Reminiscing about the Gangster-Era? Not in Charlestown

Since the FBI , there’s been a lot of looking back on the Irish mob and its influence in Boston’s working class neighborhoods.

People are of their run-ins with outlandish gangsters. The crazy parties. The fear and the respect. The bar room brawls and business agreements. 

But despite its reputation as a hub for bank robbers, drug runners and gentlemen’s deals, no one in Charlestown is having those conversations.

At least that’s what they’ll tell you when you ask them about it. And if they do tell you anything, they’ll always qualify it with “you didn’t hear it from me.”

“If you weren’t into that foolishness, you weren’t bothered,” said one lifelong Charlestown resident who was a young man in the 1960s. “I was on the straight and narrow and there was a real separation from that element. I always felt good about the community. The people I know did too.”

He added that the only way to really get a sense of what the mob life was like back then, is to talk to someone who was involved. (And good luck with that.) The majority of people in Charlestown weren’t involved – and they didn’t want to be.

Another senior resident said the only real evidence around town of the gangster presence was the shame some of their families experienced. “They must have felt miserable when their sons went to prison.”

To be clear: Whitey Bulger was not a force in the mob that ran Charlestown. That distinction allegedly went to the McLaughlin Brothers: Bernie, Georgie and Edward (better known as Punchy).

Bulger’s notoriety was fixed to the Winter Hill Gang from Somerville. And one thing people in Charlestown will tell you is there was a longstanding feud between Somerville and Charlestown. That feud was not limited to, but certainly did include its gangster crews.

The fight between the gangs supposedly started in 1961, when George McLaughlin tried to pick up the girlfriend of a Winter Hill Gang member. That’s the story told in Howie Carr’s Encyclopedia of Boston Mobsters. George was beaten pretty badly over it. When Buddy McLean, who led the Winter Hill Gang, refused to hand over the guys who attacked George, the McLaughlins tried to kill McLean with a car bomb.

This launched an era of violence that lasted throughout much of the 1960s, during which time scores of people were killed. Many were gunned down in the open air when they left bars, including Bernie McLaughlin. He was killed outside of the Morning Glory bar, which stood roughly where is today. Reportedly there were more than 100 witnesses.

If you ask an elder Townie about the McLaughlin Brothers, a predictable reply is “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Especially if you’re not from the neighborhood. 

Anyone who glorifies the gangsters does a disservice to younger generations, according to Patch columnist Jack Kelly, who grew up in the shadow of the McLaughlins Brothers’ legacy – and the neighborhood’s tough reputation because of them.

“They were nothing but false prophets,” Kelly wrote, . “Personally, having seen the tragic consequences of the supposedly good gangster life, it is nothing but a sham. The only thing that seems to come from it is a mother crying because her son is going to jail, children raised without the people they depend on the most, and a ridiculous, misplaced sense of pride.”