on his trail, and this policeman arrested Bristol Bill in Liverpool. This same policeman would eventually play a big part in Bristol Bill's life on the other side of the pond.

  After his arrest, Bristol Bill's money was confiscated, and he was sentenced to 14 years in prison at a penal colony in Botany Bay, Australia. After serving 10 years, Bristol Bill escaped by swimming four miles to an American whaler. He first landed in Bedford, Mass., but soon Bristol Bill made his way to New York City, where, at the time, almost all the professional thieves were of British extraction.

  Bristol Bill's mission was to hook up with a robbery gang, which was called “the most extensive association of burglars, counterfeiters, and swindlers the Western world has ever seen.” The London contingent consisted of such noted “crossmen” (a London term for thieves) as Billy Fish, Billy Hoppy, “Cupid” Downer, Bill Parkinson, Bob Whelan, Jim Honeyman, and Dick Collard. They were joined by two New Yorkers: Joe Ashley, and “One-eye” Thompson.

  The brains of the operation was a shady character named Samuel Drury, who was known as a banker and a financier, but was, in fact, a counterfeiter of great renown and a prodigious fence of stolen goods. Whatever his gang robbed, Drury would buy and sell, and keep the majority of the money for himself.

  Bristol Bill met a girl named Catherine Davenport, who was an expert sneak-thief and pickpocket. Davenport also worked for Drury as a “koneyacker,” or a passer of counterfeit cash. Davenport informed Drury that the famous Bristol Bill was in New York City, and that he wanted to join their operation. When Bristol Bill first met Drury, he thought he looked familiar.

  “Were you ever a policeman in London?” Bristol Bill asked Drury.

  Drury admitted he had been.

  “I knew it!” Bristol Bill said. “You're the same hound that tracked me to Liverpool and had me pinched for 14 years.”

  Drury told Bristol Bill that he was caught stealing himself, and he had to leave London for New York City. Drury told Bristol Bill, “If you have any grudge against me, you must forget it. I can make you a fortune in this country.”

  Bristol Bill worked with Drury and his crew for a full four years, robbing banks, valuables, and jewelry, from various places as far away as New Orleans. He even traveled to Montreal, to steal a large quantity of silver plate from the home of the Governor-General of Canada.

  Bristol Bill's specialty was making his own burglary tools, and he was the best lock-picker in the entire United States. He once escaped from jail with a key he had made from silver oak. Another time, Bristol Bill opened his cell door with a key he had fashioned from a piece of stove pipe.

  Bristol Bill's biggest heist was the robbery of the barge “The Clinton.” After opening the ship's safe with a key he had made from a wax impression, Bristol Bill walked away with $32,000 in cash. He kept $10,000 for himself, and sold the rest of the money to Drury for $7,000, which Drury disposed of, little by little, from a bank he owned in upstate New York.

  By 1849, Bristol Bill had earned over $400,000 in America, which he spent mostly on his three “wives”: one living in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn, and one in New Jersey. The three women were fast friends, and they usually accompanied Bristol Bill on his out-of-town robberies; one posing as his wife and the other two as his sisters.

  Living the lush life, Bristol Bill thought it was finally time to exact his revenge on Drury. Bristol Bill knew that Drury had bombed the home of a lawyer with whom Drury had quarreled. Not needing Drury as a fence anymore, Bristol Bill, at the request of the New York Police Gazette, provided information to the police about Drury's involvement with the bombing. While Drury and his son, along with One-Eyed Thompson, were in jail awaiting arraignment, the police raided Drury's mansion in Astoria. They found counterfeit plates and thousands of dollars in counterfeit cash.

  For his help in nailing Drury, the New York City police gave Bristol Bill a pass. Knowing New York City was not safe for him any longer, Bristol Bill traveled to Vermont with his current squeeze, a former opera singer known only as “Gookin' Peg.�
�� Bristol Bill was also accompanied by a counterfeiter named Christian Meadows and a London crook, English Jim.

  They leased a cottage in Groton, near the Canadian border, and got ready to engage in what they did best: robbing banks. In the spring of 1850, acting on information supplied by the New York Herald and the New York Police Gazette, the Vermont police raided the cottage. They found Bristol Bill's home-made burglary tools, a counterfeit machine, and freshly made bills. In addition, there were several diagrams of the banks Bristol Bill had planned to rob.

  Faced with insurmountable evidence, Bristol Bill and Meadows were arrested. English Jim was not at the cottage when the police arrived, and for some reason, “Gookin' Peg” was never charged. Bristol Bill and Meadows were sentenced to ten years at the Windsor State Prison. When Bristol Bill was released, he was almost 60 years old, and he disappeared from the American crime scene. Some said Bristol Bill went back to London. Others said, he died broke in America.

  While he was in prison, Bristol Bill confided to fellow inmates that the biggest mistake he had ever made was inventing an unpickable lock in his early locksmith days in London. This lock was subsequently sold widely in the United States.

  Bristol Bill said there were many times when he encountered his own invention on bank vaults and on the front doors of homes, which made his mission of breaking, entering, and stealing almost impossible.

  Capone - Al “Scarface”

  Most people associate Al Capone with Chicago, but in fact, Al Capone was born and bred, and got his start in the mob in the borough of Brooklyn, New York.

  Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born the fourth of nine children, on January 17, 1899, on Navy Street, in the section of Brooklyn now known as DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). Capone stayed in school until the 6th grade, when in a fit of rage, he beat up one of his teachers. A resulting trip to the principal's office caused Capone to get beat up himself, and after licking his wounds, Capone left school for good.

  Capone hooked up with a street mob called “The James Street Gang,” which was an offshoot of the powerful Five Points Gang in Lower Manhattan. “The James Street Gang” was run by the rough and ruthless Johnny Torrio, who became the teenaged Capone's mentor for many years to come.

  Torrio, along with his partner Frankie Yale, hired Capone to be their chief bouncer at their bar/brothel in Brooklyn. It was there that Capone got his nickname “Scarface,” after his cheek was slashed by a hoodlum named Frank Galluccio, in a bar fight over a girl, whom Capone had insulted (apparently, the girl was Galluccio's sister, and Capone had made a tasteless remark about her shapely figure). Capone later told the press he had gotten his scar fighting for the “Lost Battalion” in France, during World War I. However, the truth was, Capone never served a day of military service in his entire life.

  In 1919, Torrio moved to Chicago to run the rackets of his uncle-through-marriage: Big Jim Colosimo. Capone was suspected of a few murders in Brooklyn, so in order to avoid the heat, Capone headed west to Chicago to aid Torrio in his takeover of the town. Their first order of business was to take out Colosimo, who was a hindrance to Torrio and Capone getting into the illegal booze business. Brooklyn pal Frankie Yale traveled to Chicago, and he took care of Colosimo, personally and permanently, with bullets.

  With Colosimo out of the way, the Torrio/Capone duo attempted to organize Chicago into separate but equal fiefdoms, each with protection and exclusivity in their own territories. Irish mobster Dion O'Banion, the head of Chicago's “North Side Gang,” told Torrio he wanted nothing to do with Torrio's proposal, signing his death warrant in the process. Again, Frankie Yale was called into action, and O'Banion was shot to death by Yale and two associates in O'Banion's florist shop, in November of 1924.

  After Torrio was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt by O'Banion's successor, Hymie Weiss, Torrio went into retirement at the age of 43, willing all his rackets to the 26-year-old Al Capone.

  Capone took Chicago by the throat, and he had over 1,000 experienced gunmen under his control. Even the Chicago police turned a blank eye to Capone's murderous activities.

  Capone once boasted, “I own Chicago, and I own the police.”

  Add aldermen, mayors, legislators, governors, newspapermen, and congressmen to the list of people on Capone's payroll. To deflect any possible heat from people not on his payroll, Capone widely limited his business endeavors to things that were popular with the people: booze, gambling, and prostitution.

  Capone once boasted to his adoring press, “I'm just an honest businessman who's giving the public what they want.”

  Capone was so popular with the common man, he was wildly cheered at Chicago Major League baseball games.

  Capone's downfall started on February 14, 1929, when he orchestrated the “Valentine's Day Massacre.” While Capone was sunbathing in Miami, his shooters lined up seven men against a garage wall in Chicago. The killers machine-gunned the seven men to death, but they missed Capone's main intended target and owner of the garage: George “Bugs” Moran.

  All of a sudden, Capone was no longer the people's choice. Even the jaded citizens of Chicago were aghast at the savagery of the vicious murders. Despite the fact the government had no proof of Capone's involvement in the “Valentine's Day Massacre,” they plotted to put him in jail, any way they could.

  As a result, Capone was hit with 11 counts of income tax evasion, and in 1931, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

  In 1934, Capone was transferred to Alcatraz, a maximum security prison called “The Rock.” There, the effects of syphilis Capone had acquired in his brothel days in Brooklyn took control of his mind. Capone was diagnosed with dementia, and when he was released in November 1939, Al Capone was a broken man, given to outbursts of rage, over anything: from the government, to the Communists, to his old foe “Bugs” Moran.

  Capone spent his last years flowing in and out of lucidity, and on January, 21, 1947, he died of a heart attack at his home in Miami Beach, Fla.

  Civil War Draft Riots of 1863

  Never in the history of New York has there been a more brutal mass insurrection than the New York City Civil War Draft Riots of 1863.

  In March of 1863, the seeds were planted for these riots when President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation, called The Conscription Act (or Enrollment Act), stating he needed 300,000 more men to be drafted into the Northern Army, to beat back the Southern Rebels in the Civil War. This act required every male citizen, between the ages of 20 and 40, to be drafted into the war. Each man who joined the army was given a bounty of up to $500, as an enlistment bonus. The gravest inequity, however, was that for the sum of $300 a man could buy himself out of being drafted. The rich could afford the $300, but the poor could not, which led to the Civil War being called “A rich man's war and a poor man's fight.”

  New York City (only Manhattan at the time) had more than 800,000 citizens, of which more than half were foreign. Of that half, half again were poor Irish, who had no desire to fight in a war to end the slavery of Negroes, whom they despised. These poor, low-class Irish people had settled in the Five Points and in the Mulberry Bend areas in downtown Manhattan (the 6th Ward), and also in the 4th Ward near the East River. In these slums, gangs like the Plug Uglies, the Bowery Boys, the Roach Guards, and the Dead Rabbits, committed atrocious crimes. And this downtown area is where the draft rioters began their bloodthirsty march.

  President Lincoln had announced that Draft Day in New York City would commence on Saturday, July 11. On that day, with only minor disturbances throughout the city, 1,236 men were drafted into the war. When the draft ended that day, it was announced that the draft would bypass Sunday and continue again on Monday morning.

  However, the seeds of discontent grew during the rest of the weekend, spurred by an article in Saturday evening's Leslie's Illustrated, which stated, “It came like a thunderclap on the people, as men read their names in the fatal list, the feeling of indignation and resistan
ce soon found vent in words, and a spirit of resistance spread fast and far. The number of poor men exceeded that of the rich, their number to draw from being that much greater, but this was viewed as proof of the dishonesty in the whole proceeding.”

  As Monday morning drew near, the poor slum-living Irish began planning how to voice their displeasure, and it wouldn't be pleasant. At 6 a.m. Monday, men and women started spilling out of the downtown slums, and they began their resolute march to the north. At every street corner, more discontents joined their forces, and the group became so huge it split into two groups. It was estimated that eventually 50,000 to 70,000 people took part in the four-day Draft Riots, and the New York City Metropolitan Police had only 3,000 men to combat the rioters.

  As the rioters moved north along Fifth and Sixth Avenues, they turned east and made a beeline toward the main draft office, at 46th Street and Third Avenue. Police Superintendent John A. Kennedy, realizing trouble was brewing, dispatched 60 police officers to guard the Third Avenue Draft Office, and another 69 to guard the draft office at Broadway and 29th Street.

  The rioters on Third Avenue were led by the volunteer firemen attached to Engine Company 33, known as The Black Joke. They consisted of members of the Plug Uglies street gang, who by now had stopped traffic completely and were pulling people out of their carts. Signs in the crowd were held saying “NO DRAFT!!”, when suddenly someone in the crowd shot a pistol up into the air, and the riots commenced.

  The mob threw bricks and stones at the draft office, breaking all the windows in the building. Then they surged forward, thousands of them, while 60 cops tried in vain to hold them back. The rioters stepped over the now-battered and unconscious policemen, and as draft officials jumped out the rear windows of the building, the mob set fire to the Third Avenue Draft Office.