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Pistol Pete’s Payback and Other Historic Vengeances

Khalid Elhassan October 15, 2020 31 min

World War II - Quisling — Quisling with SS chief Heinrich Himmler. Cotton Boll Conspiracy

29. Violent Mob Visits Payback Upon the Mob

new orleans massacre of 1891 — An artist’s sketch depicts the mob that gathered in New Orleans in 1891 to “avenge” the police commissioner’s murder. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group Editorial/UIG via Getty Images

The assassination of New Orleans’ police chief created a backlash, and 19 mafiosi were arrested and prosecuted. In the first trial of 9 of them, the defendants successfully tampered with the jury. Despite overwhelming evidence, 6 were acquitted while the other 3 had hung juries. The following day, March 14^th, 1891, a mob numbering in the thousands, including some of New Orleans’ most prominent citizens, broke into the prison housing the defendants. They lynched 11 of them – the biggest single mass lynching in US history.

That had a salutary effect on the mafia. Unlike Sicily and southern Italy, where criminals could act in brazen defiance of the authorities and society, with little to fear from either, America was different, with limits to what criminals could get away with. Thereafter, the American mafia adopted strict rules against targeting law enforcement, even preemptively killing mobsters seeking to go after cops or prosecutors.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.