The Gangs of New York

by Herbert Asbury

  WHEN NEW YORK WAS REALLY WICKED

  AT THE close of the Civil War, while the statesmen of Tammany Hall dipped greedy fingers into the city’s money chests. New York entered upon an unparalleled era of wickedness; so demoralized were the police by political chicanery and by widespread corruption within their own ranks that they were unable to enforce even a semblance of respect for the law. For more than twenty-five years the criminal classes revelled in an orgy of vice and crime; and the metropolis, then comprising only Manhattan Island, richly deserved the title of “the modern Gomorrah,” which is said to have been first applied by the Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage in a sermon in the Brooklyn Tabernacle during the middle seventies. Both the Rev. Talmage and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of Plymouth

  '‘Stop Thief”—A Sketch of Life in New York City. October 31,1868

  Church in Brooklyn, made frequent pilgrimages to Manhattan and visited the shrines of wickedness under escort of Central Office detectives, acquiring sermon material which they employed in the point-with-horror manner still used so effectively by modern clergymen.

  Before the War the dives, dance halls, and houses of ill-fame were largely confined to the Five Points, the Bowery and Water, Cherry and other streets along the East River water front in the old Fourth Ward. But scarcely had the South laid down its arms at Appomattox than hundreds of bagnios, with red lanterns gleaming from the windows or dangling from beams on the porches, appeared throughout the city. They operated without molestation so long as the owners paid the assessments imposed by their political overlords, and even advertised with great boldness in the newspapers and by printed circular. The most celebrated single group of these places was the Sisters’ Row in West Twenty-fifth street, near Seventh avenue, where seven adjoining houses were opened in the sixties by seven sisters who had come to New York from a small New England village to seek their fortunes, and had

  The Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage in Satan’s Circus

  fallen into ways of sin. These were the most expensive bordellos in the city, and were conducted with great style and ceremony. On certain days of the month no gentleman was admitted unless he wore evening dress and carried a bouquet of flowers, and the inmates were advertised as cultured and pleasing companions, accomplished on the piano and guitar and familiar with the charms and graces of correct social intercourse. The proceeds of Christmas Eve were always given to charity. Another noted resort was Josephine Woods’, in Eighth street near Broadway, where a grand blind man’s buff party was held every New Year’s Eve, and open house was kept throughout New Year’s Day in imitation of the prevailing custom in more refined society.

  In a speech at Cooper Union in January, 1866, Bishop Simpson of the Methodist Episcopal Church made the startling and discouraging announcement that prostitutes were as numerous in New York as Methodists, and later, in a sermon in St. Paul’s M. E. Church, fixed the number at twenty thousand, approximately one-fortieth of the population. John A. Kennedy, Superintendent of Police, vigorously denied the truth of the Bishop’s statements, and said that although he had no figures on the Methodists, who had not come under his jurisdiction, the records of the police force showed that there were but 3,300 public prostitutes in the city, distributed among 621 houses and ninety-nine assignation hotels, and including 747 waiter girls employed in concert saloons and dance haUs. However, Bishop Simpson and other reformers produced considerable proof, and it is quite likely that his figures more nearly approached the truth than those of the Superintendent, for the latter dealt only with the professional aspects of the problem, and, moreover, did not include the thousands of street women who swarmed the thoroughfares of the city. Originally women of this class were known as night-walkers, for they were seldom seen on the streets before dusk, but as they became bolder they were called street-walkers.

  Many of the worst of the dives with which New York was infested during these days of iniquity, and which were utilized as rendezvous by the gangs of criminals and the hordes of fallen women, were in the area between Twenty-fourth and Fortieth streets and Fifth and Seventh avenues, a region of such utter depravity that horrified reformers referred to it as Satan’s Circus.

  As late as 1885 it was estimated that at least half of the buildings in the district were devoted to some form of wickedness, while Sixth avenue, then the wildest and gayest thoroughfare in the city, was lined with brothels, saloons and all-night dance halls, and was constantly thronged by a motley crowd seeking diversion and dissipation. This area was a part of the old Twenty-ninth police precinct, which ran from Fourteenth to Forty-second streets and from Fourth to Seventh avenues, and was the original Tenderloin, so named by Captain, later Inspector, Alexander S. Williams. After long and unrewarded toil in outlying districts. Captain Williams was transferred to the command of the Twenty-ninth in 1876. A few days later a friend, meeting him on Broadway and noting his expansive smile, asked the cause of his merriment.

  “Well,” said Williams, “I’ve been transferred. I’ve had nothing but chuck steak for a long time, and now I’m going to get a little of the tenderloin.”

  A Street Arrest.—[Drawn by C. Kendrick.] May 18, 1878

  Perhaps the most famous of the dives which came under Williams’ jurisdiction was the old Haymarket, in Sixth avenue just south of Thirtieth street. Because of its long life—it survived several closings and was in active operation until late in 1913— the Haymarket became widely known throughout the United States, and was a favorite place for the plucking of yokels who ventured into the metropolis to see the sights of the great city. The house was opened as a variety theater soon after the Civil War, and was named after a similar playhouse in London. But it was unable to compete with such celebrated theaters as the Tivoli in Eighth street and Tony Pastor’s in Fourteenth street, and was closed about the first of December, 1878. However, within a few weeks it was remodeled and reopened as a dance hall, which it remained to the end of its days.

  The Haymarket was housed in a three-story brick and frame building, which by day was dismal and repulsive, for it was painted a dull and sulphurous yellow and showed no signs of life. But with the coming of dusk, as the performers in Satan’s Circus assembled for their nightly promenade of Sixth avenue, the shutters were removed and lights blazed from every window, while from huge iron hooks before the main entrance hung a sign, “Haymarket—Grand Soiree Dansant.” Women were admitted free, but men paid twenty-five cents each for the privilege of dancing, drinking and otherwise disporting themselves within the resort. The galleries and boxes which had extended around three sides of the main floor when the house was a theater were retained, and off them were built small cubicles in which, at the height of the Haymarket’s glory, women habitues danced the cancan and gave exhibitions similar to the French peep shows. The descriptive title of “circus,” which is now generally applied to such displays in this country, is said to have originated in the Haymarket. The dictionary defines the cancan as “a rollicking French dance, accompanied by indecorous or extravagant gestures,” but it appears to have been much more than rollicking as performed in the old Haymarket, especially during the early morning hours when the place was hazy with smoke and the tables and floors filled with drunken revellers, among whom lush workers and pickpockets plied nimble fingers. In more recent years the cancan has given way to the hoochy-coochy and other forms of muscle dancing, which first became popular with the appearance of the original Little Egypt at the Chicago World’s Fair.

  The French Madame’s, in Thirty-first street near Sixth avenue, took its name from the nationality of its proprietor, an obese, bewhiskered female who sat throughout the night on a high stool near the cashier’s cage. She acted as her own bouncer, and acquired great renown for the manner in which she wielded a bludgeon, and for the quickness with which she seized obstreperous women customers by the hair and flung them into the street. While the resort was ostensibly a restaurant, practically no food except black coffee was sold, although a big business was done in wines and liquors
. The place was much frequented by the street women, who readily accepted offers to dance the cancan, which was performed in small chambers above the dining-room. For a dollar they danced nude, and for an additional small fee gave exhibitions similar to those provided in the booths of the Haymarket. Resorts similar to the French Madame’s, except that they had small dance floors, were the Idlewile in Sixth avenue near Thirty-first street, and the Strand, a few doors south, which was operated by Dan Kerrigan, a member of the Tammany Hall General Committee during the late seventies. The Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage spent an evening in each of these places in 1878, and raised such a furore with his sermons that the police, upon orders from Mayor Cooper, closed them to women for a period of several months.

  Other famous dives of the Satan’s Circus district were the Cremorne, in Thirty-second street west of Sixth avenue; Egyptian Hall in Thirty-fourth street, east of Sixth avenue; Sailors’ Hall in Thirtieth street, which was frequented principally by Negroes; Buckingham Palace in Twenty-seventh street, noted for its masked balls; Tom Gould’s in Thirty-first street, a drinking dive with rooms for rent upstairs, and the Star and Garter, an establishment of a slightly higher class which was opened at Sixth avenue and Thirtieth street in 1878 by Ed Coffee, a famous sportsman of the period. The Star and Garter enjoyed an immediate success, largely because of the popularity of the head bartender, Billy Patterson, a rotund and jovial genius who was one of the really great drink mixers of the age. It was his boast that he did not have an enemy in the world, and that he could concoct a drink which would make any man his abject admirer; it was considered a great honor to have Billy Patterson, in person, prepare a beverage. When he was finally struck down by a mysterious assailant who attacked him with a slung-shot one night as he left the side door of the Star and Garter, the circumstance caused so much comment throughout Satan’s Circus that it gave rise to the famous query, “Who struck Billy Patterson?”

  The Haymarket in 1879

  The Cremorne occupied the basement of a building in Thirty-second street just west of Sixth avenue, and was regarded by the police as one of the most abandoned dives of the period. The origin of its name is unknown, but it is likely that, in common with many other resorts of the district, it was named for a London dance-hall or bar-room. The street entrance led directly to the bar, at the end of which, behind a large and handsomely carved desk, sat the manager, a huge, pompous, unapproachable personage whose great walrus mustaches and luxuriant beard gave him the sobriquet of Don Whiskerandos. Beyond the manager swinging doors opened into a large room, garishly decorated with paintings and statues noted more for nudity than artistic merit, where men and women sat together at tables and drank to the accompaniment of music from a squeaky violin, a booming bull fiddle and a rattling piano. The women here, as in most of the other resorts, received a commission on all drinks; small brass checks were given them for mixed beverages and straight liquors, and when wine was bought by their friends they saved the corks. Drinks for ladies were twenty cents, but gentlemen paid the standard price of fifteen cents or two for a quarter. Next door to the Cremorne was another establishment which bore the same name, but it was a mission conducted by Jerry McAuley, a reformed gambler and drunkard whose name has been immortalized by the present McAuley Mission in Water street, where rehgion and sandwiches are now available nightly for the bums of the water front. Befuddled customers of the dive frequently wandered into McAuley’s Cremorne by mistake, whereupon he promptly locked the doors and preached to the roisterers before he would permit them to resume their round of dissipation.

  A new type of resort, the concert saloon, appeared in New York in 1860, when a Philadelphian opened the Melodeon in the old Chinese Assembly Rooms in lower Broadway. These places soon became very popular, and within a few years there were at least two hundred of them scattered throughout the lower part of the city. They provided dancing and hquor, but the principal attractions were the waiter girls and the low, and frequently lewd, theatrical performances, although some of the cheaper establishments, especially those along the Bowery, offered as entertainment only a piano virtuoso, who was always drunk and was called Professor.

  The most celebrated of these resorts was that operated by Harry Hill in West Houston street east of Broadway. For many years Hill’s place was rightly considei'ed one of the sights of the metropohs, to which visiting clergymen repaired to gather material for sermons on the iniquities of Gotham. It occupied the whole of a sprawling, dingy, two-story frame house, which had two front entrances, a small door for ladies, who were admitted free, and a larger one for gentlemen, who paid twenty cents. Before the main doorway a huge red and blue lantern shed its rays against a gigantic sign-board which leaned against the side of the house, and upon which were lettered half a dozen lines of doggerel, composed by Hill and inviting the wayfarer to partake of

  Punches and juleps, cobblers and smashes.

  To make the tongue waggle with wit’s merry flashes.

  Harry Hill prided himself on his religious habits, and went to church regularly every Simday, and to prayer meeting on Wednesday night; and frequently donated large sums to charity, as evidence of his willingness to co-operate in good works. He was an inveterate poet, and once a week mounted the stage and gave a recital of his output, while the other activities of the resort ceased, not even drinks being served until the master had finished. It is distressing to note that on this night the attendance was generally very slim.

  The rules of the house were written in rhyme, and were prominently displayed upon the walls. “The pith of these rules is,” says a contemporary writer, “no loud talking; no profanity; no obscene or indecent expressions will be allowed; no one drunken, no one violating decency, will be permitted to remain in the room; no man can sit and allow a woman to stand; all men must call for refreshments as soon as they arrive, and the call must be repeated after each dance; if a man does not dance he must leave. Mr. Hill himself is a man about fifty years of age, small, stocky and muscular, a complete type of the pugilist. He keeps the peace of his own concern, and does not hesitate to knock any man down, or throw him out of the door, if he breaks the rules of the establishment. He attends closely to all departments of the trade. He is at the bar; in the hall, where the dancers must be kept on the floor; at the stage, where the low comedies and broad farces are played. He keeps the roughs and bullies in order; he keeps jealous women from tearing out each other’s eyes. With burly face and stocky form, he can be seen in all parts of the hall, shouting out, ‘Order! Order! Less noise there! Attention! Girls, be quiet!’ And these he shouts all evening.”

  The dance hall proper had originally been a series of small rooms, which had been made into one by the removal of partitions. There was no regular bar on the main floor, but on one side of the long hall was a counter over which drinks were served, and from which they were distributed by the waiter girls after they had been brought up from the basement, where the more disreputable of Hill’s customers spent their evenings in sorry debauch. On the other side of the room was the stage, with a tall box for the Punch and Judy show which was then a popular form of entertainment. Hill’s place was a favorite resort of pugilists, and he frequently varied his theatrical entertainment with a prize fight. It was there that John L. Sullivan made his first New York appearance on March 31, 1881, when he defeated Steve Taylor in two and one-half minutes.

  Harry Hill competed, on more or less even terms, with such celebrated downtown hells as the American Mabille at Bleecker street and Broadway, the Black and Tan in the basement of No. 153 Bleecker street, and Billy McGlory’s Armory Hall at No. 158 Hester street. The American Mabille, which was named for the Jardin de Mabille in Paris, was owned by Theodore Allen, better known as The Allen, member of a family which was originally devoutly Methodist but later notoriously criminal. Three of his brothers, Wesley, Martin, and William, were professional burglars, while a fourth, John, ran a gambling house. The Allen is said to have owned more than half a dozen resorts, and financed gambling
houses and places of ill-fame. He was also a friend and patron of the gang leaders, and planned and participated in a large number of bank and store burglaries. He finally kiUed a gambler and disappeared from the scene. His resort occupied the basement and first floor of the Bleecker street house, with a dance hall in the basement and the concert saloon upstairs, where dissolute women in gaudy tights danced and sang ribald songs.

  The Black and Tan was operated by Frank Stephenson, a tall, slim man with a curiously bloodless face. Contemporary writers marked his resemblance to a corpse; his face was almost as white as snow and his cheeks were sunken, while his eyebrows and hair were black as ink. His eyes were deep set, and very keen and piercing. It was his custom to sit bolt upright in a high chair in the center of his resort, and remain there for hours without displaying any other sign of life than the baleful glitter of his eyes. His establishment was largely frequented by Negroes, but the women were all white and appear to have been quite abandoned. Four bartenders served drinks over a long counter, and behind each was a

  long dirk and a bludgeon which were frequently used to silence fractious customers. The closing hours of the Black and Tan, as of the other principal resorts, were enlivened by the cancan and licentious displays. For many years one of the regular frequenters of the Black and Tan was an old woman known as Crazy Lou, who was said to have been a daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant. At the age of seventeen she was seduced, and coming to New York to seek the author of her shame, fell into the hands of procurers, who sold her to one of the Seven Sisters in West Twenty-fifth street. When her beauty faded she was dismissed, and thereafter became a frequenter of the Haymarket, the Cremorne, Harry Hill’s, Billy McGlory’s and finally the Black and Tan. In her old age she lived on scrapings from garbage pails, and the few pennies she could beg or earn by selling flowers. But each evening she went regularly to the Black and Tan, arriving promptly at midnight and remaining for exactly two hours. She wore a faded, ragged shawl, and always sat at a certain table in a corner, where Stephenson in person served her with a huge tumbler of whiskey which cost her nothing. This she sipped until the time came for her to leave. But one night she failed to appear, and the next morning her body was found floating in the East River. Stephenson expressed his sorrow by setting a glass of whiskey on her accustomed table each night at midnight for a month, permitting no one to sit there until two o’clock in the morning.