by Bruno, Joe
In 1917, after the arrest of One Lung Curran, and with Madden still in jail and Mulraney in prison for life, the Gophers gradually dissipated. By 1920, the Gophers street gang ceased to exist, only to be replaced in later years by another murderous group called “The Westies.”
Great New York City Fire of 1835
It was the worst fire in New York City's history. But that didn't stop the poor Irish, living in the slums of the Five Points, from going on a dazzling display of looting, which led to one of the biggest free champagne parties in the history of America.
The city was in the throes of one of the coldest winters on record. On the days preceding “The Great Fire,” the temperature had dropped as low as 17 degrees below zero. By the night of December 16, 1835, there was two feet of frozen snow on the ground and the temperature was exactly zero frigid degrees. It was so cold, both the Hudson River and East Rivers had completely frozen.
Around 9 p.m., a watchman (the precursor to a New York City policeman) named Warren Hayes was crossing the corner of Merchant (now Beaver Street) and Pearl Street, when he thought he smelled smoke. Hayes looked up at the last floor of a five-story building at 25 Merchant Street, rented by Comstock and Andrews, a famous dry-goods store, and he spotted smoke coming out of a window. Unbeknownst to Hayes, a gas pipe had ruptured and had ignited some coals left on a stove.
Hayes immediately ran through the streets yelling “Fire!!” In minutes, the great fire bell that stood above City Hall began peeling loudly, summoning what was left of the New York City Fire Department. The bell at the Tombs Prison, about a mile north, also started ringing, summoning the volunteer firemen in that area.
In 1832, New York City was stricken with the worst case of cholera in the city's history. Four thousand people died, and more than half of the city's quarter million population fled the city in fear. This decimated the New York City Fire Department, and by 1835, the Fire Department had less than half of its previous members.
The volunteer fire department that responded on December 16, 1835, had spent the previous night fighting a fire on Burlington Street, on the East River, and they were now near exhaustion. By the time the local fire department arrived 30 minutes later, due to 40 mile-a-hour winds, the fire had already spread to 50 structures. Buildings were going up in flames on Water Street, Exchange Place, Beaver, Front, and South Streets. By midnight, the fire had also consumed Broad and Wall Street, which was the heart of the business and financial center of New York City, if not the entire country. Most of the city's newspaper plants, retail and wholesale stores, and warehouses, were also engulfed by the conflagration.
The call went out to every fire department in the city, but it was of no use. 75 hook and ladder companies were at the scene less than two hours after the fire had started. Hundreds of citizens pitched in, carrying water in buckets, pails, and even tubs. Unfortunately, because of the cold weather, the fire hoses were mostly useless.
In addition, the entire city's cisterns, wells, and fire hydrants were frozen too. Whatever water did stream thinly from the hydrants through the hoses, only went 30 feet into the air, then quickly turned into ice. What made matters worse, due to the high winds, this ice/water mixture, feebly coming out of the hoses, was blown back onto the fireman themselves, and soon scores of firemen were living ice structures. Many firemen poured brandy into their boots to keep their feet from getting frostbite. Some drank the brandy, too, in order to keep the rest of their body warm.
Other firemen raced to the East River, and they started chopping the ice to reach the water below. Black Joke Engine No. 33 was dragged onto the deck of a ship, and it started pumping water through the holes in the ice. Engine No. 33 directed the water though three other engines, until it finally reached the fire on Water Street. However, in just a few hours, those four engines were frozen too and were no longer of any use.
Two buildings were saved in an extremely odd way. Barrels of vinegar were rolled out of the Oyster King Restaurant, in the Downing Building on Garden Street. This vinegar was poured into several fire engines and used to douse the fires in the Downing Building, and in the Journal of Commerce Building next door. However, the vinegar soon ran out and could not be used to save any more structures.
As the city was engulfed in mayhem, a man ran into a church on Garden Street, and he began playing a funeral dirge on an organ, which could be heard all throughout Lower Manhattan. Minutes later, that church caught fire too, and the organist was seen sprinting from the flaming church.
Soon, the fire spread to Hanover Square, Williams Street, Hanover Street, and Exchange Place. Burning cloths and twines from various buildings were blown into the air, and they flew across the East River, igniting the roofs of homes in Brooklyn. The city’s blaze was so intense, smoke could be seen as far south as Philadelphia and as far north as New Haven. New York City was so desperate, Philadelphia firemen were summoned from 90 miles away to help fight the blaze.
After consulting with experts, New York City Mayor Cornelius W. Lawrence agreed that the fire could be stopped, if they blew up certain buildings in strategic places, so that the flames could not travel from building to building. The only problem was, the sale of gunpowder was forbidden in New York City. The nearest ample supply was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in Red Hook, Brooklyn, as well as on Governors Island.
Mayor Strong sent word that the gunpowder was needed immediately, but it did not arrive until noon on December 17, accompanied by 80 marines and a dozen sailors. The military, with the help of James Hamilton, the son of former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, began blowing up buildings. In a few hours, the blaze was contained at Coenties Slip.
As downtown Manhattan continued smoldering, hundreds of Irish men, women, and children, from the slums of the Five Points area, rushed into the devastated area, eyes sparkling, and hands a-grabbing. For a full 24 hours, the hoodlums looted whatever they could get their hands on: stealing cloaks, frock coats, plug hats, and silk and satin of the finest quality.
Cases and kegs of booze, beer, and wine were smashed open, and the mob drank heartily in the smoky frigid streets. Fights broke out between the drunk and delirious rioters, over who had the right to steal what. Ten thousand bottles of the finest champagne were stolen, too, and what the mob could not guzzle on site, they lugged back to their slums for later consumption.
Noted diarist and future Mayor of New York City, Philip Hone, later wrote, “The miserable wretches, who prowled around the ruins, and became beastly drunk on the champagne and other wines and liquors, with which the streets and roads were lined, seemed to exult in the misfortune of others.”
Finally, the area was placed under martial law, and patrolled by the marines from the Navy Yard, and from the Third and Ninth Military Regiments. However, this did not completely stop the looters from continuing their felonious frenzy. Dozens rushed to unaffected areas outside the burn zone, and they torched buildings, so they could loot those buildings too. Five arsonists were arrested by the Marines. But a sixth one, who was caught torching a building on the corner of Stone and Broad, was captured by angry citizens and immediately hung from a tree. His frozen body stood dangling there and was not cut down by the police until three days later.
From the start of the fire, three days had passed until the last spark was extinguished. By then, 17 blocks of lower Manhattan, covering 52 acres and consisting of 693 buildings, had burned to the ground. Two people were killed, and the damages were assessed at $20 million, almost a billion dollars by today's standards.
There was 10 million dollars in insurance money owed for the damages, but only a scant amount of that money was ever paid, since the insurance companies, and the banks, had also burned to the ground, forcing them out of business. Not being able to collect on their insurance, and not being able to get loans from banks that no longer existed, hundreds of businesses that burned to the ground during “The Great New York Fire of 1835” never re-opened.
In 1836, the downtown area was rebu
ilt, with structures made of stone and concrete, which were less susceptible to spreading fires. Some of those buildings are standing to this day.
Hicks, Albert E.
Albert E. Hicks, called “Hicksey” by his pals (if he had any) and “Pirate Hicks” by the police, was the last man to be executed for piracy in the United States of America.
Hicks was a freelance gangster, who lived with his wife and son at 129 Cedar Street in downtown Manhattan, only two blocks from the East River. Hicks felt his criminal enterprises were better served if he worked alone, and as a result, Hicks never joined any of the other gangs that prowled the waterfront in the treacherous 4th Ward. Working solo, the police suspected Hicks committed scores of robberies and over a dozen murders.
However, Hicks scoffed at that notion. “Suspecting it and proving it are two different things,” he said.
In March 1860, Hicks tied on a big one at a Water Street dive, and he became so drunk, he could not walk the two blocks home. Instead, he staggered into a Cherry Street lodging house, figuring he'd sleep until he was sober enough to walk the rest of the way home. The owner of the establishment was a known crimp, or a man who specialized in shanghaiing, which was the practice of “kidnapping men into duty as sailors on ships, against their will, by devious techniques such as trickery, intimidation, or violence.” Hicks asked the crimp for a nightcap, and that he got, as the crimp, not aware of Hicks' reputation, laced Hicks' rum with laudanum, which is an alcohol solution containing opium.
The nightcap knocked Hicks out cold and when he awoke the next morning, he found himself at sea, on the ship the E. A. Johnson,” which was bound for Deep Creek, Virginia, to pick up a load of oysters. Five days later, the E. A. Johnson was found abandoned at sea, a few miles off the coast of Staten Island. The ship seemed to have collided with another vessel, and when it was finally secured, Coroner Schirmer and Captain Weed of the Second Precinct Police Station, boarded the boat to examine the cause of its condition. No one was on board, but in the ship's cabin they found the room ransacked, and the floor, ceiling, and bunks filled with blood. On the deck, they found four human fingers and a thumb lying under the rail.
The next day, two residents of the Cedar Street house, where Hicks lived with this family, told the police that Hicks had returned home with a considerable sum of money, and was now gone, with no trace of him, or his family. In fact, Hicks had packed his belongings and escaped with his family to a boarding house in Providence, Rhode Island.
New York City Patrolman Nevins traced Hicks, and with the help of the Providence police, he arrested Hicks's entire family. When Patrolman Nevins searched Hicks's belongings, he found a watch and a daguerreotype (an early version of a camera), which belonged to Captain Burr, the captain of the E. A. Johnson. The two other missing seamen were brothers, Smith and Oliver Watts, but nothing could be found belonging to them and their fate remained a mystery.
As a result, Hicks was arrested and locked up in the Tombs Prison. At his trial in May, it took the jury only seven minutes to convict Hicks of piracy and murder on the high seas. He was sentenced to be hanged at Bedloe's Island on Friday the 13th, which was certainly a double-bad-luck day for Hicks.
A week after his trial, Hicks decided to become downright chatty. Hicks summoned the warden and several newspapermen to his cell, and he began spilling the beans about the whole sordid affair.
“I was brooding about being shanghaied,” Hicks said “And I decided to avenge myself by murdering all hands on the ship.”
Hicks told the assembled crowd that he was steering the ship, while Captain Burr and one of the Watts brothers was sleeping in the cabin below. The other Watts brother was on lookout at the bow. Hicks lashed the steering wheel to keep the ship on course, then he picked up an iron bar, sneaked to the bow of the ship, and hit the lookout over the head with the bar, knocking him out cold.
The other Watts brother heard the noise, and he rushed topside. By this time, Hicks had found an ax, and when the boy climbed onto the deck, Hicks decapitated him with one mighty blow. Hicks then rushed down to the cabin and confronted Captain Burr, who had just awakened from a deep sleep. The Captain put up a brave battle, but in the end, he too was decapitated.
Hicks said he then heard rumblings from up top. Hicks rushed up to the deck, and he found the first Watts boy staggering around in obvious pain. Hicks knocked him down with a heavy blow. Then he picked him up, carried him to the rail and tried to throw the boy overboard. The boy clutched at the railing, and Hicks used the ax to chop off the boy's five fingers, after which the lad toppled into the murky waters below.
Hicks threw the other two bodies overboard. Then he rushed below and ransacked the cabin, looking for money and valuables. When he saw the coast of Staten Island, Hicks lowered a small boat, and he rowed the rest of the way to land.
Hicks's confession made him an instant celebrity. Hundreds of gawkers paid the prison guards small fees to see Hicks shackled in his cell. And for a few pennies more, they were allowed to speak with the condemned man himself.
Among Hicks's many visitors was circus owner P.T. Barnum, who offered Hicks $25, a new suit of clothes, and two boxes of cigars, in exchange for a plaster cast of Hicks's head, which Barnum, the enterprising chap that he was, had planned to display in his circus, after Hicks's execution. Hicks agreed, but later on his way to the gallows, he complained to the warden that the suit was cheap and it did not fit properly. The warden told Hicks it was too late for alterations.
On the morning of July 13, Hicks, led my Marshall Rynders and a crowd estimated at 1500 people, started a procession to the docks. Rynders and Hicks boarded the boat accompanied by several policemen, and they sailed for Bedloe's Island, where a gallows had been erected 30 feet from the water. Hundreds of boats followed the doomed man, and it was estimated that 10,000 people came to witness Hicks's execution.
After the noose was slung around Hicks’s neck and the ground removed from beneath his feet, Hicks struggled for a full three minutes before he stopped moving. Hicks was then cut down and pronounced dead.
Hicks was buried at Calvary Cemetery. However, a few days later, Hicks's body was stolen and sold to medical students, intent on studying the brain of a man who could commit such vile atrocities without much remorse.
Holstein, Caspar – The Harlem Policy King
He was considered a genius; a compassionate man who gave freely to the poor. However, Caspar Holstein made his fortune in the Harlem numbers policy racket, a game of chance he helped invent.
Casper Holstein was born on December 7, 1876, in St. Croix, Danish West Indies. His parents were of mixed African and Danish descent, and his father's father was a Danish officer in the Danish West Indies Colonial militia. In 1894, the Holstein family moved to New York City. Holstein, an extremely bright teenager, graduated from high school in Brooklyn, which was no mean accomplishment for a black man before the turn of the century. After graduation, Holstein enlisted in the Navy, and during World War I he visited his homeland, which, by then, was known as the West Virgin Islands.
When Holstein was discharged from the Navy, he worked at various odd jobs, including being a doorman in an Upper East Side building. He also became a personal assistant to a wealthy white couple, and years later, after he had made his fortune and they had lost theirs, Holstein supported this couple, then paid for their funeral.
Looking to better himself, Holstein wandered down to Wall Street, where he got a job, first as a messenger, and then as head messenger for a commodities brokerage firm. Holstein became enamored of gambling, especially the horses. But he also dabbled in the stock market, perusing the daily figures from the Boston and the New York City Clearing Houses.
One day, an idea came to Holstein that would improve his lot dramatically. Holstein knew that people in black neighborhoods, such as Harlem, loved to gamble, but most didn't have enough spare cash to do so. When he had saved enough money to start his new endeavor, Holstein devised a scheme where people could bet
as little as a dime on a random set of three digit numbers which would appear daily in the New York City newspapers.
Using the Boston and New York City Clearing House figures, Holstein took the two middle digits of the New York number and the one middle digit from the Boston number. So if the two clearing house totals were $9,456,131 and $7,456,253 respectively, the winning number would be 566: the “56” being the two digits before the last comma of the first figure, and the “6” being the last digit before the last comma of the second figure.
This system was so random, it could not be manipulated; like it would be later by gangster Dutch Schultz, after he muscled in on the Harlem numbers rackets and began using race track figures which he manipulated to decrease his losses. By the early 1920's, Holstein's system was the rage in Harlem. Holstein became known as the "Bolita King," earning an estimated $5000 a day.
Using his newfound wealth, Holstein contributed generously to worthwhile causes. He gave huge amounts of money to the St. Vincent Sanitarium and to the nationalist Garvey Movement. Holstein also funded prizes for Opportunity Magazine's literary awards, which discovered much of Harlem's young artistic talent. Holstein built dormitories at black colleges, and he financed many of Harlem's artists, writers, and poets. Holstein also helped start a Baptist school in Liberia, and he established a hurricane relief fund for his native Virgin Islands. The New York Times said that Holstein was, “Harlem's favorite hero, because of his wealth, his sporting proclivities, and his philanthropies among the people of his race.”
