Five Points Gang
 Paul Kelly in a photograph published by McClure's Magazine in 1909 | |
| Also Known As | Five Pointers Paradise Social Club (1903 reporting) |
|---|---|
| Origins | |
| Founding Location | Five Points, Manhattan, New York City |
| Territory | Five Points and Little Italy, Lower Manhattan Harlem (Paul Kelly Association branch) New Jersey (Paul Kelly Association branch) |
| Lineage | |
| Predecessor(s) | Dead Rabbits Whyos Other nineteenth-century Five Points gangs (later historical lineage) |
| Profile | |
| Structure | Federation of neighborhood crews and social clubs |
| Ethnicity | Predominantly Italian under Kelly, with Irish and Jewish members |
| Activities | Election fraud Robbery Illegal gambling Prostitution Assault |
| Politics | |
| Leader | Paul Kelly Jack Sirocco (post-1905 faction) Chick Tricker (post-1905 faction) Jimmy Kelly (post-1905 faction) |
| Notable Members | Jack McManus Biff Ellison Johnny Spanish Nathan Kaplan |
| Auxiliaries | James Street Gang (described as an auxiliary under Johnny Torrio) |
| Rivals | Eastman Gang |
| Activity | |
| Years Active | c. 1900–early 1910s |
| Dissolved Date | Early 1910s |
| Dissolution Cause | Internal factionalism Closure of the New Brighton 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.[1][2] Later histories generally apply the name more broadly to Kelly's organization and its affiliated crews.[3]
Origins and 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.[2]
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.[4]
Kelly organization
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.[2] 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.[5]
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.[3]
Factional split and decline
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.[2] Asbury instead used “Five Pointers” for the broader Kelly organization and described separate remnants surviving after Kelly moved uptown.[3] 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.[3]
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.[6] 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.”[3]
See also
- ↑ “Reserves Beaten Off: Five Points Gang Ends Celebration by Rioting and Assaulting”, New-York Tribune, July 6, 1903, p. 4.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 George Kibbe Turner, “Tammany's Control of New York by Professional Criminals”, McClure's Magazine, vol. 33, no. 2, June 1909, pp. 117–126.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928), pp. 272–296.
- ↑ James M. O'Kane, The Crooked Ladder: Gangsters, Ethnicity and the American Dream (Routledge, 2017), pp. 64–66.
- ↑ “Paul Kelly Man Killed”, New-York Tribune, November 27, 1905, p. 3.
- ↑ “Johnny Torrio and His First Mob: The James Street Gang”, Infamous New York, March 21, 2014.
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- Five Points, Manhattan