By Joshua Andrews
Publisher
Jewish Mayhem
http://www.jewishmayhem.com

Part I of II

Located in the rough and seedy part of New York City known as the Bowery District in early 1909, was a modest sized tattoo studio at #11 Chatham Street. On almost any given night of the week and well into the early mornings, one would find the studio’s lights on and its doors open for business, with the signature buzzing sound of electric tattoo machines filling the air.

Now, this was not just any ordinary turn of the century, busy tattoo studio. #11 Chatham Street was the legendary tattoo studio that once belonged to Irish-American Samuel F. O’Reilly. Who was Samuel F. O’Reilly? Well, he was the inventor of the modern electric tattoo machine and the first supplier of tattoo supplies. Back in 1891, O’Reilly ingeniously took a Thomas Edison design for an 1870’s model stencil maker, and converted it to the first working electrictattoo machine.

The owner and operator of the #11 Chatham Street tattoo studio in 1909, was the master tattoo artist German-American Charlie Wagner, Samuel F. O’Reilly’s protégé. O’Reilly had died from an accidental fall a year earlier and left histattoo machine patent, his #11 Chatham Street tattoo studio and his tattoo supply business to his close friend and student, Charlie. After O’Reilly’s death, Wagner pretty much worked alone, occasionally hiring someone to help out in the shop until he grew tired of him.

By early 1909, Wagner was so busy with clients that he resigned himself to the fact that he really needed another tattoo artist working along side him to offset the tremendous pressure of waiting clients. The problem was that Wagner was very particular as to who he would teach the tricks of the trade and who he wanted as company, day in and day out, from the early afternoon, until the early morning.

As fate would have it, a young un-tattooed, street smart second generation American Hebrew lad by the name of Lew Alberts was out and about looking for work at that time. Lew Alberts was a very talented artist who had previously worked as a wallpaper designer for a large company until he was laid off for unknown reasons.

The story goes as follows: one day, Lew was wandering in the Bowery District and happened to walk by the #11 Chatham St. tattoo parlor. Fascinated, he entered into Wagner’s studio, which happened to be at the right moment because he was able to have a good uninterrupted chat with Charlie. This was rare because Charlie was almost always busy with customers or visitors.

Charlie got along with Lew exceptionally well and since Lew mentioned that he was looking for work, Charlie offered him a part time job doing all sorts of chores in the tattoo studio. The job was on condition that if things worked out well between them, he would accept Lew as an apprentice tattoo artist and teach Lew everything about tattooing and the business.

Lew started working in #11 Chatham that very day and one of the chores Lew was to do was to draw some new tattoo designs for Charlie. Using his experience as awallpaper designer and a graphic artist, Lew drew original design after design, which simply blew Charlie way. Charlie immediately saw that Lew had an incredible talent for tattoo art. So impressed he was with Lew that within the next few days, Charlie gave Lew a rudimentary explanation of thetattoo machine and how it works and how to tattoo people with it and allowed Lew to tattoo one of the customers with it.

Lew took to electric tattooing immediately and became the first Hebrew tattoo artist in modern history.

Part II will be in the next issue

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