Bessie Starkman and her common-law husband, Italian-born Rocco Perri, established a business in bootlegging after the sale and distribution of alcohol was prohibited in both Canada and the United States.
33 Facts About Bessie Starkman
1.
2.
Bessie Starkman was born in the Kingdom of Poland within the vast Russian empire on June 21,1890, to Jewish parents Shimon and Gello Starkman.
3.
Bessie Starkman had two daughters with Tobin, Gertrude and Lilly.
4.
Bessie Starkman found life as a housewife within a traditional Orthodox Jewish household to be unbearable and she longed to escape from her marriage.
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In 1912, Bessie Starkman met Rocco Perri, an Italian immigrant, while he lived as a boarder in her family home.
6.
However, Perri and Bessie Starkman found a better means of income when the Ontario Temperance Act came into effect on September 16,1916, as it restricted the sale and distribution of alcohol.
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Perri and Bessie Starkman opened brothels in Hamilton, at the time the city with the highest percentage of its women engaged in prostitution in North America.
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On 9 March 1917, the Hamilton police raided the house at 157 Caroline Street North owned by Perri and Bessie Starkman and arrested Bessie Starkman for keeping a bawdy house after the police discovered a prostitute, Mary Ashley, engaged in her trade at the house.
9.
On 17 November 1917, Bessie Starkman gave birth to a son by Perri, but the child died after only two days.
10.
Perri and Bessie Starkman had to smuggle alcohol from the United States into Canada to maintain their business.
11.
Bessie Starkman, busy running the finances for their organization, did not question Perri's outings.
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Perri and Bessie Starkman survived financially in the few years after 1915 from his income as a macaroni salesman and their grocery store on Hess Street.
13.
Bessie Starkman was the head of operations and the duo's negotiator and dealmaker.
14.
Bessie Starkman realized that to win market share in both Canada and the United States required the gang to sell high-quality and safe alcohol.
15.
Mrs Perri [Bessie Starkman] appears to be the head of all the Hamilton operations.
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Bessie Starkman who was both more literate and numerate than Perri ran the financial aspects of the Perri-Bessie Starkman gang while Perri handled the operational side of the business.
17.
Bessie Starkman was known for dressing in a modernist "flapper" style with her hair cut short while wearing expensive clothing and jewelry.
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Bessie Starkman was a great fan of the music of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith and Scott Joplin and avidly collected the records of their songs.
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Bessie Starkman had a moody, sullen personality with many considering her to be a "difficult" woman.
20.
Unlike Perri, who was known for being generous with money, Bessie Starkman was known for being frugal and tight with money.
21.
Bessie Starkman became fluent in the Calabrian dialect of Italian that was Perri's native tongue and she usually spoke to him in this dialect.
22.
Bessie Starkman advised him, encouraged him and facilitated a lot of what he did.
23.
Bessie Starkman had an innate understanding of how to take advantage of certain situations.
24.
People have a kind of romantic view that Bessie Starkman was responsible for much of what they did in bootlegging, but it's certainly clear that she was responsible for the narcotics traffic.
25.
One report estimates that in the mid-1920s, Perri and Bessie Starkman were generating C$1 million per year through criminal endeavours and had a hundred employees.
26.
Perri and Bessie Starkman were charged with perjury after their Royal Commission testimony, but in a plea bargain, the charges were dropped against Bessie Starkman; Perri served five months of a six-month sentence and was released on September 27,1928.
27.
Bessie Starkman told Zaneth that she needed more time to research his background before selling him anything and on 23 September 1929 Zaneth appeared in court as a witness for the Crown at the trial of Italiano, which put an end to his undercover work.
28.
Perri ran down the street after the assailants before retreating back to Bessie Starkman who had been killed with two shotgun blasts.
29.
Sergeant Frank Zaneth of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported to his superiors that Bessie Starkman was in debt to the gambler Arnold Rothstein, and that when Rothstein was killed in 1928, the debt had been assumed by Charles "Lucky" Luciano.
30.
Perri wanted Bessie Starkman's funeral to be a lavish affair and he purchased a $3,000 coffin for her that was a copy of the one that was used to bury the actor Rudolph Valentino in 1926.
31.
In Canada, Bessie Starkman's funeral upstaged the media coverage of the first British Empire games, which were being held in Hamilton at the time.
32.
Inspector John Miller of the Ontario Provincial Police, who was assigned to investigate the murder commented that Bessie Starkman had many enemies as he noted that the Italiano, Silvestro, D'Agostino and Papalia families all hated her.
33.
Part of Bessie Starkman's estate went to Perri, and the rest to her children.