Page 85 - All About History - Issue 19-14

THE REAL-LIFE GANGS OF NEW YORK

THE GANGS’

TERRITORIES

WALKER STREET (FUTURE CANAL STREET)
CENTER STREET ORANGE STREET MULBERRY STREET MOTT STREET ELIZABETH STREET BOWERY

WHITE STREET
BAYARD STREET
FRANKLIN STREET
PELL STREET BOWERY

LEONARD STREET
CROSS STREET
CENTER STREET ANTHONY STREET ORANGE STREET MULBERRY STREET CHATHAM

SQUARE
CROSS STREET PEARL STREET CHATHAM STREET

FT FORTY MANHATTAN
THIEVES

DB DAYBREAK
BOYS

BB THEBOWERY CENTRAL PARK
BOYS

W WHYO BROADWAY

DR DEAD
RABBITS

K KERRYONIANS POINTS
FIVE

notorious slums in which they came to reside, of the infamous area. in the early-19th century, had been formed solely
some toiling long, hard hours to send money back Five Points was the roughest part of town. It to protect the city’s liquor merchants. Gangs would
to Ireland; others trading in bloody violence and had been built up in an area that was once home also attach themselves to volunteer fire stations,
hair-raising crime as they sought political influence to a pretty five-acre lake known as the Collect but taking payments from the city for putting out
and wealth. Of the New York gangs of the 1850s, had, in the mid-18th century, become a dumping blazes, although this stopped shortly after the Great
two – The Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys – had ground for the bloody waste of the tanneries and Fire of 1835 when 600 buildings in 17 city blocks
battled the hardest, engaging in fierce fighting slaughterhouses that ringed it. The authorities filled were destroyed while the gangs fought among
against each other with both bearing grudges going in the dumping ground in 1813, but the slums that themselves and looted at will.
back years. They each took up camp in different emerged on top were little better. It was the dirtiest In order to keep earning money and to gain
parts of the city: The Dead Rabbits in an area and unhealthiest hellhole on Earth in the eyes its respect, the gangs quickly realised the benefits of
called the Five Points, the centre of which was an unlucky inhabitants and, in such an environment, involving themselves in political matters. Politicians
irregular intersection of three streets – Anthony, the gangs offered security, work and money. came to use the gangs’ muscle to help them fight
Cross and Orange – that had five corners, while The The Dead Rabbits, for instance, had been part of an election – sometimes quite literally – and in
Bowery Boys claimed the Bowery district just north another crew nicknamed the Roach Guards that, return, they were rewarded in an arrangement

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