Joseph Linsey

Joseph Linsey (May 27, 1899 - November 24, 1994) was an organized crime figure in Boston's underworld during the Prohibition era, associated with Joseph Kennedy and Meyer Lansky, and later became a prominent businessman and philanthropist, specifically making contributions to Brandeis University.

Biography

Born in Russia, he immigrated to the United States as a child and later grew up in Boston. After his father died, he went to work at the age of nine delivering groceries and later became apprenticed as a meatcutter. At the start of Prohibition, the 21-year-old Linsey began bootlegging illegal liquor with Charles "King" Solomon from a front business, the National Realty Company. He also bought Canadian liquor from the Bronfman's and, although serving a year for violations of the Volstead Act, he was acquitted from his two later indictments on similar charges. He was alleged by Vinnie Teresa to have been involved in wholesale gambling in the time post Prohibition era. He died in Florida of natural causes in 1994.

Further reading

• Etzkowitz, Henry and Peter Schwab. Is America Necessary?: Conservative, Liberal, & Socialist Perspectives of United States Political Institutions. St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1976. ISBN 0-8299-0090-X
• Fox, Stephen. Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth-Century America. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1989. ISBN 0-688-04350-X
• Fried, Albert. The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980. ISBN 0-231-09683-6
• Lacey, Robert. Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. London: Century, 1991. ISBN 0-7126-2426-0
• Stein, Benjamin J. A License to Steal: The Untold Story of Michael Milken and the Conspiracy to Bilk the Nation. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. ISBN 0-671-74272-8
• Summers, Anthony. Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1993. ISBN 0-399-13800-5
• Smith, Joseph "History of The American Greyhound Derby: The Kentucky Derby of Greyhound Racing" Boston Big Jackpot Betting 2011 ISBN 978-1-4679-4556-1
• Temple, Robert "The History of Greyhound Racing in New England" Boston Xlibris Corp. 2010 ISBN 978-1-4568-4077-8