Owney Madden

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Owney "The Killer" Madden , actually Owen Victor Madden (born December 18, 1891 in Leeds , Great Britain , † April 24, 1965 Hot Springs (Arkansas) ) was an influential gangster in New York City in the 1920s to 1930s.

Born in Britain , he is counted among the Irish mobsters and is considered the leader of the Irish gangsters in Hell's Kitchen (Manhattan) from 1921 to 1934 . He owned the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem and was also a leading boxing promoter in the United States in the 1930s .

Life

Early years

Owney Madden was the son of Francis and Mary Owen (née O'Neil) Madden. The family moved from Leeds to Wigan and eventually to Liverpool . His father planned to emigrate with the family to the USA, but it was only after his death that the mother reached New York City - initially alone - on board the RMS Oceanic in 1901, where she stayed with her widowed sister Elizabeth O'Neil at 352 10th Avenue in Manhattan .

Madden, his older brother Martin and his younger sister Mary waited in Leeds until their mother could also arrange passage for them to New York. Inwardly, Madden always remained attached to his old homeland; He did not give up his British passport until the 1940s and continued to speak with his northern English accent in New York.

Gophers gang

On June 4, 1902, the Madden children arrived in New York City aboard the Teutonic . The family lived in Hell's Kitchen. Madden joined the Gophers there at the end of the same year , which marked his entry into a criminal career. In particular, in the fight of his gang against the Hudson Dusters , he earned a relevant reputation . He got his nickname "The Killer" after he shot an Italian mobster and although he called his name and address out loud, he couldn't find a witness afterwards.

By 1910 - at the age of 18 - Madden had risen to become a well-known member of his gang and was already leading about 1/3 of the members. At this point in time, he had been assigned five murders of members of rival gangs. As a result, he earned about $ 200 a day from racketeering and other illegal activities.

In the following three years, Madden's influence of the Gophers reached its climax, as Madden recruited numerous armed members and with their help penetrated into the territory of neighboring gangs; the Hudson Dusters were particularly affected.

On December 6, 1912, three members of this gang committed an assassination attempt on Madden and wounded him. Madden refused to identify the perpetrators in front of the police; soon after, however, some members of the Hudson Dusters were found murdered.

The Gophers were also involved in the Racketeering Laboratory ; In the first Slugger War laboratory from 1913 to 1917, the smaller gangs had united to hold their own against the numerically stronger thugs of Benjamin Fein and Joseph Rosenzweig . So at the end of 1913 there was a shootout with a large number of people involved on Grand Street and Forsyth Street.

In 1914 Madden got into an argument with "Little Patsy Doyle" (aka William Moore) over a woman named Freda Horner. Doyle, a member of the Hudson Dusters, then informed the police of Madden's activities in order to pull him out of circulation. Through Margaret Everdeane, a friend of Freda Horner, Madden arranged a meeting with Doyle and murdered him at that meeting on November 28, 1914.

Madden was sentenced to twenty years in prison in Sing Sing for this murder , where he made contact with old acquaintances from the Lower East Side; in particular Alessandro Vollero , Joseph Valachi and Jimmy DeStefano from the Five Pointers .

prohibition

After nine years in prison , Madden was released on parole in January 1923 . In contrast to other old gangsters, he gained a foothold in the alcohol prohibition that had existed since 1920 , although the Gophers and other classic gangs no longer existed. However, veteran Gophers member Larry Fay needed Madden's physical strength to run his business. He ran a taxi business that he had built with his income from smuggling Canadian whiskey . In the battle for the most lucrative stands along Broadway , Madden quickly took on hands-on leadership. By the time Fay soon expanded into the dairy business, Madden had gained enough experience and made contacts to build his own organization.

For Fay, the illegal activities had only been a means to an end to raise funds for more legal business. Madden, on the other hand, was primarily interested in the high win rates of purely illegal activities and was no longer satisfied with simple smuggling. In 1924 he began robbing deliveries of other gangsters, from which "Big" Bill Dwyer was particularly affected. Dwyer quickly realized that partnering Madden was better.

Cotton Club

Madden also saw the benefit of partnerships. Together with his old rival George "Big Frenchy" De Mange, he founded the legendary Cotton Club in Harlem by taking over the boxer Jack Johnson's shop .

Madden got out of the alcohol business shortly before the end of Prohibition and began his activities as a boxing promoter in 1931 . His partners Duffy and DeMange also participated. Soon they controlled the careers of numerous important boxers, e. B. that of Max Baer and Primo Carnera .

Vincent Coll

Madden had also worked with Dutch Schultz from the days of alcohol smuggling . This had come into conflict with Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll . Coll, also a former member of the Gophers, had carried out a raid on Sheffield Farms dairy , which was in the area of ​​influence of Schultz. Instead of accepting his boss's reprimand, Coll now demanded to be treated as an equal partner and to be involved in his business. Schultz gave Coll the ultimatum to either accept the old terms or to leave. Madden also intervened and tried to convince Coll. A meeting at the Stork Club , of which Madden was silent partner with George DeMange and "Big Bill" Dwyer, did not lead to any result.

Around the summer of 1930, Coll and his supporters began to carry out raids in the Madden and Schultz area. Another ultimatum from Schultz to Coll, either to stay out of alcohol smuggling or to be killed, was also ignored. Rather, Coll probably went on the attack himself, because in the early months of 1931 at least ten members of the Seven Group were murdered; including Carmine Borelli, who refused to lure his boss Dutch Schultz into an ambush. However, the Seven Group struck back and murdered Coll's brother Peter.

In the course of the argument at Hell's Kitchen, Coll kidnapped Madden and DeMange and collected ransom. Schultz continued to press for Colls to be killed. This succeeded when Madden was on the phone and was shot with a submachine gun in the phone booth . The involvement in the assassination of Colls Madden was charged as a breach of his parole and he was imprisoned again on July 7, 1932 in Sing-Sing. However, he was released in 1933, shortly before prohibition ended.

Hot Springs, Arkansas

After being detained, Madden went to Hot Springs . On the one hand, he wanted to escape the legal harassment in New York, on the other hand, he had registered that his time as a gangster in New York was over. In the meantime, Dutch Schultz had been shot and the Five Families of the La Cosa Nostra were beginning to dominate crime in New York.

In Hot Springs he built a small hotel and casino and was also involved in illegal gambling activities there. He maintained good contacts with the New York underworld and his hotel was frequented by numerous bullies from the metropolis; z. B. when it was necessary to evade the attention of the judiciary or rivals for a short time. So held z. B. 1935 Lucky Luciano at Madden's when he was wanted by prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey .

In 1943 Madden became a US citizen. In 1965 he died of emphysema and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery.

Adaptations

literature

  • Herbert Asbury: The Gangs Of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld . United Kingdom: Arrow Books 2002. ISBN 0-09-943674-4
  • Patrick Downey: Gangster City: History of the New York Underworld 1900-1935. New Jersey: Barricade Books, 2004. ISBN 1-56980-267-X
  • TJ English: Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster . New York: HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0-06-059002-5
  • Robert J. Kelly: Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States . Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30653-2
  • Bobbie Jones McLane: Owen Vincent "Owney" Madden: Hot Springs Resident Extraordinaire. , The Record 46 (2005); 19-28.
  • Hank Messick: Lansky . London: Robert Hale & Company, 1973. ISBN 0-7091-3966-7
  • Graham Nown: The English Godfather: Owney Madden . London: Ward Lock, 1987. ISBN 0-7063-6590-9
  • Carl Sifakis: The Mafia Encyclopedia . New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Graham Nown: The English Godfather: Owney Madden . Ward Lock, 1987, ISBN 0-7063-6590-9 .
personal data
SURNAME Madden, Owney
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Madden, Owen Victor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American gangster
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Leeds
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 1965
Place of death Hot Springs , Arkansas, USA