Whiskey Business: New York City Bootlegging …...Whiskey Business: New York City Bootlegging Arrests Under the Mullan-Gage Act, 1921–1923 By Kara Adams November 2019 Submitted in

Whiskey Business:

New York City Bootlegging Arrests Under the Mullan-Gage Act,

1921–1923

By Kara Adams

November 2019

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in History Dual-

Degree Program in History and Archives Management

Simmons University

Boston, Massachusetts

The author grants Simmons College permission to include this thesis in its Library and to make it

available to the academic community for scholarly purposes.

Submitted by:

Kara Adams

_____________________________

Approved by:

_________________________ ______________________________

Laura R. Prieto (thesis advisor) Stephen Berry (second reader)

Professor and Alumni Chair in Public Humanities Associate Professor

W h i s k e y B u s i n e s s P a g e | 1

Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 2

Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4

Historiography ................................................................................................................................ 7

Methodology ................................................................................................................................. 16

Chapter I: Bootleggers, Moonshiners, and… Waiters .................................................................. 22

Map 1......................................................................................................................................... 24

Chapter Two: Lucky Number 53(.6) ............................................................................................ 34

Map 2......................................................................................................................................... 36

Map 3......................................................................................................................................... 37

Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 45

Appendix ....................................................................................................................................... 47

Table 1 ....................................................................................................................................... 47

Table 2 ....................................................................................................................................... 50

Table 3 ....................................................................................................................................... 53

Table 4 ....................................................................................................................................... 58

Map 4......................................................................................................................................... 61

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 62


Abstract During Prohibition in the United States, many states passed laws relegating enforcement to state

agencies. New York’s Mullan-Gage Act went into effect in 1921 and resulted in thousands of

indictments for possession, manufacture, distribution, sale, and purchase of alcohol by NYC

residents. This project characterizes demographics of indictments under the Act, examining New

York District Attorney records and defendant-provided information to analyze nativity, gender,

and class of individuals indicted between 1921–1923. Contrary to the expectations of the nativist

sentiment behind the temperance movement, the Mullan-Gage indictment data shows that not

only were native-born Americans the highest proportion of indictments, but all ethnic groups

were almost equally as likely to work inter-ethnically as they were to work only with other

individuals of their ethnic group.


Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful to the Simmons University Graduate Student Professional

Development Fund for financial support to conduct my thesis research. My deepest appreciation

also extends to the staff at the New York Municipal Archives, who were exceedingly helpful and

gracious during the eight months I spent rifling through District Attorney records in their reading

room. Laura Prieto has shepherded this project from its inception as a seminar paper in 2016 to

its final form today and has given me guidance and encouragement at every step of the way. I

would also like to thank Stephen Berry for his comments as my second reader.

Finally, this project would not exist if not for the steadfast support of my family, my

friends, and my partner Emeline, who has encouraged my rambling about bootlegging and the

Mullan-Gage Act for years and provided invaluable support, both for the writing of this thesis

and my continued existence as a functioning human being while working on it


Introduction

A single whiskey bottle, found over the cash register of the Pre-Catelan Café, heralded

the beginning of “a drying process more extensive than ever dreamed of” for New York City’s

cafés, restaurants, and saloons. On April 6th, 1921, more than two hundred officers of the New

York Police Department flooded the streets of Manhattan. According to the New York Herald,

they spread “terror and consternation throughout the whole of the wet belt from the Battery to the

furthest reaches of Harlem.”1 The Mullan-Gage Act, a supplemental state law introduced to the

New York Senate on the heels of national Prohibition’s implementation in January of 1920, had

finally been signed into law, two days prior of the NYPD’s sweep of the Tenderloin’s watering

holes. Fourteen were arrested between the hours of 8PM and midnight, including John M.

Tierney, the manager of the renowned Pre-Catelan. Tierney himself exemplified many of the

indictments for Mullan-Gage Act violations that would follow in the next two years: he was

male, employ ed in food service, indicted for distribution of a small quantity of liquor, and—

likely to the chagrin of nativist members of the temperance movement—a native-born

American.2

After decades of campaigning for national liquor prohibition, the temperance movement

got its wish in 1919 with the ratification of the 18th Amendment and the associated Volstead Act.

The 18th Amendment was passed, in no small part, as a result of a wave of anti-immigrant

sentiment in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Anti-Saloon League targeted Irish and

German immigrants through much of the 19th century, and as more Italian and Jewish

1 The New York Herald. (New York, N.Y.), 07 April 1921. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.

Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045774/1921-04-07/ed-1/seq-1/> 2 New York District Attorney records, box number 1644, folder number 3130, case file 147240. New York City

Municipal Archives.

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045774/1921-04-07/ed-1/seq-1/


immigrants made their way to the United States in the late 1800s, they too became targets.3 The

Volstead Act allocated for federal enforcement of the 18th Amendment’s sweeping prohibition of

intoxicating liquors, and formerly wet states were encouraged to pass their own local versions of

the enforcement law. The Mullan-Gage Act was introduced to the New York State Legislature,

with stricter enforcement standards than the Volstead Act, mere days after the Noble

Experiment’s onset, and it was passed and signed into law on April 4th, 1921.

The Mullan-Gage Act was expected to lead to a “fade-away” of production and

distribution of intoxicating liquors in New York City, widely considered, by both supporters and

opponents of national prohibition, to be one of the wettest cities in the nation.4 Dry advocates

called the Act “the most amazing state enforcement law in the country” soon after its passage,

and in the first few months of enforcement, the Act did seem to have some impact on New York

City’s liquor trade. The NYPD, newly empowered to enforce Prohibition law, seized 98,594

bottles of liquor worth $15 million by the end of 1921.5 The shine quickly wore off, however,

when courts rapidly became overwhelmed with indictments for sales of a single drink of

whiskey, or of someone walking down the street with a flask tucked in their pocket. Ultimately,

the Mullan-Gage Act was in effect for only two years, while national Prohibition continued for

another ten, and even before its repeal, its passage quickly led to political ramifications for the

state government as a whole. Governor Miller was overwhelmingly voted out of office the year

after he signed the Act into law. He was replaced by Al Smith, his predecessor and a well-known

3 Michael Lerner, Dry Manhattan (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2008), 97-99. 4 Lerner, Dry Manhattan, 65. 5Lerner, Dry Manhattan, 78.


advocate of the “wet” cause.6 After a dramatic response to the Mullan-Gage Act, enforcement of

prohibition was returned to the sole province of the federal government, but not before thousands

of New Yorkers were indicted under the state law.

Analyses of Prohibition frequently position the dry versus wet causes as ones of white

American Protestants versus foreign-born immigrants, often Catholic or Jewish. Yet this

simplification glosses over the distaste many native-born Americans held for Prohibition and

creates an appearance of monolithic ethnic divides within American society in the early 20th

century. Additionally, analyses in this vein tend to characterize all ethnic groups, foreign born or

native, as insular, despite evidence of successful multi-ethnic bootlegging syndicates in Boston,

Chicago, and New York itself. This thesis examines all recorded indictments under New York’s

Mullan-Gage Act in Manhattan precincts and courts, to characterize the individuals and groups

involved in violations of state-enforced Prohibition more thoroughly than previous works have

done. By examining occupation, gender, and nativity, I aim to present a comprehensive view of

class and ethnic characteristics of New Yorkers who rejected the Noble Experiment between

1921 and 1923. The indictment data from New York’s District Attorney files calls into question

the perception of immigrant New Yorkers as ethnically isolated and insular—indeed, as the data

show, both immigrant and native-born American violators of the Mullan-Gage Act were equally

likely to work intra-ethnically as they were to work inter-ethnically. The indictment data also

show that, despite the nativist sentiment fueling the temperance movement and national

prohibition, immigrants from all countries were less likely to violate the Mullan-Gage Act than

natural-born Americans.

6 Lerner, Dry Manhattan. 93. Those in favor of national prohibition and who supported the temperance movement

were known as “dry” politicians, or simply “drys.” “Wet” politicians, or “wets,” were the opposing perspective,

disavowing national prohibition and often fighting for its repeal.


Historiography

In constructing a historiography of crime during Prohibition, the question of perception

poses a significant challenge. Perhaps more than other areas of history, bootlegging during

Prohibition is shrouded in uncertainty and half-truths; the analysis of crime throughout history

faces the challenge of availability of sources and data, no matter the time period. Only what is

documented, in one way or another, can be analyzed, and historical narratives involving crime

have often only been documented from the side of law enforcement, potentially leading to a

skewed view of the history in question. Official data must be treated with the same caution and

analytical perspective as any other record; as Michael Lerner outlines in his analysis of

Manhattan during Prohibition, “prohibition enforcement efforts in the city clearly discriminated

against Jews, Catholics, and ethnic minorities.”1 Cases were not immune from uneven

enforcement once opened, either—as Lerner points out, “cases involving wine were often

dismissed outright,” and “women and elderly defendants generally won lenient treatment from

prosecutors.”2 Where records are available from sources other than law enforcement, they must

also be treated with caution: non-career criminals typically did not anthologize their bootlegging

activities to the extent that well-known bootleggers have occasionally done, and those more well-

known autobiographies are rife with inaccuracies and uncited, unverified claims. Additionally,

the historiography is further muddied by the fascination of popular culture with the era. As a

result, fact is often difficult to separate from fabrication, and popular myths are frequently

repeated by academic scholarship.

1 Lerner, Dry Manhattan, 86. 2 Lerner, Dry Manhattan, 91.


Analyses of the Prohibition era in popular culture tend towards a focus on organized

crime: Christopher Shannon discusses Irish-American gangsters in “Public Enemies, Local

Heroes,” published in 2006;3 Rachel Rubin’s “Gangster Generation” contains in-depth analysis

of multiple generations of the Jewish-American public’s perception of Jewish gangsters from the

1910s through the 1950s;4 and Jonathan J. Cavallero’s article “Gangsters, Fessos, Tricksters,

and Sopranos” (2004), is only one of the most recent examinations of the portrayal of Italian

gangsters and Italian-Americans’ response to those portrayals.5 These analyses demonstrate the

inextricable connections between the popular perception of Prohibition and the popular

perception of bootlegging as solely a component of organized crime.

Though it is difficult to determine if art imitates scholarship or vice versa, much of the

historical analysis of Prohibition similarly focuses on organized crime, which itself has a

complicated historiography. Studies of organized crime are also frequently plagued with the

repetition of gangland mythology as fact, and early “examinations” of the history of organized

crime tend to be unsourced, sensationalized works of pulp journalism. A wide array of purported

“autobiographies” published between the 1920s and the 1970s easily captured the public

imagination. These fictionalized memoirs were supposedly dictated by aging gangsters to

journalists worthy of their trust, with no corroboration of facts. Humbert Nelli’s The Business of

Crime6 and Alan Block’s East Side West Side7 are some of the foundational works in the study of

organized crime, drawing on earlier work in other fields including sociology and criminology to

3 Christopher Shannon, “Public Enemies, Local Heroes: The Irish-American Gangster Film in Classic Hollywood

Cinema,” New Hibernia Review 9, no. 4 (2005), 48-64. 4 Rachel Rubin, “Gangster Generation: Crime, Jews, and the Problem of Assimilation,” Shofar 20, no 4 (Summer

2002), 1-17. 5 Jonathan J. Cavallero, “Gangsters, Fessos, Tricksters, and Sopranos: The Historical Roots of Italian American

Stereotype Anxiety,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 32, no 2 (2004), 50-73. 6 Humbert Nelli, The Business of Crime (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981). 7 Alan Block, East Side West Side, (New Brunswick, Transaction Books, 1985).


construct thoroughly investigated analyses of some of the myths and falsehoods perpetuated by

journalists, law enforcement, and criminals themselves. Histories of organized crime tend to

focus primarily on one ethnicity or another, even as the authors state that multiple ethnic groups

were actively engaged in organized criminal activity during this time period. Widely cited works,

including Theft of the Nation, The Business of Crime, and East Side West Side, acknowledge that

“[e]thnic diversity characterized many of the syndicates that emerged during the prohibition era,”

but devote the bulk of their analyses to Italian syndicates, and specifically the Sicilian-focused

“La Cosa Nostra” in the United States. 8 This is not exclusive to works that focus on Italian

syndicates; both Jenna Weisman Joselit and Albert Fried make use of the same framework in

their extensive analyses of Jewish criminal organizations. However, frequently the very works

that purport to analyze the entirety of organized crime turn out instead to focus only on Italian-

led syndicates. More recently, David Critchley’s revisionist work, The Origin of Organized

Crime in America, goes even a step beyond the common tendency to focus on Italian-led

syndicates and opts to ignore evidence of successful inter-ethnic cooperation almost entirely.

Critchley puts the cart before the horse by claiming that American organized crime was

essentially solely imported from Italy, dominated by Sicilian-led syndicates which were insular

and operated primarily through kinship ties with minimal outside collaboration, but supports his

claim by downplaying the inter-ethnic cooperation shown in some of New York City’s largest

and most profitable bootlegging organizations, particularly those headed by Charles “Lucky”

Luciano (who worked closely with Jewish gangsters Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy”

Siegel throughout Prohibition and beyond) and Frank Costello (whose partnership with the Irish

Bill O’Dwyer headed a multi-million dollar rum-running ring for which the two were arrested in

8 Nelli, The Business of Crime, 168.


1925).9 Scholarly works often repeat other sweeping generalizations. One of the most common is

the frequent citation of Mark Haller’s statement, published as part of a federal report on

gambling, that of “leading bootleggers” in the late 1920s, “50 percent were of Jewish

background, some 25 percent of Italian background, and the rest primarily Irish and Polish

background.”10 While Haller qualifies this statement with “leading bootleggers,” and produces a

list of those considered “leading” in subsequent pages of his report, this analysis has been

repeated and occasionally misconstrued to mean that the majority of all bootleggers were

Jewish.11 This is likely a demonstration of the opacity of criminal activity in action. Because

only high-profile bootleggers were known to be bootleggers, it is assumed, by Haller, Critchley,

and others, that the ethnicities of “leading” bootleggers were representative of the whole.

Focusing solely on bootlegging-as-organized-crime provides only a partial view of

bootlegging activities during Prohibition. As Michael Lerner points out, “most defendants in

prohibition cases were not career or hardened criminals” and were far more likely to be working-

class individuals such as bartenders, waiters, or porters. Scholarship on these individuals,

however, is somewhat lacking. Historical examinations of groups within the wider category of

bootleggers exist, such as the work of Tanya Marie Sanchez and Mary Murphy examining

female bootleggers in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Butte, Montana.13 Allan Everest similarly

makes significant use of oral histories to examine non-syndicate bootlegging activity in northern

9 David Critchley, The Origin of Organized Crime in America, (New York, Routledge, 2010), 206. 10 Commission on the Review of the National Policy Towards Gambling, Final Report: Appendix 1, (Washington

DC, 1976), 109. 11 Critchely, Origin of Organized Crime in America, 164. 13 Mary Murphy, “Bootlegging Mothers and Drinking Daughters: Gender and Prohibition in Butte, Montana,”

American Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1994).; Tanya Marie Sanchez, “The Feminine Side of Bootlegging,” Louisiana

History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 41, no 4 (Autumn 2000).


New York in the second chapter of Rum Across The Border.14 Works which examine inter-ethnic

cooperation outside of criminal activity certainly exist as well—An Unlikely Union by Paul

Moses, as an exemplar, is an in-depth examination of the relationship between New York City’s

Irish and Italian communities, a history which spans a century and a half of both of the city’s

immigrant enclaves.15 Though An Unlikely Union does not dedicate significant discussion to

either group’s activities during Prohibition (focusing more on political overlap and religious

commonality between the two groups), Moses’ voluminous work clearly demonstrates a wider

scholarly interest in both competition and collaboration between ethnic groups and immigrant

communities. Both scholarly and public attention, however, has tended to prioritize the aspects

of bootlegging connected to organized crime, and so most of the scholarship available (especially

scholarship that examines ethnic groups participating in bootlegging) has primarily focused on

the “career criminals” engaged in bootlegging activities. While members of organized crime

organizations are not representative of the ethnic populations from which they originate, the

question of the degree of inter-ethnic cooperation, both within and outside of organized crime

structures, is essentially unexplored in any significant detail. Similarly, analysis of large groups

of individuals convicted for bootlegging does not appear to exist. By examining indictments

under the Mullan-Gage Act, my work will provide an analysis of these indictments, considering

both individual and group indictments, and analyzing the ethnicities, genders, and residential

information of 5,943 individuals indicted under the Mullan-Gage Act for the entirety of its time

in effect between 1921 and 1923.

14 Allan Everest, Rum Across the Border, (Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 1991), 19-58 15 Paul Moses, An Unlikely Union: the Love-Hate Story of New Yorks Irish and Italians (New York: New York

University Press, 2017)


To effectively characterize such a large number of indictments, I have chosen to employ

quantitative analysis to determine trends among individuals indicted for Prohibition violations on

the state level. As described by Margo Anderson, quantitative methods are an efficient way to

examine events in the aggregate and are particularly useful in the case of “[r]epeated phenomena

... which read one at a time would be insignificant,” such as indictment records.16 Examples of

compelling works of quantitative history exist prior to modern computing, but beginning in the

1950s historians using quantitative methods, especially for works with social or economic topics,

made an impact on American studies: Anderson lists Merle Curti’s The Making of an American

Community, Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer’s The Economics of Slavery in the Ante

Bellum South, and the establishment of The Historical Methods Newsletter (renamed Historical

Methods) and other journals focused on quantitative history as landmark developments in the

field.17 Quantitative History specifically calls out the use of quantitative methods for historians

of crime and the criminal justice system, noting that court and newspaper records are frequently

used to examine criminal patterns over extended periods.18 Though the Mullan-Gage Act was in

effect for a fraction of national Prohibition’s lifetime, the centrality of Manhattan in the 1920s—

both to the nation as a whole and to bootlegging endeavors specifically—and the sheer numbers

of Mullan-Gage violations recorded in the New York District Attorney records provide ample

opportunity to apply quantitative methods to examine them.

The use of quantitative methods to analyze Prohibition specifically is not unprecedented

either. Economists, for example, have contributed quantitative research to the body of work on

the era. Mark Thornton’s extensive analysis in The Economics of Prohibition provides key

16 Margo Anderson, “Quantitative History,” SAGE Handbook of Social Science Methodology (SAGE Publications

Ltd, 2007), 246 17Anderson, “Quantitative History,” 248. 18 Anderson, “Quantitative History,” 249.


context for the fiscal concerns surrounding bootlegging, both from the perspective of

enforcement and, more importantly for my own analysis, the perspective of those doing the

selling. Thornton synthesizes contemporary analyses of economic factors during Prohibition to

provide comparative tables of the costs associated both with federal expenditures and an “alcohol

price index,” the latter showing, on average, a 467% increase in selling price of various varieties

of alcohol between 1916 and 1928.19 Further, as Everest discusses in Rum Across The Border,

these price spikes were not consistent across regions—a $4 bottle of rye whiskey bought in

Canada sold in Plattsburgh, NY, for between $7 and $9, but carried a hefty $12 price tag in New

York City.20 As Thornton elaborates in his fifth chapter, Prohibition afforded both career

criminals and formerly law-abiding citizens relatively easy access to the booming economy of

underworld smuggling, and the enforcement of Prohibition caused price spikes significant

enough to entice those who may not have broken the law previously into doing so after the

passing of the 18th Amendment.21

Criminologists have similarly made use of quantitative analysis to examine the

Prohibition era and to characterize criminal activity related to bootlegging, though these analyses

tend to focus on violent crime or—similar to historical scholarship on bootlegging—on activities

related to organized crime. One example is Emily Greene Owens’ analysis of the U.S. Census

Bureau’s “death registry” to assess the correlation between violent homicide and bootlegging

from 1920–1933. Owens uses statistical analysis to determine what factors contributed to the

apparent spike in homicide deaths during the Prohibition era, and considers the addition of new

states to the U.S. Census Bureau Registry, the increasing urbanization of the American

19 Mark Thornton, The Economics of Prohibition, (Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1991), 100-102. 20 Everest, Rum Across the Border, 38. 21 Thorton, Economics of Prohibition, 116-117.


population in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and increased government spending after the

passage of the New Deal. Owens ultimately concludes that, even in large cities like New York,

“there is no robust and convincing evidence that outlawing alcohol markets increased

violence.”22 Further, The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime (2014) dedicates its entire

second chapter—fittingly titled “How To Research Organized Crime”—to investigative

methodologies used by criminologists.23 Dick Hobbs and Georgis A. Antonopoulos dedicate

separate sections to both official data and to quantitative and economic analyses. Interestingly,

the section on quantitative analyses appears to assume that the quantitative aspect is inherent in

the source a researcher will use; it lists counting exercises, commissioned studies and reports,

and economic tools—such as price and wealth indexes—as potential sources for quantitative

analyses. There is no mention of a researcher choosing to apply quantitative methods to

qualitative sources, only the use of documents created with their quantitative uses in mind.

Nonetheless, the use of quantitative methods in the study of organized crime is encouraged by

the Oxford Handbook’s section dedicated to it.

Qualitative analysis is present in keystone historical works on organized crime, as well,

though these studies still suffer the drawback of focusing primarily—if not solely—on relatively

well-known career criminals. Alan Block’s work was especially instrumental in using in-depth

analysis of newspapers published in 1931 to dismantle the legend of a nationwide “purge” of

pre-Prohibition era bosses—this analysis blended quantitative analysis of qualitative sources to

produce a definitive rebuttal to a myth that had been plaguing the field for decades. Haller’s

tallying of “leading” bootleggers is a similar application of quantitative analysis applied to

22 Emily Greene Owens, “Are Underground Markets Really More Violent?”, American Law and Economics Review

13, 1 (2011), 39. 23 Letitzia Paoli, et al., “How to Research Organized Crime,” The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime, Oxford

University Press, 2014.


qualitative sources, with the caveat that the origin of his list of “leading” bootleggers is not

provided within his report. Finally, Nelli also makes significant use of quantitative analysis to

examine syndicate crime within the Italian organized crime community, though his focus on

Italian syndicates means his work displays minimal information regarding the degree of

cooperation urban Italian syndicates had with the myriad other ethnicities they lived and worked

beside. My intent in examining Mullan-Gage violations is to build on these foundations and

begin to fill the gaps in the historiography addressing inter-ethnic cooperation in bootlegging

activity.


Methodology

The New York City Municipal Archives provided me with a digitized index of felony

indictments from the New York District Attorney, ranging from approximately 1916 to 1925,

which served as a scaffold for my collection of data for this analysis. In effect only between 1921

and 1923, the Mullan-Gage Act defines a concise time period in which to examine the

demographics of indictments for its violation. The index contains name of defendant, date and

nature of offense, and case file number. By filtering the index, in spreadsheet form, for nature of

offense, I narrowed down which boxes would contain indictment records for violations of the

Mullan-Gage Act.

The New York District Attorney case files contain a wealth of information about each

case, though some fields were left up to the officer’s discretion, and one case file may contain

more information than another. Each case file consists of: a Records of Proceedings sheet; a

Memorandum of Exhibits sheet; court affidavits, typed summaries of officers’ statements; Notice

And Affidavit sheets, filled out by arresting officers; and defendant statement forms, which

requested information directly from the individuals indicted. Records of Proceedings sheets serve

as the cover sheets for the file as a whole, and Memorandum of Exhibits sheets listed court

proceedings. Court affidavits, Notice and Affidavit sheets, and defendant statement forms served

as the primary sources of the data I collected; court affidavits and Notice and Affidavit sheets

contained information about the quantity of alcohol associated with each indictment, while

defendant statements and Notice and Affidavit sheets both contained defendant information, such

as home address, occupation, and nativity information. Some files also contained transcripts of

grand jury testimony, items entered into evidence such as letters from defendants or photographs


of crime scenes, and other forms generated by police or district attorney, but these were

ultimately infrequent additions to files for Mullan-Gage violations (though they were common in

the files of more widely prosecuted crimes, such as assault and larceny) and generally did not

add any information to the data I analyzed. Though the structure of all components of the case

files is formulaic, there were degrees of variation in terms of how much information was

included per case. For example, though all defendant statement forms requested the defendant’s

occupation and address, some defendants declined to provide this information. The same is true

of the records generated by law enforcement; some officers took advantage of the space provided

on the Notice And Affidavit sheets or the court affidavits to elaborate on defendants’ age, race,

gender, and ethnicity, as well as enumerating quantities of alcohol involved in the case, but other

officers provided only what was required by the form. Additionally, within one case file,

information could be contradictory—officers would sometimes record addresses or occupations

on the forms they generated which differed from the answers given by defendants on the

defendant statement forms. Where this occurred, I have chosen to prioritize the information

provided by the defendant statement forms, as they contain self-identified information and, in the

case of occupation, are often more specific; a common contradiction is the listing of a

defendant’s occupation as merely “restaurant” on forms created by law enforcement, but when

asked their occupation for the defendant statement form, the individuals replied “waiter,”

“bartender,” or “restaurant owner.” This enhanced specificity allows for a more accurate analysis

of which individuals were indicted—for example, the number of waiters indicted, 949 total, is

318.48% higher than the number of bartenders indicted, and 1,936.73% higher than the number

of restaurant owners indicted.


In addition to the name of defendant, date, and nature of offenses, I recorded the quantity

of alcohol associated with the indictment, the arresting officer’s name, and the home address,

birthplace, and occupation of each defendant. The Mullan-Gage Act, unlike the Volstead Act,

prosecuted possession of any quantity of alcohol as a violation, considering possession prima

facie intent to distribute. This led to a large number of indictment for relatively small quantities

of alcohol. A waiter selling a single glass of whiskey or a laborer carrying one flask of gin in a

lunchbox cannot be considered “bootleggers” in the same class as individuals indicted for

transporting barrels of wine or cases of scotch. To more easily assess such distinctions, I noted

whether the quantity of alcohol associated with each indictment was more or fewer than ten

quarts. I recorded home address both to allow for mapping of the indictments and to aid in

determining ethnicity.

Birth place recorded from the defendant statement records is sufficient in many instances,

but nowhere on the indictment records is there a place for either the defendant or law

enforcement to specify race. In some instances, officers who elaborated on their forms noted race

of arrested individuals, but most of the records do not contain this information. Recording home

addresses provides an alternate method for determining race and ethnicity, as many

neighborhoods served as ethnic or racial enclaves, as shown by the Lusk Committee Map (see

Map 4, Appendix). The two populations whose ethnic or racial identities are most obfuscated by

the records only of birth place are eastern European Jewish immigrants and black citizens born in

the United States, as indictment records recorded neither race nor religion as a required field.

Contemporary census records collected racial identification but not religious identities—mother

tongue was recorded on the 1920 federal census, which allows some eastern European


immigrants to be identified as Jewish, for instance, if the recorded language is Yiddish or

Hebrew.

Unfortunately, after cross referencing a sample of indictment records from individuals

who listed Russia or other eastern European countries, I was unable to confirm many of the

identities of individuals in the sample when cross referencing census data. Additionally, many

records of individuals living in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods such as the Lower East

Side provided the official language of their country of origin as their mother tongue. One

contemporary report from a Jewish community organization headquartered in New York City

reported in 1923 that, from a total population of around 3.6 million, "over 2,000,000 Jews gave

Yiddish as their mother tongue in the 1920 census.”1 Another report, issued by the Federal

Census Bureau, lists the number of foreign-born white immigrants who listed their mother

tongue as Yiddish as 1,091,820.2 Using these totals, anywhere from 45% to 70% of Jewish

immigrants listed their mother tongue as the language of the country they emigrated from—

introducing a significant degree of uncertainty into determining these individuals’ ethnicities.

The Census Bureau itself acknowledges this flaw in the data, stating that “[m]any Jews of

foreign birth report German, Russian, or other languages as their mother tongue. The returns of

the 1920 census, in particular, probably exaggerate the number of Russian mother tongue at the

expense of Yiddish.”3 It is likely that Jewish immigrants who reported a language other than

Yiddish or Hebrew as their mother tongue spoke the languages they provided in addition to or

instead of Yiddish. It is also a possibility that some members of a population fleeing state-

sanctioned violence due to their ethnoreligious identity were hesitant to list similarly identifying

1 Harry Linfield, “A SURVEY OF THE YEAR 5683,” Jewish American Year Book, 25 (1925). 37. 2 “Mother Tongue of Foreign-Born White Population.” Fifteenth Census of the United States 1930, United States

Census Bureau, 1932. 342. 3 “Mother Tongue of Foreign-Born White Population,” 342.


information on government-issued forms such as the census after their arrival. Ultimately,

though ripe for further investigation, cross examining the NYDA indictment records was

insufficient to answer this question—as a result, my data list only nativity, or place of birth, for

indicted individuals.

Though the vast majority of the NYCMA’s records are in excellent condition, a

significant number of records were too deteriorated to be used in my analysis. Out of 7,099

records, 1,155 had only their Records of Proceedings cover sheets available, which recorded

neither the quantities of alcohol associated with the indictment nor the birthplaces of the

individuals indicted. As these two data points represent the focus of my analysis, these records

could not be included in my work. The remaining 5,944 form the data set for my analysis. Using

the spreadsheet initially provided by the NYCMA as a skeleton, I recorded the information from

the indictment records in an Excel workbook and have made use of Excel’s data functions

(including pivot tables and the native graph creator) to analyze the information I recorded.

Additionally, I have used ArcGIS to create visualization layers of my data set. All statistics in

both chapters, unless otherwise noted, derive from the New York District Attorney indictment

records.

The database provided to me by the NYCMA contains 19,462 indictments between April

1921 and June 1923. Of these, 7,099 were indictments for violations of New York’s Mullan-

Gage Act, accounting for 36.5% of all NYPD activity during the time the Mullan-Gage Act was

in effect. As some records were too damaged to be used, my analysis encompasses 5,944 of these

indictments as a data set to examine questions of ethnicity, gender, and class within the

population of New York City during Prohibition. Chapter One examines overall statistics, which

are predominantly individual indictments. Indictments under the Mullan-Gage Act put the


nativist ideals behind prohibition to the test—the largest single group indicted for Mullan-Gage

violations were not Irish, German, Italian, or Jewish immigrants, who were often blamed for the

country’s alcohol problem by temperance groups, but native-born Americans, by a significant

margin. Chapter Two narrows analysis even further, examining group indictments to determine

the degree of inter-ethnic cooperation among Mullan-Gage violators. This data also undermines

conceptions of ethnic groups involved in bootlegging activity, determining that Mullan-Gage

violators of all ethnicities were almost equally as likely to only work with other individuals of

their ethnicity or to work with individuals from ethnic groups other than their own.


Chapter I: Bootleggers, Moonshiners, and… Waiters

Mere weeks after the Mullan-Gage Act was passed, there were already signs that the

pressure it placed on the New York state legal system was untenable. The first case brought to

trial, on April 28th, 1921, required prosecutors to survey forty potential jurors to get a full jury of

twelve, a process the New York Times claims took two hours. Another hour later, with an 11-to-

1 vote, Joseph A. Farrell of Brooklyn was acquitted of his indictment. The crime? “A small

bottle of liquor … found on a shelf” in an empty café.1 This long, slow trudge of jury selection,

deliberation, and acquittal continued for two and a half years, and overwhelmingly targeted

individual citizens for small quantities of alcohol. This chapter will examine overall indictment

statistics to provide an analysis of individuals indicted under the Mullan-Gage Act. My analysis

will clarify that, though prohibition was to some degree intended to curb the influence of

immigrants on American society and American drinking habits, native-born Americans were just

as likely (if not more so) to violate prohibition laws to keep America’s floodgates of liquor open.

Unsurprisingly, New Yorkers made up an overwhelming proportion of indictments under

the Mullan-Gage Act. Out of 5,944 indictments, 5,791 (97.4%) were residents of New York

State, and 5,167 (86.9%) listed their home address as Manhattan. Residents of Brooklyn and the

Bronx made up 5.6% and 2.7%, respectively, followed by New Jersey residents (1.5%),

predominantly residents of nearby cities such as Jersey City, Newark, and Hoboken. Ten

individuals listed their residences as ships—four unidentified vessels, as well as sailors who

provided their residences as the SS Britannica, the SS Carolina, the USS Illinois, and the SS San

Maria were recorded. Proximity to Manhattan and frequency of indictments are directly

1 “FIRST RUM JURY FREES PRISONER,” New York Times, April 27th, 1921.


correlated—fewer indictments are recorded the farther home addresses are from the city, with

eight indictments from Connecticut, four each from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and one

from Baltimore, Maryland. Two individuals who provided Chicago as their residence were

indicted independently of each other, serving as something of an outlier.2 These results are in

agreement with findings from criminology scholars, which have found that “offenders typically

commit most of their crimes close to their home location.” All these indictments were created in

Manhattan precincts and courts, so it is unsurprising that the vast majority of individuals indicted

lived there as well.3 While the proximity of indictment location to home address is not a

surprising result, visualizing the data as a map provides another view of the city’s population.

2 NYDA indictment records, case numbers 136650 and 137393. 3 Shane D. Johnson, “How Do Offenders Choose Where to Offend? Perspectives from Animal Foraging,” Legal and

Criminological Psychology 19, no. 2 (May 2014): pp. 193-210, https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.12061, p.194.


Map 1. Home addresses of individuals indicted for Mullan-Gage Act violations, centered on Manhattan. Colors

indicate birth place, provided by defendant.


Ethnic enclaves are visible in Map 1, based on the concentration of variously colored

points and their location in Manhattan. The Lower East Side is clearly distinguishable by its high

concentration of teal and blue points representing the Russian and eastern European Jewish

immigrants who arrived in the United States mere decades prior to Prohibition. Similarly, the

clusters of both dark pink and red points in both southern Manhattan and along the southeastern

coast of Harlem in northern Manhattan represent the Italian immigrant population and first-

generation Italian-Americans, as the largest wave of Italian immigration in the late 1800s was far

enough in advance of Prohibition’s implementation to explain the high concentration of native-

born Americans in known Italian enclaves. Finally, the early effects of the Great Migration are

also visible in Harlem; while southeastern Harlem was primarily an Italian neighborhood through

the mid-20th century, the high-density clusters of red points in western and northern Harlem are

most likely Black native-born Americans.4 These results are consistent with census bureau data

noting that Harlem’s Black population saw a sharp increase between 1910 and 1930, from 9.89%

to 70.2%.5

These and other visual clusters are consistent with maps generated by the NYPD in 1919,

delineating ethnic enclaves as part of an investigation into radical politics, known as the Lusk

Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities.6 While the Lusk Committee was examining

radical politics, not liquor law violations, the mere existence of a government-commissioned

map outlining known ethnic enclaves demonstrates the ethnic and racial anxieties permeating

4 As discussed in the description of the NYDA records, race was not a mandatory field on police affidavits, nor did

most defendants self-identify their race on their defendant statements. Some officers chose to record racial

information in their statements, but this information was not consistently reported. 5 Andy A Beveridge, “Harlem's Shifting Population,” Gotham Gazette, September 2, 2008,

https://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/city/4077-harlems-shifting-population) 6 Sam Roberts, “Police Demographics Unit Casts Shadows From Past,” The New York Times (January 3, 2012),

https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/police-demographics-unit-casts-shadows-from-past/). Map also

included in Appendix.

https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/police-demographics-unit-casts-shadows-from-past/


New York life at the time Prohibition was enacted. These anxieties also consumed the national

stage, most notably visible in the passage of immigration quotas in 1921 and 1924. The language

of prohibition was often used, as Julien Comte observes, “to articulate concerns about

immigration and foreign radicalism.”7 Though the ties between nativism and temperance were

more frequently implicit, explicit connection was not out of the ordinary. Some members of the

Anti-Saloon League performed double duty as recruiters for violently nativist organizations such

as the Ku Klux Klan, and considered prohibition an explicit reflection of the Klan’s ideals.8

Ethnic anxieties contributed to both the passage of prohibition, and to the enforcement of the law

in New York City, though the results of that enforcement were perhaps contrary to what the

temperance movement’s supporters would have predicted.

Examination of overall birth place percentages within the data set from the NYCMA

shows that the highest percentage of indictments were of native-born Americans. At 1,730

indictments, American citizens were 29.1% of individuals indicted for Mullan-Gage violations,

over six percentage points more than Italian immigrants, the next highest group at 1,358

indictments (22.9%). Just over one thousand Irish immigrants (17.1% of total) were indicted,

followed by 404 Russian immigrants (6.7%), 388 German immigrants (6.5%), 315 Austrian

immigrants (5.3%), 159 Hungarian immigrants (2.6%), and 88 Polish immigrants (1.5%). The

remaining 8.3% of records contain indictments of individuals from 62 other countries. (Table 1

lists all birth places and the number of records associated with each place.)

7 Julien Comte, “LET THE FEDERAL MEN RAID”: BOOTLEGGING AND PROHIBITION ENFORCEMENT

IN PITTSBURGH,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 186. 8 Thomas R. Pegram, “Hoodwinked: The Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Prohibition

Enforcement,” 95.


Defendants also reported a wide range of occupations, across individual indictments as

well as within group indictments. A significant portion of indictments were of individuals

involved in food service occupations, such as waiters, bartenders, or restaurant or café managers.

Of the total, 992 individuals, including 16 women, gave their occupation as waitstaff, comprising

the highest percentage of overall indictments at 16.7%. Another 700 records contained

“restaurant” in their provided occupation—this includes owners, keepers, managers, and

cashiers, though 291 of these records are labeled only “restaurant.” Another 241 indictments are

of “restaurant keepers,” and 67 are of restaurant proprietors/owners. Saloon keepers and owners

comprised a surprisingly small proportion of indictments—52 total—though bartenders

comprised a higher percentage, at 316 indictments. Overall, 2,313 indictments (38.9%) listed

food service positions as their occupation. Other occupations which make up large percentages

of indictments are retailers, including storekeepers, grocers, butchers, and cigar store owners

(488, 8.2%); laborers (448, 7.5%); clerks (370, 6.2%); porters (336, 5.7%); chauffeurs/drivers

(259, 4.4%); and housewives (118, 1.9%). (Table 2 lists common occupations within the overall

data set.) Occupations of indicted individuals are overwhelmingly blue-collar, corroborating

previous analysis by historians such as Michael Lerner, which states that Prohibition

enforcement was overwhelmingly targeted towards the working class, even when non-working-

class neighborhoods were policed.9

Indictments of individuals with occupations that are easily identified as “white collar”

make up a small proportion of indictments; 43 individuals identified their profession as “real

estate,” 16 identified as “brokers” or “stock brokers,” and no individuals identified as office

workers in any capacity. Despite the provision in both the Volstead Act and the Mullan-Gage

9 Lerner, Dry Manhattan, 115.


Act allowing for the distribution of medicinal alcohol, 39 records list individuals who identified

their occupation as “druggist,” “chemist,” or “pharmacist.” Hundreds of thousands of physicians

and pharmacists applied for licenses to distribute medicinal alcohol in 1920 alone, so the minute

proportion of pharmacists indicted under Mullan-Gage may be an indication that the NYPD

policed pharmacies less stringently, under the assumption that any distribution within them was

licensed.10 Presumably due to the private nature of appointments between doctor and patients,

physician indictments are even more rare; only one is present in the data set.

The Mullan-Gage Act declared possession of any quantity of alcohol illegal and prima

facie intent to distribute—a vocal dry lobby in New York’s state government was strengthened

after the 1920 elections, which allowed for passage of a more stringent enforcement act

compared to the Volstead Act.11 Although the Mullan-Gage Act was mirrored on the Volstead

Act, it differed significantly from the federal enforcement law, which was carefully crafted to

allow for possession of alcoholic beverages obtained prior to the passage of the Act and stored

within an individual’s private home. As a result, under the Mullan-Gage Act, indictments of

individuals for possessing one glass of whiskey were not differentiated from indictments of

groups of rumrunners hauling in hundreds of cases of liquor from Canada or the Caribbean.

Within the overall data set, 1,428 indictments (24.0%) were associated with significant quantities

of alcohol, which I have defined as ten or more quarts—both the Volstead Act and the Mullan-

Gage Act allowed for personal possession of alcoholic beverages purchased before the 18th

Amendment’s implementation, but it is safe to assume that by 1921, an individual possessing

more than ten bottles of alcohol intended wider distribution than amongst themselves, friends,

10 George Griffenhagen, “Medicinal Liquor in the United States,” Pharmacy in History, 30. 11 Lerner, Dry Manhattan, 76.


and family. Restricting some of my analyses to indictments that involved ten or more quarts of

alcohol paints a more accurate picture of the individuals and groups involved in large-scale

distribution of alcohol during Prohibition. To contrast the occupational analyses above, where

16.7% of all indictments were of waiters, of the 1,428 indictments which involved significant

quantities of alcohol, only 8.5% were waiters. The largest proportion was instead laborers, at

9.7%— 2.2 percentage points higher than the overall indictment statistics. Larger quantities of

alcohol were also more likely to be associated with group indictments, which Chapter Two

discusses in further detail.

Narrowing the pool of results to indictments associated with large quantities of alcohol

also shows different percentages of nativity distribution. The percentage of Americans involved

in indictments with large quantities of alcohol was slightly higher, at 30.1%, than those indicted

with small quantities, at 29.1%, as is the percentage of Russian immigrants, which increased to

7.4% of large quantity indictments (from 6.7% of small quantity indictments). Indictments of

Italian immigrants see the largest increase, to 26.3% of large quantity indictments—a 4.6

percentage point increase from the 22.9% of small quantity indictments. These increases seem to

fill the gap left by Irish immigrants in particular, whose percentage falls from 17.1% to 11.1%.

While such a drastic contrast in the percentages of Irish immigrants involved in large vs small

quantity indictments seems odd at first glance—as Irish immigrants are the third largest group of

individuals indicted overall—examining occupation statistics within the set shows that a

significantly larger proportion of Irish immigrants (598 total) listed a food service occupation

than any other ethnicity. The number of indictments of Irish immigrants employed in food

service positions was 132.6% the number of Americans employed in food service positions, 451

of whom listed food service occupations on their affidavits. Fewer Irish immigrants were


indicted for large quantities of alcohol due to a larger proportion of Irish immigrants working in

food service positions, which were typically associated with indictments for minimal quantities

of alcohol. A final consideration is the high proportion of Irish immigrants and first-generation

Irish-Americans who were employed by the NYPD. As Lerner points out, most police officers

“had grown up in the world of ethnic saloons” and may have policed their own communities

somewhat less stringently as a result.12

Much like it did not distinguish between large or small quantities of alcohol in

determining the severity of an indictment, the Mullan-Gage Act did not distinguish between

possession, transportation, manufacture, purchase, or distribution as different categories of

violation. As with other aspects of police affidavits, officers were not required to note the nature

of violations leading to the indictment, but unlike violators’ identifying qualities, officers more

frequently provided contextualizing information about violations as information pertinent to their

cases. Two additional categorizations worthy of independent consideration are transportation and

manufacture, both generally associated with significant quantities of alcohol. Both were often

more dangerous than merely selling or purchasing liquor; bootleggers and rumrunners often

made the news for shootouts with police officers, and manufacturing apparatuses ran the risk of

failure, occasionally with catastrophic results. The New York Times published numerous

articles every month declaring bootlegging and rumrunning dangerous endeavors—civilians and

bootleggers alike were often caught in the crossfire of shootouts between bootlegging groups,

with shootouts claiming fatalities of bootleggers, officers, and civilians at a shockingly-frequent

rate. One such shootout occurred a block away from the NYPD headquarters on the Lower East

Side, and resulted in the hospitalization of four men and two women, all but one of whom were

12 Lerner, Dry Manhattan, 72-74.


civilians.13 As for the danger of manufacturing, one of the few Mullan-Gage violations

connected to a murder or manslaughter charge is a manufacturing indictment, after a stovetop

still exploded on 9th Avenue, killing the defendant’s two sons.14 The increased danger to

bootleggers and moonshiners is one potential reason transport and manufacture indictments

make up such a small proportion of overall indictments.

Affidavits mention transportation (whether by car, horse-drawn cart, or boat) in 198

indictments, 139 of which were group indictments. Transportation can be further subdivided into

“bootlegging” and “rumrunning.” Though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, in my

analysis I have used bootlegging to describe over-land transportation, while rumrunning

describes over-water transportation. Despite New York City’s proximity to many water routes,

rumrunning indictments make up a very small proportion of indictments in which transport was

noted. Only 22 indictments out of 198 (11.1% of transportation indictments, less than 1%

overall) were associated with boats or ships. One explanation for water transportation making up

such a small percentage of transportation indictments may be related to the federal government’s

failure to account for a need of water transportation regulation. Rumrunners were capable of

outrunning the Coast Guard’s older, clunkier vessels for the early years of Prohibition, leading to

the development of notorious Rum Rows along the eastern seaboard—lines of ships carrying

liquor, anchored outside the three-mile limit (extended to twelve miles in 1924, as an extra

measure to impede rumrunners further), with fleets of smaller, speedier boats making runs

13 “GIRL, WOMAN, 4 MEN SHOT IN BATTLE OF TWO BOOTLEG BANDS.” New York Times, May 9, 1922.

https://nyti.ms/38S4Jg2 14 NYDA indictment records, case number 142725.


between them and the shoreline.15 The Volstead Act’s lackluster fiscal allocation for

enforcement is plain to see in the attributed federal expenditures, which provided zero funding

for the Coast Guard as an enforcement body until 1925.16 Since the Mullan-Gage Act was only

in effect until 1923, it is likely the NYPD had just as much, if not significantly more, trouble

patrolling the waters around New York City as the Coast Guard did with the nation’s coasts, and

so rumrunners in the early years of enforcement are likely to have slipped through the cracks.

Indictments associated with transportation, either over land or over water, are also

strongly correlated with group indictments, as discussed more thoroughly in Chapter Two.

indictments for manufacture (or “moonshining”), on the other hand, appear to have been

predominantly solo ventures—of the 318 indictments whose affidavits mention either possession

of equipment for manufacture (such as stills, presses, and bottling and labeling equipment) or the

act of manufacture itself, only 31 indictments were of more than one individual. The vast

majority of indictments, therefore, were for possession or distribution—only 3.3% of indictments

involved transportation, and 5.4% involved manufacture.

Manufacture indictments especially provide another dimension for analysis: the

proportion of women indicted. Women make up a very small percentage of overall

indictments—3.3%, with 193 total. Within the set of indicted women, however, 55 indictments

were noted as involving manufacture equipment. While still a negligible proportion of the entire

data set, women comprised 17% of manufacture indictments overall. The reverse is also true; of

women indicted, 28.5% were indicted for alcohol manufacture. These proportions increase when

data is selected for significant quantities of alcohol, which mostly excludes food service workers

15 James A Carter III, "Florida and Rumrunning during National Prohibition." The Florida Historical Quarterly 48,

no. 1 (1969), 53. 16 Thorton, Economics of Prohibition, 100.


such as waitresses and female cooks due to the low quantities of alcohol usually associated with

food service occupations. Out of 1,428 indictments for more than ten units of alcohol, 80 were

women (5.6%), but of those 80 women, only two were waitresses, while 54 out of 80 (67.5%)

were indicted for manufacture, most of whom were housewives. In other words, it was unlikely

for any given individual indicted to be a woman, but if a woman was indicted, she was

significantly more likely to be indicted for manufacture than a male counterpart. Murphy and

Sanchez have previously examined women and alcohol manufacture during Prohibition and

came to similar conclusions regarding the female moonshining populations of Butte and New

Orleans; my findings help to corroborate those conclusions for the women of New York City.17

The data analyzed in this chapter represents a view of alcohol-related indictments during

the Mullan-Gage Act, data that has been heretofore under-examined in the broader historical

conversation surrounding Prohibition and its enforcement. Where data analysis has existed

previously, these numbers corroborate many other scholars’ findings. Overall, analysis of

Mullan-Gage violations provides a fact-based view of the individuals indicted from 1921 to 1923

under New York State’s Prohibition law and their occupations, ethnicities, genders, and the

extent of their involvement in illicit activities involving alcohol. Chapter Two examines in

greater detail indictments associated with group cases, and the degree to which ethnic groups

cooperated with each other and within their own community.

17 Murphy, Bootlegging Mothers and Drinking Daughters, 175; Sanchez, The Feminine Side of Bootlegging, 406.


Chapter Two: Lucky Number 53(.6)

While individual indictments were often for small, seemingly-insignificant quantities of

alcohol, group indictments paint a different picture of Mullan-Gage violations. While many

were, like individual cases, indictments of food service workers for small quantities of alcohol, a

great deal of group indictments were of groups transporting, manufacturing, or delivering

substantial quantities of liquor, likely as part of the sprawling underground market that flourished

during Prohibition. Across all group indictments, proportions of ethnicities involved in Mullan-

Gage violations remain fairly consistent—in both individual and group arrests, native-born

Americans make up a large portion of indictments, and the proportions of other nativity groups

remain quite close to those seen in overall indictments. Examining only group arrests provides a

new dimension for analysis: the degree of cross-ethnic cooperation. Just as nativist sentiment

was misguided regarding which nativity groups were violating prohibition law and how

frequently, stereotypes of ethnic insularity are similarly called into question when examining

indictments for group violators of the Mullan-Gage Act.

Chapter One discusses indictments and cases interchangeably, because for individuals,

one indictment is one case file, but examining group indictments requires drawing a distinction,

as group indictments are determined by multiple indictments under one case file number. To

review totals, my data set is comprised of 5,944 indictments, which are associated with 5,412

case files. Group indictments constitute 989 indictments, and 446 case files. Though the vast

majority of group indictments were pairs of individuals, 66 case files (14.8%) involve more than

two indictments. Case file grouping is essential for analyzing birth-place statistics and inter-

ethnic cooperation across group indictments and will primarily be used in that capacity.


Group indictments for Mullan-Gage violations were a small fraction of overall

indictments. Map 2 demonstrates that group indictments make up 16.6% of indictments and

8.2% of case files. Despite their comparative rarity, group indictments are important to examine

because of their close correlation with large quantities of alcohol, as well as with transportation

indictments. Analyzing group indictments as a separate data set, especially those associated with

significant quantities of alcohol, provides a more accurate picture of the characteristics of those

involved in large-scale illegal liquor production, distribution, and sale than examining only the

overall statistics.


Map 2. Home addresses of individuals indicted for group violations of the Mullan-Gage Act, centered on Manhattan.

Colors indicate birth place, provided by defendant.


Map 3. Home addresses of individuals indicted for group violations, with indictments associated with significant

quantities of alcohol highlighted with white haloes. Base map changed for increased visibility.


As shown by Map 3, just as with overall indictments, these percentages are affected by

selecting for indictments associated with significant quantities of alcohol. Group indictments are

somewhat more significantly affected by selecting for indictments associated with significant

quantities—individuals indicted in groups were more likely to be associated with significant

quantities of alcohol than individuals indicted alone. Of all 1,426 indictments for significant

quantities of alcohol, 424 (29.7%) were group indictments. The inverse is even more drastic; of

989 group indictments, 42.9% were associated with significant quantities of alcohol, as opposed

to 24% overall.

Analyzing group indictments also reveals occupational statistics that differ from the

overall data set. While waiters remain the largest single occupation reported for both group and

overall indictments, they make up a smaller proportion of group indictments than in individual

indictments (13.3% of group indictments versus 16.7% of overall indictments). Additionally, all

food service occupations were recorded in only 285 indictments (28.8%), just over ten

percentage points less than in the overall set. A greater proportion of laborers (84, 8.5%; a one-

point increase) and especially chauffeurs (92, 9.3%; a 4.9-point increase) partially fill the space

left by food service occupations. Truckers make up a larger proportion as well, increasing to

1.8% from 0.7% in the overall set. The increase of over-land transport occupations—whether

personal or industrial transport—is matched by the greater proportion of transportation-related

indictments within group indictments. One hundred and thirty-nine indictments for transporting

alcohol were group indictments, 69.7% of all transportation-associated indictments. Further,

within those 139 indictments, only eight were associated with fewer than ten quarts of alcohol.

Transportation indictments, therefore, are strongly correlated with both large quantities of

alcohol and with group indictments.


The inverse seems to be true of food service occupations within the context of group

indictments. Even when more than one individual was indicteded, food service occupations are

more strongly correlated with small quantities of alcohol than with significant quantities. Of the

564 group indictments for small quantities of alcohol, 241 were employed in food service

occupations. In contrast, there are only 89 group indictments, out of 425, of food service

employees for significant quantities of alcohol, and over all group indictments, food service

occupations make up only 285 indictments, out of 989. Only 22 owners of restaurants, cafés, or

lunchrooms were indicted as part of a group indictment; of those 22, a mere seven were indicted

for significant quantities of alcohol, compared to 34 waiters. When considered alongside the

much higher proportion of waiters that make up individual indictments, as well as the drastic

proportional differences between waiters’ indictments and owners/proprietors’ indictments, these

statistics reinforce Lerner’s observation that restaurant proprietors were only infrequently

indicted along with their employees. Proprietors were generally not directly implicated by

specific cases of their employees selling alcohol to customers; waitstaff and bartenders were

easier targets for a police force that, by many accounts, was at least partially disinterested in

enforcing the law in the first place.1 Waitstaff were more frequently indicted in single cases than

in group cases. If indicted in group cases at all, waitstaff were more frequently indicted with

other waitstaff, or with their customers.

The proportions of individuals by nativity are relatively the same for group indictments

as for overall indictments. Americans, Italians, Irish, and Russians again make up the four largest

groups, in similar percentages. Of 989 group indictments, 376 are Americans (38.0%), 229 are

Italians (23.2%), 109 Irish (11.0%), and 56 Russian (5.7%). Native-born Americans see the

1Lerner, Dry Manhattan, 73-75.


steepest proportional increase, with an increase of almost nine percentage points from the overall

percentage of 29.1%, while the percentage of Irish immigrants indicted is lowered by 6.1

percentage points when examining group indictments. This drop is likely related to the high

correlation of Irish immigrants and food service occupations, as discussed previously. The

remaining 171 indictments are spread across just 43 countries, as opposed to the 62 countries

encompassed by the overall indictment statistics.

Contemporary observers accused Southern Italians in particular of cultural insularity.2

Modern historical scholars occasionally argue this as well—Critchley’s thesis in The Origin of

Organized Crime in America relies on his generalization that most Sicilians who engaged in

organized criminal activity, including large-scale bootlegging, worked nearly-exclusively with

individuals of their own ethnicity. However, based on the data from Mullan-Gage Act violations,

this does not seem to be the case in every instance, or even in an overwhelming majority of

instances. Rather than considering insularity a cultural trait of any one ethnicity, it is important to

note that around half of group indictments across ethnicities are same-birth-place indictments,

indicating no significantly higher or lower tendencies to work within one’s own ethnicity for any

one group. Of 446 case files, 239 (53.6%) are individuals of the same ethnicity. Half of the 144

cases involving Italian immigrants involve only Italian immigrants, while just over half of the 70

cases involving Irish immigrants involve only other Irish immigrants. Americans worked only

with Americans in 98 cases of 227 (43.2%); only 14 cases of 38 involving Russians were

similarly insular. For Americans, Italians, Irish, and Russians, the highest number of indictments

were intra-ethnic, indicating that insularity was equally as frequent across all four of these

groups, and not a defining characteristic of any one ethnicity in particular. The frequency of

2 “There Is A Way.” New York Times. August 25th, 1904. https://nyti.ms/35Akp56


insularity also does not indicate a tendency only towards insularity—more Russian immigrants,

for example, worked with fellow Russian immigrants than they worked with any one other

nativity group, but the 14 indictments involving only Russian immigrants comprise less than half

of all indictments involving Russian immigrants. Furthermore, of the 20 most frequent ethnicity

groupings, only Germans, Austrians, and Greeks worked more frequently with individuals of a

different ethnicity than with their own, and all three ethnicities worked most frequently with

native-born Americans. (Table 3 lists all ethnic groupings for group cases.) Put differently, the

first choice of partners for individuals of most nativity groups was individuals with the same

ethnic group, but no ethnic group overwhelmingly preferred to stay within their own ethnicity.

When working with someone outside their own nativity group, most individuals’ second choice

was a native-born American.

Native-born Americans, in fact, make up the largest number of indictments associated

with a group case, as they do overall indictments, though the proportion of Americans involved

in group cases is significantly higher, 50.8%, than for the data set overall (in which Americans

were involved in 29.1% of indictments). The pattern of native-born Americans making up the

largest percentage of nativity groups indicted for group Mullan-Gage violations remains

consistent when examining group indictments for large quantities of alcohol as well. (Table 4

lists all ethnic groupings for group cases associated with significant quantities of alcohol.) Of the

183 group indictment cases which involved significant quantities of alcohol, 111 involved

Americans, and 49 involved only Americans—including the largest single group indictment, of

six men for transporting liquor in a quantity worth $500,000 (the equivalent of $7.47 million in


2019), indicted after a gun fight between the defendants’ barge and the NYPD’s police boat.4 It

is one of the great ironies of Prohibition that though the temperance movement advocated for its

passage in part due to anti-immigrant sentiment—to the extent that dual membership in the Anti-

Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan was a point of pride for Klan members—native-born

Americans were statistically the most likely to violate the law, and statistically the most likely to

work with other ethnicities to do so.5

The overall proportion of intra-ethnic cooperation versus inter-ethnic cooperation is

remarkably consistent, even when selecting only indictments associated with significant

quantities of alcohol. For Americans, Italians, and Irish, the percentage hovers around 50%,

while Russian immigrants appear to have cooperated with non-Russians slightly more than half

of the time, especially when large quantities were involved. Ninety-eight out of 183 group cases

associated with large quantities of alcohol are intra-ethnic, including the 49 American-only cases

(which are themselves half of the intra-ethnic cooperation percentage). In fact, this percentage is

the same as the percentage of intra-ethnic cooperation across all group indictments—53.6%. In

addition to the cases involving native-born Americans enumerated above, within the set of group

indictments related to significant quantities of alcohol, 29 out of 61 cases involving Italians are

insular, as are ten out of 21 cases involving Irish immigrants, and five out of thirteen cases

involving Russians.

This analysis of group indictment sheds light on the actual insularity of different

nativities and ethnicities. It is important to highlight the predominance of native-born Americans

in indictments for a law intended, to some degree, to curb the influence of immigrant ethnic

4 New-York Tribune (New York [N.Y.]), 27 April 1922. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib.

of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1922-04-27/ed-1/seq-3/> 5 Pegram, Hoodwinked, 91.

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1922-04-27/ed-1/seq-3/


communities on American society, while leaving “old-stock” Americans to their own

intoxicating devices.6 Ultimately, Americans and Russian immigrants appear to have been the

most likely to cooperate across ethnicities. It is not overwhelmingly apparent that the relatively

high degree of inter-nativity cooperation by Russian immigrants can be explained only by shared

religious identification, though this is a reasonable assumption at first glance—though there are

multiple instances of Russians working with both Poles and Austrians (two of the Eastern

Europeans with high Jewish populations experiencing heavy emigration in this era) Russian

immigrants cooperated more frequently with native-born Americans than with any other non-

Russian nativity group, followed in a distant third place by Italian immigrants. Irish and Italian

immigrants, the two largest groups of offenders after native-born Americans, both display a

slightly higher propensity to cooperate intra-ethnically instead of seeking partnership with other

groups, but only by a margin of 3.6 percentage points. This potentially contradicts conceptions of

ethnic insularity promulgated for Italian immigrants in particular. Often stereotyped in

contemporary writings as clannish, uncooperative, and unable or unwilling to assimilate to wider

American society, modern scholarship similarly often assumes that Italian immigrants

cooperated predominantly with other Italian immigrants exclusively or preferentially. This

perception is thanks in no small part to examinations of bootlegging activity, particularly

bootlegging associated with organized or syndicate crime, which focus primarily on Southern

Italians to the exclusion of other nativity or ethnic groups, such as Critchley and Nelli’s works. It

is worth noting that the collection only of nativity data does obscure the ethnic (and racial)

origins of the native-born Americans indicted under the Mullan-Gage Act—it is entirely possible

that the majority of native-born Americans indicted were first-generation Americans, individuals

6 Lerner, Dry Manhattan, 99.


who may have been perceived as insufficiently Americanized by other Americans. Without

deeper investigation into each individual case, it is impossible to determine how far removed an

individual is from the generation that emigrated to America; it is also disingenuous to assert that

an individual’s degree of assimilation is the defining characteristic of how American they are,

and is not an element I sought to incorporate into my analysis.

This examination of New York District Attorney records shows that, for Mullan-Gage

violations in the first three years of national Prohibition, this supposed ethnic insularity is neither

unique to Italian immigrants, nor is it overwhelmingly predominant within Italian group

indictments—Italian immigrants were only marginally less likely to work across ethnicity or

nativity than within their own. The same holds true for other ethnic groups, including those most

frequently targeted by the nativist sentiments fueling the temperance movement and national

prohibition.


Conclusion The brief span of time that the Mullan-Gage Act was in effect makes for a compelling

“time capsule” of the early years of Prohibition enforcement. Courts and police officers drowned

not in liquor but under the workload placed upon them by state enforcement of the deeply

unpopular ban, and indictments were often thrown out before even reaching a judge due to the

sheer quantity of arrests and indictments flowing through Manhattan’s precincts. Even so,

indictments under the Mullan-Gage Act provide a succinct time period to examine the

characteristics of individuals and groups indicted for liquor law violations. Those indicted were

overwhelmingly male working-class New Yorkers indicted for possessing or distributing very

small amounts of alcohol, and the largest percentage of nativity was not foreign-born

immigrants, as expected by many supporters of the dry cause, but native-born Americans.

Americans also showed a willingness to cross ethnic and nativity lines to break the law in the

first place, both when overall group indictments are considered and when group indictments

associated with significant quantities of alcohol are examined. Women across ethnic lines were

significantly more likely to be indicted on charges related to manufacture, a finding which

corroborates previous work on bootlegging women in other areas of the United States. Finally,

all ethnicities and nativities were around as likely to work within their own group as across

ethnic lines—53.6% of both overall group indictments and group indictments associated with

large quantities of alcohol were intra-ethnic, an extremely slim margin which runs contrary to

conceptions of ethnic insularity, both for native-born Americans and foreign-born immigrants.

Examining prohibition through the lens of ethnicity, and examining ethnicity through the lens of

prohibition, provides insight into the societal tensions present in early 20th century America,

addressing issues of class, nativity, and crime by utilizing a wealth of data-rich collections.


The Mullan-Gage Act, almost from its inception, was regarded as a failure, perhaps even

more so than national Prohibition itself. Yet the Noble Experiment continued for another decade,

without the state of New York’s cooperation regarding enforcement. Opportunities for future

research, therefore, lie in similar examination of the Prohibition Bureau’s records, held by the

National Archives and Records Administration. Similarly, more in-depth examination of

indictments associated with Mullan-Gage violations would further refine these statistics,

particularly in the cases of Russian/eastern European Jewish immigrants and native-born Black

Americans—populations which are both unfortunately obscured by the request only for nativity

in police and district attorney documentation. Further avenues for the synthesis of quantitative

and qualitative analysis are certainly present in this area, and advances in digital history offers

tempting opportunities to further characterize and analyze this period in history. Of particular use

are advancements in geographical mapping and analysis software—by narrowing the scope to

fewer records in specific neighborhoods, it is likely that there is more specific data to report,

particularly regarding ethnicity and racial data.


Appendix

Table 1. Count of nativity records. Some records were uncertain and are denoted with [?], and

any additional racial information provided by officers is listed in parentheses.

Nativity, provided by defendant Count

US 1722

Italy 1350

Ireland 1015

Russia 404

Germany 390

Austria 317

Hungary 159

Poland 88

Greece 72

[BLANK] 50

France 44

Romania 42

England 25

Switzerland 22

British West Indies 21

Sweden 21

Spain 19

Finland 13

Canada 12

Scotland 10

Turkey 9

US (Black) 8

Japan 7

Syria 6


Lithuania 6

Norway 4

Cuba 4

Puerto Rico 4

West Indies 4

Barbados 3

South America 3

China 3

Chile 2

Mexico 2

Belgium 2

Galicia 2

Czechoslovakia 2

Luxembourg 2

Australia 2

Austria-Hungary 2

Ukraine 2

Albania 2

Ireland [?] 2

Bermuda 1

US? 1

Cyprus 1

Germany [?] 1

Virgin Islands, British West Indies (Black) 1

Panama 1

Bulgaria 1

Dalmatia 1

Australia [?] 1

Portugal 1

Arabia 1


British Guyana 1

Egypt 1

Republic of San Marino [Italy] 1

Milan [Italy] 1

Hong Kong China 1

Trinidad, British West Indies 1

East India 1

Brazil [?] 1

Saxony [Germany] 1

Malta 1

Argentina 1

Virgin Islands 1

Serbia 1

Serbia [?] 1

Armenia 1

Italy [?] 1

Grand Total 5944


Table 2. Occupations provided by defendants. Occupations that had fewer than 10 records

associated are combined under “(OTHERS NOT LISTED).”

Occupations Count

waiter 949

laborer 420

clerk 327

Porter 320

bartender 298

restaurant 291

restaurant keeper 252

chauffeur 196

storekeeper 146

salesman 127

grocer 110

housewife 106

cook 76

manager 66

tailor 60

longshoreman 52

restaurant owner 49

barber 47

cafe owner 44

shoemaker 42

lunchman 42

real estate 40

driver 38

restauranteur 37

saloon keeper 36

[BLANK] 31

carpenter 31


janitor 28

truckman 27

Butcher 26

cafe 26

candy store 25

peddler 24

machinist 24

seaman 23

mechanic 23

baker 23

painter 21

merchant 21

restaurant manager 19

restaurant proprietor 18

bootblack 18

helper 16

Cashier 16

retired 15

waitress 15

watchman 14

druggist 14

chef 13

electrician 13

presser 12

pharmacist 12

sailor 11

hotel keeper 11

engineer 11

ice dealer 11

fireman 11


elevator operator 11

candy store keeper 11

broker 11

coal dealer 11

steward 10

grocery 10

fruit dealer 10

ironworker 10

cigar maker 10

(OTHERS NOT LISTED) 1076

Grand Total 5944


Table 3. Nativity groupings associated with group cases. Some records were uncertain and are

denoted with [NOT LISTED], and any additional racial information provided by officers is listed

in parentheses.

Nativity of Group Cases Count

American/American 80

Italian/Italian 62

Irish/Irish 35

Italian/American 31

German/American 15

Irish/American 14

Russian/Russian 11

Italian/Italian/Italian 11

American/American/American 11

Austrian/American 10

Russian/American 8

Irish/Italian 8

German/German 6

Italian/Italian/American 4

American/American/American/American 4

Greek/American 3

German/German/American 3

Austrian/Italian 3

Hungarian/American 3

[NOT LISTED]/American 3

Russian/Russian/Russian 3

Italian/Russian 2

Polish/Russian 2

Italian/American/American 2

German/American/American 2

Romanina/Russian 2


BWI/American 2

English/American 2

French/Italian 2

Polish/Polish 2

German/Hungarian 2

Romanina/Romanina 2

[NOT LISTED]/Polish 2

[NOT LISTED]/Italian 2

German/Italian 2

English/English 2

Spanish/American 2

Austrian/Austrian 2

Austrian/Hungarian 2

Hungarian/Hungarian 2

American/American/American/American/American/American 2

Hungarian/Italian 2

Greek/Greek 2

Scottish/American/American 1

Mexican/Spanish 1

Italian/Swiss 1

French/American 1

English/Irish 1

French/American/American/American 1

French/French 1

French/American/American/American/American 1

Italian/American/American/American/American 1

Austrian/Dalmatian 1

Dutch/American 1

Austrian/French 1

English/Romanina/American 1


Austrian/German 1

SWEDISH/American/American 1

German/Hungarian/Austrian 1

French/Sweedish 1

German/Hungarian/American 1

DANISH/Irish/Swiss 1

German/Irish 2

Lithuanian/Lithuanian 1

Austrian/Greek 1

Polish/German 1

[NOT LISTED]/Irish 1

Puerto Rican/Spanish 1

German/American/Italian 1

Romanina/Turkish 1

[NOT LISTED]/Irish/Italian 1

Finnish/Swedish 1

Finnish/American 1

American/American/American/American/American/American/A

merican 1

Syrian/Syrian 1

[NOT LISTED]/[NOT LISTED]/[NOT LISTED]/[NOT LISTED] 1

French/Italian/American 1

Austrian/Italian/American/American 1

Italian/Swedish 1

Austrian/Russian 1

Italian/Turkish 1

Hungarian/Irish 1

Dutch/German 1

[NOT LISTED]/American/Turkish 1

Japanese/Japanese 1


Hungarian/Russian 1

Maltese/Italian 1

Bermudan/American 1

Norwegian/American 1

Bohemian/Bohemian 1

Dutch/Russian 1

Irish/Irish/Irish 1

Polish/American 1

Irish/Irish/American 1

Albanian/American 1

Albanian/Italian 1

Romanian/Russian/Russian 1

Irish/Polish 1

Russian/[NOT LISTED] 1

Irish/Russian 1

[NOT LISTED]/[NOT LISTED]/[NOT LISTED]/[NOT

LISTED]/[NOT LISTED]/[NOT LISTED] 1

Canadian/Swiss 1

Russian/American/American/American 1

Irish/American/American 1

Spanish/Italian/Italian 1

Canadian/Syrian 1

Swedish/Swiss 1

Canadian/American 1

Swiss/Danish 1

Italian/Italian/Italian/Italian/American 1

American (Black)/Russian 1

Chilean/Chilean 1

Austrian/Barbadosian 1

French/Russian/American 1


Czech/Irish 1

Italian/Russian/American 1

Greek/Irish 1

Grand Total 447


Table 4. Nativity of group indictments associated with significant quantities of alcohol. Some

records were uncertain and are denoted with [NOT LISTED], and any additional racial

information provided by officers is listed in parentheses.

Row Labels Count

American/American 39

Italian/Italian 21

Italian/American 15

Irish/Irish 10

Italian/Italian/Italian 8

Austrian/American 7

Irish/American 6

German/American 6

American/American/American 6

Italian/Italian/American 3

Russian/Russian 3

American/American/American/American 3

German/Hungarian 2

Hungarian/American 2

Greek/American 2

German/German 2

Russian/Russian/Russian 2

German/German/American 2

[NOT LISTED]/American 2

French/Italian 1

Japanese/Japanese 1

Italian/Russian/American 1

German/Hungarian/American 1

Russian/French/American 1

German/Italian 1

Swedish/Swiss 1


German/Italian/American 1

Italian/American/American 1

Austrian/Russian 1

Puerto Rican/Spanish 1

German/American/American 1

Russian/Romanian 1

French/American/American/American/American 1

Russian/American/American/American 1

French/French 1

French/Italian/American 1

Irish/English 1

Austrian/Austrian 1

Austrian/Italian/American/American 1

Italian/American/American/American/American 1

Swiss/Italian 1

Lithuanian/Lithuanian 1

Austrian/Hungarian 1

Russian/Dutch 1

Irish/Italian 1

Russian/Italian 1

BWI/American 1

English/English 1

English/Romanian/American 1

Russian/American 1

Canadian/Syrian 1

Spanish/American 1

Italian/Italian/Italian/Italian/American 1

Swiss/Danish 1

Danish/Irish/Swiss 1

Italian/Maltese 1


Austrian/Italian 1

[NOT LISTED]/[NOT LISTED]/[NOT LISTED]/[NOT

LISTED]/[NOT LISTED]/[NOT LISTED] 1

American/American/American/American/American/American 1

Irish/Irish/Irish 1

Irish/Irish/American 1

Grand Total 183


Map 4. Lusk Committee Map, showing ethnic enclaves determined by the NYPD in 1919. Full

image URL: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/nyregion/201111_ethnic_maps/vert-

map-big.png

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/nyregion/201111_ethnic_maps/vert-map-big.png

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/nyregion/201111_ethnic_maps/vert-map-big.png


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Documents

Whiskey Business: New York City Bootlegging …...Whiskey Business: New York City Bootlegging Arrests Under the Mullan-Gage Act, 1921–1923 By Kara Adams November 2019 Submitted in