![]() While English marshals his material for maximum storytelling, he relies mostly on secondary sources, interviews and a few FBI files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. ![]() ![]() Along the way, he lays out some of the symbiotic connections between Irish-American gangsters, political bosses and the police, showing how in many cities they ruled both the gangs and the gangbusters for generations. Throughout its long development, Irish-American organized crime has always been closely intertwined with politics, and seemed especially powerful as an outgrowth of urban organizations such as New York City’s Tammany Hall.Įnglish also describes Kansas City’s Pendergast machine, Boston’s Curley organization and several others. In fact, some historians trace the origins of the Irish-American underworld back even further, to the “transported” convicts and political prisoners who were shipped to the American colonies in the 17th century. ![]() According to English, the heritage of the Irish mobster was firmly entrenched in this country long before Italian immigrants established their version of the Sicilian mafia with its code of omerta, or Jewish gangsters like Arnold Rothstein and Meyer Lansky built gambling empires and swanky resorts with professional enforcers. ![]()
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