Irene Kite

1937-1939

In 1937, an Alton, Illinois woman took on the local gambling-Mobsters and the political machine … with an axe.

Motivating Factors

In Irene Kite‘s county of Madison, gambling was illegal, yet law enforcement and local government allowed certain establishments offering games of chance to operate openly. Her husband Carl’s card club had been one of them until the powers that be, at the behest of the area’s crime syndicate, refused him permission to operate in April 1937 after 15 years in business. This left the Kites without an income.

The majority of approved gaming enterprises were ones run by Mobsters, and they sought to get all independently owned places closed down.

The Syndicate heads in Madison County were: Harry Murdock, Harry Price, Paul Delaney and Cliff Phayer.

“With the exception of a few cities in Madison County, the syndicate had its grip everywhere — Granite City and Wood River being the chief places where the syndicate was barred. Alton, Edwardsville, East Alton, Venice, Madison, Collinsville and some of the smaller places were dominated in their politics, as well as their slot machine business, by one or the other of the divisions of gamblers who were plundering the people of the county,” reported the Alton Evening Telegraph (Nov. 2, 1938).

The article highlighted that the Mobsters’ slots were rigged to rarely pay out and when they did, amounts were small.

Her Killing Spree

On a Saturday afternoon in late December of the same year, Kite contacted a local newspaperman and informed him what she planned to do that night and why.

Later, she went from gambling club to gambling club in Alton, once inside apologized for the disruption and slayed as many syndicate-owned slot machines as she could. Familiar with the devices’ inner workings, she disabled each one with two targeted blows.

Kite maimed 14 slots in 7 bars before police arrested her.

Irene Kite, with axe, in action.

She did it “because that’s the only way I can get at those who allow one man to operate a gambling resort and won’t let the next man,” and she’d intended to embarrass the slot owners, she’d told the reporter (Alton Evening Telegraph, Dec. 20, 1937).

Kite emphasized she’d axe the slots again and again if she thought she had to.

“I’ve got a lot of axes — about a dozen of them — and I’m not going to quit until every slot is out of the city,” she said (Nevada State Journal, Feb. 15, 1938).Kite also had informed the newspaperman that in Alton numerous syndicate-operated gambling places already should’ve been closed but hadn’t been because no officer would serve the warrants. She’d estimated that about 14 of these warrants, all legitimate and signed by a judge, were on file; the reporter looked into the matter and confirmed the total to be 17.

Success And Fame

After spending a few hours in jail that Saturday night, Kite was released. No charges were brought against her for her destructive rampage.

What it did get her was results. Alton’s Chief of Police Paul Smith ordered that all gambling in the city be stopped. And it was … at least for the time being.

“It is true that the slot machines are now in storage,” the Alton Evening Telegraph reported (Nov. 2, 1938), but the gambling syndicate hope, only until after election (on Nov. 8) when the prediction is made, if everything goes right, they will be out and in full operation again.”

Kite also garnered widespread fame. People and groups — the Alton Ministerial Association and the League of Women Voters, for example — admired and supported her. Eventually, the notoriety led to her and her story being featured, in March 1939, in Actual Detective Stories of Women in Crime, a hard-boiled pulp publication.

————————————–

Sources

During Andrew Jackson’s U.S. presidency, anti-gambling sentiment began sweeping the Southern states. By 1835, it had hit Louisiana and was making its way up the Mississippi River. The fever peaked mid-year in Vicksburg, Mississippi when a band of vigilantes committed a criminal act that shocked the world.

Generally, the steps taken to eradicate gambling in a region included passing laws prohibiting the activity, ordering gamblers (operators and professional cheaters) to leave the jurisdiction and raiding and shutting down illegal operations. What happened in Vicksburg, however, was unprecedented and radical.

The Last Straw

Dissent toward the gamblers in the city burgeoned over a couple of days, starting on July 4 at a party held by the corps of Vicksburg Volunteers and attended by numerous residents. When, at the shindig, an officer attempted to quiet everyone for a toast, a gambler named Francis Cabler allegedly insulted him and then hit a guest. Cabler was shown the door.

After the festivities ended, many of these militia members as well as locals went to the city’s public square. Cabler showed up, too, and made a beeline for the group. Before he reached it, however, two volunteers arrested him and found a loaded gun, knife and dagger on his person.

The mob tied him to a tree, tarred and feathered him and ordered him to leave Vicksburg within 48 hours.

Get Out Or Else

That night, numerous Vicksburg residents met in the courthouse, formed an ad hoc anti-gambling committee and passed the following resolutions, as noted in a Vicksburg dispatch published in numerous newspapers, including The Watchman:

• “That a notice be given all professional gamblers, that the citizens of Vicksburg are resolved to exclude them from this place and its vicinity; and that 24 hours’ notice be given them to leave the place.”
• “That all persons permitting faro dealing in their houses, be also notified that they will be prosecuted therefor [sic].”
• “That 100 copies of the foregoing resolutions be printed and stuck up at the corners of the streets — and that this publication be deemed notice.”

The next morning, Sunday, July 5, the notices were posted throughout the city.

Crescendo Of Violence

Immediately after the deadline passed, on the 6th, the militia, followed by several hundred citizens, marched to and stormed the “kangaroos,”* the known and suspected gambling houses in the waterfront district. In their frenzy, this vengeful faction destroyed any gambling equipment it came upon, leaving pieces of faro tables and roulette wheels in its wake.

The multitude sought out the coffeehouse owned by Alfred North, “one of the most profligate of the gang,” the Vicksburg report described. Acting on the rumor that armed gamblers were hiding inside, the mob surrounded the building and burst open the back door, which revealed only darkness.

The occupants fired their guns, instantly killing one of the pack’s leaders, reportedly a well-respected community member.

“This unexpected reception aroused the citizens to madness and desperation,” wrote the Natchez Courier (July 13, 1835).

The vigilantes shot back, and a bloody riot ensued. Outnumbering and overpowering the gamblers, the disgruntled mob extracted the four men inside, one of whom had been hit by a bullet. North wasn’t among them, but someone apprehended him nearby.

Before a mass of looky-loo townspeople, the alleged gamblers were hanged. Those executed were North, Hullums, Dutch Bill, Smith and McCall (full names weren’t published).

“All sympathy for the wretches was completely merged in detestation and horror of their crime,” the Vicksburg dispatch noted, referring to the gamblers.

Next, the entire procession collected, piled and burned all of the wooden gambling equipment littering the streets.

The following day, July 7, the dangling corpses were cut down from the gallows and buried in a ditch.

In The Minority

The dispatch from Vicksburg indicated that its citizens wholly supported the lynchings and those who carried them out. The report read:  

“Our city has for some days past been the theatre of the most novel and startling scene that we have ever witnessed. While we regret that the necessity for such scenes should have existed, we are proud of the public spirit and indignation against offenders displayed by the citizens, and congratulate them on having at length banished a class of individuals, whose shameless vices and daring outrages have long poisoned the springs of morality, and interrupted the relations of society.”

On the other hand, much of the rest of the U.S. and the world considered the lynchings vile. One such opinion was published in The Watchman (Aug. 8, 1935). It read, “It seems to us that the proceedings of the people of Vicksburg cannot be sanctioned by any well regulated mind. They are subversive of every principle of law and the good order of society, and ought to be discountenanced with horror by every good and just man.”

Exodus To More Tolerable Locales

After the Vicksburg murders, other towns along the Mississippi River exiled the gamblers from their communities.

The “proceedings at Vicksburg have kindled a spirit throughout the lower country which is breaking forth at every point, and obliging the blackleg fraternity to make their escape with all haste,” reported Niles’ Weekly Register (Aug. 8, 1835).

Due to these expulsions, the gamblers moved en masse to the West Coast.

—————————————

* The people of Vicksburg referred to the local gambling houses as “kangaroos” because one of the former casinos, which had burned down the year before, was called the Kangaroo Saloon.

Sources