by Bruno, Joe
Big Tim, still fond of Little Herman, got Rosenthal a job as the proprietor of a small Lower East Side craps game. Rosenthal did so well for Sullivan in this endeavor, Big Tim procured Rosenthal a prestigious gig as a bookmaker in a storefront in Far Rockaway, Queens, which was the last stop on the New York City subway transit system. Riding the subway daily gave Rosenthal plenty of time to think, and he envisioned the day when he would become a big shot himself.
As a result of Rosenthal’s guile and Big Tim’s connections, Rosenthal moved up the underworld gambling ladder one step at a time. Rosenthal eventually became the manager of the prestigious Hesper Club, located on 111 Second Avenue and owned by Big Tim Sullivan’s brother, Patrick. The private Hesper Club was famous for its full casino. It featured roulette wheel and craps tables, and a back-room poker game which attracted some of the most illustrious gamblers in town. The gamblers included respected judges, assistant district attorneys, and a few mid-to-high-level government employees.
The Hesper Club was a club where you obtained membership only through the recommendation of another member. Big Tim was so intent on his brother Patrick’s private club thriving, Big Tim even penned a flowery letter, which was framed and placed inside the club next to the front door.
The letter, dated April 30, 1903, and addressed to then-Hesper president Sam Harris, read:
“Dear Sir: Regarding my election as a life member of the Hesper Club, I keenly appreciate the compliment you pay me, and should it be possible for me at any time to serve you, or any of the members, I would be glad to do so. A simple word from you will command me – Yours truly, TIMOTHY D. SULLIVAN.”
This framed letter said reams about the strong connection between the elected politicians of the time and the illegal gambling crowd. Everyone knew Big Tim Sullivan ran the Lower East Side with an iron fist, fitted with a velvet glove. They also knew that Big Tim could provide well-paying jobs, some of them “no-show” jobs, to anyone he desired.
But the implication of the Hesper Club letter was even more sinister than that.
Big Tim basically said in the letter that a simple word from the president of the Hesper Club, and Sullivan would pull whatever strings necessary to keep illegal gambling thriving in the Hesper Club; not to mention giving jobs to whomever the bigwigs at the Hesper Club said needed jobs. This was a classic case of one dirty hand washing the other.
Being the manager of the Hesper club catapulted Rosenthal into the big time. He was raking in so much cash, he was able to rent of suite of rooms at the illustrious Broadway Hotel, which set Rosenthal back more than $1,200 a month; a tidy sum in the first decade of the Twentieth Century. With his newfound celebrity, Rosenthal decided to take himself a second wife, a chubby bleach-bottled redhead named Lillian, who did not, like Rosenthal’s first wife, do business on her back. In fact, Herman was so flush with cash, Lillian had no need, nor any desire, to work at all.
The problem with Rosenthal was that he was not very good at making friends, but quite competent at making enemies; especially those in the New York City police department. While he was manager of the Hesper Club, Rosenthal opened his own gambling operation, with the blessing of Big Tim Sullivan, of course, at 123 Second Avenue, called The Red Raven Club. The Red Raven Club had formerly been a poolroom run by Rosenthal.
It was common knowledge at the time, if you wanted to run an illegal gambling establishment in New York City, you had to pay off the police and pay them good. But giving graft to cops was adverse to Rosenthal’s nature. Instead of making his weekly contributions to the “Police Benevolent Association,” Rosenthal used that money instead to fortify his gambling houses from unwanted invasion. He installed extra-sturdy doors and employed the most competent doormen, who were experts at sniffing out an undercover cop, or someone from the city who might want to serve the club with a warrant.
This made the New York City police department all the more eager to shut Rosenthal down.
In 1903, New York City Police Captain Charles Kemp spent considerable time devising a way to put Rosenthal out of business. According to Rose Keefe’s book, The Starker, Kemp used a dubious “letter of instruction” to gain admittance for one of his operatives to 123 Second Avenue, when it was a tightly run Rosenthal poolroom/illegal gambling house. The letter read:
Herman Rosenthal Esq.
This is to introduce my friend, Mr. Ketcham. He is all right.
H. Morgan
The undercover cop gave the letter to the doorman, who in turn, gave the letter to Rosenthal. For some unknown reason, Rosenthal gave the thumbs-up for the visitor to enter. The undercover did so and in the course of an hour, he was able to place bets on several horse races.
This allowed Captain Kemp to get a warrant, and on August 15, 1903, Captain Kemp, five detectives, and 20 policemen broke down the front door of 123 Second Avenue with axes. When they busted inside, they found Rosenthal frantically trying to destroy the day’s racing receipts inside a raging fireplace. Rosenthal was cuffed, and along with three of his employees, taken to the police station and charged with “keeping and maintaining a poolroom.” Why he was not charged in connection with taking illegal race bets is a testament to Rosenthal’s adroitness in pitching papers into the fire.
Rosenthal’s rabbi with the law, and his ace-in-the-hole, was always Big Tim Sullivan. However, by the elections of 1908 Sullivan’s stronghold on the German and Irish votes had been weakened by the huge influx of Italians below 14th Street and west of Broadway, and Jews east of Broadway. With Sullivan’s power waning, Rosenthal, who had an abrasive and defying attitude when dealing with the legal authorities, had a large target on his back as far as the New York City police department was concerned.
In 1909, New York City District Attorney William Travers Jerome, who had prosecuted Harry Thaw for the murder of famed architect Stanford White, set his sights on police corruption, illegal gambling in general, and on Herman Rosenthal in particular. Jerome had Rosenthal arrested and charged with “running a string of gambling houses.” However, as soon as Jerome closed down one of Rosenthal’s joints, little Herman just moved his equipment to a like-area nearby and opened again with impunity.
By 1910, the Hesper Club had lost its luster. Due to the decrease in his political power, Big Tim Sullivan and his brother, Patrick, resigned from the club and left its future in the slippery hands of Herman Rosenthal.
With Rosenthal now running the show, instead of the usual politicians and judges spinning the Hesper Club’s roulette wheel, shooting craps, and playing poker in the back, they were replaced by neighborhood hooligans, who didn’t gamble as much as the previous members and were inclined to cheat a bit on cards, which decreased the Hesper Club’s membership even more.
The first blow came on October 28, 1910, when, according to the New York Times:
“The Hesper Social and Political Club at 111 Second Avenue was invaded by the police yesterday under orders from Commissioner Cropsey and Police Commissioner Driscoll. The club, which is in Senator Christy Sullivan’s district, has long been regarded as one of the most influential East Side organizations, and the police raid caused considerable consternation in the neighborhood.”
Inside the Hesper Club, 250 men were rounded up, and the police found “evidence of gambling” in the form of stuss tables, faro layouts, and blackboards, on which the partially erased words “Track Good” were still visible.
The police let all but two of the men go, but as they were doing so, about 100 or so disappointed gamblers decided to bum-rush past the police officers standing guard at the front door and force their way inside. These men claimed they were members of the private Hesper Club and should not be denied admittance. Seven of those men were also arrested, and the Hesper Club was temporarily shuttered.
Rosenthal, who was not on the premises at the time of the raid, was furious. He immediately sent Matthias Radin, who introduced himself at Police Headquarters as “the lawyer for the Hesper Club,” to set the record straight. Radin y
elled at Detective Cody, one of the officers involved in the raid, that “Tammany Hall would remember what the police had done and would remember those instrumental in it.”
Then Radin tried to push his way into the office of the Police Commissioner. When he was stopped by a phalanx of cops, Radin yelled at them, “You don’t know who you’re talking to! You’re talking in a swell way to a good Tammany man and you’ll pay for it, and don’t you forget it!”
Newspaper reporters surrounded Rosenthal’s mouthpiece, and this was the stage Radin relished. He told the reporters, “It was an outrage to invade the quarters of the club. It is one of the oldest and respectable clubs on the East Side and had never been interfered with before in history. Those blackboards meant nothing. The police might have written those words ‘Track Good’ themselves. We hold lectures in the clubhouse regularly and the blackboards were used for illustrating points in these educational lectures. They were for the education and benefit of the members. So far as the stuss tables were concerned, any home might have such tables in it.”
The October 27 raid showed how much pull Tammany Hall still had concerning the New York City police department. Due to pressure applied by the aforementioned Matthias Radin, Police Commissioner Driscoll, who had ordered the raid, was relieved of his job and transferred to a local Precinct where his powers were greatly diminished. Also, Detectives Cody and Murphy, who led the raid, were no longer detectives. They were assigned to plain patrol duty, in uniform, in the boondocks of the Bronx.
Through his considerable pull at Tammany Hall, Radin was able to get the Hesper Club reopened. So, the police set their sights on another one of Rosenthal’s establishments: the Red Raven Club at 123 Second Ave, right down the street from the Hesper Club. This club was Rosenthal’s alone, and it didn’t have the protection Big Tim Sullivan had afforded the Hesper Club.
On December 23, 1910, the Red Raven Club was raided by Capt. Kemp’s men. It was closed for a while as Rosenthal ordered his man Radin to get a court injunction to reopen the club. That Radin did, but on March 19, 1911, led by District Attorney Jerome himself, the police raided the Red Raven Club in a rousing midnight invasion.
Seven men were arrested, but the big fish – Rosenthal - was not on the premises at the time. So, Jerome sent his men to the Hesper Club, where there they found Rosenthal and arrested him on the spot. Rosenthal spent the night in Night Court, where his bail was set at $10,000; a tidy sum usually reserved for elite criminals. When the sun rose and the bail bond offices opened, Rosenthal posted bail and was none too happy about it.
He was even unhappier, when the police raided the Hesper Club for the final time on April 19, 1911.
The New York Times headlines and subsequent article read:
HESPER CLUB RAIDED BY FLYNN’S AXEMEN
Deputy Commissioner Takes the Sullivan Stronghold
By Storm as a Gambling Resort
IT MAY END GAMBLING HERE
Gamblers Thought This Club Immune From Police
Interference on Account of Political Influence.
“The Hesper Club at 111 Second Avenue, generally believed to have the support of political interests allied to those of Big Tim and Christie Sullivan, and known as the gamblers’ own club, the principal citadel in the gambling fortifications throughout the city, was raided by Deputy Police Commissioner William J. Flynn. The raid, the gamblers themselves admitted when they heard of it, may prove to be the last blow necessary to suppress vice in this city.”
A known gambler, who frequented the Hesper Club, said, “It will be hard to keep on gambling when every time Flynn gets a man, he is put under a suspended sentence with orders to report to him. Flynn will have a regular roll book, and call roll every time he holds a meeting. It will be fine to hear the roll reading ‘Beansie Rosenfeld, Hymie Rosenthal, Bob Kennedy’ and so forth. And hear those fellows answer ‘Present and voting.’ That’s what it will come to at this rate, with everyone facing a two-year sentence and a $1,000 fine if he breaks parole.”
With both of his money-making gambling joints shut down by the law, Rosenthal was so broke he had to move out of the Broadway Hotel, and he absconded to a flea-bag tenement with his wife, Lillian.
Desperate for a way to make a living, Rosenthal again turned to Big Tim Sullivan for help. Sullivan, whose political power had been seriously diminished and was in the early stages of syphilis dementia, fronted Rosenthal $35,000 to open a posh gambling house, not on the Lower East Side, but in the ritzy “Tenderloin District,” which ran from 30th Street to 50th Street, and from Sixth to Eight Avenues. Instead of dealing with the Lower Manhattan mugs, the Tenderloin district was the gambling home of such elegant sporting characters as Richard Canfield, Lou Busteed, Charles Gates, Julius Fleischmann, Henry Sinclair, and Percival Hill.
On November 17, 1911, Rosenthal’s gambling den had its grand opening at 104 West 45th Street. This made Bridgey Webber, a former member of the Hesper Club, not too happy. In early 1911, Webber, who had been Rosenthal’s archenemy since they were teenagers, had opened his own sporting club at 117 West 45th Street, down the block from Rosenthal’s new joint, and he sure didn’t like the competition being so close to his lucrative operation.
However, Rosenthal’s steadfast insistence not to pay off the local police came back to haunt him. After being open just a few days, Rosenthal was summoned to the offices of Police Inspector Cornelius Hayes, who demanded an immediate payment of $1,000; to be followed by payments of $1,000 a week. Rosenthal told Hayes to go spit in his hat, which was not such a smart thing do to, since a few days later, Hayes led a contingent of cops to Rosenthal’s new club. The police smashed down the doors, then took their axes to every piece of equipment in sight.
Rosenthal borrowed money to purchase new equipment, and he took in a new partner: New York City Police Lieutenant Charles Becker, who was reputed to have closed down more gambling joints in New York City than any other cop in town.
CHARLES BECKER
In 1870, Charles Becker was born to a German/American family in the tiny town of Calicoon Center, in the Catskill region of upstate New York. Becker’s father died when he was seven, and he was raised by his widowed mother. In 1890, when Becker was just 20 years old, he hopped on a train and headed for New York City where he hoped to gain fame and more than his fair share of fortune.
After working at several meaningless jobs, the tall and broad-shouldered Becker took a gig as a bouncer in a German “Biergarten” (beer garden) just off the Bowery. German Biergartens were jovial joints where sometimes an unruly customer, who had one too many brews, needed to get pitched out on his ear. Becker was especially good at this sort of thing, and he got the reputation of someone who could “punch with the kick of a horse.” Becker’s status as a ruffian grew, and soon he caught the eye of several customers who were politically connected and were in the position to get someone like Becker an appointment in the New York City police department; after he paid them handsomely, of course.
Becker’s rabbi was the Republican Police Commissioner John McClave, who had been appointed by Mayor Franklin Edson in 1884 and re-appointed in 1890 by Mayor Hugh Grant. McClave, as was the practice in those days, took the whopping sum of $300 off Becker (nearly a half a year of a New York City policeman’s pay), and in early 1894 Becker became a full-fledged New York City policeman. Soon after he secured Becker his “appointment,” McClave was summoned before the Lexow Committee, which was investigating police corruption in New York City. The charge against McClave was “banking the proceeds of bribery,” and with his son-in-law Gideon Granger testifying against him, McClave was forced to resign.
There is no record of McClave ever having returned Becker’s $300.
After making his bones in several precincts, Becker was given a most enviable post as a vice-stomping unformed policeman in the Tenderloin, sometimes known as “Satan’s Circus.” Becker soon learned he could expand his policeman’s pay considerably by sticking out his hand whenever he encountered someone
breaking the gambling or prostitution laws; both of which abounded in the Tenderloin. Of course, because he was not arresting people who came across with the cash, Becker sometimes had to make a legitimate arrest just to show he was doing his job.
On September 16, 1896, 24-year-old novelist/journalist Stephen Crane was hobnobbing in the Tenderloin, doing research for an article on which he was working. Crane had just received worldwide acclaim for his Civil War novel Red Badge of Courage and was looking to add to his reputation by writing a piece about the Tenderloin.
Around 10 p.m., Crane ambled into the Broadway Garden, which was located in the southern tip of the Tenderloin, at the corner of Broadway and Thirty-First Street. There Crane made the acquaintance of three young ladies who called themselves “dancers,” which they may have been, but more often they were prostitutes. Crane had finished interviewing these women for his proposed story, and he escorted the three lovelies outside where they intended to go their separate ways.
After Crane had guided one lady to a cable car, he turned back to the other two, just in time to see Patrolman Becker, in his sparkling blue uniform with its shining brass buttons, came out of nowhere and grab both ladies by the wrists. Becker announced he was arresting them for prostitution.
Thinking quickly, one of the ladies pointed at Crane, and she told Becker, “I’m no prostitute. He’s my husband!”
Becker turned to Crane and asked him if the lady’s statement was true.
Crane said, “Yes, I am. I’m her husband.”
Becker let go of the young lady’s wrist, but still held tightly onto the other young lady’s wrist. “Well, what about this one?” Becker asked Crane.
Crane replied, “I know nothing about her.”
Becker smiled. “Well, she’s nothing but a common prostitute, and I’m arresting her for soliciting prostitution.”
