Manhattan Mafia Guide (13 page)

September 6, 1901:
Kelly and two others rob and violently assault a man named Robert K. Bruce. Despite several witnesses, Kelly is never charged.

September 17, 1901:
The Paul Kelly Association was instrumental in what is often cited as being a proverbial “changing of the guard” in New York politics. The Old World, “saloon-keeping” Irish, who had a stranglehold on politics for decades, were challenged by a new breed of European immigrants. Jewish and Italian thugs-for-hire quite literally blocked polling stations, fended off rival goons and offered up hundreds of repeat votes. As a reward, various criminal activities were sheltered, like gambling and “fifty-cent prostitution,” with estimates of 750 to 1,000 young Italian women employed as sex workers in Little Italy by the end of 1901.

October 30, 1901
: Four members of the Paul Kelly Association, called “One of Big Tim Sullivan’s organizations” in the
World
newspaper,
⁷²
attack Denis McElvoy, proprietor of the Harry Howard Square Hotel on Canal and Baxter. The hotel served as headquarters of Sullivan political rival Justice Jerome.

November 2, 1901:
190 Mulberry Street is identified as the Paul Kelly Association headquarters in
a New York Times
article.
⁷³

November 4, 1901:
Paul Kelly and associate Patrick McCabe are arrested for holding up Frederick T. Rouss of Brooklyn, attempting to steal his watch.

December 6, 1901:
Kelly is sentenced to nine months in jail for assault. During the sentencing, the Mulberry Street Police Station is censured for previously shielding Kelly, whom the judge described as “one of young Tim Sullivan’s friends.” The sergeant of that station is accused of letting Kelly off the hook in the past and is reprimanded.

August 30, 1902:
The first printed reference to the Five Points Social Club appears in an article reporting on an outing hosted by district leader Tom Foley at the former Sulzer’s Park (2
^nd
Avenue and 126
^th
Street). About 150 members of the club attend the all-day event.

September 1902:
Kelly is released from jail and focuses his attention on building up the Paul Kelly Association’s membership, with its earliest headquarters at 190 Mulberry Street and branches in Harlem and Newark, New Jersey.

September 10, 1902:
Nine members of the Five Points Social Club cause a small stir after losing a baseball contest at a day outing in College Point hosted by ex–police chief William Devery. The club’s headquarters are identified as 126 White Street.
⁷⁴

September 29, 1902:
Sixty Monk Eastman gang members raid the Five Points gang district. In the end, seventeen brawlers are arrested, and fifteen revolvers, eight knives and three blackjacks are seized.
⁷⁵
Paul Kelly is never mentioned.

October 4, 1902:
The Five Pointers lead a surprise raid on an Eastman hangout at 96 Suffolk Street in retaliation for the September 29 battle. Thirty-five men armed with revolvers and clubs rush up the stairs to the second-floor pool hall, where Eastman is said to be. At the end of the bloody struggle, several gangsters and police are injured, and twenty-nine gangsters are arrested.
⁷⁶
Paul Kelly is never mentioned.

October 6, 1902:
Alderman Tom Foley meets with the Eastmans to settle a dispute with the Five Pointers.

October 7, 1902:
Foley meets with the Five Points gang to settle a dispute with the Eastmans. Paul Kelly is never mentioned.

October 11, 1902:
Persuaded by Foley, delegates from the Five Pointers and the Eastmans meet at Tammany Hall headquarters and sign a peace treaty.
⁷⁷
The Five Pointers then celebrate the peace treaty at their club rooms at 126 White Street. (Remember, Kelly was already operating out of 190 Mulberry Street.) The story that Foley encouraged Eastman and Kelly to face off in a boxing match to decide who would get control of the district
might
be true, though there is no documentation to verify this. In fact, despite Kelly’s high profile, his name is not mentioned once in any of the original articles or reports on the gang war or the peace treaty.

February 8, 1903:
Police raid the Paul Kelly Association headquarters at 190 Mulberry Street and break up an illegal prizefight between Kid Griffo and “the Creole,” arresting seventeen people. The Paul Kelly Association soon moves its headquarters to 24 Stanton Street, even farther from Five Points.

March 7, 1903:
The Paul Kelly Association is still engaging in legitimate sporting activities. Its wrestler, W. Gariosa, defeats W. Karl of the Pastime Athletic Club in two minutes and fifteen seconds at the New Polo Athletic Association gymnasium at 129
^th
Street and Park Avenue.

May 14, 1903:
Paul Kelly wrestles Joe “the Ghetto Champion” Bernstein in an exhibition match at Miner’s Bowery Theater; after fifteen minutes, a fight breaks out between the contestants. When the dust settles, Kelly is declared the winner.

July 4, 1903:
Six hundred members of “the new Five Points gang”
⁷⁸
attend a day outing in New Dorp, Staten Island, with members of the Eastman gang, as part of Foley’s ongoing plan to keep peace in his district. No incidents are reported while the former rivals mingle, but the Five Pointers wreak havoc as they march from the Whitehall Ferry terminal back to their headquarters. Fifteen police officers who respond to shots being fired at pedestrians are assaulted by the mob. Only two arrests are made. Paul Kelly is never mentioned.

July 8, 1903:
Alleged members from an East Harlem branch of the “Paul Kelly Social Club”
⁷⁹
battle police in a saloon at East 115
^th
Street and 2
^nd
Avenue. One officer is injured.

August 7, 1903:
A Boston merchant is attacked by alleged members of the Five Points gang on the Bowery. When a police officer attempts to interfere, he is also attacked.

September 16, 1903:
Paul Kelly Association gang member Michael Donovan is killed during a major gun battle on Rivington Street with the Eastman gang. Over one hundred shots are fired between dozens of rival gangsters. This is the first time that Kelly and Eastman are recorded to be at war. No original articles mention that this was a “second war,” lending more evidence to the theory that Kelly had nothing to do with Eastman’s 1902 war with the Five Pointers.

September 19, 1903:
Police raid and shut down the new Paul Kelly Association headquarters at 24 Stanton Street and confiscate all the organization’s records. Several members are arrested on various charges, including weapons possession. Police vow to shut down the Paul Kelly Association for good. With the help of an unknown investor, Kelly eventually moves into a saloon at 57 Great Jones Street, right off the Bowery.

September 20, 1903:
Michael Donovan is buried, and services are held at his home on the corner of Governeur and Cherry Streets. Several Paul Kelly Association members pay respects. On the same day, two of the association’s members who were arrested during the raid on 24 Stanton Street are fined for weapons possession.

October 24, 1903:
The
Evening World
reports that “assassination is a regular industry in this city,”
⁸⁰
citing rates the Paul Kelly gang charged for their criminal services, allegedly told by a former member of the gang: punching, $5; punching and razor cut to face, $15; beating with brass knuckles and blackjacks, $20; sent to hospital guarantee, $50; stabbing, $5; murder, $100. The article also claimed that a pretty woman named “Shady Sadie” assisted in these endeavors by acting as a decoy.

March 14, 1904:
The NYPD identifies a man named “Paddy” Brock—whom they also referred to as “Fenton”—as the leader of the Five Pointers, maintaining the position through “many successful encounters with rivals.”
⁸¹
Throughout 1904, Paul Kelly is mentioned on an almost monthly basis, as is the Five Points gang, though never in the same article.

August 4, 1904:
Several Kelly gang members go on a local rampage, breaking storefront windows and assaulting innocent bystanders. Over a two-hour period, thousands of dollars in damage is done, and one man, a fruit peddler named Christo Colojanes, is beaten so badly that he dies of his injuries. Police are only successful in arresting one gangster, who gives his name as William Windorf. A police officer by the name of Frye, who made the arrest, is threatened with his life and reassigned to another part of the city.

September 4, 1904:
Two hundred Paul Kelly Association members gather in New Dorp, Staten Island, for an outing where a shooting occurred. One gang member is arrested; the remaining members take the Staten Island Ferry home, where a waiting squad of policemen escorts them all the way to their headquarters.

November 14, 1904:
A man named John Careva is identified by the police as the “current leader” of the Five Pointers following an arrest on Mulberry Street.
⁸²
Several reports from the era report a notorious gunman named Phil Casey as the driving force behind the Five Pointers.

March 27, 1905:
A judge named Delehanty grants Vaccarelli the right to legally change his name to Kelly. Some have implied it was an attempt to woo the predominantly Irish-led unions, which Kelly had his eye on infiltrating. In the summer of 1905, Kelly is recruited to break a strike of the Cloakmaker’s Union and is hired by the Musical Mutual Protective Union to assist in putting its laborers “in order.” This is his first recorded foray into the labor-slugging field.

April 1, 1905:
Police raid Kelly’s Little Naples/New Brighton Club at 57 Great Jones, and the gang leader is arrested. He is released on April 5 to a cheering crowd of five hundred spectators, according to reports.

May 26, 1905:
Kelly bodyguard Thomas “Eat ’Em Up Jack” McManus is killed in what the
New York Times
calls a “rivalry between the Kelly and the Five Points adherents.”
⁸³

May 27, 1905:
A New York Times
article describes a feud between the “Kelley [
sic
] gang, who resort to the Brighton” (57 Great Jones Street), and the “Five Points gang, whose headquarters is at Salter’s” (the Pelham, 12 Pell Street).

June 3, 1905:
The
St. John Daily Sun
declares that the “Paul Kelly band” and “Five Points band” were “rivals for Bowery honors.”
⁸⁴

August 5, 1905:
The Paul Kelly gang goes on a two-hour rampage through the streets of the Lower East Side. Several bystanders are seriously injured, and thousands of dollars’ worth of damage is done.

August 27, 1905:
Nine Paul Kelly gang members are arrested for rioting in East Harlem.

September 2, 1905:
An off-duty police officer and his associate are beaten inside Kelly’s club at 57 Great Jones.

November 17, 1905:
A benefit for the Paul Kelly Fife, Drum and Bugle Corps is held at Everett Hall (31–33 East Fourth Street). Outside the event, rival gangster Jack Sirocco is shot in the arm.

November 21, 1905:
Members of the Liberty Association have a shootout with Paul Kelly gang members at 57 Great Jones Street. Paul Kelly is not present, but his brother, Joseph Vaccarelli, manager of the saloon, is arrested.

Paul Kelly’s “Little Naples” at 57 Great Jones Street in 1905. The caption read, “Headquarters of the largest and best organized gang in New York City, the Paul Kelly’s.”
From
Public Opinion: A Comprehensive Summary of the Press Throughout the World on All Important Current Topics,
Volume 39
.

November 23, 1905:
Kelly survives a midnight shooting at 57 Great Jones, but bodyguard Bill Harrington is killed. The gunmen are “Razor” Reilly and Biff Ellison, identified by several news sources as members of the rival Five Points gang. Kelly leaves the scene with three gunshot wounds before police arrive and find the body of Harrington.

November 26, 1905:
With Kelly on the run, a police officer exchanges gunfire with five Paul Kelly gang members attempting to rob a cigar store at 2163 Second Avenue in East Harlem. One gangster named John Gela is shot in the eye and dies soon after in Harlem Hospital.