Introduction
The Bowery has been the place in which many parts of New York’s history have been situated. This includes important incidents like the New York Draft riots, amongst many other casual or fatal gang fights that happened along the Bowery. The existence of gangs in the past speaks a lot about the place its social dynamics. The gang scene was very evident and multiracial in the Bowery and throughout three eras; 1829 (Irish gangs), 1863 (Irish and American gangs) and 1900 (Chinese gangs). This essay will be exploring the evolution of gang cultures in the Bowery, hand in hand with its relationship to the evolutions of the weapons involved.
Era 1: 1829 (“Five Points” Gang)
Around 1829, the first few gangs formed in the Bowery. When the life in the Bowery began to spring up, there were many cheap green-grocery stores; behind one of them was a back room, opened by Rosanna Peters in Worth Street on the Bowery. [1] One of the first few gangs in New York that have appeared with a definite acknowledged leadership were said to have originated from that room.[2] The back room was originally used to sell fiery liquor of the period at a lowered price, soon many more of these rooms appeared throughout the streets of the Bowery, turning them into the haunt of thugs, pickpockets, murderers, and thieves.[3] All these happened at the “Five Points” of the Bowery. The name “Five Points” was derived from the five-pointed intersection created by Baxter Street and Cross Street on the Bowery.[4]
The overwhelming reality of the Five Points in the 19th century was the fact that there were endless drudgery and the low pay, with appalling sanitation and the firetrap tenements.[5] Five Points was a mess of slum and the gang groups seemed to originally form in the name of safety and to protect the liquor stores, themselves and their families, most of these gangs at that time were Irish immigrants. However, things seemed to have escalated quickly and went downhill with the rise of power of the gangs. The back room that was used for gang meetings spawned the rise of the five points gang.[6] They include “The Chichesters, Roach Guards, Plug Uglies, Shirt Tails and Dead Rabbits”.[7]
Figure 1. (A dispute at Five Points, Bowery in 1829 by Culver Pictures)[8]
These emporiums came to be regarded as the worst dens of the Five Points, and the centers of its infany and crime.[9] Their names came from the way they dressed and presented themselves. For example, the Shirt Tails wore their shirts outside their trousers, the Plug Uglies wore enormous plug hats and the Dead Rabbits walked around with sluggers that carried a dead rabbit impaled on a pike.[10] Many of the gang members held brickbats, with pistols peeping out of their pockets.[11]
Era 2: 1863 (New York Draft Riots – “Dead Rabbits” and “Bowery Boys”)
The gang fights were often taken very casually and this continued up until The New York Draft Riots. By 1863, there were many American gang groups and the Bowery Boys spawned. They were one of the most important gangs in this era.[12] The Bowery Boys were considered “violent only for a good cause”, though they were a nativist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Irish gang.[13]
During the 1863 New York Draft riot, the Irish Dead Rabbits fought with the American gang, the Bowery Boys. Initially intended to express anger at the draft, the protests turned into a race riot, with white rioters, predominantly Irish immigrants,[14] attacking blacks throughout the city. Gangs raged through the streets of New York from Monday to Saturday in a hot week in July that year.[15] “It began as a protest against the Conscription Act which had been passed by Congress in March, but soon the fight turned into a product of mere ignorance and passion, from malignant hate towards those in better circumstances, from craving for plunder, from a barbarous spite against a different race.”[16] These gang thieves were going about, calling at houses, & demanding money.[17] In this era, the gangs started using more knifes and rifles. They would sit on the roof of the buildings and shoot downwards at the people on the streets.
Figure 2. (Civil War Draft Riot, Sacking a Drug Store, 1863 by Culver Pictures)[18]
At the end of the Draft riot, the mob caused more than $1.5 million of damage.[19] The number killed or wounded during the riot is estimated to nearly 100.[20]
Era 3: 1900 (“Tong Wars”)
The Tong Wars started in 1900.[21] They were Chinese men that executed their rivals and open warfare on the streets of Chinatown in the Bowery.[22] As compared to the gangs in 1863, they were more sophisticated with the weapons they used. They armed themselves with Chinese Caliber pistols.
Figure 3. (New Years Greeting, Chinatown, 1900)[23]
Tong wars could be triggered by a variety of inter-gang grievances, from the public besmirching of another tong’s honor to failure to make full payment for a “slave girl” to the murder of a rival tong member, or fighting over Chinese prostitutes.[24] They also had an interesting social dynamics. “The Chinese prostitutes are owned by powerful tong members, and even if independent, have to be on good terms with them. In general, they have to give right of way to tong men to avoid trouble.”[25]
Each tong had salaried soldiers, known as boo how doy, who fought in the Bowery alleys and streets over the control of opium, prostitution, gambling, and territory.[26] The tongs definitely contributed a lot to the vibes in the Bowery in the 20th century. On quiet nights, the fumes of opium, smoked in the basements and in the dingy rooms above the gambling places, floated down to the streets and mingled with the odors of stale beer, raw whiskey and unwashed men of all races.”[27]
Conclusion
This was how the gangs on the Bowery came about and how they have impacted New York’s History as a whole. They started in the Bowery and played an important role for people to look back and reflect on the incidents. They have shaped the history of fights, gang cultures, as well as the pressing issue of racism that is still present today. Throughout the three eras being explored in this research, we can see how the different gang members’ weapons carry with them their own different cultures, whether visually in terms of style, or metaphorically. As for the layout of the Bowery, the old Five Points section now contains three of the city’s principal agencies for the administration of Justice – The Tomes, the Criminal Courts Building and the new County Court House.[28]
[1] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York, (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001, 19.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Five Points Manhattan, Website, “Wikipedia”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Points,_Manhattan#cite_note-1
[5] “The First Slum in America”, The New York Times, Kevin Baker. September 30, 2001
[6] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York (An Informal History of the Underworld), (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001) 21.
[7] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York (An Informal History of the Underworld), (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001) 20.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York (An Informal History of the Underworld), (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001) 20.
[10] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York (An Informal History of the Underworld), (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001) 21.
[11] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York (An Informal History of the Underworld), (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001) 21.
[12] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York (An Informal History of the Underworld), (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001) 26.
[13] Bowery Boys, Website,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowery_Boys
[14] Eric Foner (1988). Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, The New American Nation series, pp. 32–33, New York: Harper & Row; ISBN 0-06-093716-5 (updated ed. 2014, ISBN 978-0062354518).
[15] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York (An Informal History of the Underworld), (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001) 108.
[16] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York (An Informal History of the Underworld), (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001) 109-110.
[17] An Eyewitness Account of the New York Draft Riots, July, 1863
Author(s): A. Hunter Dupree, Leslie H. Fishel and Jr.
Source: The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Dec., 1960), pp. 472-479
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1888878
[18] Gony page 109
[19] Civil War Home, Website – http://www.civilwarhome.com/draftriots.htm
[20] Ibid.
[21] Daily Mail, Website, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3778298/The-gang-wars-left-New-York-littered-bodies-Mafia-s-Five-Families-ruled-tit-tat-Tong-wars-brought-bloody-dressed-terror-Chinatown.html
[22] Ibid.
[23] http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2012/01/new-years-murder-return-of-tong-wars.html
[24] Zelenko, Michael. “The Tongs of Chinatown – FoundSF.” FoundSF. http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Tongs_of_Chinatown (accessed December 3, 2012).
[25] Book – Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money, and Murder in New York’s Chinatown
By Scott D. Seligman
[26] Zelenko, Michael. “The Tongs of Chinatown – FoundSF.” FoundSF. http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Tongs_of_Chinatown (accessed December 3, 2012).
[27] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York (An Informal History of the Underworld), (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001) 279
[28] Herbert Asbury, Gangs Of New York (An Informal History of the Underworld), (New York, NY: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2001) 1
