1920's Law and Justice | O'Banion, Dion Patrick 1891-1924

GANGSTER

The Florist/Bootlegger.

In the early 1920s the illegal rackets on the North Side of Chicago were dominated by an Irish immigrant named Dion O'Banion. On the surface he was a genial man who loved to sing the old songs of his homeland, and he spent most days working in his florist's shop on North State Street. Yet he was also a major bootlegger and drug trafficker whom Chief of Police Morgan Collins considered "Chicago's arch-criminal." Informed insiders claimed that O'Banion—who always carried three guns concealed in special pockets made by his tailor—arranged for the deaths of at least twenty-five of his enemies. It was O'Banion who began the custom of sending large floral arrangements at the public funerals of slain mobsters. He made most of these funeral wreaths himself.

Background.

O'Banion started out as a member of a North Side juvenile street gang. His earliest adult crimes were burglary...