The Crazy Butch Gang was an American juvenile street gang active in the New York City underworld during the late nineteenth century. Largely active in Manhattan's Lower East Side, the group were widely known as the cities top pickpockets and sneak thieves during the "Gay Nineties" period. An early member of this gang would later become known as a prominent New York gangster Jack Zelig.
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Dave Anderson (Bill Cosby) and Manny Durrell (Sidney Poitier) are two high-class sneak thieves who have never been caught. Joshua Burke (James Earl Jones) is a retired detective who has enough evidence on the both of them to put them behind bars. Instead, he offers to maintain his silence if the crooks will go straight and do work at a youth center for delinquents. At first, the crooks are reluctant and unwilling (and so are the kids).
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He was released on these two occasions but was sentenced to six months at Blackwell's Island. Shortly after his release, he became partners with Hettie Thompson, sister of the infamous Maria Thompson, and they traveled together throughout the country. He later headed a group of sneak thieves including Jimmy Griffin, Frank Knapp and Jack Tierney, whose activities he planned and financed. Though primarily based in New York City, they were also active in other major cities across the country.
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By 1896, Skippy Rohan was associated with the Ashley Street Gang (the embryonic Egan's Rats). Most of the Ashley Street boys were just sneak thieves at this time and were awed to be hooked up with a notorious crook like Skippy Rohan, who took a primary position in the fledgling gang. He grew especially close to gangster Tom Egan. On June 16, 1897, Skippy Rohan was accused of shooting and killing a saloonkeeper named Casper Biemfohr during a robbery gone bad.
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At the age of 12 Jack is placed in a school, the master of which is prejudiced against him, owing to the boy's mischievous disposition. After having received severe and unjust punishment from the schoolmaster, Jack decides to run away from school, and escapes from the room in which he is locked, through the window. Wandering along a country road, he accidentally overhears two sneak thieves planning to rob a house. Jack makes his way to the house in time to warn its mistress of the proposed robbery.
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As described in a film magazine, Peck's girl Minnie (Normand) gets into so much mischief that the wiseacres of the town decide that she needs to be put to some useful occupation. A kindly lady takes her under her care and she soon becomes a more or less valuable assistant to a modiste's show. Returning to the store one evening to get a package, she comes across some sneak thieves who are burrowing beneath the bank. She spreads the alarm, captures one of the crooks, and wins the heart of a detective sent to apprehend the criminals.
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Like many other Chicago-based Prohibition gangs, the North Side Gang originated from the Market Street Gang, one of many street gangs in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. The Market Street Gang was made up of pickpockets, sneak thieves and labor sluggers working in the 42nd and 43rd Wards. The gang especially distinguished itself during the newspaper "Circulation Wars" of the early 1910s between the Chicago Examiner and the Chicago Tribune. It was during the Circulation Wars that future North Side leader Dean O'Banion, then a member of the juvenile satellite Little Hellions, would develop valuable contacts with politicians and journalists.
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The 19th Street Gang was a New York City predominantly Irish street gang during the 1870s known as a particularly violent anti-Protestant gang. The 19th Street Gang, made up mostly of young pickpockets, muggers, and sneak thieves, was led by a young man known as Little Mike. Operating around New York's 19th Street to 34th Street, known as "Poverty Lane", the gang mainly robbed defenseless victims, such as the elderly, as well as women and children; however, the gang was sometimes said to spare local Catholics, often asking victims to give their baptismal name, recite psalms, their local church, and other questions. By the end of the 1880s, the gang had disappeared entirely.
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An alarm was quickly raised and police quickly deduced that the two gentlemen served to distract McDonald while sneak thieves infiltrated the office and stole the tin box. These men were under the employ of Noble who somehow found out about the meeting and was believed to have planned the operation. He and Jack Tierney waited outside in a horse-drawn carriage, either to take off with the box or to provide the thieves to escape if they were caught, while the two salesmen Frank Knapp and Jimmy Griffin posed as the salesmen who spoke to McDonald. Knapp stayed in the office with McDonald, purposely taking a seat in which McDonald's back was to the vault, while Griffin excused himself then slipped back into the office where he took the box from the vault.
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