Monk Eastman

Edward "Monk" Eastman (1873 – December 26, 1920) was an American gangster who created and ran the Eastman Gang, one of New York City’s most formidable street gangs in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He is regarded as one of the final 19th-century New York gangsters, active before the emergence of Arnold Rothstein, the Jewish mob, and later Italian American Cosa Nostra crime organizations.

Eastman was born in 1873 in the Corlear’s Hook section of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His father, Samuel Eastman, a Civil War veteran and wallpaper hanger, abandoned the family when Monk was about five. His mother, Mary Parks Eastman, then moved Monk and his siblings into the home of her maternal grandfather on the Upper East Side. The 1880 census shows five-year-old Edward living with his mother, grandfather, and other relatives on East Seventy-Fifth Street. Parks, born in New York to New York-born parents, worked in a dry goods store. In the 1870 census, Mary and Samuel Eastman lived on Cannon Street with their children Lizzie and three-year-old Willie, who likely died young since he wasn’t listed with the family in 1880. Samuel Eastman had been a single man in 1860, living in the household of Thomas McSpedon, a member of a prominent old New York family whose firm, McSpedon & Baker, was the city government’s official printer. McSpedon also served as an elected alderman and city fire marshal. By 1900, Mary Eastman lived in Queens with her daughters Elizabeth and Francine and their families. That same census lists Edward Eastman as a “bird salesman,” living on East First Street in Lower Manhattan and married since 1896 to Margaret Eastman.

Eastman wasn’t arrested until after his grandfather died. Parks had helped him set up a pet shop on Broome Street, and for years after becoming known as a gangster, Eastman listed his occupation as “bird seller” on official forms. He eventually returned to the Lower East Side and joined neighborhood gangs of poor young men, often children of immigrants. His operations included a bike rental racket.

Eastman’s ethnicity has been debated. Because his gang included many Jewish-American criminals, he is often described as Jewish, including by some newspapers of his time. However, researchers have found he was likely a Protestant of British European descent.