Eamon Loingsigh's Blog, page 10

Sixto Stabile – Auld Irishtown

Sixto Stabile – Character in the Auld Irishtown trilogy
[image error]

Sixto Stabile was raised in South Brooklyn, educated at Harvard.

“They shooed the whore away an’ tied me to the bed. Then this Ivy League dago comes in, duded up like he’s some gaudy business man with a pinky ring. But you can’t put a blond wig on a guerrilla and convince me her name’s Mary.”

~Vincent Maher

Sixto Stabile (b. 1893), also known as the Young Turk, is a self-assured, sardonic and overly polite South Brooklyn Italian who graduated from Harvard University. Sixto’s Italian father paid for his schooling via a bawdyhouse (brothel) he owns, the Adonis Social Club on 20th street & 4th avenue, protected by Frankie Yale and the Black Hand. In 1916, Yale’s man Il Maschio was murdered by the Irish White Hand. For safety reasons, Yale agreed to send young Al Capone to Chicago. Still angry that Red Hook is populated with Italians, yet the dock winnings are collected by the Irish, Yale decided to temporarily emphasize friendlier relations with the powerful White Hand gang’s Dinny Meehan. Highly educated Sixto was a perfect fit to smooth things out. Working with the ILA’s Thos Carmody, Sixto helped put together a brilliant three-way peace deal, which gave the Italians the southern terminal of Red Hook in exchange for the murder of Wild Bill Lovett, while both the White and Black Hand longshoremen unionized.




Light of the Diddicoy 
Does not appear

Exile on Bridge Street
With the assistance of Jonathan G. Wolcott‘s NY Dock Co, and headquartering his new gang in Red Hook, Lovett seceded from the White Hand in 1917. Dinny Meehan was backed into a corner, so Sixto sprung into action. At the Adonis, Sixto and Carmody kidnapped White Hand enforcer Vincent Maher and gave him peace terms that would break Lovett’s stronghold in Red Hook and kill Wolcott’s strategist and muscle, Silverman. The plan succeeded. Even though Lovett survived, he was sent to the Great War in a plea deal after murdering a Black Hand assassin. In 1919, after Maher is jailed, Sixto and Yale visit him and offer him a job in Chicago, warning him that Meehan plans on setting him up for the robbery of the Hanan & Son shoe factory, just as he’d set up Pickles Leighton, Non Connors, and even Lovett before him.

Sadie Meehan – Auld Irishtown

Sadie Meehan – Character in the Auld Irishtown trilogy

[image error]

Sadie Meehan must choose between her husband, and her son (art by Sebastian MacLaughlin)

“Sadie looks up into my eyes and smiles. She wipes a tear away and hugs me. And so does L’il Dinny, hugging me by the leg. She whispers to me, ‘Now you need to start makin’ a plan for yourself an’ your family, to escape Brooklyn.’”

~Liam Garrity

Sadie Meehan (née Leighton, b. 1891) faces a terrible decision: Staying with her gang leader husband, or leaving him in order to keep her son safe. Sadie was raised in the terrible poverty of East London. In 1910, her cousins Darby and Pickles Leighton paid her passage to Brooklyn, New York where she again lived in desperate conditions. She was courted by both Dinny Meehan and Harry Reynolds of the White Hand gang, but when Meehan was arrested for the murder of Christie Maroney, Reynolds came to her the night before the trial. Her cousin Pickles was then convicted, while Meehan, McGowan, and Vincent Maher were exonerated. Feeling closer to Meehan and seeing that he could best pull her out of poverty (Meehan also promised to get her cousin out of prison), she shunned Reynolds. Sadie cared for three orphans that Dinny brought home and helped groom them as productive gang members. Within months of Meehan’s release, she gave birth to a son, Li’l Dinny.

Light of the Diddicoy
Sadie takes in the homeless immigrant teenager Liam Garrity.

Exile on Bridge Street
Sadie gives Garrity a haircut, flowers and advice on courting women when Dinny attempts to betroth him to Anna Lonergan. She is startled when her cousin Darby sneaks up on her and L’il Dinny, who shames her for marrying the man who banished him and set up Pickles for the murder of Maroney, then offers her a cryptic warning. When Darby and Anna throw rocks through Sadie’s window while Dinny is in jail, she goes to Garrity, but Reynolds says he “can’t talk to Sadie.” Garrity then pays for her and L’il Dinny to stay in a hotel on Long Island. Scared to go back to Brooklyn and the coming gang war, she plans on keeping her son far away.

Sadie Leighton – Auld Irishtown

Sadie Leighton – Character in the Auld Irishtown trilogy

[image error]

Sadie Meehan must choose between her husband, and her son (art by Sebastian MacLaughlin)

“Sadie looks up into my eyes and smiles. She wipes a tear away and hugs me. And so does L’il Dinny, hugging me by the leg. She whispers to me, ‘Now you need to start makin’ a plan for yourself an’ your family, to escape Brooklyn.’”

~Liam Garrity


Sadie Meehan (née Leighton, b. 1891) faces a terrible decision: Staying with her gang leader husband, or leaving him in order to keep her son safe. Sadie was raised in the terrible poverty of East London. In 1910, her cousins Darby and Pickles Leighton paid her passage to Brooklyn, New York where she again lived in desperate conditions. She was courted by both Dinny Meehan and Harry Reynolds of the White Hand gang, but when Meehan was arrested for the murder of Christie Maroney, Reynolds came to her the night before the trial. Her cousin Pickles was then convicted, while Meehan, McGowan, and Vincent Maher were exonerated. Feeling closer to Meehan and seeing that he could best pull her out of poverty (Meehan also promised to get her cousin out of prison), she shunned Reynolds. Sadie cared for three orphans that Dinny brought home and helped groom them as productive gang members. Within months of Meehan’s release, she gave birth to a son, Li’l Dinny.




Light of the Diddicoy
Sadie takes in the homeless immigrant teenager Liam Garrity.

Exile on Bridge Street
Sadie gives Garrity a haircut, flowers and advice on courting women when Dinny attempts to betroth him to Anna Lonergan. She is startled when her cousin Darby sneaks up on her and L’il Dinny, who shames her for marrying the man who banished him and set up Pickles for the murder of Maroney, then offers her a cryptic warning. When Darby and Anna throw rocks through Sadie’s window while Dinny is in jail, she goes to Garrity, but Reynolds says he “can’t talk to Sadie.” Garrity then pays for her and L’il Dinny to stay in a hotel on Long Island. Scared to go back to Brooklyn and the coming gang war, she plans on keeping her son far away.

Darby Leighton – Auld Irishtown

Darby Leighton – Character in the Auld Irishtown trilogy.

[image error]

Exiled, Darby Leighton lives with the shadows (art by Sebastian MacLaughlin)

“Knowing things is what I’m known for, and I’m the guy waiting in the long shadows to use them against you.”

~Darby Leighton

Darby Leighton – (b. 1890) is a man of the shadows. Sickly and with calm, dead eyes, he has the look of a lost soldier as he’s been banished from the White Hand gang. He has never been able to decide his own fate, but now is married, has a daughter and is ready to emerge. Having been abandoned as children in 1900, Darby and his brother Pickles Leighton lived under a rotted pier in Brooklyn until joining an early version of the White Hand gang. When a young Dinny Meehan appeared, they became profitable. Darby was the one who saved money to bring his cousin Sadie Meehan (nee Leighton) to Brooklyn. Darby looked up to Meehan, but was made to follow his brother Pickles in joining Wild Bill Lovett’s upstart Jay Street gang one block over. When Pickles was convicted of murdering Christie Maroney, Meehan’s enforcer The Swede beat Darby to “death’s door” and “eightysixt” him to the shadows. Having lived under cover for so long, he’s learned to spy on the gang and has worked in the background to gather valuable information against it.

Light of the Diddicoy

In 1915 Darby is seen running from The Swede again on the streets of Irishtown. Later, a gang member who openly questioned Darby’s exile was murdered.

Exile on Bridge Street

From the shadows, Darby snuck up on Sadie and son, L’il Dinny. Feeling she’d left him to rot while marrying the man who banished him, he gave her a cryptic warning, “One day Bill Lovett’s gonna kill ya husband, and I’m gonna know about it ahead o’ time.” But in 1917, Lovett’s revolt against Meehan failed, leaving Darby deeper in the shadows than before. In 1919, Lovett reappeared, seemingly from the dead, and gave him his .45, telling Darby to get it to Richie Lonergan in order to kill Meehan’s cousin, Mickey Kane. With Lovett returned, Darby hopes to overthrow Meehan and become a dockboss to support his young family.

Pickles Leighton – Auld Irishtown

Pickles Leighton – Character in the Auld Irishtown trilogy

[image error]

Pickles Leighton won the War for the Inside and could provide many paroled soldiers to Lovett in the blood feud against Meehan.

 

“It’s all about the Leighton brothers. As long as Pickles sits in Sing Sing and Darby’s eighty-sixt, Lovett’ll never get wit’ us. Even after givin’ it to McGowen like they did.”

~The Swede

 

Pickles Leighton (b. 1889), also known as King of the Inside, is a murderer and prisoner in Sing Sing. He does not appear in the books, but is often spoken of. In 1900, he and his brother Darby Leighton were abandoned. By 1908, Pickles clashed with Dinny Meehan and joined upstart Wild Bill Lovett’s Jay Street gang. In a show of solidarity, Lovett allowed Pickles to go with Meehan to murder Christie Maroney in 1912. But Pickles was the only one convicted. Meehan grew concerned over controlling the inside of Sing Sing and the many convicts that could support an uprising against him, so he had his righthand McGowan plea guilty to a small charge in order to kill Pickles in Sing Sing. In the War for the Inside, many battles occurred that maimed Pickles, including losing an eye, but in the end Lovett paid a screw (prison guard) to beat McGowan to death. Now that Lovett has returned from the Great War alive, Pickles’ release could provide him a great many paroled soldiers in the gang war against Meehan and the White Hand.

Light of the Diddicoy

When Vincent Maher meets Liam Garrity in 1915, he brings him to McGowan’s Wake. Drunkard Mick Gilligan blurts that if no one has proven Lovett and Pickles are responsible for the murder of McGowan, then why is Darby Leighton banished to the shadows?

Exile on Bridge Street

In 1917, Dinny Meehan is shot and wounded by two recent parolees from Sing Sing.  The Gas Drip Bard tells the story of the sensational trial for the murder of Christie Maroney where Pickles was incorrectly named the leader of the White Hand gang. In 1919, Italian Blackhander Frankie Yale tells a jailed Maher that he is the next man Meehan is planning to set up, just like what happened to Pickles.

 

 

Vincent Maher – Auld Irishtown

Vincent Maher – Character in the Auld Irishtown trilogy

[image error]

Vincent Maher has a sexual intelligence. (art by Sebastian MacLaughlin)

“Vincent Maher has no moral issue in both separating virginity from a young female with his blood-filled cock as he does removing the life from a male with his snub-nosed, single action revolver.”

~Liam Garrity

 

Vincent Maher (b. 1894), also known as Masher (obsolete word for a ladies man) is a chatty charmer with a crude, sexual intelligence and enforcer for White Hand Gang leader Dinny Meehan. Always carrying his snub-nosed .38 in his belt, Vincent splits his time between the violent underworld and Italian bawdyhouse, The Adonis Social Club. He is best known for having a very large penis and when he was questioned for hurting a whore, he pulled down his pants and said simply, “she asked me to go to the hilt.” With his connection to South Brooklyn Italians and union recruiter Thos Carmody, he helped foster a deal between the White Hand, the Black Hand and the ILA. Vincent was the second orphan Dinny and Sadie Meehan cared for and was successfully groomed to be an enforcer. In 1912, he was arrested along with Meehan, McGowan and Pickles Leighton for murdering the King of Irishtown Christie Maroney.

Light of the Diddicoy

In 1915, Vincent found homeless immigrant Liam Garrity and brought him to McGowan’s Wake to meet Dinny Meehan. When the gang was under attack from many enemies, Vincent and Richie Lonergan struck first in a wave of attacks by killing Mick Gilligan, who was made an example to those who consider breaking the Code of Silence during the Donnybrook in Red Hook.

Exile on Bridge Street

In 1917, with the White Hand gang again facing extinction, Vincent played a role in bringing three former enemies together against Wild Bill Lovett and the New York Dock Company. Afterward, He again struck the first blow when he and the ILA’s Thos Carmody worked together in murdering Jonathan G. Wolcott‘s strategist and muscle, Silverman. Vincent is currently in jail with Meehan, The Swede and Lumpy Gilchrist for robbing a shoe factory, and has been fielding rogue, yet tempting offers from the Black Hand to undermine Meehan.

 

Mary Lonergan – Auld Irishtown

Mary Lonergan – Character in the Auld Irishtown trilogy
[image error]

Mournful Mother Mary. The scar on the left side of her face is from her husband drunkenly throwing hot grease at her. 

“That biddy ol’ flab. She comes here all the time askin’ for favors. She wants her eldest son to open a bike shop, but of course she don’t have the money for it. So she wants Dinny’s help.”

~Vincent Maher

 

Mary Lonergan (b. 1876), also known as Mother Mary, is a tragic, abused and defeated Irish mother of fifteen. Known for a facial disfigurement from when she was scalded by her husband who threw hot grease at her, she is an Irishtown curiosity. Mary is religious, impulsive, comically boisterous, strongly opinionated and defensive of her many children, although her old-world superstitions actually led to the death of a son. She is the mother of White Hand gang member Richie “Pegleg” Lonergan and the nubile Anna Lonergan. Her dream is to be a business woman and leave the slums for a better neighborhood and schools so her children don’t depend on gangs when they grow up.

Light of the Diddicoy
In 1916, she showed up at the Dock Loaders’ Club demanding word with White Hand gang leader Dinny Meehan. A deal was struck that if her eldest son Richie worked for the gang, Meehan would pay rent for a Lonergan family bike shop that she would run.
Exile on Bridge Street
In 1917 her six year-old son Tiny Thomas died of an infection because she believed that if she took him to the hospital, they’d give him “the black box,” (poison him to give the bed to a Protestant). In 1918 a second child died of the Spanish Influenza. Wild Bill Lovett has also abused her since she wants her son Richie to stick with whoever is the current king of Irishtown, not an upstart. She consented to her eldest daughter Anna’s betrothal to Meehan follower Liam Garrity to ensure the Lonergan family connection to the gang, though Anna vehemently refused.

Garry Barry – Auld Irishtown

Garry Barry – Character in the Auld Irishtown trilogy

[image error]

A wraith, Garry Barry was left for dead. Yet he lives. (art by Sebastian MacLaughlin) 

“You see that guy over there? That’s Garry fookin’ Barry. Don’t ever trust’em. He’s a fookin’ psychopath, that one. Trouble, nothin’ but. If he comes up on ya, just play dumb.”
~Cinders Connolly

Garry Barry (b. 1888) In the year he came into being there was a great blizzard in New York. On duty in Irishtown, Patrolman William Brosnan found the baby in the wreckage of a fallen tenement. Twenty years later, Barry was beaten to death by the White Hand gang outside a saloon. Newspapers reported on the public trouncing and quoted doctors that he was expected to die of massive head injuries. In 1919, after another great snow storm, he again reappears, hiding out off Flatbush avenue. Barry was the former leader of the Red Onion gang that paid tribute to Christie Maroney. He is known for being indolent and unsound, believing he should be leader of the White Hand gang, even though he has but a single follower. When the White Hand took power after 1912, Dinny Meehan considered him for a dockboss position. But Barry obstinately challenged Meehan to a fist fight for leadership of the gang. Meehan then battered Barry, knocking him out within a minute and leaving him out of the gang’s inner circle.





Light of the Diddicoy
A fringe gang member, Barry was present at the Donnybrook in Red Hook, when the White Hand took back power on the docks of Brooklyn. 
Exile on Bridge Street
In 1916 Barry went to the Black Hand with an offer to assassinate Meehan, if they supported him being the new leader. Barry was seen by Liam Garrity in a saloon with a knife looking for an opportunity to murder Meehan on the night of Black Tom’s Explosion. In retaliation, Meehan sent Whitehanders after Barry and viciously beat him in front of an entire neighborhood, leaving him for dead. Refusing to go away, he now has grotesque facial scars where he was crudely sown up. In 1919, Barry was found by Patrolman Daniel Culkin and Amadeusz Wisniewski who, at the behest of Waterfront Assembly Director Jonathan G. Wolcott, gave Barry an envelope full of money to burn down Meehan’s home and take over the gang with their assistance.

Christie Maroney – Auld Irishtown

Christie Maroney – Character in the Auld Irishtown trilogy
[image error]

Christie Maroney prayed to the god of gold and power, but the White Hand gang found his blood to be red when they shot him in the streets of Irishtown.             (Art by Joseph Guillette)

 

“There was a murder in Brooklyn one time, where there often was before and I s’pose there will be again. Christie Maroney. . . It was said half his face was made o’ gold.”

~The Gas Drip Bard

Christie Maroney (1867-1912) also known as the Gold-Toothed Larrikin, was murdered before the books take place. He was the self-proclaimed “King of Irishtown” before Dinny Meehan. A barrel-chested, full-bellied man who wore a bowler’s cap three sizes too small for his head, he bedecked himself in gold, including his teeth. Maroney was murdered between the bridges in 1912 by the upstart White Hand gang who, along with other Brooklyn gangs, were paying him tribute. A “son of an exiled child,” Maroney bullied his way to the top of the underworld, then broke the insulated neighborhood’s Code of Silence and sold its secrets to outsiders. He was known to offer cash loans to young women looking for work, who soon found out they had to pay it back by having sex with merchant marines, libidinous drunks and even Italians. He was despised by the aging, original settlers of Irishtown who had survived the Great Hunger (Irish potato famine) who couldn’t believe one of their own would break their Irish traditions.

Light of the Diddicoy

Speaking with bartender Paddy Keenan, Irishtown Patrolman William Brosnan counts all the times he’s arrested White Hand gang leader Dinny Meehan, including in 1912 for the murder of the “yegg” Christie Maroney.

Exile on Bridge Street

When Liam Garrity is convinced to listen to Irishtown’s shanachie (Irish storyteller), The Gas Drip Bard, he hears for the first time about the sensational trial of Maroney’s murder that had all of Brooklyn on edge. Even the Marines were called in because riots were threatened if the young Whitehanders were convicted. But Meehan, McGowan and Vincent Maher were all exonerated, while only Pickles Leighton was convicted. The affects of Maroney’s murder is still haunting the gang.

Harry Reynolds – Auld Irishtown

Harry Reynolds – Character in the Auld Irishtown trilogy

[image error]

Secrets haunt Harry Reynolds 

“I just cry. So angry, I cry. Confused. Undeserved as I am. Shaking my head and covering my face on the floor and bleating and blubbering and acting the fool. Harry yanks me up by the coat.”

~Liam Garrity

Harry Reynolds (b. 1891) also known as The Shiv, is a hard pragmatist with a taciturn, brooding personality and is dockboss of the Atlantic Terminal for the White Hand gang. Harry is known as the smartest, most respected man under leader Dinny Meehan and inspires men to work hard even as he gives orders in a low, calm voice. When an immigrant longshoremen challenged him, he unemotionally punctured the man’s kidney with a shiv, then gave him directions to the local hospital. Harry was the first orphan that Dinny and Sadie Meehan had cared for and was groomed as Dinny’s future righthand. But something tragic and unspecified happened. When Liam Garrity asked questions about it to the talkative old-timer Beat McGarry, he was immediately told never to speak of it again. Harry looks remarkably similar to Meehan. They met in Elmira’s Reformatory as teens.




Light of the Diddicoy
Harry never hangs out in the Dock Loaders’ Club after getting his share of tribute money and does not even keep a righthand man. When Liam Garrity asks his advice concerning Meehan’s request to have him kill his own uncle, Harry hands him a knife. Harry fought in the Donnybrook in Red Hook, helping the gang win back power on the Brooklyn docks.
Exile on Bridge Street 
After Tommy Tuohey’s murder, Harry is tasked with training young Garrity, who moves in with him. Together they renovate a dilapidated room on Eighth Avenue in expectation of the teenager’s mother and sisters’ arriving from Ireland, teaching him about patience and being forthright. When Dinny Meehan is jailed and Sadie shows up asking for help after being harassed by Lovett followers, Harry tells Liam that he can’t speak with her. When Garrity asks why, Harry walks away.