Samuel Morton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the natural scientist, see Samuel George Morton.
Samuel J. "Nails" Morton (1894-May 13, 1923) was a Jewish gunman of Dion O'Banion's Northside gang. A World War I veteran he had received the French Croix de Guerre and promoted to Lieutenant by the wars end. Morton is most noted for the revenge carried out by the Northside mob after his death. Morton, who was fond of horseback riding, was thrown from his horse while riding in Lincoln Park and trampled to death. Members of the Northside mob, including Bugs Moran, Vincent Drucci, Hymie Weiss, and Louis Alterie took the horse from the stables and, leading it upon the spot where Morton was killed, shot the horse "with four slugs to the head". This would later be reenacted by James Cagney in the film The Public Enemy after Cagney's character kills a horse which kicked to death fellow gangster "Nails" Nathan played by Leslie Fenton as well as inspire the scene from Mario Puzo's The Godfather Saga.
[edit] Further reading
- Fried, Albert. The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980. ISBN 0-23109683-6
- Mayer, Milton Sanford. "What Can a Man Do?". University of Chicago Press, 1964.
- O'Kane, James M. The Crooked Ladder. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1994. ISBN 0-7658-0994-X
- Reppetto, Thomas. American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2004. ISBN 0-8050-7798-7
[edit] References
- English, T.J. Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster. New York: HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0-06-059002-5
- Kelly, Robert J. Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30653-2
- Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
- Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001. ISBN 0-8160-4040-0
