Jack Rose (gambler)
Encyclopedia
Jacob Rosenzweig was an American gambler and underworld figure in New York City
. He was one of several star witnesses in the Becker-Rosenthal trial, among these being fellow gamblers Bridgie Webber, Harry Vallon
, and Sam Schepps
. Rose's testimony was the most damaging because he directly implicated Becker in arranging the murder of Herman Rosenthal
. As Becker's debt collector, Rose confessed to hiring the Lenox Avenue Gang
, providing the getaway car. He testified he did it all on the orders of Charles Becker
.
as Jacob Rosenzweig, he grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut
and spent much of his early life living in Bridgeport
, Waterbury
, and South Norwalk, Connecticut
. He contracted typhoid when he was four years old, causing alopecia universalis
, leaving him permanently bald and devoid of eyebrows. His appearance caused him to be "the butt of schoolmates' joke" and where he got his underworld alias.
Rose eventually opened a small-time gambling house in Norwich and was involved in sporting and athletic events including promoting "stumble-bum" pugilists and founded The Rosebuds, an early minor league baseball team
in the Connecticut League
. He later moved to New York City
where he operated a successful Second Avenue gambling resort in East Side Manhattan
known as The Rosebud. His place was soon a popular underworld hangout, particularly by the Eastman Gang
, and Rose became closely associated with Monk Eastman
, "Big" Jack Zelig
, and the Lenox Avenue Gang
. He was such a popular Broadway character that a cocktail
, containing "one jigger of applejack, juice of half a lemon, half an ounce of grenadine, shaken with cracked ice, and strained", was named in his honor
.
In the summer of 1912, NYPD detective Lieutenant Charles Becker
and the "Gambling Squad" raided The Rosebud. In exchange for not closing down the resort, Rose agreed to pay Becker 25% of his weekly income, which ran as high as $10,000 a month. Rose would also become Becker's official collector for the rest of the gambling establishments from which Becker would extort money. His role in Becker's organization was outlined in an affidavit
by Herman Rosenthal, a gambler who had fallen out with Becker, and published in the New York World
. On July 16, 1912, after meeting with District Attorney Charles S. Whitman
, the four members of the Lenox Avenue Gang gunned down Rosenthal in the doorway of the Hotel Metropole. The murder car was traced by police to a Lower East Side
automobile rental service, where one of the owners identified Rose as having rented out the car on the night of the murder. With this information, a number of gamblers and underworld figures including Bridgie Webber, Harry Vallon
, Sam Schepps
, and Jack Sullivan were rounded up as suspects.
Three days after Rosenthal's murder, Rose turned himself in at the NYPD Headquarters
. He later confessed to hiring the gunmen whom he identified as Gyp the Blood, Lefty Louis Rosenberg
, Jacob "Whitey Lewis" Seidenschner and Francesco "Dago Frank" Cirofisi, as well as hiring the getaway car and paying the men $1,500 on the orders of Becker. Rose agreed to testify against Becker at his murder trial. One of the star witnesses, his testimony at each of the three trials against Becker resulted in his conviction and eventual execution for murder in 1915. He was also quoted, albeit after the fact, as having predicted the murder of Jack Zelig stating "Zelig will never live to see the trial start. Watch. They'll be the next one they get".
At the end of the trial, Broadway gamblers began laying odds that "the squealer" would be murdered within a matter of days or weeks for becoming an informant. Instead, Rose was offered $1,000 a week to appear in vaudeville
and received countless requests to lecture on crime. He eventually snuck out of the city disguised in a wig and returned to southern Connecticut to become a farmer. A year later, Rose started speaking at churches preaching against gambling and other vices. He also agreed to appear in several motion picture shorts
for this purpose and, in 1917, he lectured at U.S. Army training camps to warn troops about gambling.
In 1936 he was threatened with rearrest in the Rosenthal case.
He fell ill in his later years and returned to New York to live in a residential hotel with his wife Hilda. In late September 1947, Rose was sent to Roosevelt Hospital where he remained for several weeks until he died from an "internal disorder" on October 4, 1947. In relative obscurity at the time of his death, his funeral at Riverside Chapel, on Amsterdam Avenue and Seventy-Sixth Street, attracted no public attention with exception to Chief of Detectives George Mitchell
who declared his police file to be officially closed.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. He was one of several star witnesses in the Becker-Rosenthal trial, among these being fellow gamblers Bridgie Webber, Harry Vallon
Harry Vallon
Harry Vallon was a New York City gambler and mob informant.He turned state's evidence and testified against the gunman in the murder of Herman Rosenthal, and also against Charles Becker, under a promise of immunity from the district attorney. He testified as one of four mob informants, along with...
, and Sam Schepps
Sam Schepps
Samuel Schepps , also known as Schapps, was a New York City mobster with the Monk Eastman Gang. Schepps ran gambling houses for Jack Zelig as part of his work with the gang.-Biography:...
. Rose's testimony was the most damaging because he directly implicated Becker in arranging the murder of Herman Rosenthal
Herman Rosenthal
Herman Rosenthal was an American author, editor, and librarian.-Biography:Rosenthal was born in Friedrichstadt , Courland. He was educated at Bauske and Jakobstadt , graduating in 1859. In that year he translated into German several of Nekrasov's poems...
. As Becker's debt collector, Rose confessed to hiring the Lenox Avenue Gang
Lenox Avenue Gang
The Lenox Avenue Gang was an early 20th century New York City street gang led by Harry Horowitz, and was one of the most violent gangs of the pre-Prohibition era.-History:...
, providing the getaway car. He testified he did it all on the orders of Charles Becker
Charles Becker
Charles Becker was a New York City police officer in the 1890s-1910s and who was tried, convicted and executed for ordering the murder of a Manhattan gambler, Herman Rosenthal in the Becker-Rosenthal trial. Becker was the first American police officer to receive the death penalty for murder...
.
Biography
Born in PolandPoland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
as Jacob Rosenzweig, he grew up in Fairfield County, Connecticut
Fairfield County, Connecticut
Fairfield County is a county located in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The county population is 916,829 according to the 2010 Census. There are currently 1,465 people per square mile in the county. It is the most populous county in the State of Connecticut and contains...
and spent much of his early life living in Bridgeport
Bridgeport
Bridgeport is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Connecticut.Bridgeport may also refer to:-Places:In Canada:* Bridgeport, Nova ScotiaIn the United States:* Bridgeport, Alabama* Bridgeport, California, in Mono County...
, Waterbury
Waterbury
Waterbury is a city in Connecticut in the United States.Waterbury may also refer to any one of the following:-Places:United States*Waterbury, Nebraska*Waterbury, Vermont*Waterbury , Vermont,a village within the town of Waterbury, Vermont....
, and South Norwalk, Connecticut
South Norwalk, Connecticut
South Norwalk is a neighborhood in Norwalk, Connecticut. SoNo features a high density of bars and eateries and is the center of Norwalk's nightlife and restaurant culture...
. He contracted typhoid when he was four years old, causing alopecia universalis
Alopecia universalis
Alopecia universalis or alopecia areata universalis is a medical condition involving rapid loss of all hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes. It is the most severe form of alopecia areata, with an incidence of .001%...
, leaving him permanently bald and devoid of eyebrows. His appearance caused him to be "the butt of schoolmates' joke" and where he got his underworld alias.
Rose eventually opened a small-time gambling house in Norwich and was involved in sporting and athletic events including promoting "stumble-bum" pugilists and founded The Rosebuds, an early minor league baseball team
Minor league baseball
Minor league baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in the Americas that compete at levels below Major League Baseball and provide opportunities for player development. All of the minor leagues are operated as independent businesses...
in the Connecticut League
Connecticut League
The Connecticut League, also known as the Connecticut State League is a now defunct minor baseball league based in Connecticut. The league began as off-shoot of the original Connecticut State League in 1902 as a Class D league with teams in eight cities...
. He later moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
where he operated a successful Second Avenue gambling resort in East Side Manhattan
East Side (Manhattan)
The East Side of Manhattan refers to the side of Manhattan Island which abuts the East River and faces Brooklyn and Queens. Fifth Avenue, Central Park, and lower Broadway separate it from the West Side....
known as The Rosebud. His place was soon a popular underworld hangout, particularly by the Eastman Gang
Eastman Gang
The Eastman Gang was the last of New York's street gangs which dominated the city's underworld during the late 1890s until early 1910s. Along with the Five Points Gang under Paul Kelly, the Eastmans succeeded the long dominant Whyos as the first non-Irish street gang to gain prominence in the...
, and Rose became closely associated with Monk Eastman
Monk Eastman
Edward "Monk" Eastman was a New York City Gangster who founded and led one of the most powerful street gangs in New York City at the turn of the Twentieth Century, the Eastman Gang. His other aliases included Joseph "Joe" Morris, Joe Marvin, William "Bill" Delaney, and Edward "Eddie" Delaney...
, "Big" Jack Zelig
Jack Zelig
"Big" Jack Zelig was a Jewish American New York City gangster and one of the last leaders of the Monk Eastman Gang.-Early years & the Eastmans:...
, and the Lenox Avenue Gang
Lenox Avenue Gang
The Lenox Avenue Gang was an early 20th century New York City street gang led by Harry Horowitz, and was one of the most violent gangs of the pre-Prohibition era.-History:...
. He was such a popular Broadway character that a cocktail
Cocktail
A cocktail is an alcoholic mixed drink that contains two or more ingredients—at least one of the ingredients must be a spirit.Cocktails were originally a mixture of spirits, sugar, water, and bitters. The word has come to mean almost any mixed drink that contains alcohol...
, containing "one jigger of applejack, juice of half a lemon, half an ounce of grenadine, shaken with cracked ice, and strained", was named in his honor
Jack Rose (cocktail)
Jack Rose is the name of a classic cocktail, popular in the 1920s and 1930s, containing applejack, grenadine, and lemon or lime juice. It notably appeared in a scene in Ernest Hemingway's 1926 classic, The Sun Also Rises, in which Jake Barnes, the narrator, drinks a Jack Rose in a Paris hotel bar...
.
In the summer of 1912, NYPD detective Lieutenant Charles Becker
Charles Becker
Charles Becker was a New York City police officer in the 1890s-1910s and who was tried, convicted and executed for ordering the murder of a Manhattan gambler, Herman Rosenthal in the Becker-Rosenthal trial. Becker was the first American police officer to receive the death penalty for murder...
and the "Gambling Squad" raided The Rosebud. In exchange for not closing down the resort, Rose agreed to pay Becker 25% of his weekly income, which ran as high as $10,000 a month. Rose would also become Becker's official collector for the rest of the gambling establishments from which Becker would extort money. His role in Becker's organization was outlined in an affidavit
Affidavit
An affidavit is a written sworn statement of fact voluntarily made by an affiant or deponent under an oath or affirmation administered by a person authorized to do so by law. Such statement is witnessed as to the authenticity of the affiant's signature by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public...
by Herman Rosenthal, a gambler who had fallen out with Becker, and published in the New York World
New York World
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...
. On July 16, 1912, after meeting with District Attorney Charles S. Whitman
Charles S. Whitman
Charles Seymour Whitman served as the 41st Governor of New York from January 1915 to December 1918. He was also a delegate to Republican National Convention from New York in 1916.-Biography:...
, the four members of the Lenox Avenue Gang gunned down Rosenthal in the doorway of the Hotel Metropole. The murder car was traced by police to a Lower East Side
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....
automobile rental service, where one of the owners identified Rose as having rented out the car on the night of the murder. With this information, a number of gamblers and underworld figures including Bridgie Webber, Harry Vallon
Harry Vallon
Harry Vallon was a New York City gambler and mob informant.He turned state's evidence and testified against the gunman in the murder of Herman Rosenthal, and also against Charles Becker, under a promise of immunity from the district attorney. He testified as one of four mob informants, along with...
, Sam Schepps
Sam Schepps
Samuel Schepps , also known as Schapps, was a New York City mobster with the Monk Eastman Gang. Schepps ran gambling houses for Jack Zelig as part of his work with the gang.-Biography:...
, and Jack Sullivan were rounded up as suspects.
Three days after Rosenthal's murder, Rose turned himself in at the NYPD Headquarters
New York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...
. He later confessed to hiring the gunmen whom he identified as Gyp the Blood, Lefty Louis Rosenberg
Louis Rosenberg
-Biography:Rosenberg was born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. He received an LL.B. from Duquesne University School of Law in 1923. He was a special counsel, Allegheny County Emergency Relief in 1935. He was a Special deputy attorney general of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 1936 to 1939. He was a...
, Jacob "Whitey Lewis" Seidenschner and Francesco "Dago Frank" Cirofisi, as well as hiring the getaway car and paying the men $1,500 on the orders of Becker. Rose agreed to testify against Becker at his murder trial. One of the star witnesses, his testimony at each of the three trials against Becker resulted in his conviction and eventual execution for murder in 1915. He was also quoted, albeit after the fact, as having predicted the murder of Jack Zelig stating "Zelig will never live to see the trial start. Watch. They'll be the next one they get".
At the end of the trial, Broadway gamblers began laying odds that "the squealer" would be murdered within a matter of days or weeks for becoming an informant. Instead, Rose was offered $1,000 a week to appear in vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
and received countless requests to lecture on crime. He eventually snuck out of the city disguised in a wig and returned to southern Connecticut to become a farmer. A year later, Rose started speaking at churches preaching against gambling and other vices. He also agreed to appear in several motion picture shorts
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
for this purpose and, in 1917, he lectured at U.S. Army training camps to warn troops about gambling.
In 1936 he was threatened with rearrest in the Rosenthal case.
He fell ill in his later years and returned to New York to live in a residential hotel with his wife Hilda. In late September 1947, Rose was sent to Roosevelt Hospital where he remained for several weeks until he died from an "internal disorder" on October 4, 1947. In relative obscurity at the time of his death, his funeral at Riverside Chapel, on Amsterdam Avenue and Seventy-Sixth Street, attracted no public attention with exception to Chief of Detectives George Mitchell
George Mitchell
George Mitchell may refer to:*George J. Mitchell , former Senator from Maine, special envoy to the Middle East for the Obama administration, former Senate majority leader and former chairman of Disney...
who declared his police file to be officially closed.
Further reading
- Chafetz, Henry. Play the Devil: A History of Gambling in the United States from 1492 to 1955. New York: Potters Publishers, 1960.
- Cohen, Stanley. The Execution of Officer Becker; The Murder of a Gambler, the Trial of a Cop, and the Birth of Organized Crime. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006. ISBN 0-78671-757-2
- Harlow, Alvin F. Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street. New York and London: D. Appleton & Company, 1931.
- Katcher, Leo. The Big Bankroll: The Life and Times of Arnold Rothstein. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994. ISBN 0-306-80565-0
- Logan, Andy. Against The Evidence: The Becker-Rosenthal Affair. New York: McCall Publishing Company, 1970.
- Morris, Lloyd R. Incredible New York: High Life and Low Life of the Last Hundred Years. New York: Random House, 1951.
- Pietrusza, David. Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003. ISBN 0-7867-1250-3
- Root, Jonathan. One Night in July: The True Story of the Rosenthal-Becker Murder Case. New York: Coward-McCann, 1961.