Courts and Criminals

About a month afterward the defendant's counsel made a motion for a new trial on the ground that the convict now admitted his testimony to have been wholly false, and produced an affidavit from the assassin to that effect. Naturally so startling an allegation demanded investigation. Yes, insisted the "bravo," it was all made up, a "camorra"—not a word of truth in it, and he had invented the whole thing in order to get a vacation from State prison and a free ride to New York. However, the court denied the motion. The writer procured a new indictment against the assassin—this time for perjury—and he was sentenced to another additional term in prison. What induced this sudden and extraordinary change of mind on his part can only be surmised.

These two cases are extreme examples of the mediaevalism that to a considerable degree prevails in New York City, probably in Chicago and Boston, and wherever there is an excessive south Italian population.

The conditions under which a large number of Italians live in this country are favorable not only to the continuance of ignorance, but to the development of disease and crime. Naples is bad enough, no doubt. The people there are poverty-stricken and homeless. But in New York City they are worse than homeless. It is better far to sleep under the stars than in a stuffy room with ten or twelve other persons. Let the reader climb the stairs of some of the tenements in Elizabeth Street, or go through those in Union Street, Brooklyn, and he will get firsthand evidence. This is generally true of the lower class of Italians throughout the United States, whether in the city or country. They live under worse conditions than at home. You may go through the railroad camps and see twenty men sleeping together in a one-room built of lath, tar-paper, and clay. The writer knows of one Italian laborer in Massachusetts who slept in a floorless mud hovel about six feet square, with one hole to go in and out by and another in the roof for ventilation—in order to save $1.75 per month. All honor to him! Garibaldi was of just such stuff, only he suffered in a better cause. In Naples the young folks are out all day in the sun. Here they are indoors all the year round. For the consequences of this change see Dr. Peccorini's article in the 'Forum' for January, 1911, on the tuberculosis that soon develops among Italians who abroad were accustomed to live in the country but here are forced to exist in tenements.

Now, for historic reasons, these south Italians hate and distrust all governmental control and despise any appeal to the ordinary tribunals of justice to assert a right or to remedy a wrong. It has been justly said by a celebrated Italian writer that, in effect, there is some instinct for civil war in the heart of every Italian. The insufferable tyranny of the Bourbon dynasty made every outlaw dear to the hearts of the oppressed people of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Even if he robbed them, they felt that he was the lesser of two evils, and sheltered him from the authorities. Out of this feeling grew the "Omerta," which paralyzes the arm of justice both in Naples and Sicily. The late Marion Crawford thus summed up the Sicilian code of honor:

According to this code, a man who appeals to the law against his fellow man is not only a fool but a coward, and he who cannot take care of himself without the protection of the police is both.... It is reckoned as cowardly to betray an offender to justice, even though the offence be against one's self, as it would be not to avenge an injury by violence. It is regarded as dastardly and contemptible in a wounded man to betray the name of his assailant, because if he recovers he must naturally expect to take vengeance himself. A rhymed Sicilian proverb sums up this principle, the supposed speaker being one who has been stabbed. "If I live, I will kill thee," it says; "if I die, I forgive thee!"

Any one who has had anything to do with the administration of criminal justice in a city with a large Italian population must have found himself constantly hampered by precisely this same "Omerta." The south Italian feels obliged to conceal the name of the assassin and very likely his person, though he himself be but an accidental witness of the crime; and, while the writer knows of no instance in New York City where an innocent man has gone to prison himself rather than betray a criminal, Signor Cutera, formerly chief of police in Palermo, states that there have been many cases in Sicily where men have suffered long terms of penal servitude and even have died in prison rather than give information to the police.

In point of fact, however, the "Omerta" is not confined to Italians. It is a common attribute of all who are opposed to authority of any kind, including small boys and criminals, and with the latter arises no more from a half chivalrous loyalty to their fellows than it does from hatred of the police and a uniform desire to block their efforts (even if a personal adversary should go unpunished in consequence), fear that complaint made or assistance given to the authorities will result in vengeance being taken upon the complainant by some comrade or relative of the accused, distrust of the ability of the police to do anything anyway, disgust at the delay involved, and lastly, if not chiefly, the realization that as a witness in a court of justice the informer as a professional criminal would have little or no standing or credence, and in addition would, under cross-examination, be compelled to lay bare the secrets of his unsavory past, perhaps resulting indirectly in a term in prison for himself.16 Thus may be accounted for much of the supposed "romantic, if misguided, chivalry" of the south Italian. It is common both to him and to the Bowery tough. The writer knew personally a professional crook who was twice almost shot to pieces in Chatham Square, New York City, and who persistently declined, even on his dying bed, to give a hint of the identity of his assassins, announcing that if he got well he "would attend to that little matter himself." Much of the romance surrounding crime and criminals, on examination, "fades into the light of common day"—the obvious product not of idealism, but of well-calculated self-interest.

As illustrating the backwardness of our Italian fellow-citizens in coming forward when the criminality of one of their countrymen is at stake, the last three cases of kidnapping in New York City may be mentioned.

About a year and a half ago the little boy of Dr. Scimeca, of 2 Prince Street, New York, was taken from his home. From outside sources the police heard that the child had been stolen, but, although he was receiving constant letters and telephonic communications from the kidnappers, Dr. Scimeca would not give them any information. It is known on pretty good authority that the sum of $10,000 was at first demanded as a ransom, and was lowered by degrees to $5,000, $2,500, and finally to $1,700. Dr. Scimeca at last made terms with the kidnappers, and was told to go one evening to City Park, where he is said to have handed $1,700 to a stranger. The child was found wandering aimlessly in the streets next day, after a detention of nearly three months.

The second case was that of Vincenzo Sabello, a grocer of 386 Broome Street, who lost his little boy on August 26, 1911. After thirty days he reported the matter to the police, but shortly after tried to throw them off the track by saying that he had been mistaken, that the boy had not been kidnapped, and that he wished no assistance. Finally he ordered the detectives out of his place. About a month later the child was recovered, but not, according to reliable information, until Mr. Sabello had handed over $2,500.

Pending the recovery of the Sabello boy, a third child was stolen from the top floor of a house at 119 Elizabeth Street. The father, Leonardo Quartiano, reported the disappearance, and in answer to questions stated that he had received no letters or telephone messages. "Why should I?" he inquired, with uplifted hands and the most guileless demeanor. "I am poor! I am a humble fishmonger." In point of fact, Quartiano at the time had a pocketful of blackmail letters, and after four weeks paid a good ransom and got back his boy.

It is impossible to estimate correctly the number of Italian criminals in America or their influence upon our police statistics; but in several classes of crime the Italians furnish from fifteen to fifty per cent of those convicted. In murder, assault with intent to kill, blackmail, and extortion they head the list, as well as in certain other offences unnecessary to describe more fully but prevalent in Naples and the South.

Joseph Petrosino, the able and fearless officer of New York police who was murdered in Palermo while in the service of the country of his adoption, was, while he lived, our greatest guaranty of protection against the Italian criminal. But Petrosino is gone. The fear of him no longer will deter Italian ex-convicts from seeking asylum in the United States. He once told the writer that there were five thousand Italian ex-convicts in New York City alone, of whom he knew a large proportion by sight and name.17 Signor Ferrero, the noted historian, is reported to have stated, on his recent visit to America, that there were thirty thousand Italian criminals in New York City. Whatever their actual number, there are quite enough at all events.

By far the greater portion of these criminals, whether ex-convicts or novices, are the products or byproducts of the influence of the two great secret societies of southern Italy. These societies and the unorganized criminal propensity and atmosphere which they generate, are known as the "Mala Vita."

The Mafia, a purely Sicilian product, exerts a much more obvious influence in America than the Camorra, since the Mafia is powerful all over Sicily, while the Camorra is practically confined to the city of Naples and its environs. The Sicilians in America vastly outnumber the Neapolitans. Thus in New York City for every one Camorrist you will find seven or eight Mafiusi. But they are all essentially of a piece, and the artificial distinction between them in Italy disappears entirely in America.

Historically the Mafia burst from a soil fertilized by the blood of martyred patriots, and represented the revolt of the people against all forms of the tyrannous government of the Bourbons; but the fact remains that, whatever its origin, the Mafia to-day is a criminal organization, having, like the Camorra, for its ultimate object blackmail and extortion. Its lower ranks are recruited from the scum of Palermo, who, combining extraordinary physical courage with the lowest type of viciousness, generally live by the same means that supports the East Side "cadet" in New York City, and who end either in prison or on the dissecting-table, or gradually develop into real Mafiusi and perhaps gain some influence.

It is, in addition, an ultra-successful criminal political machine, which, under cover of a pseudoprinciple, deals in petty crime, wholesale blackmail, political jobbery, and the sale of elections, and may fairly be compared to the lowest types of politico-criminal clubs or societies in New York City. In Palmero it is made up of "gangs" of toughs and criminals, not unlike the Camorrist gangs of Naples, but without their organization, and is kept together by personal allegiance to some leader. Such a leader is almost always under the patronage of a "boss" in New York or a 'padrone' in Italy, who uses his influence to protect the members of the gang when in legal difficulties and find them jobs when out of work and in need of funds. Thus the "boss" can rely on the gang's assistance in elections in return for favors at other times. Such gangs may act in harmony or be in open hostility or conflict with one another, but all are united as against the police, and exhibit much the same sort of "Omerta" in Chatham Square as in Palermo. The difference between the Mafia and Camorra and the "gangs" of New York City lies in the fact that the latter are so much less numerous and powerful, and bribery and corruption so much less prevalent, that they can exert no practical influence in politics outside the Board of Aldermen, whereas the Italian societies of the Mala Vita exert an influence everywhere—in the Chamber of Deputies, the Cabinet, and even closer to the King. In fact, political corruption has been and still is of a character in Italy luckily unknown in America—not in the amounts of money paid over (which are large enough), but in the calm and matter-of-fact attitude adopted toward the subject in Parliament and elsewhere.

The overwhelming majority of Italian criminals in this country come from Sicily, Calabria, Naples, and its environs. They have lived, most of their lives, upon the ignorance, fear, and superstitions of their fellow-countrymen. They know that so long as they confine their criminal operations to Italians of the lower class they need have little terror of the law, since, if need be, their victims will harbor them from the police and perjure themselves in their defence. For the ignorant Italian brings to this country with him the same attitude toward government and the same distrust of the law that characterized him and his fellow-townsmen at home, the same Omerta that makes it so difficult to convict any Italian of a serious offence. The Italian crook is quick-witted and soon grasps the legal situation. He finds his fellow countrymen prospering, for they are generally a hard-working and thrifty lot, and he proceeds to levy tribute on them just as he did in Naples or Palermo. If they refuse his demands, stabbing or bomb-throwing show that he has lost none of his ferocity. Where they are of the most ignorant type he threatens them with the "evil eye," the "curse of God," or even with sorceries. The number of Italians who can be thus terrorized is astonishing. Of course, the mere possibility of such things argues a state of mediaevalism. But mere mediaevalism would be comparatively unimportant did it not supply the principal element favorable to the growth of the Mala Vita, apprehended with so much dread by many of the citizens of the United States.

Now, what are the phases of the Mala Vita—the Camorra, the Black Hand, the Mafia—which are to-day observable in the United States and which may reasonably be anticipated in the future?

In the first place, it may be safely said that of the Camorra in its historic sense—the Camorra of the ritual, of the "Capo in Testa" and "Capo in Trino," highly organized with a self-perpetuating body of officers acting under a supreme head—there is no trace. Indeed, as has already been explained, this phase of the Camorra, save in the prisons, is practically over, even in Naples. But of the Mala Vita there is evidence enough.

Every large city, where people exist under unwholesome conditions, has some such phenomenon. In Palermo we have the traditional Mafia—a state of mind, if you will, ineradicable and all-pervasive. Naples festers with the Camorra as with a venereal disease, its whole body politic infected with it, so that its very breath is foul and its moral eyesight astigmatized. In Paris we find the Apache, abortive offspring of prostitution and brutality, the twin brother of the Camorrista. In New York there are the "gangs," composed of pimps, thugs, cheap thieves, and hangers-on of criminals, which rise and wane in power according to the honesty and efficiency of the police, and who, from time to time, hold much the same relations to police captains and inspectors as the various gangs of the Neapolitan Camorra do to commissaries and delegati of the "Public Safety." Corresponding to these, we have the "Black Hand" gangs among the Italian population of our largest cities. Sometimes the two coalesce, so that in the second generation we occasionally find an Italian, like Paul Kelly, leading a gang composed of other Italians, Irish-Americans, and "tough guys" of all nationalities. But the genuine Black Hander (the real Camorrist or "Mafiuoso") works alone or with two or three of his fellow-countrymen.

Curiously enough, there is a society of criminal young men in New York City who are almost the exact counterpart of the Apaches of Paris. They are known by the euphonious name of "Waps" or "Jacks." These are young Italian-Americans who allow themselves to be supported by one or two women, almost never of their own race. These pimps affect a peculiar cut of hair, and dress with half-turned-up velvet collar, not unlike the old-time Camorrist, and have manners and customs of their own. They frequent the lowest order of dance-halls, and are easily known by their picturesque styles of dancing, of which the most popular is yclept the "Nigger." They form one variety of the many "gangs" that infest the city, are as quick to flash a knife as the Apaches, and, as a cult by themselves, form an interesting sociological study.

The majority of the followers of the Mala Vita—the Black Handers—are not actually of Italian birth, but belong to the second generation. As children they avoid school, later haunt "pool" parlors and saloons, and soon become infected with a desire for "easy money," which makes them glad to follow the lead of some experienced capo maestra. To them he is a sort of demi-god, and they readily become his clients in crime, taking their wages in experience or whatever part of the proceeds he doles out to them. Usually the "boss" tells them nothing of the inner workings of his plots. They are merely instructed to deliver a letter or to blow up a tenement. The same name is used by the Black Hander to-day for his "assistant" or "apprentice" who actually commits a crime as that by which he was known under the Bourbons in 1820. In those early days the second-grade member of the Camorra was known as a picciotto. To-day the apprentice or "helper" of the Black Hander is termed a picciott' in the clipped dialect of the South. But the picciotto of New York is never raised to the grade of Camorrista, since the organization of the Camorra has never been transferred to this country. Instead he becomes in course of time a sort of bully or bad man on his own hook, a criminal "swell," who does no manual labor, rarely commits a crime with his own hands, and lives by his brain. Such a one was Micelli Palliozzi, arrested for the kidnapping of the Scimeca and Sabello children mentioned above—a dandy who did nothing but swagger around the Italian quarter.

Generally each capo maestra works for himself with his own handful of followers, who may or may not enjoy his confidence, and each gang has its own territory, held sacred by the others. The leaders all know each other, but never trespass upon the others' preserves, and rarely attempt to blackmail or terrorize any one but Italians. They gather around them associates from their own part of Italy, or the sons of men whom they have known at home. Thus for a long time Costabili was leader of the Calabrian Camorra in New York, and held undisputed sway of the territory south of Houston Street as far as Canal Street and from Broadway to the East River. On September 15, last, Costabili was caught with a bomb in his hand, and he is now doing a three-year bit up the river. Sic transit gloria mundi!

The Italian criminal and his American offspring have a sincere contempt for American criminal law. They are used by experience or tradition to arbitrary police methods and prosecutions unhampered by Anglo-Saxon rules of evidence. When the Italian crook is actually brought to the bar of justice at home, that he will "go" is generally a foregone conclusion. There need be no complainant in Italy. The government is the whole thing there. But, in America, if the criminal can "reach" the complaining witness or "call him off" he has nothing to worry about. This he knows he can easily do through the terror of the Camorra. And thus he knows that the chances he takes are comparatively small, including that of conviction if he is ever tried by a jury of his American peers, who are loath to find a man guilty whose language and motives they are unable to understand. All this the young Camorrist is perfectly aware of and gambles on.

One of the unique phenomena of the Mala Vita in America is the class of Italians who are known as "men of honor." These are native Italians who have been convicted of crime in their own country and have either made their escape or served their terms. Some of these may have been counterfeiters at home. They come to America either as stokers, sailors, stewards, or stowaways, and, while they can not get passports, it is surprising how lax the authorities are in permitting their escape. The spirit of the Italian law is willing enough, but its fleshly enforcement is curiously weak. Those who have money enough manage to reach France or Holland and come over first or second-class. The main fact is that they get here—law or no law. Once they arrive in America, they realize their opportunities and actually start in to turn over a new leaf. They work hard; they become honest. They may have been Camorrists or Mafiusi at home, but they are so no longer. They are "on the level," and stay so; only—they are "men of honor." And what is the meaning of that? Simply that they keep their mouths, eyes, and ears shut so far as the Mala Vita is concerned. They are not against it. They might even assist it passively. Many of these erstwhile criminals pay through the nose for respectability—the Camorrist after his kind, the Mafius' after his kind. Sometimes the banker who is paying to a Camorrist is blackmailed by a Mafius'. He straightway complains to his own bad man, who goes to the "butter-in" and says in effect: "Here! What are you doing? Don't you know So-and-So is under my protection?"

"Oh!" answers the Mafius'. "Is he? Well, if that is so, I'll leave him alone—as long as he is paying for protection by somebody."

The reader will observe how the silence of "the man of honor" is not remotely associated with the Omerta. As a rule, however, the "men of honor" form a privileged and negatively righteous class, and are let strictly alone by virtue of their evil past.

The number of south Italians who now occupy positions of respectability in New York and who have criminal records on the other side would astound even their compatriots. Even several well-known business men, bankers, journalists, and others have been convicted of something or other in Italy. Occasionally they have been sent to jail; more often they have been convicted in their absence—condannati in contumacia—and dare not return to their native land. Sometimes the offences have been serious, others have been merely technical. At least one popular Italian banker in New York has been convicted of murder—but the matter was arranged at home so that he treats it in a humourous vein. Two other bankers are fugitives from justice, and at least one editor.

To-day most of these men are really respectable citizens. Of course some of them are a bad lot, but they are known and avoided. Yet the fact that even the better class of Italians in New York are thoroughly familiar with the phenomena surrounding the Mala Vita is favorable to the spread of a certain amount of Camorrist activity. There are a number of influential bosses, or capi maestra, who are ready to undertake almost any kind of a job for from twenty dollars up, or on a percentage. Here is an illustration.

A well-known Italian importer in New York City was owed the sum of three thousand dollars by an other Italian, to whom he had loaned the money without security and who had abused his confidence. Finding that the debtor intended to cheat him out of the money, although he could easily have raised the amount of the debt had he so wished, the importer sent for a Camorrist and told him the story.

"You shall be paid," said the Camorrist.

Two weeks later the importer was summoned to a cellar on Mott Street. The Camorrist conducted him down the stairs and opened the door. A candle-end flaring on a barrel showed the room crowded with rough-looking Italians and the debtor crouching in a corner. The Camorrist motioned to the terrified victim to seat himself by the barrel. No word was spoken and amid deathly silence the man obeyed. At last the Camorrist turned to the importer and said:

"This man owes you three thousand dollars, I believe."

The importer nodded.

"Pay what you justly owe," ordered the Camorrist.

Slowly the reluctant debtor produced a roll of bills and counted them out upon the barrel-head. At five hundred he stopped and looked at the Camorrist.

"Go on!" directed the latter.