GANGSTER'S OBSEQUIES.
AMAZING HONOURS. RESPECT AND AFFECTION. CHICAGO'S RECORD ECLIPSED. (Australian and N.Z. Cable Assn.) NEW YORK, Nov. 17. A Chicago telegram says an amazing display of respect and affection, surpassing the honours usually accorded to a great national figure, marked the funeral services of Sammy Amatuna, called Samoots, the benevolent despot, who was the former leader of a gang of thugs, murderers and bootleggers. Amatuna was shot by rival gangsters, who resented his encroachment on their liquor sales areas. Amatuna's richly-garbed body lay in a silvered bronze casket, costing 10,000 dollars. Innumerable enormous floral tributes, valued at 30,000 dollars, were piled in the parlour and every room of Amatuna's house, and overflowed into the neighbours' houses. Thousands of men and women in all walks of life, including Amatuna's followers and rival gangsters (who called a temporary truce), politicians who respected Amatuna's vote-getting power, lawyers, business men, and miserably poor men and women, who existed upon Amatuna's bounties, formed a continuous line passing the bier all night and the day preceding the funeral, which was longer and more imposing than any previous great gangster's funeral, for which Chicago has'gained an unenviable" notoriety.
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Waikato Times, Volume 99, Issue 16653, 19 November 1925, Page 7
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192GANGSTER'S OBSEQUIES. Waikato Times, Volume 99, Issue 16653, 19 November 1925, Page 7
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