A Dog Fight in Kit Burns’ Rat Pit
known as Snatchem, a member of the Slaughter House gang, and, in the opinion of a contemporary journalist, “a beastly, obscene ruffian, with bulging, bulbous, watery-blue eyes, bloated face and coarse swaggering gait.” This noble thug, besides plying his trade as a river pirate, was an official bloodsucker at the bare-knuckle prize fights which were frequently held in the Fourth Ward and Five Points dives. With two revolvers in his belt and a knife in his boot-top, Snatchem was an important figure at these entertainments, and when one of the pugilists began to bleed from scratches and cuts inflicted by his opponent’s knuckles, it was Snatchem’s office to suck the blood from the wound. He pridefully described himself as a “rough-and-tumble-stand-up-to-be-knocked-down-son-of-a-gun,” and a “kicking-in-the-head-knife-in-a-dark-room fellow.” Apparently he was all of that. Another attraction of Sportsmen’s Hall was Kit Burns’ son-in-law, known as Jack the Rat. For ten cents Jack would bite the head off a mouse, and for a quarter he would decapitate a rat.
A famous Water street resort was the Hole-in-the-Wall, at the corner of Dover street, run by One-Armed Charley Monell and his trusted lieutenants, Gallus Mag and Kate Flannery. Callus Mag was one of the notorious characters of the Fourth Ward, a giant Englishwoman well over six feet tall, who was so called because she kept her skirt up with suspenders, or galluses. She was bouncer and general factotum of the Hole-in-the-Wall, and stalked fiercely about the dive with a pistol stuck in her belt and a huge bludgeon strapped to her wrist. She was an expert in the use of both weapons, and like the celebrated Hell-Cat Maggie of the Five Points, was an extraordinary virtuoso in the art of mayhem. It was her custom, after she had felled an obstreperous customer with her club, to clutch his ear between her teeth and so drag him to the door, amid the frenzied cheers of the onlookers. If her victim protested and struggled, she bit his ear off, and having cast the fellow into the street she carefully deposited the detached member in a jar of alcohol behind the bar, in which she kept her trophies in pickle. She was one of the most feared denizens of the water front, and the police of the period shudderingly described her as the most savage female they had ever encountered.
The dive over which Gallus Mag exercised a belligerent supervision became the most vicious resort in the city, and was finally closed by Captain Thorne of the Fourth Ward police after seven murders had been committed there in a period of less than two months. It was in the Hole-in-the-Wall that Slobbery Jim and Patsy the Barber, both desperate criminals and prominent members of the Daybreak Boys, had their famous fight. On one of their prowling expeditions along the river front Slobbery Jim and Patsy the Barber came upon a German immigrant, newly landed, walking beneath the sea wall at the Battery. They set upon him, knocked him unconscious with a club, and robbed him of twelve cents, all the money he possessed. They then cast him into the harbor, where he drowned. The thugs repaired to the Hole-in-the-Wall to divide their plunder, and Slobbery Jim pointed out that since he had hoisted the heavy German over the wall he should have at least seven and possibly eight of the twelve cents. But Patsy the Barber held out for an equal division, contending with equal logic that if he had not struck the German with a club Slobbery Jim might not have been able to push him into the water. The infuriated Slobbery Jim promptly seized the prominent nose of Patsy the Barber between his teeth, and Patsy countered with a knife thrust between the ribs, which, however, did little damage. For more than half an hour the two thugs rolled and tumbled about the floor of the dive, unmolested either by One-Armed Charley or Gallus Mag, for it was recognized that they were not engaged in an ordinary brawl, but were desperate men fighting for a principle. Finally Slobbery Jim obtained possession of the knife and stabbed Patsy the Barber in the throat, and when the latter fell fainting from loss of blood, promptly stamped him to death with hobnailed boots. Slobbery Jim escaped, and was not again heard of until the Civil War, when he appeared as a captain in the Confederate Army.
Although Water street was the site of the most vicious dives of the Fourth Ward and the haunt of the most desperate gangsters, there was little to choose between it and other thoroughfares of the district. Cherry street, through which George Washington and John Hancock had once strolled, was the headquarters of the crimps, who operated boarding houses where sailors were robbed and murdered and from which they were shanghaied. During the late sixties an investigating committee estimated that 15,000 sailors were annually robbed of more than $2,000,000 in these places. Dan Kerrigan, a noted pugilist who fought a three-and-a-half hour bare-knuckle battle with Australian Kelly, operated a house at No. 110 Cherry street, and Mrs. Bridget Tighe, a celebrated female crimp, had a place at No. 61. Next door to Kerrigan’s, at No. 111, was the famous house kept by Tommy Hadden, the most notorious crimp of them all, who also owned a boarding house in Water street. He served two terms in state’s prison for robbing and shanghaiing sailors. Both Hadden and Kit Burns had been leaders of the Dead Rabbits and other early Five Points gangs, but as they grew older they wearied of the brawling of Paradise Square and removed to the Fourth Ward, where they opened dives and waxed fat and prosperous, and became notable ornaments of the water front. However, they occasionally returned to the Points and accompanied the Rabbits and Plug Uglies on important forays.
Sailors were frequently murdered as they slept in the old Fourth Ward Hotel at Catherine and Water streets, and their bodies disposed of through trapdoors opening into underground passages which led to the docks. The first Jack-the-Ripper murder in New York is said to have occurred in this house, when an old hag known as Shakespeare was cut to pieces by a half-witted bar fly commonly called Frenchy. Shakespeare always claimed that she had come from an aristocratic family, and that in her youth she had been a celebrated actress in England. She supported her contention by reciting, in return for a bottle of swan gin, every female role in Hamlet, Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice, and throughout the Ward she was regarded as an authority on the drama. Through the agency of Thomas Byrnes, Chief of Police, Frenchy was released after a few years’ imprisonment. He always maintained his innocence, and the belief was widespread that he had been framed, and that Shakespeare had been murdered by the original Jack the Ripper, who was then operating in London. For several years there had been much professional jealousy between Scotland Yard and the New York police, and Chief Byrnes had publicly boasted that the Ripper would have been caught had he committed his crimes in New York. He defied the English criminal to come to the United States, and soon afterward Shakespeare was killed. Many investigators believed that Jack the Ripper had accepted the challenge, and that the police had arrested Frenchy to save their professional honor. In the London killings there were various indications that Jack the Ripper was a seafarer.
Another famous sailors’ house was the Pearsall & Fox Hotel, in Dover street near Water, which had a dance hall in the basement, houses of prostitution on the second and third floors, and rooms to hire on the fourth and fifth. Still another resort of this type was the Glass House at No. 18 Catherine Slip, kept by Martin Bowe, member of a celebrated Fourth Ward family. Bowe had three brothers. Jack, Jim, and Bill, all of whom were notorious shooters, cutters, and thieves. Not only did they lead other gangsters in forays upon the docks and upon ships lying in the East River, but acted as fences and disposed of the loot obtained by other gangs. One of their principal followers was Jack Madill, who was bartender at the Glass House for more than a year. He was finally sent to prison for life after he had killed his wife because she refused to help him rob a drunken sailor, or, in the expressive argot of the period, roll a lush.
The most notorious of all the Fourth Ward dives was the dance house kept by John Allen in Water street, at No. 304. Allen was a member of a pious and well-to-do family of upper New York state, and was set apart by his parents to follow in the footsteps of his brothers, two of whom became Presbyterian preachers and the third a Baptist. But about 1850 Allen became dissatisfied with the prospective rewards of a ministeri
al career, and abandoned his studies in Union Theological Seminary, removing with his wife to the Fourth Ward. There they opened a dance hall and house of prostitution, staffing it with twenty girls who wore low black bodices of satin, scarlet skirts and stockings, and red-topped boots with bells affixed to the ankles. One of the inmates of the Allen establishment soon after the Civil War was a daughter of the Lieutenant-Governor of a New England state. She had come to New York to seek her fortune and had been caught in the meshes of the procurers, who then abounded throughout the city and operated almost without hindrance. The dive soon became one of the principal recreational centers for the gangsters of the Fourth Ward, and Allen operated it with such shrewdness that within ten years he had banked a fortune of more than $100,000, and had become widely known as the Wickedest Man in New York, a sobriquet first applied to him by Oliver Dyer in Packard’s Monthly. His resort became one of the worst the city has ever seen, worthy to rank alongside such notorious, but later, places as the Haymarket, McGuirk’s Suicide Hall, Paresis Hall, and Billy McGlory’s famous Armory Hall.
Allen had definitely left the service of the Lord when he embarked on a Fouth Ward business career, but he never entirely forgot his early training. Curiously enough, although a drunkard, a thief, a procurer, and possibly a murderer, he remained a devoutly religious man, and insisted upon surrounding his unholy occupation with a holy atmosphere. His house opened for business each afternoon at one o’clock, but on three days a week he gathered his harlots, bartenders, and musicians in the bar-room at noon and
there read and expounded a passage from the Scriptures. Each of the cubicles to which his women repaired with their customers was supplied with a Bible and such religious literature as Allen could obtain, and on gala nights New Testaments were given away as souvenirs. He subscribed to practically every religious paper and magazine published in the United States, and took several copies each of the New York Observer and The Independent^ his favorites. He scattered them about the dance hall and bar-room, and on every table and bench reposed a hymnbook called The Little Wanderers’ Friend then a popular volume. Allen was always ready to lead his harlots and their customers in a religious sing-song, and it was not unusual for the house to resound with the noise of hymns. The harlots’ favorite was “There is Rest for the Weary”:
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for you,
On the other side of Jordan,
In the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the Tree of Life is blooming,
There is rest for you.
The various magazine and newspaper articles which detailed the curious manner in which Allen operated his house attracted much attention, and the evangelical clergymen of the city determined to take advantage of the situation. The Rev. A. C. Arnold of the Howard Mission was especially indefatigable, and made frequent visits to the house, trying to induce Allen to permit an ordained preacher to conduct his meetings. Finally, on May 25, 1868, the Rev. Mr. Arnold led a detachment of six clergymen and as many devout laymen into the dangerous purlieus of Water street, and found Allen so drunk that he was unable to protest when they held a prayer meeting from midnight until four o’clock in the morning. Accounts of this meeting were published, and for several months there was a regular procession of curiosity seekers and ministers to the Water street dive, so that Allen’s regular patrons were driven away and his profits dwindled. The preachers continued to hold meetings whenever Allen could be found drunk enough to give his consent, and at length they prevailed upon him to abandon his nefarious business. At midnight on August 29, 1868, the doors of the dance hall were closed for the first time in seventeen years, and the next morning this notice was posted upon the door:
THIS DANCE HOUSE IS CLOSED
NO GENTLEMEN ADMITTED UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY THEIR WIVES, WHO WISH TO EMPLOY MAGDALENES AS SERVANTS.
Prayer Meeting in John Allen’s Dance House
The next day the Rev. Mr. Arnold announced that John Allen had been converted and reformed, and that he would never resume his former occupation. A few days later the preachers began to hold revival meetings in the dance house, and on the Sunday following Allen attended services at the Howard Mission, and the Rev. Mr. Arnold asked the congregation to pray for him, which was done. This circumstance aroused much interest, as did the public meetings, which continued daily until about the first of October. Meanwhile the ministers had prevailed upon Kit Burns to turn his rat pit over to them for services, and on September 11 meetings were also begun in Tommy Hadden’s boarding house in Water street, although none were held in his Cherry street resort. Bill Slocum’s gin mill in Water street was also overrun by the preachers, but Slocum, Burns, and Hadden would not attend services at the Mission, although they permitted themselves to be mentioned in prayers.
So much commotion aroused by the Water street revival that about the middle of September a communication to the public was issued, signed by the Rev. Mr. Arnold, Dr. J. M. Ward, Rev. H. C. Fish, Rev. W. C. Van Meter, Rev. W. H. Boole, Rev. F. Browne, Oliver Dyer, Rev. Isaac M. Lee and the Rev. Mr. Huntington. This document professed to set forth thé facts about the Water street preaching. It said that Allen, Burns, .Slocum, and Hadden had surrendered their premises for serviced because they had been converted, and that they were co-operating with the preachers solely through religious motives. The communication said also that the congregations had, to a very large extent, been composed of sailors and residents of the Fourth Ward, and that some of the most wretched outcasts of the district had been present and had, in many instances, requested prayer and private rehgious instruction.
These things were solemnly set forth by the preachers as facts, and were accepted as such until the New York Times, after an extended investigation, exposed the entire scheme. The Times declared that there was not a religious revival in progress among the denizens of the water front, and that Slocum, Allen, and Tommy Hadden were not converted or reformed men. It was shown that the preachers and their financial backers had hired the Allen dive for one month, paying him $350 for the privilege of holding prayer meetings and other religious services, and binding him, as part of the bargain, to sing hymns and pray, and to assert that he had given the house free of charge because of his love for the preachers. The newspaper continued:
As for the other men’s reformation, that is as absolutely a piece of humbuggery as Allen’s. Tommy Hadden is playing the pious with the hope of being secured from trial before the Court of General Sessions for having recently shanghaied a Brooklynite, and also in consideration of a handsome moneyed arrangement with his employers—similar to that of Allen. Kit Burn’s rat pit will be opened for religious services on Monday next; but the pubUc need not be deceived in the matter of his reformation. His motive, like that of the others, is to make money, and, be it known, he is to receive at the rate of $150 per month, for the use of his pit for an hour every day. Slocum desired prayers at the Howard Mission on Sunday last, but it is understood that he is not to be lionized because the missionaries are not willing to pay him a high enough rental for his hall. As for the general movement carried on in Water street, under the false pretense that these men have voluntarily and from purely religious motives, offered their saloons for public worship, and have, themselves, determined to reform, very little more need be said. The daily prayer meetings are nothing more than assemblages of religious people from among the higher grades of society, in what were once low dance halls. There is an unusual amount of interest displayed at these meetings, and much good, doubtless, has been accomplished thereby, but it is also a fact that there are but a few, and sometimes none, of the wretched women, or ruffianly, vicious men, of that neighborhood present. Those classes are not reached at all, and it is false to say that a revival is going on among them. The character of the audiences and the exercises are similar to that of the noon meeting at the Fulton street church.
The New York World gave the following account of one of the meetings in Kit Burns’ rat pit:
> The Water street prayer meetings are still continued. Yesterday at noon a large crowd assembled in Kit Burns’ liquor shop, very few of whom were roughs. The majority seemed to be business men and clerks, who stopped in to see what was going on, in a casual manner.
In a few minutes after twelve the pit was filled up very comfortably, and Mr. Van Meter made his appearance and took up a position where he could address the crowd from the center of the pit, inside the barriers. The roughs and dry goods clerks piled themselves up as high as the roof, tier after tier, and a sickening odor came from the dogs and debris of rats’ bones under the seats.
Kit stood outside, cursing and damning the eyes of the missionaries for not hurrying up.
Kit said, “I’m damned if some of the people that come here oughtn’t to be clubbed. A fellow ’ud think they had never seen a dog-pit before. I must be damned good looking to have so many fine fellows looking at me.”
Snatchem was a prominent figure at all of the Water street revival services. His intelligence was not of a very high order, and he was easily aroused by the fiery exhortations of the preachers and the emotional appeal of the shouting and hymn-singing. He asked for prayers at every meeting, and frequently embarrassed the ministers by publicly inquiring when they would receive the barrel of water from the river Jordan, which he had been assured would wash away his sins. But he was practically abandoned to whatever fate the Devil had in store for him when, having been asked why he wanted to go to Heaven, he replied that he wanted to be an angel and bite off Gabriel’s ear.
The Gangs of New York Page 6