Owney "The Killer" Madden.

Owney "The Killer" Madden.

I think this man is one of the most underestimated crime boss's.

Anyone know much about this man ? since i have come on site i never see much people talking about him at all.

I´m not sure, but I think he was a WASP, which made him kinda unique in the New York gangster world among all the Irish, Jewish, German and Italian mobsters. I read he was born in Leeds, England in a upper middle class home, if I´m not mistaken.
Here is a doc on him where he is mentioned as been Irish, so I´m not sure about his origin.

Yes i seen he was born in Liverpool England as you may know i think 72% of the people of Liverpool are Irish descent so that is were Owney got the Irish.

oweny with the gophers (irish gang) in NY 1910

Five Points Gang - from this gang came some of the most notable gangsters of the depression period including Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Johnny Torio, Frankie Yale and Jimmy.

Owney Madden also had the ear of corrupt mayor Leo McLaughlin when he moved to Hot Springs to retire. Think he still had a few interests out there and had his headquarters at the Southern Club on Central Avenue where he handled some stuff for New York.

Ex-President Bill Clinton grew up near him as a kid and his mother was a nurse for Owney Madden.

german mobsters?

Dutch Schultz. They called him the German.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Schultz

yeah,but he was a jew... .it seems that most of the "german mobsters" were jews. thee only german mobster i found is Fred Goetz.

Madden was English-born to Irish parents.

born in Liverpool England

Irish-English.

They were not pure german people but german jews.....as for Madden,he was a irish descent

The Germans are definitely the forgotten minority of New York. You never hear much about them, but there were a lot of them in the city in those days, Jewish and Christian. They had their own German-language newspapers, their own theaters, churches, clubs, etc, and obviously they ran most of the breweries. They also brought hot dogs and pretzels to America. In those days anyone of Germanic descent was just called Dutch, so sometimes people don't even realize that many of the "Dutchmen" people were talking about back then were Germans.

Spot on.

There was a huge German population in Yorkville (upper east side) around 1900-1930. Many mobsters of this era were Germen. But I never found them interesting enough so their names slips my mind right now.

German deceent is actually the largest ethnic group in US and had pretty thriving neighborhoods for a long time until, you know, those two wars (especially the second one)made being German uncool, to say the least. Stevepalooza, you're definitely right that they're forgotten. You can thank Hitler for that. Reading a book on the old Five Points, I discovered that a significant amount of Germans in the area during 1850s-70s were Jewish and that the delicatessen we think of as Jewish is more German influenced than Jewish (at least until they got to NYC).