Hudson Dusters

The Hudson Dusters was a New York street gang during the early twentieth century.

Formed in the late 1890s by Circular Jack, Kid Yorke, and Goo Goo Knox the gang began operating from an apartment house on Hudson Street. Knox, a former member of the Gopher Gang, had fled after a failed attempt to gain leadership of the gang from then leader Marty Brennan. However the two gangs later became allies during the gang wars against "Gay Nineties" gangs, the Potashes and Boodle Gangs, soon controlling most of Manhattan's Westside as far as 13th Street and eastern Broadway bordering Paul Kelly's Five Points Gang to the north. While the gang dominated the Westside it constantly battled smaller rival gangs including the Fashion Plates, Pearl Buttons, and the Marginals for control of the Hudson River docks throughout the 1900s eventually driving the rival gangs out through sheer numbers with over 200 members, not including the Gophers numbering several hundred more, controlling the waterfront by 1910.

The gang, now a dominant force in New York, included members such as "Red" Farrell, Mike Costello, "Rubber" Shaw, Ricky Harrison, and "Honey" Stewart. The gang soon became involved in election fraud as they soon were hired out by Tammany Hall politicians in exchange for political protection. A colorful member by the name of Ding Dong organized a push cart theft ring where he had a group of apprentice gang members toss packages to him from a passing wagon and distract the police from Ding Dong from capture. Soon the gang began to be noticed by the press as reporters met members in Greenwich Village taverns hangouts becoming glamorized by the city. Many of the gangs members, including most of its leaders, had become drug addicts and were known for their wild "cocaine parties" in which the gang wandered the city afterwards in a drugged state committing violent acts. One victim of these attacks was Gopher member Owney Madden who was shot six times outside the Arbor Dance Hall on November 6, 1914 resulting in three of the gang members deaths less then a week later. With the gangs political connections to Tammany Hall police remained inactive however the gang frequently moved their headquarters to avoid police raids by the Strong Arm Squad.

The gang, who regularly demanded goods from local merchants, soon attracted the unwanted attention of the police after an incident in which the gang destroyed a saloon after its owner refused to deliver six barrels of beer to a gang party. The saloon keeper reported this to friend Dennis Sullivan, a patrolman of Charles Street Station, arrested "Red" Farrell and ten other members at a local pool hall for vagrancy. The gang retaliated luring Sullivan into the neighborhood on the premise of a local merchant, who had been forced to make a complaint against a member of the gang. When Sullivan arrived he was attacked by around twenty members and severely beaten, eventually losing consciousness, stripping him of his uniform and throwing his badge in a sewer drain. As the gang fled five members remained behind jumping on his back and kicking him in the face repeatedly before a police "flying squad" arrived. Hospitalized for over a month the incident was immortalized by a poem by Gopher leader "One Leg" Curran.

Says Dinny "Here's me only chance

To gain meself a name;

I'll clean up the Hudson Dusters,

and reach the hall of fame."

He lost his stick and cannon,

and his shield they took away.

It was then he remembered,

Every dog had his day.

The gang liked the poem so much they had it printed on thousands of sheets and distributed throughout the neighborhood as well as the Charles Street Station and the hospital Sullivan was recovering. the song grew to be so popular that many juvenile gangs would commonly sing the tune in the streets.

By 1914 however, with most of its leaders in jail or dead from drug overdoses, the gang had fallen apart as the Marginals, under Tanner Smith, drove what was left of the gang from their territory where the Marginals, after defeating the Pearl Buttons, would control for the next decade. The last of the gang were eventually arrested by police during its clearing of gangs from Manhattan in 1916.

The gang is mentioned in the murder mystery In Like Flynn by Rhys Bowen.

External links

Manhattan Gangs – The Big Five

Categories: Gangs

Hudson Dusters

Further reading

External links