Episode 37: Gangs, Gangsters, and Gamblers

Irish Americans found themselves on all sides of the law in the late 19th and 20th centuries. A life of crime tempted some who lived hardscrabble lives in the Angle and the near West Side. The Triangle, McCart Street, and Cheyenne Gangs stopped at petty crime, though the Cheyennes were caught up in the newspaper circulation wars of the 1910s, culminating in the death of a former newspaper boy in 1914. Legendary characters such as Blackjack McGinty and Shimmy Patton grew up in the same milieu but made their livelihoods and reputations in bootlegging and gambling. A few decades later, Danny Greene embroiled himself in a civil war between mob factions in Cleveland and "lived by the bomb and died by the bomb."