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McManus stepped in, throwing Tricker out on his ear. One night, Chick Tricker, a member of the Jack Sirocco clique, drunkenly wandered into Kelly’s Jones Street club and insulted the showgirls.
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Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt ordered the saloon closed in 1903.Ĭlick for the complete story of Eat Em Up JackĪfter the closure of McGurk’s, Eat Em’ Jack McManus moved into Paul Kelly’s full time employ as a bodyguard. Ever a humanitarian, McGurk renamed the bar Suicide Hall in an attempt to capitalize on the publicity. Six prostitutes, tired of their hardscrabble lives, killed themselves in the bar. McGurk’s was relatively unknown until a wave of suicides hit the dance floor in 1899. A knife scar ran across his throat from ear to ear (back before one of his ears was chewed off in McGurk’s). In time, McManus’s body became a patchwork quilt of wounds and welts. McGurk, a career shanghaier, made a living luring sailors to his saloons and drugging them with chloral-hydrate with the assistance of his waiter Short-Change Charley and the ferocious bouncer and former champion pugilist, Eat Em Up Jack McManus. Opened in 1893, by John McGurk, this low dancehall and brothel catered to prostitutes and female criminals such as famed thief, Sophie Lyons. When the smoke cleared, three men were dead and a score wounded.ĭuring the Summer, the Whyos loafed around in Old St. It took fifty police officers armed with rifles to break up the rumble. “They shot up the town in regular Wild West style.”–NYPD Inspector Schmittbergerįor nearly an hour, the Eastmans and the Five Pointers shot it out, bobbing and weaving under the steel pillars. According Inspector Schmittberger of the NYPD: In an instant, a hurricane of lead erupted and the Battle of Rivington Street commenced. Kelly found Monk and a crew relaxing under the elevated train tracks. Kelly roused his mob and headed to the intersection of Rivington and Allen Streets for revenge. The next day Eastman and his torpedoes dashed into a Five Point saloon and shot the joint to pieces. Punches were thrown and Eastman vowed to return.
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On an election day in September 1903, Eastman and some henchmen out repeat voting for the Tammany ticket ran into Kelly’s men on a similar mission. The Monk Eastman and Paul Kelly gangs shot it it out under the elevated train tracks on Rivington Street. A best seller, Riis’ book led to the demolition of Mulberry Bend and the heart of the Five Points. Riis published his work in a landmark text titled: How the Other Half Lives. Formed by Dandy Johnny Dolan, a well-coiffed killer with axe blades embedded in his fighting boots, and Danny Lyons, a homicidal pimp, the Whyos became the first true organized gang on Manhattan, offering services like beatings and contract killings.ģ Columbus Park: The End of Mulberry BendĪrmed with nothing more than a camera, Jacob Riis explored the back alleys, saloons and rear tenements of the Five Points, documenting the squalor of the Bend and other slums. By the 1870s, a gang called the Whyos, known for their war-cry “WHY-O”, dominated Mulberry Street and the Five Points.
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(no longer exists), a tiny garbage packed square, known as Paradise Square, was located at the intersection of the Five Points.Īll that remains of Mulberry Bend today, is a tiny sliver of land on the east side of Columbus Park.ĭuring the Civil War, the Dead Rabbits, an Irish street gang, headquartered their gang on Mulberry Street where they battled anti-Irish nativist American Gangs like The Bowery Boys and Bill the Butcher Poole. Named for the intersection of five streets which no longer exist, the Five Point was America’s first and worst slum. In exchange for getting out the vote on election day- with smashed ballot boxes, repeat voters and general mayhem, gangsters could rely on Tammany’s lawyers and corrupt judges to keep them well armed and out of jail.Īllow this map and Gangs of New York walking tour to take you back to a time when gang warfare plagued the cobblestones of New York.ġ The Cradle of the Gangs: The Five Points Under Tammany Hall’s Bowery Assembly leader, Big Tim Sullivan, organized crime emanated out of the Five Points, spreading throughout the slums of Manhattan. With names like the Dead Rabbits, the Whyos, The Monk Eastmans, and The Five Pointers, gangs became a hallmark of New York politics in the early 20th Century. Organized, politically connected and deadly, by the 1870s the gangs of New York had metastasized from leaderless hordes of criminals of the Civil War era into a cancerous pox, directed and controlled by New York’s political machine, Tammany Hall.