Giuseppe Morello - gangster

Sicilian established first New York crime ‘family’

Morello was known as 'the claw'
because of a deformed right hand

The Mafia boss Giuseppe Morello, who is credited with building the first of the New York gangs to be known as a crime ‘family’, was born on this day in 1867 in the notorious Sicilian crime stronghold of Corleone, a small town in a mountainous area 50km (31 miles) inland from the island’s capital, Palermo.

Morello had a deformed right hand with a single finger that was always bent, on account of which he became known as Joe l’artiglio - Joe ‘the claw’.

Along with three half-brothers, Morello established the 107th Street Mob in the East Harlem district of Manhattan in the late 1890s, a time when it had a substantial Italian population. The gang is recognised as the organisation that would eventually evolve into the Genovese crime family, the oldest of the New York Mafia’s so-called Five Families.

Also known as Piddu, a Sicilian diminutive of Giuseppe, and sometimes Peter among other names, Morello is thought to have been brought up among the criminal underworld in Sicily on account of his widowed mother, Angelina, marrying Bernardo Terranova, a prominent member of the Corleonesi Mafia.

Giuseppe was only six years old at the time but when he reached maturity, he and his half-brothers, Vincenzo, Ciro and Nicolò, began to take part in Mafia activity.

The young Morello is thought to have emigrated to the United States in around 1892 to escape imprisonment in Sicily after a counterfeiting operation he was running had been exposed. He was also suspected of killing a witness to a murder in Corleone.

He settled initially in the south, taking labourer’s work on sugar cane plantations in Louisiana and cotton plantations in Texas, where he was later joined by other members of his family, including his mother and stepfather, his Sicilian wife, Rosa, and their son, Calogero.

East Harlem in the early 1900s was an area of
New York with a large Italian community

In 1897 Morello moved to New York, accompanied at first by Vincenzo, Ciro and Nicolò. Known as the East 107th Street Mob, they began extorting money from local businesses.

They established links with other criminals, notably another Corleonesi, Ignazio ‘the Wolf’ Lupo, the Mafia boss in Little Italy, Manhattan, who would later marry Morello's half sister, Salvatrice, and Vito Cascio Ferro, a Sicilian with connections to the notorious Black Hand gangsters who terrorised the Little Italy neighbourhood.

As the Morello crime family grew, their rackets extended to loan sharking, fake Italian lottery tickets and robbery and their territory expanded to other parts of Manhattan and The Bronx. They were the first criminal organisation in New York to develop sophisticated money laundering methods through legitimate businesses such as stores and restaurants. 

They also introduced the practice of extorting small amounts of money each week from business owners in exchange for "protection" rather than taking large sums that would put them out of business. 

The Morello gang maintained their grip by dealing ruthlessly with anyone who crossed them or tried to stand up to them. Lupo, his main enforcer, was said to be responsible for more than 60 murders in a 10-year period, often disposing of victims by forcing their dismembered corpses in large wooden barrels, which would then be dumped the sea, left on street corners or in back alleys, or shipped to other cities with labels carrying addresses that did not exist.

Ignazio Lupo was Morello's
ruthless enforcer

In 1903, the group began a major counterfeiting ring. Cascio Ferro, known as Don Vito, printed $5 bills in Sicily and smuggled them into the United States.  By 1905, Morello had created the largest, most influential Sicilian crime family in New York City and was recognised as capo di tutti capi (boss of bosses) by other Mafia leaders.

It was Vito Cascio Ferro who is thought to have murdered the New York police detective Joe Petrosino in Palermo in 1909, in revenge for an investigation that ultimately saw Morello and Lupo jailed. 

Morello and Lupo were both released after serving only nine years of their sentences but emerged to find the New York crime scene dominated by conflicts between rival gangs.

Nicolò, the youngest of his three-half brothers, had taken control of Morello activities but in 1916 was killed by the Neapolitan boss in Brooklyn, Pellegrino Morano, as part of the Mafia-Camorra War.

Morello found himself under threat from Salvatore D’Aquila, his former lieutenant, who was now a boss himself and ordered Morello killed.

Morello fled to Sicily, where - thanks to his chief ally, Giuseppe Masseria - he foiled a plot to kill him in Sicily and returned to New York, becoming consigliere to Masseria, with whom he enjoyed some prosperity throughout the Prohibition years of the 1920s.

However, during the so-called Castellammarese War, between 1930 and 1931, in which Masseria and Morello fought against a rival group based in Brooklyn, led by Salvatore Maranzano and Joseph Bonanno, Morello was killed on August 15, 1930, while collecting cash receipts in his East Harlem office, his murderer almost certainly acting on the orders of Maranzano.

Masseria himself was killed the following year, shot dead in a restaurant in Brooklyn, the victim of a plot by some ambitious mobsters he had recruited himself but who now turned against him, including Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, Joe Adonis, Vito Genovese and Albert Anastasia, all of whom would go on to become powerful Mafia figures in their own right. Luciano took control of Morello-Masseria operations and the organisation was known as the Luciano family from 1931 until 1957, when power shifted to Genovese.

The church of San Domenico in one of the most
historic Corleone streets, Via XXIV Maggio

Travel tip:

Corleone, a town of around 12,000 inhabitants in the province of Palermo, was once dominated by Arabs before falling into the hands of the Normans.  Its strategic position overlooking the main routes between Palermo and Agrigento meant it was on the frontline in many wars.  At one time the town had two castles and was encircled by a defensive wall.  Its association with the Mafia began in the 1960s following the outbreak of violence that followed the killing of clan boss Michele Navarra. The link was solidified when author Mario Puzo decided his main character in The Godfather would be known as Vito Corleone after a United States immigration official processing the arrival of Vito Andolini mistook his place of origin for his surname. In fact, several real life Mafia bosses, including Tommy Gagliano, Gaetano Reina, Jack Dragna, Luciano Leggio, Leoluca Bagarella, Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, came from Corleone and the Corleonesi clan dominated the Sicilian Mafia in the 1980s and 1990s, when they were seen as the most violent and ruthless group ever to take control.

Palermo's majestic Cathedral of the Assumption of
the Virgin Mary has many architectural elements

Travel tip:

Although Palermo’s reputation has suffered at times because of the Mafia’s presence, visitors to Sicily’s capital these days would normally witness nothing to suggest that the criminal underworld exerts any influence on daily life.  Situated on the northern coast of the island, Palermo is a vibrant city with a wealth of beautiful architecture bearing testament to a history of northern European and Arabian influences.  The church of San Cataldo on Piazza Bellini is a good example of the fusion of Norman and Arabic architectural styles, having a bell tower typical of those common in northern France but with three spherical red domes on the roof, while the city’s majestic Cathedral of the Assumption of Virgin Mary includes Norman, Moorish, Gothic, Baroque and Neoclassical elements. Palermo’s opera house, the Teatro Massimo, is the largest in Italy and the third biggest in Europe.

Also on this day:

1660: The birth of Baroque composer Alessandro Scarlatti

1894: The birth of architect Michele Busiri Vici

1913: The birth of car designer Pietro Frua

1930: The birth of campaigning politician Marco Pannella

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1 May

Laura Betti - actress and jazz singer

Long-time companion of director Pier Paolo Pasolini

The actress and singer Laura Betti, who appeared in a number of important Italian films in the 1960s and 1970s, including Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita, Bernardo Bertolucci’s Novecento and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, was born on this day in 1927 in Casalecchio di Reno, in Emilia-Romagna.  In addition to Teorema, which won her the coveted Volpi Cup for best actress at the 1968 Venice Film Festival, Betti appeared in six other Pasolini films as the two developed a special and unlikely relationship.  Betti, a vivacious blonde with striking good looks, had no shortage of suitors among the authors, artists, singers and aspiring actors that made up her circle in Rome in the 1950s, but Pasolini was gay and had no interest in her in a romantic sense.  Yet he became a regular guest at her apartment near the Palazzo Farnese and she wrote many years later that a kind of love developed between them. They met while he was an unknown poet and it was with her encouragement that he realised his aspiration to become a director.  Over time she effectively became his cook and housekeeper.  Read more…

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The Portella della Ginestra Massacre

Conspiracy theories behind murder of peasants

Sicily and the whole of Italy was horrified on this day in 1947 when gunmen opened fire on defenceless peasants gathered for a Labour Day celebration in the hills above Palermo, killing 11 and wounding more than 30 in what became known as the Portella della Ginestra Massacre.  The victims included four children between the ages of seven and 15, who were cut down indiscriminately by a gang of men, some on horseback, who appeared suddenly and began firing machine guns as the peasants, numbering several hundred, congregated on a plain along a remote mountain pass between the towns of Piana degli Albanesi and San Giuseppe Jato, where a Labour Day rally had taken place every year since 1893.  Salvatore Giuliano, an outlaw wanted in connection with the killing of a police officer in 1943, was held responsible although many people believed that Giuliano and his gang of bandits were set up as scapegoats in a conspiracy involving the Mafia, wealthy landowners and politicians.  The outrage came only 10 days after a surprise victory by the so-called People’s Block - a coalition of the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist Party - in Sicilian local elections.  Read more…

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Ignazio Silone – politician and author

Socialist leader became famous for anti-Fascist novels

Writer and political leader Ignazio Silone was born Secondino Tranquilli on this day in 1900 in Pescina dei Marsi in the region of Abruzzo.  Tranquilli became famous under the pseudonym, Ignazio Silone, during World War II for his powerful anti-Fascist novels and he was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature ten times.  Silone’s father, Paolo Tranquilli, died when he was 11 and he lost his mother, Marianna, and other members of his family four years later in the Avezzano earthquake of 1915.  Two years afterwards he joined the Young Socialist group of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), eventually becoming their leader and editor of their newspaper Avanguardia.  He was a founding member of the breakaway Italian Communist Party (PCI) party in 1921 and became one of its covert leaders during the Fascist regime, editing their newspaper in Trieste, Il Lavoratore. His brother, Romolo Tranquilli, was arrested in 1928 for being a member of the PCI and died in prison in 1931 as a result of the severe beatings he had received from the Fascist police.  Silone went to live in Switzerland in 1930 where he declared his opposition to Joseph Stalin and was expelled from the PCI.  Read more…

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Uberto Pasolini - film producer and director

Roman count who found unexpected fame with The Full Monty

The film director and producer Uberto Pasolini, who gained international recognition when his British comedy The Full Monty became one of UK cinema’s biggest commercial success stories in 1997, was born on this day in 1957 in Rome.  A nephew of the great Italian director Luchino Visconti, Pasolini worked for 12 years as an investment banker in England before following his dream to work in the film industry, abandoning his career to work, initially without pay, on the set of the David Puttnam-Roland Joffé film, The Killing Fields, in Thailand.  Puttnam took him on, at first as a location scout, before Pasolini moved to America to become part of Puttnam’s production team in Los Angeles. He set up his own company in London in 1994 and went on to direct some of his own productions, including the critically acclaimed 2008 movie Machan, based on a true story about a group of would-be immigrants from Sri Lanka who overcome visa problems stopping them from moving to the West by pretending to be their country’s national handball team.  Like Luchino Visconti, who was a descendant of the same Visconti family that ruled Milan between the 13th and 15th centuries, Pasolini was from a noble background.  Read more…

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Giovanni Guareschi – writer

Satirical magazine editor first used Don Camillo to fill a gap

Author Giovanni Guareschi, the creator of the fictional character, Don Camillo, was born on this day in 1908 in Roccabianca in Emilia-Romagna.  The popular stories featuring his famous comic creations, the stalwart Italian priest, Don Camillo, and the Communist mayor, Peppone, have since been made into many radio and television programmes and films.  Guareschi, who was christened Giovannino, started his career writing for the Gazzetta di Parma and then became a magazine editor.  He was called up to serve in the army in 1943 but was quickly taken prisoner, along with other Italian soldiers, by the Germans. He wrote a secret diary while he was in the prison camp, Diario Clandestino.  After the war Guareschi founded a weekly satirical magazine, Candido, where his Don Camillo stories first appeared. He had written the introductory story for another publication but lifted it to fill a gap in Candido at the last minute.  His magazine criticised and satirised the Communists but after they were beaten in the 1948 elections he turned his attention to the Christian Democrats instead.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: In Danger: A Pasolini Anthology, by Pier Paolo Pasolini, edited by Jack Hirschman

Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian poet, film director, writer, screenwriter, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist and a political figure. In Danger is the first anthology in English devoted to the political and literary essays of Pasolini, with a generous selection of his poetry. Against the backdrop of post-war Italy, and through the mid-'70s, Pasolini's writings provide a fascinating portrait of a Europe in which fascists and communists violently clashed for power and where journalists ran great risks. The controversial and openly gay Pasolini was murdered at the age of 53; In Danger includes his final interview, conducted hours before his death.

Jack Hirschman is an internationally-renowned poet and translator. A former poet-laureate of San Francisco, and editor of The Artaud Anthology, Hirschman has written many books, including Front Lines: Selected Poems, All That's Left and his 900-page masterwork, The Arcanes.

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30 April

Andrea Dandolo - Doge of Venice

Reign tested by earthquake, plague and war

Andrea Dandolo, the fourth member of a patrician Venetian family to serve as Doge of the historic Republic, was born on this day in 1306.  A notably erudite scholar, Dandolo wrote two chronicles of the history of Venice in Latin and reformed the Venetian legal code by bringing together all of the diverse laws applicable to the Venetian Republic within one legal framework.  He achieved these things despite his reign being marked by a devastating earthquake, a catastrophic outbreak of the Black Death plague and two expensive wars, against Hungary and then Genoa.  Dandolo studied at the University of Padua, where he became a professor of law, a position he maintained until he was elected Doge. He quickly rose to a position of prominence in Venetian life, being appointed Procurator of St Mark’s Basilica, the second most prestigious position in the Venetian hierarchy after the Doge, at the age of just 25.  He was elected Doge in 1343, aged 37.  It was a particularly young age at which to be given the leadership of the Republic, but his family history and the manner in which he had conducted himself as Procurator gained the respect of the republic’s aristocratic elders.  Read more…

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Pope Pius V - Saint

Pontiff dismissed jester and clamped down on heretics

The feast day of Pope Saint Pius V is celebrated every year on this day, the day before the anniversary of his death in 1572 in Rome.  Pius V, who became Pope in 1566, is remembered chiefly for his role in the Counter Reformation, the period of Catholic resurgence following the Protestant Reformation.  He excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England for heresy and for persecuting English Catholics and he formed the Holy League, an alliance of Catholic states against the Turks.  Pius V was born Antonio Ghislieri in Bosco, now Bosco Marengo, in Piedmont. At the age of 14 he entered the Dominican Order, taking the name of Michele. He was ordained at Genoa in 1528 and then sent to Pavia to lecture.  He became a bishop under Pope Pius IV but after opposing the pontiff was dismissed. After the death of Pius IV, Ghislieri was elected Pope Pius V in 1566. His first act on becoming Pope was to dismiss the court jester and no Pope has had one since.  Protestantism had by then conquered many parts of Europe and Pius V was determined to prevent it getting into Italy. He therefore took a personal interest in the activities of the Inquisition in Rome and appeared to be unmoved by the cruelty practised.  Read more…

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Antonio Sant’Elia - architectural visionary

Futurist’s ideas were decades ahead of his time

The architect Antonio Sant’Elia, best known for producing hundreds of drawings based on his vision of an idealised modern industrial city, was born on this day in 1888 in Como in Lombardy.  Sant’Elia’s life was short - he died in battle barely a year after signing up for military service in the First World War - and his physical legacy comprised only one completed building, a modest villa in the hills above his home city.  Yet, thanks to the boldly imaginative designs he captured in dozens of sketches illustrating how he saw the cities of the future, Sant’Elia is still seen as one of modern architecture’s most influential figures, more than a century after his death.  A builder by trade, in 1912 Sant’Elia set up a design office in Milan with fellow architect Mario Chittone.  He was already a follower of Futurism, the avant-garde artistic, social and political movement that had been launched by the poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909.  The Futurists’ admiration for the speed and technological advancement of cars and aeroplanes and the new industrial cities, which they saw as demonstrating the triumph of humanity over nature through invention, aligned with his own rejection of traditional design.  Read more…

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Luigi Russolo – painter and composer

Futurist artist who invented 'noise music'

Luigi Russolo, who is regarded as the first ‘noise music’ composer, was born on this day in 1885 in Portogruaro in the Veneto.  Russolo originally chose to become a painter and went to live in Milan where he met and was influenced by other artists in the Futurist movement.  Along with other leading figures in the movement, such as Carlo Carrà, he signed both the Manifesto of Futurist Painters and the Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting as the artists set out how they saw Futurism being represented on canvas, and afterwards participated in Futurist art exhibitions.  Russolo issued his own manifesto, L’arte dei rumori - The Art of Noises - in 1913, which he expanded into book form in 1916.  He stated that the industrial revolution had given modern man a greater capacity to appreciate more complex sounds. He found traditional, melodic music confining and envisioned noise music replacing it in the future.  Russolo invented intonarumori - noise-emitting machines - and conducted concerts using these machines. The audiences reacted with either enthusiasm or hostility to the style of music he produced.  None of these machines survived although they have since been reconstructed for use in performances.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: A History of Venice, by John Julius Norwich

A History of Venice begins with frightened refugees from the barbarian invasions of Italy settling in a marshy lagoon, continuing through the establishment of republican government and the building of a trading empire encompassing the Dalmatian Coast, Mediterranean Islands and parts of the Po Valley. Then, with the Portuguese establishing a more direct trade route to the originating locations of valued Asian goods, it continues with the reinvention of the city into a publishing, intellectual, and finally a pleasure centre. It ends with the Napoleonic invasion, bringing an end to the thousand year old, Serenissima Repubblica (Most Serene Republic).  Rich in fascinating historical detail, populated by extraordinary characters and packed with a wealth of incident and intrigue, this is a brilliant testament to a great city - and a great and gripping read. A classic that has become one of the standard works on the history of the ultimate maritime city.

John Julius Norwich was born in 1929. He was educated in Toronto, at Eton, at the University of Strasbourg and, after a spell of National Service in the Navy, at New College, Oxford, where he took a degree in French and Russian. In 1952 he joined the Foreign Service, where he remained for 12 years, serving at the embassies in Belgrade and Beirut. In 1964 he resigned from the service to write, later becoming an accomplished presenter of TV documentaries as well as the author of more than 40 books.

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29 April

Liberation of Fornovo di Taro

How Brazilian soldiers hastened Nazi capitulation

The town of Fornovo di Taro in Emilia-Romagna acquired a significant place in Italian military history for a second time on this day in 1945 when it was liberated from Nazi occupation by soldiers from the Brazilian Expeditionary Force fighting with the Allies.  Under the command of General João Baptista Mascarenhas de Morais, the Brazilians marched into Fornovo, which is situated about 13km (8 miles) south-west of Parma on the east bank of the Taro river, at the conclusion of the four-day Battle of Collecchio.  It was in Fornovo that the 148th Infantry Division of the German army under the leadership of General Otto Fretter-Pico offered their surrender, along with soldiers from the 90th Panzergrenadier Division and the 1st Bersaglieri and 4th Mountain Divisions of the Fascist National Republican Army.  In total, 14,779 German and Italian troops laid down their arms after Fretter-Pico concluded that, with the Brazilians surrounding the town, aided by two American tank divisions and one company of Italian partisans, there was no hope of escape.  Although the total capitulation of the German and Fascist armies in Italy was not officially announced until May 2 in Turin, the surrender in Fornovo effectively brought the war in the peninsula to an end.  Read more…

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Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini - painter

Venetian artist who made mark in England

The painter Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini, who is regarded as one of the most important Venetian painters of the early 18th century, was born on this day in 1675 in Venice.   He played a major part in the spread of the Venetian style of large-scale decorative painting in northern Europe, working in Austria, England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.  With a style that had influences of Renaissance artist Paolo Veronese and the Baroque painters Pietro da Cortona and Luca Giordano, he is considered an important predecessor of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in the development of Venetian art.  A pupil of the Milanese painter Paolo Pagani, Pellegrini began travelling while still a teenager, accompanying Pagano to Moravia and Vienna.  After a period studying in Rome, he returned to Venice and married Angela Carriera, the sister of the portraitist Rosalba Carriera.  Soon afterwards, he accepted the commission to decorate the dome above the staircase at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in 1709.  Pellegrini spent a significant part of his career in England, where he was invited, along with Marco Ricci, the nephew of Sebastiano Ricci, by Charles Montagu, the future Duke of Manchester.  Read more…

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Rafael Sabatini – writer

Author of swashbucklers had the ‘gift of laughter’

Rafael Sabatini, who wrote successful adventure novels that were later made into plays and films, was born on this day in 1875 in Iesi, a small town in the province of Ancona in Le Marche.  Sabatini was the author of the international bestsellers, Scaramouche and Captain Blood, and afterwards became respected as a great writer of swashbucklers with a prolific output.  He was the son of an English mother, Anna Trafford, and an Italian father, Vincenzo Sabatini, who were both opera singers.  At a young age he was exposed to different languages because he spent time with his grandfather in England and also attended school in both Portugal and Switzerland, while his parents were on tour.  By the time Sabatini went to live in England permanently, at the age of 17, he was already proficient in several languages. Although his first attempts at writing were in French when he was at school in Switzerland, he is said to have consciously chosen to write in English, saying at the time that all the best stories had been written in English.  Sabatini wrote short stories in the 1890s, some of which were published in English magazines.   Read more…

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Sara Errani -- tennis champion

Five-times Grand Slam doubles winner reached No 5 in singles

Tennis star Sara Errani, who was born in Bologna on this day in 1987, is arguably the most successful Italian tennis player of all time.  She and partner Roberta Vinci's career record of five Grand Slam doubles titles is unparalleled.  No other Italian combination has won more than one Grand Slam title and no Italian singles player has won more than two.  Nicola Pietrangeli, who was ranked the No 3 men's singles player at his peak, won the French Open championship in 1959 and 1960 and was runner-up in Paris on two other occasions, as well as winning the men's doubles at the French in 1959, with fellow Italian Orlando Sirola.  But Errani and Vinci have won on all surfaces, achieving a career Grand Slam in 2014 when they triumphed in the women's doubles at Wimbledon, having already won the French and US titles in 2012 and the Australian in both 2013 and 2014.  They are only the fifth pairing in tennis history to complete a career Grand Slam.  Errani also achieved a world ranking of No 5 in singles in 2013, having been runner-up to Maria Sharapova in the 2012 French Open as well as winning five WTA singles titles in the space of 12 months.  Read more…

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Book of the Day: The Battle for Italy: One of the Second World War's Most Brutal Campaigns, by John Strawson

It could have all been over much quicker. In this gripping account, bestselling author John Strawson analyses how the slow, bloody and fiercely fought Italian campaign delayed the end of the Second World War after the tide had turned against Hitler and the Germans. Here was a point of dogged resistance; and also indomitable advance and eventual victory from a huge Allied push up the peninsula.  What was the justification for opening up a major new front against Hitler? What were the effects of doing so, the consequences of the important tactical decisions made by politicians and generals, the hostility between Patton and Montgomery, and the larger disagreement between the US and Britain? In answering them Strawson gets to the heart not only of this too-often overlooked struggle, but the entire War.  The Battle for Italy is military history at its finest, full of unforgettable detail and grand strategy. Readers of Max Hastings or James Holland will find the narrative style just as engaging.

Major General John Strawson CBE was a British Army officer, best known for his service during the Second World War in the Middle East and Italy, and afterwards in Germany and Malaya. In civilian life he became a prolific author, especially on military matters, writing around a dozen books.

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