Editing James Street Gang (section)

==History==
Kobler states that Torrio formed an “affiliated gang” headquartered in a saloon he operated on James Street. Schoenberg writes that Torrio “allied his James Streeters with the Five Points gang” during the latter's territorial struggle with Monk Eastman. Kelly became Torrio's mentor and later treated him as a protégé, but those relationships do not establish formal command over the James Street organization.<ref name="Schoenberg" /><ref name="Kobler" />

James Street ran from near Park Row and Five Points southeast toward the East River. Research by Thomas Hunt places Torrio's family, saloon, poolroom and associated rooming-house or brothel businesses in this James Street milieu. The documented nucleus around Torrio, Rocco “Roxie” Vanella and Frankie Yale was southern Italian, although the sources do not establish that every member shared that background.<ref name="Hunt">Thomas Hunt, [https://mafiahistory.us/a031/f_calabrian.html “Just How Organized Was Calabrian Organized Crime?”], ''The American Mafia'', 2015.</ref>

Schoenberg and Hunt place Torrio's relocation to Chicago at approximately 1909. Herbert Asbury's 1928 narrative instead says Torrio first appeared as “chieftain of the James street gang” in early 1911, dominated part of the old Fourth Ward waterfront for almost five years and then moved west.<ref name="Asbury">Herbert Asbury, [https://archive.org/details/gangsofnewyorkin0000unse/page/n379/mode/2up ''The Gangs of New York''] (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), p. 355.</ref> Asbury's chronology conflicts with the better-supported relocation date, so it is not used for the infobox lifespan.