Snorky Capone, the sharp-dressed gangster

I’VE just seen Black Mass, the movie about Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger.

Johnny Depp was great in the lead role, but the movie never explained how Bulger came by his nickname.

Can you throw some light on the matter, Queries Man? – C.

I can, but I’m afraid the answer isn’t very exciting.

Bulger came by the moniker when he was a youth simply because he had very blonde hair.

He hated the name and would rather have been known as “Boots” because of his habit of pulling a knife out of his cowboy boots to threaten his victims.

Luckily, there have been plenty of gangsters with interesting nicknames, such as Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo. His name came, not from a love of birds, but because he could duck, or avoid convictions.

The mother of Venero Mangano ran a chicken farm, so the underboss of New York’s Genovese crime family is known as “Benny Eggs”.

When John Barbato became Benny Eggs’ bodyguard, he quickly earned the title of “Johnny Sausage”.

Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik served as the Chicago mob’s principal bagman in payoffs to police and politicians, hence the origin of the nickname Greasy Thumb.

Still in Chicago, Al Capone was famously known as Scarface, but he was also nicknamed “Snorky” before his rise to the top of the city’s underworld.

The word was 1920’s slang for a sharp dresser.

If you have a question, write to The Queries Man, The Sunday Post, 80 Kingsway East, Dundee, DD4 8SL. Please do not send stamped addressed envelopes as I cannot give personal replies.