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James T. Ellison
James T. Ellison born (c. 1861-1920s), 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". Ellison was closely associated with gangster Jack Sirocco during the wars against the Eastman Gang during the early 1900s. In addition to running protection rackets that reputedly gained him a handsome annual income of somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000, Ellison owned or managed several bars and gambling establishments in New York City, including the gay bar and brothel Columbia Hall (aka Paresis Hall) and an illegal pool hall occupying the basement of Ellison's residence at 231 East 14th Street. His ni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global cultural, financial, entertainment, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences, research, technology, education, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Five Points Gang
The Five Points Gang was a criminal street gang of primarily Irish-American origins, based in the Five Points of Lower Manhattan, New York City, during the late 19th and early 20th century. 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. Five Points 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". 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 d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gopher Gang
The Gopher Gang was an early 20th-century New York street gang who counted among its members Goo Goo Knox, James "Biff" Ellison, and Owney Madden, born in England of Irish ancestry. Based in the Irish neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen, the Gopher Gang grew to control most of Manhattan with their territory covering Fourth to Forty-Second Street and Seventh to Eleventh Avenue. History Origins and early years The Gopher Gang formed from various local street gangs in the 1890s, numbering around 500 members, into what later became a committee including Marty Brennan, Stumpy Malarkey, and Newburg Gallegher. The committee met semi-regularly at their headquarters known as Battle Row, a saloon owned by Mallet Murphy, to discuss robberies and divide profits from Manhattan bordellos and illegal gambling operations. Asbury, Herbert. ''The Gangs of New York''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928. (pg. 235, 321-322) Murder of William Lennon Gallagher became involved in a three-year feud with loc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Sirocco
Jack Sirocco (1882–1954) was a New York City gangster involved in labor racketeering and strikebreaking. Originally a lieutenant in Paul Kelly's Five Points Gang, where he was the immediate boss of Johnny Torriobr> Sirocco defected to the rival Eastman Gang, which he led in its last days. Biography Sirocco, known as the main rival of gangster "Dopey" Benny Fein, was an early member of the Five Points Gang, but later defected to the Monk Eastman Gang during the gang war in the mid-1900s. Sirocco remained with the gang as manager of the Pearl House dance hall with Johnny Torrio and the satellite James Street Gang, until 1911 when he and Chick Tricker left wounded Eastman leader Jack Zelig behind during a failed robbery. Attempting to gain control of the gang both he and Tricker refused to post bail for Zelig. However, due to Zelig's political connections, the charges against him were later dropped. Upon Zelig's release Sirocco and Tricker planned Zelig's death, sending Eastman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastman Gang
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. Under the leadership of Monk Eastman, a well known bouncer and hired thug, the Eastman Gang spent the next decade establishing a criminal empire in Manhattan's Lower East Side through criminal activities, including prostitution and illegal gambling. They operated stuss games, and established strong political connections through Tammany Hall. Early years According to an article in the April 26, 1903 edition of the ''New York Daily Tribune'', the gang that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paresis Hall
Columbia Hall, commonly known as Paresis Hall, was a brothel and gay bar in New York City in the 1890s. Located on the Bowery near Cooper Union, the Hall was managed by James T. Ellison, and took its common nickname from a general term for syphilitic insanity. The building contained both a bar and a beer garden on the ground floor, with two floors of rooms above that were rented out. One was permanently held by the Cercle Hermaphroditos, an early transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ... organization, who stored clothing there due to the illegality of and public hostility to dressing in women's clothing. Paresis Hall was particularly renowned and reviled even at the time, and was a common target for both police activity and religious protests. Despite this, evi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sing Sing
Sing Sing Correctional Facility, formerly Ossining Correctional Facility, is a maximum-security prison operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in the village of Ossining, New York. It is about north of New York City on the east bank of the Hudson River. It holds about 1,700 inmates and housed the execution chamber for the State of New York until the abolition of capital punishment in New York in 2004. The name "Sing Sing" was derived from the Sintsink Native American tribe from whom the land was purchased in 1685, and was formerly the name of the village. In 1970, the prison's name was changed to the Ossining Correctional Facility, but it reverted to its original name in 1985. There are plans to convert the original 1825 cell block into a period museum.Village looks to create Sing Sing museum, May 22, 2007. Earthtimes.org http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/65218.html The prison property is bisected by the Metro-North Railroad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Alienist
''The Alienist'' is a crime novel by Caleb Carr first published in 1994 and is the first book in the Kreizler series. It takes place in New York City in 1896, and includes appearances by many famous figures of New York society in that era, including Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan. The sequel to the novel is ''The Angel of Darkness''. The story follows Roosevelt, then New York City police commissioner, and Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, as their investigative team attempts to solve gruesome murders through new methods including fingerprinting and psychology. The first murder victim investigated is a 13-year-old immigrant who has had his eyes removed, his genitals removed and stuffed in his mouth, and other injuries. The investigators deal with various interest groups that wish to maintain the status quo regarding the poor immigrant population in New York City. The book made best-sellers lists of ''Publishers Weekly'' and ''The New York Times'' the month it was published, and film rig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caleb Carr
Caleb Carr (born August 2, 1955) is an American military historian and author. Carr is the second of three sons born to Lucien Carr and Francesca Von Hartz. He authored ''The Alienist'', '' The Angel of Darkness'', ''The Lessons of Terror'', ''Killing Time'', ''The Devil Soldier'', '' The Italian Secretary'', and ''The Legend of Broken''. He has taught military history at Bard College, and worked extensively in film, television, and the theater. His military and political writings have appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals, among them ''The Washington Post'', ''The New York Times'', and ''The Wall Street Journal''. He lives in upstate New York. Early years and education He was born on August 2, 1955, in Manhattan, one of three sons born to Beat Generation figure Lucien Carr and Francesca von Hartz. Lucien's close circle of friends included William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg, whom Lucien had known since his college days. Their frequent presence in the C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tammany Hall
Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City 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 helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. It typically controlled Democratic Party nominations and political patronage in Manhattan after 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. The Tammany Society emerged as the center of Democratic-Republican Party politics in the city in the early 19th century. After 1854, the Society ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
14th Street (Manhattan)
14th Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, traveling between Eleventh Avenue on Manhattan's West Side and Avenue C on Manhattan's East Side. It forms a boundary between several neighborhoods and is sometimes considered the border between Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan. At Broadway, 14th Street forms the southern boundary of Union Square. It is also considered the northern boundary of Greenwich Village, Alphabet City, and the East Village, and the southern boundary of Chelsea, Flatiron/Lower Midtown, and Gramercy. West of Third Avenue, 14th Street marks the southern terminus of western Manhattan's grid system. North of 14th Street, the streets make up a near-perfect grid that runs in numerical order. South of 14th, the grid continues in the East Village almost perfectly, but not so in Greenwich Village, where an older and less uniform grid plan applies. In the early history of New York City, 14th Street was an upscale ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Kelly (criminal)
Paul Kelly (born Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli; December 23, 1876 – April 3, 1936) was an Italian 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. At the peak of his criminal career, Kelly was ranked by ''The New York Times'' in 1912 as "perhaps the most successful and the most influential gangster in New York history". Kelly was said to support election of Democratic Tammany Hall politicians with his gang's activities at elections. After open street warfare with the Eastman Gang in the early twentieth century, which also had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
