Lewis did not have a criminal record with the New York City Police Department and was one of the few underworld figures to have avoided being "booked" by the famed Central Office despite being investigated for an unsolved homicide.
This, along with his penchant for wearing a black sombrero and similarly styled clothing, started the rumor that he had come from South America and was "of Spanish or Portuguese extraction".
[2] Lewis never confirmed or denied the rumors although he occasionally made vague comments mentioning "his noble Spanish and Portuguese forefathers, and also let it be known that the hot blood of Indian chieftains flowed in his veins, and that he had inherited all the vices and none of the virtue of the red man".
Tall tales of his supposed "feats" were often told in dive bars throughout Chinatown and The Bowery, and the New York Times once described him as "big bodied and muscular and could deliver more knockouts with his right than any man his size or double it for that matter", but there was always a certain degree of suspicion from his underworld contemporaries.
He was never short on money, supposedly having "no fewer than three girls walking the streets for him", but was rarely known to engage in violent crime and his lack of a police record caused some to wonder if his personality was all an act.
Sardinia Frank, a Mulberry Bend thug who killed celebrated bouncer "Eat-'em-Up" Jack McManus in 1905, said following his death that "he was a bluff; he wasn't th' goods.
One account claims he was killed in 1900 by The Grabber, a fellow lieutenant of Humpty Jackson, after Lewis withheld his share from the proceeds of a Tammany Hall fundraiser they had co-hosted.
Lewis was later targeted to be killed because of his association with Rosenthal and, after being lured to his East Eleventh Street apartment late one evening, several men in a passing Pierce Arrow called out to him as he stood on the doorstep.
[6] Lewis has been appeared in several historical novels including Before My Life Began (1985) by Jay Neugeboren, Dreamland (1999) by Kevin Baker and Cityside (2003) by William Heffernan.