[lbo-talk] Low Life

Max Sawicky sawicky at verizon.net
Mon Oct 24 09:28:53 PDT 2011



>From my book of the moment, this is too good not pass on. Much more like
this in "Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York", by Luc Sante. Sante was a consultant for the movie, "Gangs of New York," which I liked a lot.

"One gang was remarkable for its intransigence and for the respect its determination inspired in other outfits. This was a nameless band of contract workers led by Humpty Jackson from a graveyard on the block between Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets, between First and Second Avenues, and it succeeded in remaining independent and relatively unmolested for several decades. Jackson was a hunchback who always carried three guns: one in his pocket, one on his back below his hump, and a third concealed in the crown of his hat. He was also something of an intellectual, an autodidact who always kept a book in his other pocket, was said to have mastered Latin and Greek, and was often seen reading Voltaire, Spencer, Darwin, and Huxley--a syllabus that bears a suggestive similarity to the reading matter favored by the 'direct action' anarchists prominent in France around the same time. Jackson was arrested over a hundred times and served at least twenty stints in jail, but always for minor infractions. He kept a peace of unrecorded specifications with the larger gangs, although three overzealous Eastmans, led by a former shoplifter called Crazy Butch, once attempted to hijack him, and failed. His associates included N-word Ruhl, the Lobster Kid, the Grabber, and Spanish Louie. The latter, also known as Indian Louie, was a theatrical figure given to mysteriously hinting at Mexican and Apache origins and alluding to his adventures in the Indian Wars. He always carried a brace of Colt revolvers as well as two eight-inch dirks, and dressed in an outfit of solid black topped off by a large black sombrero, in which getup he was often to be seen strutting with no fewer than three whores on his arm. After he was killed, he was discovered to have had no police record, and to have amassed a nest egg consisting of $170 in his pocket, $700 in his shoe, and $3,000 in the Bowery Savings Bank. His body was claimed by his father, who turned out to be Jewish and from Brooklyn."



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