I got this chip at the convention in June 2011. The Mason record intrigued me as it was a new Florida chip but disappointing as no Club name, no date, and no quantities on card. Also it is not in Lighterman’s great Florida book. Thanks to Mark Lighterman, I have added the Club name to the info along with the date. The story takes us through 25 years of the gambling business, murder, pool halls, gambling boats, the Chicago crime syndicate, and Al Capone. What more could you ask for if you collect Illegal Club chips?

Enough of that:

Florida:

LJC
L J Copeland
Miami, FL
Chocolate, Orange, Blue, Yellow, Pink, White
No quantities. No date.
Looks like a very old card

Mark’s research added:
1932
Halcyon Hotel
Miami, FL

I sent the info on the card to our resident Florida expert Mark Lighterman. He found 2 full pages, 8 column story on a huge gambling bust in Miami. There are a ton of names and businesses in the story. It appears to be a transcript of testimony from inside informants. I have the full article and intend to enter the names in a spread sheet as somewhere along the lines we will find other names associated with chip finds. If anyone wants the full article email me.

Miami Daily News
May, 31, 1932 – The same year he bought the LJC chips.
Excerpt of the article with info on LC Copeland and The Halcyon Hotel.

I showed the chip on the board and mention the story was coming in an Illegal “Of The Day” post.

Fellow Illegal chip collector, Jim Linduff saw it and was in Florida and decided to look further. He sent me the following.

George “ Skeet” Downs is mentioned in the above article and later took 6 slugs from The Chicago crime boys. Al Capone would have been running it in these years. He also sent a picture of the Halcyon Hotel.

I had no idea the size of the place. Now we have a much bigger operation in my mind. It was time to try and get more info.

Enter our “Friend of the hobby.”

And now, “The rest of the story.”

LJC

Louis Jackson Copeland was born in 1882 in Arkansas, just north of the Louisiana border. By 1911 he had somehow made his way to Miami, Florida—population 5,471—where he immediately became active in gambling enterprises and established himself as one of the early “sportsmen” in a city with a long history of them.

In 1914 he opens a pool hall:

Corrupting youth in 1917:

My note: I wonder what that large following of patrons and friends think about him starting that fine new pool hall, after this article.

In the early 1920’s Copeland starts operating on a houseboat which gets raided numerous times. The Claude Copeland mentioned in the article below is Louis’ brother; another brother Leonard also moved to Miami from Arkansas and operated pool halls and cigar stands in Miami as late as 1939.

March 1921:

Activities on Copeland’s boat present a dilemma for the law in April 1922:

Raided again later that year in December 1922:

The article you sent from 1932 shows that Copeland was still involved with gambling enterprises two decades after his arrival in Miami. In that time Miami had grown from 5,471 to over 110,000 and had become a popular resort destination. The Hotel Halcyon, where the 1932 article shows Copeland was involved with several others in a gambling operation, advertised around the country.

including this ad from the New York Times in 1930:

pic from 1932:

postcard:

In addition to new residents and vacationers arriving in droves, Miami attracted plenty of underworld figures from all over the US. One of the guys who was involved with Copeland at the Halcyon, George “Skeets” Downs, was murdered in 1934. Downs’ death was thought to have been the result of outside gamblers trying to muscle in on some of the long time Miami gambling operators

Downs reportedly didn’t want give in to what was described as mainly a Chicago gangland effort to boss the gambling.

Chicago Tribune—28dec1934:

Supposedly Downs became known as the “man who defied Al Capone” because several years prior to his murder Capone, while vacationing in Florida, tried to muscle-in on Downs’ operations without success.

I’m not sure what Copeland was up to over the next several years. He seems to be in and out of Miami, perhaps even spending some time in New York (his wife and kids appear to stay in Miami). Copeland died in Dade County, Florida in 1959 at the age of 77.

Copeland had a son Louis, Jr. who died at Miami in 1981. Louis, Jr. had a son Louis, 3rd, born 1943.

Louis, 3rd currently resides in Jupiter, Florida; he would’ve been 16 when his granddad died; maybe he knows something about his granddad’s activities.