West Side Gang
 West Side Highway and Piers 95–98 in 1937; this contextual photograph does not depict gang members | |
| Origins | |
|---|---|
| Founding Location | Manhattan, New York City |
| Territory | Manhattan's West Side waterfront Greenwich Village and Chelsea |
| Lineage | |
| Successor(s) | Dunn-McGrath Gang (through the victorious Butler faction) |
| Profile | |
| Structure | Loose coalition of two factions |
| Activities | Waterfront and labor racketeering Cargo theft and armed robbery Extortion Gambling and loansharking Murder |
| Politics | |
| Leader | Joseph “Big Joe” Butler (Butler faction) Charles “Charlie the Jew” Yanowsky (Yanowsky faction) |
| Notable Members | Robert J. “Farmer” Sullivan (Butler's partner and veteran confidant) Edward “Eddie” McGrath John “Cockeye” Dunn |
| Activity | |
| Status | Defunct |
| Years Active | Early 1930s–c. 1934 (coalition; factional war continued afterward) |
| Dissolved Date | c. 1934 |
| Dissolution Cause | War between the Butler and Yanowsky factions |
The West Side Gang was a loose 1930s criminal coalition operating around Manhattan's West Side waterfront. Historian Neil G. Clark writes that the group had no formal name but was occasionally called the “West Side Gang” by law enforcement. It contained two loosely allied groups: one centered on Joseph “Big Joe” Butler and another led by Charles “Charlie the Jew” Yanowsky.[1] Robert J. “Farmer” Sullivan was Butler's partner and veteran confidant, but the available evidence does not establish him as Butler's formal co-boss. The organization was distinct from later groups broadly classified under the Westside Irish Mob label.
Two-faction structure
[edit]The coalition was not organized like a hierarchical Mafia family. Its members and associates profited from cargo theft, extortion, gambling, loansharking and influence over waterfront labor. Journalist Daniel J. Wakin, summarizing Clark's research, identifies Butler, Sullivan and Yanowsky as the heads of its two most powerful factions.[2]
The Butler faction was centered on Big Joe Butler. Clark describes Robert J. “Farmer” Sullivan, a veteran Greenwich Village gangster, as Butler's partner and veteran confidant rather than assigning him a formal subordinate rank. Future waterfront bosses Eddie McGrath and John “Cockeye” Dunn emerged from this group.[1]
The Yanowsky faction was led by Charlie Yanowsky, a New York-born racketeer who had previously led New Jersey's Rope Ladder Gang. That earlier crew reportedly used rope ladders to climb rail cars and steal freight. After New Jersey authorities acted against it in 1933, Yanowsky moved into the Manhattan West Side underworld and developed his own following.[1] The Rope Ladder Gang was therefore an earlier Yanowsky organization, not a third West Side faction independently fighting Butler.
Rubel robbery crew
[edit]The name “Rubel Gang” is best understood as shorthand for the ad hoc crew assembled to rob an armored truck outside Brooklyn's Rubel Ice Company on August 21, 1934, not as a separate, enduring gang with four joint leaders. Contemporary accounts place the amount stolen at $427,950 and say the crew was assembled for that single operation and never again worked as one unit.[3][4]
The plan originated with Bernard “Bennie the Bum” McMahon and John “Fats” Manning. John J. “Archie” Stewart then became a principal organizer and recruiter; he was distinct from another participant, Stewart “One-Arm” Wallace. Joseph Kress was accused of participating, but the New York Court of Appeals reversed his conviction because Stewart's accomplice testimony lacked legally sufficient independent corroboration and because of prejudicial trial errors.[5]
Clark's later research associates McMahon, Manning, Kress and Stewart with Yanowsky's faction and contends that Yanowsky supplied the machine guns used in the robbery. The contemporary reconstruction and appellate opinion, however, do not identify Yanowsky as a planner, participant, commander or beneficiary. The evidence therefore supports overlapping personnel and possible logistical assistance—not a subordinate “Rubel Gang” operating under Yanowsky.[1][2]
Factional war and aftermath
[edit]The two groups initially cooperated, but their robbery and pier-racket operations increasingly overlapped. Clark dates a “cold war” to late 1934 and an open struggle for the West Side to early 1935. On January 16, 1935, Yanowsky and Joe Kress reportedly found Butler associate James “Ding Dong” Bell at the Market Diner in Greenwich Village, where Yanowsky shot him.[1] The incident supports direct violence between factional figures but does not establish a formal command order binding every associate.
Yanowsky was shot and captured by federal agents in Hoboken in January 1936 while wanted for questioning about a gang killing, a bank robbery and an interstate silk hijacking.[6] On March 15, Butler was fatally wounded in a shotgun ambush near the Hotel New Yorker. Three Yanowsky-group associates were charged, but the charges were later dropped for insufficient evidence; the evidence does not establish that Yanowsky ordered Butler's killing. Sullivan was fatally shot during a purported reconciliation dinner in Matawan Township, New Jersey, on September 20.[1] Nothing located establishes that Sullivan had inherited a formal boss title after Butler's death.
The Butler side, increasingly led by McGrath and Dunn, eventually prevailed as Yanowsky associates were killed or imprisoned. The surviving Butler organization consolidated the more lucrative waterfront rackets and evolved into the Dunn-McGrath Gang.[1][2] Yanowsky survived his imprisonment and later worked as a New Jersey waterfront-union business agent. He was found stabbed to death in Clifton, New Jersey, in 1948; contemporary reporting connected that later killing to a New Jersey waterfront struggle rather than the earlier Manhattan faction war.[7]
References
[edit]- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Neil G. Clark, Dock Boss: Eddie McGrath and the West Side Waterfront (Fort Lee, New Jersey: Barricade Books, 2017), especially chapters 4–9.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Daniel J. Wakin, “West Side Gangs Fight It Out in the ’30s”, February 25, 2018.
- ↑ “Robbery in Brooklyn—I”, The New Yorker, May 13, 1939.
- ↑ “Robbery in Brooklyn—II”, The New Yorker, May 20, 1939.
- ↑ People v. Kress, 284 N.Y. 452 (N.Y. 1940).
- ↑ “‘I'm Glad I Got It,’ Mutters Gangster After Being Shot”, The Washington Daily News, January 31, 1936, p. 25.
- ↑ “Business Agent of Union Found Stabbed to Death”, Evening Star, July 17, 1948, p. 4.