Thomas J. Cawley
The Czar of Gambling
A stocky LaSalle Irishman, son of a coal miner, who quit his streetcar conductor job in the mid-1920s to go in on a pool hall and cigar store with Vincent Kelly. Took out a bank loan in 1937 to convert the cigar store into a full casino at 641 First Street. For the next twenty years he was 'the Czar of Gambling' — paid off four mayors and three police chiefs, kept the Chicago Outfit out of his territory, refunded ruined housewives without argument on the condition the family never came back. When the U.S. Senate hauled him in front of Estes Kefauver in October of 1950, he answered every question — no Fifth Amendment, no 'I don't recall.' After the 1953 raid he liquidated his gambling fortune into commercial real estate, where he was again successful. His descendant Daniel Cawley runs Cawley Chicago Commercial Real Estate today. The name on the casino sign lives on as a brokerage.
Kelly & Cawley's. Steak dinners cost fifty cents, chicken twenty-five — Cawley's slot revenue covered the giveaway.
Gambling · Vice · LaSalle · 1933–1953
Kelly & Cawley's
The country casino at the heart of Little Reno
641 First Street, LaSalle, IL