The Charlestown Mob was an Irish mob group in Charlestown, which figured prominently in the history of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

for much of the 20th century. The gang was headed by the McLaughlin brothers ( Bernie, Georgie, and Edward "Punchy" McLaughlin) and their associates brothers Stevie and Connie Hughes from Charlestown. Some of its notorious associates included Will Delaney, Harry Hannon, William Bennett, Edward Bennett, John Shackelford, Frank Murray, Leo Lowry, Ron Dermody and Joe "Rockball" O'Rourke. They were involved in the

Irish Gang Wars The Irish Mob (also known as the Irish mafia or Irish organized crime) is a collective of organized crime syndicates composed of ethnic Irish members which operate primarily in Ireland, the United States, Canada and Australia, and have been in ...

of the early to mid-1960s against

Somerville Somerville may refer to: *Somerville College, Oxford, a constituent college of the University of Oxford Places *Somerville, Victoria, Australia * Somerville, Western Australia, a suburb of Kalgoorlie, Australia * Somerville, New Zealand, a subur ...

's Winter Hill Gang led by

James "Buddy" McLean James Joseph McLean (January 26, 1930 – October 31, 1965) was an American mobster boss, who was the original boss of the Somerville, Massachusetts-based Winter Hill Gang during the 1960s. McLean was well known throughout the Greater Boston ar ...

. The decade-long gang war left both Bernie and Punchy dead and Georgie in prison. The Hughes brothers later suffered almost identical fates, as they were both shot to death on separate occasions.

See also