Johnny Dolan
| Johnny Dolan | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1849 or 1850 |
| Died | April 21, 1876 (age 26) New York City, New York |
| Criminal penalty | Death by hanging |
| Criminal status | Deceased |
| Conviction(s) | Murder |
"Dandy" Johnny Dolan (1849 or 1850 – April 21, 1876) was a New York City murderer and reputed leader of the Whyos street gang.
According to Herbert Asbury's book The Gangs of New York, Dolan led the Whyos during its glory years of the post-Civil War era. Asbury wrote that Dolan was known as a particularly inventive criminal, who perfected a variety of devices widely used for assault and murder throughout the underworld. According to Asbury, Dolan designed a copper eye gouger to be worn on the thumb and used it both in criminal activities and in battles with other gangs. Dolan himself allegedly owned a personally designed pair of boots with sections of a sharp axe blade embedded in the soles, which he used to stomp a downed victim.
Asbury is the main and possibly only known public source of this description of Dolan as a man who engaged in chronic physical violence, enucleated his victims and led the Whyos. There is room for doubt as to the validity of Asbury's claims, which were written fifty years after Dolan's death.
A biography of Dolan published by the New York Times newspaper in 1876 contains many details about Dolan's criminal history, but never once describes him as an eye-gouger or gang member. It states that he was a petty thief and burglar who, before his final arrest on a murder charge, served two terms in Blackwell's Island Penitentiary for larceny, one of four and the other of six months, as well as a two-and-a-half year term in the State Prison at Sing Sing for burglary. A separate Times report describes him as "well known in the various low saloons on the Bowery as a man of desperate character." It says that he once tried to kill a man in a saloon and intended to use a heavy sling shot to do it.
Dolan died for the murder of merchant James H. Noe, 59. On the morning of August 22, 1875, Noe, the owner of a Greenwich Street brush factory, went to check on his business. He surprised a burglar who was attempting to enter through the scuttle in the roof and engaged in a fatal battle with him.
According to Asbury, Dolan attacked Noe with eye gougers before beating him to death with an iron bar. According to the Times, the burglar struck Noe on the head with a rattan cane, then grabbed an iron tube ("paint-iron") and repeatedly hit Noe over the head with it. After Noe collapsed, the burglar was even "considerate enough to provide a pillow for the bleeding, mangled head," using rags found on the floor, the Times wrote. The burglar then bound and gagged Noe, and robbed him of several items, including a watch and chain. Noe survived several days before dying. Of damage to the eyes, a post-mortem report mentions "a lacerated wound" on the upper lid of the left eye and a "fissure of the frontal bone." Official cause of death was meningitis caused by the injuries.
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