Gangsters in Tampa

When I think about the speakeasy culture of the 1920s my mind conjures images of Chicago and outfits like Al Capone's or the infamous O'Banion's Northside gang. The movies brought images of beer barrels chopped open with axes, late-night runs across the Great Lakes to smuggle booze from Canada, and of course baseball bats and Tommy guns. In Chicago alone, there were more than 25,000 men and boys who belonged to one of the gangs. 

Moving to Florida over a decade ago and starting to explore the history of this state introduced me to a new group of 1920s gangsters. Here Charlie Wall's mob clashed with Italian mobster Ignacio Antinori. With the plethora of inlets around Tampa Bay rumrunners were unstoppable. But the real power of the Tampa outfits was Bolita, a type of lottery that was popular in Cuba and among Florida’s working-class minorities. Charley Wall, the black sheep of his blueblooded family,  got into the game early and pretty much cornered the racket. At the height of his power, nothing of importance got done in central Florida without his nod. Gambling, car theft, human trafficking,  prostitution, rumrunning, bootlegging, speakeasies, and music halls were sources of his wealth. That wealth bought him elections, courts, police departments, and city halls. 

What wealth could not buy was protection from a racket bigger than all the others combined. During prohibition, no self-respecting gangster would engage in the dope trade. But, drugs flowed through Tampa's port. Self-respect was of little import to the men whose lust for money fueled the drug trade. Crime syndicates formed and crime was big business. Individuals like Wall were squeezed out by networks spread around the world. After a Decade of Blood, the Trafficante family took over Tampa.

History of Flogging in Tampa

Flogging holds a prominent place in Tampa history; in fact, from the turn of the 20th century into the 1930s, "professional flogger" was an acceptable, if not entirely respectable occupation. If you didn't like someone and didn't want to get your own hands dirty, you could hire a flogger to deliver a public whipping. There are reported cases of men, women, and children who died from injuries received in a flogging. It is a sad fact that flogging in Tampa and Hillsborough County was widespread and accepted deep into the 20th century. 

As with most other punishments, flogging took the worst toll on people of color. Instead of the leather strap, a whip or chain might be used. Other targets of the lash were Jews, Catholics, women of ill repute, and criminals. Prisoners were systematically abused. The use of the lash in law enforcement was a daily practice. It continued for decades and no prisoner was immune to the threat of flogging on the whim of city and county officials. Judges even beat children in the courtrooms of the city. 

Judge Whitaker of the Tampa municipal court is said to have set the legal precedent, "by personally applying the lash to two boy offenders convicted in his court." The judge believed a good whipping would be better for their character than jail time. Perhaps he was right, but by the time of Ybor City Blues, Hillsboro County had instituted a policy of flogging four prisoners a day even if there had been no infractions of the rules. 

Hillsborough County Chain Gang 1925

Imagine for a moment what it would be like to serve time in the county jail. First of all, jail usually meant the county work camp. Prisoners worked twelve-hour days building roads, cleaning ditches, and cutting brush using hand tools. They were shackled together to form a "chain gang." Then, every afternoon a flogger would walk down the row and pick out four random men to flog. If you were disliked, unlucky, or a shade or two darker than the next man in line, you could end up with daily floggings through your entire sentence.

The Magic Kingdom of Henry Plant

This past weekend, Sarah and I were in Tampa for the Florida Gulf Coast Chapter of Sisters in Crime meeting, which was held in the media room of the Oxford Exchange. This was the first time since the pandemic began that we have been able to meet in person. As the members are spread out along the West Coast of Florida, we appreciate having the option of doing an in-person meeting while others join us via Zoom. 

Since we were right across the street from the University of Tampa, we took advantage of our location to take a little trip into Tampa's first Magic Kingdom, the Kingdom of Henry Plant. Plant's Kingdom was made up of railroads, steamships, lavish resorts, and tropical islands. It even had its own flag.

Plant Flag

There is no place the flag more proudly waved than over his castle, AKA The Tampa Hotel. As you can see from the picture below, the hotel was as close to a castle as Plant could make it. It was built at the center of a lavishly landscaped 100-acre park. It had an 18-hole golf course, its own stables for horseback riding, tennis courts, croquet and badminton courts, horseshoes, fishing, boating on Tampa Bay, and even hunting was available. There were shows and concerts by some of the world's best performers, a rail station, and a casino with a floor that opened to the swimming pool. 

He spared no expense on constructing and furnishing the castle. Moorish spires rose above the roofline, each adorned with a crescent moon. 

One wing of the Tampa Bay Hotel

Lobby

There were life-sized statues decorating the lobby, art, and furnishings imported from Europe and the Orient. Phone service was available in every guest room (which was unheard of at the time). Every guest had access to a bath with hot and cold running water.

Typical Hotel Bathroom

The hotel was finished in February of 1891, at a cost of over three million dollars. When the Spanish-American War loomed on the horizon, Plant lobbied hard to make Tampa the main port of embarkation of the troops. His prized hotel was filled with officers, plus Clara Barton and her Red Cross nurses as they waited for orders to leave for Cuba. Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders camped on the banks of the river and held drills on Plant's carefully landscaped lawns. 

After his death in 1899, the family lost interest in the hotel, which was sold to the city of Tampa in 1905 for 125 thousand dollars. It closed in 1932, and in 1933 part of the building reopened as a museum; the rest is used as offices for the University of Tampa.