53. For these calculations, I only considered buildings with four or more apartments. The sample blocks include two with large German populations (the east side of Centre from Worth to Leonard Streets and the east side of Mott Street from Canal to Pell) and three that were more heavily Irish (the east side of Mulberry from Canal to Bayard, the west side of Mulberry from Park to Bayard, and the east side of Baxter from Park to Bayard). Source for composition of all sample blocks is the 1855 New York State census, except Mulberry from Canal to Bayard, which is from the 1860 census.
54. Dwellings 12–30, fourth election district, dwellings 45–57, 117–31, fifth election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census; dwellings 24–52, third district, Sixth Ward, 1860 United States census.
55. Dwelling 39, second division, third election district, dwellings 67 and 68, fourth election district, dwellings 83–87 (Cow Bay), 138–40 (Park Street), 147–49 (Mulberry Street), fifth election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census.
56. Marriage register, Transfiguration Church; William Bennett, Narrative of a Recent Journey of Six Weeks in Ireland (London, 1847), 129–30; 119 of the 185 residents identified on these blocks in the Transfiguration marriage records were natives of Kerry. Ninety-four of those 119 had been born on the Lansdowne estate.
57. Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books; marriage register, Transfiguration Church.
58. “Report . . . into the Condition of Tenant Houses in New-York and Brooklyn,” 17–18, 28; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 3 (March 1860): 248–49; 4 (April 1860): 12–14; Robinson, Hot Corn, 212–13.
59. Tribune, April 1, 1856, November 29, 1864; DeForest and Veiller, eds., Tenement House Problem, 1: 408; Report of the Select Committee Appointed to Investigate the Health Department (1859), 31, in Lubitz, “Tenement Problem,” 32–33, 133; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 3 (March 1860): 248–50; Times, November 8, 1853 ($8.50), July 2, 1871; 1860 and 1870 Manhattan Records of Real Estate Assessment, New York Municipal Archives.
60. Griscom, Sanitary Condition, 6; Brace in Times, January 22, 1853.
61. Times, March 31, 1856. In 1847, two Five Points property managers, the Osborn brothers, paid $35 in taxes, $6.50 in insurance, $26 for painting, $35 for masonry work, $50 for carpentry, $21 for wallpapering, and $7 for glass installation at 70 Mott. Other miscellaneous repairs brought the total expenses for the year to $200.66. This left a net income of less than $100, which if the property was worth $3,000 or so, represented a 3 percent rate of return, not an outrageous profit. Expenses, however, did not usually consume so large a proportion of the landlord’s income. At 79 Orange Street, for example, the Osborns recorded just $5.38 spent on repairs in 1847; they also spent $41.84 for taxes and insurance, $13.56 to evict a tenant, and $15.74 in commissions to the carpenter they hired to collect the rents. Subtracting these figures from the $437.65 in rent collected leaves $361.13. Of that total, the Osborns took $200 for managing the property for the year, leaving the owner, Cornelius Van Rensselaer, $161.13 in profit for the year. If the property was worth $3,000, that amounted to a return on assets of about 51/2 percent. If the owner still paid mortgage interest on this property, then these profits would be reduced further—Charles F. Osborn Account Book, George L. Osborn Account Book, New York Public Library.
62. Charles F. Osborn Account Book, George L. Osborn Account Book; Doggett’s New York City Directory for 1848–49 (New York, 1848), 182, 408; Doggett’s New York City Directory for 1849–1850 (New York, 1849), 149, 231, 302; Doggett’s New York City Street Directory for 1851, 262; 1850 United States manuscript census, Sixth Ward, pp. 204 (McDermott), 221 (Trainor), 225 (Hall). The Osborn account books refer to this building first as 66 Mott and later as 70 Mott because the block was renumbered sometime in late 1848 or early 1849.
63. Tribune, April 7, 1856, April 15, 1859; Express in Halliday, Lost and Found, 214. See also the Courier and Enquirer in Times, December 1, 1851.
64. Herald, January 30, February 17, 1858.
65. Isaac N. P. Stokes, Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909, 6 vols. (1915–28; New York, 1967), 5: 1859; Times, March 9 and October 13, 1853; Express in Halliday, Lost and Found, 212.
66. Barnard, Forty Years at the Five Points, 13.
CHAPTER FOUR
1. For a list of working-class New York memoirs, see Richard B. Stott, Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York (Ithaca, 1990), 279–83. The closest thing to a Five Points memoir, though it says very little about Five Points itself, is the autobiography of pickpocket George Appo in the Society for the Prevention of Crime Papers, Columbia University, much of which was reprinted in Timothy J. Gilfoyle, “A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Autobiography of George Appo,” Missouri Review 16 (1993): 34–77. For Appo’s story, see Chapter Thirteen.
2. John Morrow, A Voice from the Newsboys (New York, 1860), 15–26.
3. Ibid., 26.
4. Ibid., 26–35.
5. Ibid., 36–41.
6. Ibid., 49, 54.
7. Ibid., 61–85. Johnny’s memoir does not mention the House of Industry in connection with Willie’s adoption, but for the links between the two programs see Chapter Eight.
8. Morrow, Voice from the Newsboys, 96–111.
9. Ibid., 100–17.
10. Notes on the back of a photo of the gravestone of John Morrow, Box 16, Peter J. Eckel Newsboy Collection, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library; Record of Deaths in the City of Brooklyn, 1861, p. 66, New York Municipal Archives.
11. John McCormack, for example, who had toiled as a laborer in County Tipperary until his emigration in May 1851, held the same menial status in Five Points five months later. See account 1247, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books, New York Public Library; 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), 7: 193.
12. My calculation of the current value of Healy’s $700 in savings is based on John J. McCusker, “How Much Is That in Real Money?” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 101 (1991): 327–32, which suggests a multiplier of 16 to convert dollar amounts from the 1850s into 1991 dollars. All subsequent estimates of the current value of nineteenth-century monetary figures are based on McCusker’s work.
13. “Passengers Sent out from Lord Palmerston’s Estate to Quebec April 1847,” BR146/9/4, Broadlands Papers, University of Southampton; account 3976, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books. Healy’s movements through the city can be traced in Doggett’s New York City Directory for 1850–1851 (New York, 1850), 229; Rode’s New York City Directory for 1850–1851 (New York, 1850), 233; Trow’s New York City Directory for 1855–56 (New York, 1855), 375; Trow’s New York City Directory for 1856–57 (New York, 1856), 368; Trow’s New York City Directory for 1857–58 (New York, 1857), 369–70; and Trow’s New York City Directory for 1858–59 (New York, 1858), 357. He can also be found listed in dwelling 107, sixth election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York State manuscript census, Old Records Division, New York County Clerk’s Office, and in family 95, dwelling 15, third district, Sixth Ward, 1860 United States manuscript census, National Archives. This Owen Healy should not be confused with a second saloonkeeper of the same name who lived on Cherry Street. See account 26110, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books.
14. All percentages have been rounded to nearest whole number except those under one, which are rounded to nearest tenth of a percent. Five Points employment statistics are based on my 1855 census sample, whose composition is described in Chapter Two, note 10. “All New York” categories adapted from Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825–1863 (1949; Port Washington, NY, 1965), 214–18, and Stott, Workers in the Metropolis, 92.
The occupational categories are made up of the following vocations: “Professionals” includes physicians, clergymen, lawyers, and architects. “Business owners” includes manufacturers, merchants, hotel and boardinghouse keepers,
restaurateurs, “proprietors,” clothiers, dry goods dealers, shopkeepers, wine merchants, grocers, and food and liquor dealers. It is impossible, through the census, to determine whether a “grocer” or “saloon keeper” actually owned his or her own business or merely worked in someone else’s. For the sake of consistency, all grocers and saloonkeepers have been placed in this category. “Petty entrepreneurs” includes peddlers and ragpickers. “Lower-status white-collar workers” were overwhelmingly clerks, but this category also includes a few salesmen, government workers, actors, and male teachers. The “Skilled workers” category is composed of assayers, bakers, blacksmiths, bleachers, boilermakers, brass workers, brewers and distillers, bricklayers, burnishers, butchers, cabinetmakers, carpenters, carvers, caulkers, chandlers, coach and wagon makers, confectioners, coopers, coppersmiths, dyers, factory workers, furriers, glassmakers, glaziers, guilders, gunsmiths, hatters, ironworkers, jewelers, leather workers, locksmiths, masons, mechanics, musical instrument makers, oil, paint, and paper makers, painters, plasterers, plumbers, polishers, potters, precious metal workers, precision instrument makers, printers, refiners, roofers, sailmakers and riggers, sawyers, shipbuilders, shoemakers, stonecutters, tailors, textile workers, tobacco workers, turners, upholsterers, varnishers, and weavers. “Unskilled workers” are defined as cartmen, chimney sweeps, hostlers and grooms, laborers, policemen (so classified because people from any occupational category took these jobs when offered), porters, sailors, waiters, and watchmen. Finally, “Difficult to classify” includes adult students, authors, conductors or other railroad employees, drovers, expressmen, farmers, financiers, fishermen, florists, gamblers, gardeners, gentlemen, hunters, scavengers, speculators, superintendents, and undertakers. For the women, “Needle trades” include cap makers, dressmakers, mantilla makers, milliners, seamstresses, “tailoresses,” vest makers, and wigmakers. “Servants” includes servants, cooks, and nurses. Some better versed in the nuances of the antebellum trades or labor history in general may quibble with my placement of certain workers in certain groups, or even the categories themselves. I believe, however, that these groupings suffice for the purpose of drawing general comparisons between Five Pointers and the rest of the New York population.
15.
16.
17. The Eighteenth Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (New York, 1861): 21–23; Tribune, July 9, 1845; Carol Groneman, “The ‘Bloody Ould Sixth’: A Social Analysis of a New York City Working-Class Community in the Mid-Nineteenth Century” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1973), 99; Edith Abbott, “Wages of Unskilled Labor in the United States, 1850–1900,” Journal of Political Economy 13 (June 1905): 363.
18. Groneman, “‘Bloody Ould Sixth,’” 97–99.
19. Tribune, July 9, 1845; Stott, Workers in the Metropolis, 119.
20.
Deposits in Five Pointers’ Bank Accounts by Month, 1852–54
Source: Accounts 300, 319, 347, 375, 396, 450, 451, 461, 472, 528, 572, 643, 685, 710, 722, 738, 740, 776, 789, 817, 866, 897, 906, 924, 927, 945, 987, 1015, 1017, 1022, 1024, 1049, 1063, 1104, 1185, 1235, 1245, 1247, 1258, 1270, 1310, 1314, 1319, 1322, 1333, 1360, 1373, 1380, 1387, 1400, 1444, 1445, 1669, 1710, 1760, 1875, 1885, 1935, 2072, 2075, 2116, 2165, 2250, 2260, 2265, 2270, 2281, 2287, 2320, 2332, 2335, 2378, 2403, 2405, 2406, 2440, 2464, 2467, 2639, 2661, 2663, 2674, 2709, 2723, 2977, 2978, 2995, 3035, 3067, 3093, 3155, 3204, 3424, 3461, 3543, 3580, 3597, 3651, 3666, 3735, 3805, 3830, 3914, 3976, 4069, 4120, 4134, 4137, 4163, 4188, 4191, 4201, 4203, 4205, 4228, 4248, 4255, 4260, 4277, 4336, 4344, 4382, 4383, 4386, 4408, 4409, 4427, 4454, 4456, 4497, 4516, 4525, 4529, 4536, 4542, 4544, 4572, 4592, 4602, 4617, 4654, 4735, 4737, 4738, 4739, 4740, 4745, 4751, 4774, 4780, 4808, 4820, 4838, 4873, 4888, 4960, 4976, 4983, 5036, 5098, 5115, 5134, 5137, 5138, 5152, 5155, 5172, 5192, 5209, 5225, 5230, 5240, 5243, 5245, 5249, 5266, 5276, 5286, 5290, 5303, 5304, 5354, 5360, 5367, 5394, 5403, 5409, 5419, 5433, 5454, 5479, 5514, 5583, 5607, 5612, 5631, and 5649, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books and Account Ledgers. See also Cormac O’Grada, “Immigrants, Savers, and Runners: The Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank in the 1850’s,” Center for Economic Research Working Papers Series (1988), no. 2.
21. Virginia Penny, The Employments of Women: A Cyclopaedia of Woman’s Work (Boston, 1863), 110; Greeley, Recollections, and Five Points Monthly Record in Stott, Workers in the Metropolis, 112–17, 164 (quotations); “Report of the Committee to Examine into the . . . Commissioners of Emigration,” Documents of the Assembly of the State of New-York, Seventy-fifth Session, 1852 (Albany, 1852), doc. 34, 176–77; Harper’s Weekly (July 4, 1857): 418–19.
22. Nineteenth Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (New York, 1862): 22. The Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1858 (New York, 1858), 336–37, lists three licensed pawnshops and twenty-six licensed second-hand shops in the Five Points district. Many other second-hand shops operated without licenses.
23. British Mechanic’s and Labourer’s Hand Book and John White, Sketches from America, in Stott, Workers in the Metropolis, 128, 131–32, 140; [James D. Burn], Three Years Among the Working-Classes in the United States During the War (London, 1865), 11.
24. United States Senate, Committee on Education and Labor, Report of the Senate Committee Upon Relations Between Labor and Capital (Washington, D.C., 1885), 1: 413–14; Stott, Workers in the Metropolis, 140; Groneman, “‘Bloody Ould Sixth,’” 105.
25. Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (New York, 1984), 119; Tribune, September 26 (“pot boiling”), November 15, 1845, July 26, 1850 (“half-starved”).
26. Tribune, June 10, 1850, March 20, 21, 29, 31, 1854; Herald, July 23 and 25, November 14, 1850, October 3, 1853; Robert Crowe, Reminiscences of Robert Crowe, the Octogenerian [sic] Tailor (New York, 1901), 26.
27. Tribune, September 5, 9 (quotation), 1845, May 8, 1850, May 27, 1853; Ernst, Immigrant Life, 79, 215.
28. Dwelling 57, third electoral district, second division, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census; J. D. Eisenstein, “The History of the First Russian-American Jewish Congregation,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 9 (1901): 68.
29. [William M. Bobo], Glimpses of New-York City, by a South Carolinian (Charleston, 1852), 118 (“suspenders”); Alvin F. Harlow, Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street (New York, 1931), 173–74 (“sha-a-d”); account 1828, Emigrant Saving Bank Test Books and Account Ledgers; Hyman Grinstein, The Rise of the Jewish Community of New York, 1654–1860 (Philadelphia, 1945), 411.
30. Ernst, Immigrant Life, 86; Junius H. Browne, The Great Metropolis: A Mirror of New-York (Hartford, 1869), 98–99; William H. Bell Diary, October 9, 1850, New-York Historical Society.
31. Browne, Great Metropolis, 277; George G. Foster, New York by Gas-Light (1850; Berkeley, 1990), 126; “Autobiography of George Appo,” typescript, pp. 1–3, Society for the Prevention of Crime Papers, Columbia University; Evening Post, January 21, 1854; Harlow, Old Bowery Days, 377.
32. Tribune, May 8, 13, 14 (quotation), 1850; John F. Maguire, The Irish in America (London, 1868), 232–33. For neighborhood construction accidents, see Tribune, December 4, 1850; Herald, November 5, 1853.
33. Irish-American, July 30, 1853 (Coogan quotation); Stott, Workers in the Metropolis, 102, 120; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (June 1857): 61; 2 (April 1959): 274; Annual Report of the New-York Ladies’ Home Missionary Society (1868): 8; entry of December 15, 1856, Adoption Case Histories, Five Points Mission Records, United Methodist Church Archives, Drew University.
34. Herald, June 11, 1853 (Mulberry Street shirt sewer); Tribune, June 8, 1853; Times, March 1, 1855.
35. Wirt Sikes, “Among the Poor Girls,” Putnam’s Magazine, n.s. 1 (April 1868): 433; accounts 1875 and 12057, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books.
36. Accounts 3652 and 4542, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books; Tribune, M
arch 27, 1851.
37. Tribune, June 8, 1853; Sikes, “Among the Poor Girls,” 436.
38. Herald, October 9, 1850, June 11, 1853; Times, February 24, 27, 1855.
39. Herald, October 7, 1851 (“caprice”), June 11, 1853; Tribune, March 27, 1851, March 22, 1853.
40. Tribune, September 3, 1845, June 8, 1853; Herald, June 11, 1853 (“Song of the Shirt”).
41. [George G. Foster], New York in Slices: By an Experienced Carver (New York, 1849), 53; Tribune, June 8, 1853 (quotation); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (Urbana, 1982), 118. Many Five Points women became seamstresses because the work could be done at home while caring for one’s children.
42. Tribune, November 6, 1845; account 2405, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books and Account Ledgers. Naylan listed her address as 32 Orange Street when she opened her account, but it is very unlikely that she worked at that address. She was probably one of the domestics who commuted to work.
43. [Bobo], Glimpses of New-York City, 187; Tribune, November 6, 1845.
44. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (March 13, 1880): 27; John F. Maguire, The Irish in America (London, 1868), 315, 317–18.
45. Tribune, November 6, 1845; statement of Ann Kelly, April 10, 1859, reel 75, New York County District Attorney’s Indictment Papers, New York Municipal Archives.
46. Carl N. Degler, “Labor in the Economy and Politics of New York City, 1850–1860: A Study of the Impact of Early Industrialism” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1952), 124–25; Tribune, September 16–17, 1845; Times, March 2, 1859.
47. Irish-American, May 28, 1853 (including quotation from Sun), May 16, 1857; Herald, May 13, 1853; Degler, “Labor in the Economy,” 137–38; Ernst, Immigrant Life, 67.
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