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Kevin Hall
- Dec 26, 2023
- 6 min
Commonwealth of Kingpins
They drained the lake in a Staunton city park on Dec. 31, 1951, and authorities spent the first hours of 1952 using rakes and shovels to...
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Kevin Hall
- Dec 26, 2023
- 9 min
Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't
As a military man, Dwight Eisenhower could appreciate the value of a dependable road. While serving as Allied commander in Europe during...
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Kevin Hall
- Dec 26, 2023
- 5 min
Donovan Senses Storm Clouds Are Gathering
Sometime in early 1951, Richmond numbers kingpin Harry Donovan must have figured his act needed cleaning up right quick, before the boom...
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Kevin Hall
- Dec 26, 2023
- 2 min
The 1951 Kefauver Crime Hearings
June 17, 1951: The Richmond Times-Dispatch publishes the first of two big Sunday stories that peek behind the curtain of the numbers...
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Kevin Hall
- Dec 10, 2023
- 7 min
Making a Splash in Horse Country: Harry Donovan's Thorncliff estate
During America’s massive middle-class expansion in the years following the Second World War, the city of Richmond briefly led the nation...
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Kevin Hall
- Sep 17, 2021
- 7 min
The Sport of Kings (and Kingpins)
There was a time when horse racing ranked with baseball and boxing among the nation’s most popular sports. In the 1930s and '40s, there...
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Kevin Hall
- Sep 15, 2021
- 8 min
(Dis)Honest Abe
Abe Plisco was one of the out-of-town gangsters who reporters spotted at Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery during the 1938 funeral of...
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Kevin Hall
- Sep 15, 2021
- 3 min
Richmond Hosts a Mob Funeral
On a Monday in January 1938, organized crime bosses converged on Richmond, Virginia to bury one of their own: Carroll Peyton “Nubby”...
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Kevin Hall
- Sep 15, 2021
- 5 min
Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread
The popular marketing slogan “greatest thing since sliced bread” traces its origins back to 1930, when a part-time inventor in Missouri...
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Kevin Hall
- Mar 15, 2021
- 4 min
Meet Leo Seay, a top Donovan lieutenant
Prohibition is when we first meet Leo Seay of Richmond, who many years later would serve as a top lieutenant in Harry Donovan’s numbers...
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Kevin Hall
- Mar 13, 2021
- 3 min
A Star Is Born
On May 7, 1937, the entertainment page of The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the Loew's movie palace at Sixth and Grace Streets...
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Kevin Hall
- Mar 13, 2021
- 8 min
Blackballing Pinball
As the United States grappled with the economic and social fallout following the Great Depression, Prohibition and its eventual repeal,...
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Kevin Hall
- Mar 13, 2021
- 3 min
Virginia Went "Dry" Three Years Before Prohibition
Halloween in 1916 in Richmond was frightening beyond just the “hundreds of kiddies and light-hearted grown-ups” who “threw cares to the...
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Kevin Hall
- Mar 13, 2021
- 5 min
Um, what is the numbers racket?
It is widely believed that the numbers game started in New York's Harlem neighborhood in the 1920s, quickly spreading to other Black and...
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Kevin Hall
- Mar 13, 2021
- 3 min
Meet Harry Donovan
In the decades between The Roaring Twenties and JFK's New Frontier, Virginia's capital city underwent a dramatic transformation from a...
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