41. Old Brewery, 88.
42. Voice from the Old Brewery, May 1, 1869. By 1857, even the House of Industry emphasized the religious motivation behind its distribution of food and clothing. “We call our entire work a mission work, even to feeding the hungry and clothing the naked,” stated its Monthly Record. “Nothing but illness . . . will be accepted as an excuse for the absence of any individual” from morning or evening prayer services. Such statements, so unlike Pease’s earlier remarks, suggest that the organization began to change significantly after he left Five Points in early 1857 to take charge of the House of Industry’s Westchester County farm—Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (1857): 125–26.
43. America As I Found It. By the Mother of Mary Lundie Duncan (New York, 1852), 87–88.
44. “Five Points Mission: Historical Presentation,” Five Points Mission Records. For the shoe club, see Voice from the Old Brewery, passim.
45. Times, December 20, 1852; Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890; New York, 1971), 151.
46. Irish-American, February 25, October 14 (“Publicola”), 1854; Freeman’s Journal, October 15, 1853.
47. Entries of September 20, October 18, 1856, Adoption Case Histories, entry of January 6, 1857, Board Minute Book, Five Points Mission Records; Francis E. Lane, American Charities and the Child of the Immigrant (Washington, DC, 1932), 88; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (1858): 228–29.
48. Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (1857): 3–5, 127.
49. Entry of October 7, 1856, Board Minute Book, Five Points Mission Records; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (1857): 125–27; Barnard, Forty Years at the Five Points, 34; Rosenberg, Religion, 234–35.
50. Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (1858): 252–54, 265.
51. Annual Report of the Trustees of the Five Points House of Industry (1855): 15–18; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (1857): 15; Halliday, Lost and Found, 95–96.
52. Tribune, November 22, 1856. For the Children’s Aid Society adoption efforts, see Miriam Z. Langsam, Children West: A History of the Placing-Out System of the New York Children’s Aid Society, 1853–1890 (Madison, 1964).
53. Entry of July 1, 1856, Board Minute Book, Five Points Mission Records; Belleville Weekly Democrat, April 17, 1858, quoted in Marilyn I. Holt, The Orphan Trains: Placing Out in America (Lincoln, 1992), 99–100; Voice from the Old Brewery 1 (June 1, 1861): 24; John Morrow, A Voice from the Newsboys (New York, 1860), 95–98; Langsam, Children West, 27; Brace, Dangerous Classes, 241. The mission and House of Industry never released figures on the precise number of children they gave up for adoption.
54. Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 2 (1859): 235–36; Annual Report of the New-York Ladies’ Home Missionary Society 23 (1867): 31; entries of November 8, 23, 1856, Adoption Case Histories, Five Points Mission Records.
55. Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society 8 (1861): 11–12; Adoption Case Histories, Five Points Mission Records; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry, passim.
56. Annual Report of the Trustees of the Five Points House of Industry (1855): 15–16; entry of August 15, 1856, Adoption Case Histories, Five Points Mission Records.
57. Solon Robinson, Hot Corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated (New York, 1854), 52–75 and ff. (quotation p. 54). Mission officials groused that Maggie was never really as wild as Pease claimed, but the life story of the Maggie they describe is so different from that of Robinson’s “Wild Maggie” that they must be different children—Old Brewery, 182–90.
58. Entries of September 16, 1856, January 29, 1857, Adoption Case Histories, Five Points Mission Records.
59. Entries of July 25, December 5, 1856, Adoption Case Histories, Five Points Mission Records.
60. Entries of August 20, October 14, 1856, Adoption Case Histories, Five Points Mission Records; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 2 (1858): 66–67.
61. Annual Report of the Trustees of the Five Points House of Industry (1855): 16–18.
62. Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (1857): 136–42.
63. Morrow, Voice from the Newsboys, 91–92.
64. Annual Report of the Trustees of the Five Points House of Industry (1855): 20–24.
65. Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (1857): 87–90.
66. Ibid., 212–14.
67. Irish-American, April 23, 1859.
68. Irish-American, November 14, 1863; Freeman’s Journal, May 2, 1863; “Public Charities,” Catholic World 17 (1873): 3–7, in Langsam, Children West, 52; Brace, Dangerous Classes, 234–35.
69. Lane, American Charities and the Child of the Immigrant, 118; Holt, Orphan Trains, 62–63, 99–100; Langsam, Children West, 56, 65; Brace, Dangerous Classes, 268.
70. Clarkson, History of the Church of Zion and St. Timothy, 60–63; John G. Shea, The Catholic Churches of New York City (New York, 1878), 693–96; Transfiguration Church: A Church of Immigrants, 1827–1977 (New York, 1977), 9; Jay P. Dolan, “Urban Catholicism: New York City, 1815–1865” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1970), 313–17; Dolan, The Immigrant Church: New York’s Irish and German Catholics, 1815–1865 (Baltimore, 1975), 47–51 (quotation).
71. Freeman’s Journal, February 20, 1847; Holt, Orphan Trains, 106–7, 112–13; Langsam, Children West, 48; John F. Maguire, The Irish in America (London, 1868), 512–14.
72. Evening Post, February 7, 1854; Old Brewery, 64; Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion 4 (January 15, 1853): 48; America As I Found It, 90–91.
73. Annual Report of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor 16 (1859): 39; Harper’s Weekly, February 21, 1857; Times, February 7, 1870; Monthly Record of the Five Points House of Industry 1 (October 1857): 151; 3 (March 1860): 250; Voice from the Old Brewery 1 (February 1, 1861): 5; Seventeenth Annual Report of the New-York Ladies’ Home Missionary Society (1861): 7–8.
74. Times, February 7, 1870; Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York, 1957): 169–70.
75. John W. Pratt, “Boss Tweed’s Public Welfare Program,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly 45 (1961): 396–411.
CHAPTER NINE
1. Express, Tribune, Times, and Herald, July 6, 1857; Lyman Abbott, Reminiscences (Boston, 1915), 35.
2. Times, March 8, 1878 (William), June 26, 1899, p. 2 (quotation).
3. New York City Board of Aldermen, Documents 25 (1858), doc. 6, p. 53 (Walsh as assistant foreman).
4. Trow’s New York City Directory for 1859–60 (New York, 1859), 881; Trow’s New York City Directory for 1860–61 (New York, 1860), 889; Trow’s New York City Directory for 1861–62 (New York, 1861), 884; p. 927, district two, Sixth Ward, 1860 United States manuscript census, National Archives. For conditions in these tenements, see Denis T. Lynch, The Wild Seventies, 2 vols. (1941; Port Washington, NY, 1971), 2: 293–95; Times, July 2, 1871, August 27, 1873; Harper’s Weekly 17 (September 13, 1873): 796.
5. Leader, November 27, 1858 (William), January 3, 1863 (Tammany general committee); Irish-American, November 19, 1859 (William); Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1862 (New York, 1862), 57 (street inspector); Times, June 26, 1899, p. 2 (superintendent of markets); Frank Moss, The American Metropolis, 3 vols. (New York, 1897), 3: 52 (quotation). The polling place for this district was, by 1860, located at the same address as Walsh’s saloon. Although the Herald stated that the voting station there was located in a butcher shop, it was undoubtedly placed at that address to allow Walsh to monitor the voting—Herald, November 7, 1860.
6. William’s break with Tammany apparently began in 1864, when he had a falling-out with Brennan and ran for Congress against the Tammany nominee, Brennan confidant Morgan Jones—Times, March 8, 1878.
7. Times, March 8, 1878, June 26, 1899, p. 2; Matthew P.
Breen, Thirty Years of New York Politics Up-to-Date (New York, 1899), 529–31; Trow’s New York City Directory for the Year Ending May 1, 1871 (New York, 1870), 1257.
8. Times, June 26, 1899, p. 2.
9. Times, December 23 (“pothouse,” p. 4), 24 (“inevitably become,” p. 4), 25 (p. 4), 26 (p. 9), 1886.
10. Times, December 25, 1886, p. 4, April 13, 1888, p. 5.
11. Times, November 1, 1915, p. 11; Herald, June 26, 1899, p. 4 (quotation); John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 24 vols. (New York, 1999), 22: 563.
12. Times, June 26, 1899, p. 2.
13. Times, June 26 (quotation, p. 2), 30 (p. 14), 1899.
14. Herald, October 26, November 4, 1853 (political advertisements in which Kerrigan is identified as head of the movement to defeat the regular Democratic nominee for council from the twelfth district), October 17, 1860; Times, August 8, 1887, p. 2 (quotations), November 3, 1899, p. 7; Irish-American, October 29, 1853; Florence E. Gibson, The Attitudes of the New York Irish Toward State and National Affairs, 1848–1892 (New York, 1951), 58.
15. Times, March 23, 1855, August 8, 1887, p. 2 (dominated board of councilmen).
16. Herald, January 10, 30, 1856, November 2, 1899; Tribune, January 30, 1856.
17. Herald, December 3, 1852, January 20, June 7, 1853; statement of Schell, December 13, 1852, in indictment of December 23, 1852, New York County District Attorney’s Indictment Papers, New York Municipal Archives; Times, January 20, 24, 1853; Irish-American, October 29, 1853; Gibson, Attitudes of the New York Irish, 58; family 424, dwelling 85, fourth election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York State manuscript census, Old Records Division, New York County Clerk’s Office. For Mathews’s status as a sporting man, see Times, January 14, 1885, and Ned James to the Editor, Clipper, January 24, 1885. Gilmartin may have been one of the many Five Pointers who had emigrated from North Sligo. That surname, not a common one in New York at the time, was very prominent among the Palmerston and Gore Booth immigrants, and is still common today in Ahamlish and Drumcliff.
18. Times, November 5–6, 1856; Citizen, November 15, 1856 (“regular running street fight”); Tribune, November 5, 1856; Herald, November 5, 1856; testimony of William A. Smith (“Mulberry St. Boys”), July 6, 1857, reel 89, New York County Coroner Inquests. In Ireland in the 1850s, the term “Molly Maguires” referred to members of a secret anti-British society who pledged allegiance to a mythical woman who symbolized their struggle against injustice. The term was later adopted by Irish labor activists in Pennsylvania coalmining regions.
19. Jerome Mushkat, Fernando Wood: A Political Biography (Kent, OH, 1990), 41–75; Leader, September 14, 1856; Irish-American, October 26, 1850, November 4, 1854, November 15, 1856, October 24, 1857 (for Wood’s popularity with the Irish).
20. Irish-American, July 11, 1857; The Diary of George Templeton Strong, ed. Allan Nevins, 5 vols. (New York, 1952), 2: 342; Times, May 1, 1857; Harper’s Weekly (January 31, 1857): 65.
21. Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (New York, 1992), 143–45; Irish-American, August 9, 1856; Tribune, July 6, 1857 (quotation).
22. Citizen, November 22, 1856 (quotation); Irish-American, January 31, 1857, August 14, 1858 (quotation); European, December 6, 1856; Irish News, June 19, 1858; Tribune, February 1, 1850; Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825–1863 (1949; Port Washington, NY, 1965), 164; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York, 1999), 838–39.
23. Tribune, July 4, 6, 1857; Herald, July 4, 1857; testimony of Joseph Souder, July 10, 1857, reel 89, New York County Coroner Inquests; Times, July 6, 1857.
24. Herbert Asbury, Gangs of New York, 113, quoted in Paul S. Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, 1978), 69; Diary of George Templeton Strong, 2: 346; Times, July 11, 13 (final quotation), 1857.
25. “UN QUI SAIT” to the Editor, July 11, 1857 (“beat all the new policemen”) in Times, July 13, 1857; testimony of William A. Smith (“hooting & cheering”), Richard Quinn, July 6, 1857, microfilm roll 89, New York County Coroner Inquests (Smith’s and Quinn’s testimony is paraphrased in the Times, July 7, 1857); testimony of Josiah McCord in Herald, July 6 (“Bowery boys”), 7 (for 40 Bowery as Mathews’s headquarters), 10 (testimony of Metropolitan Police Sergeant Joseph Souder on Florentine), 1857; Morning Express, July 6, 1857 (“coffee and cake” and Mathews); Tribune, July 6, 1857 (final two quotations).
26. American Republican Party General Executive Committee Minute Book, New-York Historical Society; Herald, October 29, 1854 (“reform” nominations); family 363, dwelling 64, second division, third electoral district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census (previous white native-born male head of household was a twenty-two-year-old sailor in family 211); Trow’s New York City Directory for 1855–56 (New York, 1855), 292. While it cannot be proven that the “reform” slate was the Know Nothing ticket, given Florentine’s father’s affiliation and the Know Nothing tendency to use this ploy in 1854, this seems the most logical explanation. For this tactic, see Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, 52–53.
27. Testimony of William Y. Taft, July 8, 1857, reel 89, New York County Coroner Inquests; Tribune, July 6, 1857.
28. Tribune, July 6, 1857.
29. Tribune and Herald, July 6, 1857; Abbott, Reminiscences, 33 (“blood streaming”).
30. Morning Express and Tribune, July 6, 1857; Clipper, January 24, 1885 (on Mathews and Kerrigan as sporting men).
31. Marcus Horbalt [sic] to the Editor, July 7, 1857, in Times, July 8, 1857; Herald, July 7 (testimony of Charles Francis), 10 (Molony to the Editor), 1857; account 8355, Emigrant Savings Bank Test Books, New York Public Library (Roche).
32. Testimony of Thomas Harvey, July 6, 1857, reel 89, New York County Coroner Inquests; Morning Express, July 8, 1857.
33. Annual Report of the Chief Engineer of the Fire Department (New York, 1858), in Board of Aldermen, Documents 25 (1858), doc. 6, pp. 53, 171; Leader, October 31, 1857 (Horbelt as election inspector); Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1858 (New York, 1858), 102; family 904, dwelling 144, fifth election district, Sixth Ward, 1855 New York census (Horbelt); Trow’s New York City Directory for 1856–57 (New York, 1856), 701 (Roche).
34. Herald (“busily engaged”) and Morning Express, July 6, 1857.
35. Morning Express and Herald, July 6, 1857.
36. Abbott, Reminiscences, 34; Robert F. Lucid, ed., The Journal of Richard Henry Dana, Jr., 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1968), 2: 823–24.
37. Tribune and Times, July 6, 1857; Joshua Brown, “The ‘Dead Rabbit’-Bowery Boy Riot: An Analysis of the Antebellum New York Gang” (M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1976), 24–27.
38. Herald and Times, July 6, 1857. The press occasionally referred to Kerrigan and Mathews’s followers as the “Atlantic Boys” because many of them belonged to Atlantic Hose Company No. 14.
39. Times and Tribune, July 6–7, 1857; Evening Post, July 6, 1857; Brown, “‘Dead Rabbit’-Bowery Boy Riot,” 165–69. Brown lists twelve killed in the riot, but I believe that one of those he lists as killed—William “Fatty” Walsh—is actually Thomas Walsh or his brother William, both of whom survived the riot. No Walsh was found in any of the coroner’s reports. But Brown does not include among the dead Metropolitan Thomas Sparks, who died as a result of injuries sustained at the hands of the mob on Chatham Street in the early morning hours of the Fourth. Consequently, I believe the figure of twelve killed is accurate.
40. Herald, July 10, 1857; Times, July 8, 10, 13 (Clancy quotation), 17 (Gallagher quotation), 1857; Citizen, August 1, 1857; testimony of policeman James Irving, July 8, 1857, testimony of policeman Thomas Dutcher, July 10, 1857, statements of prisoners Edward Doyle, Patrick Mooney, Patrick McBride, Thomas McGaraghy, and Barney Gallagher, July 9, 1857, reel 89, New York County Coroner Inquests. The outcome of the case of Owen Gilmartin, who demanded a jury trial, could not be determined.
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br /> 41. For the Astor Place death toll, see Edward K. Spann, The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840–1857 (New York, 1981), 237–38; Peter G. Buckley, “To the Opera House: Culture and Society in New York City, 1820–1860” (Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1984), 3.
42. Burrows and Wallace, Gotham, 839; William D’Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States: 1858–1886 (Washington, DC, 1947), 159–66, 244–48.
43. Citizen, July 18, 1857. That a large number of the Roche Guard hailed from lower Mulberry is indicated by both the location of Roche’s original saloon and the addresses given by those questioned by the coroner in the death of William Cahill. The questioning indicated the coroner’s belief that these men were active members of the Roche Guard. The Times identified these men as John Roche (probably William’s brother) of 5 Mulberry; Philip Murphy of 9 Mulberry; Thomas White of 11 Mulberry; Michael Finane of 6 Mulberry; and Patrick Lane, whose address was not given—Times, July 7, 1857.
44. Irish-American, July 18, 1857; Herald, July 6, 1857.
45. Tribune, July 6, 1857; testimony of Louis B. Pike, July 8, 1857, reel 89, New York County Coroner Inquests.
46. Journal of Richard Henry Dana, Jr., 2: 824–25; Times, July 7, 1857.
47. Times, July 20, 1857.
48. Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1858, 143, 438; Herald, May 14, 1876 (Dowling); Times, October 10, 1870 (Jourdan).
49. Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York for 1859 (New York, 1859), 116 (Kerrigan’s clerkship).
50. Leader, July 2, 1864.
51. Leader, October 2, 1858. In his listing of Sixth Warders who had held citywide office, Clancy did not include Andrew H. Mickle, elected mayor in 1846. Mickle, a Protestant, had been born in a Five Points tenement with pigs in both the basement and attic, but married the daughter of his employer, a successful tobacco dealer. Mickle later took over the business and died a millionaire. By the time he became mayor, he had not lived in the Sixth Ward for decades, explaining why Clancy did not include him in his account of Sixth Warders who had held important city offices—Harlow, Old Bowery Days, 302.
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