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Charles "King" Solomon (1884-January 24,
1933) was a Jewish racketeer who controlled New England's
bootlegging, narcotics and illegal gambling during Prohibition.
One of the earliest crime figures in New England's history, Solomon
immigrated from his native Russia as a boy settling with his family
in Boston's West End. The son of a local theater owner, Solomon and
his three brothers came from a middle class background and, during
his teenage years, worked as a counterman in his uncle's restaurant.
However, by his early 20s, he had had become involved in
prostitution, fencing and bail bonding prior to Prohibition.
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By the early 1920s, he controlled the
majority of illegal gambling and narcotics such as cocaine and
morphine before expanding into bootlegging with Dan Carroll during
Prohibition owning many of the cities most prominent speakeasies
including the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. He enjoyed extensive
contacts throughout the underworld including the Bronfmans in Canada
as well as associates in New York and Chicago.
Although never indicted on bootlegging charges (due to his political
connections), he was tried on narcotics charges in 1922. Represented
by editor and general councilor of the Boston American Grenville
MacFarlane, which had then been crusading against drug abuse, he was
later acquitted of charges. He would however served thirteen months
of a five year prison sentence at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary for
intimidating a witness into perjury for his narcotics trial. During
his imprisonment, a request for his transfer to a prison closer to
Boston was made by Boston Congressmen George H. Tinkham and James A.
Gallivan.
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Attending the Atlantic City Conference in
1927, Solomon was one of the several leaders in the "Big Seven" who
helped negotiate territorial disputes and establish policies which
would influence the later National Crime Syndicate in 1932. Solomon
continued to control illegal gambling in New England until his death
on January 24, 1933 when he was killed in Boston's Cotton Club by
rival gunmen [1]. His territories were eventually divided up among
his lieutenants Joseph Linsey, Hyman Abrams and brothers Max and
Louis Fox.
The King, in his glory at his Cotton Club
in the South End. He was as big as they came in Boston. He beat a
narcotics rap in 1922, but was convicted of suborning perjury during
the trial and sentenced to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta where
Whitey Bulger would later take part in LSD experiments. Fortunately
for the King, two Boston Congressmen, one of whom was James Gallivan
(as in Gallivan Boulevard) intervened so that he could be moved
closer to home.
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He was soon released and in 1927 took part in the famous summit of
Jewish ganglords in Atlantic City. As Prohibition neared its end in
1933, it behooved numerous other factions in the Boston underworld to
eliminate the King. One night he was in the men’s room of the Cotton
Club when gunmen burst in and opened fire. The cops asked the dying
Solomon who did it, to which he responded only, “Those dirty rats!”
The reputed rats’ names: Coyne and Burke.
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