Gangsters of NYC's Lower East Side: Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement, October 2023
About this ebook
Conditions in the pre-Prohibition twentieth century Lower East Side certainly fueled an explosion in gangs and racketeering. Such underworld giants as Meyer Lansky, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and Salvatore “Charlie Luciano” Lucania were products of that overcrowded and hard environment. But that was just a small part of the area’s underworld history.
In this issue, Informer presents a collection of articles representing the seedy and bloody gangland history of the Lower East Side. Material spans many decades of Manhattan’s history. Related article subjects:
∙ End of the Whyos gang.
∙ Historic Photo: Bandits' Roost.
∙ John H. McGurk and Bowery's "Suicide Hall."
∙ The death and life of hoodlum/hero Monk Eastman.
∙ NYC's first Mafia boss?
∙ Italian gang chief with an Irish name: Paul Kelly.
∙ Sai Wing Mock and the New York "Tong Wars."
∙ Frank Lanza's New York firms may have been Mafia fronts.
∙ In search of "Johnny Spanish."
∙ Racketeering future was molded in young Meyer Lansky's neighborhood.
∙ "Death Avenue": Second Avenue, 1910-1924.
∙ 1964 narcotics report included mobster bios.
In addition, the issue includes these articles:
∙ New facts about 1928 Mafia conventioneers.
∙ "Bill the Butcher" wasn't from the Five Points.
∙ New and recent true crime book releases.
∙ Looking back from 2023: 150, 100, 75, 50, 5 years ago.
Contributors to this issue: Thomas Hunt, Justin Cascio, Patrick Downey, Michael O'Haire, Steve Turner, Matt Ghiglieri.
About the author
Thomas Hunt has been editor/publisher of Informer since 2008 and publisher of The American Mafia history website, MafiaHistory.us, since 2002. A Vermont resident, he is the author of Wrongly Executed? The Long-Forgotten Context of Charles Sberna's 1939 Electrocution, coauthor (with Martha Macheca Sheldon) of Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia, coauthor (with Michael A. Tona) of DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime, contributor to Mafia: The Necessary Reference to Organized Crime.
Justin Cascio is a nonfiction writer and genealogist whose popular works use genealogy to tell the history of the Mafia in Sicily and the United States. His interest in Mafia history sprang from awareness of his family’s roots in Corleone, Sicily. His famous “cousins” from Corleone include Jack Dragna, Giuseppe Morello and actor Al Pacino. Justin appears in the 2022 documentary, Pasqualina of Springfield, as an expert on the Prohibition-era bootlegger in Massachusetts. He has been a regular contributor of articles to Informer. His work can also be found on the Mafia Genealogy website (mafiagenealogy.com) and on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Patreon).
Patrick Downey is a crime historian who specializes in the stories of Prohibition Era and Depression Era gangsters. He produces the Vintage Crime Wave video series on YouTube. Downey has authored Hollywood on the Spot, Legs Diamond: Gangster, Gangster City, Bad Seeds in the Big Apple and other books. In addition to posting on his own long-running blog, Dead Guys in Suits, he has written for the Writers of Wrongs blog. He has contributed several articles to Informer.
Michael O’Haire is a software engineer, family historian and author, living in Smithtown, New York, with his wife and two children. He is completing research for an upcoming book on the life of his ancestors and their relationship with the early Colorado Mafia. He can be reached at ohaire@hotmail.com.
Steve Turner is a retired construction manager, living in London, England, who has been interested in the history of organized crime since reading The Valachi Papers in the early 1970s. He has worked with author David Critchley on Mafia-related research, and he has been a frequent contributor to Informer. Turner, David Critchley and Lennert van't Riet collaborated on the "Gunmen of the Castellammarese War" series of articles published in Informer in 2012 and 2013. The same team authored Informer feature articles on Vito Genovese (January 2014) and Albert Anastasia (June 2015). Turner contributed to several articles in Informer's October 2020 special issue on Nicola Gentile.
Matt Ghiglieri, aka Matteo Galante, is a Mafia researcher and documentarian with a focus on northern California. A San Francisco native with a background in sound engineering, he owns media company Columbus Avenue Productions, which produces a San Francisco Mafia exposé called Golden Gate Underworld. When not writing about the Mafia or making music, he enjoys gardening and spending time with his family. He resides in Pittsburg, California.
