Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster (11 page)

Fanny Sweet was unusual in that she was a freelance operator—a reckless and daring enterprise. In the New Orleans bordello business, there were more secure ways to make a living. The best whorehouses in town became local institutions. If a nineteenth century madam provided a top-notch product and greased the necessary palms, she was bound to accumulate important friends and become something of a fixture in the city’s political and social circles.

Such was certainly the case with Kate Townsend of Basin Street, the only other madam to rival Fanny Sweet for notoriety in the red light lore of New Orleans. No bordello operator in the history of the city was more successful than Sister Kate. Her legend was based in part on her formidable talents as a businesswoman, but also on other endowments. In the words of one newspaper, “Kate was a very portly woman and attracted general attention on the street…as she grew in age she became afflicted with what was properly a deformity, a voluminous bust which never failed to provoke astonishment in those who chanced to meet her.”

Kate’s career would have made a great rags-to-riches story were it not for the ending, which was bloody and premature. Instead, the story of Kate Townsend would live on for years as a cautionary tale to those enticed by the prospect of a reputable career in the bordello business.

She was born in Liverpool in 1831, as Katherine Cunningham, the daughter of an Irish dock worker. By the age of fifteen, she was a dance house barmaid working in a dive on Paradise Street. There she met and romanced a handsome young Irish sailor named Peter Kearnaghan. Though unmarried, Kate became pregnant and gave birth to twins. Kearnaghan was rarely around, and she was left to fend for herself. In early 1857 she left her two children with a relative and departed from Liverpool, never to return again. Kate Cunningham set out for America and eventually arrived in New Orleans, where she was reborn as Kate Townsend.

For a young woman living on her own in a big American city, no other profession came close to that of the “working girl” as a means of support. At a time when women could not vote, drink in a saloon, gamble, or even circulate unaccompanied in public without being looked down upon, working as a brothel prostitute was a statement of independence. Among other things, the whorehouse provided lodging, protection, and a steady income all in one.

Kate Townsend first went to work at Clara Fisher’s place on Philippa Street, where she spent six months, then moved to a two-story, red-brick bagnio on Canal Street between Basin and Rampart, and then to Maggie Thompson’s brothel on Customhouse Street—the last place she would ever be looked upon as just one of the girls.

As a young woman, Kate was attractive, with a voluptuous figure. Her early success was based, in large part, on her looks and talents in the boudoir. But by the time she left Maggie Thompson’s place to open her own establishment in 1863, Kate had begun to put on weight at an alarming rate. From this point on, Kate would spend much less time in the bedroom and much more time as a greeter, bouncer, and businesswoman of considerable distinction.

Kate Townsend’s business flourished like no other; she made influential friends among the politicians and police captains who came to her place. With their help she was able to expand her business, eventually opening a three-story palace of marble and brownstone at 40 Basin Street that was probably the most luxurious bordello in the entire United States. She presided over this lace-curtained house of ill repute for nearly two decades. As she acquired more wealth and influence, her waistline and other physical attributes kept pace. By most accounts, as she became more obese, she also became more irascible and short-tempered. Kate was especially mean to a mild-mannered man who served as her bookkeeper. One evening in November 1888, after she had berated and physically abused the man in front of the working girls, he could take no more. He got even with Kate Townsend by stabbing her eleven times with a pair of pruning shears and leaving her to die in a pool of blood on the floor of her bordello.

The killer was put away for life, and Kate was remembered not as a corpulent, mean-spirited boss, but as a pioneer in the bordello business who provided employment and a home for generations of immigrant girls. Her burial was lavish even by the standards of New Orleans, a city known for its colorful, outlandish funerals. The body of the famous madam—sheathed in a six-hundred-dollar, white, silk dress, trimmed with lace at fifty dollars a yard—was laid out in the drawing room of her bordello. The furniture was also covered with white silk, and a Dixieland band played “Nearer My God to Thee” as champagne was served to all. Kate’s enormous body rested in a four-hundred dollar, metallic casket adorned with a silver cross, beneath which were inscribed her name and the date of her demise. The open casket was followed through the streets of the French Quarter by a procession of twenty carriages accompanied by hundreds of working girls, with nary a man in sight. The body was interned at Metarie Cemetery.

Sister Kate was gone.

Her funeral was a memorable, over-the-top tribute to an underworld figure of great renown, and as such would serve as a precursor to the extravagant mob boss funerals that would become commonplace in many U.S. cities in the decades that followed.

The Policeman as “Gangster”

It was into this broiling cauldron of street thugs, gambling impresarios, immigrant swindlers, whores, and madams that David C. Hennessy immersed himself as a young New Orleans policeman. By the time he was a young man, he was already a star detective with an intuitive understanding of the city’s newest criminal peril. Ever since Sicilian immigrants had begun flooding into New Orleans in the 1880s—the first of many such waves that would redefine the ethnic makeup of many U.S. cities—sensationalistic accounts of the camorra and Mafia were commonly featured in the press. The general belief that the Sicilians’ secretive nature was proof of a criminal mentality would be dramatically reaffirmed when the city’s beloved Chief Hennessy was ambushed by gunfire and died in a gutter on Basin Street—an event that rocked the city of New Orleans to its core.

Given Hennessy’s past, it was no great surprise that he would one day be top copper in a city where the Irish had begun to rise up from the lowest of the low. Hennessy’s father, also named David, had been a citizen of some distinction. The elder Hennessy first arrived in the city as a member of the union army when David Jr. was just three years old. He was a Civil War hero, wounded three times, who had stayed in the Crescent City following the war—a mean, unstable era commonly known as Reconstruction. In October 1864, Hennessy, Sr. was appointed to the Metropolitan Police force by his Yankee commanding officer. Hennessy excelled as a policeman, navigating his way through the cities criminal underworld with skill. He also soon met his end in a violent manner that would resonate years later when his only son was also murdered.

It was in a French Quarter saloon that the elder Hennessy met his fate. While drinking one night, he was approached by an unreconstructed Confederate enthusiast who was not enamored with the Yankee carpetbaggers who now ruled his town.

“You’re a cad and a carpetbagger and a stinking Irishman to boot,” the man told Hennessy.

“And you, my friend,” answered the policeman, “are nothing more than defeated rebel trash.”

Accounts of what happened next are unclear, long lost in the haze of history. Some claimed there was a wild shoot-out; others said that the belligerent Confederate accosted the off duty policeman without provocation. Either way, the senior Hennessy wound up dead with a bullet in the back.

David Hennessy, Jr. was just nine years old when his father was violently snatched from the world. His mother had no visible means of support other than the small pension then paid to the widows of killed policemen. In 1870, the elder Hennessy’s former commander, feeling an obligation to the family, appointed eleven-year-old David Hennessy to be his office messenger at police headquarters. In later years, the commander liked to say that the boy turned out to be so clever, diligent, and courageous that he had no choice but to promote him speedily through the ranks of the force.

In nineteenth century New Orleans, being a policeman was an agreeable profession for an enterprising Irishman. Especially in the years following the Civil War, citizens with Hibernian surnames flocked to the profession. And why not? For at least two decades, ditch digging, gangsterism, hustling, and whoring were the only avenues of advancement available to the average lass or laddie. That began to change as street gangs, transients, and vice peddlers multiplied like mosquitoes in a mangrove. During Reconstruction, the murder rate in New Orleans jumped to three times higher than any other city in the States. With old Civil War grudges being settled in the saloons and crime running rampant, the city’s overseers came to an obvious conclusion: They needed more cops. The WASP aristocracy sure as hell didn’t want the job; it paid shit, required long hours, and was also dangerous. For such an unappealing task, who better than a Paddy?

Despite efforts by an emerging Know-Nothing Party to rid the police force of all immigrants,
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the Metropolitans became a major patronage plum of the Irish. By 1865, though their representation in the city’s population stood at thirteen percent, Irish immigrants made up thirty-three percent of the police force, second only to native-born Americans, many of whom were also of Irish extraction. Men with Irish surnames filled out the ranks of the department at all levels, but especially at the entry level, where many famine immigrants for the first time found themselves empowered after years of starvation and humiliation. For these hardheaded coppers, the taste of vengeance was swift and indiscriminate. According to police records, Irish cops were the most likely to be brought before the Board of Police on abuse-of-authority charges. Some became known for a reckless willingness to become involved in the violent activity of riot control—a handy opportunity for head-breaking and ass-whupping of a wholesale nature. Within the department, these cops became known as “Hibernian leatherheads.”

David C. Hennessy was not a Hibernian leatherhead. Unlike those of the Irish masses who had embraced police work for the simple reason that it was safer and more remunerative than joining a street gang—and less likely to get them a prison sentence—Hennessy became a cop because it was his birth right. From the beginning he seemed destined for great things in the department and beyond, which is why the Irish and many others in the city followed his career as they might the rise of a promising politician.

His legend took shape almost from the start. On one notable occasion, while still an eighteen-year-old patrolman, Dave Hennessy single-handedly caught two grown men in the act of burglary, beat them in a street fight, and delivered them to a police station for arrest. On his twenty-first birthday, he met the age requirement for the detective division and was immediately promoted by Thomas N. Boylan, the department’s newly appointed chief and fellow Irishman.

The biggest coup of Hennessy’s career occurred on July 5, 1881, when he and his older cousin, Mike Hennessy, also a detective, apprehended a notorious Sicilian criminal named Giuseppe Esposito, who was wanted by Italian authorities on multiple murder and kidnapping charges. Dave, Mike, and two New York detectives had staked out Esposito for months, waiting for just the right moment to make their arrest, which they did in broad daylight near Jackson Square, in the middle of the French Quarter.

The incarceration and eventual extradition of Esposito was big news both locally and internationally. Hennessy’s bold capture of an infamous mafia killer living incognito in the city’s Little Palermo district catapulted his name into the headlines. His career ambitions appeared limitless. The only thing that could derail him now would be a scandal of his own making, which is precisely what occurred just a few months after his spectacular arrest of Giuseppe Esposito.

The seeds of Hennessy’s derailment were rooted in a bitter power struggle within the ranks of the New Orleans police force. Emboldened by the success of the Esposito caper, Hennessy, with the support of his cousin Mike, had begun campaigning to get the highly political Police Board to appoint him Chief of Detectives, what Hennessy believed would be the first of many steps in his rise to the top. Among those who supported David Hennessy was Police Chief Tom Boylan, who was set to retire soon.

Both Hennessy and Boylan were infuriated when Hennessy was inexplicably passed over for appointment as Chief of Detectives. The position went instead to a man named Thomas Devereaux, Hennessy’s main political rival. A bitter contest ensued between Hennessy and Devereaux over who would take over for Boylan once he retired. The Police Board became the arena for their fight. Its meetings became increasingly heated as the two factions maneuvered for position. In the meantime, another candidate for the top job emerged, Detective Robert Harris; he, too, had support on the board and within the department.

This third detective was dramatically eliminated from the competition one day when, in broad daylight, Thomas Devereaux blew Harris’ brains all over the street with his Tranier pistol, which fired an unusually large bullet. Devereaux claimed self defense. His enemies called it murder. Devereaux was tried and found not guilty; he remained Chief of Detectives.

The battle between Devereaux and the two Hennessys continued unabated. Mike Hennessy, in particular, was often seen having heated words with Devereaux in public. Tempers rose a notch when Devereaux accused Mike Hennessy of insubordination before the Police Board. When the board dismissed Devereaux’s accusations, he became enraged and verbally attacked the board’s members. For this, they ordered
him
to stand trial for insolence and insubordination. The first witness scheduled to testify against him was Mike Hennessy.

The entire matter finally boiled over on October 13, 1881, just four months after David Hennessy first became an international celebrity. On that day, a three-way gunfight erupted between Devereaux and the two Hennessys. In the office of a downtown stockbroker friend of Devereaux’s, the Chief of Detectives shot Mike Hennessy in the jaw. In response, David Hennessy drew his pistol and shot Devereaux in the head at close range. Devereaux died instantly. Mike Hennessy was rushed to Charity Hospital and eventually recovered from his wounds.