The North Side Gang—Chicago’s Pirate Robin Hoods

The Roaring Twenties were a time period filled with tales of adventure and glamour. Prohibition fueled a party lifestyle - and made available a dangerous but adrenaline fueled life to some of the more enterprising members of the underworld. In Chicago, Illinois, the Twenties have become a time of legend and usually call to mind one man, Al Capone. But Capone, for all intents and purposes, was only a figure head during the Beer Wars. He ran his gang and racket, but he delegated the dirty work.

To the north of him was a group that was, as one newspaper of the time called them, Modern Day Pirates, The North Side Gang. Consider Capone the Prince John to their Robin Hood and his Merry-men, an analogy that Rose Keefe introduced in her book, Guns and Roses: The Untold Story of Dean O’Banion. Robin Hood isn’t quite as steal from the rich to give to the poor and you’ll need to give Little John a temper and thirst for vengeance that was unrivaled. Also, make the merry-men a little crazier and a lot more deadly. You get the picture.

Who was responsible for running this group of gangsters that, while small, caused a lot of trouble for the biggest figure of Chicago’s Underworld? That was none other than Dean O’Banion. Our figurative Robin Hood.

Erin Finlen starts her series here.

Dean O’Banion.

Dean O’Banion

Dean O’Banion, or Dion as he is often misnamed in history, is considered the archetype of Irish Chicago Gangsters. An impulsive, faintly religious, prankster who was oddly chivalrous and loyal to a fault was the original boss of the North Side Gang during Prohibition and his death became the catalyst for what are known as The Beer Wars.

The Death of a Mother

Born in Maroa, Illinois on July 8, 1892, to Charles and Emma O’Banion, Dean was a middle child of three, with a big brother named Floyd and a little sister named Ruth. He was a good student and in one of the only surviving childhood pictures of him, taken at his school in Maroa, it is easy to see a precocious but loving child staring back. Maroa is a small town a few hours’ drive south of Chicago and away from the influences of the big city it is possible that O’Banion would have taken a very different path is things had stayed the same with his happy family to guide him.

Except, Dean was struck by a tragedy that no child is equipped to endure and certainly not back them when there was no therapy or mental health knowledge, not in the way we have now. When he was six years old, O’Banion’s mother passed away from tuberculosis and his world was shattered. He had loved his mother dearly and after her death not only did he lose her, but his father moved him and his older brother to Chicago in an effort to be closer to his own family and for better employment opportunities. His sister Ruth stayed behind in Maroa and ended up living in Kansas and having a family of her own when she was older.

Chicago, it’s His Hometown

The shock of not only losing him mother but then being uprooted from his childhood home and leaving behind his sister was probably traumatic and confusing. It would have given a much less optimistic child a pessimistic and depressed disposition. Dean, however, found that he enjoyed the adventure that was waiting for him.

In Chicago, he was enrolled at Holy Name School on State Street, but school only did so much to curb his impulsiveness and there was no stopping the influences of the neighborhood they lived in an area that was called “Little Hell,” and that lived up to its name with child gangs running the streets.

Then when he was sixteen, he went to hop on the back of a trolley car, slipping when he grabbed the handle, he fell and was hit by the wheels of the trolley. It broke his leg and he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. Given the state of medicine in the early 1900s, he seems to have had some of the luck of the Irish to have not had a worse outcome.

He eventually left school and started working, first as a singing waiter in a saloon, where he met the acquaintance of a criminal named Charles Reiser. Reiser would introduce him to safecracking, although, Dean, always a little trigger happy and impulsive, wasn’t the best at deciding how much nitroglycerin to use. His frame of mind was always ‘more is better’ and he had a tendency to ruin the contents of the safe when he blew it open, once blowing a hole in the wall of the building but leaving the safe unharmed.

Through Reiser and safe cracking he met the man who would become his best friend and right hand man, Earl “Hymie” Weiss.

Robin Hood and Little John

Weiss and O’Banion were friends from the start, a study in opposites. O’Banion was impulsive with a temper that was easily triggered but just as easily satisfied. He was jovial and people were drawn to him, wanting to be his friend. Weiss was serious, with a temper that was terrifying when he was set off and not nearly as easily calmed. Smart and forward thinking he was O’Banion’s perfect foil and the two almost seem to be made to rule the Prohibition scene. Which they began almost as soon as it started, with O’Banion hijacking the first truck and immediately starting his booze running racket. They were very successful and it showed.

They were also regularly in trouble together, but by that point they were able to pay off most juries and judges. When asked why they were robbing a telegraph office O’Banion said he was there to apply for a job. Similarly, when asked why his finger prints were at the scene of the crime, he replied with “That was an oversight. Hymie forgot to wipe them off.”

O’Banion’s biggest passion was the flower shop, Schofield’s, that he had bought stock in with his friend Sam ‘Nails’ Morton. Where Morton was content to be a silent partner, though, O’Banion preferred to work there, getting his hands dirty. One of the most notorious gangsters of his day was unrecognizable humming and arranging bouquets, while helping customers when they came into the shop. The store also his office. On its second floor he ran the North Side Gang, taking calls and meetings, he even installed a couch for Weiss, who was frequently laid low with migraines.

O’Banion loved to dress nicely and dine well. What he didn’t put up with was…well, it was a lot. Once in a restaurant he heard a man yelling at his wife. O’Banion intervened and wrestled the man to the floor. When someone made a barbed remark about them he shot them in a crowded theater. Afterwards, he realized what he had done and apologized, according to a newspaper man at the time, asking him what brand of cigars he should send him. When some of his drivers complained that one of the other men who worked in the garage was gay, he told them to deal with it or leave, that that was just the way the man was and he wasn’t hurting anything.

O’Banion, as evidenced by the man in the restaurant berating his wife, was not one to take a marriage commitment lightly and when he met Viola, who would become his bride. He was immediately smitten. The pair were deeply in love and when he died, she told reporters that the man she knew wouldn’t have hurt a fly. That he only carried a gun because of the danger in the city. Naive? Yes. Lying? Possibly. But it is very likely that the version of him that she knew was not the man who shot people in theaters or took men on one way rides, a term, by the way, that is credited to his best friend, Hymie Weiss.

Two of his other best friends and his other underbosses in the North Side were Vincent Drucci and George Moran. Moran and O’Banion were good friends, but the important one to look at here, is Vincent Drucci. Drucci was a Sicilian who had grown up on the north side of Chicago. When he came home from World War I, he fell in with O’Banion and his friends. Drucci offsets any rumors that O’Banion hated Sicilians, as the two played pranks together and would go to speakeasies, laughing and having a good time. It wasn’t Sicilians that O’Banion hated, it was just one family of them: The Gennas. They are the ones caused the most trouble and who would eventually lead to his death.

The Murder of John Duffy

At the start of 1924, Dean O’Banion was already in a bit of trouble, although no one could really pin the blame on him. A man named John Duffy had been found murdered in a ditch north of the city. His body was found with three bullet holes in it and when police went to his house they found the body of his girlfriend who had been shot dead by Duffy. No one questioned with the regards to the couple seemed at all surprised that Duffy would have murdered her and expressed concern for her. Duffy was not a well-liked man.

It was suspected that Dean O’Banion killed him, as Duffy was last seen getting into a car with O’Banion and one man who authorities later decided was James Monahan, Hymie Weiss’s brother in law, outside of the Four Deuces, an establishment run by South Side leaders Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. The car that police seized in the investigation belonged to Monahan, though he told police that Weiss was paying on the car for him. In Hot Springs, Arkansas at the time, receiving treatment for his headaches, Weiss was released of suspicion.

Some suspect that O’Banion was trying to frame Torrio and Capone for Duffy’s murder by meeting him outside The Four Deuces. However, it is more likely that was simply a way to get Duffy to meet him, as Duffy was believed to have ties to their gang. That fact and the fact that Weiss’s car was used, inadvertently throwing suspicion on O’Banion’s friend, implies that rather than being a plot to frame Torrio, it was another of O’Banion’s impulsive, spur of the moment decisions.

The Sieben Brewery Raid

When Prohibition had started it had been a free for all in Chicago, with everyone trying to steal alcohol and speakeasies from everyone else. Johnny Torrio, according to history, organized the gangs and got them to agree to only sell alcohol in their assigned territories. This had worked out remarkably well, except that The Terrible Genna Brothers, as they were known, a family gang of ruthless killers from the west side of the city refused to back off of O’Banion’s territory. And by May of 1924, O’Banion had had enough, deciding to cut ties with Torrio and the whole situation entirely. Unfortunately, he chose the worst possible way to do it.

Telling Johnny Torrio that he was interested in selling his stock in the Sieben Brewery O’Banion asked him to meet at the brewery to finalize the deal. What Torrio didn’t know but Dean O’Banion did was that on that particular day the brewery was set to be raided by the police. Torrio had already been arrested for violating prohibition once, but O’Banion had not, meaning that he would more than likely get off with a warning, while Torrio was going to have to serve jail time.

Making matters worse, O’Banion didn’t hide that he had been expecting the raid well, shaking hands with the police and in general being in quite a good mood for someone being arrested. It didn’t take much for Torrio to put together what had happened.

When the Genna Brothers found out, they demanded permission to kill O’Banion. The only person stopping them was the leader of Sicilian Union in Chicago, Mike Merlo, who was against violence and urged them not to get revenge. The Gennas and Torrio with their heavy respect for Merlo, agreed. Except it was really just waiting. Merlo was dying of cancer and once he died, there would be nothing standing in their way.

Let the War Begin

Over the summer of 1924, O’Banion was busy as ever. In July he was arrested for violating the Volstead Act again, this time with Hymie Weiss and another gangster, Dan McCarthy. Their trial was put on hold however, as Weiss was too ill to go to court and doctors informed authorities that they weren’t sure Weiss would live long enough to stand trial.

After the second arrest, O’Banion took a brief vacation out west, where he was introduced to a new weapon. The Thompson Submachine Gun. He was extremely interested in them and brought them back with him when he and his wife returned to Chicago.

November 9, 1924, Mike Merlo succumbed to cancer and took with him the stay of execution that he had given O’Banion. The Gennas brought in a hired gun and placed orders for thousands of dollars’ worth of flowers. In spite of them being rivals this was not unusual, Schofield’s was the place to go for your flower order, especially if you were part of the Underworld. That night, after O’Banion had left the shop Jim Genna and another man came in, getting a feel for the shop and picking up $1,000 of the $3,000 worth of flowers they had order from Mr. Schofield, telling him they would get the rest in the morning.

When the car pulled up on the day of the funeral to pick up the order, four men emerged from the car. Frankie Yale, John Scalise, Angelo Genna and Salvatore Ammatuna walked into the shop. According to William Crutchfield who was working that day, sweeping up fallen petals, O’Banion recognized them and asked William to go to the back so he could speak with them. O’Banion didn’t seem suspicious according to him. In fact, he greeted them with an outstretched hand. That was his view as the door to the back room closed behind him. And only a few moments later he heard gunshots. Dean O’Banion had been shot four times and lie dead on the floor of his beloved flower shop. And all hell was about to break loose.

Crutchfield telephoned the authorities who arrived at the shop, with sirens on and began their investigation. Coming down the street, Hymie Weiss and George Moran saw the cars and detoured to Weiss’s mothers house, where he telephoned the shop asking for O’Banion. He was informed of what had happened, and according to Rose Keefe in her book, The Man Who Got Away, silently went into the bathroom and locked the door. Moran had to break it down and when he did he found Weiss sobbing, saying “Everything I have in the world is gone.”

Saying Goodbye

O’Banion’s funeral was the biggest that Chicago had ever seen and it enthralled and disgusted people in equal measure. The funeral itself was attended by many figures of gangland and Torrio and Capone paid their respects as well. A bold move, considering it was generally accepted that they had helped with, if not entirely ordered the hit on the man for whom the funeral was being held. Vincent Drucci and Hymie Weiss cried openly and Weiss was photographed helped Viola, Dean’s widow, after being unable to carry the casket due to his grief.

After the funeral, as the last of the mourners filed out and the gangsters got into their cars and drove away, everyone knew this was not going to end well. Chicago held it’s breathe. The Chicago Beer Wars had begun.

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Sources

Binder, J. J. (2017). Al Capone’s Beer wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago during Prohibition. Prometheus Books.

Dean Charles O’Banion. (n.d.). https://www.myalcaponemuseum.com/id158.htm

Keefe, R. (2003). Guns and roses: The Untold Story of Dean O’Banion, Chicago’s Big Shot Before Al Capone. Turner Publishing Company.

Keefe, R. (2005). The Man who Got Away: The Bugs Moran Story : a Biography. Cumberland House Publishing.

Kobler, J. (2003). Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone. Da Capo Press.

Sullivan, E. D. (1929). Rattling the cup on Chicago crime.

The Political War Over Tennessee Prohibition

It seems accepted that today’s political atmosphere is more divisive, caustic, and contentious than any since the Civil War. But from research for the author’s book, Manny Shwab and the George Dickel Company (Amazon US | Amazon UK), at least in Tennessee, the late 1880s through 1920 were even more contentious and volatile over the issue of prohibition.

Clay Shwab explains.

A 1915 advert for Cascade Whisky from the Rock Island Argus.

Nashville

From the 1890s through the tumultuous years leading to Prohibition, the city of Nashville was very much like the wild west—a bustling, exciting, changing, and dangerous place. Political debates and rallies were frequently held in the downtown streets with hordes in attendance. Legal fun may have been hard to find in pre-Music City Nashville. Gunfire was frequent. In 1908, a senator and editor of the Nashville Tennessean, Edward Carmack, was shot and killed on Union Avenue after he attempted to shoot a one-time friend and editor of the Nashville American, Duncan Cooper. Their dispute related to prohibition.

From 1890 through 1920, Tennessee was a political war zone between the Wets and the Drys, the anti-prohibitionists and the prohibitionists, with entrepreneur and owner of the George Dickel whisky company, V. E. “Manny”  Shwab, as the chief strategist and field general for the Wets. Shwab owned the state’s most valuable distillery producing the “famous” Cascade Whisky, “Mellow as Moonlight”–at the time, a far more popular and well-known whiskey than Jack Daniel’s. The wet and dry battle blew Tennessee politics apart to the point that the Republican and Democrat parties split in half and reformed along prohibition position lines. The anti-liquor proponents were  known as “Fusionists”.

Cascade Hollow Seizure

Senator Carmack’s shooting provided the Drys the martyr they needed. In 1909, shortly  after the shooting, Tennessee passed  Bill #11 banning the  manufacture of alcohol. Malcolm Patterson, Tennessee governor and Shwab ally, vetoed the bill, but the legislature overrode his veto. Five days later, in what was the largest federal seizure of any kind, Shwab’s Cascade Hollow Distillery was shut down. Nine thousand barrels of Cascade whisky were seized along with the distillery’s six buildings and 600 acres. The whiskey alone was values at over $30 million in today’s dollars.

Newspapers were unabashedly biased, giving wildly differing “factual” accounts of events. According to reports, Shwab was either “the debaucherer of more young men than any other man in Tennessee” because of his whiskey company and many saloons, or a “one man Tammany Hall”, or “Nashville’s richest citizen” and a philanthropic, consensus building visionary, dragging Tennessee into the 20th century while elevating Tennessee whiskey to a stellar reputation. Newspapers throughout the country and Canada covered the seizure with headlines such as: “Big Still Taken by U.S.”, Chicago Tribune;  “Raid on Whiskey”, Vicksburg, Mississippi; “The Cascade distillery is the most valuable property of the kind in the state”, Nashville Banner; “Chattanoogans Think it Was Prompted by Politics”, Chattanooga. To emphasize the importance of the distillery to the state, the Nashville American stated that from 1905-1908, Manny’s Dickel company that distributed Cascade paid one fourth of the taxes paid by all distilleries in middle and west Tennessee combined, including Jack Daniel’s.

Tennessee Prohibition was not to go into effect until January of the next year, 1910. The alleged violation was tax evasion due to the common practice known as “equalization of wantage”. During the process of aging whiskey in wooden barrels, evaporation occurs. The government required payment of tax on a minimum of  40 gallons per each 50 gallon barrel, even if there were only 35 gallons remaining after evaporation. To avoid paying tax on non-existent whiskey, distillers would take whiskey from barrels holding more than 40 gallons and add it to barrels containing less. The seizure occurred on Thursday, April 1. Through Manny’s connection with the U.S. Attorney General and some powerful Tennessee allies, the distillery was back in Shwab’s hands the following Monday after posting a bond of $275,000 ($8.4 million today).

Bill #11 did not stop the fight. In 1911, thirty four Republican legislators retreated to Decatur Alabama to deny a quorum to vote on legislation—referred to by them as “the liquor election bill”—that would lead to the reversal of Tennessee’s prohibition on distilling. Shwab had assured the bill’s successful passage allegedly by bribing six Republicans. The April 12, 1911 Nashville Banner headline exclaimed “High-Handed Corruption Alleged in Election Bill Fight…Member or Members Have Been Fixed—Money Furnished by Well Known Liquor Dealer.” The allegation was that the Shwabs had furnished over $20,000 ($660,000 today) to “fix” votes. With the legislative process ground to a halt, the April 14, 1911 Memphis Commercial Appeal  opined that “the whole public machinery of the state would be clogged so long as the present situation exists.”

And the “present situation” persisted. The May 4th  Tennessean deemed Prohibitionist legislators who were supporting the bill, “arrant hypocrite and… mutton-headed ignoramuses” who have “…an inherited affliction which cannot be cured and for which [they] should be pitied, and not censured.” So much for objective journalism. By June 26, the three-month stand-off must have finally subsided as the legislature had a quorum to pass resolution #57 calling for an investigation into the slush-fund allegations as well as new allegations against several legislators. In July, Governor Ben Hooper vetoed the joint resolution. The fight persisted.

Boss Crump and Liquor by the Drink

In October 1913, Governor Hooper called a special and highly contentious legislative session of both houses. The issues were the shipping of liquor into Tennessee from other states and the “Nuisance Bill”. The bill would “declare a saloon, gambling den, bawdy house, or any other business the conduct of which is a violation of the law, a  public nuisance.” Similar to modern day anti-abortion bills considered by some states, any five qualified voters could shut a business down in an effort to get around public officials who were seen as ignoring the activity. For example, Shwab was consistently accused of using his influence to avoid raids  on his saloons as well as influencing legislation and dictating nominees for office.

Thirty-nine year old mayor of Memphis, E.H. “Boss” Crump, went to Nashville to fight and alter the legislation and to secure Manny’s support. Crump would be a major figure in Tennessee politics for the next twenty years, very much following in Shwab’s footsteps. He wanted to manipulate the language of the law so eleven of his wards could sell liquor by the drink. Manny was all for it, as it would allow liquor to be sold in the major cities. Papers referred to the issue as a “battle royal”. According to the Knoxville Journal:

Backing up mayor Crump and his henchmen was V. E. Shwab the wealthiest whiskey man in Tennessee the owner of Cascade, and the Gibraltar of the whiskey interests in Tennessee.…He was seen to talk with various members of the house and senate on the floor of the Maxwell (hotel) lobby this morning…Some little excitement went the round in whispers this morning when it got started that the whiskey interests are threatening the weak-kneed fellows.

Indicative of the atmosphere in Nashville, the Bristol Courier declared “The Tennessee Legislature has been in session and nobody has been killed, not even Boss Crump”. The lobbyists were accused of “threatening dire consequences to those who have accepted courtesies from them.” But the Crump and Shwab forces were unsuccessful. On October 14, 1913, the Tennessean exuberantly announced “John Barleycorn Knocked Out in Second Round”, declaring “Nashville Arid”. Shwab moved operations to Louisville to continue distilling and selling his renowned Cascade internationally until federal prohibition in 1920.

Clay Shwab’s book, Manny Shwab and the George Dickel Company, is available here: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Michael Malloy – The New York Irishman who wouldn’t die

Remember the cartoons you saw as a child, where one character is the oblivious target and survivor of another’s constant scheming? In 1930s New York, that scenario played out in real life. Here, Tom Daly explains the extraordinary story of Michael Malloy.

Tony Marino’s speakeasy. Third Avenue, New York.

On a warm afternoon in July 1932, three New Yorkers cooked up a scheme to make themselves rich. Running a speakeasy in the last year of the prohibition on alcohol in the US, one of them had noticed an Irishman who would regularly visit his bar, drink himself silly and pass out. That afternoon, he and his accomplices observed the man, slouched over his glass and mumbling to himself. He looked old, sick and tired, and it seemed as if he was not far from dying. How hard could it be to give him a little help along the way? With two more accomplices, they took out several life insurance policies on him, plied him with free booze and waited for him to pass. But he would not go so easily – every morning he was back, cheerfully ordering another drink as he settled in for the day. Before long the gang was becoming increasingly desperate, trying to poison him and even running him over with a car, but the insatiable Irishman simply would not die. He rose every morning and carried on as normal, like a cartoon character who keeps accidentally surviving attempts on their life, blissfully unaware that they are the target of a terrible plot. 

The man was an immigrant named Michael Malloy, whose resistance to the murder attempts earned him nicknames such as ‘Iron Mike’ and ‘The Rasputin of the Bronx.’ He was eventually killed by the gang, but the plot had long since lost its guile. Their frustration had got the better of them and by the end it seemed as if they were more concerned with finally killing their man than they were with getting away with it. Swiftly arrested, four of them would be sent to the electric chair, where they would not cheat death in the way their victim had done.

Background

Michael Malloy was born in County Donegal, in the north-west of Ireland, probably in the 1870s. By the early 1920s he had emigrated to New York, where he worked as a firefighter for a while, but by the end of the decade he was homeless and alcoholic. He frequented the speakeasies – venues that served illegal alcohol during prohibition – in the Bronx and by 1932 was a regular in one that was run by 27-year-old Tony Marino. 

Marino had an eye for quick money-making schemes. Already raking in a considerable income from his alcohol operation, earlier that year he had befriended a woman named Mabelle Carson and convinced her to sign a $2,000 life insurance policy that named him as the beneficiary. On a freezing night soon after, he had got her blind drunk, soaked a mattress with icy water and left her lying naked on the mattress by an open window. She died overnight and no questions were asked as Marino picked up his money, leaving him to wonder – how many times could I get away with that?

The Plot

It was in July 1932 that he decided Michael Malloy would be his next target. Standing at the bar with his friends, 24-year-old Francis Pasqua and 29-year-old Daniel Kreisberg, Marino gestured at Malloy and complained that he owed him money. If he can’t pay his debts, Pasqua suggested, couldn’t you do to him what you did to Mabelle Carson? Marino paused, before agreeing that it would be a nice little earner. 

That December, the men presented Malloy with some papers that they said would help get Marino elected to local office, and promised to provide him with free drink for the next few days in return. The thrilled Malloy was unaware that the papers he signed were actually life insurance policies that named Marino, Pasqua, Kreisberg and their friend, Joe Murphy, as the beneficiaries in the case of his accidental death. The men stood to gain $3,500 (over $50,000 in today’s money) between them. 

For the next three days, Malloy was given all the drink he wanted, free of charge, and the gang was sure that it would tip him over the edge. But on the fourth morning, to their shock and annoyance, Malloy breezed back into the bar and ordered some more drink. One has to wonder what Malloy was thinking – how exactly had he gone from being in debt to the bar to being best pals with the landlord and having drinks on the house? But Malloy didn’t consider how suspicious it was: all he cared about was the free booze. As far as he was concerned, he’d already died and gone to heaven.

The gang gets desperate

As the trend continued into the new year, Marino was growing impatient and petulantly suggested it would be easier to shoot Malloy in the head. But, not wanting to attract any attention from the authorities, Joe Murphy instead suggested that they start replacing Malloy’s normal drink with wood alcohol. Wood alcohol could cause death even in small quantities and, in an era when it was not uncommon for people to die from poor quality illegal alcohol, Murphy figured that no foul play would be suspected. The gang agreed to go ahead with the plan and served Malloy with wood alcohol one afternoon, but their target just kept knocking the drinks back and ordering more, carrying on into the next day and the day after. Astonished, the gang was forced to think again. 

This time, Pasqua conceived a plan to feed Malloy rotten sardine sandwiches and raw oysters to compliment the wood alcohol, knowing that the mix of oysters and hard spirits would poison him. When this did not work, they filled Malloy’s sandwiches with broken glass and metal, but still the Irishman simply devoured the sandwiches, washed them down with wood alcohol and happily sat there asking for more. 

After this, the men decided that nothing Malloy consumed was going to kill him. The next plan was to carry a passed out Malloy into the freezing January night, cover him with icy water and wait for him to die of exposure. But when the sun rose the next morning, there was Malloy, waiting outside the door for another drink. 

February was now around the corner, which meant the gang would have to pay another monthly installment towards the insurance plans. Hoping to get him before then, they let another friend of theirs, 23-year-old Hershey Green, in on the plan and promised him a cut of $150 to run Malloy over with his car. One afternoon, Pasqua and Murphy held a drunk Malloy upright in a side road while Green raced towards them. Just before Green reached the men, Pasqua and Murphy jumped out of the way and got up to see if the deed had finally been done. Unbelievably, the man who had been too drunk to stand just a few seconds previously had managed to jump out of the way as well. The men immediately repeated the process, but Malloy managed to jump out of the way again. It was a case of third time lucky for the gang as Green finally hit Malloy at 45 miles an hour, but the noise alerted some passers by and the men were not able to make sure he was dead. For a few weeks they heard nothing from the Irishman and were busy trying to find which morgue his body was in so they could collect their money, but they were absolutely stunned in mid-February when a heavily bandaged Michael Malloy turned up at the bar declaring that he was desperate for a drink. He had no memory of the incident.

Getting more than they bargained for

By now the murder plot was not even going to make the gang a profit – they had already spent too much money on paying for the insurance plan, on buying wood alcohol and on giving Malloy free booze, and any money they did receive was going to have to be split five ways. Still, Malloy’s ability to cheat death had infuriated them, and he was going to have to die if only so they could salvage some pride from the whole venture. On the night of February 21, 1933, the gang waited for Malloy to pass out and carried him to a rented room near the bar, where they finally killed him by sticking a gas pipe down his throat. They then paid off a coroner to list his cause of death as pneumonia and set about collecting the insurance money. 

Francis Pasqua collected $800 from the first insurance company, but was shocked when an employee at the second company asked to see the body. Pasqua sheepishly replied that the body had already been buried, which aroused enough suspicion to get the police involved. The New York police had been hearing rumors about ‘Iron Mike’ for the previous few weeks and swiftly added the story up, exhuming Malloy’s body for proper testing. The tests showed that Malloy had been murdered, and Marino, Pasqua, Kriesberg, Murphy and Green were all arrested. They were dubbed ‘The Murder Trust’ by a fascinated press. 

Hershey Green was convicted of the attempted murder of Michael Malloy and sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison. The other four men, who all pointed the finger at each other during their trial, were each convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Marino, Pasqua and Kriesberg were all executed in the electric chair on the same day, June 7, 1934. All three of them were married, while Marino and Kriesberg were both fathers to young children. Joe Murphy was executed by the same method the following month.

Not much is known about Michael Malloy. Nothing is known about his family, his exact age when he died is not known, and he would have just been another anonymous alcoholic in New York if it hadn’t been for a murder plot against him and his bizarre ability to survive it. All that is known about him is that he used to be a fireman, he was very fond of a drink, and he absolutely earned his nickname, ‘Iron Mike.’

Now, you can also read Tom’s articles on the Princess Alice Disaster on London’s River Thames here, 14th century French female pirate Jeanne de Clisson here, and why Tom loves history here.

Finally, read more from Tom at the Ministry of History here.

Gin in 18th century England… Could prohibition work?

Gin arrived in Britain in the late 17th century following the arrival of a new monarch from the Netherlands, King William III. Here, Janet Ford tells the story of how gin’s extraordinary popularity in 18th century England led to Parliament trying to restrict its sale… And how successful these Gin Acts were.

The Gin Shop, a cartoon about drinking too much. By George Cruikshank, 1829.

How popular was gin?

It was estimated that in the year 1730, 10 million gallons of gin were produced. The average Londoner got through 14 gallons of gin a year or two pints a week - which is a lot of gin!

Why was gin so popular?

The main reasons why gin was so popular were the price, its strength and the life of the working classes, who drank it the most. Gin was very cheap, which allowed the poor to drink it. Gin was much more stronger than ale and beer, and so would get people drunk quicker. But life for the working class during the 18th century was difficult, as living conditions were poor, and so having a cheap and strong drink would have numbed the pain of real life and given the poor and working class some relief from their stresses.

The Gin Acts

There were various acts brought in which aimed to restrict the sale and consumption of gin, with the Acts of 1729, 1736, 1749, 1751 and 1760. The 1736 Act, ‘taxed retail sales at 20 shillings a gallon and made selling gin without a £50 annual licence illegal’ (1) and the 1751 act, ‘lowered the licence fee and forced distillers to sell only to licensed retailers trading from respectable premises’ (2). In general, Parliament wanted to make gin difficult to make and sell to the nation.

Why laws were brought in?

There were various reasons why parliament and religious figures, who were also against gin, wanted to make gin difficult to sell and make.

One of the main reasons was the link between gin and crime. Many of those who wanted to ban it believed that gin increased crime. To an extent this would have been true; however, as gin was so popular, banning it could have increased crime, as those who wanted the drink, would have done anything to get it. One of the main examples of a crime being committed that was related to gin was that of Judith Dufour. Judith had been drunk on gin at work, which was normal for her. She also had a two-year-old daughter, who was found naked, apart from a scarf around her neck, strangled in a field. It was found that she had been killed by her own mother, while she was drunk on gin. These stories would have frightened not just politicians and religious figures, but also the general public.

Another reason was the role of women. Beer and ale were mostly drunk by men and not women. But this was not the case for gin, as both sexes drank it. As gin was sold in alehouses, women were starting to drink in them. Parliament and religious figures believed that this increase in interaction between men and women would increase prostitution and corrupt women.

The Effects of the Acts on Gin

One of the major effects the acts had was nothing at all. Gin was still made, sold and drank in various places, such as street corners and gin shops, throughout the 18th century. When the 1729 Act was brought in, production and the amount of gin which was drank did dip, but production increased in the 1730s.

One of the reasons why gin was still made were loopholes in the acts. The First Gin Act stated that gin was made with ‘juniper berrie, or other fruit, specie or ingredients’ (3) - which is what it is made out of. However, a loophole was that people would simply not put juniper berries in gin but use other ingredients in order to produce legal gin. This did make gin slightly dangerous, especially as some people put turpentine in their ‘gin’. If it gave gin a bad taste, the drinkers would not have cared, as they drank gin to get drunk, but it was still dangerous. Another loophole was related to the amount of gin sold. It was only illegal to sell gin if less than a gallon was sold. Many people actually bought over a gallon in order to still have gin. In most cases, it was either wasted, as it was a great deal of gin and storing it was difficult, or people drank it all and became ill or even died.

There was a great deal of criticism toward the reformers, as the acts were seen as discrimination towards the working class. This was due to them being the main group who drank it, even if the middle and upper classes were not excluded from drinking gin. Interestingly, the upper classes also drank illegal drinks, as they drank imported brandy, but there were far fewer consequences for them. It was such behavior which encouraged the working class to carry on making and selling the drink, as if the upper classes could do it, why not them? This discrimination made the working class less willing to compromise with Parliament as they were not being treated equally. 

The acts had a negative effect, as there was an increase in violence. There were many riots by the working class, as their drink was being taken away from them and they were being controlled by the upper classes. Another reason for the violence were fines. Those who were found selling gin were fined £10, which was a great deal of money to the poor and working classes. If they were informed on by their neighbors and were found guilty, that person who had informed on them was given some or all of the money. This would have been seen as a good deal, as they were given money without doing much work. However, if informers were found, they were attacked and, in some cases, killed.

In the late 18th century, the production, selling and drinking of gin declined. This was partly due to new acts, such as those of 1751 and 1760 being brought in, which were more about compromise than pure prohibition. Even so, the decline in use was mostly down to the bad harvests, which started in 1757. Parliament put a ban on exports of grain for a few years, which made the distillers angry, but Parliament was more concerned over food for the general population than the distillers. The acts and the bad harvests made gin very expensive for the poor, and most went back to the cheaper alternative of beer.

In the later 18th century, there was the introduction of gin brands, with Gordon’s in 1769 and Plymouth Gin in 1796. Parliament considered such brands both positive, as only a select few were making gin, and negative, as gin was still being made and in some ways became more established as bigger companies were making it.

Were the Acts successful?

To an extent the acts were successful, as they did make gin more difficult to sell. However, the acts actually made the situation much worse in other ways, as they increased violence and worsened the quality of gin. But more importantly, gin never disappeared, even with the decline, as there was still bootleg gin or brands.

And finally, gin has now become very much part of our culture.

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References

• 1/2 www.history.co.uk/study-topics/history-of-london/18th-century-gin-craze
• 3 Patrick Dillon, The Much Lamented Death of Madam Genava, (Review, 2002) p88

Bibliography

• Gin Lane, www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pd/w/ william_hogarth,_gin_lane.aspx
• www.history.co.uk
• www.self.gutenberg.org
• Patrick Dillon, The Much Lamented Death of Madam Genava, (Review, 2002)

The roaring Twenties! But were the 1920s a liberal or conservative period in the USA?

Bradley Phipps from bphipps.co.uk has provided us with this fascinating article on 1920s America. Was the 1920s a decade of fun, liberal values? Or was it rather a time of great conservatism? Bradley presents his view by looking at key topics in the decade – race, immigration, female suffrage, prohibition, the economy and election results.

It’s tempting, partly due to portrayal in the media and literature, to see the 1920s in America as a time of consensus around progressivism and liberalism, consumerism, excess, and fun. Whilst there are elements of truth in this, the decade which came to an abrupt and memorable close in the 1929 Wall Street Crash was actually a time of reactionism, conservatism, and division.

Before delving into the experience of different groups in society and looking at some important issues like prohibition, it’s important first to briefly set the scene. The 1920s was, in part, a battle between conservative forces and progressive forces. This battle was epitomized in religion, which is where much of the attempt to make society more moralistic stemmed from. There was a fierce battle raging during the decade between the traditionalists and the modernists in religion, with questions over how the Bible should be interpreted and whether theories like evolution – which challenged the usual wisdom of how the world worked – should be taught in schools. This battle in religious issues spilled over into just about everything else, with the forces of conservatism attempting to preserve tradition and what they believed to be morality, and other forces seeking a more liberalized, free society. The conservative forces certainly won the war of ideas during the Twenties, though the 1930s would in many ways be in quite stark contrast due to Roosevelt’s New Deal policies.

People campaigning for female suffrage.

Race relations and Immigration

There are a number of areas to look at when assessing the decade, one of the most important being race relations and immigration. Whilst it’s true to a certain degree that the Roaring Twenties were a period of prosperity and liberalism for some people, for new immigrants and African-Americans, this cannot be seen to be the case. The decade saw resurgence in nationalist and racist sentiment, as well as more understandable concerns about immigration. The division in race was most clearly seen in the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, which probably benefited from the nationalist sentiment and racial tensions which the First World War had brought up, as well as the migration of African-Americans to the north. The Klan’s membership rose rapidly to around 6 million in 1920, which totaled over 5% of the population at the time. Whilst that may not sound impressive, the KKK wielded substantial influence in politics, and as there was general popular consent for things like immigration restrictions and less of a liberal attitude towards race relations compared to what we have today, the Klan did not come under serious threat throughout the decade. Even politicians, who often have different and more moderate views than the public at a given time, were in general agreement with their voters in terms of restricting immigration. In 1921, the Emergency Immigration Act was passed, which severely reduced immigration and did so partly on race-based lines in terms of blocking off immigration from the Middle East. These restrictions were tightened further still in the 1924 Immigration Act, which placed further restrictions and quotas on immigration in a further attempt to please the public. There appeared to be a conservative consensus during this time on the issue of immigration; both the public and the political classes were in consensus that there should be a large reduction in the number of people settling in the country, and there was also general agreement that the race of a potential immigrant should play a deciding role.

The difficulties for immigrants and minorities during this period were not just political though; the Klan did not limit its activities to the political arena. The passing of the immigration restriction legislation was a success for the Klan; it had in many ways fulfilled its purpose. With the public satisfied at the restrictions on immigration, membership of the Klan plummeted from its peak of 6 million in 1924 down to just 30,000 in 1930. But during the 20s, such was its fervor in defending what it believed to be traditional, white, Protestant values and morality, that it took to more violent methods to attack those who it believed to be corrupting the morals it defended, including violence against black people up to and including the infamous public lynchings, serving as yet more evidence against the fairly common perception of the decade as being liberal, care-free, and fun.

Female Suffrage

Women are often portrayed as having a new-found freedom in 1920s America, having undergone a sexual liberation and seen their role in society turned on its head. This is perhaps the only section of society where the myth of the 1920s fits quite well. There can be no denying that for many young women, their willingness to challenge the status quo increased; photographic evidence alone serves as evidence of new short skirts, provocative dances, and more open and flagrant promiscuous behavior. In contrast to the attempts to enforce morality and good behavior, youthful women found a new side of life and many of them embraced it with open arms, throwing themselves into exciting new jazz music and dances like the Charleston. Luchtenburg succinctly summarizes the increased personal freedom of women: “Before the war, a lady did not set foot in a saloon; after the war, she entered a speakeasy as thoughtlessly as she would go into a railroad station.”

Aside from in the social context, the increasing move for more power for women in politics was seen in the suffrage movement which became increasingly powerful before the 1920s. This culminated in the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in August 1920, when women were finally given the right to vote on equal terms with men. Opposition came primarily in the form of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, which disbanded after the 19th amendment was successful, but continued to publish works which opposed the liberation of women and their changing role in society. There was also considerable opposition in Congress, with 25 members of the 96-strong Senate voting against the amendment, alongside a number of abstentions. There was also considerable difficulty in getting the amendment ratified by some states, particularly Southern states, where members of the state legislature faced considerable lobbying by various groups.

Even the politicians and lobbyists who supported women’s suffrage cannot necessarily have been doing so purely out of the moral cause of increasing women’s rights and making the nation more democratic. The extent of the dominance of conservative thinking in the era can be seen in Daniel Okrent’s argument, who believed they could only make alcohol illegal and have popular consent for doing so with the votes of women, who were generally more in favor of it becoming illegal than men.

Interestingly, even the women’s suffrage movement cannot be seen as entirely progressive and liberal; particularly in the South, the women campaigners sought to gain more support from men by playing upon the issue of race. They said it was unfair that males from ethnic minority groups could vote whilst women could not. Even more divisively, there was also the suggestion that allowing women to vote would ensure that white voters remained dominant and more politically powerful than minority groups. We can see that even the progressive political causes in the decade were in some ways heavily regressive and conservative.

Prohibition

Something important during the 1920s that we’re all aware of is prohibition. Alcohol became illegal in early 1919 with the passing of 18th Amendment and whether it should continue to be so remained a contentious issue throughout the following decade. Prohibition is the best and clearest example of an increasing trend towards enforcing morality and an attempt to return to traditional Protestant values. The nation was divided over the issue, with much of the division being between traditional rural areas and the more liberal and less morally strict urban areas. Leuchtenburg writes that prohibition served as a way for rural America to “impose their social mores on city folk”; for Protestants to stop Catholics drinking; and for Anglo-Saxons to change the behavior of immigrants. As is well known, making alcohol illegal led to a reliable source of income for many criminal and mafia gangs, and so far from enforcing morality, prohibition is often seen as just opening up new avenues of immorality.

Similarly, prohibition led to speakeasies and other illegal hidden parties at which people continued to indulge in alcohol. However, despite the common wisdom that prohibition was a complete failure, it did actually succeed in substantially reducing alcohol consumption, a reduction which largely remained in place even when prohibition had ended. By 1933, when prohibition came to an end, alcohol consumption was 70% what it had been before prohibition. Whilst not a raving success, it’s safe to say it fulfilled its purpose at least a little bit. Though of course other factors could also have led to these variations in consumption.

Conversely, prohibition brought out the very worst in the American policing system; bribery was common, with many police willing to turn a blind eye to illegal bars provided they had received a bribe or other benefit for doing so. This is an important lesson for today - laws imposed without significant popular consent cannot work; they will be subject to capricious enforcement. Leuchtenburg argues that the public anger at the police’s mix of corruption and harsh treatment of bars led to anti-police sentiment springing up, with one example being crowds cheering on the boat of a bootlegger in New York when being pursued by the police.

Perhaps the weakness of the whole attempt to enforce morality upon parts of society which were pursuing liberalization was that Eliot Ness, a key prohibition enforcement agent and leader of the elite ‘Untouchables’ group, died an alcoholic.

Radical Groups

Radical political dissent during the Twenties was not tolerated. It is important to view policies in era in context. Having just come out of the First World War, the United States now saw a new threat emerging in Russia. The threat was Red. The Bolshevik revolution in what was to become the Soviet Union began in 1917, leading to a civil war between defenders of the old Tsarist regime, and those who sought to impose a communist-inspired regime. America has always feared communism – it is anathema to its principles of liberal democracy and free trade, and red scares have become part of its history. Whilst McCarthyism in the 1950s is fairly well-known, the red scare during the 1920s is less well remembered.

There was increasing government action against radical left-wing political groups and moves to clamp down on leftist groups had already begun before the 1920s, as seen most clearly in the arrest and imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs – the leader of the American Socialist Party - who had performed remarkably well in elections considering his outsider political position. Deportations without due process or trials became common, particularly against the Socialist International Industrial Workers League; in January 1920 around 10,000 people were arrested for holding radical political views. Furthermore, the immigration acts which were discussed earlier were also used to restrict radical literature and punish any immigrants with sympathies towards left-wing political groups.

The economy…

But aside from all this, wasn’t the economy at least growing – wasn’t everyone sharing in a newfound wealth? In some ways, yes. The economy was growing and people were generally more affluent, giving the majority more access to consumer and electric goods. However, not all shared in the increased prosperity; urban workers saw their wages increase quite rapidly, but the wages of farmers stagnated, and some manual laborers such as miners saw their wages decline, and with the rise in machinery and technology, some manual workers were replaced by automated systems. Union membership during this period fell, dropping from 5 million in 1920 to 3.5 million in 1929, a sign of general increasing prosperity as well as the government’s crackdown on radical elements. As often happens during economic booms, the gap between the rich and the poor widened, with the poorest seeing their standard of living stagnate whilst the richest saw their wealth continue to skyrocket.

Undoubtedly, though, the economy did improve the standard of living for many people during the decade. Gross National Product grew by 40% through the decade, wages for most workers rose in real-terms, and prices on some previously inaccessible goods became accessible. The prices of cars, for example, fell due to more efficient and faster production, leading automobile ownership to rocket by nearly 200%, from 8 million to 23 million people owning cars. Similarly, increasing access to the radio gave a source of entertainment in almost everyone’s home, and with increasing demand came national programming which provided most of the nation with access to some of the same programs. This boom in the economy also led to an upsurge in the number of people buying shares, with it becoming increasingly common for middle class families to buy into the market; as we know, this ended in catastrophe in 1929. The great tragedy of the decade is that, though the Wall Street Crash impacted everyone, those who bore its brunt most heavily were the poorest, who had seen the least benefit from the economic boom.

Election results

Finally, the clearest indication of the conservatism and consistency of the decade which helps to dispel the myth of the decade being progressive and unique is the actual results of election. We’ve already seen that from prohibition, to the Red Scare, to attempts to enforce morality, the politics of the decade were conservative and at times regressive. But the real flavor of a decade can be found in its election results.

In the 1920 Presidential election, Republican candidate Warren Harding won with a massive 60% of the vote, leaving the Democrat candidate James Cox with an abysmal 34%. In 1924, Coolidge was victorious with 54% of the vote, leaving the Democrat with just under 30%. This election was notable because of a rarity in American politics – the strong performance of a third party candidate, which came in the form of Robert La Follete who stood for the short-lived Progressive party. Whilst it could be argued that the Progressives split the Democrat vote, thereby allowing the Republican in by default, the vote for the Democratic candidate and the Progressive Party candidate still falls 10% short of the Republican vote. In 1928, Herbert Hoover continued the Republican ascendancy. Pledging continued economic growth, he won 58% of the vote, leaving his Democrat opponent with only 40%. Whilst some of these margins may not sound incredibly wide, bear in mind that American Presidential elections are apt to have very narrow margins of victory. In the year 2000, for example, the result between Bush and Gore was less than a percentage point apart.

But Presidential elections don’t give us the full picture. The Congress Republicans were also dominant. They gained control of the house in 1918, and comfortably retained control of it until 1930. The Republicans also gained control of the Senate in 1918, keeping it until 1932. This means the decade saw uninterrupted Republican control of the Presidency, and both chambers of Congress; a very rare thing indeed. There is no way this could have happened unless the vast majority of the public were aligned in a conservative consensus. They were content with Republican policies and did not desire change.

On reflection

So we’ve seen that in very few ways can the decade which has been dubbed the Roaring Twenties be seen as a time of radical change. It was  conservative and reactionary, and in some ways regressive. Even in modernizations like female suffrage, the forces of conservatism were involved in their support of it in order to ensure more support for prohibition. Modern liberal ideas had little place in this decade; they would not gain common support until the 1930s, when the much-lauded (though much-overrated) Franklin D. Roosevelt put into practice his new vision for the role of government in society and much greater regulation of the free market.

This article is provided by Bradley Phipps from bphipps.co.uk.

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