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That Time Al Capone Ran A Soup Kitchen · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Shout out to our super
0:35
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram and our super producer Max Williams. Oh,
0:43
Speaker 1: we just had to get that one out of the way.
0:44
Speaker 1: No oh yeah, we mean it was only right and natural. Ben,
0:49
Speaker 1: I'm no, um you said that? Um? Ben? How do
0:52
Speaker 1: you feel about a soup? Are you a super person? Yeah?
0:55
Speaker 1: I was. I was thinking about this because too much
0:58
Speaker 1: soup can have this we're sort of I don't know.
1:01
Speaker 1: It always felt like a had a comedic implication to me,
1:05
Speaker 1: even before the infamous soup Nazi of the Seinfeld days.
1:11
Speaker 1: But I, um, yeah, I like a good soup. I
1:13
Speaker 1: make a I make a pretty mean soup myself. But
1:16
Speaker 1: to me, soup is like you've probably heard people talk
1:20
Speaker 1: about this before, guys, but some people feel like soup
1:24
Speaker 1: is either a poor person's meal or not a real meal,
1:27
Speaker 1: just soup by itself. I tend to disagree with the
1:30
Speaker 1: latter point. But what do you think? No, well, it
1:33
Speaker 1: certainly is a good use of leftovers. All you needed
1:36
Speaker 1: a little bit of stock, uh, and some vegetables and
1:39
Speaker 1: a meat of some sort, perhaps just like some leftover
1:42
Speaker 1: ham or or b or something like that. You got
1:45
Speaker 1: yourself a stew going baby. To quote Carl Weathers from
1:50
Speaker 1: the rest of development. But I just want to bring
1:52
Speaker 1: up really quickly while we're on the specifically the soup
1:54
Speaker 1: part of this discussion. I mean, we're gonna get more
1:56
Speaker 1: into into soup discussions. But there was something called perpet
2:00
Speaker 1: chewel stew that was a staple of medieval ends back
2:04
Speaker 1: in the day, and it was literally just like you
2:06
Speaker 1: see it in in movies and stuff, the giant cauldron
2:09
Speaker 1: of bubbling stew over the fire like in an in
2:12
Speaker 1: an end. It was called perpetual stew because it was
2:15
Speaker 1: just always going, uh, and they would just add more
2:18
Speaker 1: stuff to it and replenish it as needed. But it
2:21
Speaker 1: was never really got like started from scratch, and I'm
2:25
Speaker 1: sure it led to some food born illness, but it
2:28
Speaker 1: was definitely something that probably contributed as well to the
2:32
Speaker 1: notion of soups or stews being kind of a poor
2:35
Speaker 1: person's meal, um, because you know, it is very much
2:39
Speaker 1: something that you can just use whatever is laying around.
2:41
Speaker 1: It also is of course a staple of institutionalized feeding
2:46
Speaker 1: of the homeless, for example, in what is known as
2:48
Speaker 1: soup kitchens, where you you know, line up and you
2:51
Speaker 1: get your stuff, a cup of soup and then that's
2:54
Speaker 1: you know, we'll hopefully sustain you for a little while.
2:56
Speaker 1: But those things kind of combined have led to this
2:59
Speaker 1: reputation that soup has is sort of like a lower meal.
3:04
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And don't get us wrong, there are definitely
3:07
Speaker 1: soups that have been considered historically fancy turtle soup. We
3:11
Speaker 1: did an episode on that lobster bisco as well. But
3:15
Speaker 1: you're right, you know, it turns out that people have
3:18
Speaker 1: been making soup for an estimated twenty thousand years. It's
3:22
Speaker 1: by no means a new idea. It's uh, trying not
3:25
Speaker 1: to say super too much in this episode and all
3:27
Speaker 1: it's extraordinarily practical. And today's story is it just about
3:33
Speaker 1: the history of soup kitchens. Don't worry. You're probably still
3:35
Speaker 1: gonna leave hungry. But don't worry, this story is about
3:38
Speaker 1: something else too. We're going through a bit of a
3:40
Speaker 1: crime phase this week on the show, and the star
3:44
Speaker 1: of today's episode in many ways is a guy named
3:48
Speaker 1: al Capone, the quintessential American gangster. He was so successful
3:55
Speaker 1: during his time that it's difficult for a lot of
3:58
Speaker 1: people nowadays to described the full extent of his criminal empire.
4:03
Speaker 1: Like we know, we know he did a ton of
4:06
Speaker 1: dirt Noll, but we also know that the crimes that
4:09
Speaker 1: eventually brought him down had nothing to do with his
4:13
Speaker 1: bootlegging or anything like that. It was tax evation. The
4:16
Speaker 1: I R S will get you back, then the I
4:19
Speaker 1: R S it will absolutely get you. I actually just
4:21
Speaker 1: got done um watching the full run of Boardwalk Empire,
4:25
Speaker 1: and Alphonse Capone plays a huge role in that show
4:29
Speaker 1: because the history of organized crime is very much entwined
4:34
Speaker 1: in the history of prohibition, because when the Volstead Act
4:38
Speaker 1: was passed, it made alcohol illegal and opened up this
4:42
Speaker 1: entire new black market that did not exist before. And
4:46
Speaker 1: when you have a black market, of course you're gonna
4:48
Speaker 1: have violence and and turf wars and things that all
4:52
Speaker 1: stem from the fact that something is made illegal. It
4:55
Speaker 1: is often the argument for like say, legalizing drugs, because
4:58
Speaker 1: if you do that, then you don't have have a
5:00
Speaker 1: need for things like Cartel's to come in and fill
5:03
Speaker 1: that vacuum um of legal sales of things. You know,
5:06
Speaker 1: with this black market. So basically the impetus for striking
5:12
Speaker 1: down the voltstead actor repealing it was because of a
5:15
Speaker 1: couple of things. It was because of this you know,
5:17
Speaker 1: burgeoning organized crime world that kind of sprung up around it,
5:21
Speaker 1: but also all of this unclaimed tax revenue that was
5:25
Speaker 1: just going down the tubes, you know. And this all
5:27
Speaker 1: happened in the face of the Great Depression. And like
5:30
Speaker 1: many crime lords in their own hometowns or their own
5:34
Speaker 1: home territory, it's often quite popular, quite a popular choice
5:37
Speaker 1: diplomatically to sort of paint themselves as sort of Robin
5:41
Speaker 1: Hood esque figures. We know, Pablo Escobar did that in
5:44
Speaker 1: his home turf of median Um in Colombia, and al
5:47
Speaker 1: Capone was no different. Even though he was absolutely an
5:50
Speaker 1: unhinged psychopath who would you know, bludge into death with
5:55
Speaker 1: like paper weights and baseball bats anyone that crossed him
5:57
Speaker 1: or even offended him mildly, but he still wanted to
6:01
Speaker 1: curate this image of himself not just as public enemy
6:03
Speaker 1: number one in his hometown of Chicago, but also as
6:06
Speaker 1: some sort of benevolence overlord that looked out for the
6:09
Speaker 1: little people and was really just kind of sticking it
6:12
Speaker 1: to the man, but as we know, he was much
6:14
Speaker 1: much more than that and absolutely a terrible, terrible person.
6:17
Speaker 1: How's your mother doing? She get the Uh? Yeah, she
6:21
Speaker 1: get the soda? Popeye sent al right, being a good kid,
6:24
Speaker 1: Be a good kid, run along exactly. No, it's true.
6:28
Speaker 1: So it's you're right. This robin hood image, while demonstrably
6:34
Speaker 1: false in many ways, is an important piece of gardnering
6:38
Speaker 1: local support, community support, and when the official government steps in,
6:44
Speaker 1: new power structures can rise. This is what components saw
6:49
Speaker 1: during the stock market crash that would set off what
6:52
Speaker 1: we call the Great Depression today. He said, you know,
6:55
Speaker 1: I could do a little pr how's your mother? So
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Speaker 1: he so he opened a soup kitchen in Chicago. Again,
7:05
Speaker 1: if you've listened to our previous episodes about this time period,
7:08
Speaker 1: you know that life was fundamentally rocked and shaken to
7:12
Speaker 1: the core for so many people living in the US
7:15
Speaker 1: at the time. People who had homes literally no longer
7:20
Speaker 1: had those homes. They no longer had jobs, they no
7:22
Speaker 1: longer had any economic opportunities. They were, in a very
7:27
Speaker 1: real way worried about what they and their families would
7:31
Speaker 1: eat every day. So this this soup kitchen was a
7:35
Speaker 1: brilliant move, and the big question is how much of
7:40
Speaker 1: it was his It was actual, you know, concerned for
7:42
Speaker 1: his fellow human beings, how much of it was concerned
7:45
Speaker 1: for his deteriorating public image. We have views on that
7:49
Speaker 1: that I think we could give you with the course
7:51
Speaker 1: of this show. But first, let's let's talk a little
7:54
Speaker 1: bit about Capone pre Boardwalk Capone, believe it or not,
7:58
Speaker 1: he was not born a middle aged crime boss. He
8:02
Speaker 1: was born in relative to relatively modest means, son of
8:05
Speaker 1: poor Italian immigrants who moved to Brooklyn. He got expelled
8:10
Speaker 1: from school for socking uh female teacher, and then he
8:14
Speaker 1: joined a street gang. And he was, by all means
8:18
Speaker 1: a pretty smart dude. You can't rise to this level
8:22
Speaker 1: of organized crime without being, you know, a fairly bright crayon.
8:27
Speaker 1: He could have maybe pursued his educational There might be
8:30
Speaker 1: a world just to the left of hours where he
8:33
Speaker 1: is like a very well known criminal defense attorney. How
8:37
Speaker 1: hilarious would that be. That's not what happened. He took
8:41
Speaker 1: over Chicago's leading crime syndicate, and just four years after
8:46
Speaker 1: taking over Chicago's organized crime he was a multi millionaire.
8:50
Speaker 1: I believe yeah, and as he's portrayed in Boardwalk Empire
8:53
Speaker 1: by the fantastic actor Steven Graham, who you might remember
8:57
Speaker 1: from some early guy Ritchie movies like I believe he
9:00
Speaker 1: is in Snatch or lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
9:03
Speaker 1: I think we both often confused those two. Uh no,
9:06
Speaker 1: I think he was in I think he was in Snatch. Um.
9:08
Speaker 1: But he is a British actor who does a damn
9:12
Speaker 1: fine Brooklyn accent as al Capone. You know, he's he's
9:15
Speaker 1: very really disappears into that role. He had the nickname
9:18
Speaker 1: Scarface because he did have these like very large scars
9:23
Speaker 1: on his face from when he was attacked with a
9:25
Speaker 1: blade and and uh kind of disfigured um. And he
9:28
Speaker 1: was very insecure about it and actually wore makeup to
9:32
Speaker 1: cover these scars, like some kind of like a pancake makeup. Um.
9:35
Speaker 1: So you see that in the show. But he also
9:38
Speaker 1: was so successful and so let's just say, kind of
9:43
Speaker 1: self possessed that he didn't want to play nice with
9:46
Speaker 1: any of the other crime families or any of the
9:48
Speaker 1: other you know, members of the syndicate, and that ultimately
9:51
Speaker 1: led to his downfall as well, because he was, you know,
9:54
Speaker 1: kind of a little too big for his bridges, as
9:55
Speaker 1: folks would say, and he didn't want to kind of
9:57
Speaker 1: cut other people in, so that ultimately led to his
10:00
Speaker 1: rivals kind of helping in his downfall a little bit
10:03
Speaker 1: as well. But you're right then he made around forty
10:06
Speaker 1: million dollars throughout the course of his career, primarily from
10:10
Speaker 1: selling illegal alcohol during Prohibition, like I said, with that
10:13
Speaker 1: vacuum um left by the outlawing of of booze and
10:18
Speaker 1: it was distributed to more than ten thousand speakeasies and
10:22
Speaker 1: houses of ill repute through this massive operation that he
10:26
Speaker 1: was at the heart of, this kind of network of
10:29
Speaker 1: of bootleggers that you know, distributed all throughout the Midwest.
10:33
Speaker 1: And because of the way prohibition was viewed in that
10:37
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, there were obviously teetotalers and
10:40
Speaker 1: folks that thought prohibition was kind of saving the soul
10:43
Speaker 1: of America. There were an equal, if not much greater
10:47
Speaker 1: number of people that looked at it as being deprived
10:49
Speaker 1: of their civil liberties. So even the average person felt
10:52
Speaker 1: like it was their god given right to drink alcohol
10:54
Speaker 1: and that Alcopoland was just giving the people what they wanted. Yeah,
10:58
Speaker 1: and what they wanted was boo just to run this
11:02
Speaker 1: through the inflation calculator. As we said, four years after
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Speaker 1: he joins these after he heads these crime syndicates, he's
11:09
Speaker 1: making forty million. So if we can get our inflation calculator,
11:13
Speaker 1: boo booper doopoop makes uh, it's around five hundred and
11:22
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars. This guy is not hurting for money
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Speaker 1: at all, and he's got m He is very conscious
11:29
Speaker 1: of the fact that he needs this public support. He's
11:33
Speaker 1: doing all sorts of dirt behind the scenes, but he's
11:36
Speaker 1: also very publicly launching programs to give milk to all
11:41
Speaker 1: the Chicago school children, which also has its own sketchy backstory,
11:45
Speaker 1: and he's donating tons of cash to local charities. This
11:50
Speaker 1: is this all happens before the stock market crash on October.
11:55
Speaker 1: By the way, when the stock market crash occurs, he
11:59
Speaker 1: sees the writing on the wall. As we said, banks
12:02
Speaker 1: are failing, businesses are shuttering, Millions of people are unemployed.
12:06
Speaker 1: They don't know where they're going to eat. And that's
12:09
Speaker 1: where we see the rise of breadlines, the rise of
12:14
Speaker 1: things like soup kitchens. I'm throwing my arms around, even
12:18
Speaker 1: though this is an audio podcast. It's just a big
12:21
Speaker 1: this is a huge social change, and just for perspective,
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Speaker 1: In November, more than seventy five thousand people in Chicago
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Speaker 1: without jobs lined up to register their names while they
12:35
Speaker 1: would wait for some kind of government assistance, whether that's
12:39
Speaker 1: a free meal program or whether that's a a work
12:43
Speaker 1: program of some sort. And the Chicago Tribune notes that
12:49
Speaker 1: unless anybody feels, you know, kind of classes, these aren't,
12:53
Speaker 1: you know, stereotypical hoboes with bendals waiting in line. These
12:57
Speaker 1: people are dressed. They're dressed like they're going to church,
13:00
Speaker 1: where they're dressed like they're going to work in an office.
13:03
Speaker 1: And that's when in such a in a very short span,
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Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of soup kitchens pop up all around
13:10
Speaker 1: the country. And one of those soup kitchens literally belonged
13:15
Speaker 1: to the man himself, Scarface al Capone. He didn't even
13:26
Speaker 1: have a name for his charity, which I thought was interesting.
13:29
Speaker 1: But there was a sign over the door of the
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Speaker 1: kitchen that said free soup, coffee and donuts for the unemployed.
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Speaker 1: And they served around people every day with no questions asked,
13:41
Speaker 1: no need to prove that you qualified or whatever. They
13:44
Speaker 1: even would doll out second helpings because again, I mean, look,
13:49
Speaker 1: sorry to keep going back to this. Clearly probably you know,
13:52
Speaker 1: hyperbolic and fictionalized portrayal of al Capone in Boardwalk Empire,
13:55
Speaker 1: but he does this is accurate. He did have a
13:58
Speaker 1: son who was as disabled he was deaf, and you
14:02
Speaker 1: do see the character kind of struggling with how to
14:05
Speaker 1: you know, literally communicate to his son and keep him
14:08
Speaker 1: from being bullied and all of that. But you did
14:11
Speaker 1: get a sense that he very much loved his son
14:13
Speaker 1: and he was a family man, but he you know,
14:17
Speaker 1: was also an unhinged kind of sociopath. So it's an
14:19
Speaker 1: interesting dichotomy that you see. So whether it was pure
14:23
Speaker 1: optics or pure politics that he was playing, or if
14:25
Speaker 1: he actually did have a soft spot in his heart
14:27
Speaker 1: for the kind of disenfranchise, I think the jury is
14:30
Speaker 1: still a little bit out. But breakfast was a cup
14:33
Speaker 1: of hot coffee that was sweetened with sugar and sweet rolls,
14:37
Speaker 1: which would be kind of like a cinnamon roll type situation.
14:40
Speaker 1: And then lunch and dinner you could get a bowl
14:42
Speaker 1: of soup and a loaf of bread or a slice
14:45
Speaker 1: of bread. And every day three hundred and fifty loaves
14:49
Speaker 1: and a hundred dozen sweet rolls were consumed by the
14:52
Speaker 1: folks that frequented this kitchen, and thirty pounds of coffee
14:57
Speaker 1: that was sweetened up with around fifty pounds of sugar
15:02
Speaker 1: were also in play. It cost around three hundred dollars
15:05
Speaker 1: a day, which, in you know, nineteen thirties dollars, that's
15:09
Speaker 1: a lot of money. It's a little less than five
15:11
Speaker 1: grand exactly every single day. But it was clearly worth
15:15
Speaker 1: it to him, whether politically or whether it gave him
15:17
Speaker 1: a sense of purpose and made him feel like less
15:20
Speaker 1: of a monster. But he didn't strike me as the
15:21
Speaker 1: kind of guy that was particularly self aware of his
15:23
Speaker 1: status as being, you know, kind of a monster. But
15:27
Speaker 1: we do know that even though he didn't have his
15:28
Speaker 1: name on the building, he was connected to it in
15:32
Speaker 1: stories that were printed in the local papers. Yeah, and
15:36
Speaker 1: his associates went on record. Someone who knew Capone, it
15:40
Speaker 1: was like an open secret that this was a Compone operation.
15:44
Speaker 1: One of his colleagues said, he, meaning Capone, couldn't stand
15:49
Speaker 1: it to see those poor devils starving. Nobody else seemed
15:52
Speaker 1: to be doing much, so the big boy decided to
15:55
Speaker 1: do it himself. They're clearly leaning into this sort of
15:58
Speaker 1: anti hero image. But then that image brings with it
16:03
Speaker 1: its own complications. Thanksgiving Campone soup kitchen is planning to
16:11
Speaker 1: have a traditional Thanksgiving meal for people in need, and
16:16
Speaker 1: they had, you know, they were serving at this point,
16:18
Speaker 1: like five thousand Chicago residents a day. Here's his problem though,
16:23
Speaker 1: his his criminal he's aware of his criminal past might
16:25
Speaker 1: affect public image. Someone in the city had done a
16:29
Speaker 1: turkey heist right four things, because they still a thousand
16:33
Speaker 1: turkeys from this department store. And Capone was not involved
16:37
Speaker 1: with this crime. He was above turkey theft at this point.
16:40
Speaker 1: But he said, I would think he would hope and
16:42
Speaker 1: he said, you know, well, we don't want to be
16:44
Speaker 1: blamed for this caper. So at the very last minute,
16:47
Speaker 1: they said, look, we run a clean soup kitchen here.
16:50
Speaker 1: We're not serving turkey and cranberry. We're serving beef stew,
16:54
Speaker 1: just to keep the heat off. Yeah, and I understand
16:57
Speaker 1: why he did that optically speaking, but it also is
16:59
Speaker 1: kind of a cheap o move. They could have pivoted
17:01
Speaker 1: to something like a nice ham, you know, something a
17:04
Speaker 1: little more festive beef stew. I don't really associate that
17:07
Speaker 1: with the holidays very much. I would imagine that that
17:10
Speaker 1: came from stuff they already had lying around, because well,
17:12
Speaker 1: they didn't want to be seen is having uh, you know,
17:14
Speaker 1: participated in any kind of Turkey heist. They also didn't
17:17
Speaker 1: want to have to go and you know, buy a
17:19
Speaker 1: whole another however, many thousand hams they would have had
17:22
Speaker 1: to buy. And you know, I'm gonna be honest, Uh no, Max,
17:26
Speaker 1: if I had to choose between the two, I would
17:28
Speaker 1: choose beef stew. I'm a beef stew guy. I don't know,
17:31
Speaker 1: I love a beef stew. I do love a beef stew.
17:33
Speaker 1: It's true. Um. So, you know, he really cared about,
17:37
Speaker 1: at the very least this image of being this kind
17:40
Speaker 1: of benevolent you know, criminal, and you know he this
17:44
Speaker 1: included widows and orphans and the homeless of course, you know,
17:49
Speaker 1: but it was a big swath because at this point,
17:51
Speaker 1: because of the unemployment and the absolute disaster that was
17:55
Speaker 1: the Great Depression, a lot of these folks were mixing.
17:57
Speaker 1: You know, it was not just one particular type of
18:00
Speaker 1: individual that would have been standing in line at these
18:03
Speaker 1: at this kitchen and the Bismarck Tribune reported on this,
18:07
Speaker 1: and they noted that quote, a hungry man is just
18:10
Speaker 1: as glad to get soup and coffee from Al Capone
18:13
Speaker 1: as from anyone else. Very true, very true. And there's
18:17
Speaker 1: there's an excellent piece of writing in Harper's magazine that
18:21
Speaker 1: shows the irony of this situation in Chicago, because, of course,
18:25
Speaker 1: not everybody approved of Capone's charity here. And I think
18:31
Speaker 1: this is just my opinion. I think it's because he
18:33
Speaker 1: had some other motives at play. I think that's pretty
18:37
Speaker 1: obvious anyway. In Harper's, the writer Mary Borden, she notes
18:42
Speaker 1: this image that really stuck with me. Says, you know,
18:46
Speaker 1: picture this. There's a line of people without jobs that
18:48
Speaker 1: are waiting for a handout from Capone's soup kitchen. He's
18:53
Speaker 1: the most wanted man in Chicago. And picture, if you will,
18:56
Speaker 1: the line for his soup kitchen stretching past the very
19:01
Speaker 1: front door of the city's police headquarters, which held evidence
19:06
Speaker 1: of the incredibly violent crimes that Campone committed or had committed.
19:11
Speaker 1: And the press was desperate to uh to get more
19:17
Speaker 1: info on this. He got a lot of pr from
19:20
Speaker 1: having a soup kitchen. The press was always trying to
19:23
Speaker 1: like send somebody in to catch Capone there in person,
19:28
Speaker 1: but they never did. You won't find a photograph of
19:31
Speaker 1: him at the kitchen today. Uh. And some newspapers were
19:35
Speaker 1: negative in their press, like the Daily Independent in Murphysboro, Illinois,
19:40
Speaker 1: who said, if anything were needed to make the farce
19:43
Speaker 1: of gang Land complete, it is the Al Capone soup kitchen.
19:48
Speaker 1: It would be rather terrifying to see Capone running for
19:50
Speaker 1: mayor of Chicago. We're afraid he would get such a
19:53
Speaker 1: tremendous vote. It's even conceivable that he might be elected
19:56
Speaker 1: after a few more stunts like his soup kitchen. But again,
20:00
Speaker 1: and he's just feeding people. You know, people are eating
20:03
Speaker 1: at the end of the day. He's not poisoning them.
20:06
Speaker 1: You know, he's not forcing them to commit crimes for him.
20:09
Speaker 1: But it is a battle of hearts and minds, and
20:11
Speaker 1: at this point he is very much winning. That's right.
20:14
Speaker 1: And it wasn't even his idea. Uh. And speaking of politics,
20:18
Speaker 1: you know, I mean he was very closely embedded in politics.
20:22
Speaker 1: And we know about the you know, the political machines
20:25
Speaker 1: of Chicago and all that, and the you know, Boss
20:27
Speaker 1: Tweed and all of that stuff. I mean, it really
20:30
Speaker 1: is a historically corrupt political city and has has maintained
20:34
Speaker 1: that reputation even up until the modern day. But this dude,
20:38
Speaker 1: Daniels Sarah Tella, who was a pal of Campones, and
20:42
Speaker 1: he was also a political ally. He got elected to
20:46
Speaker 1: the Illinois State Senate in nineteen thirty and he's the
20:49
Speaker 1: one who suggested to Campone that he do this soup
20:52
Speaker 1: kitchen stunt. For lack of a better word. Harry Reid,
20:55
Speaker 1: who was a newspaper reporter at the time, claimed to
20:58
Speaker 1: have been present in an apartment with Capone and Sarah
21:01
Speaker 1: Tella when this idea kind of came up, and he
21:05
Speaker 1: says that on November nineteen thirty November two, nine thirty,
21:09
Speaker 1: Capone said, quote, there are so many people hungry in
21:12
Speaker 1: the First Ward because of the depression, that Dan asked
21:14
Speaker 1: me to back a free hand out joint. I'm gonna
21:17
Speaker 1: try to do the Al Capone voice. He's got more
21:19
Speaker 1: starving people down there than he can handle. All the
21:22
Speaker 1: bums that land in Chicago go to the First War.
21:25
Speaker 1: That makes it tough for the people who lived there,
21:27
Speaker 1: and so we figured if we could feed the drifters,
21:29
Speaker 1: it would lighten the load for the regular charity rackets,
21:33
Speaker 1: the charity rackets, and uh, the city editor there says,
21:38
Speaker 1: you know, Campone, this will make a great story, and
21:40
Speaker 1: Compone didn't like it. He for owed his brow and
21:43
Speaker 1: he said, nothing, do it, nix on that, no story.
21:46
Speaker 1: I'd only be panned for doing it. And he was right.
21:48
Speaker 1: Some newspapers were inevitably gonna pan him. But also, lest
21:53
Speaker 1: we paint this man is too much of a saint,
21:56
Speaker 1: he did not invest a ton of his own money
21:58
Speaker 1: into the soup kitch, and instead, as reported in biography
22:03
Speaker 1: on him, Campone his life, legacy and legend, he bribed
22:06
Speaker 1: and extorted other businesses to supply the food. Like there's
22:11
Speaker 1: a ninety two trial with Sarah Tella over whether the
22:15
Speaker 1: guy conspired with grocers to cheat customers. And in the
22:18
Speaker 1: course of that trial, the court discovered a load of
22:22
Speaker 1: ducks had been donated by this chain store to Christmas
22:25
Speaker 1: baskets for the poor, but they disappeared along the way
22:29
Speaker 1: and Capone's soup kitchen ended up with a lot of ducks. Yeah,
22:34
Speaker 1: I mean, even that turkey heist that he supposedly had
22:36
Speaker 1: nothing to do with. I wouldn't be surprised if you
22:38
Speaker 1: know some of that could have ended up in his
22:40
Speaker 1: kitchen at some point circuitously, right like you know, fell
22:43
Speaker 1: off a truck. That whole situation. And in addition to
22:47
Speaker 1: bootlegging alcohol and making a fortune off of that enterprise,
22:50
Speaker 1: he also was hugely involved in illegal gambling and his
22:55
Speaker 1: underground casinos would do about twenty five thousand dollars of
23:00
Speaker 1: off at every month. Yeah, so he wasn't hurting for money.
23:04
Speaker 1: He totally could have paid for this and not miss
23:06
Speaker 1: the meal himself. It would not have impacted his life
23:09
Speaker 1: in a meaningful way to do so, but he still
23:12
Speaker 1: didn't pay as we as we clearly outlined, he was
23:16
Speaker 1: making other businesses foot the bill and provide the supplies.
23:27
Speaker 1: You may be familiar with the city of Chicago, and
23:31
Speaker 1: you might want to, you know, give this piece of
23:35
Speaker 1: obscure history an in person visit. But if you go
23:39
Speaker 1: to nine thirty five South State Street in the South
23:43
Speaker 1: Luke neighborhood today, you are not going to see the
23:46
Speaker 1: Soup Kitchen because it closed abruptly in n two In April.
23:52
Speaker 1: The owners of the kitchen claimed that it was no
23:54
Speaker 1: longer needed because the economy was finally on the way
23:58
Speaker 1: back up. But that's a little bit weird because from
24:03
Speaker 1: one to nineteen thirty two the number of unemployed people
24:06
Speaker 1: in the country had increased by four million. Not four
24:10
Speaker 1: million total, just four million newly jobless people. And I
24:14
Speaker 1: just want to backtrack, ever so quickly and slightly. You
24:17
Speaker 1: may well have heard of the St. Valentine's Day massacre
24:21
Speaker 1: in ninety nine on St. Valentine's Day. That was a
24:25
Speaker 1: hugely public slaughter of many of Capone's competition in the
24:30
Speaker 1: crime world, and it was squarely pinned on him in
24:33
Speaker 1: the press. So this whole Soup Kitchen thing was also
24:37
Speaker 1: an effort to kind of get the public opinion back
24:40
Speaker 1: on his side, right, Yeah, absolutely, this was that was
24:44
Speaker 1: ultimately his motive. You think, just two months after the
24:49
Speaker 1: Soup Kitchen closes, component is indicted on those crimes we
24:54
Speaker 1: mentioned before, not bootlegging, not gambling, twenty two counts of
24:58
Speaker 1: income tax, the shil And this is so crazy. I
25:02
Speaker 1: think about this kind of stuff sometimes, man. I know
25:04
Speaker 1: it's very self centered, but Capone is this huge He's
25:09
Speaker 1: like an international figure at this point, and his career
25:13
Speaker 1: is over when he's only thirty three years old. He
25:16
Speaker 1: eventually gets locked up in Alcatraz while he is on
25:20
Speaker 1: trial leading to his incarceration. He is pledging left and right,
25:26
Speaker 1: I'm gonna reopen my soup kitchen. But that never happens.
25:29
Speaker 1: And as you know, Capone is eventually released from prison
25:33
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine, but he is suffering from the
25:39
Speaker 1: complications of syphilis. He is mentally and physically incapable of
25:44
Speaker 1: operating the way he once did. In fact, just a
25:48
Speaker 1: year before his death, Campone's psychiatrist would go on to
25:52
Speaker 1: conclude that he had the mentality of a twelve year
25:55
Speaker 1: old child. He spent the last years of his life
25:58
Speaker 1: at his mansion and paul I in Florida, and he
26:01
Speaker 1: died of cardiac arrest and suffering a stroke in nineteen Yeah,
26:07
Speaker 1: that's right. And um, obviously we still think of al
26:09
Speaker 1: Capone today and really associate him as one of the
26:13
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, top figures in American organized crime.
26:16
Speaker 1: And that's because he wanted it. You know. Like there's
26:19
Speaker 1: a scene in Boardwalk Empire where he, uh and his
26:22
Speaker 1: cronies are all kind of gathered in a hotel suite
26:25
Speaker 1: and he forces them to repeatedly watch this newsreel kind
26:29
Speaker 1: of dramatizing his rise to prominence in the crime world
26:32
Speaker 1: and referring to him as a public enemy number one,
26:35
Speaker 1: and he literally makes them watch it like three times
26:37
Speaker 1: in a row. He's also like always high on cocaine
26:41
Speaker 1: in the show, which I didn't realize was a thing.
26:43
Speaker 1: But again, they did a pretty good job at sticking
26:45
Speaker 1: to mostly true historical things when it comes to the
26:49
Speaker 1: characters in Boardwalk Empire. But it's true, he definitely had
26:54
Speaker 1: this reputation that lived on far after he passed away.
26:58
Speaker 1: The Soup Kitchen, however, did have that same longevity. Yeah,
27:02
Speaker 1: it's right, It's absolutely true. If you trace the life
27:06
Speaker 1: of the Soup Kitchen after it gets closed down, you'll
27:10
Speaker 1: see that it also ends not with a bang, but
27:13
Speaker 1: with a whimper. The building eventually became a flophouse, and
27:17
Speaker 1: then in nine the authorities in Chicago said, hey, this
27:21
Speaker 1: is a fire hazard. They shut it down permanently. So
27:24
Speaker 1: if you go there today where it stood, you'll find
27:28
Speaker 1: a parking lot. You know, maybe you could be the change,
27:32
Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historian. Maybe you could just park there with
27:38
Speaker 1: some soup, like a big tureen of soup or or
27:42
Speaker 1: a cooler of soup, a thermos. I don't know. You
27:45
Speaker 1: probably have to have a permit though, unless you're also
27:47
Speaker 1: a crime boss. Yeah, you would think. And it's interesting too,
27:50
Speaker 1: just like the kind of nuances of of how Capone's
27:55
Speaker 1: reputation sort of affected his care at the end of
27:58
Speaker 1: his life. Right. Um, we know that he spent the
28:01
Speaker 1: last year of that prison sentence in the hospital for syphilis.
28:05
Speaker 1: After that, he was trying to get the best care
28:08
Speaker 1: because obviously he had the money to do it and
28:10
Speaker 1: had not been completely wiped out by the I R. S.
28:12
Speaker 1: I'm sure he had some cash stored away and some
28:15
Speaker 1: mattresses or safe deposit boxes or what have you. So
28:18
Speaker 1: he was trying to get help at Johns Hopkins University
28:21
Speaker 1: because his primary care physician was an associate professor of
28:25
Speaker 1: medicine there at Johns Hopkins, and this personal doctor was
28:29
Speaker 1: trying to pull some strings to get him to be
28:31
Speaker 1: admitted to Johns Hopkins, which, as we know, is a
28:34
Speaker 1: very illustrious university known today as being one of the
28:37
Speaker 1: top medical schools in the world, um, in the country
28:41
Speaker 1: at the very least. But the board of trustees of
28:44
Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins were not having it. They did not want
28:47
Speaker 1: their reputation tarnished by having one of you know, the
28:51
Speaker 1: most notorious gangsters ever to be, you know, hanging out
28:55
Speaker 1: in their hospital, so they refused treatment to him, or
28:58
Speaker 1: at the very least, they refused to have him be
29:00
Speaker 1: admitted for a long term stay. So he had to
29:03
Speaker 1: go with Baltimore's Union Memorial Hospital, who I guess had
29:06
Speaker 1: slightly lower standards, and they did admit Capone for treatment,
29:10
Speaker 1: and they even took it a step farther and allowed
29:13
Speaker 1: his entourage bodyguards, a barber, personal barber, and massur also
29:18
Speaker 1: food tasters. I mean, it's crazy, dude. Capone really was
29:21
Speaker 1: like gangster royalty, you know, and he was super paranoid.
29:25
Speaker 1: He always thought people were out to get him. He
29:27
Speaker 1: didn't trust anybody, and he employed food tasters to protect
29:32
Speaker 1: him from being poisoned by his enemies, of which numbered
29:35
Speaker 1: in the you know, incalculable right. Yeah. Yeah. Capone also
29:40
Speaker 1: had a soft side. He wrote a love song in prison,
29:44
Speaker 1: which I feel like could be its own episode. And
29:47
Speaker 1: he and he's the he is the reason that the
29:50
Speaker 1: phrase money laundering is popular the modern days. So yes,
29:55
Speaker 1: was he criminal? Absolutely? Was he ruthless? Absolutely? Did he
29:59
Speaker 1: run a soup for self serving reasons, you bet you.
30:03
Speaker 1: But he also left us with tons and tons of
30:07
Speaker 1: things of ideas, concepts, and pieces of history that remain
30:11
Speaker 1: with us in the modern day. So I gotta tell you,
30:15
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's just because of the culture
30:17
Speaker 1: I grew up in. But I've always been one of
30:20
Speaker 1: those people who digs the anti hero vibe. You know,
30:24
Speaker 1: if I were in Chicago at that time, I might
30:26
Speaker 1: think it is a plus that the guy who sells
30:29
Speaker 1: me underground booze has also given me free soup, you
30:32
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Totally And just to backtrack a
30:34
Speaker 1: split second to his uh you know status is like
30:37
Speaker 1: a huge music buff. He did write that song UM
30:41
Speaker 1: entitled Madonna Mia. But he also he actually kidnapped the
30:46
Speaker 1: famous jazz musician Fats Waller Thomas Wright Fats Waller, who
30:51
Speaker 1: was a very prominent jazz musician at the time in
30:54
Speaker 1: ninety six. They basically black bag the guy UM at gunpoint,
30:58
Speaker 1: forcing him into the back of a limb some of
31:00
Speaker 1: his associates. He wasn't present because he was at his
31:04
Speaker 1: seven Good Lord seven birthday party. Uh And and basically,
31:10
Speaker 1: you know, this is just the other way he does business.
31:12
Speaker 1: He doesn't ask he tells, and he had Fats Waller
31:15
Speaker 1: to do a non consensual birthday performance, a private showing
31:19
Speaker 1: at his party, And of course is a final bit
31:22
Speaker 1: here to wrap up the money laundry. Think. The reason
31:25
Speaker 1: we're mentioning that the phrase does come to us in
31:27
Speaker 1: the modern day because when al Capone needed to funnel
31:32
Speaker 1: his illegal cash, his ill gotten gains, its literal ill
31:35
Speaker 1: gotten gains, he would use laundromats because it was hard
31:39
Speaker 1: for the Johnny law of the day to keep track
31:42
Speaker 1: of how cash was flowing into those businesses. So the
31:47
Speaker 1: you know, some people still use laundromats today. But more importantly, folks,
31:51
Speaker 1: tell us what you think. What do you What do
31:54
Speaker 1: you think about the career of al Capone? And I
31:57
Speaker 1: think you can call it a career he was running
32:00
Speaker 1: in an empire. What do you think about the idea
32:03
Speaker 1: of criminals or organized crime stepping in to assist the
32:07
Speaker 1: public when it feels like the ordinary governing structures have
32:11
Speaker 1: not or are incapable or unwilling to do so. We'd
32:15
Speaker 1: love to hear all these thoughts. Please let us know
32:18
Speaker 1: at our officially hopefully working email address Ridiculous at I
32:23
Speaker 1: Heart radio dot com. No, we gotta test that one
32:26
Speaker 1: too when we get off air, just to make sure
32:28
Speaker 1: we definitely do bead. But hopefully all is right in
32:31
Speaker 1: email world and we will be hearing from you shortly.
32:34
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to super producer Max Williams and his brother
32:38
Speaker 1: Alex Williams who composed our theme. Huge thanks to sup
32:40
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram, Jonathan Strickland Quister should be seeing him
32:44
Speaker 1: against soon one of these days, and Christopher haciotis here
32:47
Speaker 1: in spirit yes, as well as Eve's Jeff Coach. Check
32:51
Speaker 1: out our Turbentine episode and all the other great shows
32:55
Speaker 1: Eaves creates, and of course thanks to our own our capone,
33:01
Speaker 1: Gay Bluesier, who is entirely working as our research associate
33:05
Speaker 1: as a very complex money laundering scheme which does, as
33:09
Speaker 1: far as I understand, does involve regular heist of ducks,
33:14
Speaker 1: turkeys and beef stew. Stay safe out there, Gabe, We'll
33:18
Speaker 1: see you next time. Folks. For more podcasts for my
33:27
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
33:30
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.