The corrupt and gruesome tale of America’s first paid assassination.
The United State’s first-ever recorded assassination for money was a botched effort that ultimately took 26 years to perpetrate. It all went down on September 6th, 1869 at Keenan’s Liquor store near Elfreth’s Alley, a working-class neighborhood at the time.
US Special Revenue Officer James J. Brooks was a tough-as-nailed investigator for the Internal Revenue Bureau, which was aggressively working to break up illegal whiskey rings operating in large cities around the country. These organized networks of underground distilleries, distributors, and corrupt officials cost the federal government millions upon millions in lost tax revenue.
In Philadelphia, one of the key players in our whiskey ring was William “Bull” McMullen — a powerful and influential leader in the city’s Irish community. McMullen was notorious for his control over local politics and his connection to the city’s violent street gangs, including its most infamous: the Moyamensing Hose Company. Under McMullen’s influence, this local band of bullies became a self-serving political tool to intimidate rivals and enforce his will.
ℹ️ TRUE STORY: Philadelphia had no paid municipal fire fighters until 1871. Before then, we basically just had firefighting militias. These sketchy groups of volunteers operated more like street gangs than civil service organizations. Their turf wars with other fire companies were often violent clashes that terrorized the very neighbors they claimed to protect.
Moyamensing Hose Company was one of the biggest, baddest fire houses in the city. Their services were not cheap – indeed, property owners were ruthlessly extorted in their time of need. “The Killers” (as they were sometimes called) would let a building burn to the ground before they’d allow rival firefighters anywhere near it to help. They were also known for deliberately setting fires to loot.
Wild times! Brooks certainly had his work cut out for him. He started with the smaller stills tucked away in the many cellars and storage sheds of Port Richmond. As he gathered witnesses and evidence, he worked his way up the chain until he was on the heels of the city’s largest producers, with multi-million dollar operations hidden in abandoned warehouses and factories.
At this point, a representative from the Whiskey Ring offered Brooks $1,000 a week to back off – that’s about $23,000 in today’s money (amounting to almost $200k per year). 💰💰💰😲 In response, Brooks busted six of their most profitable illicit distilleries, and made dozens of arrests. By mid-year, he’d captured more than 125 stills, and the Whiskey Ring was not happy, to say the least.
What’s a criminal syndicate to do? McMullen met with Bob Smith Lister, a feared enforcer in the area, and they agreed Brooks needed a vigorous beat-down. They enlisted Moyamensing Hose Company’s best looter, James Dougherty, an unemployed carpenter who tagged in Hugh Morrow, a young man who’d been orphaned as a young child, and left in the older man’s charge.
The two followed Brooks the entire month of August that year, but never managed to get to him. Exasperated, McMullen upped their reward from $50 and 2 barrels of whiskey to $200 each. Lister handed them a gun. “Shoot him if you have to,” he told them. McMullen added, “What do you care if you kill him or not?”
Dougherty soon got word that Brooks would be checking the books at Keenan’s warehouse at 112 N. Front Street. They rocked over with Neil McLaughlin, an unscrupulous hackney driver, and snuck into the office where they found Brooks standing at a desk, peering over a ledger.
Morrow stepped forward with his gun drawn, and inexplicably shot him under his right shoulder blade (rather than a more lethal shot to the head, as they’d discussed). Dougherty moved in with his blackjack, hitting Brooks square in the face when he turned toward his assailants, who took off down the stairs.
Blood streaming, chest searing – Brooks found the strength to follow them out the door and note the yellow spokes on their getaway carriage. Witnesses said he tried to draw his gun, but then he started coughing up blood and collapsed. Before losing consciousness, he showed bystanders his badge and pointed the direction his attackers had fled. The crowd dashed off after their coach, as it careened up Callowhill, then tipped dangerously onto American before speeding out of sight.
Meanwhile, Brooks seemed mortally struck: the bullet had lodged too close to his heart to remove, and the wound was expected to bleed out. He was taken to his home at 4th and Spruce to die quickly in his bed. Evening newspapers announced his demise, only to retract their reporting the next morning. And the next. And the next.
After ten days, it was clear Morrow and Dougherty’s assassination attempt had failed, so the Whiskey Ring sent the culprits into hiding in NYC. Too late! Another hackney driver had identified McLaughlin’s distinctive carriage to police after he heard they were looking for one with yellow accents. McLaughlin gave up Morrow and Dougherty, who were extradited from New York.
Dougherty, Morrow, and McLaughlin were all tried together in December of 1869. Each sentenced to seven years in Moyamensing Prison, where McLaughlin was the first to die less than a year later of tuberculosis, which was rampant in Philly prisons back then. 😷🫁☠️
Dougherty would go next – murdered at his home in 1872. Seems McMullen pulled strings for early release, and then the Whiskey Ring took him out as a security threat (evidently he’d been safer in prison). With Morrow, though, McMullen had a soft spot.
He arranged the same pardon for him as he did for Dougherty, but instead of sending him off unprotected, he hired him as a bartender at his saloon at 8th and Fitzwater. He was also surprisingly forgiving when Morrow shot him in the chest a few months later for allegedly shortchanging him. 🔫😳 Morrow still went to jail, but McMullen got him sprung early again – although not before he caught the TB that would kill him within the year. ⚰️
James J. Brooks would live on to ultimately break Philadelphia’s whiskey ring and then another one in New Orleans, exposing decades of corruption that would eventually snowball into a national scandal that ensnared high-ranking officials in President Ulysses Grant’s administration. From here, Brooks served as chief of Secret Service until 1890, then opened his own private detective agency in Pittsburgh.
But his days were numbered. The assassin’s bullet buried by his heart had slowly, gradually eroded major blood vessels in the area, until an internal rupture finally killed him in 1895. At 70 years old, he’d outlived all three of his assassins by some 2 decades. In his obituary, the Philadelphia Times called him “The Hero of the Whiskey War.”
While never officially charged with anything, William McMullen’s reputation remained tied to the city’s underbelly, where he was a figure of violence, chaos, profiteering, and election fraud. There have been no efforts to honor (or even acknowledge) his legacy since his death in 1901. Philadelphia no doubt would rather forget this unfortunate chapter in our history.
READ MORE! 👀 Get the full story in Bob McNulty’s original narrative that brings his history to life with names, locations, and context (printed in September’s LOCAL newspaper).
📖 For more great history, follow @PhiladelphiaStoriesbyBobMcNulty on Facebook. And check out Bob’s previous Local column HERE about a Brewerytown treehouse making beautiful music in the early 1900s.
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