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Larger boys, unless they went to work selling papers or working at fourteen cents an hour in one of the factories, became attached to one of the neighborhood gangs, which had such colorful names as the 'Lava-Bedders' or the `Red Tigers.' According to an historian of the police department, two of Frank Hague's brothers were members of the Red Tigers:
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In 1884 a gang of young hoodlums banded together in the
northern portion of the Second Precinct, and styled themselves
For a long time it was not safe for people to pass through that the Red Tiger gang. They committed all kinds of crime.
part of the city in the night-tine. Highway robbery was of frequent
occurrence; women had been assaulted, and saloons
were cleaned out almost every night. Police protection was
entirely inadequate for the emergency. Special arrangements
were made by bringing men from other precincts that would
put a stop to crime while they remained; but, as the police
were needed for the protection of life and property in other
parts of the city, they could not remain on duty there. The
hoodlums very quickly learned of their withdrawal. The second
precinct was commanded at this time by a captain who
was too ill to be of use to the service. This fact, added to the
small patrol force in the precinct, was responsible for the
disgraceful condition of affairs in that part of the city. Captain
C. P. Smith was assigned to command this precinct in 1887,
and was given a few more men. He assumed the offensive
against this mob of Red Tigers, and after a few months had
them all in jail and the mob broken up. Amongst the worst
of this mob were William Thomas, William Konoski alias Billy
Dutch, John Hague alias Big Pete, Michael Tully alias Sap,
John Tully alias Munk, Thomas Turley, John Lane, John Gallagher alias Red, John Sullivan alias Tiger, and Hugh Hague.
A proper detail now patrols that part of the city. The Red
Tigers are entirely broken up, and the streets are safe to travel
at all hours of the day and night. (E. Costello, History of the Police Department of Jersey City (1891), p. 220.
This volume, now very rare, was published for the Police Relief Association. Its
four hundred and twenty-eight pages contain many items interesting to the student
nineteenth-century urban society.)
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