1910 in Organized Crime - Events

Events

• Rival newspapers William Randolph Hearst's Chicago American and the Chicago Tribune extend contracts though Moses Annenberg to street gangs such as Ragen's Colts, under the guise of "athletic clubs", in which newsdealers and vendors are intimidated (otherwise known as "bootjacking") into selling a specific newspaper. During the three-year period known as the "Circulation Wars", 27 street vendors are stabbed, beaten or shot as many of the future Prohibition gangsters and other criminals of Chicago's underworld become involved, including Dean O'Banion.
• Chicago police arrest over 200 known Italian gangsters and known Black Hand members in a raid in Little Italy, including Morello crime family leader Lupo the Wolf. However, none are convicted as many of the notes of extortion threats cannot be traced to them.
• Chicago racketeer James "Big Jim" Colosimo brings his nephew Johnny Torrio, then with New York City's Five Points Gang, to eliminate the Black Hand from the city in response to their extortion demands. Within a month, ten Black Hand extortionists had been killed.
• Jim Cosmano, a major Chicago Black Hand leader, is severely wounded in an ambush by Johnny Torrio on a South Side bridge. Cosmano had previously demanded $10,000 threatening to destroy Colosimo's cafe.
• Gas House Gang member William Jones is imprisoned.
• Eastman Gang leader Chick Tricker's Park Row dive bar is closed by the New York City Committee of Fourteen. However he is able to move his operations to the vice district known as Satan's Circus purchasing Dan the Dude's Stag Cafe on West 28th Street later renaming it the Cafe Maryland.
• January 1-March 26, 1911 - Thirty-eight Black Hand victims are killed by Black Hand assassins, many by the unidentified assassin known only as Shotgun Man, between Oak Street and Milton Street in Chicago's Little Italy.
• March 15 - The Chicago Vice Commission, a civic organization to close the brothels and "panel houses" of the Levee District, is organized.
• April 1 - Spanish Louie, a lieutenant of Humpty Jackson, is killed while walking on East 11th Street by an unknown gunman (although other sources have incorrectly claimed 1900 and 1911).