Five Points

by Tyler Anbinder

  41. Michael and Mary Rush to “Dear Father and Mother,” September 6, 1846, in IUP–BPP, Colonies, Canada, 17: 100–101. Although the Rushes did not live on either the Palmerston or Gore Booth estate, their desperate situation must have been similar to that of Ahamlish and Drumcliff residents.

  42. Lynch to Kincaid, December 18, 1846, Norton manuscript; Kincaid to Palmerston, March 23, 1847, BR146/9/3, Broadlands Papers. A much more detailed account of the Palmerston emigration program can be found in my “Lord Palmerston and the Irish Famine Emigration,” The Historical Journal (June 2001).

  43. Marianna O’Gallagher and Rose Masson Dompierre, Eyewitness Grosse Isle 1847 (Sainte-Foy, Québec, 1995), 349, 352, 357–58; A. L. Buchanan to S. Wolcott, June 11, 1847, BR146/9/8/2 (wreck), copy of letter from Chief Emigrant Agent at Québec enclosed in Lord Elgin’s Despatch No. 76 “of 11th Aug. 1847,” BR 146/9/10 (emigrants well supplied), “Passengers Sent out from Lord Palmerston’s Estate to Quebec April 1847,” BR146/9/4, Broadlands Papers; John C. McTernan, Memory Harbour: The Port of Sligo, Its Growth and Decline and Its Role as an Emigration Port (Sligo, 1992), part II, 32; IUP–BPP, Emigration, 10: 15 (overall mortality rate); IUP–BPP, Colonies, Canada, 17: 471–77 (Palmerston and Gore Booth mortality).

  44. M. H. Perley to John S. Saunders, September 2, 18 (quotation), 1847, Dr. W. S. Harding to [the Lieutenant-Governor?], September 13, 1847, in IUP–BPP, Colonies, Canada, 17: 300, 318, 321–22; Sligo Champion, September 11, 18, 1847; New Brunswick Courier in McTernan, Memory Harbour, part II, 30; Adam Ferrie, Letter to the Rt. Hon Earl Grey . . . Embracing a Statement of Facts in Relation to Emigration to Canada (Montreal, 1847), 7–11.

  45. Stewart and Kincaid to Palmerston, December 3 and 16, 1847, in IUP–BPP, Colonies, Canada, 17: 351–53; Stewart to Kincaid, n.d. (marked “1847”), Norton manuscript; Gore Booth testimony, June 2, 1848, in IUP–BPP, Emigration, 5: 266; testimony of Joseph Kincaid, June 21, 1847, in ibid., 4: 143–66.

  46. Letter of Michael Brennan, et al., October 27, 1847, in New Brunswick Courier, November 6, 1847, in Elizabeth Cushing, et al., A Chronicle of Irish Emigration to St. John, New Brunswick, 1847 (St. John, 1979), 50; Gore Booth emigrants quoted in Fitzpatrick, “Emigration, 1801–70,” in New History of Ireland, 5: 597.

  47. Lansdowne, Glanerought and the Petty-Fitzmaurices, 127; Ommanney to the Commissioners, March 5, 26, April 1, 1848, in IUP–BPP, Famine, 3: 335, 339–40.

  48. Unknown writer to “My dear William,” February 27, 1849, O’Sullivan to Poulett Scrope, April 30, 1849, The Nation, December 12, 1857, all in Lyne, “Post-Famine Emigration from Kenmare,” 72, 97, 100–101. The mortality figure is based on Lansdowne, Glanerought and the Petty-Fitzmaurices, 128–29, which cites Trench as saying that 5,000 had died in the Kenmare “union” (relief district) by the time he became agent in early 1850. The Lansdowne estate made up about one-third of the Kenmare union, thus my upper estimate that about one-third of that figure had died.

  49. Trench, Realities of Irish Life, 122–24.

  50. Ibid., 124–25; Lyne, “Post-Famine Emigration from Kenmare,” 89 (poorhouse figures), 102–3 (Cork Examiner), 136–37.

  51. Lyne, “Post-Famine Emigration from Kenmare,” 136–37; Trench, Realities of Irish Life, 124–26. For some of the Lansdowne ships, see Glazier, Famine Immigrants, 6: 619–20, 626–27, 662–63, 644–49, 7: 16–19, 84–85.

  52. Lyne, “Post-Famine Emigration from Kenmare to America,” 104–5, 112–13; Maxwell to Stewart and Kincaid, November 27, 1847, in IUP–BPP, Colonies, Canada, 17: 353–54 (food supply).

  53. Tribune, March 19, 1851; Herald, March 22 (Robert Peel’s arrival), 23 (editorial), 1851.

  54. Dublin Review, n.s., 12 (January–April 1869), 4–17, Tralee Chronicle, February 26, 1869, Eugene O’Connell to the Freeman’s Journal, November 20, 1880, in Lyne, “Post-Famine Emigration from Kenmare to America,” 120–22; Charles Russell, “New Views on Ireland,” Or, Irish Land: Grievances: Remedies, 3rd ed. (London, 1880), 47; Lansdowne, Glanerought and the Petty-Fitzmaurices, 129.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1. The Old Brewery, and the New Mission House at the Five Points, By Ladies of the Mission (New York, 1854), 43; National Police Gazette in Edward Van Every, Sins of New York as “Exposed” by the Police Gazette (1930; New York, 1972), 282–83; Solon Robinson, Hot Corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated (New York, 1854), 209.

  2. National Police Gazette in Van Every, Sins of New York, 282–83; Old Brewery, 49; “The Five Points,” National Magazine 2 (1853): 169.

  3. Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (New York, 1928), 15–16, 19; Fredrika Bremer, The Homes of the New World, 2 vols., trans. Mary Howitt (New York, 1853), 2: 602.

  4. Tribune, June 19, 1850; unidentified newspaper quoted in Old Brewery, 48; Joel H. Ross, What I Saw in New York (Auburn, NY, 1851), 96; The Prose Works of N. P. Willis (1845; new ed. in one vol., Philadelphia, 1849), 582–83.

  5. Dwellings 23 and 24, Sixth Ward, 1850 United States manuscript census, National Archives. Dwelling 24 must be the Old Brewery because one of the inhabitants listed, John Burke, is described as a longtime resident of the building in Ross, What I Saw in New York, 92–94. That dwelling 23 was also part of the Old Brewery, perhaps with a separate entrance, is based on my comparison of its residents listed in the census with the 1850–51 New York City directory.

  6. Ross, What I Saw in New York, 92–94; Bremer, Homes of the New World, 2: 602.

  7. The Eleventh Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (New York, 1854): 23.

  8. “Manhattan Record of Assessment,” Sixth Ward, 1860 (which describes height and dimensions of buildings), and blocks 161–65 and 199–202, “Block and Lot Folders,” New York City Housing Department Papers, both at New York Municipal Archives; William Perris, Maps of the City of New York. Surveyed under the Direction of the Insurance Companies of Said City (New York, 1853 and 1857).

  9. [George G. Foster], New York in Slices: By an Experienced Carver (New York, 1849), 23; Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Investigate the Health Department (1859), 31, in Edward Lubitz, “The Tenement Problem in New York City and the Movement for Its Reform, 1856–1867” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1970), 95–96; John H. Griscom, The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of New York (1845; New York, 1970), 8; Citizens’ Association, Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health (New York, 1865), 77.

  10. Times, July 1, 1859; Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, January 13, 1847; Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Investigate the Health Department (1859), 31, in Lubitz, “The Tenement Problem,” 95–96.

  11. Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Investigate the Health Department (1859), 31, in Lubitz, “The Tenement Problem,” 95–96.

  12. Election districts 3–6, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York State manuscript census, Old Records Division, New York County Clerk’s Office (percentage of brick tenements and proportion of Five Pointers living in them); “Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Examine into the Condition of Tenant Houses in New-York and Brooklyn,” Documents of the Assembly of the State of New-York, Eightieth Session—1857 (Albany, 1857), doc. 205, pp. 17–18; Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City: Dwelling Type and Social Change in the American Metropolis (New York, 1990), 13.

  13. “Report . . . into the Condition of Tenant Houses in New-York and Brooklyn,” 18–19; Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Investigate the Health Department (1859), 66, in Lubitz, “Tenement Problem,” 63–64; Lawrence Veiller, “Back to Back Tenements,” in Robert W. DeForest and Lawrence Veiller, eds., The Tenement House Problem, 2 vols. (1903; New York, 1970), 1: 293.

  14. Harper’s Weekly 1 (February 21, 1857): 114–15; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 2 (November 1858): 150.

  15. Tribune, June 5, 1850; Sixteenth Annual Report of the New York Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor (New Yor
k, 1859): 37; Lubitz, “Tenement Problem,” 541. The figures on inhabitants per apartment were derived by surveying the Perris insurance maps and New York City Department of Housing “Block and Lot” records to identify buildings most likely to have the neighborhood’s standard two-room apartments, and then determining the number of residents by consulting the 1855 New York State manuscript census in conjunction with the city directories.

  16. Thirteenth Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society (1866): 28; John Morrow, A Voice from the Newsboys (New York, 1860), 39.

  17. Thirteenth Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society (1866): 28.

  18. George Ellington [pseud.], The Women of New York; Or, The Under-World of the Great City (New York, 1869), 600–603 (“same bare floors”); Times, June 20, 1859. This Times story, which describes tenements in the First and Fourth Wards, is the only one I know of that details antebellum tenement decoration. Many tenements in those wards, especially the Fourth, were as bad as those at Five Points, which is why I believe it is a useful source despite its lack of reference to Five Points itself. For the archeological items found in Five Points, see the project’s Web site: http://r2.gsa.gov/fivept/fphome.htm, and Rebecca Yamin, “Lurid Tales and Homely Stories of New York’s Notorious Five Points,” Historical Archaeology 32 (1998): 74–85. The artifacts are currently stored in the basement of the World Trade Center, but their ultimate destination, in a museum or archive, has not yet been determined.

  19. Second division, third election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census. The 1855 census taker for this portion of the neighborhood distinguished between boarders and lodgers in his enumeration. Females accounted for just 35 percent of boarders but made up 60 percent of the lodgers.

  20. Account 4739, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books, New York Public Library; families 140 and 156, second division, third election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census.

  21. Account 3307, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books, dwelling 54, second division, third electoral district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census; dwelling 288, p. 215, Sixth Ward, 1850 United States census.

  22. The Tribune (June 5, 1850) did not state precisely what proportion of these Sixth Ward cellar dwellers lived in the Five Points neighborhood. Given that the Five Points district made up about one-third of the ward, and that it was the most impoverished portion of the ward with the largest population of poor people likely to seek cellar accommodations, it seems reasonable to estimate that half of the cellar population lived in Five Points.

  23. Samuel Prime, Life in New York (New York, 1847), 179–80; Times, July 1, 1859; Tribune, June 5, 13, 1850; Griscom, Sanitary Condition, 10.

  24. Times, July 1, 1859; Tribune, June 13, 1850; family 63, fourth election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census; [James D. Burn], Three Years Among the Working-Classes (London, 1865), 5–6.

  25. Twenty-third Annual Report of the New-York Ladies’ Home Missionary Society (1867): 28; Herald, September 18, 1892, p. 11; “Report . . . into the Condition of Tenant Houses in New-York and Brooklyn,” 23; “Tenement Evils as Seen by the Tenants,” in DeForest and Veiller, eds., Tenement House Problem, 1: 394 (not quoted). Many of the quotations in this section are from the late nineteenth century rather than the Civil War era. I have used such quotations in this section because many aspects of tenement life, especially from the perspective of the tenant, were not recorded in the antebellum years.

  26. DeForest and Veiller, eds., Tenement House Problem, 1: 414.

  27. Charles H. Haswell, Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, 1816–1860 (New York, 1897), 332; James Ford, Slums and Housing, with Special Reference to New York City: History, Conditions, Policy (Cambridge, MA, 1936), 1: 95; Plumber and Sanitary Engineer (December 15, 1879), 26; Times, March 22, 1880; folder 200/27, “Block and Lot Folders,” New York City Housing Department Papers. As mentioned earlier, a typical tenement with the dimensions found in the front building at 65 Mott had four apartments on each floor, while the rear tenements had two per floor. We know from the census that groceries occupied the front spaces of the first floor in the front building in 1860, while in 1903 the entire first floor was set aside for commercial purposes. If the grocers took up only the front of the ground floor, this would have left room for thirty-six apartments. If the groceries occupied the entire first floor, that would have left space for thirty-four apartments. Dwellings 40 and 41, third district, Sixth Ward, 1860 United States census. Tax assessment records from the 1850s list the owner of 65 Mott Street as “J. Weeks,” possibly the Jacob Weeks who still owned the property in 1903. If that is the case, then Weeks was probably not responsible for the construction of the building nearly eighty years earlier. “J. Weeks” was probably the brother of Samuel Weeks, who in 1860 owned 47 and 49 Mott among other properties, and son of the “Mrs. Weeks” who owned 37 Mott.

  28. Times, March 28, 1856; Griscom, Sanitary Condition, 7.

  29. Asa Green, A Glance at New York (New York, 1837), 169, 174–75.

  30. Tribune, December 15, 1848, June 5, 1850, September 19, 1865; Report of the Council of Hygiene, 76.

  31. Owen Kildare, My Old Bailiwick (New York, 1906), 227; DeForest and Veiller, eds., Tenement House Problem, 1: 388, 394–95.

  32. DeForest and Veiller, eds., Tenement House Problem, 1: 388, 394–95.

  33. Ibid., 1: 294; Report of the Council of Hygiene, 80; Eugene P. Moehring, Public Works and the Patterns of Real Estate Growth in Manhattan, 1835–1894 (New York, 1981), 96; Sixteenth Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, 50; Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Investigate the Health Department (1859), 66, in Lubitz, “Tenement Problem,” 64–66.

  34. Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 4 (April 1860): 17.

  35. DeForest and Veiller, eds., Tenement House Problem, 1: 387; Griscom, Sanitary Condition, 18; Report of the Council of Hygiene, 73. The green fluid quotation describes a yard at 49 Elizabeth Street, a half block north of the area I have defined as Five Points, but typical of yards in the Five Points district as well.

  36. Philip Wallys, About New York: An Account of What a Boy Saw in his Visit to the City (New York, 1857), 63; Report of the Council of Hygiene, 77; Sixteenth Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, 50, 52; Annual Report of the City Inspector (1842), 188–97, (1856), 157, in Carol Groneman, “The ‘Bloody Ould Sixth,’: A Social Analysis of a New York City Working-Class Community in the Mid-Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. dissertion, University of Rochester, 1973), 182.

  37. Subterranean, February 13, 1847, in Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (Urbana, 1982), 58; DeForest and Veiller, eds., Tenement House Problem, 1: 390–94; Owen Kildare, My Mamie Rose (New York, 1903), 19.

  38. [Burn], Three Years Among the Working-Classes, 302–3; James D. McCabe, Lights and Shadows of New York Life (Philadelphia, 1872), 403; Kildare, My Mamie Rose, 15, 23, 38–39; Charles Loring Brace, The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years Work Among Them, 3rd ed. (New York, 1872), 204–05.

  39. Voice from the Old Brewery: The Organ of the Five Points Mission 1 (August 1, 1861): 29; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (June 1857): 64 (“cried and cried”); Five Points Monthly 3 (February 1856): 24–25; Tribune, November 23, 1864.

  40. Kildare, My Mamie Rose, 15; Harper’s Weekly 23 (August 9, 1879): 629; 27 (June 30, 1883): 401, 410; 29 (August 1, 1885): 491, 496; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (August 12, 1882): 390 (quotations), 392–93; (July 23, 1887): 373.

  41. Lubitz, “Tenement Problem,” 217; Times, February 4, 6, 7, 1860; Harper’s Weekly 4 (April 7, 1860): 211.

  42. Report of the Council of Hygiene, 73; Herald, June 10, 1863.

  43. Old Brewery, 104.

  44. William F. Barnard, Forty Years at the Five Points: A Sketch of the Five Points House of Industry (New York, 1893), 2; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (January 1858): 219; Robinson, Hot Corn,
209, 307. Maps of the Collect Pond seem to show that water covered the ground that would eventually become Cow Bay, so the story describing the origin of its name may be apocryphal.

  45. Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (May 1857): 20, 22; (June 1857): 68; (October 1857): 165; (January 1858): 225; Commercial Advertiser, August 23, 1849; George G. Foster, New York by Gas-Light (1850; Berkeley, 1990), 125; Robinson, Hot Corn, 209, 307; Ross, What I Saw in New York, 96; dwellings 105–15, pp. 26–28, Sixth Ward, 1850 United States census; dwellings 82–87, third election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census. Although neither the 1850 nor the 1855 census takers appears to have entered all of the Cow Bay tenements, the census does accurately reflect the continuing African-American exodus from the neighborhood.

  46. Old Brewery, 199; Express in Samuel B. Halliday, The Lost and Found; or Life Among the Poor (New York, 1859), 211–12 (this tour is also described in the Times, July 1, 1859).

  47. Robinson, Hot Corn, 70.

  48. Ibid., 212–13; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (June 1857): 70.

  49. “Report . . . into the Condition of Tenant Houses in New-York and Brooklyn,” 18; Evening Post, May 17, 1849.

  50. “Report . . . into the Condition of Tenant Houses in New-York and Brooklyn,” 18. I cannot document that Honora Moriarty and her daughters were Lansdowne immigrants, but their surname and residence in a building particularly dominated by emigrants from that estate make it likely that the identification is accurate.

  51. Times, July 1, 1859; Express in Halliday, Lost and Found, 207–8; New York Illustrated News (February 18, 1860): 216; account 6524, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books; Ira A. Glazier, ed., The Famine Immigrants: Lists of Irish Immigrants Arriving at the Port of New York, 1846–1851, 7 vols. (Baltimore, 1983–86), 6: 647; family 227, p. 136, second district, Sixth Ward, 1860 United States census.

  52. Dwelling 31, second division, third electoral district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census; accounts 4983, 5800, 6773, and 7504, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books; wedding of Daniel Haley, October 14, 1857, marriage register, Transfiguration Church.