Soft Voice Made Mose Like Teacher Of Sunday School
View transcription
Mose Flannery, caballero of the twisting trails that lead through the downtown wards of Camden and Philadelphia, was always pointed as "a dangerous boy to monkey with."
But Mose’s appearance belied his reputation. A mild-mannered, slender, neatly groomed and soft-voiced lad of about 26 or 28, he would have passed for a Sunday school teacher or a bank teller rather than a leader in gangland who was feared and respected by the satellites who followed him.
It was no secret among the politicians of the riverfront precincts that Mose was working a "rich game." He was described as "a heavy money guy" in the slot machine "business."
But if that was his business, politics was his avocation. On the hustings, primary or election day, he was a real boss and he possessed a real influence. Mose played no particular favorites. He was, on several occasions, a Republican Organization worker in the "bloody Eighth" ward. At the last municipal election he threw his support to the Non-Partisan movement. He frequently was an aide of the Democratic party. Down in those districts where fear is a controlling element on election day, Mose Flannery was one of the unafraid.
He was arrested no less than eight times at the last municipal election on various charges, none of which were ever prosecuted. At that particular election he and Mike Brown, the Republican boss of the ward, clashed, with Mose a challenger in Mike’s own district. Brown ran up a heavy majority in his own precinct and he carried the ward, but the battle was close.
However, there appeared to be no "bad blood" between Brown and Flannery after the election.
In all the rumors of political and other significance that have been sweeping through the city these last few weeks the name of Mose Flannery has seldom been mentioned, although there was a feeling he has been one of the "men behind" in the wholesale manipulation of slot machines.
Flannery seldom, if ever, took recourse to the courts in his days of trouble, and they have been many. He has assumed the same attitude he took on his cot in Cooper Hospital today when, mortally wounded, he said, "I don’t talk to cops; if I don’t live to get the fellows who did this, my gang will."