Predominantly Italian members and retained many Italian members. Throughout its existence, members were all immigrants or the first-generation sons of immigrants, and the gang eventually included many Irish immigrants in its later iteration.
Paul Kelly, born Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, was an Italian American who founded the Five Points Gang. It included some who later became prominent criminals in their own right, including Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, and Lucky Luciano.
Paul Kelly, founder of the Five Points GangA slum tour through the Five Points in an 1885 sketch
The area of Manhattan where four streets – Anthony (now Worth), Cross (now Mosco), Orange (now Baxter), and Little Water (now nonexistent) – converged was known as the "Five Points".[2]Mulberry, notorious for slum tenements, was one street down from the Five Points. This area, now the present-day location of Chinatown, lay between Broadway and the Bowery. By the 1820s, this district had been a center of settlement for poor immigrants and was considered a slum area of run-down wood frame and brick dwellings, warehouses and commercial enterprises dating from the late 18th century and early 19th century, populated by mostly poor English and Scots-Irish with increasing waves of German, Welsh and Irish refugees by the 1840s.[1]
Gambling dens and brothels were numerous in the Five Points area, which was considered a dangerous destination, where many people had been mugged, particularly at night. In 1842, famous British author Charles Dickens visited the area and was appalled at the poor living conditions and substandard housing.[1]
In the pre–civil war era, Catholic immigrants often dealt with ethnic prejudice and class discrimination from NativistWhite Anglo-Saxon Protestants. As a result, many Irish immigrants formed local street gangs such as the Kerryonians, the Forty Thieves, the Shirt Tails, and the Chichesters, to rebel against their low social status. These street gang members soon turned to crime.
Shortly before the American Civil War, these gangs began to dissipate, with remaining members joining powerful gangs such as the Dead Rabbits and the Whyos.[3] Eventually the influence and numbers of these Irish gangs started to wane.
By the 1870s a new wave of Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants were settling into the area. Criminal gangs of Irish, Jewish and Italian criminals began competing for control of the territory, rackets and revenue to be made from illicit activities. Monk Eastman's Eastman Coin Collectors originally had many Irish members before becoming predominantly Jewish.
Origins
Italian American Paul Kelly (born Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli), formed the Five Points Gang, then made up mostly of Italians. The Five Points Gang had a reputation for brutality and in battles with rival gangs they often fought to the death. The gang would then gain more power and members when Kelly recruited the remaining members of other Five Points gangs, such as the Dead Rabbits and Whyos, into his growing gang.
As time went on, Jewish, Polish and Eastern European immigrants would also be brought within the ranks of the Five Points Gang, making them even more powerful and influential. Al Capone came from the James Street gang and would later lead the Chicago Outfit. Charles "Lucky" Luciano also joined the Five Points Gang in his younger years and was later considered the most powerful criminal in the country.
Rise to power
Biff Ellison, a former member and would-be leader of the Five Points Gang.
As the Five Points Gang became more experienced, Kelly and his lieutenants saw the money to be made by supporting corrupt politicians in their election bids. By threatening voters, falsifying voter lists and stuffing ballot boxes, the gang aided city officials of the Democratic Party political machine Tammany Hall to retain power. At the turn of the 20th century, the only competitors to the Five Pointers were from Monk Eastman's gang.
The rivals disputed claims to a strip of territory of the Lower East Side in Manhattan. In 1901, a Five Pointer shot Eastman in the stomach, but he survived. Soon after, one of his crew killed a Five Pointer in retaliation. By 1903 the feud escalated, and the two gangs openly engaged in warfare. In one incident, Kelly, Torrio and 50 Five Pointers were in a gun battle with a similarly sized force of Eastman's gang. City Police called to the scene had to retreat from the battle, which lasted several hours. Three men were killed, and many were wounded in the battle. When the police finally gained control of the situation, they arrested Eastman, but he spent only a few hours in jail. A Tammany-controlled judge released him after Eastman swore that he was innocent.
The general public was angered about warfare in the streets. A Tammany Hall deputy named Tom Foley brought Kelly and Eastman together and told them that neither would receive any political protection if they did not resolve the border dispute. They restored peace for a short time, but within two months, violence had risen again. Officials brought together the two leaders, but asked them to take on each other in a boxing match with the winner's gang to take the disputed territory.
The New Brighton/Little Naples Cafe, main clubhouse of Paul Kelly's Five Pointers gang.
On the appointed day, hundreds of men from both sides met at an abandoned house in the Bronx. Eastman and Kelly fought each other viciously. Kelly had been a boxer in his younger days, and was said to make a better showing in the earlier rounds, but Eastman was a larger man and fought ferociously. The fight lasted two hours and by the end of the match, both had suffered heavy punishment, but neither man had been knocked out and the match was declared a draw. The gang leaders told their men that they were still at war.
At this point, the Tammany Hall bosses decided to back the Five Points crew and to withdraw any legal or political help for Eastman and his gang. In 1904 Eastman was beaten unconscious by a policeman who had foiled a robbery in progress. Eastman was convicted of the crime and sentenced to a 10-year term in Sing Sing prison (Ossining Correctional Facility) in Ossining, New York.
Ascendancy
Eastman's imprisonment meant the Five Points Gang had no effective rival for control of organized crime activities in the Lower East Side. During that time, Kelly's organization expanded into other parts of Manhattan and parts of New Jersey. The Eastman crew was largely eclipsed when Eastman's successor Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach, a former member of the Five Points Gang until he defected to the Eastman Gang, was murdered in 1908 by hitmen of the Five Points Gang, allegedly at the behest of Paul Kelly.
Kelly brought a more businesslike approach to his gang activities. He opened the New Brighton Athletic Club, a two-story cafe and dance hall at 57 Great Jones Street (between Lafayette and Bowery), where he charmed socialites and other prominent citizens who frequented his club. Always well dressed, Kelly spoke French, Italian, and Spanish fluently, and appreciated fine art and classical music. His educated and sophisticated persona impressed many of New York's elite.
Decline and final years
Paolo Vaccarelli/Paul Kelly survived an attempt on his life, after being shot three times by two of his former lieutenants, James T. "Biff" Ellison and Pat "Razor" Riley, in a gun battle inside the New Brighton in 1905. Tammany Hall pressure made him keep a lower profile after this incident, while New York Police Commissioner William McAdoo closed the New Brighton for the protection of its socialite regulars. This failed assassination began the decline of Kelly's dominance in the New York underworld.[4]
Kelly and his gang did not, however, disappear. After Kelly closed the New Brighton, he moved operations to the Italian immigrant communities in Harlem and Brooklyn, while also retaining ties to his old neighborhood, becoming a vice president of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) under his Americanized birth name of Paul Vaccarelli. He was based in the Chelsea area.
Kelly/Vaccarelli was expelled from the ILA in 1919, but returned to it later that year. He took leadership of a spontaneous port-wide strike begun in protest against a wage increase of only five cents an hour, which management had agreed to. With the support of Mayor John F. Hylan, Kelly was appointed to a commission to resolve the strike. He ended it but did not achieve any concessions for the strikers.[5]
Kelly subsequently became a labor racketeer, providing muscle in labor disputes during the 1920s.[citation needed] Kelly died of natural causes in 1936.
Gradually the Mafia gangs took over the rackets and criminal activities formerly controlled by the Five Points Gang. Former Five Pointers such as Torrio, Capone, Lansky and Luciano became the leaders of the new groups and, with mentoring from influential businessman and criminal genius Arnold Rothstein, expanded their operations on a national and international basis. With the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act establishing Prohibition in 1920, profits from bootlegged liquor became a huge source of revenue for the Mafia families.
Kelly's second-in-command John Torrio was the first to establish his style of racketeering in Chicago, recruiting Capone to join him there. Torrio later helped form a National Crime Syndicate in the United States, following the demise of the Five Points Gang and after Capone replaced him in Chicago, in coordination with Luciano and Lansky.
Five Points was a 19th-century neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The neighborhood, partly built on low-lying land which had filled in the freshwater lake known as the Collect Pond, was generally defined as being bound by Centre Street to the west, the Bowery to the east, Canal Street to the north, and Park Row to the south. The Five Points gained international notoriety as a densely populated, disease-ridden, crime-infested slum which existed for over 70 years.
Frank Costello was an Italian-American crime boss of the Luciano crime family.
Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was an American political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789, as the Tammany Society. It became the main local political machine of the Democratic Party and played a major role in controlling New York City and New York State politics, and helped immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise in American politics from the 1850s into the 1960s. Tammany usually controlled Democratic nominations and political patronage in Manhattan for over 100 years following the mayoral victory of Fernando Wood in 1854, and used its patronage resources to build a loyal, well-rewarded core of district and precinct leaders; after 1850, the vast majority were Irish Catholics due to mass immigration from Ireland during and after the Irish Famine of the late 1840s.
John Donato Torrio was an Italian-born American mobster who helped build the Chicago Outfit in the 1920s later inherited by his protégé Al Capone. Torrio proposed a National Crime Syndicate in the 1930s and later became an adviser to Lucky Luciano and his Luciano crime family.
Earl J. "Hymie" Weiss, was a Polish-American mob boss who became a leader of the Prohibition-era North Side Gang and a bitter rival of Al Capone. He was known as "the only man Al Capone feared".
The Forty Thieves — likely named after Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves — were formed in 1825 and alleged to be the first known and oldest New York City criminal street gang. The Thieves consisted primarily of Irish immigrants and Irish Americans who terrorized the Five Points neighborhood of 19th century Manhattan. Another criminal gang named the "Forty Thieves" which had no criminal ties to the New York gang was formed in London, England in 1828. From 1873-1950s, an all-female London criminal gang known as the "Forty Elephants" was also known to use the name the Forty Thieves. Later a criminal gang in Philadelphia called themselves the Forty Thieves. The Kerryonians, another early Irish gang formed in the same year as the Forty Thieves, have been alleged to be the second oldest organized criminal gang in New York City.
Vincenzo Colosimo, known as James "Big Jim" Colosimo or as "Diamond Jim", was an Italian-American Mafia crime boss who emigrated from Calabria, Italy, in 1895 and built a criminal empire in Chicago based on prostitution, gambling and racketeering. He gained power through petty crime and heading a chain of brothels. From 1902 until his death in 1920, he led a gang known after his death as the Chicago Outfit. Colosimo was assassinated on May 11, 1920, and no one was ever charged with his murder. Johnny Torrio, an enforcer whom Colosimo imported in 1909 from New York, seized control of Colosimo's businesses after his death. Al Capone, a close associate of Torrio, has been accused of involvement in Colosimo's murder but was not yet in Chicago at the time.
Paul Kelly was an American mobster and former boxer, who founded the Five Points Gang in New York City. He had started some brothels with prize money earned in boxing. Five Points Gang was one of the first dominant street gangs in New York history. Kelly recruited young, poor men from the ethnically diverse immigrant neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan. The Five Points Gang included some who later became prominent criminals in their own right, including Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Frankie Yale.
The Whyos or Whyos Gang, a collection of the various post-Civil War street gangs of New York City, was the city's dominant street gang during the mid-late 19th century. The gang controlled most of Manhattan from the late 1860s until the early 1890s, when the Monk Eastman Gang defeated the last of the Whyos. The name came from the gang's cry, which sounded like a bird or owl calling, "Why-oh!"
Edward "Monk" Eastman was an American gangster who founded and led the Eastman Gang in the late 19th and early 20th century; it became one of the most powerful street gangs in the city. His aliases included Joseph "Joe" Morris, Joe Marvin, William "Bill" Delaney, and Edward "Eddie" Delaney. Eastman is considered to be one of the last of the 19th-century New York City gangsters who preceded the rise of Arnold Rothstein and the Jewish mob. Later, more sophisticated, organized criminal enterprises also included the Italian American Cosa Nostra.
The North Side Gang, also known as the North Side Mob, was an Irish-American criminal organization within Chicago during the Prohibition era from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s. It was the principal rival of the South Side Gang, also known as the Chicago Outfit, the crime syndicate of Italian-Americans Johnny Torrio and Al Capone.
The Atlantic City Conference held between 13–16 May 1929 was a historic summit of leaders of organized crime in the United States. It is considered by most crime historians to be the earliest organized crime summit held in the US. The conference had a major impact on the future direction of the criminal underworld and it held more importance and significance than the Havana Conference of 1946 and the Apalachin meeting of 1957. It also represented the first concrete move toward a National Crime Syndicate.
Salvatore "Frank" Capone was an Italian-American mobster who participated in the attempted takeover of Cicero, Illinois by the Chicago Outfit. He worked in the businesses with his brothers Al Capone and Ralph Capone.
The Eastman Gang was the last of New York's street gangs which dominated the city's underworld during the late 1890s until the early 1910s. Along with the Five Points Gang under Italian-American Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, best known as Paul Kelly, the Eastman gang succeeded the long dominant Whyos as the first non-Irish street gang to gain prominence in the underworld during the 1890s. Its rise marked the beginning of a forty to fifty-year period of strong Jewish-American influence within organized crime in New York City.
James T. Ellison, better known as Biff Ellison, was a New York City gangster affiliated with the Five Points Gang and later a leader of the Gopher Gang. He was noted for his propensity for physical violence as well as a dapper appearance that led The New York Times to describe him as "looking like a prosperous banker or broker" and contemporary chroniclers as "smooth-faced, high-featured, well-dressed, a Gangland cavalier" and "a fop in matters of dress".
Black Hand extortion was a criminal tactic used by gangsters based in major cities in the United States. In Chicago, Black Hand extortion began around 1900 and had all but faded away by 1970, replaced by the Mafia. The Mafia was initially organized by Johnny Torrio and further organized by Al Capone into the extant Chicago Outfit sometime later. Black Handers in Chicago were mostly Italian men from Calabria and Sicily who would send anonymous extortion notes to their victims emblazoned with a feared old country symbol: the "Black Hand". The Black Hand was a precursor of organized crime, although it is still a tactic practiced by the Mafia and used in organized crime to this day. The Black Hand gangsters of this time period differed from the Mafia by lacking formally structured hierarchies and codes of conduct, and many were essentially one-man operations. Black Hand blackmail was also common in New York, Boston, and New Orleans. Victims would be threatened with being beaten, shot, or have their place of business bombed if they did not pay. Starting around 1909, Black Hand activity was causing difficulties for mob boss Big Jim Colosimo, a former Black Hand gangster and owner of brothels throughout Chicago. Colosimo's life was being threatened with demands for cash to ensure his physical safety. In an effort to fix the problem, he recruited Johnny Torrio, who was a member of New York's Five Points Gang at the time, to come to Chicago. Torrio would later become the famous successor to Big Jim Colosimo and mentor Al Capone as the organized crime ruler of Chicago.
This is a list of organized crime in the 1880s, arranged chronologically.
This is a list of organized crime in the 1900s, arranged chronologically.
This is a list of organized crime in the 1910s, arranged chronologically.
This is a list of organized crime in the 1920s, arranged chronologically.
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