Glossary entry
Going to the mattresses
GOH-ing too thuh MAT-ress-iz
Definition
GOH-ing too thuh MAT-ress-iz
Going to war. Moving crews into rented rooms and safe apartments, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and staying away from home and routine until the conflict is settled.
“When the shooting started in Brooklyn the whole crew went to the mattresses for six weeks.”
The phrase describes a real logistical arrangement. Men who could be found at home were men who could be killed at home, so a crew at war moved into apartments taken under other names, with mattresses on the floor and someone awake at all hours.
It appears in the historical record of the Castellammarese War and the Brooklyn conflicts of the 1930s. Wider public use of the phrase comes almost entirely from The Godfather.