The Disappearance of Irish-American Gangster Danny Walsh
What Happened to Rhode Island's Most Powerful Bootlegger?
Before 1920, Daniel “Danny” Walsh was just a regular working man in Pawtucket Rhode Island earning about five dollars a day. However, things would change dramatically after Congress passed the Volstead Act also known as prohibition which would take effect in January of 1920.
This unpopular legislation would provide an opportunity for small-time hoods and crooks as well as ordinary people to become rich beyond their wildest imaginations.
Danny Walsh was a first-generation Irish American born into a large family in Cumberland Rhode Island who was living an average life at the time prohibition began. Walsh found himself in a unique situation being that his home state of Rhode Island along with Connecticut were the only two states that refused to ratify the 18th Amendment. (The Volstead Act)
Seizing on the lax enforcement by state officials as well as the high de…