One of the most respected, capable, and feared Irish racketeers to ever operate within the city of New York during the 1920s through the 1960s was Manhattan’s own Edward (Eddie) McGrath. Eddie was raised on the Eastside in a section of Manhattan once controlled by a largely Irish gang known as the Gas House Gang. But McGrath himself was said to have been raised in a relatively stable middle-class environment. Yet by the time he reached his late teens, he had already gravitated toward a life of crime.
His rise to the top of the Irish underworld would start slowly. By the late 1920s, he was operating on the Westside, a heavily Irish-populated area where he worked in tandem with other young, like-minded hoodlums in liquor bootlegging and general thievery. After the repeal of Prohibition’s Volstead Act in 1933 which had made it illegal to either manufacture, buy, sell, or even possess alcoholic beverages, Eddie McGrath and his gang now had to look elsewhere to earn a dishonest dollar.
