title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Following the completion of the Guadalcanal campaign, the 2nd Marine Division had been withdrawn to New Zealand for rest and recuperation. Losses were replaced, and the men were given a chance to recover from the malaria and other illnesses that had weakened them through the fighting in the Solomons. On 20 July 1943, the Joint Chiefs directed Admiral Chester W. Nimitz to prepare plans for an offensive operation in the Gilbert Islands. In August, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance was flown to New Zealand to meet with the new commander of the 2nd Marine Division, General Julian C. Smith, and initiate the planning of the invasion with the division's commanders.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Located about southwest of Pearl Harbor, Betio is the largest island in the Tarawa Atoll. The small, flat island lies at the southernmost reach of the lagoon, and was the base of the majority of the Japanese troops. Shaped roughly like a long, thin triangle, the tiny island is approximately long. It is narrow, being only wide at its widest point. A long pier was constructed jutting out from the north shore, onto which cargo ships could unload cargo while anchored beyond the -wide shallow reef which surrounded the island. The northern coast of the island faces into the lagoon, while the southern and western sides face the deep waters of the open ocean.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Following Colonel Evans Carlson's diversionary Makin Island raid of August 1942, the Japanese command was made aware of the vulnerability and strategic significance of the Gilbert Islands. The 6th Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force reinforced the island in February 1943. In command was Rear Admiral Tomonari Saichirō (友成 佐市郎), an experienced engineer who directed the construction of the sophisticated defensive structures on Betio. Upon their arrival, the 6th Yokosuka became a garrison force, and the unit's identification was changed to the 3rd Special Base Defense Force. Tomonari's primary goal in the Japanese defensive scheme was to stop the attackers in the water or pin them on the beaches. A tremendous number of pillboxes and firing pits were constructed, with excellent fields of fire over the water and sandy shore. In the interior of the island was the command post and a number of large shelters designed to protect defenders from air attack and bombardment. The island's defenses were not set up for a battle in depth across the interior. The interior structures were large and vented, but did not have firing ports. Defenders were limited to firing from the doorways.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: The Japanese worked intensively for nearly a year to fortify the island. To aid the garrison in the construction of the defenses, the 1,247 men of the 111th Pioneers, similar to the Seabees of the U.S. Navy, along with the 970 men of the Fourth Fleet's construction battalion, were brought in. Approximately 1,200 of the men in these two groups were Korean laborers. The garrison itself was made up of forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The Special Naval Landing Force was the marine component of the IJN, and were known by U.S. intelligence to be more highly trained, better disciplined, more tenacious and to have better small unit leadership than comparable units of the Imperial Japanese Army. The 3rd Special Base Defense Force assigned to Tarawa had a strength of 1,112 men. They were reinforced by the 7th Sasebo Special Naval Landing Force, with a strength of 1,497 men. It was commanded by Commander Takeo Sugai. This unit was bolstered by 14 Type 95 light tanks under the command of Ensign Ohtani.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: A series of fourteen coastal defense guns, including four large Vickers 8-inch guns purchased during the Russo-Japanese War from the British, were secured in concrete bunkers around the island to guard the open water approaches. It was thought these big guns would make it very difficult for a landing force to enter the lagoon and attack the island from the north side. The island had a total of 500 pillboxes or "stockades" built from logs and sand, many of which were reinforced with cement. Forty artillery pieces were scattered around the island in various reinforced firing pits. An airfield was cut into the bush straight down the center of the island. Trenches connected all points of the island, allowing troops to move under cover when necessary to wherever they were needed. As the command believed their coastal guns would protect the approaches into the lagoon, an attack on the island was anticipated to come from the open waters of the western or southern beaches. Rear Admiral Keiji Shibazaki, an experienced combat officer from the campaigns in China, relieved Tomonari on 20 July 1943, in anticipation of the coming fight. Shibazaki continued the defensive preparations right up to the day of the invasion. He encouraged his troops, saying "it would take one million men one hundred years" to conquer Tarawa.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: The American invasion force to the Gilberts was the largest yet assembled for a single operation in the Pacific, consisting of 17 aircraft carriers (6 CVs, 5 CVLs, and 6 CVEs), 12 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers, 66 destroyers, and 36 transport ships. On board the transports were the 2nd Marine Division and the Army's 27th Infantry Division, for a total of about 35,000 troops.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: As the invasion flotilla hove to in the predawn hours, the island's four 8-inch guns opened fire. A gunnery duel soon developed as the main batteries on the battleships and commenced counter-battery fire. This proved accurate, with several of the 16-inch shells finding their marks. One shell penetrated the ammunition storage for one of the guns, setting off a huge explosion as the ordnance went up in a massive fireball. Three of the four guns were knocked out in short order. One continued its intermittent, though inaccurate, fire through the second day. The damage to the big guns left the approach to the lagoon open.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Following the gunnery duel and an air attack of the island at 06:10, the naval bombardment of the island began in earnest and was sustained for the next three hours. Two minesweepers, with two destroyers to provide covering fire, entered the lagoon in the pre-dawn hours and cleared the shallows of mines. A guide light from one of the minesweepers then guided the landing craft into the lagoon, where they awaited the end of the bombardment. The plan was to land Marines on the north beaches, divided into three sections: Red Beach 1 on the far west of the island, Red Beach 2 in the center just west of the pier, and Red Beach 3 to the east of the pier. Green Beach was a contingency landing beach on the western shoreline and was used for the D+1 landings. Black Beaches 1 and 2 made up the southern shore of the island and were not used. The airstrip, running roughly east–west, divided the island into north and south.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Marine Corps battle planners had expected the normal rising tide to provide a water depth of over the reef, allowing their draft Higgins boats room to spare. However, on this day and the next, the ocean experienced a neap tide and failed to rise. In the words of some observers, "the ocean just sat there", leaving a mean depth of over the reef.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: A New Zealand liaison officer, Major Frank Holland, had 15 years' experience of Tarawa and warned that there would be at most 3 feet depth due to the tides. Shoup warned his troops that there would be a 50–50 chance that they would need to wade ashore, but the attack was not delayed until more favorable spring tides.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: The supporting naval bombardment lifted and the Marines started their attack from the lagoon at 09:00, thirty minutes later than expected, but found the tide had not risen enough to allow their shallow draft Higgins boats to clear the reef. Only the tracked LVT "Alligators" were able to get across. With the pause in the naval bombardment, those Japanese who had survived the shelling were again able to man their firing pits. Japanese troops from the southern beaches were shifted up to the northern beaches. As the LVTs made their way over the reef and into the shallows, the number of Japanese troops in the firing pits slowly began to increase, and the volume of combined arms fire the LVTs faced gradually intensified. The LVTs had a myriad of holes punched through their non-armored hulls, and many were knocked out of the battle. Those 'Alligators' that did make it in proved unable to clear the sea wall, leaving the men in the first assault waves pinned down against the log wall along the beach. A number of 'Alligators' went back out to the reef in an attempt to carry in the men who were stuck there, but most of these LVTs were too badly holed to remain seaworthy, leaving the Marines stuck on the reef some off shore. Half of the LVTs were knocked out of action by the end of the first day.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Colonel David Shoup was the senior officer of the landed forces, and he assumed command of all landed Marines upon his arrival on shore. Although wounded by an exploding shell soon after landing at the pier, Shoup had the pier cleared of Japanese snipers and rallied the first wave of marines who had become pinned down behind the limited protection of the sea wall. Over the next two days, working without rest and under constant withering enemy fire, he directed attacks against strongly defended Japanese positions, pushing forward despite daunting defensive obstructions and heavy fire. Throughout, Shoup was repeatedly exposed to Japanese small arms and artillery fire, inspiring the forces under his command. For his actions on Betio, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Early attempts to land tanks for close support and to get past the sea wall failed when the LCM landing craft carrying them hung up behind the reef. Some of these craft were hit out in the lagoon while they waited to move in to the beach and either sank outright or had to withdraw while taking on water. Two Stuart tanks were landed on the east end of the beach, but were knocked out of action fairly quickly. The battalion commander of 3rd Battalion, 2nd Regiment found several LCMs near the reef and ordered them to land their Sherman tanks and head to Red Beach 2. The LCMs dropped ramps and the six tanks came down, climbed over the reef and dropped into the surf beyond. They were guided in to shore by Marines on foot, but several of these tanks fell into holes caused by the naval gunfire bombardment and sank. The surviving Shermans on the western end of the island proved considerably more effective than the lighter Stuarts. They helped push the line in to about from shore. One became stuck in a tank trap and another was knocked out by a magnetic mine. The remaining tank took a shell hit to its barrel and had its 75 mm gun disabled. It was used as a portable machine gun pillbox for the rest of the day. A third platoon was able to land all four of its tanks on Red 3 around noon and operated them successfully for much of the day, but by day's end only one tank was still in action.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: By noon the Marines had successfully taken the beach as far as the first line of Japanese defenses. By 15:30 the line had moved inland in places but was still generally along the first line of defenses. The arrival of the tanks started the line moving on Red 3 and the end of Red 2 (the right flank, as viewed from the north), and by nightfall the line was about half-way across the island, only a short distance from the main runway.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: In addition, Maj. Michael P. Ryan, a company commander, had gathered together remnants of his company with diverse disconnected Marines and sailors from other landing waves, as well as two Sherman tanks, and had diverted them onto a more lightly defended section of Green Beach. This impromptu unit was later referred to as "Ryan's Orphans". Ryan, who had been thought to be dead, arranged for naval gunfire and mounted an attack that cleared the island's western end.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: The communication lines that the Japanese installed on the island had been laid shallowly and were destroyed in the naval bombardment, effectively preventing commander Keiji Shibazaki's direct control of his troops. In mid-afternoon, he and his staff abandoned the command post at the northeast end of the airfield, to allow it to be used to shelter and care for the wounded, and prepared to move to the south side of the island. He had ordered two of his Type 95 light tanks to act as a protective cover for the move, but a 5-inch naval artillery shell exploded in the midst of his headquarters personnel as they were assembled outside the central concrete command post, resulting in the death of the commander and most of his staff. This loss further complicated Japanese command problems.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: As night fell on the first day, the Japanese defenders kept up sporadic harassing fire, but did not launch an attack on the Marines clinging to their beachhead and the territory won in the day's hard fighting. With Rear Admiral Shibazaki killed and their communication lines torn up, each Japanese unit had been acting in isolation since the start of the naval bombardment. The Marines brought a battery of 75 mm Pack Howitzers ashore, unpacked them and set them up for action for the next day's fight, but most of the second wave was unable to land. They spent the night floating in the lagoon without food or water, trying to sleep in their Higgins boats. During the night, some Japanese marines swam to some of the wrecked LVTs in the lagoon, and to the "Saida Maru" (斉田丸), a wrecked Japanese steamship lying west of the main pier. They waited for dawn, when they intended to fire on U.S. forces from behind. Lacking central direction, the Japanese were unable to coordinate for a counterattack against the toehold the Marines held on the island. The feared counterattack never came, and the marines held their ground. By the end of the first day, of the 5,000 Marines put ashore, 1,500 were casualties, either dead or wounded.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: With the Marines holding a thin line on the island, they were commanded to attack Red Beach 2 and 3 and push inward and divide the Japanese defenders into two sections, expanding the bulge near the airfield until it reached the southern shore. Those forces on Red 1 were directed to secure Green Beach for the landing of reinforcements. Green Beach made up the entire western end of the island.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: The effort to take Green Beach initially met with heavy resistance. Naval gunfire was called in to reduce the pill boxes and gun emplacements barring the way. Inching their way forward, artillery spotters were able to direct naval gunfire directly upon the machine gun posts and remaining strong points. With the major obstacles reduced, the marines were able to take the positions in about an hour of combat with relatively few losses.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Operations along Red 2 and Red 3 were considerably more difficult. During the night the defenders had set up several new machine gun posts between the closest approach of the forces from the two beaches, and fire from those machine gun nests cut off the American forces from each other for some time. By noon the U.S. forces had brought up their own heavy machine guns, and the Japanese posts were put out of action. By the early afternoon they had crossed the airstrip and had occupied abandoned defensive works on the south side.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Around 12:30 a message arrived that some of the defenders were making their way across the sandbars from the extreme eastern end of the islet to Bairiki, the next islet over. Portions of the 6th Marine Regiment were then ordered to land on Bairiki to seal off the retreat path. They formed up, including tanks and pack artillery, and were able to start their landings at 16:55. They received machine gun fire, so aircraft were sent in to try to locate the guns and suppress them. The force landed with no further fire, and it was later found that only a single pillbox with 12 machine guns had been set up by the forces that had been assumed to be escaping. They had a small tank of gasoline in their pillbox, and when it was hit with fire from the aircraft the entire force was burned. Later, other units of the 6th were landed unopposed on Green Beach, north (near Red Beach 1).


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: By the end of the day, the entire western end of the island was in U.S. control, as well as a fairly continuous line between Red 2 and Red 3 around the airfield aprons. A separate group had moved across the airfield and set up a perimeter on the southern side, up against Black 2. The groups were not in contact with each other, with a gap of over between the forces at Red 1/Green and Red 2, and the lines on the northern side inland from Red 2/Red 3 were not continuous.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: The third day of battle consisted primarily of consolidating existing lines along Red 1 and 2, an eastward thrust from the wharf, and moving additional heavy equipment and tanks ashore onto Green Beach at 08:00. During the morning the forces originally landed on Red 1 made some progress towards Red 2 but took casualties. Meanwhile, the 6th Marines which had landed on Green Beach to the south of Red 1 formed up while the remaining battalion of the 6th landed.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: By the afternoon the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines were sufficiently organized and equipped to take to the offensive. At 12:30 they pressed the Japanese forces across the southern coast of the island. By late afternoon they had reached the eastern end of the airfield and had formed a continuous line with the forces that landed on Red 3 two days earlier.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: By the evening the remaining Japanese forces were either pushed back into the tiny amount of land to the east of the airstrip, or operating in several isolated pockets near Red 1/Red 2 and near the western edge of the airstrip.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: That night the Japanese forces formed up for a counterattack, which started at about 19:30. Small units were sent in to infiltrate the U.S. lines in preparation for a full-scale assault. The assembling forces were broken up by concentrated artillery fire, and the assault never took place. Another attempt, a large "banzai attack", was made at 03:00 and met with some success, killing 45 Americans and wounding 128. With support from the destroyers "Schroeder" and "Sigsbee", the Marines killed 325 Japanese attackers.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: At 04:00 the Japanese attacked Major Jones' 1st Battalion 6th Marines in force. Roughly 300 Japanese troops launched a banzai charge into the lines of A and B Companies. Receiving support from 1st Battalion 10th Marines' 75mm pack howitzers and the destroyers "Schroeder" and "Sigsbee", the Marines were able to beat back the attack but only after calling artillery to within 75 meters of their own lines. When the assault ended about an hour later there were 200 dead Japanese soldiers in the Marine front lines and another 125 beyond their lines. At 07:00 navy fighters and dive bombers started softening up the Japanese positions on the eastern tip of the island. After 30 minutes of air attack the pack howitzers of 1/10 opened up on the Japanese positions. Fifteen minutes later the Navy kicked off the last part of the bombardment with a further 15 minutes of shelling. At 08:00 3rd Battalion 6th Marines under the command of Lt. Col. McLeod attacked, Jones' 1/6 having been pulled off the line after suffering 45 killed and 128 wounded in the previous night's fighting. Due to the narrowing nature of the island, I and L Companies of 3/6 formed the entire Marine front with K Company in reserve. The Marines advanced quickly against the few Japanese left alive on the eastern tip of Betio. They had two Sherman tanks named Colorado and China Gal, 5 light tanks in support and engineers in direct support.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: I and L Companies advanced before experiencing any serious resistance in the form of connected bunkers on I Company's front. McLeod ordered L Company to continue their advance, thereby bypassing the Japanese position. At this point L Company made up the entire front across the now wide island, while I Company reduced the Japanese strong point with the support of the tank Colorado and attached demolition/flame thrower teams provided by the engineers. As the I Company Marines closed in, the Japanese broke from cover and attempted to retreat down a narrow defile. Alerted to the attempted retreat, the commander of the Colorado tank fired in enfilade at the line of fleeing soldiers. The near total destruction of the Japanese soldiers' bodies made it impossible to know how many men were killed by this single shot, but it was estimated that 50 to 75 men perished. While 3/6's L Company advanced down the eastern end of the island, Major Schoettel's 3rd Battalion 2nd Marines and Major Hay's 1st Battalion 8th Marines were cleaning out the Japanese pocket that still existed between beaches Red 1 and Red 2. This pocket had been resisting the advance of the Marines landing on Red 1 and Red 2 since D-day and they had not yet been able to move against it.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: 1/8 advanced on the pocket from the east (Red 2) while 3/2 advanced from the west (Red 1). Major Hewitt Adams led an infantry platoon supported by two pack howitzers from the lagoon into the Japanese positions to complete the encirclement. By noon the pocket had been reduced. On the eastern end of the island 3/6's L Company continued to advance, bypassing pockets of resistance and leaving them to be cleared out by tanks, engineers and air support. By 13:00 they had reached the eastern tip of Betio. 3/6 killed roughly 475 Japanese soldiers on the morning of D+3 while losing 9 killed and 25 wounded. Back at the Red 1/Red 2 pocket there was no accurate count of Japanese dead. There were an estimated 1,000 Japanese alive and fighting on the night of D+2, 500 on the morning of D+3 and only 50–100 left when the island was declared secure at 13:30 D+3.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: For the next several days the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines moved up through the remaining islands in the atoll and cleared the area of Japanese, completing this on 28 November. The 2nd Marine Division started shipping out soon after and were completely withdrawn by early 1944.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Of the 3,636 Japanese in the garrison, only one officer and sixteen enlisted men surrendered. Of the 1,200 Korean laborers brought to Tarawa to construct the defenses, only 129 survived. All told, 4,690 of the island's defenders were killed. The 2nd Marine Division suffered 894 killed in action, 48 officers and 846 enlisted men, while an additional 84 of the wounded survivors later succumbed to what proved to be fatal wounds. Of these, 8 were officers and 76 were enlisted men. A further 2,188 men were wounded in the battle, 102 officers and 2,086 men. Of the roughly 12,000 2nd Marine Division marines on Tarawa, 3,166 officers and men became casualties. Nearly all of these casualties were suffered in the 76 hours between the landing at 09:10 November 20 and the island of Betio being declared secure at 13:30 November 23.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: The heavy casualties suffered by the United States at Tarawa sparked public protest, where headline reports of the high losses could not be understood for such a small and seemingly unimportant island. The public reaction was aggravated by the unguardedly frank comments of some of the Marine Corps command. General Holland Smith, commander of the V Amphibious Corps who had toured the beaches after the battle, likened the losses to Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. Nimitz himself was inundated with angry letters from families of men killed on the island.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Back in Washington, newly appointed Marine Corps Commandant General Alexander Vandegrift, the widely respected and highly decorated veteran of Guadalcanal, reassured Congress, pointing out that "Tarawa was an assault from beginning to end". A "New York Times" editorial on 27 December 1943 praised the Marines for overcoming Tarawa's rugged defenses and fanatical garrison, and warned that future assaults in the Marshalls might well result in heavier losses. "We must steel ourselves now to pay that price."


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Writing after the war, General Holland Smith, who in his biography was highly critical of the Navy, commented:


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Some commanders involved, including Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, Lt General Julian C. Smith and Lt Colonel David M. Shoup, disagreed with General Smith. Said Nimitz:


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Nimitz launched the Marshalls campaign ten weeks after the seizure of Tarawa. Aircraft flown from airfields at Betio and Abemama proved highly valuable.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: All told, nearly 6,400 Japanese, Koreans and Americans died on the tiny island in 76 hours of fighting. In the aftermath of the battle, American casualties lined the beach and floated in the surf. Staff Sgt Norman T. Hatch and other Marine cameramen were present obtaining footage that would later be used in a documentary. "With the Marines at Tarawa" contained scenes of American dead so disturbing that the decision of whether or not to release it to the public was deferred to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who approved it.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Following the battle, the 2nd Marine Division was shipped to Hawaii, leaving the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment behind to clear the battlefield of ordnance, provide security for the Seabees rebuilding the airstrip and aid in the burial detail. The 2nd Marine Division remained in Hawaii for six months, refitting and training, until called upon for its next major amphibious landing, the Battle of Saipan in the Marianas in June 1944.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: The greater significance of the action on Tarawa to the success in the Marshalls proved to be the lessons learned from the battle itself. It was the first time in the war that a United States amphibious landing was opposed by well entrenched, determined defenders. Previous landings, such as the landing at Guadalcanal, had been unexpected and met with little or no initial resistance. At the time, Tarawa was the most heavily defended atoll invaded by Allied forces in the Pacific. The losses by the United States at Tarawa resulted from several contributing factors, among which were the miscalculation of the tide and the height of the obstructing coral reefs, the operational shortcomings of the landing craft available, the inability of the naval bombardment to weaken the defenses of a well entrenched enemy, and the difficulties of coordinating and communicating between the different military branches involved. Navy battleships and cruisers had fired some three thousand shells into Tarawa in the three hours before the landings. "This was by far the heaviest bombardment of an invasion beach ever delivered up to that time. Yet it proved inadequate. ... The high explosive shells employed by the bombarding ships usually went off before penetrating the Japanese defensive works (thus) doing little real damage." For the subsequent Marshalls campaign, the naval bombardments took a month and included the use of armor-piercing shells, while the landing craft also had armor.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: The failures of the Tarawa landing were a major factor in the founding of the Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT) the precursor of the current U.S. Navy SEALS – after Tarawa "the need for the UDT in the South Pacific became glaringly clear". The "landing on Tarawa Atoll emphasized the need for hydrographic reconnaissance and underwater demolition of obstacles prior to any amphibious landing". "After the Tarawa landing, Rear Admiral Richmond K. Turner directed the formation of nine Underwater Demolition Teams. Thirty officers and 150 enlisted men were moved to the Waimānalo Amphibious Training Base to form the nucleus of a demolition training program. This group became Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT) ONE and TWO."


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: Over one hundred of the Americans killed were never repatriated. In November 2013, the remains of one American and four Japanese were recovered from "what was considered a pristine site preserving actual battlefield conditions and all remains found as they fell."


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: The remains of 36 Marines, including 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr., were interred in a battlefield cemetery whose location was lost by the end of the war. The cemetery was located in March 2015. On 26 July 2015, the bodies were repatriated to the United States, arriving at Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam, Hawaii.


title: Battle of Tarawa

text: In March, 2019 a mass grave of Marines, reportedly from the 6th Marine Regiment, was discovered on Tarawa. The remains of 22 Marines recovered from the mass grave arrived at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii on 17 July 2019.


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: Aftab Shivdasani (born 25 June 1978) is an Indian actor, producer and model known for his works in Bollywood and also working for Tamil and Kannada film industry.


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: Shivdasani was selected as the Farex baby at the age of 14 months and eventually appeared in many TV commercials. He started his career as a child artist in films like "Mr. India" (1987), "Shahenshah" (1988), "ChaalBaaz" (1989), "Awwal Number" (1990), "C.I.D." (1990) and "Insaniyat" (1994).


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: In 1999, he made his adult debut in Ram Gopal Varma's "Mast", for which he received the Zee Cine Award for Best Male Debut and Star Screen Award for Most Promising Newcomer- Male. Subsequently, he featured in several commercially successful films, including, "Kasoor" (2001) for which he received Zee Cine Award for Best Actor in a Negative Role and a nomination for Filmfare Best Villain Award, "Kya Yehi Pyaar Hai" (2002), "Awara Paagal Deewana" (2002), "Hungama" (2003), "Masti" (2004). His debut film in Tamil cinema was "Bhaskar Oru Rascal" (2018). He made his debut in Kannada cinema with the commercial hit movie "Kotigobba 3 " (2021).


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: Shivdasani was born in Mumbai in a Sindhi Hindu Family to Prem and Putli Shivdasani. His mother is an Irani Zoroastrian. He studied at St. Xavier's High School, (Fort) located at Lokamanya Tilak Marg in Mumbai. He then graduated from H. R.College of Commerce in Mumbai. In 2012, he was engaged to Nin Dusanj, a London-based Punjabi who grew up in London and later moved to Hong Kong, working within the advertising and luxury branding industries in Asia. On 5 June 2014, he married Nin Dusanj at a private ceremony attended only by both their families. They have a daughter Nevaeh born in 2020.


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: Shivdasani was selected as the Farex baby (baby food brand) at age 14 months and from that point on he appeared in many TV commercials. He made his Bollywood debut as a child actor in "Mr. India" (1987), then appearing in films such as "Awwal Number", "Shahenshah", "ChaalBaaz" and "Insaniyat". He also played the child role for Inspector Vijaykumar Srivastav in the 1988 film 'Shahenshah', who would later be played by Amitabh Bachchan for the remainder of the film.


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: Shivdasani continued appearing in commercials until the age of 19 when he was offered a lead role in director Ram Gopal Varma's "Mast" opposite Urmila Matondkar while still studying at H.R. College. Shivdasani made his debut as an adult opposite Matondkar in "Mast". The film became an instant flop although Shivdasani won the Zee Cine Award for Best Male Debut and the Star Screen Award for Most Promising Newcomer – Male for his performance in "Mast". He earned critical acclaim for his performance. Mohammad Ali Ikram of Planet Bollywood praised his performance and wrote: "Newcomer Aftab Shivdasani comes across as a bit young and aimless when the movie opens, but as you watch the proceedings, you'll learn that this bit of casting makes perfect sense considering Kittu's immaturity and innocence."


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: In 2001, Shivdasani made his comeback to acting with his second film, Vikram Bhatt’s "Kasoor" opposite the debutant Lisa Ray. Shivdasani played a negative role and shot to instant fame with his portrayal of Shekhar Saxena, a well-known journalist, who murders his wife. His performance in the film earned him a nomination for the Filmfare Best Villain Award and a Zee Cine Award for Best Actor in a Negative Role. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama noticed the improvement in his acting and praised his performance. "Aftab, as the suave publishing magnate, catches you unaware with a performance that is first-rate. His characterisation is dissimilar from the one he played in his debut-making venture "Mast". His work should catapult him to the league of genteel artists." His next release of that year saw him paired with Ram Gopal Varma again after "Mast" in "Love Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega", in which Shivdasani starred in a supporting role opposite Saif Ali Khan, Fardeen Khan, Twinkle Khanna and Sonali Bendre. Shivdasani's performance was applauded by Taran Adarsh and considered to be better than the other two heroes. Taran Adarsh wrote "Aftab plays to the gallery and gives a good account of himself. Aftab has an edge over the other two heroes because his character is mass appealing. His scenes with Johny Lever are simply superb." However, the film failed at the box office. His last release of the year was Rajiv Rai's "Pyaar Ishq Aur Mohabbat", in which Shivdasani played Taj Bharadwaj, one of the three lead roles with the debutant Arjun Rampal and Suniel Shetty opposite Kirti Reddy. Shivdasani was praised by Taran Adarsh. "Aftab Shivdasani has an edge thanks to his lovable characterization. He is natural." Pankaj Shukla of SmasHits wrote "Aftab is impressive as usual and is fast maturing as an actor."


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: In 2002, Shivdasani's first two films "Koi Mere Dil Se Poochhe" opposite debutant Esha Deol was a failure but "Kya Yehi Pyaar Hai" opposite Ameesha Patel was successful at the box office. His third release of that year was Rajkumar Kohli's multi-starrer supernatural horror "" that was a disaster. His fourth film of 2002 was the multi-starrer action comedy "Awara Paagal Deewana", that proved to be a successful movie and became the seventh highest grosser movie of that year. It was his only hit movie of 2002. His final release of that year was "Pyaasa".


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: Shivdasani had some success in 2003 with the multi-starrer "Darna Mana Hai", which was a commercial failure at the box office but it was critically successful. His role of Purab, a young college student who has the ability to stop and move people, was critically praised. His next release was Priyadarshan's comedy film "Hungama" opposite Akshaye Khanna and the debutant Rimi Sen, which was his biggest success of that year. His third and final release of that year was "Footpath" opposite Bipasha Basu, Rahul Dev and debutant Emraan Hashmi, which failed to do well at the box office.


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: Shivdasani's first two releases of 2004 were "Suno Sasurjee" opposite Ameesha Patel, and "Muskaan" opposite Gracy Singh. His third release of that year was Indra Kumar's comedy film "", in which he starred opposite Vivek Oberoi, Ritesh Deshmukh, Amrita Rao, Genelia D'Souza, Tara Sharma, Lara Dutta and Ajay Devgan. The film became a hit. His last release of that year was "" opposite Anupam Kher and Shriya Saran.


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: In 2005, Shivdasani's films included "Mr Ya Miss" opposite Antara Mali and "Koi Aap Sa" opposite Anita Hassanandani Reddy and Dipannita Sharma. The former was a flop while the latter was average at the box office. All of Shivdasani's films, especially "Ankahee", were failures in 2006. Shivdasani found some success with multi-starrer films in 2007 and 2008.


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: In 2009, Shivdasani acted in "Aao Wish Karein", the first film produced under his production company, Rising Sun Entertainment. He helped co-write the script and also played the lead character, Mickey. The same year, Shivdasani appeared in "Acid Factory". In 2011, Shivdasani played the lead role in the comedy film "Bin Bulaye Baraati" opposite Priyanka Kothari. Shivdasani's next release was 2012 super-hit "" in which he played the lead role opposite Twinkle Bajpai. His next film "Grand Masti", a sequel to the 2004 blockbuster "Masti" was also a huge success like the original grossing over 100crores at the box office. In January 2016 part 3 of the hit franchise "Kyaa Kool Hai Hum" was released where Aftab starred alongside Tusshar Kapoor the film was a hit at the box office. In July 2016 the third instalment of the super hit Masti series, Great Grand Masti was released.


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: In 2021 he took part in a commercially successful sandalwood, kannada movie kotigobba 3 as a cop(police officer). Aftab Shivdasani entered the web space for the first time with, “Poison 2”.


title: Aftab Shivdasani

text: In 2021, Shivdasani starred as Vijay Kumar, a RAW officer in , the sequel to Neeraj Panday’s hit series Special Ops on Disney+ Hotstar. His performance received commercial and critical appreciation from all and was also hailed as the surprise package of the second season.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Next is a 2007 American science fiction action thriller film directed by Lee Tamahori and starring Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore, Jessica Biel, Thomas Kretschmann, Tory Kittles, and Peter Falk. The film's original script was loosely based on the 1954 science fiction short story "The Golden Man" by Philip K. Dick. The film tells the story of Cris Johnson, a small-time magician based in Las Vegas, who has limited precognition. His ability allows him to see into the very immediate future. His gift not only makes him a target of a highly motivated and heavily armed group of terrorists, but also puts him in the crosshairs of the FBI who want to recruit him to oppose those terrorists instead.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: The film was released on April 25, 2007, in Belgium and France, and on April 27, 2007, in the United States by Paramount Pictures. With a production budget of $78 million, the film grossed $76 million worldwide, making it a box office flop.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: It was the first Revolution Studios film to be distributed by Paramount Pictures, followed by 2017's "".


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Cris Johnson can see into his future. He can only see two minutes ahead, with the exception of a vision he once had of a woman walking into a diner. Knowing no details other than the time, he goes to the diner twice each day at 8:09 to await her arrival. He works as a small-time magician in Las Vegas, where he supplements his income with gambling, using his powers to win medium amounts against the house.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Cris draws the attention of NSA Agent Callie Ferris, who has figured out his ability and wants to stop Russian terrorists from detonating a nuclear weapon. Before she can approach Cris, his gambling draws the attention of casino security. Using his ability to forecast the actions of his pursuers, he eludes them and the Las Vegas police. Ferris tracks Cris to his location, but he escapes after foreseeing her arrival. Later that night, the casino's security chief is approached by two of the terrorists, is interrogated about Johnson and is then killed.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: The following morning, Cris is at the diner again when he sees Liz Cooper, the woman from his vision. It turns out that Cris can not only see the future, but also see how his actions can affect that future. When Liz's aggressive ex-boyfriend arrives, Johnson envisions all outcomes of his intervening, and then chooses the outcome that gets him "in" with Liz. Knowing that she is heading for Flagstaff, Arizona, Cris tricks her into giving him a ride. Ferris follows, while the terrorists decide to kill him.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: With the weapon tracked to Los Angeles, Ferris persuades her superiors to let her bring Cris in. The terrorists follow in the hope that the agents will lead them to Cris.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Cris and Liz have to spend the night in a motel. Ferris confronts Liz near the hotel. Claiming Cris is a dangerous sociopath, Ferris asks Liz to drug Cris so that they can bring him in peacefully. Instead, Liz warns Cris, who tells her his secret. When she asks why he will not help the FBI stop the terrorists, he explains his limitations, noting the exception for events involving her. Cris tries to escape from the FBI but is captured after saving Ferris from logs tumbling down the side of a mountain. Unable to get to Cris, the terrorists kidnap Liz.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: The NSA strap Cris to a chair and force him to watch television until he has a vision that can help. They expect him to see a report about the detonation of the bomb, but instead he envisions a broadcast from several hours in the future in which Liz is killed with a bomb vest while strapped to a wheelchair as bait for him. Cris escapes and races to the parking garage where she will be killed. Catching up to him, Ferris promises to help save Liz as long as Cris will help stop the bomb; she also sets up a plan to draw out the terrorists.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Cris helps the NSA track the terrorists to the port where they are based. When they arrive, Cris is able to walk right up to the terrorist leader while using his power to dodge bullets. After killing the terrorists and saving Liz, they find that the bomb has already been moved. Ferris shows Cris a seismograph, hoping that he will see any tremors caused by explosions before they happen. As he stares at the screen he realizes that he has made a mistake and that he was too late: the bomb detonates out at sea and completely destroys the port, as well as the rest of the city.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: The timeline reverts a full day to Cris and Liz in bed at the hotel in Arizona, before Ferris arrived. Because of Liz's involvement in events, Cris has now been able to envision everything that could happen leading to the nuclear explosion. "Every time you look into the future, it changes."


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Gary Goldman and Jason Koornick initially optioned the science fiction short story "The Golden Man" by Philip K. Dick. Goldman wrote a script treatment that he and Koornick presented to Nicolas Cage's production company, Saturn Films, but Goldman ended up writing the screenplay on spec.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: This first draft had more similarities to the short story, detailing the efforts of a government agency to capture and contain a precognitive mutant.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: To provide greater interaction between the opposing parties (as well as create a leading role), Cris was changed from a feral animal whose existence threatened humanity's into a more familiar and understandable social outcast. A romantic subplot was added: the character of Liz Cooper, who in this draft was not only destined to be the love of Cris's life, but a mutant as well (born in Love Canal) and the only woman he has ever met with whom he can have children, herself incapable of procreating with normal humans.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: As the original short story had a distinct tone of racist paranoia, the motivation for the pursuit of Cris was changed from an ironclad policy of exterminating mutations to a manipulative Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent's obsessive search for unconventional assets in the war on terror.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: This script was filled with anti-authoritarian themes, with Cris often speaking clearly and eloquently of how he enjoys his independence. He states plainly that "what I want is freedom. And you don't get it by giving it up."


title: Next (2007 film)

text: The DHS is explicitly depicted as a completely unregulated, astoundingly powerful and unapologetically ruthless collection of fanatics, breaking laws without consideration and eager to torture and even murder innocent civilians to achieve their objectives. They discuss their plans in using Cris as if he were a piece of machinery, most of which consist of using him as a "timescope": that is, bolting him into a chair for the rest of his life so his only experiences are ones which are useful to them, a process which they believe would extend the range of his abilities. One agent suggests that they amputate his arms and legs, a suggestion his colleague considers humorous.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: However, his enemies are skilled tormentors and eventually they drive him to the breaking point: when the DHS learns that Liz is pregnant with his child, they coldly decide to have her executed at a pre-determined time, thus pre-emptively proving to Cris their determination to possess him. He attempts to secure Liz's safety, but the DHS captures her. In retaliation, he demolishes the Las Vegas DHS headquarters with a barrel of C-4 explosive agents had seized earlier in a warrant-less search. He and Liz are the "only" survivors.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Saturn Films had the script extensively rewritten and in the process almost completely eliminated its anti-authoritarian themes. Though Cris remained a meek social outcast, he is somewhat less sympathetic: he is portrayed as arrogant, as well as far more prone to applying violent solutions. The DHS's role was replaced with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Despite a scene in which Cris experiences his worst nightmare – spending the rest of his life strapped into a chair with his eyes wedged open – the authorities are portrayed as sympathetic and Cris as uncooperative and belligerent. Their insistence on his obedience is reduced to the point that the authorities offer their assistance in "rescuing" Liz (whom they neglect to arrest despite her efforts to sabotage Cris's capture) from the terrorists. This leads to the film's greatest variation from the original draft – a confrontation with the terrorists. No clue is given as to the motivation for the terrorists' detonation of the nuclear device in Los Angeles. The few terrorists who speak in the film with British, French and German accents, seem to be under the guidance of an unseen leader who has told them that they must kill Cris since "he says that Cris is the only threat to the plan". During the confrontation with the terrorists, Cris willingly supports the FBI with his abilities in a series of sequences similar to those in the original script, only with the authorities as allies instead of antagonists.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: This was the script Saturn Films brought to the attention of Revolution Studios. Revolution Studios acquired the screenplay and in November 2004, Revolution Studios hired Lee Tamahori to direct the film, with Cage in the lead role. Filming was to begin in summer 2005. In December 2005, Moore was cast as the federal agent who seeks people to help prevent future terrorism and uncovers Cage's character as a potential candidate. In November 2005, Initial Entertainment Group negotiated for rights of international distribution of "Next", which had a target release date of 2007. In February 2006, actress Jessica Biel was cast as the love interest of Cage's character.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: In May 2006, Starz! Entertainment's 14-episode reality television miniseries, "Looking for Stars", gave 200 contestants the opportunity to earn a speaking role in "Next", which was won by actor Marcus Welch.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Sections of the film were filmed in the San Bernardino Mountains in California. Mountain locations used in production of the film included Crestline, Running Springs and Big Bear Lake. The hotel featured in the film, "The Cliffhanger", is actually a restaurant overlooking the City of San Bernardino. In order to make the restaurant look more like a hotel, a facade was attached to the building. The facade is the section of the motel where Johnson and Liz Cooper were staying. Interior shots were filmed elsewhere. Following the end of production, the facade was removed. However, remnants of the signage placed and the paint works conducted remain intact. Running Springs served for scenes shot in the town. Scenes (in which a vehicle was rolled off the side of a cliff) shot in Big Bear Lake were shot at a campground. Due to the terrain located on the side of the cliff the Cliffhanger is located on, the producers decided to finish the scenes at the campground in Big Bear Lake.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: "Next" originally was to be distributed by Sony Pictures Entertainment (which had a deal with Revolution), set to be released on September 28, 2006, but that studio dumped it in January 2007, and Paramount Pictures subsequently picked it up and released the film on April 27, 2007.


title: Next (2007 film)

text: The film opened at #3 at the U.S. box office, grossing $7.1 million in 2,725 theaters in its opening weekend. In its eight-week run in the United States, it grossed a total of just $18 million and has a combined worldwide gross of $76 million. Compared to other films based on Philip K. Dick stories, "Next" grossed less than "Minority Report", "Total Recall", "Paycheck" and "Blade Runner" but performed better than "Impostor", "Screamers" and "A Scanner Darkly".


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 28% based on 128 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Numerous plot holes and poorly motivated characters prevent "Next" from being the thought-provoking sci-fi flick it could've been." Metacritic gives the film had an average score of 42 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Justin Chang of "Variety" said the film plays "like the cinematic equivalent of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel" and that the plot is highly reminiscent of "24". Chang also said "What starts out as a mildly diverting thriller blows itself to smithereens in the final reel", describing the climax as a "stunning cheat." James Berardinelli of ReelViews gave the film 2½ out of 4 stars and said parts of the film are "fascinating" and "compelling" but that "the whole thing ends up collapsing under its own weight." Berardinelli said Nicolas Cage "seems to be going through the motions", "Julianne Moore brings intensity to the part of Callie, although the character is incomplete", "Jessica Biel is appealing" but "the character is unfinished", and that "Thomas Kretschmann is unimpressive as a generic "24"-style terrorist." He also said "some viewers will feel cheated by what "Next" does, and it's hard to blame them."


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Connie Ogle of the "Miami Herald" gave the film 2 out of 4 stars and said the film looks like director Lee Tamahori "spent about 12 bucks on his special effects budget." Ogle said the film had a decent premise but ""Next" begins to seriously embarrass itself and its stars once it rolls to its climax." "Toronto Star" film critic Peter Howell gave the film 1½ stars out of 4 and called it a "colossal waste of time" and said it is "possibly the most egregious befouling of Dick's work to date." Howell said the roles "seem to be cut-and-pasted from other movies", called the film a "straight-to-DVD wannabe", and said the film "has one of the most infuriating endings ever."


title: Next (2007 film)

text: Moira MacDonald of the "Seattle Times" gave "Next" 1½ stars out of 4 and said "Late in the movie, Cris shouts at a bad guy, 'I've seen every possible ending here. None of them are good for you.' It's as if he's talking to the audience, and alas, he's right." and "Julianne Moore spends most of her screen time in Lee Tamahori's confused sci-fi thriller "Next" looking royally pissed off, like she got tricked into making the movie on a sucker bet. You can't blame her; this film's audience is likely to look that way as well by the time the end credits roll." "Kalamazoo Gazette" critic James Sanford gave the film 1½ stars and said "the only visions "Next" inspires are flashbacks to better films" like "Honeymoon in Vegas", "Leaving Las Vegas", "The Illusionist", and "Hannibal", adding "any film that makes someone wish he or she were watching "Hannibal" must be pretty awful." Sanford said "Cage performs as if he's on autopilot, Moore looks more miserable than she did as the suicidal housewife in "The Hours", and Biel seems fully aware she was hired only to provide a few glimpses of cheesecake." Sanford also remarked, "the ending of this film is not just a colossal cheat, it's a hard slap in the face to anyone who has invested his or her time in watching it." Daniel Eagan of "Film Journal International" said the film "follows a familiar Hollywood pattern in which a few intriguing ideas are swamped by the demands of a big-budget, star-driven vehicle" and that it "won't add any luster to Nicolas Cage's resume." Eagan said "Half of "Next" is a clever, unpredictable thriller that plays with Dick's customary obsessions with time and reality. The other half is a sloppy, bloated adventure marred by cheesy special effects and some equally cheesy acting" and also that "the script to "Next" has plenty of [plot jams], one or two egregious enough to demand ticket refunds."


title: Next (2007 film)

text: "Orlando Sentinel" critic Roger Moore gave the film 3 out of 5 stars and said "who says preposterous junk can't be fun?" Moore said "this sloppy little time travel variation is a crowd-pleasing hoot, thanks mostly to Cage turning on the charisma and showing off his gift for hangdog understatement" and that the "Groundhog Day"-like attempts to woo Jessica Biel's character are "hilarious." Moore concluded "It's all so stupid and ends so perfunctorily that you can't call "Next" good, or even as good as the dopey "Déjà Vu"...but it does score over ["Déjà Vu"] in one important criterion. It's just fun." Wesley Morris of the "Boston Globe" gave the film 2½ out of 4 stars and called it a "watchably absurd popcorn flick" and that the film "bears almost no resemblance" to the original short story "The Golden Man", the short story it was adapted from. He described Moore's performance as "enjoyably curt" and said "alongside Cage's spontaneity, Biel seems humorless and earnestly dull." Morris said the film is fun "until it turns crass" and concluded, "when you're being toyed with that cheaply, you forget how much you admire Nicolas Cage's shamelessness and start to resent the movie's." Diana Saenger of "ReviewExpress" gave the film 3½ stars and said ""Next" boasts a fresh plot with a tricky twist ending that can be misconstrued if you don't pay close attention and then pause to think about it." Saenger reported that it was Nicolas Cage's idea for Cris to be a magician, and that it was his suggestion that his wife be part of the scene where a woman comes out of the audience to be part of the magic show. Saenger remarked that people complaining about the twist being a rip-off probably didn't understand it and said it made perfect sense and concluded "I liked the surprise twist and found "Next" very entertaining."


title: Next (2007 film)

text: The film was subject to the heckling of Bridget Jones Nelson and Michael J. Nelson in an October 2007 installment of "Rifftrax".


title: Next (2007 film)

text: The technique the protagonist uses to see into the future has been compared to the video game concept of savescumming.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Jewish-American organized crime initially emerged within the American Jewish community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been referred to variously in media and popular culture as the Jewish Mob, Jewish Mafia, Kosher Mob, Kosher Mafia, and Kosher Nostra or Undzer Shtik (). The last two of these terms are direct references to the Italian cosa nostra; the former is a play on the word for kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the latter is a calque of the Italian phrase 'cosa nostra' (Italian for "our thing") into Yiddish, which was at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: In the late 19th century in New York City, Monk Eastman (who himself was most likely not Jewish) operated a powerful Jewish gang that competed with Italian and Irish gangs, notably Paul Kelly's Five Points Gang, for control of New York City's underworld. Another notorious gang, known as the Lenox Avenue Gang, led by Harry "Gyp the Blood" Horowitz, consisted of mostly Jewish members and some Italian members (such as Francesco Cirofisi). It was one of the most violent gangs of the early 20th century and became famous for the murder of gambler and gangster Herman Rosenthal.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: In the early 1920s, stimulated by the economic opportunities of the Roaring Twenties, and later the Prohibition, Jewish organized crime figures such as Arnold Rothstein were controlling a wide range of criminal enterprises, including bootlegging, loansharking, gambling, and bookmaking. According to crime writer Leo Katcher, Rothstein "transformed organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, run like a corporation, with himself at the top." Rothstein was allegedly responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series. At the same time, the Jewish bootlegging mob known as The Purple Gang dominated the Detroit underworld during prohibition, while the Jewish Bugs and Meyer Mob operated in the Lower East Side of New York City before being absorbed into Murder, Inc. and becoming affiliates of the Italian-American Mafia.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: The largely Jewish-American and Italian-American gang known as Murder, Inc. and Jewish mobsters such as Meyer Lansky, Mickey Cohen, Harold "Hooky" Rothman, Dutch Schultz, and Bugsy Siegel developed close ties with and gained significant influence within the Italian-American Mafia, eventually forming a loosely organized, mostly Jewish and Italian criminal syndicate known in the press as the "National Crime Syndicate." Jewish and Italian crime groups became increasingly interconnected in the 1920s and 1930s into the 1960s and beyond, as both groups often occupied the same neighborhoods and social statuses of the time. The two ethnic crime groups became especially close in New York City following the establishment of the close relationship between partners Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky and their subsequent elimination of many of the so-called "Mustache Pete" types — Sicilian-born gangsters who often refused to work with non-Italians and even non-Sicilians. The Cohen crime family of Los Angeles and Las Vegas was notably part of both the Jewish Mafia and Italian-American Mafia, and lines between the two ethnic criminal organizations often blurred throughout the 20th century. For decades after, Jewish-American mobsters would continue to work closely and at times compete with Italian-American organized crime.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Jewish-American gangsters were involved in many different criminal activities, including murder, racketeering, bootlegging, prostitution and narcotics. Their role was also significant in New York's burgeoning labor movement, especially the garment and trucking unions, as well as the poultry industry. Jewish organized crime fueled antisemitism and deeply concerned the Jewish community. Jewish organized crime was used by antisemites and anti-immigration supporters as arguments to bolster their agenda. Jewish gangs controlled portions of the Lower East Side and Brownsville in New York City, and were also present in other major American cities. American Jewish mafia boss Kid Cann held sway over Minneapolis for over four decades and remains the most notorious mobster in the history of Minnesota.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Jewish-American organized crime was a reflection of the ethnic succession among gangsters, which has tended to follow the immigrant waves in the United States: English, German, Irish, Jewish, Italian, Asian and Latino. Ethnic involvement in organized crime gave rise to alien conspiracy theories in the US law enforcement community, in which the conception of organized crime as an alien and united entity was vital. The involvement of a small percentage of recent immigrants in organized crime created a lasting stereotype of devious immigrants corrupting the morality of native-born Americans. Organized crime was a complex set of relations between the recently arrived Jewish and Italian criminals and groups like the Irish-American organized crime networks, which had been established before the 1920s and which the newer groups were sometimes subordinate to.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Although never receiving close to the level of cultural attention of the Italian-American Mafia, from the late 1960s, Jewish-American gangsters would figure as characters in Jewish American literature. For some writers, Jewish gangsters and boxers in the post-World War II era were seen as tougher, more aggressive literary role models, freeing the community from the stigma of defenselessness and powerlessness, compared with the physical aggressiveness and lawlessness more associated with the Irish and Italian immigrants. According to Rich Cohen, author of "Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons and Gangster Dreams": "If Jewish gangsters still thrived today, if they hadn't gone legit, if Jews of my generation didn't regard them as figments, creatures to be classed with Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster, I think the Jewish community would be better off". However, Cohen's description of Jewish gangsters ignores their criminality and immorality. These tough characters were still gangsters who extorted, exploited and murdered other members of the Jewish-American community for profit. They forced Jewish women into prostitution, and were generally considered a scourge within their own community. The Yiddish press and literature of the 1920s and 1930s were resolute in their condemnation of Jewish mobsters.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: A large wave of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries produced Jewish mobsters such as Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach, "Big" Jack Zelig, and Vach "Cyclone Louie" Lewis, who competed with and were acknowledged by Italian and Irish gangs.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Just as with their Italian counterparts, gangs specializing in extortion began operating in the heavily Jewish neighborhoods of New York's Lower East Side, most prominently the so-called Yiddish Black Hand headed by Jacob Levinsky, Charles "Charlie the Cripple" Litoffsky, and Joseph Toplinsky during the early 20th century. A significant Jewish underworld already existed in New York at the start of the 20th century, with Jewish mobsters conversing in a jargon with Yiddish origins. A pimp was known as a "simcha," a detective as a "shamus", and a loafer as a "trombenik." Jewish-American organized crime arose among "slum kids who as prepubescents stole from pushcarts, who as adolescents extorted money from store owners, who as young adults practiced "schlamming"" (wielding an iron pipe, wrapped in newspaper, against striking workers or against scabs) – until as adults they joined well-organized gangs involved in a wide variety of criminal enterprises boosted by prohibition.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: The lure of quick money, power, and the romance of the criminal lifestyle was attractive to both second-generation Jewish and Italian immigrants. There was a supposed Jewish "crime wave" in early 20th century New York. In disturbing numbers, young Jews had joined crime "rackets," it was said, along with children of Irish, Italian and other immigrants. However, the supposed Jewish-immigrant crime wave may have been exaggerated by the press and law enforcement. Crime and population figures show that Jews in New York committed crimes at a rate far below the average for the wider society. As described by sociologist Stephen Steinberg, less than a sixth of the city's felony arrests were Jews during the 1920s, when Jews constituted nearly a third of the city's population.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: As the 20th century progressed, Jewish-American mobsters such as "Dopey" Benny Fein and Joe "The Greaser" Rosenzweig entered labor racketeering, hiring out to both businesses and labor unions as strong-arm men. Labor racketeering or "labor slugging" as it was known, would become a source of conflict as it came under the domination of several racketeers including former Five Points Gang members Nathan "Kid Dropper" Kaplan and Johnny Spanish during the Labor slugger wars until its eventual takeover by Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro in 1927. Other Jewish organized crime figures involved in controlling labor unions include Moses Annenberg and Arnold Rothstein, the latter reportedly responsible for fixing the 1919 World Series.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: According to crime writer Leo Katcher, Rothstein "transformed organized crime from a thuggish activity by hoodlums into a big business, run like a corporation, with himself at the top." According to Rich Cohen, Rothstein was the person to see during prohibition (1920–1933) if one had an idea for a tremendous business opportunity, legal or not. Rothstein "understood the truths of early 20th century capitalism (hypocrisy, exclusion, greed) and came to dominate them". According to Cohen, Rothstein was the 'Moses of Jewish gangsters', a rich man's son, who showed the young and uneducated hoodlums of the Bowery how to have style. Lucky Luciano, who would become a prominent boss within the Italian-American Mafia and organize New York's Five Families, once claimed that Arnold Rothstein "taught me how to dress". The stereotypical attire of the American mobster portrayed in movies can partially trace its roots directly to Rothstein.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: During prohibition, Jewish gangsters became major operatives in the American underworld and played prominent roles in the distribution of illegal alcohol and the spread of organized crime throughout the United States. At the time, Jewish gangs operated primarily in America's largest cities, including Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, Newark, New York City, and Philadelphia. Numerous bootlegging gangs such as the Bug and Meyer Mob headed by Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel and Abe Bernstein's Purple Gang would see the rise of Jewish-American organized crime to its height. Other Jewish mobsters, including Dutch Schultz of New York City, Moe Dalitz of Michigan, Kid Cann of Minneapolis, Charles "King" Solomon of Boston and Abner "Longy" Zwillman (the "Al Capone of New Jersey") became wealthy during prohibition.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: During this time, Luciano successfully eliminated the Old World Sicilian Mafia bosses like Joe Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano in the 1931 Castellammarese War and took control of the New York Italian Mafia. Luciano did not discriminate against Jews and valued longtime associates such as Meyer Lansky and Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel. Several Jewish gangsters such as Red Levine and Bo Weinberg were used in the war as unsuspected non-Italian hitmen. After Masseria and Maranzano were murdered, a conference was held at New York's Franconia Hotel on November 11, 1931, which included Jewish mobsters such as Jacob Shapiro, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Joseph "Doc" Stacher, Hyman "Curly" Holtz, Louis "Shadows" Kravitz, Harry Tietlebaum, Philip "Little Farvel" Kovolick and Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg. During this meeting, Luciano and Lansky convinced the Jewish-American mobsters of the benefits of cooperating with the Italian-American Mafia in a newly created consortium called the National Crime Syndicate by the press. At the meeting's conclusion, "Bugsy" Siegel supposedly declared "The yids and the dagos will no longer fight each other."


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Those Jewish gangsters hostile to the idea of cooperation with non-Jewish rivals gradually receded, most notably Philadelphia bootlegger Waxey Gordon, who was convicted and imprisoned for tax evasion based on evidence provided to United States Attorney Thomas E. Dewey by Lansky. Following Gordon's imprisonment, his operations were assumed by Nig Rosen and Max "Boo Hoo" Hoff.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: During prohibition Moe Dalitz established the Cleveland Syndicate with fellow Jewish gangsters Louis Rothkopf, Maurice Klein, Sam Tucker, Charles Polizzi, and Irish gangster Blackjack McGinty. Charles Polizzi was born Leo Berkowitz to Jewish biological parents who died when he was an infant. Charles was adopted by the Polizzi family and his adoptive brother, Alfred Polizzi, was the head of the Italian Mayfield Road Mob. The Syndicate was heavily involved with bootlegging on Lake Erie and developed what was known as the Little Jewish Navy. The Syndicate operated casinos in Youngstown, Northern Kentucky, and Florida. The Syndicate attended the Atlantic City Conference representing Cleveland. The Syndicate ran numerous casinos in Newport, Kentucky including the original Flamingo, and Tropicana. The Syndicate's reign, in Northern Kentucky, came to an end following a botched attempt to discredit George Ratterman, a candidate for sheriff and a federal crackdown during the Kennedy Administration.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: The Cleveland Syndicate members were early investors in the Desert Inn, in Las Vegas, and owned it until it was purchased by Howard Hughes. Its members invested in horse tracks including River Downs, Fair Grounds Race Course, Thistledown Racecourse, Fairmount Park Racetrack, Aurora Downs, and the Agua Caliente Racetrack.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Under Lansky, Jewish mobsters became involved in syndicate gambling interests in Cuba, Miami, and Las Vegas. Buchalter would also lead the predominantly Jewish Murder, Inc. as the Luciano-Meyer syndicate's exclusive hitmen.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Following World War II, the dominant figures in organized crime tended to be second-generation Italian-Americans and Jewish-Americans. As late as the 1960s, Jewish presence in organized crime was still acknowledged as being of significance however. As Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna explained to hitman and later government informant Jimmy Fratianno:


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Jewish mobsters, such as Meyer Lansky and the Los Angeles-based Mickey Cohen, along with Harold "Hooky" Rothman, continued to hold significant power and control organized crime groups in New York City, New Jersey, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, and Las Vegas, while the Jewish-American presence remained strong in Italian-American criminal rackets. Shondor Birns was a Jewish crime boss, in Cleveland, who controlled numbers, prostitution, theft, and gambling rackets. Birns was active until 1975 when he was murdered by Irish gangster Danny Greene.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Jewish-American organized crime derived from dislocation and poverty, where language and custom made the community vulnerable to undesirables, the sort of thing that it is claimed fosters criminality among any other ethnicity in a similar situation. As American Jews improved their conditions, the Jewish thug and racketeer either disappeared or merged into a more assimilated American crime environment. American Jews quietly buried the public memory of the gangster past; unlike the Mafia, famous Jewish American gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Dutch Schultz and Bugsy Siegel founded no crime families.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Much like Irish-Americans and other ethnicities (with the exception of Italian-American criminal organizations), Jewish-American presence in organized crime began to decline after World War II. Jewish-American individuals remain closely associated with organized crime, especially Italian-American and Israeli organized crime, but the Jewish-American criminal organizations and gangs which once rivaled the Italian and Irish-American mobsters during the first half of the 20th century have largely faded.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: In more recent years, Jewish-American organized crime has reappeared in the form of Orthodox Jewish, Israeli and Jewish-Russian mafia criminal groups. Many of the Russian mobsters active in New York, especially Brighton Beach, are actually Soviet Jews, including Marat Balagula, Boris Nayfeld, and Evsei Agron.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: From the 1990s until 2013, members of the New York divorce coercion gang kidnapped and tortured Jewish men in troubled marriages to force them into granting religious divorces to their wives, in some cases extorting money from them. Described by prosecutors as a "criminal syndicate" that was "akin to the Bloods, the Crips, or the Mafia," the organization, which charged up to $100,000 for their 'services,' was shut down in the wake of a sting operation orchestrated by the FBI. While some tried to draw a distinction between the actions of the "well-organized operation" described by prosecutors and traditional kidnapping cases coming before judges that involved murder, terrorism or child abduction, Judge Freda Wolfson said she didn't see any difference. Epstein was sentenced in 2015 to 10 years in prison, and Wolmark was sentenced to more than 3 years in prison and a $50,000 fine. In another development, a 2016 sting collared Aharon Goldberg and Shimen Liebowitz, two Satmar Hasidic Jews who were part of what "The Forward" described as the "Orthodox divorce underworld". The pair had colluded with a third man to perform a contract killing on an estranged husband.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Several notable Jewish-American mobsters provided financial support for Israel through donations to Jewish organizations since the country's creation in 1948. Jewish-American gangsters used Israel's Law of Return to flee criminal charges or face deportation. Notables include Joseph "Doc" Stacher, who built up Las Vegas by pairing the Jewish and Italian Mafia into a national organized crime syndicate. Prime Minister Golda Meir set out to reverse this trend in 1970, when she denied entrance to Meyer Lansky. He was the mob's accountant, thought to be among the most powerful people in the country, with a gambling empire stretching throughout the United States.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: In 2010, it was reported by Wikileaks that the United States Embassy in Israel, in a cable titled "Israel: The Promised Land of Organized Crime?", had expressed grave concern about the activities of Israeli organized crime figures, and was taking measures to prevent members of crime families from being issued visas to the United States. American diplomats expressed concern that Inbal Gavrieli, the niece of one of Israel's most powerful mafia bosses, had been elected to the Knesset as an MK for Likud.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: The code of silence among Soviet Jewish émigrés into New York City's Brighton Beach and other neighborhoods like it nationwide under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment have shielded new Jewish-American gangsters, such as Marat Balagula, Boris Nayfeld, Monya Elson, and Ludwig Fainberg. They were raised, however, as secular Jews and share more in common culturally with Gentiles from the former Soviet Union than with their predecessors, such as Meyer Lansky, Kid Cann, and Mickey Cohen, who grew up in families that practiced Orthodox Judaism.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Soviet Jewish organized crime figures from other nations, such as Budapest-based Semion Mogilevich, have also attempted to penetrate the United States, including participating in a US$10 billion money-laundering operation through the Bank of New York in 1998.


title: Jewish-American organized crime

text: Organized criminals from the State of Israel have also had a presence in the United States. The Israeli mafia (especially the Tel Aviv-based Abergil crime family) has also been heavily involved in ecstasy trafficking to America.


title: Workhouse

text: In Britain, a workhouse () was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term "workhouse" is from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon reporting that "we have erected wthn our borough a workhouse to set poorer people to work".


title: Workhouse

text: The origins of the workhouse can be traced to the Statute of Cambridge 1388, which attempted to address the labour shortages following the Black Death in England by restricting the movement of labourers, and ultimately led to the state becoming responsible for the support of the poor. However, mass unemployment following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the introduction of new technology to replace agricultural workers in particular, and a series of bad harvests, meant that by the early 1830s the established system of poor relief was proving to be unsustainable. The New Poor Law of 1834 attempted to reverse the economic trend by discouraging the provision of relief to anyone who refused to enter a workhouse. Some Poor Law authorities hoped to run workhouses at a profit by utilising the free labour of their inmates. Most were employed on tasks such as breaking stones, crushing bones to produce fertiliser, or picking oakum using a large metal nail known as a spike.


title: Workhouse

text: As the 19th century wore on, workhouses increasingly became refuges for the elderly, infirm, and sick rather than the able-bodied poor, and in 1929 legislation was passed to allow local authorities to take over workhouse infirmaries as municipal hospitals. Although workhouses were formally abolished by the same legislation in 1930, many continued under their new appellation of Public Assistance Institutions under the control of local authorities. It was not until the introduction of the National Assistance Act 1948 that the last vestiges of the Poor Law finally disappeared, and with them the workhouses.


title: Workhouse

text: The Statute of Cambridge 1388 was an attempt to address the labour shortage caused by the Black Death, a devastating pandemic that killed about one-third of England's population. The new law fixed wages and restricted the movement of labourers, as it was anticipated that if they were allowed to leave their parishes for higher-paid work elsewhere then wages would inevitably rise. According to historian Derek Fraser, the fear of social disorder following the plague ultimately resulted in the state, and not a "personal Christian charity", becoming responsible for the support of the poor. The resulting laws against vagrancy were the origins of state-funded relief for the poor. From the 16th century onwards a distinction was legally enshrined between those who were willing to work but could not, and those who were able to work but would not: between "the genuinely unemployed and the idler". Supporting the destitute was a problem exacerbated by King Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries, which began in 1536. They had been a significant source of charitable relief, and provided a good deal of direct and indirect employment. The Poor Relief Act of 1576 went on to establish the principle that if the able-bodied poor needed support, they had to work for it.


title: Workhouse

text: The Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601 made parishes legally responsible for the care of those within their boundaries who, through age or infirmity, were unable to work. The Act essentially classified the poor into one of three groups. It proposed that the able-bodied be offered work in a house of correction (the precursor of the workhouse), where the "persistent idler" was to be punished. It also proposed the construction of housing for the impotent poor, the old and the infirm, although most assistance was granted through a form of poor relief known as outdoor relief – money, food, or other necessities given to those living in their own homes, funded by a local tax on the property of the wealthiest in the parish.


title: Workhouse

text: The workhouse system evolved in the 17th century, allowing parishes to reduce the cost to ratepayers of providing poor relief. The first authoritative figure for numbers of workhouses comes in the next century from "The Abstract of Returns made by the Overseers of the Poor", which was drawn up following a government survey in 1776. It put the number of parish workhouses in England and Wales at more than 1800 (about one parish in seven), with a total capacity of more than 90,000 places. This growth in the number of workhouses was prompted by the Workhouse Test Act 1723; by obliging anyone seeking poor relief to enter a workhouse and undertake a set amount of work, usually for no pay (a system called indoor relief), the Act helped prevent irresponsible claims on a parish's poor rate.


title: Workhouse

text: The growth was also bolstered by the Relief of the Poor Act 1782, proposed by Thomas Gilbert. Gilbert's Act was intended to allow parishes to share the cost of poor relief by joining together to form unions, known as Gilbert Unions, to build and maintain even larger workhouses to accommodate the elderly and infirm. The able-bodied poor were instead either given outdoor relief or found employment locally. Relatively few Gilbert Unions were set up, but the supplementing of inadequate wages under the Speenhamland system did become established towards the end of the 18th century. So keen were some Poor Law authorities to cut costs wherever possible that cases were reported of husbands being forced to sell their wives, to avoid them becoming a financial burden on the parish. In one such case in 1814 the wife and child of Henry Cook, who were living in Effingham workhouse, were sold at Croydon market for one shilling (5p); the parish paid for the cost of the journey and a "wedding dinner".


title: Workhouse

text: By the 1830s most parishes had at least one workhouse, but many were badly managed. In his 1797 work, "The State of the Poor", Sir Frederick Eden, wrote:


title: Workhouse

text: Instead of a workhouse, some sparsely populated parishes placed homeless paupers into rented accommodation, and provided others with relief in their own homes. Those entering a workhouse might join anywhere from a handful to several hundred other inmates; for instance, between 1782 and 1794 Liverpool's workhouse accommodated 900–1200 indigent men, women and children. The larger workhouses such as the Gressenhall House of Industry generally served a number of communities, in Gressenhall's case 50 parishes. Writing in 1854, Poor Law commissioner George Nicholls viewed many of them as little more than factories:


title: Workhouse

text: By 1832 the amount spent on poor relief nationally had risen to £7 million a year, more than 10 shillings (£0.50) per head of population, up from £2 million in 1784. The large number of those seeking assistance was pushing the system to "the verge of collapse". The economic downturn following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century resulted in increasing numbers of unemployed. Coupled with developments in agriculture that meant less labour was needed on the land, along with three successive bad harvests beginning in 1828 and the Swing Riots of 1830, reform was inevitable.


title: Workhouse

text: Many suspected that the system of poor relief was being widely abused. In 1832 the government established a Royal Commission to investigate and recommend how relief could best be given to the poor. The result was the establishment of a centralised Poor Law Commission in England and Wales under the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, also known as the New Poor Law, which discouraged the allocation of outdoor relief to the able-bodied; "all cases were to be 'offered the house', and nothing else". Individual parishes were grouped into Poor Law Unions, each of which was to have a union workhouse. More than 500 of these were built during the next 50 years, two-thirds of them by 1840. In certain parts of the country there was a good deal of resistance to these new buildings, some of it violent, particularly in the industrial north. Many workers lost their jobs during the major economic depression of 1837, and there was a strong feeling that what the unemployed needed was not the workhouse but short-term relief to tide them over. By 1838, 573 Poor Law Unions had been formed in England and Wales, incorporating 13,427 parishes, but it was not until 1868 that unions were established across the entire country: the same year that the New Poor Law was applied to the Gilbert Unions.


title: Workhouse

text: Despite the intentions behind the 1834 Act, relief of the poor remained the responsibility of local taxpayers, and there was thus a powerful economic incentive to use loopholes such as sickness in the family to continue with outdoor relief; the weekly cost per person was about half that of providing workhouse accommodation. Outdoor relief was further restricted by the terms of the 1844 Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, which aimed to end it altogether for the able-bodied poor. In 1846, of 1.33 million paupers only 199,000 were maintained in workhouses, of whom 82,000 were considered to be able-bodied, leaving an estimated 375,000 of the able-bodied on outdoor relief. Excluding periods of extreme economic distress, it has been estimated that about 6.5% of the British population may have been accommodated in workhouses at any given time.


title: Workhouse

text: The New Poor Law Commissioners were very critical of existing workhouses, and generally insisted that they be replaced. They complained in particular that "in by far the greater number of cases, it is a large almshouse, in which the young are trained in idleness, ignorance, and vice; the able-bodied maintained in sluggish sensual indolence; the aged and more respectable exposed to all the misery that is incident to dwelling in such a society".


title: Workhouse

text: After 1835 many workhouses were constructed with the central buildings surrounded by work and exercise yards enclosed behind brick walls, so-called "pauper bastilles". The commission proposed that all new workhouses should allow for the segregation of paupers into at least four distinct groups, each to be housed separately: the aged and impotent, children, able-bodied males, and able-bodied females. A common layout resembled Jeremy Bentham's prison panopticon, a radial design with four three-storey buildings at its centre set within a rectangular courtyard, the perimeter of which was defined by a three-storey entrance block and single-storey outbuildings, all enclosed by a wall. That basic layout, one of two designed by the architect Sampson Kempthorne (his other design was octagonal with a segmented interior, sometimes known as the Kempthorne star), allowed for four separate work and exercise yards, one for each class of inmate. Separating the inmates was intended to serve three purposes: to direct treatment to those who most needed it; to deter others from pauperism; and as a physical barrier against illness, physical and mental.


title: Workhouse

text: The commissioners argued that buildings based on Kempthorne's plans would be symbolic of the recent changes to the provision of poor relief; one assistant commissioner expressed the view that they would be something "the pauper would feel it was utterly impossible to contend against", and "give confidence to the Poor Law Guardians". Another assistant commissioner claimed the new design was intended as a "terror to the able-bodied population", but the architect George Gilbert Scott was critical of what he called "a set of ready-made designs of the meanest possible character". Some critics of the new Poor Law noted the similarities between Kempthorne's plans and model prisons, and doubted that they were merely coincidental - Richard Oastler went as far as referring to the institutions as 'prisons for the poor'. Augustus Pugin compared Kempthorne's octagonal plan with the "antient poor hoyse", in what Felix Driver calls a "romantic, conservative critique" of the "degeneration of English moral and aesthetic values".


title: Workhouse

text: By the 1840s some of the enthusiasm for Kempthorne's designs had waned. With limited space in built-up areas, and concerns over the ventilation of buildings, some unions moved away from panopticon designs. Between 1840 and 1870 about 150 workhouses with separate blocks designed for specific functions were built. Typically the entrance building contained offices, while the main workhouse building housed the various wards and workrooms, all linked by long corridors designed to improve ventilation and lighting. Where possible, each building was separated by an exercise yard, for the use of a specific category of pauper.


title: Workhouse

text: Each Poor Law Union employed one or more relieving officers, whose job it was to visit those applying for assistance and assess what relief, if any, they should be given. Any applicants considered to be in need of immediate assistance could be issued with a note admitting them directly to the workhouse. Alternatively they might be offered any necessary money or goods to tide them over until the next meeting of the guardians, who would decide on the appropriate level of support and whether or not the applicants should be assigned to the workhouse.


title: Workhouse

text: Workhouses were designed with only a single entrance guarded by a porter, through which inmates and visitors alike had to pass. Near to the entrance were the casual wards for tramps and vagrants and the relieving rooms, where paupers were housed until they had been examined by a medical officer. After being assessed the paupers were separated and allocated to the appropriate ward for their category: boys under 14, able-bodied men between 14 and 60, men over 60, girls under 14, able-bodied women between 14 and 60, and women over 60. Children under the age of two were allowed to remain with their mothers, but by entering a workhouse paupers were considered to have forfeited responsibility for their families. Clothing and personal possessions were taken from them and stored, to be returned on their discharge. After bathing, they were issued with a distinctive uniform: for men it might be a striped cotton shirt, jacket and trousers, and a cloth cap, and for women a blue-and-white striped dress worn underneath a smock. Shoes were also provided. In some establishments certain categories of inmate were marked out by their clothing; for example, at Bristol Incorporation workhouse, prostitutes were required to wear a yellow dress and pregnant single women a red dress; such practices were deprecated by the Poor Law Commission in a directive issued in 1839 entitled "Ignominious Dress for Unchaste Women in Workhouses", but they continued until at least 1866. Some workhouses had a separate "foul" or "itch" ward, where inmates diagnosed with skin diseases such as scabies could be detained before entering the workhouse proper. Also not to be overlooked were unfortunate destitute sufferers of mental health disorders, who would be ordered to enter the workhouse by the parish doctor. The Lunacy Act 1853 did promote the asylum as the institution of choice for patients afflicted with all forms of mental illness. However, in reality, destitute people suffering from mental illness would be housed in their local workhouse.


title: Workhouse

text: Conditions in the casual wards were worse than in the relieving rooms, and deliberately designed to discourage vagrants, who were considered potential troublemakers and probably disease-ridden. Vagrants who presented themselves at the door of a workhouse were at the mercy of the porter, whose decision it was whether or not to allocate them a bed for the night in the casual ward. Those refused entry risked being sentenced to two weeks of hard labour if they were found begging or sleeping in the open and prosecuted for an offence under the Vagrancy Act 1824.


title: Workhouse

text: A typical early 19th-century casual ward was a single large room furnished with some kind of bedding and perhaps a bucket in the middle of the floor for sanitation. The bedding on offer could be very basic: the Poor Law authorities in Richmond in London in the mid-1840s provided only straw and rags, although beds were available for the sick. In return for their night's accommodation vagrants might be expected to undertake a certain amount of work before leaving the next day; for instance at Guisborough men were required to break stones for three hours and women to pick oakum, two hours before breakfast and one after. Until the passage of the Casual Poor Act 1882 vagrants could discharge themselves before 11 am on the day following their admission, but from 1883 onwards they were required to be detained until 9 am on the second day. Those who were admitted to the workhouse again within one month were required to be detained until the fourth day after their admission.


title: Workhouse

text: Inmates were free to leave whenever they wished after giving reasonable notice, generally considered to be three hours, but if a parent discharged him- or herself then the children were also discharged, to prevent them from being abandoned. The comic actor Charlie Chaplin, who spent some time with his mother in Lambeth workhouse, records in his autobiography that when he and his half-brother returned to the workhouse after having been sent to a school in Hanwell, he was met at the gate by his mother Hannah, dressed in her own clothes. Desperate to see them again she had discharged herself and the children; they spent the day together playing in Kennington Park and visiting a coffee shop, after which she readmitted them all to the workhouse.


title: Workhouse

text: Available data surrounding death rates within the workhouse system is minimal; however, in the Wall to Wall documentary "Secrets from the Workhouse", it's estimated that 10% of those admitted to the workhouse after the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act died within the system.


title: Workhouse

text: Some Poor Law authorities hoped that payment for the work undertaken by the inmates would produce a profit for their workhouses, or at least allow them to be self-supporting, but whatever small income could be produced never matched the running costs. In the 18th century, inmates were poorly managed, and lacked either the inclination or the skills to compete effectively with free market industries such as spinning and weaving. Some workhouses operated not as places of employment, but as houses of correction, a role similar to that trialled by Buckinghamshire magistrate Matthew Marryott. Between 1714 and 1722 he experimented with using the workhouse as a test of poverty rather than a source of profit, leading to the establishment of a large number of workhouses for that purpose. Nevertheless, local people became concerned about the competition to their businesses from cheap workhouse labour. As late as 1888, for instance, the Firewood Cutters Protection Association was complaining that the livelihood of its members was being threatened by the cheap firewood on offer from the workhouses in the East End of London.


title: Workhouse

text: Many inmates were allocated tasks in the workhouse such as caring for the sick or teaching that were beyond their capabilities, but most were employed on "generally pointless" work, such as breaking stones or removing the hemp from telegraph wires. Others picked oakum using a large metal nail known as a spike, which may be the source of the workhouse's nickname. Bone-crushing, useful in the creation of fertiliser, was a task most inmates could perform, until a government inquiry into conditions in the Andover workhouse in 1845 found that starving paupers were reduced to fighting over the rotting bones they were supposed to be grinding, to suck out the marrow. The resulting scandal led to the withdrawal of bone-crushing as an employment in workhouses and the replacement of the Poor Law Commission by the Poor Law Board in 1847. Conditions were thereafter regulated by a list of rules contained in the 1847 Consolidated General Order, which included guidance on issues such as diet, staff duties, dress, education, discipline, and redress of grievances.


title: Workhouse

text: Some Poor Law Unions opted to send destitute children to the British colonies, in particular to Canada and Australia, where it was hoped the fruits of their labour would contribute to the defence of the empire and enable the colonies to buy more British exports. Known as Home Children, the Philanthropic Farm school alone sent more than 1000 boys to the colonies between 1850 and 1871, many of them taken from workhouses. In 1869 Maria Rye and Annie Macpherson, "two spinster ladies of strong resolve", began taking groups of orphans and children from workhouses to Canada, most of whom were taken in by farming families in Ontario. The Canadian government paid a small fee to the ladies for each child delivered, but most of the cost was met by charities or the Poor Law Unions.


title: Workhouse

text: As far as possible, elderly inmates were expected to undertake the same kind of work as the younger men and women, although concessions were made to their relative frailty. Or they might be required to chop firewood, clean the wards, or carry out other domestic tasks. In 1882 Lady Brabazon, later the Countess of Meath, set up a project to provide alternative occupation for non-able-bodied inmates, known as the Brabazon scheme. Volunteers provided training in crafts such as knitting, embroidery and lace making, all costs initially being borne by Lady Brabazon herself. Although slow to take off, when workhouses discovered that the goods being produced were saleable and could make the enterprise self-financing, the scheme gradually spread across the country, and by 1897 there were more than 100 branches.