Today’s Murderous Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The Black Hand was essentially an extortion racket practiced by Sicilian and Italian gangsters (many of whom were members of the Mafia and Camorra) for approximately thirty years—1890 to 1920—against the unschooled, superstitious immigrants of the “Little Italy” settlements sequestered in major Eastern, Southern, and Midwestern cities.
Chicago’s history of the Black Hand, like New York’s, dated back to about 1890. The violence displayed by Chicago Blackhanders against their victims was devastating; it consisted mostly of bombings that destroyed whole buildings and several families in each attack. Little Italy—the area contained within Oak and Taylor Streets and Grand and Wentworth Avenues—was a Black Hand playground, more appropriately a slaughterhouse.
For years, it seemed that Blackhanders were more interested in annihilating their victims than in extorting money from them. Black Hand killings reached a peak around 1910-11 in Chicago. At one intersection, Oak and Milton Streets, which the Italians named “Death Corner,” thirty-eight Black Hand victims were shot to death between January 1, 1910 and March 26, 1911. At least fifteen of those killed were dispatched by a professional Black Hand assassin referred to by the residents as “Shotgun Man.” This killer, never apprehended, walked about openly in Little Italy and was well known. He had no loyalty to either victim or Blackhander. He hired out his gun and would murder without flinching, carrying out death sentences decreed by Blackhanders who could not collect. Blackhanders paid him handsomely for his services.
One criminal historian estimated that close to eighty Black Hand gangs terrorized Chicago’s Little Italy during the first two decades of the present century. Some of these gangs, wholly unrelated to each other, signed their notes as “The Mysterious Hand,” or “The Secret Hand,” but it meant the same thing: Pay or Die.
The notes Chicago Blackhanders sent their victims were couched in unbearably polite words, making them all the more sinister. The letter received by a wealthy Italian businessman typified the courteous but deadly Blackhander of this era:
“Most gentle Mr. Silvani: Hoping that the present will not impress you much, you will be so good as to send me $2,000 if your life is dear to you. So I beg you warmly to put them on your door within four days. But if not, I swear this weeks’ time not even the dust of your family will exist. With regards, believe me to be your friends.”
This letter was not signed but police still managed to trace it to one Joseph Genite (who was discharged for lack of evidence), in whose house they found a stockpile of dynamite, two dozen revolvers, several sawed-off shotguns, and other assorted weapons.
Other Black Hand notes were less formal:
“You got some cash. I need $1,000. You place the $100 bills in an envelope and place it underneath a board in the northeast corner of Sixtyninth Street and Euclid Avenue at eleven o’clock tonight. If you place the money there, you will live. If you don’t, you die. If you report this to the police, I’ll kill you when I get out. They may save you the money, but they won’t save you your life.”
The police in most instances were helpless; the notes were all but impossible to trace. When witnesses did come forward they quickly retracted their statements after being contacted by Black Hand enforcers. In desperation, police raided Chicago’s Little Italy in January, 1910, and rounded up close to two hundred known Sicilian gangsters suspected of running Black Hand extortion rackets. All were released within twelve hours for lack of evidence.
For a five-year period—1907 to 1912—upstanding business leaders of the Italian community banded together to form the White Hand Society which actually supplied its own police force and money to prosecute Black Handers. Many extortionists were put in prison, but were shortly paroled through contacts with corrupt local and state officials. Dr. Joseph Dimiani, one of the White Hand leaders, explained why the Society threw in the sponge. “They [the White Handers] were so discouraged by the lax administrations of justice that they were refusing to advance further money to prosecute men arrested on their complaints.”
A rash of bombings came next. Experts used by the Black Hand were brutal enforcers such as Sam Cardinelli, his chief lieutenant, eighteen-year-old Nicholas Viana, known as “The Choir Boy,” and dim-witted Frank Campione. The three, all later hanged for murder, were responsible for at least twenty bombings in which dozens of Italians were killed. One police estimation reported that more than 800 bombs were directed against Black Hand victims in Chicago between 1900 and 1930, most of them during the period from 1915 to 1918.
A whole generation of professional bombers who had once worked for Black Hand gangs found heavy-duty work in the dawn-of-the-1920s bootleg wards between gangs in Chicago. Many of these were used in Chicago union wars, as well. The Italian and Sicilian Black Handers in earlier days preferred to use non-Italian bombers to prevent identification. When the Black Hand operations fell off in the early 1920s, these non-Italian bombers went to work for union gangsters. One of these, Andrew Kerr, was arrested in 1921 and boasted that he employed the best bombers in the business to enforce his edicts over the Steam and Operating Engineers union.
Kerr named Jim Sweeney as a boss bomber. Sweeney’s group of killers included “Soup” Bartlett and “Con” Shea, who had murdered whole families with bombs for decades. Shea, Kerr swore, had been a professional bomber since he was sixteen years old.
Boss of the barber’s union in Chicago, Joseph Sangerman took Sweeney’s position as king of the bombers after Sweeny was arrested and sent to prison. Sangerman’s top bomber was George Matrisciano (alias Martini) who manufactured his own “infernal machines” of black powder. This berserk bomber, who had terrorized Black Hand victims for twenty-five years, always walked about with two sticks of dynamite in his pockets. Before Sangerman had him killed, Matrisciano could be seen approaching total strangers in Little Italy and proudly showing them a newspaper clipping which described him as “a terrorist.”
A sharp decline of Black Hand operations followed Matrisciano’s death, and finally the racket cased to flourish. Police had failed to snuff out the Black Hand terror; it was the coming of Prohibition and its big-moneyed rackets which ended the terrible extortions. Like stock market investors, almost everybody happily plunged into bootlegging—even the courteous murderers of Little Italy, much to the gratitude of its hounded residents.
Culled from: Bloodletters and Badmen
Arcane Excerpts: Delusions and Stupor Edition
A Compendium of Insanity is a book written by John B. Chapin, M.D., LL.D. and published in 1898. Chapin (1829-1918) was an American physician and mental hospital administrator. He was an advocate for the removal of mentally ill patients from the almshouses in New York State to a hospital setting and helped to pass a state law that provided hospital care for the patients. Here is an excerpt from the book which answers the question that I often ponder: am I suffering from Melancholia with Delusions and Stupor? (It turns out, no – no, I am not!)
Melancholia with Delusions and Stupor
A patient may pass from the condition of simple melancholia into a more aggravated form of the same disease, characterized by an appearance of stupor. The stuporous condition is mainly due to the domination of delusions and to a partial or complete suspension of will-power, which may amount to a cataleptoid state. When a patient is presented for examination suffering from stuporous melancholia, there is usually a long history of invalidism or of progressive depression, with a comparatively sudden transition to a stuporous condition. It is not to be understood that a patient necessarily passes first through an attack of melancholia with agitation before entering upon the stage under consideration, as both forms of disease appear to continue along the lines of their respective development till the end is reached in recovery or in terminal dementia. When a patient is presented for observation suffering from stuporous melancholia, the appearance will be in striking contrast with the other forms of this disease. There will be offered a history of physical ill-health, insomnia, and worry, or possibly of some profound moral shock. The prodromal stage is not usually prolonged. The more aggravated mental symptoms may appear at an early stage. The patient is disposed to be absolutely silent, and the only response to questions may be monosyllabic. The eyes have a fixed and downcast appearance or are entirely closed. The facial muscles are immobile. The countenance is pale or sallow, and has a smooth, oleaginous appearance. A fixed and rigid position is maintained, and whether sitting or standing there is a reluctance to any change, accompanied often by actual resistance. There is an unwillingness to rise from the bed, to dress, or to undress. Food is not desired, or absolutely refused, and only administered by placing liquids in the mouth, or often by overcoming the resistance of the patient by the use of force. The bodily functions are performed unconsciously or are in a state of apparent suspense. Saliva is retained in the mouth, giving rise to an offensive odor. The tongue when examined seems flabby, enlarged, and shows indentations produced by pressure of the teeth. The pulse is not accelerated, and the temperature is normal or subnormal. There is an apparent indifference to surroundings, to heat or cold or bodily comforts. Every effort to arouse the patient is without avail. There is an appearance of stupidity and stupor; but, as a matter of fact, the mind of the patient is intently engrossed with delusions which are of centric origin or wholly subjective. The intense will-power necessary to maintain fixed positions for long periods, the resistance offered to all changes proposed, the expression of the eyes, all indicate that the mind is intently absorbed in some controlling delusion. This condition might be confounded with the stupid state that characterizes mental enfeeblement or dementia, but the history of the case will usually furnish the right clue. It is important, however, to the proper treatment that a distinction be made. A person may pass rapidly into the stuporous stage of melancholia, but dementia, as will appear, is the usual terminal stage of several forms of mental disease of long standing. Patients have stated on recovery that while in this state they believed they were fragile, like glass, and would go to pieces if jarred or moved; that they were transformed into another state of existence, and could subsist without food; that the world had come to an end, and all human operations were suspended. The patient believes he is incapable of making any exertion to extricate himself from some terrible fate awaiting him—conditions showing the power exerted by dominating delusions. An experience with some dreadful dream furnishes the nearest approach to what may be conceived to be the mental state of these wretched persons. The nature of the delusions of a stuporous melancholiac are usually unknown, and their consequent actions so uncertain that it is never safe to act upon any presumption. Some outbreak of violence directed against the patient himself, his attendants or surrounding objects may occur at an unexpected time, so that it is not wholly safe to leave a patient unattended.
Andersonville Prisoner Diary Entry Du Jour!
This is the continuation of the 1864 diary of Andersonville prisoner Private George A. Hitchcock (see the archived version for all entries up until now).
Here’s today’s entry:
October 25th. The wood detail has been stopped because some of the men have escaped. Salt is very scarce.
Culled from: Andersonville: Giving Up the Ghost