Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone Read Online Free PDF

the first gang from that district (circa 1825), came the Shirt Tails, so dubbed because they wore their shirttails outside their trousers; the Plug Uglies, mammoth Irishmen who protected their heads during combat under leather-reinforced plug hats, felled their victims with bludgeons, and stamped them to death with hobnailed boots; the Dead Rabbits ("rabbit," in the slang of the day, meaning ruffian; "dead rabbit" a super-tough brawny ruffian), whose standard-bearers led them into the fray behind a dead rabbit stuck on a spear. After the Civil War there emerged the Whyos. Legend ascribes the origin of the name to a. cry they uttered when fighting. Legend further holds that a qualification for membership in the Whyos was the commission of at least one murder. Filling contracts for murder and mayhem was the Whyos' main business, and to potential clients they presented a printed price list:

    Every gang tolerated, when it did not actively recruit, a following of imitative juveniles. Thus, there were the Forty Little Thieves, the Little Dead Rabbits, the Little Whyos, and though some members were barely eight years old, they robbed, slugged, and occasionally killed with as much exuberance as their seniors.
    The word "racket" in its criminal sense probably comes from a device adopted by the old New York gangs. It was common practice for social and political clubs of the era to sponsor benefit galas in their own behalf. These were noisy affairs, what with the brass band and the general boisterousness stimulated by heavy drinking, so that they came to be known as rackets. Grasping the opportunity for easy and, to all outward appearance, licit profit, a gangster would organize a benevolent association of which he was the sole member, announce a racket, and with threats of demolishing their premises compel the neighborhood shopkeepers and businessmen to purchase blocks of tickets. James "Biff" Ellison, a Five Pointer dandy, who drenched himself with perfume, founded the Biff Ellison Association, and its rackets, held three times a year, netted him $3,000.
    The Five Points gang, successor to the Whyos, reached its zenith at the turn of the century under the generalship of an ex-bantamweight prizefighter, Paul Kelly (real name: Paolo Antonini Vaccarelli). From his New Brighton Dance Hall in Great Jones Street, one of Manhattan's brassiest, wickedest fleshpots, he mapped the operations of some 1,500 Five Pointers and laid claim to all the territory bounded by the Bowery and Broadway, Fourteenth Street and City Hall. A quiet, urbane man, Kelly was better educated than any of his fellow gangsters. He spoke Italian, French and Spanish, dressed with impeccable taste, and generally exhibited the appearance and manners of polite society. No gang chieftain could long retain power unless he proved politically useful, and Tammany Hall was beholden to Kelly for the help his hearties frequently gave its candidates at the hustings.
    By the time Capone joined the Five Pointers Kelly's prestige had somewhat deteriorated. Years of warfare with the apelike Monk Eastman's Bowery gang had strained his resources. Then his own henchman, the aromatic Biff Ellison, grew to resent his leadership. One winter night in 1905 Ellison and a member of the rival Gopher gang burst into the New Brighton, a gun blazing in each hand. A Five Pointer named Harrington went down with a bullet through his head. Kelly stopped three bullets. He survived, however, and after months of convalescence opened another dance hall, Little Naples. A reform group, the Committee of Fourteen, managed to have it padlocked. Kelly withdrew to Harlem, where he developed a new source of profit. He organized first the ragpickers, then the garbage scow trimmers into unions and served as their business agent. Eventually he became vice-president of the International Longshoremen's Association, AFL.
    Kelly did not sever his connections with the Five Pointers, what was left of them. Though the