Five Points

by Tyler Anbinder

  48. Account 2320, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books; dwellings 87 and 92, fourth election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census; Doggett’s New York City Street Directory for 1851 (New York, 1851), which lists, alphabetically by street, the proprietors of many Five Points businesses; Bell Diary, October 9, 1850.

  49. William Burns, Life in New York, In Doors and Out of Doors (New York, 1851), unpaginated; Irish-American, February 24, 1850; accounts 1017, 1049, 2579, 3035, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books; family 467, fifth election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census.

  50. Solon Robinson, Hot Corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated (New York, 1854), 44; The Diary of George Templeton Strong, ed. Allan Nevins, 5 vols. (New York, 1952), 2: 149; Harlow, Old Bowery Days, 176.

  51. Robinson, Hot Corn, 44–47, 104–11; Tribune, October 10, 1853; Diary of George Templeton Strong, 2: 148.

  52. George Ellington [pseud.], The Women of New York; Or, The Under-World of the Great City (New York, 1869), 605–6 (“brisk business”); Samuel Halliday, The Lost and Found; or Life Among the Poor (New York, 1859), 118–23; The Old Brewery and the New Mission House at the Five Points, By Ladies of the Mission (New York, 1854), 168–69.

  53. “C.L.B.” (Charles Loring Brace) in Times, March 12, 1853; Foster, New York by Gas-Light, 115–19; Irish-American, February 17, 1850.

  54. Edward W. Martin [pseud. for James D. McCabe], The Secrets of the Great City (Philadelphia, 1868), 261–64; Owen Kildare, My Mamie Rose (New York, 1903), 45–51; “C.L.B.” in Times, March 12, 1853; Morrow, Voice from the Newsboys, 128–32; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (December 29, 1855): 43; Times, October 16, 1902; family 79, sixth election district, Sixth Ward, 1870 United States manuscript census (identified as Sullivan in Daniel Czitrom, “Underworlds and Underdogs: Big Tim Sullivan and Metropolitan Politics in New York, 1889–1913,” Journal of American History 78 [1991]: 539–40).

  55. Sun, April 17, 1889, p. 1 (Sullivan); Martin, Secrets of the Great City, 264–65; Browne, Great Metropolis, 425–33; Charles L. Brace, The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years Work Among Them, 3rd ed. (New York, 1872), 205; Seventh Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society (1860): 15–16.

  56. Third Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society (New York, 1856): 26; Philip Wallys, About New York: An Account of What a Boy Saw in His Visit to the City (New York, 1857), 43–44, 51–52; Stansell, City of Women, 50–51; Morrow, Voice from the Newsboys, 37–38, 41; Browne, Great Metropolis, 95; Seventh Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society (New York, 1860): 5; Groneman, “‘Bloody Ould Sixth,’” 127.

  57. Evening Post, November 18, 1854; Tribune, February 3, 1855.

  58. Tribune, February 3, 8, 16, 20, 1855; Eleventh Annual Report of the New-York Ladies’ Home Missionary Society (New York, 1855), 8–9; Irish-American, December 23, 1854, January 20, 1855; Eleventh Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (New York, 1854), 37; Twelfth Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (New York, 1855), 42.

  59. Fourteenth Annual Report of the New-York Ladies’ Home Missionary Society (New York, 1858), 8; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (November 1857): 171 (not quoted); Herald, October 21, 1857; Fifteenth Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (New York, 1859), 30.

  60. Irish-American, June 9, 1855.

  61. Gerard J. Lyne, “William Steuart Trench and the Post-Famine Emigration from Kenmare to America, 1850–1855,” Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society 25 (1992): 92–94; William S. Trench, Realities of Irish Life (London, 1868), 126–27.

  62. Catharine Bradley to “My dear Uncle John,” October 6, 1847, Eliza Quin to her parents, January 22, 1848, in Irish University Press Series of British Parliamentary Papers, “Emigration” series (Shannon, 1969), 5: 125, 128 (hereafter cited as IUP-BPP, Emigration).

  63. “Bridget Rooney to her father Pat Rooney,” January 15, 1848, BR146/10/13, Pat McGowan to his parents, December 21, 1847, BR146/10/13, Broadlands Papers.

  64. Eliza Quin to her parents, January 22, 1848, in IUP-BPP, Emigration, 5: 128; Pat McGowan, to his parents, December 21, 1847, BR146/10/13, Broadlands Papers.

  65. Irish-American, July 30, 1853.

  66. Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation (Cambridge, MA, 1959), 55; Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York, 1985), 295–99, 326. For a recent dissent from the standard interpretation, see Joseph P. Ferrie, “Up and Out or Down and Out? Immigrant Mobility in the Antebellum United States,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 26 (1995): 33–55, and Joseph P. Ferrie, Yankeys Now: Immigrants in the Antebellum United States, 1840–1860 (New York, 1999).

  67. One in seven Five Pointers getting married at the neighborhood’s Catholic church was a Kerry native; more than 75 percent of them had once lived on the Lansdowne estate. Given that about two-thirds of the neighborhood’s 14,000 residents in 1855 were Irish natives or their children, and that nearly all of them were Catholics, one can estimate that roughly 1,000 Five Points inhabitants were former Lansdowne tenants. If we take the size of the average Lansdowne nuclear family to be four persons, then their 153 accounts could represent 60 percent of the 1,000 Lansdowne emigrants living in Five Points, but because a few persons opened more than one account, I put the figure at 50 percent instead.

  The Lansdowne account numbers are 776, 987, 1235, 2250, 2639, 3067, 3424, 3461, 3666, 3735, 4163, 4277, 4408, 4409, 4542, 4737, 4738, 4739, 4745, 4774, 5115, 5155, 5303, 5304, 5433, 5479, 5735, 5763, 5800, 5953, 6143, 6144, 6468, 6473, 6474, 6524, 6605, 6623, 6773, 6797, 6805, 6975, 7014, 7061, 7085, 7193, 7225, 7358, 7464, 7504, 7524, 7525, 7596, 7660, 7705, 7747, 7759, 7912, 8060, 8528, 8592, 8675, 8687, 8923, 9102, 9130, 9150, 9201, 9202, 9203, 9212, 9276, 9304, 9358, 9359, 9438, 9445, 9561, 9572, 9611, 9732, 9776, 9785, 9860, 9923, 10010, 10153, 10164, 10222, 10267, 10292, 10368, 10411, 10465, 10524, 10576, 10646, 10647, 10693, 10712, 10727, 10747, 10754, 10804, 10835, 10836, 10876, 10885, 11113, 11218, 11236, 11342, 11368, 11390, 11455, 11488, 11500, 11552, 11560, 11566, 11650, 11730, 11754, 11807, 11808, 11873, 11895, 11910, 11971, 11979, 11998, 12001, 12036, 12040, 12041, 12046, 12053, 12057, 12084, 12120, 12215, 12240, 12259, 12309, 12310, 12311, 12316, 12317, 12344, 12419, and 12420.

  68. Accounts 4737, 4738, 4739, and 4745, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books.

  69. Accounts 1235, 3424, 7464, 12046, and 12419, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books.

  70. Accounts 5479 and 9445, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books and Account Ledgers. The highest balance achieved by the Lansdowne immigrants in their bank accounts was, on average, $200. The highest balance achieved by non-Lansdowne Five Pointers was, on average, $234.

  71. [Burn], Three Years Among the Working-Classes, 14–15; Church Monthly (March 1858), in Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 2 (June 1858): 34–35; Eliza Quin to “Dear Parents,” January 22, 1848 (written from the Sixth Ward Hotel), in IUP-BPP, Emigration, 5: 128.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1. Thomas L. Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, 2 vols. (London, 1864), 2: 159; Sherlock Bristol, The Pioneer Preacher: Incidents of Interest, and Experiences in the Author’s Life (1887; Urbana, 1989), 66–67.

  2. Times, January 14, 1885; Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, 2: 159.

  3. Clipper, January 24, 1885; Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, 2: 159.

  4. Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, 2: 159; Bristol, Pioneer Preacher, 66–67.

  5. Times, January 14, 1885; Clipper, January 24, 1885; Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, 2: 159–61 (quotation); Matthew P. Breen, Thirty Years of New York Politics Up-to-Date (New York, 1899), 307–8; National Police Gazette, February 7, 1885, p. 5, and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly 59 (January 24, 1885): 380. Most biographies refer to Rynders’s customhouse post as that of “weigher,” but I have utilized the title listed in Doggetts’ New York City Di
rectory because it was probably provided by Rynders himself—Doggetts’ New York City Directory for 1847–48 (New York, 1847), 356.

  6. Evening Post, January 25, 27, 1845; Times, January 14, 1885.

  7. The Nation (November 4, 1875): 288; Richard B. Stott, Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York (Ithaca, 1990), 239; Breen, Thirty Years, 233.

  8. New York Board of Aldermen, Documents 25 (1858), doc. 6, pp. 53–54, 161, 171; J. Frank Kernan, Reminiscences of the Old Fire Laddies (New York, 1885), 23–24 (Matthew Brennan), 501 (Fitzgerald); Times, October 30, 1884, p. 5 (Owen Brennan); Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1855 (New York, 1855), 168.

  9. William M. Ivins, Machine Politics and Money in Elections in New York City (1887; New York, 1970), 13–14, 25; Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1856 (New York, 1856), 225; “A Policeman” in Tribune, October 20, 1856.

  10. Ivins, Machine Politics, 9–11; Breen, Thirty Years, 39–43.

  11. Kernan, Reminiscences, 47.

  12. Ibid., 47–48; John Doggett, Jr., ed., The New York City Directory for 1842 (New York, 1842), 100.

  13. Kernan, Reminiscences, 50; Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen 18 (1839–40): 324, 410; 21 (1841): 269. For extra hiring at election time, see Tribune, March 13, 1846.

  14. Ivins, Machine Politics, 20; Kernan, Reminiscences, 49.

  15. Kernan, Reminiscences, 49–50. On the influence of money and fighters in securing nominations citywide, see Herald, October 29, 30, 1850, March 10, 1855; Breen, Thirty Years, 40–43.

  16. Kernan, Reminiscences, 48–50.

  17. Tribune, April 12, 1848; Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1849 (New York, 1849), 319; Herald, November 6, 1850 (“free indulgence”). See also Harper’s Weekly (November 13, 1858): 724 (for an image of a Five Points polling place); People v. James H. Lally, et al., April 27, 1841, New York County District Attorney’s Indictment Papers, New York Municipal Archives; [George G. Foster], New York in Slices: By an Experienced Carver (New York, 1849), 49. Whig fighters sometimes instigated polling place brawls as well, though such cases were rare after 1845. See Tom Quick, “Old Sports of New York,” Leader, June 16, 1860.

  18. Freeman’s Journal, October 27, 1849 (“grossest caricatures”); Aurora, April 11, 1842, in Walt Whitman of the New York Aurora, ed. Joseph J. Rubin and Charles H. Brown (State College, PA, 1950), 68; Herald, April 11, 1842; Tribune, April 12, 1842; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York, 1999), 630–31.

  19. Walt Whitman of the New York Aurora, 58–59, 67–68.

  20. Herald, April 14, 1842. The Herald’s account of this contest is not completely consistent. While its detailed story on the fourteenth implied that Shaler was the regular nominee, its election coverage the previous day stated that Ferris had won the endorsement of the primary meeting. And I have found no evidence that Donoho ever served as the ward’s collector.

  21. Herald, April 14, 1842.

  22. Walt Whitman of the New York Aurora, 77, 78, 80; Tribune, April 12 (“most savage”), 13, 1842; Herald, April 14, 1842.

  23. Herald, April 14, 1842 (first quotation); Walt Whitman of the New York Aurora, 77; Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1842–43 (New York, 1842), 74 (Donoho’s victory). Donoho later petitioned the board of aldermen for compensation “for damage done to his premises, on the evening of the 12th of April instant, by a mob”—Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen 22 (1842): 441.

  24. The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851, ed. Allan Nevins (New York, 1936), 596. If true, Whitman’s statement that Mike Walsh and the Spartans attacked those speaking against the Maclay Act at a public meeting in City Hall Park further complicates an assessment of the rioters’ motivations—Walt Whitman of the New York Aurora, 58.

  25. Kernan, Reminiscences, 50–51; Herald, April 11, 1849. Biographical details of Kelly’s early life are not readily available, in part because his name is so common. He first appears in a city directory as a Five Points saloonkeeper in 1843 at 74 Bayard Street. He also served as a Sixth Ward school commissioner in 1847. John Doggett, Jr., ed., The New-York City and Co-Partnership Directory (New York, 1843), 189; Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1847 (New York, 1847), 231 (which lists his address as 78 Bayard).

  26. Herald, September 26, 27 (letter to the editor correcting erroneous report of Foote’s victory), 1849.

  27. I was able to identify the address and occupation of 52 of the 68 Foote nominees and 46 of the 62 Kelly nominees in the 1849–50 or 1850–51 New York directories.

  The “Other merchants” category for Kelly includes two bakers who seem to own their own bakeries, while the Foote “Merchant” category includes an agent, a boardinghouse keeper, and a hotel proprietor. The “Unskilled” category includes a laborer, a “bill poster,” and a “carman.” The “Difficult to categorize” nominee was James “Jumps” Hogan, who according to Brennan kept a “policy [lottery] office” on Centre Street. The tickets can be found in the Herald, September 26, 1849.

  28. Herald, October 17, 19, 21 (all quotations), 24, 1849. Ridaboek’s status as a coal dealer is from his testimony in a trial reported in the Times, January 20, 1853, by which point he served on the influential Tammany general committee.

  29. Herald, October 17, 19, 21, 24, 1849; Irish-American, October 28 (quotation), November 4, 1849.

  30. Herald, October 15, 17, November 7, 1849; Clarion, November 5, 1849.

  31. Tribune, October 31, November 1, 1849; Herald, October 31, November 1, 3, 1849.

  32. Clarion, November 5, 1849; Herald, November 7, 1849; Tribune, November 8, 1849 (“uproarious”); Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1850 (New York, 1850), 409 (official returns).

  33. Tribune, December 1, 1849.

  34. Leader, October 6, 1860 (quotation); Times, November 18, 1869. The various obituaries and biographical sketches upon which this description of Brennan’s early life is based contradict each other in many details. In such cases, I have relied on the Leader, whose editor John Clancy was Brennan’s close friend. For Brennan’s older brother Timothy, see Times, December 4, 1881, p. 7. I have inferred that Brennan’s mother was widowed around the time of his birth because his father’s last listing in the city directory is in the 1821–22 edition, in which he is listed as living at 13 Ferry Street. After a hiatus of a few years in which the family does not appear in the directory, Hannah is listed as a “huckster” living at Old Slip—Longworth’s American Almanac (New York, 1821), 90.

  35. Times, January 20, 1879; Herald, January 20, 1879 (“coffee, cakes”); Tribune, January 21, 1879 (“fleet of foot”).

  36. Doggett’s New York City Directory for 1844–45 (New York, 1844), 48; Doggett’s New York City Directory for 1845–46 (New York, 1845), 50; Times, January 20, 1879.

  37. Leader, November 22, 1862.

  38. Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1848 (New York, 1848), 100.

  39. Herald, January 20, 1850; Tribune, May 9, 1850; [Wendell P. Garrison], William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life, 3 vols. (New York, 1885–89), 3: 285–300; Kernan, Reminiscences, 53–54.

  40. Kernan, Reminiscences, 53–54; Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1851 (New York, 1851), 345–46; Herald, November 8, 1850 (election results by ward). Rynders won 967 votes in the Sixth Ward, while the two Democratic candidates for assistant alderman, the highest ward-wide office up for grabs that year, captured 1,328 votes between them. One cannot be sure that the events described by Kernan took place in 1850, though given Rynders’s appearance in that year’s race for assembly, my inference that Kernan is describing the 1850 primary is probably accurate. Alvin F. Harlow, Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street (New York, 1931), 302–3, implies that the events described by Kernan took place before 1849 and attributes the anti-Irish rhetoric used by Rynders in fomenting the Astor Place Riot to resentment aga
inst the Irish inspired by this electoral defeat, but there is no evidence I know of to substantiate Harlow’s dating.

  Newspapers reported Rynders’s nomination at Tammany Hall without comment (see Herald, October 10, 1850), so my assessment of how he captured the nomination despite the opposition of Sixth Ward voters cannot be confirmed either. Evidence of growing Irish-American resentment toward Rynders’s attempts to influence Sixth Ward politics before the fall of 1850 can be found in the Irish-American, February 24, 1850. Following the lead of Breen, who asserted that Rynders “had long ruled the Sixth Ward with a rod of iron,” many historians have erroneously stated that Rynders did for a time control Sixth Ward politics. But Kernan’s account is the only one not contradicted by contemporary evidence (Breen would have been a young child in 1850). Breen, Thirty Years, 518–19; Lloyd Morris, Incredible New York (New York, 1951), 32; Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (New York, 1928), 43. Rynders attributed his defeat in the race for assembly to “money circulating somewhere in the Third ward. If our side had had it, I might, perhaps, tell you a different story”—Herald, November 6, 1850.

  41. Brennan became captain on November 20, 1851—Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1852 (New York, 1852), 101. Barr’s role in Brennan’s appointment is mentioned in the Times, January 20, 1879. The statement in one of Brennan’s obituaries that he had served as ward assessor before becoming police captain appears to be untrue, as he did not serve in that capacity (according to the Manual of the Corporation) in either 1850 or 1851.

  42. Ivins, Machine Politics, 13–14; Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1855, 168; Tribune, November 1, 1856 (quotations); Leader, October 9, 1858.

  43. Herald, November 3, 5, 6, 8, 1854 (all advertisements except election results on the eighth). Brennan captured 2,823 votes, to 1,854 for “Captain Kissner” of the Fourteenth Ward police, 1,145 for John McGrath, and 353 for Whig David W. Clark—Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1855, 368–69, 379.