Jump to content

Five Points Gang: Difference between revisions

From American Crime Wiki

Informer (talk | contribs)

658 edits
undo
Informer (talk | contribs)
658 edits
Create independently sourced historical gang article
 
Informer (talk | contribs)
658 edits
Link the approved Eastman Gang article
 
(One intermediate revision by the same user not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
{{SHORTDESC:Lower Manhattan street gang associated with Paul Kelly}}
{{SHORTDESC:Turn-of-the-century Lower Manhattan gang label and coalition}}
{{Infobox criminal organization
{{Infobox criminal organization
| name = Five Points Gang
| name = Five Points Gang
| also_known_as = Five Pointers<br>Paradise Social Club {{small|(1903 reporting)}}
| also_known_as = Five Points Italian gang {{small|(1902 reporting)}}<br>Paradise Social Club {{small|(1903 reporting)}}<br>Five Pointers
| image = Paul Kelly McClures Magazine 1909.jpg
| image = Jacob Riis stale bread vendor Mulberry Bend c1890.jpg
| image_alt = Contemporary magazine photograph of Paul Kelly
| image_alt = Italian bread vendor in Mulberry Bend around 1890
| caption = Paul Kelly in a photograph published by ''McClure's Magazine'' in 1909
| caption = An Italian bread vendor in Mulberry Bend, photographed around 1890. The image provides neighborhood context and does not depict identified gang members.
| founding_location = Five Points, Manhattan, New York City
| founding_location = Lower Manhattan, New York City
| territory = Five Points and Little Italy, Lower Manhattan<br>Harlem {{small|(Paul Kelly Association branch)}}<br>New Jersey {{small|(Paul Kelly Association branch)}}
| territory = Five Points and the adjacent Lower East Side, Manhattan
| predecessor = Dead Rabbits<br>Whyos<br>Other nineteenth-century Five Points gangs {{small|(later historical lineage)}}
| structure = Loose coalition and reused neighborhood label
| structure = Federation of neighborhood crews and social clubs
| ethnicity = Primarily Italian-American in contemporary 1902–03 reports
| ethnicity = Predominantly Italian under Kelly, with Irish and Jewish members
| activities = Gang fighting<br>Assault<br>Political intimidation
| activities = Election fraud<br>Robbery<br>Illegal gambling<br>Prostitution<br>Assault
| leader = “Mickey the Harp” {{small|(1902 report)}}<br>Paul Kelly {{small|(press association by 1905)}}
| leader = Paul Kelly<br>Jack Sirocco {{small|(post-1905 faction)}}<br>Chick Tricker {{small|(post-1905 faction)}}<br>Jimmy Kelly {{small|(post-1905 faction)}}
| auxiliaries = [[James Street Gang]] {{small|(allied or affiliated crew under Johnny Torrio in later sources)}}
| notable_members = Jack McManus<br>Biff Ellison<br>Johnny Spanish<br>Nathan Kaplan
| allies = [[Paul Kelly Association]] {{small|(reported separately in 1902–03)}}<br>Young Whyos<br>Cherry Hill Club<br>West Side Tigers
| auxiliaries = [[James Street Gang]] {{small|(described as an auxiliary under Johnny Torrio)}}
| rivals = [[Eastman Gang]]
| rivals = Eastman Gang
| years_active = At least 1901–1905 as a contemporary label
| years_active = c. 1900–early 1910s
| dissolved_date = Early 1910s
| dissolution_cause = Internal factionalism<br>Closure of the New Brighton<br>Arrests and police suppression
}}
}}


The '''Five Points Gang''' was a Lower Manhattan criminal organization associated with Italian-American gang leader Paul Kelly. Contemporary sources used “Five Points Gang” for more than one formation: a 1903 newspaper called the Paradise Social Club the “new Five Points Gang,” while a 1909 investigation reported that a faction split from Kelly's broader association in 1905 and thereafter used the name.<ref name="Tribune1903">[https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030214/1903-07-06/ed-1/?sp=4 “Reserves Beaten Off: Five Points Gang Ends Celebration by Rioting and Assaulting”], ''New-York Tribune'', July 6, 1903, p. 4.</ref><ref name="Turner">George Kibbe Turner, [https://archive.org/details/McCluresMagazineV33n02190906/page/n31/mode/2up “Tammany's Control of New York by Professional Criminals”], ''McClure's Magazine'', vol. 33, no. 2, June 1909, pp. 117–126.</ref> Later histories generally apply the name more broadly to Kelly's organization and its affiliated crews.<ref name="Asbury">Herbert Asbury, [https://archive.org/details/gangsofnewyork00asbu ''The Gangs of New York''] (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), pp. 272–296.</ref>
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.<ref name="EW1902">[https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030193/1902-09-30/ed-1/?sp=6 “Gangsters Battle in City Streets”], ''The Evening World'', September 30, 1902, p. 6.</ref><ref name="EW1903">[https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030193/1903-04-18/ed-1/?sp=8 “Gang Men to Fight Eastman”], ''The Evening World'', April 18, 1903, p. 8.</ref><ref name="Sun1905">[https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030272/1905-04-25/ed-1/?sp=9 “Gang Fight in Baxter Street”], ''The Sun'', April 25, 1905, p. 9.</ref>


==Origins and identity==
==Contemporary identity==
Five Points had supported numerous, mostly Irish gangs during the nineteenth century, including the Dead Rabbits and Whyos. These groups did not constitute one continuously governed organization. Turner described the neighborhood's Irish criminals of the 1880s as comparatively unorganized; in the late 1890s Kelly—born Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli—built a following of young Italians through athletic and social clubs.<ref name="Turner" />
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.<ref name="EW1902" />


Sociologist James M. O'Kane describes a broader ethnic succession: Irish gangs dominated Lower Manhattan into the 1880s before Jewish and Italian criminals took over or transformed older organizations. He identifies Kelly's assumption of leadership over the old Five Points gang as part of that process, while emphasizing that major gangs contained members from more than one ethnic group.<ref name="OKane">James M. O'Kane, [https://books.google.com/books?id=6tszDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT62 ''The Crooked Ladder: Gangsters, Ethnicity and the American Dream''] (Routledge, 2017), pp. 64–66.</ref>
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.<ref name="EW1903" /> 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.<ref name="Tribune1903">[https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030214/1903-07-06/ed-1/?sp=4 “Reserves Beaten Off: Five Points Gang Ends Celebration by Rioting and Assaulting”], ''New-York Tribune'', July 6, 1903, p. 4.</ref> These reports establish reuse of the name but do not prove that the 1902 group and Paradise Social Club were the same organization.


==Kelly organization==
By April 1905, ''The Sun'' was writing of “Paul Kelly and his Five Points gang.”<ref name="Sun1905" /> The newspaper evidence therefore shows a convergence of names, not a clearly documented corporate merger or spin-off.
Kelly's organization supplied fraudulent voters and street muscle to Tammany Hall politicians. Turner reported that after serving a short prison sentence, Kelly expanded the '''Paul Kelly Association''', which included thieves, pimps and rough laborers and maintained branches in Harlem and New Jersey. Kelly operated from the New Brighton, a saloon and dance hall at 57 Great Jones Street.<ref name="Turner" /> A 1905 ''New-York Tribune'' report independently described a Harlem branch of the association and connected its members to an attempted burglary and gunfire directed at police.<ref name="Tribune1905">[https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030214/1905-11-27/ed-1/?sp=3 “Paul Kelly Man Killed”], ''New-York Tribune'', November 27, 1905, p. 3.</ref>


The gang was Italian-led but not ethnically exclusive. Asbury's later account places Irish figures Jack McManus and Biff Ellison and Jewish figures Johnny Spanish and Nathan Kaplan among Kelly's Five Pointers. Because many colorful membership claims originate in retrospective gang histories, this article does not repeat the much larger rosters sometimes attributed to the organization.<ref name="Asbury" />
==Paul Kelly and later accounts==
{{Main|Paul Kelly Association}}
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.<ref name="Informer">[https://books.google.com/books?id=Bk3UEAAAQBAJ ''Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement''], October 2023, pp. 35–50, 77–84.</ref>


==Factional split and decline==
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.<ref name="Asbury">Herbert Asbury, [https://archive.org/details/the-gangs-of-new-york-herbert-asbury/page/n277/mode/2up ''The Gangs of New York''] (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), pp. 272–296.</ref> “Successors” describes a historical lineage; it does not establish uninterrupted institutional continuity with the nineteenth-century [[Five Points gangs]].
Turner reported that dissension divided Kelly's association in 1905. Its southern faction broke away and used the Five Points name under Jack Sirocco, Chick Tricker, Jimmy Kelly and other saloon-based leaders. After two attacks on Kelly's circle, Police Commissioner William McAdoo closed the New Brighton and Kelly moved his operations to Italian Harlem.<ref name="Turner" /> Asbury instead used “Five Pointers” for the broader Kelly organization and described separate remnants surviving after Kelly moved uptown.<ref name="Asbury" /> The conflicting accounts make a clean institutional division between a “Kelly gang” and a later Five Points Gang impossible to establish.


The gang fragmented into smaller crews as its leaders were killed, imprisoned or displaced. Asbury's later narrative describes police treating the remaining Five Pointers as remnants rather than a unified organization by 1910.<ref name="Asbury" />
==James Street affiliation==
 
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.”<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> 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.
==James Street auxiliary==
A later Lower East Side organization led by Johnny Torrio was known as the [[James Street Gang]] or James Street Boys. A local history of the organization explicitly describes it as a Five Points auxiliary formed to assist Kelly and the Yakey Yakes during the conflicts with the Eastman Gang.<ref name="JamesAux">[https://infamousnewyork.com/2014/03/21/johnny-torrio-and-his-first-mob-the-james-street-gang/ “Johnny Torrio and His First Mob: The James Street Gang”], ''Infamous New York'', March 21, 2014.</ref> Asbury independently places Torrio at the head of a James Street gang on the old Fourth Ward waterfront in the early 1910s, although he does not use the word “auxiliary.”<ref name="Asbury" />


==See also==
==See also==
* [[Five Points gangs]]
* [[Five Points gangs]]
* [[Paul Kelly Association]]
* [[Dead Rabbits]]
* [[Dead Rabbits]]
* [[Whyos]]
* [[Whyos]]
Line 48: Line 44:
{{DEFAULTSORT:Five Points Gang}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Five Points Gang}}
[[Category:Former gangs in New York City]]
[[Category:Former gangs in New York City]]
[[Category:Irish-American organized crime groups]]
[[Category:Italian-American organized crime groups]]
[[Category:Italian-American organized crime groups]]
[[Category:Jewish-American organized crime groups]]
[[Category:Five Points, Manhattan]]
[[Category:Five Points, Manhattan]]

Latest revision as of 21:55, 29 August 2026

Five Points Gang
Italian bread vendor in Mulberry Bend around 1890
An Italian bread vendor in Mulberry Bend, photographed around 1890. The image provides neighborhood context and does not depict identified gang members.
Also Known AsFive Points Italian gang (1902 reporting)
Paradise Social Club (1903 reporting)
Five Pointers
Origins
Founding LocationLower Manhattan, New York City
TerritoryFive Points and the adjacent Lower East Side, Manhattan
Profile
StructureLoose coalition and reused neighborhood label
EthnicityPrimarily Italian-American in contemporary 1902–03 reports
ActivitiesGang fighting
Assault
Political intimidation
Politics
Leader“Mickey the Harp” (1902 report)
Paul Kelly (press association by 1905)
AuxiliariesJames Street Gang (allied or affiliated crew under Johnny Torrio in later sources)
AlliesPaul Kelly Association (reported separately in 1902–03)
Young Whyos
Cherry Hill Club
West Side Tigers
RivalsEastman Gang
Activity
Years ActiveAt 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. ↑ 1.0 1.1 “Gangsters Battle in City Streets”, The Evening World, September 30, 1902, p. 6.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 “Gang Men to Fight Eastman”, The Evening World, April 18, 1903, p. 8.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 “Gang Fight in Baxter Street”, The Sun, April 25, 1905, p. 9.
  4. ↑ “Reserves Beaten Off: Five Points Gang Ends Celebration by Rioting and Assaulting”, New-York Tribune, July 6, 1903, p. 4.
  5. ↑ Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement, October 2023, pp. 35–50, 77–84.
  6. ↑ Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), pp. 272–296.
  7. ↑ Robert J. Schoenberg, Mr. Capone (William Morrow, 1992), chapter 2.
  8. ↑ John Kobler, Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone (Da Capo Press edition), p. 26.
Retrieved from "https://americancrime.wiki/index.php?title=Five_Points_Gang&oldid=602"