Good Times: The First Ward Ball

By Lorelie Brown

Corruption, booze and Chicago.

Nope, I'm not talking about Al Capone. Chicago was a happening place long before him.

Mike "Hinky Dink" Kenna and "Bathhouse" John Coughlin were aldermen for Chicago's First Ward. The First Ward was also known as the Levee, on the south side of the city. Coughlin was a big, brash man who apparently wore very brightly colored clothes and was elected as alderman in 1892. (And he kept up the habit of writing bad poetry. Really bad. Who titles a poem "She Sleeps by the Drainage Canal" in all seriousness?) Kenna was his exact opposite, small and quiet, but he still won election in 1897.

Hinky Dink Kenna (left) and Bathhouse John Coughlin (right).

The Levee wasn't exactly the most posh area of Chicago, not by far. In fact, it was the red light district, where thieves, pickpockets and brawlers roamed. The prostitutes ranged from the cheap tricks of "Bed Bug Row" to the high-class birds of the Everleigh Sisters' establishment, where a bottle of wine was $12 downstairs or $15 in the room. (I promise, it's more money than it sounds like these days.)

So when it came time for fundraising, they did it up right.

Kenna, Coughlin and every other official of the area sold tickets to the First Ward Ball, to be held in December. Buying a ticket was good. Buying a pack of fifty tickets was even better. Not buying tickets could leave a saloon owner or brothel madam to all sorts of harassment--from the police, of course. Ah, extortion at its best. Starting in 1896, the First Ward Ball only got wilder and wilder until 1908, the last year.

But the fun really started at the actual ball. Thousands of people crammed into the Coliseum. At midnight Hinky Dink Kenna and Bathhouse John Coughlin led the entire crowd--well, those who weren't too drunk to stand--in a procession around the floor as the band played "Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here."

After that, things hit a fevered pitch. Madams handed out free champagne and the bottles were stacked in pyramids--until they became too tall and began to topple. Drunk men ripped at the clothes of unaccompanied women. A thirty-foot bar crumpled under yet another brawl. People dressed in bathing suits, fine gowns and costumes--everything from clowns to Indians--and one notorious whore wore a nun's habit. In the corner, another prostitute whipped willing men's naked butts with a crop.

By 1908, the last year, 30,000 people were crammed in a venue meant for half that number. And every single one of them were determined to get their drink on. Women passed out from the heat (and the booze) and were crowd-surfed to the corner, where they were simply piled in stacks.

I mean seriously. This was a political fundraiser.

But it was also the last of its kind. Reformers had been after Mayor Busse to put a halt to the spectacle, but he'd resisted. The Coliseum was the victim of a bombing December 12, 1908, the day before the ball. It didn't hold them up that year, but next year they were done for. Mayor Busse gave in to pressure from the reformers to deny a liquor license and without alcohol there wasn't much left.

Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John held on to power a little while longer, despite being forced to less dramatic methods of fundraising. Eventually though, they retired. Other men swept in and took their place, including Al Capone. But he'd never hold a torch to the vivid descriptions of the First Ward Ball, at least not in my eyes.

Dynasties: Gangland Leaders of Chicago

By Delia DeLeest

Not all dynasties are created by a family, not a genetic one anyway. Some are created by "The Family."

In order to be the head of the Mafia, you must be Sicilian, and contrary to popular belief, Al Capone was not and could never be the head because of his lack of foresight. He was born in New York, after all, to non-Sicilian parents. But Al didn't let something as simple as an accident of birth prevent him from becoming one of the most powerful men in America.

Before there was Al Capone, there was "Big Jim" Colosimo. Big Jim was the undisputed boss of Chicago in 1902. He owned a string of gambling dens and brothels. He was ruthless and powerful, but like anyone else, he had his Achilles heel--or, in Jim's case, two of them. His head was turned by a pretty young thing. Eventually he left his wife and, in 1920, married his latest crush. Like many men with a new trophy wife, Big Jim lost interest in the day to day running of his empire and started turning much of his power over to underlings.

The second thing, which, combined with his new wife, resulted in his downfall was Big Jim's refusal to see a golden opportunity to expand his kingdom and make a lot of money for a lot of people. When Prohibition began in 1920, any entrepreneur willing to ignore that nasty 18th Amendment was destined to make a whole lot of money with bootleg liquor. When Big Jim's second in command, Johnny Torrio, presented him with his new business plan, Big Jim didn't see the need to expand his financial horizons, satisfied with the profits being made by gambling and prostitution. Besides, starting up a new branch of business would take away precious time he'd rather spend with his new wife.

Not one to take no for an answer, the charming Mr. Torrio took matters into his own hands. Torrio informed Colosimo of a shipment being delivered to one of his cafes. While Big Jim was there awaiting delivery, he was shot and killed, presumably by Frankie Yale, an associate of Torrio's, though neither was ever convicted.

In order to promote peace in the city, Big Jim had attempted to divide Chicago up between its various gangs, each outfit taking a section of the city for their own business purposes and leaving the other sections alone. Johnny Torrio wasn't a big fan of this plan, and when he took over upon Big Jim's death, bitter squabbles between the different factions erupted, elevating into full out gang wars.

To help him strong arm control of the city, Torrio called on his good friend from New York, Alphonse Capone, to lend him a hand.

Al was an ambitious young man and soon made himself indispensable to Johnny Torrio. Soon Al had a grasp of Chicago gangland politics, which worked to his advantage when, just a few years after Al arrived in Chicago, Johnny Torrio suffered an assassination attempt by a rival gang. Though Torrio survived, he was shaken enough to turn over the reins of his empire to Capone. Johnny became one of those rarities, a gangster who died of old age. He lived quietly in Europe for five years before returning to the U.S. to become somewhat of an elder statesman for the U.S. Underworld. He died in 1957 at the age of 75 after suffering a heart attack.

Which brings us back to Al. He finally got what he so desperately worked for all those years--control. His control became absolute when he took power over the mafia. Though he could not be its head, as was stated earlier, he could and did, place a puppet leader at its helm. Al Capone was now at the top of the world and his empire complete.

In 1931, Al was convicted of tax evasion and sent to prison. Though a successor took his place as leader of Chicago, with the ending of Prohibition, along with the concerns of the Great Depression, the time of the celebrity mobster was over. Soon they were replaced by the likes of Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger, loners with no obvious gangland ties. Though the mob is still going strong today, it tends to lay low and doesn't flagrantly flaunt the law out in the open as their predecessors did. When Capone fell, his kingdom went with him.

Men: The Ultimate Bad Boy

By Lorelie Brown

First off, let me just say I'm stoked to be here at Unusual Historicals, for more than one reason. My ability to be included here means my debut, currently titled JAZZ BABY, is going to be published (Samhain; Spring 2010). This is the culmination of a life-long dream--and the first step on a long journey, I hope. Secondly, Unusual Historicals is such an awesome place to be a part of, considering I get hot for history. (What, too much?) So me, my irreverence, and my over-use of parenthesis will hopefully be around for a good long while.

Oh, bad boys. We romance readers have such a love for them, no? From the Black Knight who gets the girl anyway, to the rake who strides through ballrooms in his gleaming boots and seduces women left and right (but never touches a virgin!), the bad boy gets his sexy on. Yum.

And who's more bad than gangsters? The modern day notion of gangsters started in the 1920s, when US Prohibition laws made alcohol forbidden. (Little known fact: it was not illegal to drink booze, just to buy or make it. So if a pint of rum just fell from the heavens at your feet, feel free to get blotto.) Gangsters had boatloads of money, most of their business was done in clubs and bars, and really, that whole Prohibition idea was kinda crazy. So breaking laws about it was looking out for the common man who just wanted to get his drink on.

Makes sense that gangsters would be great fodder for bad boys. Heck, Hollywood caught on a long time ago.

How about Al Capone:

Hmm. I don't know about you, but he's not really doing it for me in the looks department. He had a bulletproof car, though, that was later used as President Franklin Roosevelt's personal limo after it was seized--that's pretty cool.

Unfortunately, there's that whole St. Valentine’s Day Massacre thing. An attempt to get back at Bugs Moran in the increasingly violent Chicago mob wars, Capone had seven men lined up against a wall and assassinated. Each victim ended up with somewhere between 15 to 20 bullets in them. Gruesome stuff. And he died of syphilis. That sucks. I'm not thinking Capone's redeemable.

Well, OK, how about George "Bugs" Moran, who ran the North-Side gang in Chicago and was Capone's mortal enemy?

Now he's a pretty decent looking guy. He still doesn't do it for me, but I can get the appeal. He supposedly dug monogamy, so yay, no syphilis! One problem--that nickname. He got the name "Bugs" from being bat-shit crazy. Plus he was super-murderous.

Moving right along, now, we've got John Dillinger:

The guy certainly had charisma, that's for damned sure. And there's that whole Robin Hood-like aura that hangs around him. He stole primarily from banks during the 1930s Depression, and the people could get behind that, all things considered. (By 1933, a third of the banks had failed, and there was no FDIC at the time to back deposits. So imagine if you woke up one morning and found out your entire savings/retirement account was simply gone.)

By many sources, Dillinger only ever killed one man--Officer Patrick O'Malley--and some people even swear up and down that Dillinger didn't even kill him. But...well...he still hung out with killers. The whole Robin Hood image isn't quite right, either. He stole from the rich alright, but the only poor who got a cut of the loot was Dillinger himself. And one account has him leading a gang-rape at thirteen. Gah.

So, alrightie then. Maybe the real bad boys aren't quite where it's at. The heart of gold? Usually stolen. I think I'll stick to my fiction.

Just to rinse the pallet, I'll leave y'all with a picture of the most recent spiffed-up Dillinger incarnation. Now there's a bad boy I wouldn't mind spending some time with:

Weapons and Armies: The Tong Wars

By Eliza Tucker

All wars begin on smaller scales: a push for more freedom, a governmental revolution, or the desire for resources. New York City of the mid-1800s was no different. Dozens of gangs, small and large, violent and not-so-violent, ran the city with their support of the police through grafts and vice rackets.

Originally, life within the Chinese communities was dominated by a few large family and district associations with restrictive membership. As a protective response to their dominance mutual aid associations, so-called tongs, emerged. The tongs adopted the norms and values of the Triad subculture. Their secretive nature, combined with the fact that they could recruit members without traditional restrictions, enabled them to overpower the family and district associations and to take on the social functions of arbitration, protection and exploitation in Chinatown. A tong is not a criminal organization per se, but a natural means of obtaining and using mutually obligate bonds (guanxi) for both criminal and non-criminal purposes.

Organizing Chinatown: Race and Racketeering in New York City, 1890-1910
Jeffrey Scott McIllwain
Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004

Photo: Mock Duck

When the tongs first emigrated to the American West, they served as mutual aid societies. Quickly the 'mutual aid' provided began to resemble the strongarm tactics of the mafia and Irish mob. The tongs spread across the US to Chicago, Boston, and New York City. In the early 1900s, two Chinese gangs took hold of the few Manhattan blocks known as Chinatown. Led by newcomer Sai Wing Mock, known as Mock Duck or "Clay Pigeon", the Hip Sings launched a war against the much larger On Leong Tong, led by press-and-police pet, Tom Lee.

Mock Duck, at age 22, politely asked the older, legendary Tom Lee for half the revenues of all of the On Leong gambling and prostitution rackets. After a long stare, Tom Lee laughed and walked away, without saying a word.

Two days later, Mock Duck set fire to an On Leong boarding house, killing two tong members. Shortly after, an On Leong member was attacked by two hatchetmen. Tom Lee replied to the attack with an order to kill all Hip Sing members, with an emphasis on Mock Duck.

Mock Duck survived stabbings and shootings, and began wearing a chain mail vest under his clothes. Known for his terrible aim with a gun, Mock Duck soon realized his best chance against the hatchetmen was to stoop to the ground, duck his head, shut his eyes, and shoot two pistols in any direction he pleased. Using this method, Mock Duck rarely failed to hit his attackers, but often hit innocent bystanders as well.

Tom Lee put a $1000 price on Mock Duck's head--that's almost $25,000 in today's currency--and the warrant fueled the fires in the Tong Wars. Meanwhile, Mock Duck was busy securing his tong's ties to the Four Brothers, China's oldest and most respected family guild. The Four Brothers joined the war against the On Leongs after Mock Duck promised them cultural power in New York. Mock Duck also drafted the two most dangerous hatchetmen in San Francisco, who are estimated to have murdered around 100 men in the Tong Wars.

While Tom Lee had the police force in his pocket, so Mock Duck appealed to the religious reformers for added support. He told the popular Rev. Charles Parkhurst about the good Chinese trying to live honestly, and about the terrible vices the On Leongs pushed upon them, such as the singsong girls (prostitutes) and the opium dens. Mock Duck provided Parkhurst with a list of On Leong's establishment, and Parkhurst used his favor with most of New York's upper class to force the authorities into action.

But Mock Duck kept the Ace up his sleeve. Tom Lee realized that Mock Duck hadn't given Parkhurst any addresses along On Leong's Mott Street, from whence the On Leong's highest revenue came. Tom Lee couldn't turn over any information about the Hip Sings in retaliation if he wanted to stay in business.

In 1906, Tom Lee finally conceded, only to try to rebuild the On Leongs in 1909. This time, the police involved themselves fully, working toward peace more than profit. These battles, fought within just five diminutive city blocks, were responsible for approximately 350 deaths.