Five Points Gang
 An Italian bread vendor in Mulberry Bend, photographed around 1890. The image provides neighborhood context and does not depict identified gang members. | |
| Also Known As | Five Points Italian gang (1902 reporting) Paradise Social Club (1903 reporting) Five Pointers |
|---|---|
| Origins | |
| Founding Location | Lower Manhattan, New York City |
| Territory | Five Points and the adjacent Lower East Side, Manhattan |
| Profile | |
| Structure | Loose coalition and reused neighborhood label |
| Ethnicity | Primarily Italian-American in contemporary 1902–03 reports |
| Activities | Gang fighting Assault Political intimidation |
| Politics | |
| Leader | “Mickey the Harp” (1902 report) Paul Kelly (press association by 1905) |
| Auxiliaries | James Street Gang (allied or affiliated crew under Johnny Torrio in later sources) |
| Allies | Paul Kelly Association (reported separately in 1902–03) Young Whyos Cherry Hill Club West Side Tigers |
| Rivals | Eastman Gang |
| Activity | |
| Years Active | At least 1901–1905 as a contemporary label |
The Five Points Gang was a name used for several related Lower Manhattan formations around the beginning of the twentieth century. Contemporary reporting does not support one continuously governed Irish organization that simply became Italian. Newspapers initially distinguished an Italian or mixed Five Points group from the Paul Kelly Association, but by 1905 were also applying the Five Points name directly to Kelly's organization.[1][2][3]
Contemporary identity
[edit]A 1901 newspaper referred to a Five Points gang accused of terrorizing the neighborhood but did not identify its leadership or composition. On September 30, 1902, The Evening World more specifically described a “Five Points Italian gang.” Its reported leader, “Mickey the Harp,” was identified as Irish, illustrating that the ethnic labels were not absolute. The same report listed the Paul Kelly Club as a separate allied group alongside the Young Whyos, Cherry Hill Club and West Side Tigers.[1]
In April 1903, The Evening World again differentiated the Paul Kelly Association from the Five Pointers while describing both as Italian, in contrast to the Irish Cherry Hill Boys.[2] Three months later, the New-York Tribune called the Paradise Social Club the “new Five Points Gang” and said its riot occurred on the battleground of the “old Five Points Gang.” The report said the new organization had recently made a treaty with Monk Eastman's club.[4] These reports establish reuse of the name but do not prove that the 1902 group and Paradise Social Club were the same organization.
By April 1905, The Sun was writing of “Paul Kelly and his Five Points gang.”[3] The newspaper evidence therefore shows a convergence of names, not a clearly documented corporate merger or spin-off.
Paul Kelly and later accounts
[edit]Template:Main Contemporary newspapers generally called Kelly's own organization the Paul Kelly Association, Paul Kelly Club or Paul Kelly gang during 1902–03. A detailed modern reconstruction in Informer likewise treats it as a distinct Italian-American organization and cautions that later writers often applied “Five Points Gang” to it retrospectively.[5]
Herbert Asbury's influential 1928 account instead called Kelly chieftain of the Five Pointers and described them as successors to the Dead Rabbits, Plug Uglies and Whyos.[6] “Successors” describes a historical lineage; it does not establish uninterrupted institutional continuity with the nineteenth-century Five Points gangs.
James Street affiliation
[edit]Biographers of Johnny Torrio describe his James Street Gang as a distinct neighborhood organization connected to the Five Points network. Robert J. Schoenberg writes that Torrio “allied his James Streeters with the Five Points gang,” while John Kobler calls it an “affiliated gang.”[7][8] It is listed under “Auxiliaries” in the infobox only in this broad affiliated-crew sense; the sources do not establish a puppet hierarchy or formal Kelly command.
See also
[edit]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 “Gangsters Battle in City Streets”, The Evening World, September 30, 1902, p. 6.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 “Gang Men to Fight Eastman”, The Evening World, April 18, 1903, p. 8.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 “Gang Fight in Baxter Street”, The Sun, April 25, 1905, p. 9.
- ↑ “Reserves Beaten Off: Five Points Gang Ends Celebration by Rioting and Assaulting”, New-York Tribune, July 6, 1903, p. 4.
- ↑ Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement, October 2023, pp. 35–50, 77–84.
- ↑ Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), pp. 272–296.
- ↑ Robert J. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone (William Morrow, 1992), chapter 2.
- ↑ John Kobler, Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone (Da Capo Press edition), p. 26.