Enoch Malachi "Nucky" Thompson (1872-1931) was the Treasurer of Atlantic County, New Jersey from 1912 to 1921, affiliated with the US Republican Party. Thompson had immense power in the city due to his control of the casinos and boardwalk, and he used this influence to become a major bootlegger during Prohibition, becoming the boss of a criminal empire. Even after he was forced to resign as Treasurer in 1921 due to Louis Kaestner and Jimmy Darmody's conspiracy against him, Thompson became a powerful political boss with influence in both organized crime and politics, and he remained the boss of the city even after leaving office. He was murdered in 1931 by Jimmy Darmody's son Tommy Darmody, who avenged his father's murder at Thompson's hands; Pinky Rabinowitz became the new boss of the city.
Biography[]
Mabel and Enoch Thompson, 1897
Enoch Thompson was born in 1872 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the son of Irish immigrants Ethan and Elenore Thompson. He was abused by his alcoholic father, and Enoch and his younger brother Eli felt unloved by their parents due to their parents' immense love for their sickly younger sister, Susan; Susan died of consumption in 1884. Thompson began to work in politics in the 1890s under Commodore Louis Kaestner, and he became a member of the US Republican Party. Thompson helped his mentor, Kaestner, in controlling Atlantic City's politics, and he served as Atlantic County sheriff from 1908 to 1912. When Governor Woodrow Wilson began to crack down on the machine politics of New Jersey, Kaestner agreed to go to prison and make Thompson the new County Treasurer in exchange for a large share of his profits. Thompson appointed his brother Eli as the new Sheriff, and the Thompson brothers became powerful members of the Atlantic City elite. Thompson was known for his lavish lifestyle, his enjoyment of parties and women, and his generosity towards his friends; he took in the young Jimmy Darmody, the illegitimate son of Kaestner, as his own son. Darmody would work as Thompson's chauffeur for years, but from 1917 to 1920 he served in the US Army, not returning until January 1920.
Prohibition[]
Thompson smoking on the boardwalk
On 16 January 1920, Thompson held a meeting with Mayor Harry Bacharach, his brother, a recently-returned Jimmy Darmody, and several Atlantic City politicians at Babette's Supper Club to discuss business. They celebrated the onset of Prohibition by opening several bottles of liquor and drinking, as did most of the people of the city. Thompson announced that Paddy Ryan would become the Chief Clerk of the Fourth Ward and that Darmody would become his assistant, and he told his colleagues that, while the rest of America would go "dry" (outlawing alcohol), Atlantic City would be "as wet as a mermaid's twat." They decided to begin an illegal importing scheme, and they would bring alcohol into the city to help the city prosper while the rest of the country lost its alcohol. Thompson formed connections with shipping captain Bill McCoy, Chicago mobsters James Colosimo and Johnny Torrio, New Jersey smugglers Mickey Doyle and Chalky White, and New York City bootleggers Arnold Rothstein and Lucky Luciano, establishing himself at the head of a powerful organization. However, he had to deal with Darmody as he began to seek more independence from Thompson, and he had to deal from the gang wars that followed the start of Prohibition. He managed to defuse a war between the Chicago Outfit and Rothstein by blaming Al Capone and Darmody's attack on one of Rothstein's shipments on a drunken German immigrant named Hans Schroeder. Schroeder's wife Margaret had gone to Thompson in search of help after meeting him at a Women's Temperance League meeting, asking Thompson to get her husband a job so that they could take care of her soon-to-be-born baby. However, the drunkard Hans Schroeder beat Margaret so severely that the baby died, having discovered the money that Thompson gave her. Thompson had Eli kill Schroeder and dump him in the Atlantic Ocean, and the ambush was pinned on Schroeder.
War with the D'Alessios[]
Thompson in 1920
However, Arnold Rothstein and Luciano blamed Thompson for the loss of the shipment, stirring up bad blood between them. Soon after, Thompson's partner Mickey Doyle was arrested by Bureau of Prohibition agent Nelson van Alden and his squad, and Doyle's operation was busted. The D'Alessio brothers bailed Doyle out of jail and confronted him about the money that he owed them; Doyle decided to hire them to kill his enemy Chalky White to help him in retaking his lost businesses. Thompson, meanwhile, courted Margaret Schroeder and took her family in, and he lived a luxurious lifestyle. Doyle and the D'Alessio brothers later allied with Arnold Rothstein and Lucky Luciano to give them extra muscle against Chalky White, and they decided to kill Thompson to clear the way for Rothstein's takeover of Atlantic City. They robbed one of Thompson's casinos and attempted to kill him, and Thompson decided to call Jimmy Darmody and have him return to Atlantic City to protect him. Darmody brought his friend Richard Harrow with him, and the two of them decided to help Thompson strike back. They succeeded in capturing Meyer Lansky, Matteo D'Alessio, and Lucien D'Alessio, and White and Darmody killed the two D'Alessios, while Thompson had Lansky tell Rothstein about what had happened. Rothstein and Luciano eventually came to meet with Thompson to make peace with him, with Chicago boss Johnny Torrio supervising the meeting. Thompson decided to use his political influence in Chicago - where he had just visited to back Warren G. Harding at the Republican National Convention - to end the indictment against Rothstein, while Rothstein and Luciano paid Thompson $1,000,000 in cash and gave up the last D'Alessio brothers. The D'Alessios were murdered by Harrow, Darmody, and Torrio's hitman Al Capone, ending the D'Alessios. Thompson managed to pin the blame of the Hammonton ambush on the D'Alessios, putting an end to the scandal surrounding his possible involvement.
Electoral fraud indictment[]
Thompson in 1921
In 1921, Louis Kaestner began plotting against Thompson so that his son Jimmy Darmody could become the new political boss of Atlantic City, allying himself with the Ku Klux Klan, the majority of the ward bosses (except for Damien Fleming), the Chicago Outfit, Arnold Rothstein, Joe Masseria, Nucky's own brother Eli, and the state governor Edward Edwards. Kaestner arranged for the Klan to attack one of Chalky White's warehouses, leaving four dead and ten wounded; White tore the arm off of one Klansman with a shotgun blast, and he shot Herman Dacus in the neck with an Enfield rifle, mortally wounding him. Thompson reacted to this event by criticizing White's efforts, as he feared that they would cause a race war; he proceeded to speak at both an African-American church and a white church, promising to bring the Klan to justice at the black church and swearing to "teach the coloreds a lesson" at the white church. Thompson ordered his brother Eli to arrest White for his own safety. One day, Thompson walked into his office to find Assistant Attorney General Solomon Bishop and some federal agents waiting for him. Thompson was arrested on charges of election fraud, and he visited White in prison; Thompson paid for his own bail, but told White that he would have to stay in prison until the situation cooled down.
IRA dealings[]
Thompson would have to deal with both the trial and his rivalry with the Commodore, and he decided to import whiskey from Ireland, using his friend Ernie Moran's connections with Sinn Fein and the IRA to set up a meeting with IRA leader John McGarrigle. McGarrigle met with Thompson and agreed to reward him if he sent weapons to Ireland, and McGarrigle told Thompson that his associate Owen Sleater would be left in America due to his inability to continue the fight. Thompson decided to make Sleater his chauffeur and hitman, using him to blow up Darmody and Mickey Doyle's warehouse. This led to Darmody becoming enemies with Manny Horvitz, a Philadelphia bootlegger who bought the liquor that was destroyed for $5,000, and Thompson let the two of them fight. However, his court case began to take its toll, and Senator Walter Edge pressured Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty to appoint Esther Randolph to prosecute Thompson instead of the corrupt Charles Kenneth Thorogood, Thompson's ally.
General strike and Irish whiskey[]
Thompson decided to resign as Atlantic County Treasurer in July 1921 to appease the Commodore and his faction so that he could focus on the trial, and he replaced Bishop with Bill Fallon, Arnold Rothstein's lawyer. Thompson's first action after he resigned was to have White order a general strike against the white businesses in the town, getting the 10,000-strong black community to shut down the city by abandoning their jobs and depriving the casinos and hotels of workers. This damaged the income of the city, and the plotters began to lose faith in Darmody's ability to maintain power; ever since Kaestner had suffered a paralyzing stroke, they doubted that the young Darmody was experienced enough to win.
Thompson also succeeded in getting the IRA to send 10,000 cases of Irish whiskey to America in exchange for 1,000 Thompson submachine guns after meeting with the IRA in Belfast, Northern Ireland (Thompson claimed that he was going to Ireland to bury his recently-deceased father back home; he brought a dozen Tommy guns in the coffin instead of his father's body), although McGarrigle had to be killed before the plan could go through; his successor Bill Neilan oversaw the deal. Thompson brought the liquor back to America, selling it at half the going rate in order to make a large profit. This put Darmody and his allies out of business, as did the strike. Soon, Horvitz murdered Darmody's wife and her lover, and a distraught Darmody became high on heroin before murdering his father. Darmody's father's death left the coup without a strong leader; Darmody's murder of Jackson Parkhurst led to the elderly allies of Kaestner backing away from the coup; the murder of Alderman George O'Neill by Eli Thompson led to the case being weakened; Deputy Ray Halloran's testimony to the prosecutors endangered Eli Thompson; and the huge amount of money spent on buying George Remus' whiskey left the plotters out of pocket. Darmody eventually decided to apologize to Thompson, meeting him at the Atlantic City War Memorial. Thompson decided that he was not there to apologize, and he shot Darmody in the face, killing his former apprentice. The murder of Jim Neary and the defeat of the other coup plotters allowed for Thompson to return to being the boss of the city, and his enemies within Atlantic City were defeated.
War with Rosetti[]
From 1921 to 1923, Thompson peacefully reigned over Atlantic City, but mounting political pressure led to Thompson calling a meeting at Atlantic City on 31 December 1922 with his associates. Thompson held a lavish Egyptian-themed New Year's Eve celebration with several wealthy guests, and he met with Rothstein, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Chicago Outfit enforcer Frankie Yale, and Masseria crime family caporegime Gyp Rosetti after watching a performance of the number "King Tut" by Eddie Cantor and Thompson's young mistress Billie Kent. Thompson informed the gangsters that he would only be selling alcohol to Rothstein, and his partners could buy the liquor from Rothstein at an upcharge. Many were upset, but Rosetti was the only one to voice his anger, starting a tirade of insults against all of the guests. Thompson made enemies with him, and Rosetti responded by blockading the road to New York through Tabor Heights. When Mickey Doyle and Eli Thompson (now working for Doyle) drove a convoy through the town, it was ambushed with eleven fatalities.
Thompson also had to deal with Attorney General Harry Daugherty's treason, as he decided to use Thompson as a scapegoat for government corruption. He decided to contact his former prosecutor, Esther Randolph, promising her a career-making case if she were to expose corruption in the government. She would do this after Thompson delivered the bootlegger George Remus to her, as Remus purchased government liquor permits from Daugherty's aide Jess Smith. Thompson was introduced to Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon by Gaston Means, a friend in the government, and Mellon arrested Remus. Means, however, worked for both sides, and he decided to kill Smith before he could implicate Daugherty in the case. Smith killed himself before Means could kill him, and Daugherty would continue to serve as Attorney General.
Thompson was nearly killed when Rosetti arranged for Babette's Supper Club to be bombed, and his mistress Billie Kent was killed in the explosion. Thompson sent Owen Sleater to assassinate Masseria, but Sleater was killed at the Turkish bath house where Masseria was lounging. When Rosetti and his crew moved into Atlantic City, Thompson and his family fled, and Thompson allied with Al Capone and the Chicago Outfit against Rosetti. Thompson also allied with Rothstein to break Rosetti's power, and Chalky White and Al Capone massacred Rosetti's convoy of hitmen as they headed to New York, while Richard Harrow massacred several more of the hitmen at Gillian Darmody's club. Thompson then had Rosetti's own ally Tonino Sandrelli murder Rosetti on the beach, although Thompson inherited a damaged Atlantic City; his wife left him, and he was left all alone as the boss of the city.