03 - Problems identifying attendees. cover art

03 - Problems identifying attendees.

03 - Problems identifying attendees.

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 Problems identifying attendees. Some historians believe that representation at the conference was not representative of the ethnic make-up of the US criminal element, being that the delegations consisted of mostly Italian and Jewish crime leaders. Because of the lack of a substantial Irish delegation, a conclusion was made that this could have been the beginning of underworld domination by Italian and Jewish crime groups. The Irish still possessed an influential presence in America's criminal and political worlds and had a number of dominant crime leaders in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. The most prominent and well-known Irish bosses of the time included Frank Wallace of Boston, Daniel "Danny" Walsh of Providence, Chicago's George "Bugs" Moran, the South Side O'Donnells (brothers Edward (Spike), Steven, Tommy and Walter), and the West Side O'Donnells (Klondike and Myles), and William "Big Bill" Dwyer, Charles "Vannie" Higgins, Jack "Legs" Diamond and Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll of New York. Walsh was one of the leaders that many crime historians are unsure attended the meeting. Walsh was one of the most prominent Irish bootleggers of the Prohibition era, was an associate and partner of New York's Irish Combine leaders; Dwyer and Madden, and was an alleged member of the "Big Seven Group". This alone should have guaranteed his invitation, but some crime historians point to the fact that only two other Irish bosses were confirmed to be present at the meeting. Walsh's membership in the "Big Seven Group" and the fact that he was not killed until 1933 makes for a good argument to include him. But even if he had been present, he would have been only one of three Irish bosses in attendance. Some crime historians, such as T. J. English, believe that the Italian and Jewish crime bosses did not invite the most prominent Irish bootleggers and criminals of the time to the Atlantic City Conference because they intended to marginalize them, along with the old guard or "Mustache Petes" that controlled the majority of criminal operations in the big cities. Historians of organized crime note that the motivations were not out of some ethnic, racial hatred and nor was it out of sheer greed. The Irish had begun a type of criminal assimilation, leaving behind violent street rackets and moving onto more sophisticated types of organized illegality, such as taking over and corrupting the police force and local government of large cities. As author T. J. English writes; "In later years, when Luciano or Meyer Lansky would ask, “What about the Irish? Who’s taking care of the Irish?” They didn’t mean Irish mobsters. They meant the Irish cops, politicians, and establishment figures who were ‘friendly.’ In the eyes of many Italian and Jewish gangsters, this was the fair and proper role for the Irish in the underworld; since they had ‘gotten here first,’ so to speak, and had infiltrated the upperworld, that was their function. The rest should be left to the Italians, Jews, Poles, and even the blacks." That might explain why Frank Wallace was killed by hitters in Boston's Italian Mob in 1931 and Danny Walsh disappeared in 1933. Whether or not there was a concerted plan to exclude them because of their ethnicity, several prominent Irish Mob bosses were left out of the conference, first and foremost, because they were currently engaged in full-scale gang warfare with rival Italian and Jewish bosses. Bugs Moran would have been the Irish boss to represent Chicago, but he had just missed being killed in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre when his gang was sizably decimated; he faded into obscurity soon after. The South Side and West Side O'Donnells of Chicago were not as powerful as Moran and would not have been chosen to represent Chicago anyway, a they were at war with Al Capone and his allies. New York's Vannie Higgins, Legs Diamond and Vincent Coll might have been invited but were involved in the "Manhattan Beer Wars" against Jewish bosses Dutch Schultz, Waxey Gordon and Welsh boss, Owney Madden. At the Atlantic City Conference, Schultz was heard saying at the Ambassador Hotel, "This crazy maniac Coll is causing me no end of grief". To which Gordon responded, "Yeah, and what about this bastard, Legs Diamond? He's hijacking my trucks and raiding our clip joints all over North Jersey". Vannie Higgins was killed on January 19, 1932, in New York, Legs Diamond was shot three times and killed in his Albany, New York, hideout on December 18, 1931, and Mad Dog Coll was killed inside a New York phone booth by Schultz gunmen, while talking to Owney Madden, on February 8, 1932. Of note is the fate of Irish Mob boss Bill Dwyer. He was not killed, nor was he forced out of the rackets by any other gangster, Italian or otherwise. By his own choice, he retired from organized crime towards the end of Prohibition in 1932–33 and settled into life with his wife and five children in Belle Harbor, Queens. He died there in 1946...
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