White Hand Gang

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The White Hand Gang was a collection of the various Irish gangs operating on the New York Brooklyn and Red Hook waterfront from the early 1900s to 1925 organizing against the growing dominance of the Italian Black Hand (known as La Mano Nera). The gang primarily collected tributes from incoming and outgoing barge and wharf owners as well as forced payment of longshoreman. The gang was known to be particularly violent often with members killing each other contributing to their unstable leadership as one member of the gang would murder the "dock boss" and would in turn be killed by another member continuing in an endless cycle. The most prominent of these bosses was "Wild" Bill Lovett, who had replaced former leader Dinny Meehan. Meehan was shot and killed while sleeping in his home with his wife at his side. Lovett aggressively confronted the Black Hand until his death on November 1, 1923 while passed out at a bar after being shot several times (possibly by Vincent Mangano and Johnny Giustra) before Sicilian assassin Willie "Two Knife" Altierri killed Lovett with a meat cleaver.

Lovett's brother-in-law Richard "Peg Leg" Lonergan, who had become leader before Lovett was killed, began an even more aggressive attack against Vince Mangano, Albert Anastasia, and Joe Adonis who began moving in on the White Hand waterfront. On December 26, 1925 Lonergan and White Hand members Aaron Harms, James "Ragtime" Howard, Paddy Maloney, Cornielius "Needles" Ferry, and James Hart entered the Adonis Social Club, a Mafia-owned south Brooklyn speakeasy, and getting into a dispute with two Italian customers who had been dancing with two Irish women the lights suddenly went out and gunfire was heard. When the lights came on Lonergan, with lieutenants Aaron Harms and Needles Perry, lay dead on the dance floor shot to death. While police suspected visiting Al Capone, who had been forced to leave New York in 1921 after an altercation with a White Hand gang member, there was no evidence to charge Capone and the case was dropped. Without strong leadership however the White Hand gang slowly disappeared and by 1928 the Italian Mafia completely controlled the remaining White Hand waterfront.

[edit] Further reading

Pietrusza, David. Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003. ISBN 0-7867-1250-3
Schoenberg, Robert J. Mr. Capone. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. ISBN 0-688-12838-6
Downey, Patrick. Gangster City: The History of the New York Underworld, 1900-1935. Barricade Books, 2004. ISBN 156980267X