1884 in organized crime

Events

• "Yellow" Henry Stewart and three gang members are convicted of armed robbery and imprisoned. Stewart later dies in prison of malaria in 1886.
• Johnny Torrio immigrates with his mother Maria Carlucci Torrio to the United States arriving in New York from Osara, Italy.
• March 1 - Two members of the Whyos, recently sentenced to six months imprisonment for vagrancy, escape from Hart's Island after swimming to a boat anchored in the Sound. Suspicious of the circumstances surrounding their escape, two prison guards are dismissed from their posts.
• June 4 - The body of George Leonidas Leslie, former leader of the Leslie Gang, is found by a NYPD Mounted Patrolman at the bottom of Tramps' Rock on the border of Westchester County and the Bronx River.
• July 22 - New York fence Marm Mandelbaum is charged with several counts of grand larceny and receiving stolen goods by the recently appointed District Attorney Peter B. Olney. While the trial was scheduled in December, Mandelbaum skipped bail fleeing to Canada where she would reside for the rest of her life.
• October 21 - James Reilly, along with his Whyos accomplices John Belfield and James Brown, are tried and convicted of assaulting and robbing an Englishman, Henry Stanley, of $26 after Reilly lured him to a Pell Street saloon.
• December 25 - Dennis Cocoran, a formerly of the New Orleans City Hall Department of Improvements and leader of the Poydras Market Gang, stabbed Deputy Sheriff Daniel Haugherty on the corner of Poydras and Liberty Streets after an alterication only hours before. Taken to Charity Hospital, he died of his wounds at around one o'clock the following morning.

Arts and literature

Births

• Frank Nitti (Francesco Nitti), Chicago Outfit enforcer
• October 1 - Damon Runyon (Alfred Damon Runyon), Organized crime writer

Deaths

References