Michael Cassius McDonald (1839 – August 9, 1907) was a crime boss, political boss, and businessman based out of Chicago. He is considered to have introduced organized crime to the city, and to have also established its first political machine. At the height of his power, he had influence over politicians of all levels in the state of Illinois.
McDonald permanently settled in Chicago as an adult sometime after the American Civil War. McDonald ran gambling parlors in the city. As a crime boss, he developed a system in which he would guarantee the city's gambling dens and brothels protection from interference in exchange for payment. A Democrat, McDonald was involved in the city's politics, and, at his peak, wielded massive influence over it. McDonald was also involved in numerous business ventures. He was one of the principal figures behind the Lake Street Elevated Railroad Company, which built the Lake Street Elevated rapid transit line in Chicago.
In the mid-1890s, McDonald retired from the gambling business, and his gambling circuit deconsolidated under the leadership of several different crime bosses.
Early life and family
McDonald was born in Niagara Falls, New York in 1839. McDonald and his family lived in an Irish enclave of Niagara County, New York.
McDonald father was Edward "Ed" McDonald. As a young man, Ed McDonald had immigrated to Canada from County Cork, Ireland as a stowaway. The elder McDonald then worked in Quebec as a laborer, before immigrating again into the United States, settling in Niagara County in 1837. Ed McDonald became a loyal member of the Democratic Party which was relatively new at the time.
McDonald's mother was born in Limerick, Ireland with the maiden name of Mary Guy. She was a religious woman. She wed Ed McDonald in Niagara, and had three children, Michael, Mary, and Edward Jr. Functionally illiterate, she would require her children to attend parochial school during the week and mass on Sundays.
McDonald's father was a strict disciplinarian who regularly administered corporal punishment to his children for misbehavior.
The younger McDonald, despite his father's urging, refused to pursue a job as a bootmaker's apprentice.
In the autumn of 1854, a fifteen year old McDonald traveled to Chicago on a two-week trip. He returned to Chicago two years later along with four friends from school. In Chicago he worked as a "train butcher", selling candy and goods to train passengers. He committed a number of swindles while working. In 1860, he quit train butchering, and moved to New Orleans. In New Orleans he took note of the gambling culture there.
During the American Civil War, he organized groups of fraudulent enlistees who enlisted under false aliases multiple times to collect the $500 bounties. In this scheme, he colluded with army deserters, who had agreed to turn themselves in, to then reenlist, and then split the commission which McDonald received for recruiting them.
Return to Chicago
Sometime after the American Civil War he returned to Chicago. After having spent some time financing a traveling faro bank, in 1867, McDonald opened his first gambling establishment at 89 Dearborn street. In November 1868, the Chicago Tribune reported McDonald's arrest, along with national billiards champion John McDevitt and two other gamblers, for criminal conspiracy and the running of gambling dens after having apparently fleeced an intoxicated man out of more than $400 while playing faro. In 1869, he was arrested for allegedly stealing $30,000 from an assistant cashier of the Chicago Dock Company. The cashier had given the money to McDonald to finance his gambling operations. McDonald was unable to afford bail, and, consequentially, spent three months in prison prior to being acquitted at his trial. Because of the expense spent on his criminal trial, McDonald had trouble paying protection payments to the police, and, as a result, his gambling operation was frequently raided, and McDonald was repeatedly arrested and fined. This fostered McDonald's lifelong disdain for police.
McDonald had a common-law marriage, until his common-law wife ran away to join a convent in St. Louis.
In the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, McDonald lost the entirety of his real estate and businesses, which were uninsured. Within a few weeks of the fire, McDonald managed to raise enough funds to establish a saloon at State Street and Harrison Street, where illegal card games were featured.
On December 5, 1871, McDonald married Mary Ann Noonan, a divorcee with two children from her previous marriage.