GREAT CRIMINAL ORGANISATION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 81858, 5 October 1906, Page 4

GREAT CRIMINAL ORGANISATION.

DIABOLICAL PROCESSES. It was announced las' month that the "Black Hand'' had secured a firm footing in the United States, where numerous crimes had been traced w its members. A terrible picture of the doings of the society was given in a recent issue of the New York "Sunday Magazine" by Mr B. Brandenburg. The old Mafia, he writer is dead, but from its ashes has arisen a hydra-headed anomaly that is the fifth curse of Southern Italy. In the United States the transplanted seeds have sprouted into a flourishing institution that bids fair to become the gtcatest criminal organisation of the .world's history, the sporadic expression of a great criminal condition, rather than a more or less extended group of outbreaks inspired by some organised and governed society. The "Black Hand" is a gigantic menace to law and order, to the safety of life and property. There arc shocking things yet to result from it. It is not an organised society, with an in dividual head or a governing body, a roll of members, a treasury", a common calabistk code, etc. It is the popular name of a body of abojt 20,000 Italian criminals, organised in gangs, wherever there is much Italian population. There may be one gang in a colony, or 'here may be twenty. The object of each gang is its own immediate benefit, financially, politically and otherwise, and the only national form of organisation is the acquaintanceship and freemasonry that exists among the leaders. The principal man in each gang, the cap<>, has usually been in a gang in Italy or New York at -ome time previous and the members of that gang are now the heads of murderous groups elsewhere, the same as he is. The older criminals thus keep tV newei gang* in touch with each oilier; and there is a dreadful day coming when some one, perhaps several, masterminds, such as the great Mu-solim, will arise, and wetd the hundreds ot scattered gangs into a new Mafia, as organised in detail for campaigns of crime, as an army is organised for war. This is the status ot ' 'lr. "Black Hand'" to-day—a large body of criminals formed in gangs, the majority of the leaders of which know each other, and exchange courtesies n the way of mailing threatening letter*, pursuing a victim, shielding .-» fugitive, and driving the stiletto into the heart of some condemned unfortunate. There are these distinct and diabolical processes which are a heritage from the old Mafia, and which every Italian undersiands: —(i). The scrocco letter, the anonymou- threat CTiing letter, sometimes illiterate, sometimes scholarly, with a meaning all the more teriblc because it is veil ed. (2). The omerta, the enfoiw* men', of silence amongst witnesses. «tc. (•))■ The cohello, 01 lio ktiK . in f'ther words, wm. -<*ifr wircler. Each gang lias ii» sign, <-.n< leaving a blue sjoh on 'h<» corpse: ano'her leaving thirteen wound-: ?. 'bird twenty-one, Ihe accepted number of the New York Black Hand; a fourth a row of wounds on the body. Many ffangi slash a man's face, as a »e----cond warning. (4). The sequestra lione or kidnapping of relative of r»luctant victims. (5). The -uiveillance dimori, or the watch of d'ath. This is more terrible than death it«e!f. The victim i? constantly dog ged by the band; the shadow of death hangs over him wherever he goes, whatever he does; and with the Italian temperament the vieiim usually commits snieide or ro»« in'ane. Aft- r each outbreak 0 t poWie indjgnK'in!. the leading Italians make sp«-rh<j fcfid write letters declaring th're 1 j 1 o "Black Hand/-' To thewrifer i mine', fwrf tawlift 46 * b4B « . i:.;.