Empire of Sin (50 page)

Stanonis, Anthony J.
Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918–1945
. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006.

_________. “A Woman of Boundless Energy: Elizebeth Werlein and Her Times.”
Louisiana History
46, no. 1 (2005): 5–26.

Tallant, Robert.
Mardi Gras
. Garden City NY: Doubleday. 1948.

_________.
Ready to Hang: Seven Famous New Orleans Murders
. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952.

Tallant, Robert, and Lyle Saxon.
Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1945.

Teachout, Terry.
Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong
. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.

Thomas, Brook, ed.
Plessy v. Ferguson: A Brief History with Documents
. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1997.

Thompson, Kay. “First Lady of Storyville: The Fabulous Countess Willie Piazza.”
The Record Changer
, February 1951, 5–14.

_________. “Louis and the Waif’s Home.”
The Record Changer
, January 1952, 9–10, 43.

Thompson, Ray Matthew.
Albert Baldwin Wood: The Man Who Made Water Run Uphill
. Revised edition. New Orleans: Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, 1999.

Vyhnanek, Louis.
Unorganized Crime: New Orleans in the 1920s
. Lafayette, LA: Center for Louisiana Studies, 1998.

Warmouth, Henry Clay.
War, Politics, and Reconstruction: Stormy Days in Louisiana
. New York: Macmillan, 1930.

Warner, Richard N. “The First Crime Boss of Los Angeles?”
Informer
, July 2010, 4–15.

Wells-Barnett, Ida B. “Mob Rule in New Orleans.” Pamphlet published in 1900.

Wilds, John.
Afternoon Story: A Century of the New Orleans States-Item
. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976.

Williams, Martin.
Jazz Masters of New Orleans
. New York: Da Capo Press, 1978.

Wiltz, Christine.
The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld
. New York: Faber and Faber, 2000.

Winston, Justin, and Clive Wilson. “The Bolden Photograph: A Photographic Examination.”
The Jazz Archivist
22 (2009): 19–24.

Woodward, C. Vann.
The Strange Career of Jim Crow
. 3rd revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.

Zink, Harold.
City Bosses in the United States: A Study of Twenty Municipal Bosses
. New York: AMS Press, 1968.

Manuscripts, Theses, Dissertations, Oral Histories, Etc.

Friends of the Cabildo Oral Histories, New Orleans Public Library.

Oral Histories (Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University).

Papers of Iris Kelso, A. P. Tureaud, Bezou-Goffin, Josie Arlington Collection (University of New Orleans); Joseph Shakspeare Collection, William Russell Collection, Frederic Ramsey Papers (Historic New Orleans Collection).

Soards City Directories, US Census records, NOPD Reports of Homicide and Arrest Records, Passenger Lists, Passport Applications, Death Records, etc. New Orleans Public Library, Louisiana Division.

Adams, Margaret. “Outline of the Mafia Riots.” Thesis, Tulane University, 1924.

Anthony, Arthé Agnes. “The Negro Creole Community in New Orleans, 1880–1920: An Oral History.” PhD diss., University of California at Irvine, 1978.

Badger, A. S. Letter to George Denegre of April 21, 1891, Historic New Orleans Collection.

Carney, Courtney Patterson. “Jazz and the Cultural Transformation of America in the 1920s.” PhD diss., Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 2003.

Carroll, Ralph Edward. “The Mafia in New Orleans, 1900–1907.” MA thesis, Notre Dame Seminary, 1956.

Carroll, Richard Louis. “The Impact of David C. Hennessey on New Orleans Society and the Consequences of the Assassination of Hennessey.” MA thesis, Notre Dame Seminary, 1957.

Collins, Philip R. “The Old Regular Democratic Organization in New Orleans.” MA thesis, Georgetown University, 1948.

Landau, Emily Epstein. “Spectacular Wickedness: New Orleans, Prostitution, and the Politics of Sex, 1897–1917.” PhD diss., Yale University, 2005.

Leathem, Karen Trahan. “A Carnival According to Their Own Desires: Gender and Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 1870–1941.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1994.

Lester, Charlie. “The New Negro of Jazz: New Orleans, Chicago, New York, the First Great Migration, and the Harlem Renaissance, 1890–1930.” PhD diss., University of Cincinnati, 2012.

Levy, Russell. “Of Bards and Bawds: New Orleans Sporting Life Before and During the Storyville Era, 1897–1917.” MA thesis, Tulane University, 1967.

Mir, Jasmine. “Marketplace of Desire: Storyville and the Making of a Tourist City in New Orleans, 1890–1920.” PhD diss., New York University, 2005.

Stall, Buddy. “Buddy Stall’s Storyville.” Taped lecture, Historic New Orleans Collection.

Various.
Pamphlets on the Mafia Case
, Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University.

Winston, Donald E. “News Reporting of Jazz, 1890–1907.” MA thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1966.

Notes

(Note: Newspapers of this era were notoriously cavalier about names, sometimes spelling the same name several different ways in a single article. In quotations I have silently corrected these variations to correspond with what I regard as the most accurate spelling of the name.)

Prologue

Details about the Maggio killing come principally from the police report on the homicide, dated May 23, 1918, and from contemporary news reports, in particular the May 23 and 24, 1918, issues of the NOTP, NODS, and NODI. See also Robert Tallant,
Ready to Hang
, 193–96.

  
1
“one of the most gruesome …”
is from the NOTP of May 24, 1918.

  
2
It was a godforsaken neighborhood …
 The description of the Maggios’ immediate neighborhood comes from the newspaper reports, especially the NODS of May 23, 1918. A more general impression of this area, and of New Orleans’ 1918 geography overall, can be gleaned from several works: Peirce F. Lewis’s
New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape;
Craig E. Colton’s
An Unnatural Metropolis
and also his “Basin Street Blues”; and especially Richard Campanella’s (highly recommendable)
Bienville’s Dilemma
—see in particular the section “Populating the Landscape,” and the maps.

  
3
Frank Mooney, forty-eight years old …
 Information about Frank T. Mooney comes mainly from newspaper reports at the time of his hiring as superintendent—the NODI and NODS of August 8, 1917, and the NOTP of August 9, 1917.

  
4
The intruder had clearly taken …
 Further Maggio case details from the police report and from the May 1918 articles cited above.

  
5
“to have a nick honed from the blade” …
 and the chalk message are from the NOTP of May 24, 1918. [NB: Some newspapers first transcribed the chalk scrawl as “Mrs. Joseph Maggio is going to sit up tonight. Just
write
Mrs. Toney,” but I’ve used the version that appears in the NOTP and in most later sources.]

  
6
a series of unsolved attacks …
 The daily papers were somewhat confused about the dates of the earlier Italian grocer murders, perhaps because they relied on the detectives’ memory of the cases rather than checking their own newspapers’ morgues. The attacks in question, some of which were not fatal, occurred in August and September of 1910 (Crutti and Resetti), June of 1911 (Davi), May of 1912 (Schiambra), August of 1913 (Chetta), and as recently as December of 1917 (Andollina). The Schiambra murder, a shooting, was actually one of the non-hatchet murders.

  
7
“As police superintendent, he will be judged …”
The NOTP’s doubts about Mooney’s experience were expressed in an article in the August 9, 1917, edition.

  
8
openly speculating about a crazed serial killer …
 The NOTP’s speculation was in the August 16, 1918, edition.

Chapter 1: Going Respectable

The account of the events of November 29 is based principally on initial newspaper reports about the shooting (NODSs of November 29 and 30, 1890; NODPs of November 30 and December 9 and 10, 1890) and from surprisingly thorough press accounts of Phillip Lobrano’s two trials (NODI of January 29, 1892; NOTDs of January 29 and March 31, 1892; NODPs of January 29 and 30, 1892, and March 31, 1892). Little is known for sure about Lobrano, but a comparison of court testimony (which refers to his prominent family and a brother named Emile) and the obituaries of various related Lobranos indicates that he was the wayward son of Jacynthe (aka Jacinto) Lobrano, a hero of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, to whom Andrew Jackson once presented one of his swords. Phillip was born in 1847, which would make him forty-two or forty-three in 1890, and some sixteen years Mary Deubler/Josie Lobrano’s senior. Further background for this scene and the rest of Chapter 1 comes from a variety of other sources, especially the testimony from Mary Deubler’s contested-will trial (
Succession of Deubler
); Alecia P. Long,
The Great Southern Babylon
, 148–90; Herbert Asbury,
The French Quarter
, 448–51; and Al Rose,
Storyville
, 47–49.

  
1
what had happened on Royal Street …
 The scene in Louis George’s saloon is based on testimony in the two trials by Lobrano himself, A. C. Becker (the bartender), and John T. McGreevy (a friend in the bar).

  
2
“flock of vultures” …
 as quoted in Asbury,
French Quarter
, 449.

  
3
“You bastard, come take a drink” …
 is quoted in the NOTD of January 29, 1892. [NB: The newspapers did not print the two expletives uttered by Peter Deubler; I don’t think I could be far wrong in assuming, in both cases, that “bastard” was the omitted word.]

  
4
“It looks as if you want to raise hell”
and Deubler’s response are from Becker’s testimony in the second trial.

  
5
“I am going to kill that bastard …”
is quoted in the NOTD of January 29, 1892.

  
6
Twenty-six years old …
 Josie Lobrano’s appearance as per a well-known 1890s photograph of her in the Josie Arlington Collection (Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans).

  
7
Driven into prostitution …
 The best sources for details about Josie’s life are Long,
Babylon
, and
Succession of Deubler
.

  
8
arrested for disorderly conduct several times …
 The Palmyra Street incident is mentioned in the NODP of November 30, 1890.