The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury, written in 1928, is a great read for those who love to read stories about crimes and criminals that took place in New York City, dating back to the early 19th century. The book begins with the chapter titled “The Cradle of Gangs,” which was the Five Points area in 1829. Roughly, the Five Points area was the territory bounded by Broadway, Canal Street, the Bowery, and Park Row, which was formerly Chatham. Street. Now, this area is home to the city prison called Tombs, the criminal courts building, and the county courthouse. In the early 1700s, the area was primarily a trading area, surrounding a lake called Fresh Water Pond by the English and Shellpoint by the Dutch.
The lake was eventually filled in and houses were built on the dump. This dump became the region known as Five Points. The Five Points area got its name from the intersection of the five blocks of Cross, which became Park Street and is now Mosco Street, Anthony, which became Worth, Orange, which became Baxter, Mulberry Street, and Little Water, which doesn’t even exist now. It was originally a respectable area where the wealthy lived, but then the houses began to sink into the poorly drained swamp and the wealthy abandoned the area for better parts of Manhattan Island. Their places were taken mainly by freed black and lower-class Irish slaves, who began to flood into the area from Ireland, beginning in 1790.
The Five Points area became a breeding ground for thieves and criminals, and people from other parts of the city were hesitant to venture within its boundaries. The great Charles Dickens once visited the area and wrote of the Five Points: “This is the place: these narrow lanes that branch off to the right and to the left, and stink everywhere of filth and filth. Debauchery has grown old prematurely houses. and puffy faces on doorsteps have their equivalents at home and around the world. Many pigs live here. Have you ever wondered why their masters walk upright instead of on all fours, and why they talk instead of growling?
It was on these rotten streets that Dickens described that the first street gang formed in 1825. It was aptly named the Forty Thieves, and it began in the back room of a produce store on Center Street. It was owned by Roseanna Peers, and beyond the rotten vegetables outside, it sold moonshine in the back room inside and allowed a cowardly guy named Edward Coleman to rule over a motley crew of criminals. Being Irish, they all hated the English, but they mainly robbed and plundered their own.
Other gangs with names like the Chichesters, the Plug Uglies, the Roach Guards, the Shirt Tails, and the Dead Rabbits soon emerged. They fought among themselves over who would have the right to control crime on certain streets. More gangs soon arrived on the Five Points borders, including the Bowery Boys, the True Blue Americans, the American Guards, the O’Connell Guards, and the Atlantic Guards. The streets in and around the Five Points area became so dangerous that brave Davey Crockett, known for his heroism in the West, called the Five Points area of New York City the most dangerous place he had ever been. visited in his life. .
Over the years, gangs came and went in the Five Points area. The Civil War was the biggest destroyer of the original Five Points gangs, as many of the hooligans were recruited for the war in the South. Some returned mutilated. Some did not return at all.
The rest of Asbury’s book details all the gangs and thieves who roamed New York City up until 1928. We meet such nasty types as Monk Eastman and his Jewish gang, Owney Madden and his Irish Hudson Dusters, and Paul Kelly (Paulo Vaccarelli) and his Italian. Five pointers.
If you want to get dirty and read about the lives of men so despicable that they were hanged weekly in the prison yard of the city called the Tombs, The Gangs of New York is the book for you.