Dead Rabbits
| Origins | |
|---|---|
| Founding Location | Five Points, Manhattan, New York City |
| Territory | Five Points and nearby Lower Manhattan |
| Profile | |
| Ethnicity | Irish American |
| Activities | Street fighting, political violence and rioting (attributed) |
| Politics | |
| Rivals | Bowery Boys |
| Activity | |
| Years Active | 1830s–1850s (reported) |
| Founded Date | 1830s (reported) |
The Dead Rabbits were described in nineteenth-century newspapers and later histories as an Irish-American street gang associated with the Five Points neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. Traditional accounts place the group from the 1830s through the 1850s, link it to fighting and political violence, and identify the nativist Bowery Boys as its principal rival.[1]
History
Popular accounts describe the Dead Rabbits as a faction that separated from the Irish-American Roach Guards. The name was associated with a dead rabbit displayed as a fighting emblem. Much of the gang's fame comes from reports of violent clashes between Five Points groups and Bowery gangs.
The name became especially prominent during the Dead Rabbits riot of July 4–5, 1857. Fighting around Bayard Street and the Bowery grew from gang confrontations into a broader disturbance while New York's rival Municipal and Metropolitan police forces were in conflict. State militia units eventually restored order.[2]
Historical dispute
Historian Tyler Anbinder argues that a distinct gang called the Dead Rabbits may not have existed. In his reconstruction, newspapers and Bowery informants applied the expression to members of the Roach Guards and other Five Points fighters during the 1857 violence. The name should therefore be treated as disputed rather than as an uncontested formal organization.[3]
Legacy
The Dead Rabbits became a durable symbol of the Five Points underworld. Herbert Asbury's 1928 book The Gangs of New York helped popularize the traditional account, which was later heavily fictionalized in Martin Scorsese's film Gangs of New York (2002).
See also
References
- ↑ Carter F. Smith, Gangs and the Military: Gangsters, Bikers, and Terrorists with Military Training (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), p. 11.
- ↑ Nate Hendley, American Gangsters, Then and Now: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2009), pp. 65–66.
- ↑ Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum (Free Press, 2001), pp. 353–354.