In 1949, police raided a casino at 610 E. In 1949 female clerks, who were eventually arrested, sell numbers for the policy game to customers just before a police raid at 610 E. Presumably the hit man was hired by a disgruntled partner or rival - for the betting, rather than the boutonniere, business. In 1924, O’Banion was murdered in his floral shop on State Street, kitty corner from Holy Name Cathedral. Dividing the loot often led to violence.ĭean O’Banion, a florist, doubled as a bootlegger and was granted part ownership of the 22nd Street casino, also known as The Ship, by Torrio’s gang. So it’s not surprising that entrepreneurial hoods saw the potential windfall from running gambling operations. Kids in other towns grew up that way, too, I’m sure, but without the tradition of machismo that Chicago provided.” “Chicago, after all, had a reputation of being a tough town, a man’s town, and of course a hoods town, too. “It was an ideal compounded of a good deal of movie going, of watching adults in card rooms of town and country clubs, and in part of Chicago itself,” Epstein wrote in a 1972 Tribune essay. One thing Chicagoans consistently crave is satisfaction of their fascination with gambling, notes Joseph Epstein, a retired Northwestern University professor and student of local mores. “I give the public what the public wants,” he once told a reporter.

(Chicago Tribune archive )īesides muscle and money, Capone used his talent for public relations to deflect attacks on his brazen disregard for the law. I give to charity.”Īn exterior photo shows the Hawthorne Hotel in Cicero, the headquarters of Al Capone's gang, just after it was sprayed by machine gun fire from a passing car on Sept. “Reverend, can’t we get together?” Capone asked.

Capone showed up in his pajamas and threatened the commanding deputy: “This is the last raid you will ever pull.” He took the citizens’ leader aside. The 22nd Street casino was raided on May 16, 1925, by sheriff’s deputes accompanied by the president of a Cicero citizens organization, a local man of the cloth. There were approximately 40 to 50 people employed in the business.” There was a branch operation in the nearby Hawthorne Race Track, and no doubt about who the owner was. “The business consisted of taking bets on horse races, roulette wheel, craps and poker. But as an FBI agent’s deposition notes, the profits didn’t come from stogies and breath mints: As its moniker suggests, it appeared to be a cigar store. in Cicero, and subsequently at other locations in that suburb. One was the Hawthorne Smoke Shop at 4837 W. court ordered it closed for liquor violations during Prohibition in 1926. Prohibition workers lock the doors of Colosimo's Restaurant at 2126 Wabash Ave.

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