The Noose Coffee Shop in Chicago supplied last meals for death row inmates of Cook County Jail in the 1920s.

In the early 1900s, when Cook County Jail was on Dearborn and Hubbard Streets, a nearby restaurant would supply 25 to 50 meals daily to inmates who could afford them. 

The eatery was known as the "Noose Coffee Shop," located at 66 West Hubbard Street, across the alley from the Criminal Courts Building and Cook County Jail. The Noose was the popular lunch spot and hangout for reporters, attorneys, and other habitués of the Criminal Courts Building in the 1920s.

You can see the Noose Coffee Shop's location next to the Criminal Courts Building. A Google Street Maps Image.

Restaurant owner Joe Stein supplied condemned prisoners with their last meal eaten in their death cell on the evening before their hanging. The County Jail reciprocated with photographs, some autographed, of famous local and national criminals. Joe lined the restaurant's walls with those photographs and soon got the nickname Joe's 'Gallery of Crime.' Criminals were hung in the alley between the courthouse and the adjacent Cook County Jail. 

FROM THE GALLERY OF CRIME, MY FAVORITE CRIME STORIES.

The photographs below are not the pictures from Joe Stein's Restaurant.

Among the hundreds of original photographs on the restaurant walls was a picture of the tough prosecutor, Assistant State's Attorney William H. McSwiggin. By the age of 26, he had won seven death penalties in under eight months. Despite prohibition and McSwiggin's lawman status, on April 27, 1926, McSwiggin and his friend Tom "Red" Duffy went for a drink at "The Pony Inn," 5613 West Roosevelt Road in Cicero. Other mobsters were present at the tavern. A car stopped nearby, and occupants got out and sprayed them and other gangsters with machine gunfire. McSwiggin, Duffy, and a gangster named Jim Doherty were hit. Gang leader William "Klondike" O'Donnell's car sped McSwiggin & Doherty to the hospital, but both died en route.

William McSwiggin presented his plea in court to hang Anselmi and Scalise.

Al Capone's gang was suspected, but O'Donnell's and Capone's gang were at odds with each other then, so McSwiggin was thought to be a mere bystander.

---

"Terrible Tommy" O'Connor escaped from the Criminal Courts Building in December 1921, only a day before he was to have been executed by hanging.

"Terrible Tommy" O'Connor

O'Connor flew under the police radar for several years. He was up to no good in those early years; he just never got caught. Jimmy Cherin and a fellow partner in crime hung around a saloon operated by Jimmy's father, Dominick. The bar was a place where stolen goods could be fenced and was the favorite watering hole for some of Chicago's criminals.

Here, Tommy and Jimmy learned how to steal cars and commit other crimes. Tommy was known to have an explosive temper. On one occasion, he believed his mother was overcharged for some meat, so he chopped off the butcher's thumb. Tommy soon developed a reputation as a "cold-blooded killer" and acquired the moniker "terrible."

O'Connor was arrested for murder in 1921. Numerous accounts then refer to unspecified "shady court dealings" that saw O'Connor released. Chicago in the 1920s was notoriously corrupt. Police, judges, and politicians were on the take, so the notion of an accused murderer dodging justice was an unremarkable occurrence.

But O'Connor's freedom was short-lived. Somebody thought justice had been perverted and dispatched detective Patrick O'Neill to arrest O'Connor at his sister's Washtenaw Avenue house. There was an exchange of gunfire, and Officer O'Neill was hit and later died of his wounds.

O'Connor escaped out of the back of the house but was later arrested in St. Paul, Minnesota, after making a drunken nuisance of himself. He was hauled back to Chicago, tried, and found guilty of killing the police officer. The sentence was death by hanging, to be carried out in the middle of December 1921.

Four days before his date with the executioner, a prison guard was walking past O'Connor's cell when the inmate called him over. O'Connor's cellmate reached through the bars and put a headlock on the guard while Tommy took his keys and gun. They bound and gagged the guard, ran into the prison yard, and climbed over a 20-foot wall.

Another version of the breakout is that O'Connor got a gun that was smuggled into the prison hidden in a sandwich. This version has O'Connor and four or five other prisoners overpowering several guards before escaping.

Whatever the correct story, this is when the legendary Chicago lawyer Harry J. Busch met Terrible Tommy. At the time, a law school student, Busch, was driving in the neighborhood of the Cook County Jail. More than 70 years later, Busch recalled what happened after a man jumped onto his car's running board: "Suddenly the isinglass (heavy plastic) is ripped open and in comes Tommy with his cannon. He said, 'Drive like hell, you SOB, or I'll blow your brains out! I'm Tommy O'Connor!' I drove!"

Busch deliberately crashed his car into a factory wall. O'Connor scrambled out of the wreckage and was last seen legging it down the street. And that was literally the last time he was seen.

A $3,000 reward ($46,600 today) was offered for information leading to O'Connor's arrest, but it was not enough to shake loose any tips. Hundreds of police searched for the fugitive, but he was never found.

Stories appeared frequently about sightings. He was in California; no, it was Texas. He had joined the Irish Republican Army and been killed in a shootout; no, he'd died of tuberculosis. He was robbing banks in Canada; no, he had bought a pub in Limerick, Ireland.

There is a headstone in Worth, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, with the name Tommy O'Connor on it. The date of death is given as 1951.

---

Chicago's famous Timothy "Big Tim" D. Murphy, a popular labor leader in 1921, was charged with organizing the theft of $400,000 ($6,211,000 today) from a Pullman mail train at Chicago's Union Station in August 1920. Although he was released on a $30,000 bond ($417,000 today). Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis eventually convicted and sentenced Murphy to seven years in Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. 

Murphy was involved with armed robberies, labor racketeering, he had control of the railroad, laundry, and dye workers unions. His murder was never solved, though there were plenty of suspects. Some believed that the gunmen were associated with the rival, Mossy Enright, who was behind it; others believed Murray "The Camel" Humphreys was behind it, while others thought John "Dingbat" O'Berta could have been the culprit.

On May 6, 1922, Murphy, Cornelius Shea, and six other labor leaders were arrested and charged with the murder of a Chicago police officer. On May 24, the state asked for nolle prosequi ("to be unwilling to pursue"), and the court agreed to withdraw the indictments. A new indictment was returned against Murphy and the others in August, but the state also withdrew this second indictment.

(L to R) Murphy, Fred Mader, John Miller, and Cornelius Shea during their murder trial in 1922.

Big Tim was a mentor to another politician/mobster, John "Dingbat" O'Berta. O'Berta married Big Tim's wife some months after his death. O'Berta himself was killed in one of Frank McErlane's oneway rides. In a twist of fate, O'Berta was buried near Big Tim, and when their wife Flo died, she was buried in a grave between them.

When Murphy answered his front doorbell at 2525 West Morse Avenue, Chicago, on the night of June 26, 1928, there was nobody there. Just as he stepped out to look down the street, a gunman blasted him in the head with a shotgun from a car. He died instantly. 

---

On April 3, 1924, 23-year-old Beulah May Annan, Chicago's "prettiest slayer," shot her lover and coworker, Harry Kalstedt, in her South Side apartment at 817 East 46th Street, Chicago, while her husband, Al, was at work. 

According to the report published in the Chicago Daily News the following day, Annan told Assistant State's Attorney Roy Woods she "danced to the tune of jazz records a passionate death dance, with the body of the man she had shot and killed."

The dramatic crime and subsequent press coverage that focused on Annan's "most striking appearance" turned her into a celebrity — and later an inspiration. Chicago Tribune crime reporter Maurine Watkins, who covered Annan and other women accused of murder in 1924, adapted her experiences into the play and later the musical "Chicago." Annan inspired the character Roxie Hart.

Much of the report came directly from Annan herself. She held court at the Harrison Street Police Station, answering all questions and waxing poetic about love.

"I didn't love Harry so much — but he brought me wine, made a fuss over me, and thought I was pretty," she told reporters. "I don't think I ever loved anybody very much. You know how it is — you keep looking and looking all the time for someone you can really love."

Kalstedt, who worked with Annan at a laundromat, invited himself and two quarts of wine over to Annan's apartment around 12:30 pm, she said.

"We drank all of it and began to quarrel. I taunted Harry with the fact that he had been in jail once, and he said something nasty back to me. Seems like we just wanted to make each other mad — and to hurt each other," Annan said.

In her rage, Annan called Kalstedt a name, her "magnolia-white skin flushing and paling as she recited her narrative of death," the paper reported. Kalstedt told her, "You won't call me a name like that," and he headed straight for the bedroom.

According to Annan, Kalstedt could only be going after one thing: a gun. Though usually tucked under a pillow, the gun sat on the bed in plain sight.

"I ran, and as he reached out to pick the gun up off the bed, I reached around him and grabbed it. Then I shot. They say I shot him in the back, but it must have been sort of under the arm," she recalled.

Kalstedt fell back against the wall. The record playing "Hula Lou" came to a stop "as the man in the bedroom breathed his last," the paper said.

Hula Lou

Annan told reporters she couldn't stand the silence and restarted the record. After washing the blood off her hands, she took a washcloth to Kalstedt's face and kissed him. "Then I went back and started the record over again."

The shot, the paper said, was fired around 2 pm, but Annan didn't call for help until after 5 pm. "I just kept going back and forth between the living room and the bedroom, where Harry's body lay, and playing the phonograph," she said.

It wasn't until Annan's husband returned home that the police were finally called — and the media circus began.

Maurine Watkins, a Tribune reporter, was sent to the coroner's inquest at a South Side funeral home. Watkins painted a picture for Tribune readers:

"They say she's the prettiest woman ever accused of murder in Chicago — young, slender, with bobbed auburn hair; wide-set, appealing blue eyes; tip-tilted nose; translucent skin, faintly, very faintly, rouged, an ingenuous smile; refined features, intelligent expression — an 'awfully nice girl' and more than usually pretty."

Her lawyer, W.W. O'Brien, stated that self-defense would be her plea. The statements made at the police station would be repudiated as having been made under duress when intoxicated.

On May 24, 1924, a verdict of not guilty was recorded.

NOTE: Only twenty-one days from the crime to a court case decision.  

A day after Beulah's acquittal, Al Annan, who had stood by his wife throughout the trial and who had spent a significant amount of money on her defense, got the news that his wife was leaving him. "He is too slow," Beulah explained.

Beulah May Annan died of tuberculosis in a Chicago sanatorium in 1928, four years after her acquittal on charges of murder.

---

The Drake Hotel Bandits. Fifty-year-old Frank Rodkey was shot to death at 3:30 pm in the Chicago's Drake Hotel office by one of five bandits who held up the place with shotguns. Eric Nelson and Ted "Tex" Court, two of the bandits, were killed by Lincoln Park Police Officers. Two others, Joseph W. Holmes, 25, and Jack (J.W.) Wood was captured and, on August 1, 1925, turned over to the sheriff on indictment. The fifth bandit, Wm. Wasil Marks (aka Mulenchuck, Melney) escaped the 28th district police station on October 10, 1925, and was at large until August 12, 1938, when he was arrested in Santa Barbara, California. Judge Hopkins sentenced Holmes and Woods to hang on December 11, 1925. Holmes and Woods were hanged at Cook County Jail on February 13, 1926.

Drake Hotel Bandits Joseph Holmes, 25, left, and Jack Wood wearing a vest in 1925. Both Holmes and Wood confessed their involvement in the July 29, 1925, daylight holdup of the Gold Coast neighborhood's Hotel.

---

On May 21, 1924, a 14-year-old boy, Robert Emanuel "Bobby" Franks, was murdered by two young men, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, both from wealthy and socially established Jewish families, simply to commit the perfect crime.

Robert Emanuel "Bobby" Franks

At their trial, the famous Clarence Darrow conducted a defense based on psychological testimony and captured the nation's attention.

The two were indicted on June 5, 1924.

With the Leopold and Loeb case, the attention of the nation and world was once again focused on Chicago because of a murder. The circumstances of the crime involved the murder of a young boy, Bobby Franks, by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, young men from wealthy Jewish families who said they killed their 14-year-old victim, whom they didn't know, because they wanted to commit the perfect, motiveless crime. The case quickly became internationally famous.

Although their plans to conceal their identities and collect a hefty ransom of $10,000 ($162,500 today) were elaborate and intricate, Leopold and Loeb were caught almost immediately because Nathan Leopold dropped a pair of glasses near to where the body of Bobby Franks had been left. 

Nathan Leopold's Glasses

The glasses had a special patented spring for the expensive horned rim frame and were only sold in one place in Chicago. It was found that only three people, including Nathan Leopold, purchased these glasses. Once in custody, Leopold and Loeb showed no remorse and confessed in great detail to the crime, both to the authorities and the press.

Bobby Franks was found beneath the culvert at 121st Street and the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. Bobby was the son of millionaire Jacob Franks of 5052 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago.

Their separate confessions (Leopold and Loeb) are consistent in their description of the details of the crime, except that each claimed the other actually committed the blows that killed Bobby Franks. In addition to their confessions to authorities, Leopold and Loeb made many incriminating statements to the press. They described their plans to commit this crime and their elaborate self-justifications for the murder, including the invocation of German philosophers, such as Friederich Neitzche. 

Their friendship had been marked by fantasies and delusions of grandeur, highly ritualized games with elaborate plots and counterplots, and the planning and carrying out of previous criminal activities together. Their friendship also had overtones of homosexuality. Several books have been written about the case, and at least four feature films have been based on the circumstances of the crime.

Both were sentenced on September 10, 1924, to life in the Joliet Penitentiary in Illinois. In 1925, when the new Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum-security state prison for men in Crest Hill, Illinois, opened in 1925, Leopold and Loeb were transferred. Leopold and Loeb founded the Stateville Correspondence School. Richard Loeb was killed by another inmate.

---

Being Sicilians, Alberto Anselmi and Giovanni Scalise find employment with the gangs at Taylor Street, the area known as Little Sicily. The Genna Family ran the roost at the time on Taylor Street. They are in constant battle with the Northsiders, making and peddling rotgut booze, run by the formidable Dean O'Banion. Anselmi and Scalise make an odd couple at that. Scalise has one eye that deviates from the other, and Anselmi is almost twice Scalise's age. They both share a common trade, as both are cold-blooded Sicilian hitmen. 

Alberto Anselmi and Giovanni Scalise

On June 13, 1925, Anselmi, Salise, and Mike Genna are being driven around by another unknown hood in a big, flashy automobile. They had moments earlier been in a shootout with the Northsiders and had injured Moran and Drucci.

Police also out on the cruise got wind of the gang fight, immediately identified Mike "The Devil" Genna, and followed the gangster car. Police also think they recognized the fourth man in the car at the wheel, and this man was possibly identified as Samuel Amatuna, "the Beau Brummel" of gangland.

The driver of the gangster car becomes aware of the pursuit and guns the engine. The police also press on the gas. At this moment, Mike talks loudly in Sicilian and gives instructions for what will happen. He tells Anselmi and Scalise to grab the weapons on the car's floor. They consisted of two repeating shotguns and four sawed-off shotguns.

Anselmi and Scalise were tired of Amatuna and the Genna gang and received attractive offers elsewhere.

The police following them were Policemen Charles B. Walsh, Harold F. Olsen, Michael J. Conway, and Willam Sweeney.

The gangster car was now going 73 miles an hour at 59th street when a truck swerved in front of them, causing Genna's driver to hit the brakes, causing a spin, and slam his car into a lamp post. Police get out, exclaiming, "Hey, what's the idea?"

The Genna party answers their questions with a volley of gunshots from a repeating shotgun.

Policeman Olsen is hit in the jaw by the slugs and crumples to the floor. Patrolman Walsh is the next hit in the chest by buckshot. Sweeney and Conway return fire at Genna, Anselmi, and Scalise. Mike Genna's gun jams.

Genna, the unknown driver, Scalise, and Anselmi make a run for it. The unidentified fourth man is gone. Genna, Scalise, and Anselmi run into an alley running north and south between Western and Artesian Avenues. Scalise and Anselmi turn into a passageway of a house at 5941 South Artesian Avenue. Genna, tired of running, stops, turns to face Sweeney, levels his shotgun, pulls the trigger, and "Click," no bullet. Sweeney returns fire and fatally hits Genna in the leg, causing him to stumble after his companions. 

Genna jumps through the basement window of a nearby home. Officer Sweeney follows, and two policemen (one retired) join Sweeney. They enter the basement and fire at Genna lying on the floor. He has a blue steel Spanish .38 in his hands. He fires before falling back. He has a severed artery in the leg from the first bullet by Sweeney. Before he dies, Mike Genna kicks the ambulance driver sent to take him to Englewood hospital in the face exclaiming, "Take that, you son of a bitch."

Police Officers Olsen and Walsh die from their wounds. Anselmi and Scalise ducked into a store but were later captured by police. Anselmi and Scalise are roughed up by the police, who are angered at the murders of their brethren. Slain police officer Harold Olsen's brother (John Olsen), also a policeman, goes to the station and wants to kill his brother's murderer, but he is talked out of it.

Three trials, first headed by McSwiggin, the hanging prosecutor, are achieved to try and hang or imprison Anselmi and Scalise.

Anselmi talked with his hands through an interpreter during the trials; he speaks no English. John Scalise spoke in broken English. All claim that they would never have been shot if they knew they were policemen. Then Scalise puts the blame on the death of Mike Genna as being the one who fired first.

The first trial was for the murder of policeman Olsen, and they were both sentenced to 14 years for manslaughter.

During their time in prison, Scalise and Anselmi feared for their lives. They are beaten up, and Scalise is almost poisoned. He finds the food tastes a little off and tells the guard. They send the food to be analyzed by a chemist and discover cyanide, enough to kill a couple of men in his spaghetti and beans.  

In the second trial for the murder of policeman Walsh, they were both acquitted.

The Supreme Court later orders a new trial on the killing of Policeman Olsen. Scalise and Anselmi are both found not guilty and are immediately set free.

Their lawyer's defense was, in essence, that "If a policeman tries to kill you, you can, in turn, kill him in self-defense."

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

By Rupert John Taylor

Edited by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

A Brief History of Alphonse Francis “Sonny” Capone Jr.

Alphonse Francis “Sonny” Capone Jr. was born December 4, 1918, in Chicago, Illinois, to parents Al Capone and Mary "Mae" Josephine Coughlin with congenital syphilis, a serious mastoid infection, passed on from Al. He survived the required brain surgery for the disease but was left partially deaf.

Sonny Jr. did not share his father's first name. His full name was Albert Francis Capone.

Al Capone had money, power, and prestige in Chicago, New York, and Miami. He sent his son to the best schools available, among them Saint Patrick’s High School in Miami. 

Sonny in 1934

There, Sonny befriended a young Cuban expatriate by the name of Desiderio Alberto Arnaz and graduated in 1937. Arnaz was the bandleader and I Love Lucy star and creator who later gained lasting fame as Desi Arnaz. 

Sonny attended the University of Notre Dame but eventually completed his studies and obtained his degree at the University of Miami. Sonny maintained a simple life after completing his schooling.

After attending the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, Sonny Capone transferred to the University of Miami, earning his bachelor's degree from the institution in 1941. In one of his first big career choices, he found he couldn't escape the criminal element entirely. While working as a used car salesman in Florida, he found out his boss was changing the numbers on vehicles' odometers, a seedy and illegal practice. So, Sonny quit and switched gears to printing, where he served as an apprentice before deciding on a couple more profession changes. In addition to trying tire distribution, the younger Capone ran a restaurant in Miami with his mother. According to Capone: The Man and His Era, Sonny attempted to use his underworld connections to secure a loan, asking the Chicago "Outfit" for $24,000 to expand the business. It refused.

He had four daughters with Diane Ruth Casey, whom he married in 1941. Veronica, Teresa, Barbara, and Patricia Capone-Brown. Diane and Sonny divorced in July 1964, and Sonny remarried twice. Albert was married to a woman named America "Amie" Francis. It is not sure if it was his second or third wife, but she was listed in his daughters' obituary as step mother. We assume she was his third wife.

Mae Coughlin and her son, Albert Francis Capone, purchased Ted's Grotto in Miami in 1956.

sidebar

Ted's Grotto started in the 1940s as a small, unassuming diner on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami by its namesake, Ted Bowers. Ted's Grotto became a regular hang-out for Entertainers like Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Judy Garland. They'd swing by after their gigs at the Fontainebleau or the Eden Roc hotels, drawn by the intimate atmosphere and enjoying a good time. The Grotto wasn't just for entertainers, though. Politicians, athletes, and yes, even mobsters rubbed shoulders at its red booths, creating a unique Miami cocktail of glitz and grit. Ted's Grotto's reign as Miami's hottest spot didn't last forever. By the late 1960s, the city's nightlife scene had shifted, and the Grotto began to lose its luster. The restaurant closed its doors in the early 1970s, leaving a legacy of good food, music, and even better memories.

Mae Coughlin and Sonny injected Ted's Grotto with a much-needed dose of glamour. The restaurant expanded, the soup and sandwich menu got much fancier (Oysters Rockefeller, Lobster Thermidor, Tournedos Rossini, Steak Diane, Baked Alaska, and Crêpes Suzette), and the clientele shifted towards celebrities and socialites. 

On August 7, 1965, Albert Francis Capone was nabbed by the police for a petty crime. A store clerk from the Kwik Chek market in North Miami Beach caught him pocketing two bottles of aspirin and some batteries worth $3.50 ($30.60 today). from the Kwik Chek market in North Miami Beach. "Everybody has a little larceny in them," Sonny quipped upon his arrest. He pleaded no contest to the charge of shoplifting and was sentenced to two years' probation. 

When he went before a judge, he got two years of probation but shrugged off his crime by saying to the judge that “everybody has a little larceny in them.”

Following his arrest, he changed his name to Albert Francis Brown in 1966. According to his lawyer, Sonny Capone did so because he was “just sick and tired of fighting the name.”

On July 8, 2004, Albert Francis Capone died in the tiny California town of Auburn Lake Trails. His wife, America “Amie” Francis, told a reporter that Albert Francis Capone was much more than his family name.

“Al Capone has been dead a long time,” she said. “His son had nothing to do with him. Let him rest in peace, for crying out loud. He suffered enough in his life for being who he was.”

After changing his name, Albert Francis Capone, aka Sonny Capone, aka Albert Francis Brown, lived a quiet, law-abiding life. He married three times and is survived by numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Al Capone's Police Photo from New York City, December 26, 1925. The real story.

Twenty-six-year-old Al Capone's primary reason for being in New York was to bring his son, Albert "Sonny" Capone, to a specialist for a critical medical procedure. Sonny was suffering from a mastoid infection that threatened his life. The operation, thankfully, was successful and saved Sonny's life, although it left him partially deaf.

While Sonny was recovering, Capone took the opportunity to socialize and visit old haunts. He ended up at the Adonis Social Club in Brooklyn, a speakeasy with ties to his former boss, Frankie Yale. During the early hours of December 26, a violent altercation broke out involving the infamous Irish mobster Richard "Pegleg" Lonergan. Lonergan was shot and killed, along with two of his associates, in what some believe was a planned hit orchestrated by Yale and potentially carried out with Capone's involvement.

Following the Adonis Social Club incident, Capone was briefly detained by the New York Police Department. This was likely due to his proximity to the crime scene and his high-profile status. While in police custody, he was photographed as part of a lineup procedure, a standard practice for identifying suspects.

It's important to note that the exact details of the Adonis Social Club incident and Capone's role in it remain shrouded in some mystery. He was never officially charged with Lonergan's murder, but the incident undoubtedly added to his notoriety and cemented his image as a ruthless and powerful mob boss.

Copyright © 2024 Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

Al Capone, a big fan of jazz music, gave many now-famous jazz musicians their start in Chicago.

Louis Armstrong

Al Capone supported jazz musicians. Capone was a big fan of jazz music, and he helped to promote and support Negro jazz musicians in Chicago. 

During the Prohibition Era (1920-1933), alcohol was banned in the United States. It's claimed that Al Capone owned, in whole or part, a few hundred speakeasies in Chicago. His love for live jazz music played in speakeasies to attract more patrons. The performances saved jazz musicians from poverty and provided musicians with a steady income and stable living conditions, helping them focus on their music and promoting the development of jazz music. This also explained why the Jazz Age overlapped with the Prohibition Era.

Between 1923 and World War II, Chicago was the jazz capital of the world thanks to the Great Migration, which brought thousands of Negroes from the Deep South to Chicago's South Side. More than 70 nightclubs, ballrooms, and theatre halls lined the Douglas Community's Bronzeville Neighborhood streets, particularly along a stretch of State Street known as "The Stroll" from 31st to 39th Streets.

The Sunset Café, 315 East 35th Street, Chicago, Illinois.

Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Earl Hines, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band, and Nat King Cole all came of age in clubs owned and controlled by Al Capone. Sadly, "The Stroll" was demolished after World War II.

sidebar

The Sunset Café is highly recognized in the earliest forms of U.S. jazz history.

The Sunset Café held significant value to the infamous Al Capone. Joe Glaser's mother was the original owner of the building until her passing. She leased the building to Edward Fox and Sam Rifas, who were direct employees of Al Capone. After Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser left for New York, Edward Fox became the sole manager of the Café and the band under the leadership of Earl Hines. Since the Café was located within the Chicago Outfit properties, that connection allowed the Sunset Café to remain open during the Great Depression, unlike many other jazz clubs.

sidebar

Joe E. Lewis, comedian, actor and singer, was attacked by Al Capone lieutenant, "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn's men in 1927 after he refused to take his act to the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, 4802 North Broadway, which Capone partly owned.

Lewis was assaulted in his 10th-floor Commonwealth Hotel room, on November 8, 1927, by three enforcers sent by McGurn. The enforcers, including Sam Giancana and Leonard "Needles" Gianola, mutilated Lewis by cutting his throat and tongue and leaving him for dead. Capone was fond of Lewis and was upset with the assault but would not take action against one of his top lieutenants. Instead, he provided Lewis with $10,000 ($175,000 today) to aid his recovery and eventually resumed his career.

Later renamed the Grand Terrace Café when Al Capone bought a 25% stake, this "black-and-tan" (integrated) jazz club was one of the most essential venues in music history. It's where Earl "Fatha" Hines and Louis Armstrong made a name for themselves playing duets in the mid-20s. A few years later, it's where Cab Calloway and Nat King Cole landed some of their first professional gigs alongside legends like Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, and even Benny Goodman.

When the Grand Terrace Café opened in place of the Sunset Café, pianist Earl Hines took up the mantle of bandleader. Ed Fox managed both Hines and the club. During Hines' time at the Grand Terrace, the band was broadcast nationally every weekend for an hour on WMAQ and another hour on WNEP. 

The Grand Terrace Café closed in 1940, and the building served as the district office of Congressman William L. Dawson for many years. Glaser sold the building to Meyers' father, Henry, in 1962, who then opened Meyers Ace Hardware.

Capone's support helped to make jazz music a mainstream art form.

A Chicago branch of New York City's Cotton Club was run by Al's brother Ralph "Bottles" Capone.

As a result of Capone's support, jazz music flourished during the Prohibition era, making jazz music a mainstream art form.

It is important to note that Capone's support of jazz musicians was not entirely altruistic. He saw jazz music as a way to make money and gain influence. However, his support positively impacted the development of jazz music, and he is credited with helping to make it one of the world's most popular genres of music.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

sidebar

June 28, 2023, 10:12 AM CT.

Thank you, Neil, for unequivocally portraying Al Capone the way he was. It is an excellent article. There was a reason that my family was so good to the opposition.

Your Friend,                                             

Deirdre Marie Capone 

Mobster, Johnny Torrio, and the Handshake Murder.

In the nineteen twenties, Johnny Torrio was one of the top Chicago gangsters. He was prominent in the underworld but small in size at only five feet six inches tall. 

Chicago racketeer James "Big Jim" Colosimo brings his nephew Johnny Torrio to Chicago in 1910 from New York. Big Jim owned several houses of prostitution but did not favor working with illegal liquor. 

With the advent of prohibition, Torrio decided that the illicit liquor traffic would be more profitable than Colosimo's brothels. 

Colosimo was shot dead on May 11, 1920. No one was ever convicted of the murder.

With Colosimo out of the way, Johnny Torrio was the leading mobster controlling Chicago's South Side and the Loop.

Torrio now needed a loyal friend. He had already imported Al Capone from New York around 1920 to help him run Colosimo's "businesses." He let Capone start working as a bouncer in one of the brothels and soon found that Capone was ready for bigger and more important things. He then promoted Capone to be his right-hand man.

All the Chicago gangsters were busy trying to invade each other's territories.

Charles Dean O'Banion (1892-1924), the florist and his wife, Viola Kaniff. The leader of the North Side gang was the victim of the Handshake murder.

Charles "Dean" O'Banion graduated from the violent newspaper wars of early 20th century Chicago to become the chief bootlegging rival of mobsters Al Capone and Johnny Torrio, who ran the South Side. Dean was the North Side boss. 

O'Banion told Torrio he was buying a ranch in Colorado and settling down to live the rest of his life peacefully. He said he would sell his brewery, Chicago's finest, to Torrio.

When Torrio went to the brewery to inspect his purchase, the police raided the establishment. Torrio knew that O'Banion had set him up. After Torrio had served the short jail term for operating a brewery, he decided that O'Banion should die for double-crossing him and ordered the hit.

Dean was in his North Side flower shop, a front for his Mob activities, when a Torrio associate from New York, Frankie Yale, visited, hand outstretched in friendship. With him were two known gunmen from the Genna organization. A few minutes later, O'Banion was dead from six gunshot wounds in his flower shop. This murder was nicknamed the "handshake murder." No one was pinned with the murder, but the police suspected that the hit was ordered by Torrio.

Johnny "Papa Johnny" Torrio, 1939

With O'Banion dead, Torrio figured he ought to get out of the way of O'Banion's men. He and his Anna Theodosia Jacobs Torrio returned to Italy for three years and then moved to New York, where he became involved in criminal activities again. He spent two and a half years in prison for income tax evasion, being paroled in 1941. Torrio died in 1957, leaving a legacy of one of Illinois' top 1920s gangsters. 

Dean's funeral was the biggest anyone could remember, and among those attending were Al Capone and the South Side Gang members. But there soon would be other funerals. Charles Dean O'Banion is buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Chicago.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Truth About Al Capone's Soup Kitchen at 935 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois.

---

In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

---

Chicago shivered through a particularly bleak October in 1930. As the U.S. economy plummeted into the Great Depression, thousands of Chicago's jobless huddled thrice daily in a long line snaking away from a newly opened soup kitchen. With cold hands stuffed into overcoat pockets as empty as their stomachs, the needy shuffled toward the big banner that declared "Free Soup Coffee & Doughnuts for the Unemployed."

Original caption: "Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone."

The kind-hearted philanthropist who had come to their aid was "Public Enemy Number One," Al Capone.

Capone certainly made for an unlikely humanitarian. Chicago's most notorious gangster had built his multi-million-dollar bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling operation upon a foundation of extortion, bribes, and murders.

It culminated with the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the murder of seven Irish members and associates of Chicago's "North Side Gang." The men were gathered at a Chicago Lincoln Park garage on the morning of February 14, 1929. They were lined up against a wall and shot by four unknown assailants, two dressed as police officers. The incident resulted from the struggle to control organized crime in the city during Prohibition between the Irish North Side Gang, headed by George "Bugs" Moran, and their Italian Chicago Outfit rivals led by Al Capone. The triggermen have never been conclusively identified, but former members of the Egan's Rats gang working for Capone are suspected of a role, as are members of the Chicago Police Department who allegedly wanted revenge for killing a police officer's son.

Many Chicagoans, however, had more pressing concerns than organized crime in the year following the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Long lines on American sidewalks had become all-too-familiar sights as jittery investors made runs on banks and the unemployed waited for free meals.

Capone's Soup Kitchen at 935 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois.

In early November 1930, more than 75,000 jobless Chicagoans lined up to register their names. Nearly a third required immediate relief. "The Madison Street hobo type was conspicuously absent from these lines of men," reported the Chicago Tribune, which noted that many of the unemployed were well-dressed.

A week later, the Chicago Tribune reported that the mysterious benefactor who had recently rented out a storefront and opened a soup kitchen at 935 South State Street was the city's king of booze, beer, and vice. Capone's soup kitchen served breakfast, lunch, and dinner to an average of 2,200 Chicagoans daily (The NY Times reported the Soup kitchen fed 3,000 daily).

In the soup kitchen, smiling women in white aprons served coffee and sweet rolls for breakfast, soup and bread for lunch, and soup, coffee, and bread for dinner. No second helpings were denied, no questions were asked, and no one was asked to prove their need. 

You had to eat your meal there. A few exceptions were made, where food could be taken home if the unemployed man had a family to feed.

Interior of Al Capone's Soup Kitchen at 935 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois.

On Thanksgiving in 1930, Capone's soup kitchen served holiday helpings to 5,000 Chicagoans. Reportedly, Capone had planned a traditional Thanksgiving meal for the jobless until he had heard of a local heist of 1,000 turkeys. Although "Scarface" had not been responsible for the theft, he feared he would be blamed for the caper and made a last-minute menu change from turkey and cranberry sauce to beef stew.

The soup kitchen added to Capone's Robin Hood reputation with a segment of Americans who saw him as a hero for the common man. They pointed to the newspaper reports of his handouts to widows and orphans. When the government deprived them of beer and alcohol during Prohibition, Capone delivered it to them. The crime boss gave them food when the government failed to feed them in their desperate days. Hunger trumped principles for anyone who felt conflicted about taking charity from a gangster. The Bismarck Tribune noted, "A hungry man is just as glad to get soup and coffee from Al Capone as from anyone else."

Interior of Al Capone's Soup Kitchen at 935 South State Street, Chicago, Illinois.

In Harper's Magazine, Mary Borden called Capone "an ambidextrous giant who kills with one hand and feeds with the other." She noted the irony that the line of jobless waiting for a handout from Chicago's most-wanted man often stretched past the door of the city's police headquarters, which held the evidence of the violent crimes carried out at Capone's behest.

Every day, the soup kitchen served 350 loaves of bread, 100 dozen rolls, 50 pounds of sugar, and 30 pounds of coffee, costing about $300 a day ($5,175 today). It was a sum that Capone could easily afford since, on the same day that news of his soup kitchen broke, Capone's bookkeeper Fred Ries testified in court that the profits from Capone's most lucrative gambling houses cleared $25,000 a month.

One night, Lou Barelli, a former gangster and enemy of Capone's syndicate, walked into the soup kitchen, unaware of the owner. A gang member saw Barelli and decided to make a special bowl of soup for him. It's unknown what was done to make a poisonous spoon, but shortly after leaving the soup kitchen, Lou Barelli died; an autopsy revealed he’d been poisoned.

A spoon from Al Capone's Soup Kitchen that makes any edible

food item it touches poisonous. The person gets increasingly

sicker over several hours, then... lights out!

The press never spotted Capone in the soup kitchen, newspapers ate up the soup kitchen story. Some such as the Daily Independent of Murphysboro, Illinois, expressed displeasure at the adulation bestowed upon its operator. “If anything were needed to make the farce of Gangland complete, it is the Al Capone soup kitchen,” it editorialized. “It would be rather terrifying to see Capone run for mayor of Chicago. We are afraid he would get a tremendous vote. It is even conceivable that he might be elected after a few more stunts like his soup kitchens.”

Although he was one of the wealthiest men in America, Capone may not have paid a dime for the soup kitchen, relying instead on his criminal tendencies to stockpile his charitable endeavor by extorting and bribing businesses to donate goods. 

During the 1932 trial of Capone ally State Senator Daniel Serritella, claims ducks donated by a chain grocery store for Serritella's holiday drive ended up being served in Capone's soup kitchen.

sidebar 

The original soup kitchen idea really had nothing to do with Capone. The idea was originally thought up by Daniel Serritella who later suggested it to Capone. On November 2, 1930, there was a gathering in Nick Circella's apartment in Berwyn. Capone had been hiding there often during of the investigation into the murders of reporter Jake Lingle, Jack Zuta and Joe Aiello. 

Capone, Circella, and Read were discussing the general elections coming up on November 4th. Capone had deals going with candidates on both parties. Dan Serritella had just arrived at the apartment. Capone turned to Dan and said "By the way, Dan, I don't want that woman beaten badly in the First Ward. Keep your eye on that!" Capone winked at Read. "That's insurance! I told the top men she'd lead the Republicans in the First Ward and so she'd better." He turned again towards Dan. "What about that spot on State Street?" He asked. "It's going to take about a C note ($100) a day to run, any way we figure it.' said Serritella. "That's okay!" said Capone "I don't want to be cheap about it."

"Opening a new place?" Harry Read asked. "Sure! Now I got a soup kitchen!" exclaimed Capone. "A soup kitchen?" echoed Read in astonishment.

"That's right!" affirmed Capone. "There are so many people hungry in the First Ward because of the depression that Dan asked me to back a free handout joint. He's got more starving people down there than he can handle—all the bums that land in Chicago go to the First Ward. That makes it tough for the people who live there and so we figured if we could feed the drifters it would lighten the load for the regular charity rackets."

Read being the city editor told Capone that it would make a great story! Capone frowned and immediately retorted "Nothing doing! Nix on that! No story! I'd only be panned for doing it!" Serritella departed.

Capone was confident that Dan Serritella his protege, would have no difficulty getting elected State Senator from the First District. The fix was in. Dan Serritella became State Senator just as Capone had predicted. He had been City Sealer [1] for the William Hale Thompson administration.

Irregularities during his City Sealer days were later coming back to bite him. By this time, Capone was carted off to prison for hs income tax evasion. Serritella and his one time Deputy City Sealer (Harry Hochstein) were convicted of fixing the weight of food through grocers. Meaning that the public was short changed whenever they bought anything by weight. This resulted in a monopoly of millions of dollars received through bribes, extortion and defrauding the public. These are the same charges that were brought fourth against Hochstein and Serritella.

Just before Christmas 1930, several trucks from major food store chains pulled up to a warehouse on the Southside of Chicago. Serritella had presented these stores a list of provisions they were to "Donate" to the cause. In exchange, Serritella would have their short change the public charges dismissed.

Deputy City Inspector Herman Levin that Serritella's secretary had directed him to go to 3022 South Wells (Santa Lucia Church) to direct the packing of Christmas baskets for the needy. December 23, 1930, during the whole day, trucks upon trucks arrived leaving goods to be used for the Christmas basket preparations.

A south side market chain brought chickens and ducks. The National Tea company truck brought a 1000 cans of corn, tea, half pound bags of sugar, and candy. A Novak truck brought a couple of barrel of hams. The General Markets truck brought a couple of barrels of raw hams. Twenty to thirty men who were precinct captains in Serritella's ward were there packing the xmas baskets. Al Tallinger, who was Dan Serritella's secretary had given the strict order to take the ducks that were delivered and hand them over to Capone bodyguard Phil D'Andrea. The ducks, instead of being used for Christmas baskets, would be diverted to the soup kitchen at 935 South State street.

Once the word was out the crowds multiplied. Once Capone's name was tied to it the authorities were mortified. While whether or not partly a ploy for public sympathy by Capone just before went to trial, the soup kitchens he opened were still very appreciated by the hungry jobless men in photo who visited daily. In a sense ploy or not, Al did more than the government ever did at that time for the needy.  It did personally cost Capone about a c-note ($100) per day to operate. This was beside the "Donated" food.  Newspaperman Harry Read stated that he was in Nick Circella's Berwyn apartment with Capone and Serritella when the soup kitchen was planned.

In the end, the reality was the soup kitchen had been primarily state senator Daniel Serritella's idea, and not Al Capone's at all! Serritella ran with the venture in order to garner votes from his constituents for Mayor William Hale Thompson's re-election bid. Once he saw that Thompson's chances were fading the soup kitchen was promptly closed!

In May 1932, Daniel Serritella and Harry Hochstein were given each a year in jail and a $2,000 fine for their grocers extortion role. Daniel had been a well known friend of Al Capone and Harry Hochstein himself had even gone to see the gang chief off  to prison at the Dearborn train station.

On April 10, 1931, the soup kitchen closed. The reasons mentioned were that the economy had picked up, and new jobs were on the market, making the hungry line not so abundant.

However, prison, not politics, would be in Capone's future. No good publicity could save Capone from the judgment of a jury that found him guilty of income tax evasion in November 1931. 

Upon hearing of Capone's death in 1947, only the poverty-stricken
remembered Al Capone's kindness.

INDEX TO MY ILLINOIS AND CHICAGO FOOD & RESTAURANT ARTICLES.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

---

[1] City Sealer. A city with a population of 25,000 people or more may have a city sealer. A sealer can certify commercially used weighing and measuring devices via the Department of Agriculture - Weights and Measures. A city sealer does device inspections for vehicles, railroads, retail motor fuel dispensers, and more. This job provided many opportunities to skim funds.