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  “The tale is one of blood, excitement, and debauchery...” —Tu'e New York Times

  NEW YORK

  PRAISE FOR

  The Gangs of New York

  . .[T]here has been no volume before Asbury’s devoted exclusively to a history of the New York gangs . . . Mr. Asbury’s book must be regarded as a distinct contribution to Americana. He has rummaged through old histories and reports and has searched the morgues of newspapers for his contribution . . . The tale is one of blood, excitement, and debauchery. . .

  —John R. Chamberlain, New York Times

  “One of the best American books of its kind. Mr. Asbury writes in a direct and engaging manner .. . He tells the story of the New York underworld of the past century, and his narrative is excellently presented in a book adorned with amusing pictures from the weeklies and newspapers.” —Edmund Pearson, The Saturday Review of Literature

  “One devours its pages eagerly as though it were thrill-laden fiction rather than fact ... a work of immense interest whether the multifarious details of skull-cracking, blood-letting and general devilishness be minutely exact or not.”

  —Booklist

  “Herbert Asbury’s underworld is an underworld, and not a region of heroes. The stage and the screen will look to it in vain for the broken-heart-ed gentlemen who turn to crime out of a frustrated goodness, and there, practice honor among thieves, punctilio toward their victims, and eloquence upon the world at large. The book has been written by a newspaper man who does not mind denying himself of the pleasure of melodrama.” —Carl Van Doren, Books (NY Herald Tribune)

  “[T]hough New York was not an exception among big cities in breeding law-breakers in its slums, the species developed there was marked by distinctive features. . . . described with point, gusto and a sense of proportion ...”

  —Times [London] Literary Supplement

  “ . . . tells the story of the more spectacular gangsters, w'ith a quantity of picturesque detail . . .”

  —Malcolm Cowley, The New Republic

  “This is a fine piece of historical writing, and as full of interest to any lover of the picaresque as anyone has a right to ask.”

  —Herschel Brickell, North American Review

  BOOKS BY

  HERBERT ASBURY

  Up From Methodism . 1926

  A Methodist Saint. 1927 - The Life of Bishop Ashury

  The Gangs of New York . 1928

  Carry Nation . 1929

  Ye Olde Fire Laddies . 1930

  The Barbary Coast. 1933 A

  ll Around the Town .

  1934 The French Quarter .

  1936 Sucker’s Progress .

  1938 Gem of the Prairie .

  1940 The Golden Flood . 1942

  Great Illusion . 1950

  Edited by Herbert Asbury

  The Bon Vivant’s Companion .1928 Or How to Mix Drinks

  By Professor Jerry Thomas

  The Breathless Moment. 1935

  PICTURES ASSEMBLED BY PHILIP VAN DOREN STERN

  The Gangs of New York:

  An Informal History of the Underworld

  Copyright © 1927,1928 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  “Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities,” from Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley, © 1998 by Maria Kodama; translation © 1998 by Penguin Putnam Inc. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.

  Published by Thunder’s Mouth Press An Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group Incorporated 161 WilHam St., 16th Floor New York, NY 10038

  Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PubHcation Data Asbury, Herbert, 1891-1963 The gangs of New York : an informal history of the underworld / Herbert Asbury ; foreword by Jorge Luis Borges p. cm.

  Previously published: New York : Paragon House, 1990. Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 1-56025-275-8 1. Gangs—New York (State)—New York.

  2. New York (N.Y.)—^Social conditions. I. Title. HV6439.U7 N4 2001 364.r06'097471—dc21 2001046256

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3

  Designed by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc, Cover design by Howard Grossman, 12E Design

  Printed in the United States of America Distributed by Publishers Group West

  FOREWORD: Monk Eastman, Pubveyor of Iniquities

  Jorge Luis Borges

  The Toughs of One America

  Whether profiled against a backdrop of blue-painted walls or of the sky itself, two toughs sheathed in grave black clothing dance, in boots with highstacked heels, a solemn dance—the tango of evenly matched knives—until suddenly, a carnation drops from behind an ear, for a knife has plunged into a man, whose horizontal dying brings the dance without music to its end. Resigned, the other man adjusts his hat and devotes the years of his old age to telling the story of that clean-fought duel. Thai, to the least and last detail, is the story of the Argentine underworld. The story of the thugs and ruffians of New York has much more speed, and much less grace.

  The Toughs of Another

  The story of the New York gangs (told in 1928 by Herbert Asbuiy in a decorous volume of some four hundred octavo pages) possesses all the confusion and cruelty of barbarian cosmologies, and much of their gigantism and ineptitude. The chaotic story takes place in the cellars of old breweries turned into Negro tenements, in a seedy, three-story New York City filled with gangs of thugs like the Swamp Angels, who would swarm out of labyrinthine sewers on marauding expeditions; gangs of cutthroats like the Daybreak Boys, who recruited precocious murderers of ten and eleven years old; brazen, solitary- giants like the Plug Uglies, whose stiff bowler hats stuffed with wool and whose vast shirttails blowing in the wind of the slums might provoke a passerby’s improbable smile, but who carried huge bludgeons in their right hands and long, narrow pistols; and gangs of street toughs like the Dead Rabbit gang, who entered into battle under the banner of their mascot impaled upon a pike. Its characters were men like Dandy Johnny Dolan, famed for his brilliantined forelock, the monkey-headed walking sticks he carried, and the delicate copper pick he wore on his thumb to gouge out his enemies’ eyes; men like Kit Burns, who was known to bite the head off live rats; and men Uke blind Danny Lyons, a towheaded kid with huge dead eyes who pimped for three whores that proudly walked the streets for him. There were rows of red-light houses, such as those run by the seven New England sisters that gave all the profits from their Christmas Eves to charity; rat fights and dog fights; Chinese gambling dens; women like the oft-widowed Red Norah, who was squired about and loved by every leader of the famous Gophers, or Lizzy the Dove, who put on black when Danny Lyons was murdered and got her throat cut for it by Gentle Maggie, who took exception to Lizzy’s old affair with the dead blind man; riots such as that of the savage week of 1863 when a hundred buildings were burned to the ground and the entire city was lucky to escape the flames; street brawls when a man would be as lost as if he’d drowned, for he’d be stomped to death; and thieves and horse poisoners like Yoske Nigger. The most famous hero of the story of the New York City underworld is Edward Delaney, alias William Delaney, alias Joseph Marvin, alias Joseph Morris—alias Monk Eastman, the leader of the gang of twelve hundred men.

  INTRODUCTION

  TH
IS BOOK is not a sociological treatise, and makes no pretense of offering solutions for the social, economic and criminological problems presented by the gangs. Nor does it aim to interpret and analyze the gangster in the modern “I think-he-thought” manner by conducting the reader into the innermost recesses of his mind and there observing the operation of his scant mental equipment. On the contrary, it is an attempt to chronicle the more spectacular exploits of the refractory citizen who was a dangerous nuisance in New York for almost a hundred years, with a sufficient indication of his background of vice, poverty, and political corruption to make him understandable. Happily, he has now passed from the metropolitan scene, and for nearly half a score of years has existed mainly in the lively imaginations of industrious journalists, among whom the tradition of the gangster has more Kves than the proverbial cat. Nothing has ever provided more or better copy than his turbulent doings, and hopeful reporters continue to resurrect him every time there is a mysterious killing in the slum districts or among the white Ughts of Broadway. No matter how obviously the crime be rooted in bootlegging, dope peddling or what not, it is hailed as a new gang murder; words and phrases which have grown hoary and infirm in the service are trundled out and dusted off, and next morning shriek to a delighted populace that there is blood on the face of the moon and a new gang war impends.

  But the conflict never materializes, and it is quite unlikely that it ever will again, for there are now no gangs in New York, and no gangsters in the sense that the word has come into common use. In his day the gangster flourished under the protection and manipulation of the crooked politician to whom he was an invaluable ally at election time, but his day has simply passed. Improved social, economic and educational conditions have lessened the number of recruits, and the organized gangs have been clubbed out of existence by the police, who have always been prompt to inaugurate repressive campaigns when permitted to do so by their political masters. Inspector Alexander S. Williams gave the gangs the first downward push when he enunciated and put into practice his famous dictum that “there is more law in the end of a policeman’s nightstick than in a decision of the Supreme Court,” and their decline continued as decency invaded politics and an enraged citizenry protested against wholesale brawling and slugging. The gangs were definitely on the run when John Purroy Mitchel was elected Mayor on a reform ticket in 1914, and his Commissioners of Police, Douglas I. McKay and Arthur Woods, completed the rout by sending to prison some three hundred gangsters, including many of the shining lights of the underworld.

  It is true that there remain small groups which occasionally take in vain such mighty names as the Gophers, Hudson Dusters, and Gas Housers, but they are no more gangs than an armed rabble is an army; they are merely young hoodlums who seek to take advantage of ancient reputations. Within the past few years there have also arisen various combinations of young criminals such as the Cry Babies, Cake Eaters and the bands captained by Cowboy Tessler and Richard Reese Whittemore, all of which have been called gangs in the news stories. But while some of the old time gangs could muster as many as a thousand members, none of these recent groups comprised more than half a dozen, and none was able to operate more than a few months before it was dispersed by the police and its leaders sent to prison or the electric chair. They had nothing in common with such great brawling, thieving gangs as the Dead Rabbits, Bowery Boys, Eastmans, Gophers, and Five Pointers; they were more nearly akin to the bands of professional burglars and bank robbers who infested the metropolis soon after the Civil War. In the underworld such groups are not even known as gangs; they are called mobs, the difference being that a mob is composed of only a few men, seldom more than six or eight, who combine for a specific series of robberies or other crimes and have no particular adhesion or loyalty to their leader. They are gunmen and burglars, but none of their killings and stealings have anything to do with gang rivalry or questions of gang jurisdiction; and brawling and rough and tumble fighting is quite foreign to the nature of such genteel thugs. Their operations lack the spectacularity of the deeds of the old timers, and probably will continue to lack it until they have been touched by the magic finger of legend. However, they are in fact probably even more dangerous, in proportion to numbers, than the redoubtable thugs who once terrorized the Bowery, Hell’s Kitchen, and the ancient Five Points, for a majority are drug addicts, and they are very peevish and quick on the trigger.

  The gangster whose reign ended with the murder of Kid Dropper was primarily a product of his environment; poverty and disorganization of home and community brought him into being, and political corruption and all its attendant evils fostered his growth. He generally began as a member of a juvenile gang, and lack of proper direction and supervision naturally graduated him into the ranks of the older gangsters. Thus he grew to manhood without the slightest conception of right and wrong, with an aversion to honest labor that amounted to actual loathing, and with a keen admiration for the man who was able to get much for nothing. Moreover, his only escape from the misery of his surroundings lay in excitement, and he could imagine no outlets for his turbulent spirit save sex and fighting. And many a boy became a gangster solely because of an overwhelming desire to emulate the exploits of some spectacular figure of the underworld, or because of a yearning for fame and glory which he was unable to satisfy except by acquiring a reputation as a tough guy and a hard mug.

  The basic creed of the gangster, and for that matter of any other type of criminal, is that whatever a man has is his only so long as he can keep it, and that the one who takes it away from him has not done anything wrong, but has merely demonstrated his smartness. For the most part the old time gangster was apparently very courageous, but his bravery was in truth a stolid, ignorant, unimaginative acceptance of whatever fate was in store for him; it is worthy of note that the gangster invariably became a first rate soldier, for his imagination was seldom equal to the task of envisioning either himself or his victim experiencing any considerable suffering from the shock of a bullet or the slash of a knife. The cruel attitude of the gangster and his callousness at the sight of blood and pain was aptly illustrated by one of Monk Eastman’s exploits when that renowned thug was bouncer at an East Side dance hall, at the outset of his career. Eastman kept the peace of the resort with a huge bludgeon, in which he carefully cut a notch every time he subdued an obstreperous customer. One night he walked up to an inoffensive old man who was drinking beer and laid his scalp open with a tremendous blow. When he was asked why he had attacked the man without provocation, Eastman replied, “Well, I had forty-nine nicks in me stick, an’ I wanted to make it an even fifty.”

  Of course, there were exceptions, for a few gang leaders came from good families and were intelligent, as well as crafty; and some of them abandoned the underworld after brief careers and succeeded in more respectable enterprises. But in the main the gangster was a stupid roughneck born in filth and squalor and reared amid vice and corruption. He fulfilled his natural destiny.

  H. A.

  New York,

  January 5,1928,

  THE CRADLE OF THE GANGS

  THE FIRST of the gangs which terrorized New York at frequent intervals for almost a century were spawned in the dismal tenements that squatted in the miasmal purlieus of the Five Points area of the Bloody Ould Sixth Ward, which comprised, roughly, the territory bounded by Broadway, Canal street, the Bowery and Park Row, formerly Chatham street. The old Five Points section now contains three of the city’s principal agencies for the administration of justice—the Tombs, the Criminal Courts Building and the new County Court House—but in colonial times, and during the early years of the Republic, when the Negroes’ burying ground at Broadway and Chambers street was on the outskirts of the town and the present Times Square theatrical district was a howling wilderness in which the savage Indian prowled, it was chiefly marsh or swamp land, surrounding a large lake which was called Fresh Water Pond by the English and Shellpoint, or Kalchhook, by the Dutch. Later the pond became known as th
e Collect, and so appears on the ancient maps. It filled the area now bounded by White, Leonard, Lafayette and Mulberry streets, most of which is occupied by the Tombs and the Criminal Courts. The original prison was erected in 1838, and although its official name was Halls of Justice, it was popularly known as the Tombs because the design of the building had been copied from that of an ancient Egyptian mausoleum illustrated and described in a book called Stevens’ Travels, written by John L. Stevens, of Hoboken, after an extensive tour of the land of the Pharaohs.

  In the center of the Collect was a small island which was much used as a place of execution and other judicial punishments. It was there that a score of Negroes were hanged, burned at the stake or broken upon the wheel after the Slave Plot of 1741, when the black men rose against their lawful masters in an attempt to burn and loot the city. (1) Later the island became a storage place for powder, and was called Magazine Island. The principal outlet of the pond was at its northern end, about where White and Center streets now intersect. The stream then took a northwesterly course, flowing along the present line of Canal street through Lispenard’s Meadows to the Hudson River. Many years before the Revolution, when the palisades which had been built across the southern end of Manhattan just north of the present City Hall as a protection against the Indians were still standing, a small stone bridge was constructed over the stream at Broadway and Canal street, for the use of expeditions which penetrated the wilderness on venturesome journeys to the small settlements in Harlem and on the upper end of the island. It was on the Collect, in 1796, that John Fitch sailed an early experimental steamboat, eleven years before the Clermont swept grandly through the waters of the Hudson. Fitch’s craft was an ordinary yawl, eighteen feet long with a beam of seven feet, fitted with a crude steam engine. He bad as passengers Robert Fulton, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, and a sixteen-year-old boy, John Hutchings, who stood in the stern and steered the boat with a paddle.