Al Capone, sometimes known by the nickname "Scarface", was an American mobster, crime boss, and businessman who attained notoriety during the Prohibition era as the co-founder and boss of the Chicago Outfit.
His seven-year reign as crime boss ended when he was 33.
His seven-year reign as crime boss ended when he was 33.
Al Capone was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on January 17, 1899. His parents were Italian immigrants Gabriele Capone and Teresa Capone. His father was a barber and his mother was a seamstress, both born in Angri, a town in the Province of Salerno.
The Capone family immigrated to the United States, after first moving to nearby Fiume in Austria-Hungary in 1893. From that port city they traveled on a ship to the U.S., where they settled at 95 Navy Street, in the Navy Yard section of downtown Brooklyn.
Gabriele Capone worked at a nearby barber shop at 29 Park Avenue. When Al was 11, the Capone family moved to 38 Garfield Place in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
Capone showed promise as a student, but had trouble with the rules at his strict parochial Catholic school. His schooling ended at the age of 14, after he was expelled for hitting a female teacher in the face.
He worked at odd jobs around Brooklyn, including a candy store and a bowling alley. During this time, Capone was influenced by gangster Johnny Torrio, whom he came to regard as a mentor.
Capone initially became involved with small-time gangs that included the Junior Forty Thieves and the Bowery Boys. He then joined the Brooklyn Rippers, and then the powerful Five Points Gang based in Lower Manhattan.
During this time, he was employed and mentored by fellow racketeer Frankie Yale, a bartender in a Coney Island dance hall and saloon called the Harvard Inn.
Capone inadvertently insulted a woman while working the door at a Brooklyn night club and was slashed by her brother Frank Gallucio. The wounds led to the nickname "Scarface" which Capone loathed.
When he was photographed, he hid the scarred left side of his face, saying that the injuries were war wounds.
At about 20 years of age, Capone left New York for Chicago at the invitation of Johnny Torrio, who was imported by crime boss James "Big Jim" Colosimo as an enforcer. He began in Chicago as a bouncer in a brothel, where he contracted syphilis.
Timely use of Salvarsan probably could have cured the infection, but he apparently never sought treatment. In 1923, he purchased a small house at 7244 South Prairie Avenue in the Park Manor neighborhood on the city's south side for US$5,500.
In the early years of the decade, his name began appearing in newspaper sports pages where he was described as a boxing promoter. Torrio took over Colosimo's crime empire after Colosimo's murder on May 11, 1920, in which Capone was suspected of being involved.
Torrio headed an essentially Italian organized crime group that was the biggest in the city, with Capone as his right-hand man. He was wary of being drawn into gang wars and tried to negotiate agreements over territory between rival crime groups.
