Editing James Street Gang

{{SHORTDESC:Lower East Side gang led by Johnny Torrio}}
{{Infobox criminal organization
| name = James Street Gang
| also_known_as = James Street Boys<br>James Streeters
| founder = Johnny Torrio
| founding_location = James Street, Lower Manhattan, New York City
| headquarters = Torrio's saloon on James Street
| territory = James Street and the East River waterfront in the old Fourth Ward
| structure = Neighborhood street gang
| ethnicity = Predominantly southern Italian {{small|(documented nucleus)}}
| activities = Illegal gambling<br>Saloon and poolroom operations<br>Gang violence
| leader = Johnny Torrio
| allies = [[Five Points Gang]]<br>[[Paul Kelly Association]]
| years_active = Early 1900s–c. 1909
| dissolution_cause = Torrio's relocation to Chicago around 1909
}}

The '''James Street Gang''', also called the '''James Street Boys''' or '''James Streeters''', was a Lower East Side neighborhood gang formed and led by Johnny Torrio. Biographers describe it as allied or affiliated with Paul Kelly's Five Points network, not as a Kelly-controlled puppet.<ref name="Schoenberg">Robert J. Schoenberg, [https://books.google.com/books?id=zTLSKm2cby0C&pg=PT31 ''Mr. Capone''] (William Morrow, 1992), chapter 2.</ref><ref name="Kobler">John Kobler, [https://books.google.com/books?id=79AhDnSpZhQC&pg=PA26 ''Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone''] (Da Capo Press edition), p. 26.</ref>

==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.

==Relationship to Five Points==
“Affiliate” or “allied crew” is the strongest source-supported classification. The gang may be grouped under the broad “Auxiliaries” heading in an overview infobox, but that usage does not imply that Kelly directly controlled its internal affairs.<ref name="Schoenberg" /><ref name="Kobler" />

==Name ambiguity==
The same name had been used earlier for an unrelated gang of teenage girls. In 1903, the ''Evening Star'' reported that a group of girl thieves around James Street was variously called the Five Points Gang, Gap Gang and James Street Gang.<ref>[https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83045462/1903-10-13/ed-1/?sp=13 “Girl Thieves in New York”], ''Evening Star'', October 13, 1903, p. 13.</ref> That organization should not be confused with Torrio's later gang.

==See also==
* [[Five Points Gang]]
* [[Paul Kelly Association]]
* [[Five Points gangs]]

{{DEFAULTSORT:James Street Gang}}
[[Category:Former gangs in New York City]]
[[Category:Italian-American organized crime groups]]
[[Category:Lower East Side]]