What Happened to Owney Madden? The Gangster Who Retired to Run a Resort
Mobsters DailyOwney Madden retired. The former Hell's Kitchen gang leader and Cotton Club owner moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, ran a hotel, and died there in 1965 as a respected local businessman. For a Prohibition gang boss, it is close to a miracle ending.
From the Gophers to the Cotton Club
Born in Leeds, England in 1891 and raised in Hell's Kitchen, Madden led the Gophers, survived being shot repeatedly, and killed rivals before Prohibition made him rich. From a Sing Sing cell he effectively ran Harlem's Cotton Club, the whites-only showcase where Duke Ellington's orchestra made its name, while his beer business tangled with Dutch Schultz in the same underworld that Nucky Thompson's true story maps on the Jersey side.
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The Hot Springs retirement
Paroled in the 1930s on condition he leave New York, Madden picked Hot Springs, then America's wide-open gambling resort, full of bathhouses, bookmakers and visiting mobsters who left him alone out of respect. He ran the Hotel Arkansas and local gambling interests, married the postmaster's daughter, Agnes Demby, and became a fixture of the town rather than a fugitive from his past. When he died of natural causes in 1965, the tributes were genuine. The mob's most violent generation almost never got that paragraph.
Frequently asked questions
Where was Owney Madden born? He was born in Leeds, England in 1891 and emigrated to New York as a boy, growing up in Hell's Kitchen.
Did Owney Madden own the Cotton Club? Yes. He took over the Harlem club in the 1920s and ran it through Prohibition, even while serving time at Sing Sing.
How did Owney Madden die? Of natural causes in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1965, decades after leaving New York crime behind.
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