Harlem mobster Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson.
‘BUMPY’ ROAD: Margaret Johnson is using newly available 1940 census info to piece together the life of her grandfather, Harlem mobster Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson. (
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Although her grandfather was larger than life, Margaret Johnson has spent most of her adult years desperately searching for details about him.
But Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson was a very private man, which is what you had to be to run a successful criminal empire.
Margaret joined thousands of New Yorkers and US residents yesterday who punched a name into a treasure trove of newly available data from the 1940 Census at Ancestry.com.
Margaret was surprised to learn that the secretive Harlem kingpin’s name comes up not once, but twice.
In one instance, Bumpy is listed as the 41-year-old “lodger” of a Harlem homeowner. The record said the legendary crimelord put in 72 hours a week as a “barber,” making a little more than $1,000 that year with no other source of income.
The discovery gave Margaret a chuckle. She had heard Bumpy use the barber line before, but she had never seen it in print.
“That’s what he always said to people — that he was a barber,” Margaret said. “He used to tell everyone he was a barber. I know he was good with a straight razor.”
One of Bumpy’s enemies, a mob enforcer named Ulysses Rollins, learned that lesson the hard way in the early 1930s when Bumpy slashed him 36 times with a switchblade during a bloody Harlem street fight.
Rollins was working for mobster Dutch Schultz, who was trying to muscle his way into Bumpy’s lucrative numbers racket.
After standing up to Schultz and his henchman, Bumpy became a hero in Harlem, and ruled its streets with both compassion and coldbloodedness until his death from a heart attack in 1968.
Margaret was also surprised to learn that he was listed as “Raymond” on the Harlem residence. Most people called him “Bumpy.” A few called him Ellsworth. No one called him Raymond.
“He had a couple of aliases,” Margaret said. “He may have used his middle name to get the apartment.”
Margaret, 61, a retired city bus driver, was raised as Bumpy’s daughter.
And nothing was too good for Bumpy’s little girl. lavish birthday parties with pony rides. A chauffeur-driven limousine to carry her to private school. Trips to Aqueduct or Belmont to bet on the horses.
Other children earned their allowance washing dishes and raking leaves. Little Margaret got paid to tally illegal gambling profits.
But after Bumpy died — not violently, as many had forecast — Margaret’s curiosity grew. Her Harlem apartment is a virtual library of prison records and government documents.
Bumpy’s name led Margaret to a second listing for the same year, which was unusual given Bumpy’s private nature and the government’s penchant for missing blacks in the official count.
It lists a 34-year-old “Ellsworth” Johnson in Dannemora, NY — home of the Clinton Correctional Facility.
“That’s probably the more realistic one,” Margaret said. “It makes more sense that he would have been there at that time.”