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Corlears Hook – The Lower East Side
Corlears Hook was once a middle-class neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan which in the 1820's began its descent into a den of crime, vice and sin. It was once a Native American Settlement and then an industrious shipyard, the neighborhood was about to...
Eddie McGrath & The Westside Mob Part 2
The West Side piers, or the North River waterfront as it is commonly known as, stretches along the Hudson River from West Greenwich (between Houston and 14th Street) to Chelsea (14th Street to 34th Street), to Hell’s Kitchen (34th Street to 42nd Street), and all the...
Eddie McGrath & The Westside Mob Part 1
Edward J. McGrath, or “The Big Guy,” as he came to be known around the docks, was born on January 31, 1906. His parents were two Irish immigrants who had settled on the Lower East Side of New York City in an area known as the Gashouse District. During his formative...
The End of The Westies
With the arrests of Jimmy Coonan and his wife Edna, Billy Bokun, Mugsy Ritter, Flo & Tommy Collins and Johnny Halo in November and December 1986, Jimmy "Jimmy Mac" McElroy went on the run but was soon arrested, Kevin Kelly & Kenny Shannon also went on the run...
The Five Points
The Five Points was a 19th-century neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York. The neighborhood was bound by Center Street to the west, the Bowery to the east, Canal Street to the north, and Park Row to the south. The Five Points stood on what is now Park, Worth &...
“Vannie” Higgins in a Shootout in Bay Ridge Brooklyn
Charles "Vannie" Higgins lived in an apartment on Ridge Boulevard, in Brookly much to the annoyance of his neighbors. He was known as the last Irish Boss of Brooklyn or the “czar of Brooklyn liquor interests" or the Brooklyn beer baron, though he would strongly deny...
The failed hot on Eddie Diamond
Sometime in 1927, Eddie Diamond was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, by the following year Eddie packed up his family, his wife Kitty and young son John and moved out west to Denver. Eddie also took with him, one of Jacks torpedos, Dominick Bifano. Meanwhile...
The Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties. The Prohibition Laws, the Eighteenth Amendment & Volstead Act, had just been passed banning the sale of alcohol across the United States but it was largely ignored in the cities, New York, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis etc.Before Prohibition...
George Cassiday – The Bootlegger to Congress
George Cassiday was born in 1892 and fought in the First World War and a founder of the Irish Veterans Association upon his return after the war, he found employment difficult after the war and almost by accident he became a bootlegger, he would also become known as...