Dark Histories

Depression-era New York was a tough time for a guy just looking to get by. The pressure of feeding a family, the lack of available work, the poor conditions suffered from much of the work that was available and at the end of the day, you couldn’t even relax with a drink or drown your sorrows in the bottom of a bottle. At least, not legally. Whilst laws attempted to stop people from drinking alcohol, the culture of the speakeasy ripped through the underground. It was a place where one could relax and unwind, listen to some live music, play some cards, or set up an insurance fraud with a few of the friendly locals. It was the latter that took place in a small dive in The Bronx over several months in 1933 that would highlight how desperate the times could really be. It would also prove to be one of the most catastrophic displays of disorganised crime that the 19th-century newspapers would ever write about in what was dubbed as New York’s “most fantastic” murder. SOURCES   Read, Simon (2005) On The House: The