Monk Eastman
The Monk Eastman gang
Two patrolmen, walking their beat near Union Square at daybreak on December 26, 1920, discovered the lifeless body of a man lying in the snow by the subway entrance on Fourth Avenue. The dead man, William Delaney, fifty years old, had been drinking earlier that night at the Blue Bird Café, a speakeasy on Fourteenth Street. Jeremiah Bohan, a former acquaintance, had shot and killed Delaney as he had walked to the subway, firing five bullets from a .32-calibre pistol.
The death of Delaney, also known as Monk Eastman, brought to an end the career of one of New York’s most notorious criminals, the leader of a Bowery gang that had terrorized the East Side twenty years earlier.
Delaney’s men first attracted attention in October 1902 on the occasion of a gunfight with the Five Points Social Club in Suffolk Street in Chinatown. The Monk Eastman gang quickly gained influence on the Lower East Side, assassinating labor union dissidents, fighting with rival gangs, and intimidating Republican voters at election time. Police raids and arrests of gang members had little effect; powerful politicians used their influence to persuade the magistrates to drop charges.
But an attempt by Delaney in December 1903 to kill a Pinkerton detective signaled the end of the Max Eastman gang. The jury found Delaney guilty of attempted murder and the Recorder, John Goff, sentenced him to ten years in the penitentiary.
Max Zweiback, also known as Kid Twist, seized control of the Max Eastman gang during Delaney’s imprisonment but his rule ended in May 1908 when a jealous husband gunned Zweiback down as he was walking on Coney Island.
Delaney was a model prisoner in Sing Sing and he obtained his release in October 1910. His former associates had scattered and the Monk Eastman gang had long since disappeared. Delaney moved to Albany and earned his living as a plumber. He enlisted in the army during the Great War, despite his age, and served in France in the 106th Infantry. He returned to New York; an old enemy caught up with him, and Delaney died from his bullet wounds at the Fourth Avenue subway entrance.
See: "An East Side Vendetta," New York Times, 17 September 1903. " 'Monk' Eastman Will Go to Penitentiary," New York Times, 15 April 1904. " 'Monk' Eastman, Gangster, Murdered," New York Times, 27 December 1920.
