The cellars of the Old Brewery were divided into some twenty rooms, which had previously been used for the machinery of the brewing plant, and there were about seventy-five other chambers above-ground, arranged in double rows along Murderers’ Alley and the passage leading to the Den of Thieves. During the period of its greatest renown the building housed more than 1,000 men, women and children, almost equally divided between Irish and Negroes. Most of the cellar compartments were occupied by Negroes, many of whom had white wives. In these dens were born children who lived into their teens without seeing the sun or breathing fresh air, for it was as dangerous for a resident of the Old Brewery to leave his niche as it was for an outsider to enter the building. In one basement room about fifteen feet square, not ten years before the Civil War, twenty-six people lived in the most frightful misery and squalor. Once when a murder was committed in this chamber (a little girl was stabbed to death after she had been so foolish as to show a penny she had begged) the body lay in a corner for five days before it was finally buried in a shallow grave dug in the floor by the child’s mother. In 1850 an investigator found that no person of the twenty-six had been outside of the room for more than a week, except to lie in wait in the doorway for a more fortunate denizen to pass along with food. When such a person appeared he was promptly knocked on the head and his provisions stolen.
Throughout the building the most frightful living conditions prevailed. Miscegenation was an accepted fact, incest was not
The Old Brewery
uncommon, and there was much sexual promiscuity; the house swarmed with thieves, murderers, pickpockets, beggars, harlots, and degenerates of every type. Fights were of almost constant occurrence, and there was scarcely an hour of the day or night when drunken orgies were not in progress; through the flimsy, clapboarded walls could be heard the crashing thud of brickbat or iron bar, the shrieks of the unhappy victims, the wailing of starving children, and the frenzied cries of men and women, and sometimes boys and girls, writhing in the anguish of delirium tremens. Murders were frequent; it has been estimated that for almost fifteen years the Old Brewery averaged a murder a night, and the Cow Bay tenements almost as many. Few of the killers were ever punished, for unless the police came in great force they could not hope to leave the Old Brewery alive, and the inhabitants were very close-mouthed. Even if the police learned the identity of a murderer he could seldom be found, for he dived into the burrows of the Points and fled through the underground passageways. Many of the inhabitants of the Old Brewery and of the Cow Bay dens had once been men and women of some consequence, but after a few years in the dives they sank to the level of the original inhabitants. The last of the Blennerhassetts, second son of the Harman Blennerhassett who was associated with Aaron Burr in the great conspiracy to found a Western Empire, is said to have died in the Old Brewery, as did others whose families had been of equal prominence.
The churches and welfare agencies professed great distress over conditions at the Five Points for many years, but nothing was done for the rescue and regeneration of the district until the late 1830’s, when the Central and Spring street Presbyterian congregations sent missionaries into the area. But the population of the Points was principally Irish and devoutly Catholic, and the missionaries were assailed as Protestant devils and driven out by the gangsters and other criminals. In 1840 the Broadway Tabernacle, a Congregational church, was erected in Broadway near Anthony, now Worth street, and sporadic efforts were made to do welfare work at the Five Points. But nothing of importance was accomplished until 1850, when the Rev. Lewis Morris Pease and his wife were sent into the Points by the Ladies’ Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. They established their home in a room on Cross street, near the Old Brewery, and opened a mission.
Pease was one of the great humanitarian workers of his time, and to his labors, more than to those of any other one man, were due the eventual regeneration of the Five Points and the abolition of its dens of vice and misery. But he was not long permitted to continue his work without interruption, and within a year was dismissed by the ladies of the Missionary Society, who thereafter made every effort to belittle his deeds. In 1854 they wrote a history of the Methodist mission at the Points, and published it in a book called The Old Brewery, In it Pease’s name was not mentioned; he was merely referred to in rather uncomplimentary terms as “our first missionary.” It was the ladies’ idea that he should do little except preach the Gospel and obtain converts and members for the church, and for a few months Pease and his wife bowed to the will of the Society. But he soon realized that the basic troubles of the Five Points were ignorance and poverty, and that vice and crime could not be combated successfully unless the conditions which caused them were removed. To this end he established schools for both aduhs and children, and opened workrooms to which the clothing manufacturers sent materials to be made up into cheap garments under the supervision of the missionary and his wife.
The Dying Mother—A Scene in the Old Brewery
The missionary’s connection with the Society ended when a group of ladies, visiting the Points to view the creatures whom their munificence was assuring places amid the glories of the hereafter, learned that he had not preached a sermon for two days. He had been too busy carting great loads of cloth from the manufacturing houses in Broadway to his Five Points workrooms. He was succeeded by the Rev. J. Luckey, a gifted evangelist. Pease and his wife refused to leave the Points, but opened an undenominational mission, and continued their efforts to bring learning and labor to Paradise Square. Out of this mission grew the Five Points House of Industry, which remains one of the fine civilizing and educational agencies of the district. Its first building was erected in 1856 in Anthony street, and in 1864 the old tenements in Cow Bay were purchased and demolished to make way for a larger and better equipped House.
Scene in the Old Brewery
A committee consisting of Daniel Drew and others negotiated for the purchase of the Old Brewery on behalf of the Missionary Society, and in 1852 bought it for $16,000, of which the city authorities gave $1,000. The inhabitants, both human and rodent, were turned out, and on December 2, 1852, the demolition of the old rookery was begun. On January 27,1853, Bishop Jones of the Methodist Episcopal Church laid the cornerstone of the new mission, erected on the site of the Old Brewery at a cost of $36,000. The laborers who wrecked the Old Brewery carried out several sacks filled with human bones which they had found between the walls and in the cellars, and night after night gangsters thronged the ruin searching for the treasure which rumor had it was buried there. None was found, but many holes were dug, and there was much tapping and plumbing of hidden passages and wall spaces. The destruction of the Old Brewery was accomplished amid great rejoicing, and the Rev. T. F. R. Mercein wrestled with the muse and produced a poem in honor of the occasion:
God knows it’s time thy walls were going!
Through every stone Life-blood, as through a heart, is flowing;
Murmurs a smother’d groan Long years the cup of poison filling From leaves of gall;
Long years a darker cup distilling From wither’d hearts that fall!
O! this world is stern and dreary,
Everywhere they roam;
God! hast thou never call’d the weary Have they in thee no home?
Foul haunt! a glorious resurrection Springs from thy grave!
Faith, hope and purified affection.
Praising the ‘‘Strong to save!”
God bless the love that, like an angel.
Flies to each call.
Till every lip hath this evangel,
“Christ pleadeth for us all!”
Oh! this world is stern and dreary.
Everywhere they roam;
Praise God! a voice hath called the weary.
In thee is found a home!
EARLY GANGS OF THE BOWERY AND FIVE POINTS
THE ORIGINAL Five Points gangs had their genesis in the tenements, saloons, and dance halls of the Parad
ise Square district, but their actual organization into working units, and the consequent transformation of the area into an Alsatia of vice and crime, closely followed the opening of the cheap green-grocery speak-easies which soon sprang up around the Square and along the streets which debouched into it. The first of these speakeasies was established about 1825 by Rosanna Peers in Center street just south of Anthony, now Worth street. Piles of decaying vegetables were displayed on racks outside the store, but Rosanna provided a back room in which she sold the fiery liquor of the period at lower prices than it could be obtained in the recognized saloons. This room soon became the haunt of thugs, pickpockets, murderers, and thieves. The gang known as the Forty Thieves,
An Encounter between a Swell and a “Bowery B’hoy.' Five Points in 1827.
which appears to have been the first in New York with a definite, acknowledged leadership, is said to have been formed in Rosanna Peers’ grocery store, and her back room was used as its meeting-place, and as headquarters by Edward Coleman and other eminent chieftains. There they received the reports of their henchmen, and from its dimly lit corners dispatched the gangsters on their warlike missions. The Kerryonians, composed of natives of County Kerry, Ireland, was also a product of Rosanna’s enterprise. This was a small gang which seldom roamed beyond Center street and did little fighting; its members devoted themselves almost exclusively to hating the English.
The Chichesters, Roach Guards, Plug Uglies, Shirt Tails, and Dead Rabbits were organized and had their rendezvous in other grocery stores, and in time these emporiums came to be regarded as the worst dens of the Five Points, and the centers of its infamy and crime. The Shirt Tails were so called because they wore their shirts on the outside of their trousers, like Chinamen, and the expressive appellation of the Plug Uglies came from their enormous plug hats, which they stuffed with wool and leather and drew down over their ears to serve as helmets when they went into battle. The Plug Uglies were for the most part gigantic Irishmen, and included in their membership some of the toughest characters of the Five Points. Even the most ferocious of the Paradise Square eye-gougers and mayhem artists cringed when a giant Plug Ugly walked abroad looking for trouble, with a huge bludgeon in one hand, a brickbat in the other, a pistol peeping from his pocket and his tall hat jammed down over his ears and all but obscuring his fierce eyes. He was an adept at rough and tumble fighting, and wore heavy boots studded with great hobnails with which he stamped his prostrate and helpless victim.
The Dead Rabbits were originally part of the Roach Guards, organized to honor the name of a Five Points liquor seller. But internal dissension developed, and at one of the gang’s stormy meetings someone threw a dead rabbit into the center of the room. One of the squabbling factions accepted it as an omen and its members withdrew, forming an independent gang and calling themselves the Dead Rabbits.(
THE Five Points gradually declined as an amusement center as the green groceries invaded the district and the gangs began to abuse their privileges as overlords of Paradise Square, and the Bowery became increasingly important as a place of recreation. As early as 1752, when the waters of the Collect still covered the site of the Tombs and flowed sluggishly through Canal street, the Bowery began to make some pretensions to being a street of pleasure by the opening of Sperry’s Botanical Gardens, later Voxhaull’s Gardens, at the upper end of the thoroughfare near Astor Place. Its claims were greatly enhanced in 1826 by the erection of the Bowery Theater on the site of the old Bull’s Head Tavern, where George Washington had stopped to quench his thirst with Bowery ale on Evacuation Day in 1783. The new playhouse opened with a comedy, The Road to Ruin, but its first important production was in November, 1826, when Edwin Forrest played the title rôle in Othello, For many years it was one of the foremost theaters on the continent; its boards creaked beneath the tread of some of the greatest players of the time. It was then the largest playhouse in the city, with a seating capacity of 3,000, and was the first to be equipped with gas. The structure was burned three times between 1826 and 1838, and again caught fire some fifteen years before the Civil War, when the police, recently uniformed by order of Mayor Harper, appeared on the scene in all the glory of their new suits and glistening brass buttons. They ordered the spectators to make way for the firemen, but the Bowery gangsters jeered and laughed at them as liveried lackeys, and refused to do their bidding.
The thugs attacked with great ferocity when someone howled that the policemen were trying to imitate the English bobbies, and many were injured before they were subdued. So much ill-feeling arose because of this and similar incidents that the uniforms were called in, and for several years the police appeared on the streets with no other insignia than a star-shaped copper shield, whence came the names coppers and cops. After weathering many storms the theater was finally renamed the Thalia, and still stands in the shadow of the Third avenue elevated railroad, devoted to moving pictures and Italian stock, with occasional performances by travelling Chinese troupes.
Old Bowery Theater
Several other theaters soon followed the Bowery, among them the Windsor, which became famous for its performances of Hands Across the Sea, and for the remarkable acting of Johnny Thompson in On Hand. For many years these houses presented first-class plays and were frequented by the aristocracy of the city, but in time, as the character of the street changed and the dives and gangsters made it a byword from coast to coast, they offered blood and thunder thrillers of so distinct a type that they became known as Bowery plays, and could be seen nowhere else. Among them were The Boy Detective, Marked for Life, Neck and Neck, and Si Slocum. From these productions developed the “ten, twent’, thirt’” melodrama which was so popular throughout the United States until its place was taken by the moving picture. The dress circles and first balconies of the early Bowery theaters, after the first citizens had abandoned them for the playhouses farther uptown and along Broadway, were generally filled with respectable German families from the Seventh Ward, who drank pink and yellow lemonade and noisily devoured Ridley’s Old Fashioned Peppermint Kisses. But the pit and topmost galleries fairly swarmed with ragamuffins of all degrees and both sexes, who stamped and whistled and shouted “h’ist dat rag!” when the curtain failed to rise promptly on schedule time. “These places are jammed to suffocation on Sunday nights,” wrote an author who visited the Bowery about the time of the Civil War. “Actresses too corrupt and dissolute to play elsewhere appear on the boards at the Bowery. Broad farces, indecent comedies, plays of highwaymen and murderers, are received with shouts by the reeking crowds which fill the low theaters. Newsboys, street-sweepers, rag-pickers, begging girls, collectors of cinders, all who can beg or steal a sixpence, fill the galleries of these corrupt places of amusement. There is not a dance hall, a free-and-easy, a concert saloon, or a vile drinking-place that presents such a view of the depravity and degradation of New York as the gallery of a Bowery theater.”
A Street Sweeper
Within a few years after the erection of the first theater the Bowery was lined with playhouses, concert halls, saloons and basement dives, and huge beer gardens seating from 1,000 to 1,500 persons at long tables running lengthwise of an enormous room. As late as 1898 the Bowery had ninety-nine houses of entertainment, of which only fourteen were classed as respectable by the police, and there were six bar-rooms to a block. Now the street can muster a bare dozen theaters, devoted to burlesque, moving pictures, and Yiddis
h, Itahan and Chinese drama. Some of the dives which dotted the Bowery before and after the Civil War have never been equalled, even by Prohibition speak-easies, for the frightful and deadly quality of their liquor. In many of the lower class places, in the early days, drinks were three cents each and no glasses or mugs were used. Barrels of fiery spirits stood on shelves behind the bar, and poured out their contents through lines of slender rubber hose. The customer, having deposited his money on the bar, took an end of the hose in his mouth, and was entitled to all he could drink without breathing. The moment he stopped for breath the watchful bartender turned off the supply, and nothing would start it again but another payment. Some of the Bowery bums became so expert at swallowing, and were able to hold their breaths for such a long period, that they could get delightfully drunk for three cents. One famous saloon, in Baxter street near the Bowery, provided and extensively advertised a rear chamber called the “velvet room.” When a good customer was reduced to a nickel, he was given an extra large bowl of liquor and escorted with considerable ceremony into the “velvet room,” where he was permitted to drink himself unconscious, and sleep until the effects of the potation wore off.
The most famous of the early Bowery beer halls was the Atlantic Gardens, next door to the old Bowery Theater and now a palace of the moving pictures. Upstairs and down it provided seats for more than a thousand, and two four-horse drays, working ten hours a day, were scarcely able to keep the customers sup-pUed with beer fresh from the brewery. In this and other similar establishments there was music by pianos, harps, violins, drums and brasses; and dice, dominoes, cards, and sometimes rifles for target shooting were provided. Everything was free except the beer, which cost five cents for an enormous mug. Most of the gardens were operated by Germans, and at first were frequented by men and women of that nationahty, who brought their families and spent the day quietly. Beer was served by girls from twelve to sixteen years of age, wearing short dresses and red-topped boots, which reached almost to the knees and had bells dangling from the tassels. The sale of the beverage was so profitable that the managers of the gardens bid against each other for the privilege of entertaining the large racial and political organizations, frequently paying as much as $500 to any association that would agree to hold an all-day picnic on their premises. For many years these gardens were entirely respectable, but low class thugs and hoodlums soon began to invade them, not to drink beer but to guzzle hard liquor from flasks, and in time they came to be the resorts of the gangsters and other criminals of the district, and the Bowery assumed the character which has made it one of the most renowned thoroughfares in the world.
The Gangs of New York Page 3
