to clean up the Bowery. After Kelly closed the New Brighton, he moved operations to the Italian immigrant communities in Harlem and Brooklyn. But he also retained ties to his old neighborhood, becoming a vice president of the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) under his Americanized birth name of Paul Vaccarelli. He was based in the Chelsea area. Kelly/Vaccarelli was expelled from the ILA in 1919, but returned to it later that year. He took leadership of a spontaneous port-wide strike begun in protest against a wage increase of only five cents an hour, which management had agreed to. With the support of Mayor John F. Hylan, Kelly was appointed to a commission to resolve the strike. He ended it but did not achieve any concessions for the strikers. Kelly became a labor racketeer, providing muscle in labor disputes during the 1920s. He died of natural causes in 1936. In popular culture Richard Condon's novel Mile High (1969), features Kelly in the first third of the novel. He explores a young super-criminal who invented Prohibition and organized crime for his private profit. Caleb Carr features Kelly as a character in his historical crime novel The Alienist (1994). In the 2018 TV series adaptation, Kelly is portrayed by Antonio Magro. References Further reading Kimeldorf, Howard, Reds or Rackets? The Making of Radical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront, University of California Press, 1988. Downey, Patrick. Gangster City: The History of the New York Underworld 1900-1935, Barricade Books, 2004,2009. Repetto, Thomas. American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power, Holt Paperbacks, 2004. External links 1876 births 1936 deaths Five Points Gang American people of Italian descent American gangsters of Italian descent People from Chelsea, Manhattan People from Five Points, Manhattan