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Al Capone
Born January 7, 1899 (Brooklyn, New York)
Died January 25, 1947 (Palm Island, Florida)
Organized crime leader
A
‘‘Everybody calls me a
l Capone was one of the most notorious criminals of all
time. During the Roaring Twenties, he gained fame both
for the success of his criminal operation and for the violent
way it was built and maintained. Capone became a symbol
for the lawlessness of this decade, when Prohibition (the
constitutional ban on the manufacture and sale of alcoholic
beverages that was intended to improve society) seemed to
lead directly to murder and corruption. With his bulky body
and facial features, his slick suits and hats, his money, power,
and disregard for the law, Capone remains a popular icon of
the 1920s.
racketeer. I call myself a
businessman.’’
Growing up tough in Brooklyn
Alphonse ‘‘Al’’ Capone was born in the Brooklyn area of
New York City in January 1899. He was the fourth of nine
children born to parents who had immigrated to the United
States from Italy. Capone’s father was a barber and his mother a
seamstress. They were a hardworking family with no apparent
criminal connections or tendencies. The neighborhood, however, was tough, and Capone became involved at a very early
20
During the Roaring Twenties Al Capone gained fame both for the success
for his criminal operation and for the violent way it was built. (AP/Wide World
Photos. Reproduced by permission.)
age with several youth gangs, including the Brooklyn Rippers
and the Forty Thieves Juniors.
When he was fourteen, Capone got into a fight with a
teacher who had struck him. He dropped out of school and
soon joined the Five Point Juniors, which was the youth
branch of a well-known criminal organization called the Five
Point Gang. Capone became a kind of apprentice to a racketeer
(someone involved in illegal business activities) named Johnny
Al Capone
21
Torrio (1882–1957). He ran errands for Torrio and learned from
him about using cleverness, instead of violence, to get ahead.
Despite this early involvement in the city’s criminal underworld, Capone also held a number of ordinary jobs, including
work as a candy-store clerk and as a paper cutter in a bookbindery. He was employed as a bartender in a saloon when he
received the facial marks that earned him the nickname
‘‘Scarface.’’ He made a remark to a young woman that her
brother, who was seated next to her, found insulting. The
knife-wielding brother gave Capone three slashes on the left
side of his face. For the rest of his life Capone was self-conscious
about the scars and tried to cover them with powder.
While he was still a teenager, Capone met the young
woman who would become his wife, Mary ‘‘Mae’’ Coughlin,
who was a department-store clerk and two years older than
Capone. She became pregnant and in early December 1919
gave birth to Albert Francis ‘‘Sonny’’ Capone. The couple married at the end of the month. Sonny, Capone’s only child, later
developed a serious hearing problem that may have been the
result of syphilis (a sexually transmitted disease) inherited
from his father. In any case, Capone loved Sonny dearly and
always provided well for him.
A young gangster gets his start
Meanwhile, Torrio had moved to Chicago, Illinois, in
1915. There he went to work for the thriving criminal operation of his uncle, James ‘‘Big Jim’’ Colosimo (1877–1920), who
ran saloons, gambling establishments, and houses of prostitution. In 1921 Torrio invited Capone to join him in Chicago.
According to some sources, Capone was fleeing responsibility
for several murders when he moved his family to Chicago and
joined Colosimo’s organization.
Capone arrived just as Prohibition was beginning. The
Eighteenth Amendment, which made Prohibition official,
had gone into effect in early 1920. The ban on alcohol had
been brought about by reformers who wanted to protect
society from the ill effects of drinking, which they felt damaged
not only people’s health but also their relationships and ability
to work and support their families. Although some people had
opposed Prohibition from the start, especially members of
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The Roaring Twenties: Biographies
immigrant communities, for whom alcohol consumption had
an important cultural role, most U.S. citizens supported the
ban. Even Prohibition’s supporters were surprised, however,
when the Volstead Act (which spelled out the terms of the
amendment) defined as illegal not only distilled beverages
like whiskey but also fermented ones like beer and wine,
which many had assumed would not be included.
Members of criminal organizations and gangsters (the popular term for this kind of criminal) quickly realized the moneymaking potential of Prohibition. They knew that people still
wanted to drink alcohol and that they would pay for it. Thus
bootlegging (the sale and distribution of illegal liquor) became
an important focus of criminal activity, though gambling and
prostitution operations still continued.
Not long after Capone’s arrival in Chicago, Colosimo was
assassinated by some unidentified rivals; a few commentators
suspected Torrio and Capone of having something to do with
the murder, but this was never proved. Torrio took over his
uncle’s operations, with Capone as his second-in-command.
Capone demonstrated a shrewd business sense and steady nerves,
both qualities that would serve him well in the years to come.
A prominent public figure
During the early 1920s, Torrio and Capone expanded their
activities. They formed relationships with some criminal
groups, such as the Purple Gang, with headquarters in
Detroit, Michigan, while engaging in bitter and often brutal
rivalry with others. Their main enemies were the members of
the gang run by George ‘‘Bugs’’ Moran (1903–1959), which
operated on the north side of Chicago, while Torrio and
Capone controlled the south side. In January 1925 Moran’s
men made an unsuccessful attempt to kill Capone, and later
in the month they attacked Torrio, seriously wounding him.
Spooked, Torrio retired from his life of crime and moved to
Italy. That left Capone in charge of one of the most prosperous
criminal organizations in history.
During the second half of the 1920s Capone ran a sprawling
criminal empire that included bootlegging operations, liquor
distilleries and beer breweries, speakeasies (places where illegal
liquor was sold and consumed), gambling establishments,
Al Capone
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prostitution rings, racetracks, and nightclubs. At the height of
his success, his income was reportedly as high as one hundred
million dollars per year. He protected his businesses by bribing
police officers and political leaders, and he managed to rig elections so that the right people stayed in office. One of these was
the mayor of Chicago, William ‘‘Big Bill’’ Thompson Jr.
Capone was a well-known public figure around Chicago,
admired and respected by those who considered him more a
businessman than a criminal. He appeared in flashy clothes
and jewelry and often demonstrated generosity toward the
needy. For example, he opened one of the first soup kitchens
to serve the poor during the Great Depression, the period of
economic hardship that began with the stock market crash in
1929 and lasted until the beginning of World War II in 1939.
Capone boasted, with some justification, that he ran Chicago.
As quoted in Thomas Pegram’s Battling Demon Rum: The Struggle
for a Dry America, 1800–1933, Capone complained that ‘‘everybody calls me a racketeer. I call myself a businessman.’’
Capone’s money, power, and glamour went hand in hand,
however, with ruthlessness (showing no compassion), a hot
temper, and a willingness to engage in whatever violence
seemed necessary to accomplish his goals. Chicago had
become a nearly lawless place, with corrupt police officers
and politicians not only tolerating but even taking part in
criminal activity, and gangsters frequently having shoot-outs
on the streets. Capone was at the heart of the action. He was
suspected of involvement in more than two hundred murders
of enemies and rival gang members. Because people involved
in organized crime would not talk to the police—out of fear,
loyalty, or because of their own guilt—it was almost impossible
to solve or prosecute these kinds of crimes.
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
The violence continued to escalate throughout the 1920s,
lending fuel to the growing public resistance to Prohibition.
Finally an event occurred that sent shock waves through the
nation, as Chicago became the setting for one of the most
horrifying episodes of the decade. For a long time Capone
had had his eye on Moran’s territory. In addition, Moran had
recently tried to kill ‘‘Machine Gun’’ Jack McGurn, one of
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The Roaring Twenties: Biographies