Victorian Fortnight continues, only momentarily derailed by my grief at the passing of Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan.

If you take Herbert Asbury's book The Gangs of New York at face value, you could be forgiven for thinking that 19th century Manhattan was, as they say, a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Lynchings, muggings, riots, piracy, eye gouging, ear biting, prostitution of all kinds, brawls, voter fraud, stabbing, arson, robbery, and rude behavior in general were the order of the day in the saloons and back alleys of The Bowery or the Five Points district, where decent folk and police feared to tread. This was the kingdom of the gangs, a cesspool of violence and depravity that rivaled Sodom or Bartertown, depending on your frame of reference.

But be careful, gentle reader! Not everything one reads can be believed (especially blogs written by egocentric hacks.) Herbert Asbury, a journalist in 1920s New York, embellished the core historical reality of the Victorian-era gangs with sensationalistic anecdotes, dubious facts, and a heaping dose of bullshit. New York City was a rough town back in the day, sure, but it was mostly populated by hard working decent folks who went about their business without once gouging out an eye.

But who wants to read about boring nice people?

As long as you keep the subtitle, "An Informal History of the Underworld" in mind and remember that Asbury was trying to sell books, not document history, then The Gangs of New York is a fascinating read.

Asbury describes in lurid detail some of the hellish living conditions that immigrants lived in, tenements that were the breeding grounds for street gangs, murderers, and thieves. One infamous tenement, The Old Brewery, is straight out of Dante's Inferno - a nightmarish warren where "fights were of almost constant occurrence, and there was scarcely an hour of the day or night when drunken orgies were not in progress." The police wouldn't enter the Old Brewery, according to Asbury, unless they had a death wish, for "it has been estimated that for almost fifteen years the Old Brewery averaged a murder a night."

Let's see, a quick bit of math... fifteen years, one murder a night... OK, according to Asbury, approximately 5,475 New Yorkers were killed in this one apartment building alone. Talk about high tenant turnover! I bet the landlord made a fortune in safety deposit money alone.

If you can sift through some of the factual embellishments, there are some great stories in Gangs about colorful, hardcore criminals and the evil that men do. Many of the gangs were coalitions of petty criminals and street toughs, but the more powerful gangs had political ties and were often called upon to influence the outcome of local elections... with their fists.

The Dead Rabbits, the Pug Uglies, the Bowery Boys, the Slaughter Houses, the Whyos, the Daybreak Boys - these gangs would pour out into the streets and fight with each other or the police "leatherheads" for any number of reasons ranging from the political to the personal. They fought with their hands, feet, teeth, bats, knives, paving stones, sling shots, axes, and the occasional firearm. Gangs is stuffed with anecdotes about the personal weapons used by the combatants, like custom-made eye gouging implements or axe blades hidden in boots. These guys were serious. God help you if you got knocked to the ground during a gang brawl, because you'd either get stomped to death or get back on your feet missing some teeth or an ear.

And the nicknames! Many of the gangs were Irish, and if I can indulge in a sweeping generalization based on personal experience, the Irish love their nicknames. For your amusement and mine, here's a list of some of the more colorful names that 19th century gang members went by:

• Battle Annie
• Gallus Mag
• The Bottler
• Circular Jack
• Eat 'Em Up Jack McManus
• Cow-Legged Sam
• Terrible John Torrio
• Bill the Butcher
• Razor Riley
• The Grabber
• Sadie the Goat
• The Allen
• Hell Cat Maggie
• Joe the Greaser
• Goo Goo Knox
• Ding Dong
• One Lung Curran
• Crazy Butch
• Baboon Connelly

I just really love that there was a guy known as The Grabber who may or may not have hung out with Goo Goo Knox or Sadie the Goat. You can't make stuff like that up.

Or can you? I'm unclear as to where reality begins and ends in The Gangs of New York, but I intend to follow up by reading Luc Sante's Low Life to get a better understanding of crime in the New York of the 1800's. Has anybody out there read Low Life? I've heard good things.

I'd be shirking my blogging duties if I didn't recommend Martin Scorcese's Gangs of New York, which is based on Asbury's book. Scorcese also takes some liberties with the facts, but the production design in that movie is fantastic - like the book, the movie captures the scummy allure of old New York perfectly. Just remember that it's not a documentary.

This entry was posted by David Campbell, on Thursday, January 15, 2009. You can leave your response.