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Herbert Asbury

The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld Paperback – July 1, 2008

by Herbert Asbury (Author), Russell Shorto (Foreword)

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The basis of Martin Scorcese's acclaimed 2003 film, The Gangs of New York is a dramatic and entertaining glimpse at a city's dark past.

Focusing on the saloon halls, gambling dens, and winding alleys of the Bowery and the notorious Five Points district, The Gangs of New York dramatically evokes the destitution and shocking violence of a turbulent era, when colorfully named criminals like Dandy John Dolan, Bill the Butcher, and Hell-Cat Maggie lurked in the shadows, and infamous gangs like the Plug Uglies, the Dead Rabbits, and the Bowery Boys ruled the streets. A rogues' gallery of prostitutes, pimps, poisoners, pickpockets, murderers, and thieves, Herbert Asbury's whirlwind tour through the low life of nineteenth-century New York has become an indispensible classic of urban history.

Print length

366 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Vintage
Publication date

July 1, 2008
Dimensions

5.2 x 0.83 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0307388980
ISBN-13

978-0307388988
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A distinct contribution to Americana. . . . The tale is one of blood, excitement, and debauchery.”
—The New York Times

"One of the essential works of the city. . . . It owns a direct pipeline to the city's unconscious.”
—Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York

“A univeral history of infamy, the history of the gangs of New York contains all the confusion and cruelty of the barbarian cosmologies.”
—Jorge Luis Borges

“One of the best American books of its kind. Mr. Asbury writes in a direct and engaging manner.”
—Edmund Pearson, The Saturday Review of Literature

About the Author

Herbert Asbury, an early 20th-century journalist, made a name for himself by documenting the gangs, pimps, prostitutes, and thieves that thrived in the underbellies of New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and New Orleans. His works, still in print after seventy-five years, are often hailed as the best snapshots of their time period. The Gangs of New York was the basis of Martin Scorcese's 2003 film.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (July 1, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 366 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307388980
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307388988
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.83 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #60,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #128 in Organized Crime True Accounts
- #247 in Criminology (Books)
- #715 in Historical Study (Books)

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Ted

Don’t waste your time

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2020

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Not well written or researched. If you’re looking for a decent history of gangs in the 1800s in NYC...you’re going to be bored. It’s surprising it has so many positive reviews - it’s really quite trashy. Scorsese didn’t use anything from this book for the movie.

5 people found this helpful

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Joe Bruno Sr.

Great book for Crime Fans!

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2011

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The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury, written in 1928, is a great read for those who love to read stories about crime and criminals that took place in New York City, dating back to the early 1800's. The book starts with the chapter entitled "The Cradle of the Gangs," which was the Five Points Area in 1829. Roughly, the Five Points area was the territory bounded by Broadway, Canal Street, the Bowery and Park Row, which was formerly Chatham Street. Now this area is the home to the city prison called the Tombs, the Criminal Courts Building and the County Court House. In the early 1700's, the area was mostly a swap area, surrounding a lake called Fresh Water Pond by the English and Shellpoint by the Dutch.

The lake was eventually filled in and homes built on the landfill. This landfill became the region know as the Five Points. The Five Points area was named after the intersection of the five blocks of Cross, which became Park Street and is now Mosco Street, Anthony, which became Worth, Orange which became Baxter, Mulberry Street and Little Water, which now does not even exist. It was originally a respectable area where the rich lived, but then houses began sinking into the imperfectly drained swamp, and the rich abandoned the area for better parts of Manhattan Island. Their places were taken mostly by freed Negro slaves and the low-class Irish, who began flooding into the area from Ireland, starting around 1790.

The Five Points area became a breeding ground for crooks and criminal, and people from other parts of the city dared not venture into its boundaries. The great Charles Dickens once visited the area and he wrote about the Five Points, "This is the place: these narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Debauchery has made the houses very prematurely old. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors have counterparts at home and the whole world over. Many pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright instead of going on all fours, and why they talk instead of grunting?"

It was in these rotted streets that Dickens described, that the first street gang was formed in 1825. It was aptly named the Forty Thieves, and was started in the back room of a produce shop on Center Street. It was owned by Roseanna Peers, and past the rotted vegetables outside, she sold illegal hootch in the inside back room, and allowed a dastardly chap named Edward Coleman to rule a motley crew of criminals. Being Irish, they all hated the Englishmen, but they robbed and pillaged from mostly their own.

Soon other gangs cropped up with names like the Chichesters, the Plug Uglies, Roach Guards, Shirt Tails and Dead Rabbits. The fought amongst each other over who would have the right to control the crime on certain streets. Soon more gangs arrived on the Five Points boundaries, like the Bowery Boys, the True Blue Americans, the American Guards, the O'Connell Guards and the Atlantic Guards. The streets, in and around the Five Points area, became so dangerous the brave Davey Crockett, known for his heroism out west, said the Five Points area of New York City was the most dangerous place he had ever visited in his entire life.

As the years went by, gangs came and went in the Five Points area. The Civil War was the biggest destroyer of the original Five Points gangs, since many of the hooligans were drafted into the war down south. Some came back maimed. Some came back not at all.

The rest of Asbury's book details every gang and crook that prowled New York City, until m1928. We meet such unlikable chaps as Monk Eastman and his Jewish Gang, Owney Madden and his Irish Hudson Dusters, and Paul Kelly (Paulo Vaccarelli ) and his Italian Five Pointers.

If you want to get down and dirty, reading about the lives of men so despicable they were hung weekly in the courtyard of the city prison called Tombs, The Gangs of New York is the book for you.
[...]
[...]

14 people found this helpful

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Richard Weems

Too good to be true

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2007

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Herbert Asbury has developed in this book a delightfully readable (and read-out-loudable) history of the dark underbelly of New York City--the picaresque and downright nasty underground of gambling tongs, gang warfare and thorough political corruption.

I of course came to this book only recently, after having seen the Scorsese film of the same name. It is in fact quite wonderful to see the liberties Scorsese took to make a challenging film and not just a recapping of this oral-style history. Familiar names and events and places appear in the mist, but in a whole new context. This book will let you know that the incredible Scorsese movie merely scratches the surface of the NYC underworld from the Civil War era to the start of the 20th dentury, if this book is to be believed.

It is this last point that gives me some pause about this book. As I said before, this book is eminently readable and enjoyable. The webs of rivalry and alliance, of rumbles that go on for hours, riots that go on for days, tales of violence and retribution and a host of characters whose corruption and indulgence o'ershadow even the prohibition days of Chicago. Asbury freely admits when some of his tales are mere folklore, stories that criminals pass along to each other as legends, drastically overexaggerrated to confer the level of respect of awe that a gang leader or significant change of the balance of power has earned.

But sometimes it's hard to believe the level of reliable research that could have gone into so many other ta1es. The histories of particular criminals are detailed down to their dismemberment by cannon fire in the Civil War, or their miserable ends to cowardly ambush or the breaking of spirits after a particularly bad loss of business or to a mightier opponent, or to their incarceration, and the mug shots are wonderfully stylish, but it is hard to stomach easily the thoroughness of the information, unless Asbury was a devotee of the Five Corners and other such areas of ill-repute in its heyday. No doubt there was prodigious information provided by police records and other data, but perhaps this is a book to be taken more as a work of social anthropology than history--an examination of the underworld culture of NYC in this time period rather than a necessarily accurate historical document. One part bragging, another part horror, and a wonderful gaze at the debaucheries of the ale houses and gambling establishments down Asbury's nose in a way that seems sometimes sincere, sometimes a little over the top for the sake of appearances, this book is worth the read, especially to spread stories to others...just don't accept it readily as 'fact.'

23 people found this helpful

Helpful

P. V. de Metter

History of the Irish mob in Manhattan

Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2010

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The title mentioned for this review would much better fit the bill for this book. As you may know the movie picture of similar title, this book does not represent anything more as inspiration which it is based upon.

Being published for the first time in 1927, this book very much describes the history of the underworld in Manhattan as you may call the pre-maffia period. At that time Manhattan was New York and the Irish overwhelmed the Italians at that point of about 10 to 1. Research has been based on storytelling and news articles, but nevertheless make this book a good read as long as you take it with a pinch of salt. The terminology of 'half a dozen' and 'most ferocious of its time' are featured often and betray its inaccuracy, but going back in time this book might be the best you can get as far as a detailed description of the times.

It is great to see the likes of Bill the Butcher, the Monk with the notches in his club and similar characters from the movie appear in their real-life habitat and timeline as you will find out that some of them could never have known each other. It is advised, however, to take a good look at the map of Manhattan before you read this when 'lower East Side' or 'fourty-second and third avenue' don't ring a bell in your mind, it makes this book much easier to read.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in gangster tales or New York history. Being a fan of both made this a good fit for me.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Wacky Wiccan

A forgotten part of New York history

Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2018

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Excellent book, well detailed and easy to read.

3 people found this helpful

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metromusic

Great book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 16, 2020

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A really interesting book if you are either a fan of the movie of the same name, interested in American history, or into crime/gangs. Really engaging and interesting, chock full of historical anecdotes.

One person found this helpful

Mrs. Lynn M. Massey

and the narrative jumps about a great deal.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 20, 2017

Verified Purchase

I bought this after wanting more information on the time period.
I have to say it is a somewhat " dry" read, and the narrative jumps about a great deal...
However today's history books are written very differently, and I feel this would be the excellent material for a rewrite.
In short- not an easy read but has interesting and enjoyable gruesome facts.

One person found this helpful

DOPPLEGANGER

Whets the appetite for more

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 16, 2007

Verified Purchase

A most thorough resume of the diverse criminal activity of lower Manhattan from the early 1800's until circa 1920. The author paints a fascinating but shocking picture of the utter filth, hardship and depravity that was the daily life of those unfortunate enough to have no other option but to live in this area.

Mr Asbury introduces us to many gruesome villains and Gangs with names such as The Plug Uglies and Dead Rabbits and to a wide range of murderous and heinous activities. A very interesting book best read in conjunction with a detailed street map of The Five Points area.

My interest has been aroused by the contents of this book and I intend to read other related matter and next time in New York visit the area.

5 people found this helpful

Great read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 22, 2020

Verified Purchase

Very informative

One person found this helpful

M. J. Smallcombe

untold history

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 6, 2013

Verified Purchase

Read this with a map of New York (19thC) in one hand as there are frequent references to streets, avenues and districts that will mean little to the non New Yorker. Otherwise a superb, if sometimes exaggerated, history of the violence and corruption that typified New York until much more recently than you might imagine. The death of thousands in the Draft Riots during the civil war seems to have been totally forgotten in America's story about itself.

2 people found this helpful

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