Monk Eastman Gang

Eastman Gang

Monk Eastman leader of the Eastman Gang from a New York Police Department mug shot, 1903
Founded by	Monk Eastman
Founding location	Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York
Years active	1890s–1910s
Territory	Manhattan, New York
Ethnicity	predominantly Jewish-American
Membership (est.)	est. 1,100
Criminal activities	Armed robbery, theft, illegal gambling, extortion, prostitution
Rivals	Five Points Gang, Yakey Yakes

The Eastman Gang was the last of New York's street gangs which dominated the city's underworld during the late 1890s until the early 1910s. Along with the Five Points Gang under Italian immigrant Paul Kelly (who adopted an Irish name), the Eastman gang succeeded the long dominant Whyos as the first non-Irish street gang to gain prominence in the underworld during the 1890s, and marked the beginning of a forty to fifty-year period of heavy Jewish-American influence within organized crime in New York City.

Under the leadership of Monk Eastman, a well known bouncer and hired thug, the Eastmans would spend the next decade establishing a criminal empire in Manhattan's Lower East Side through criminal activities, including prostitution and illegal gambling, specifically operating stuss games, as well as later establishing political connections through Tammany Hall.

According to an article in the April 26th, 1903 edition of the New York Daily Tribune, the gang that would become the Eastmans first came on the scene in the early 1890s. They started out in the notorious Corlear's Hook section of the Lower East Side on Rivington street in the vicinity of Mangin and Goerck streets. Another gang of the era, the Short Tails, had its headquarters in this same area, making it entirely possible that the Eastmans grew out of the Short-Tails. Originally composed of gentiles from the local slums, the gang quickly became almost exclusively Jewish with the influx of Jewish immigrants into lower Manhattan and nearby Brooklyn. When Monk Eastman entered the gang is unknown, but the fact that several newspaper articles refer to him as hailing from Corlear's Hook indicates that it was probably during this early era. His background was Yankee, but he had many Irish associates.