Coney Men, Malfattori and the 'Queen of Counterfeiters': Italian criminal networks in 1870s-1880s New York

Histories of Italian American organised crime have tended to locate its emergence in the period of mass migration around the turn of the twentieth century, with particular attention to western Sicily and the rise of recognisable mafia families and their male-dominated leadership. But what happens if we look east, and earlier?

Drawing on contemporary press, census records and the daily reports of the US Treasury Secret Service Division, this presentation examines counterfeiting networks operating in New York in the 1870s and 1880s, several of whose leading male and female figures came from Messina, in north-eastern Sicily. Following their activities across the Atlantic, it considers these networks within the wider political, economic and social transformations of the Italian post-Unification decades, and the opportunities afforded by transnational mobility. It also examines their representation in local and national newspapers amid growing anti-Italian sentiment, and in relation to circulating discourse on the mafia and the Italian ‘South’. In doing so, this presentation asks what this earlier case might add to scholarship on Italian American organised crime, arguing for a more composite approach that places its transnational, gendered and discursive dimensions into closer dialogue.

Dr Rossella Merlino is Lecturer in Modern European History at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research is in modern Italian history, with particular interests in the history and culture of Italian mafias. Prior to joining Queen’s, she held lectureships at Bangor University, the University of Bath and the University of Messina, where she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow. Among her recent publications is the co-edited volume Mafie tra continuità e mutamento, published by Carocci (Rome, 2024). She is Associate Editor of Modern Italy (Cambridge University Press) and a member of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy (ASMI).

Please note that this event takes place in a room which does not have step-free access. To request a change of location, please email cbrockbank01@qub.ac.uk. To request online access, please email phanley03@qub.ac.uk.

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