Say it ain't so, Joe

New York City-

A man stepped out of his East Side tenement on his way to church. Slouched on the steps was a man whom he took for a drunk. He shook his head and passed. Upon returning from mass he saw the man still lying there, giving him a shake,the man's hat fell off and he saw that it was a corpse. The man summoned a cop and before long identification was made. Joseph Flanagan.

Called "Baby Joe" because he was youngest of the Four Fierce Flanagans, a quartet of East Side brothers who cut a swathe through New York's underworld during the Roaring Twenties, Joseph Flanagan met his end on this date back in 1929.

His career went back to his youth when he was sent to reform school at the age of fifteen. He spent a portion of the Jazz Age in the New Jersey State Penitentiary after being arrested during a jewelry store robbery in Perth Amboy. Like his brothers, Baby Joe was mainly an armed bandit but as the decade was coming to an end police surmised that he was also involved with beer running and, right or wrong, it was for the latter that they blamed. While on his final ride, somebody had placed a gun to Baby Joe's temple around 4 a.m. that Sunday morning and pulled the trigger. The job done, they dumped his body on the stoop.

Baby Joe Flanagan 

Four, make that three fierce Flanagans

Ninety-three years ago today Tom Flanagan, one of the four fierce Flanagans - a quartet of gun wielding law breaking brothers- gave up the ghost after somebody pumped a bullet into his chest at Yumpsy Cunningham's saloon. His pals, being the good guys that they were, placed him in a cab and sent him to his fathers apartment. Pop Flanagan, being of sounder mind thought that a hospital would probably be a better place. He fetched a cop who saw that Tom made it to Bellevue without further ado.

Inside the hospital, Tom was questioned about the shooting but, having memorized the Official Rules of the Underworld Volumes I-IV, he refused to say anything about it and passed out of this life at the ripe old age of thirty.

Now, don't go confusing Tom with his little brother Joe who followed his brother to an early grave in November of 1929.(Remember him? He was the guy found in the hallway.)

Baby Joe has left and gone away

Today marks the 86th anniversary of the passing of "Baby" Joe Flanagan. The youngest of New York City's the "Four Fierce Flanagan's ", Joe was the second brother to die by the gun. Brother Tom preceded him by seven years.
      It was Sunday when Joe was eliminated from the underworld and it was a churchgoer who found him. As the pious one was leaving his apartment he saw Joe lying in the hallway and thought he was sleeping off a drunk. When the man returned after the services the “drunk” was still there so the man took a closer look and realized that the “drunk” was in fact quite dead.
     Not quite sure why the dumped Joe in a hallway but then again not quite sure why a lot of these guys did what they did.