Herbert Asbury’s The Gangs of New York, 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 1800s. 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, 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 spillway. This dump became the region known as Five Points. The Five Points area was named for the five block intersection 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 now doesn’t even exist. It was originally a respectable area where the wealthy lived, but then houses began to sink into the poorly drained swamp and the wealthy left the area for better parts of Manhattan Island. Their places were mainly occupied 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 did not dare venture within its limits. The great Charles Dickens once visited the area and wrote of the Five Points: “This is the place: these narrow lanes forking to the right and to the left, reeking everywhere of filth and filth. Debauchery has grown old.” houses prematurely. Rough and puffy faces on the doors have their equivalents at home and around the world. Lots of pigs live here. Ever wonder why their masters walk upright instead of on all fours, and why do 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 began in the back room of a produce store on Center Street. It was owned by Roseanna Peers, and beyond the rotten vegetables on the outside, it sold moonshine in the back room inside and allowed a cowardly fellow named Edward Coleman to rule a motley crew of criminals. Being Irish, they all hated the English, but they mostly robbed and looted their own.
Other gangs soon sprang up with names like the Chichesters, Plug Uglies, Roach Guards, Shirt Tails, and Dead Rabbits. They fought among themselves over who would have the right to control crime on certain streets. More gangs soon arrived at the Five Points boundaries, 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 the brave Davey Crockett, known for his heroism in the West, called the Five Points area of New York City the most dangerous place there was. visited in his entire 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 robbers that prowled New York City up to 1928. We meet such nasty guys 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 hung weekly in the yard of the city prison called the Tombs, The Gangs of New York is the book for you.