Dead Rabbits
Rivals | Bowery Boys, Atlantic Guards, O'Connell Guards, American Guards, True Blue Americans, Empire Guards, New York City Police Department |
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The Dead Rabbits was the name of an
History
The original Dead Rabbits were founded by disgruntled gang members of the Roach Guards, who became the largest Irish crime organization in early 19th-century Manhattan, having well over 100 members when called up for action. Their chief rival gang was the Bowery Boys, native-born New Yorkers who supported the Know Nothing anti-immigrant political party,[1] and through Michael Walsh had links to the dominant Protestant minority[7] in Ireland and immigrants of that background;[8] Herbert Asbury's seemingly contradictory observation in his 1927 book Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld that the Bowery Boys were an Irish gang, despite being anti-Catholic[9] is explained by the deep-seated divisions in religion, culture and economic circumstances between the two groups on the island of Ireland which were carried over to the new world.
These two rival gangs fought more than 200 gang battles in a span of 10 years, beginning in 1834, and they often outmanned the police force and even the state militias. Besides street-fighting, the Dead Rabbits supported politicians such as Fernando Wood and the Tammany Hall machine, whose platforms included the welfare and benefit of immigrant groups and minorities, and under the leadership of Isaiah Rynders the gang acted as enforcers to violently persuade voters during elections to vote for their candidates.[3][10] According to legend, one of the most feared Dead Rabbits was "Hell-Cat Maggie", a woman who reportedly filed her teeth to points and wore brass fingernails into battle.[11]
On July 4, 1857, a prolonged
By 1866, mentions of the Dead Rabbits as an organization currently in existence disappeared from New York City newspapers, and they were sometimes referred to in the past tense.[13] The term "Dead Rabbit" was used as late as the 1880s as a generic term for a young, lower class criminal.
There was a similar gang in
Song
Lyrics detailing the Dead Rabbits' battle with the Bowery Boys on July 4, 1857, were written by Henry Sherman Backus[15] and Daniel Decatur Emmett:
Chorus
Then pull off the coat and roll up the sleeve,
For Bayard is a hard street to travel;
So pull off the coat and roll up the sleeve,
The Bloody Sixth is a hard ward to travel I believe.
Like wild dogs they did fight, this Fourth of July night,
Of course they laid their plans accordin';
Some were wounded and some killed, and lots of blood spill'd,
In the fight on the other side of Jordan.
Chorus
The new Police did join the Bowery boys in line,
With orders strict and right accordin;
Bullets, clubs and bricks did fly, and many groan and die,
Hard road to travel over Jordan.
Chorus
When the new police did interfere, this made the Rabbits sneer,
And very much enraged them accordin';
With bricks they did go in, determined for to win,
And drive them on the other side of Jordan.
Chorus
Upon the following day they had another fray,
The Black Birds and Dead Rabbits accordin;
The soldiers were call'd out, to quell the mighty riot,
And drove them on the other side of Jordan.
In popular culture
In films and television
The Dead Rabbit Riot was featured in the
In literature
A book of poetry by Richard Griffin, The Dead Rabbit Riot, A.D. 1857: And Other Poems, was published in 1915.
Patricia Beatty's 1987 historical children's fiction novel
Some of the exploits of the Dead Rabbits are dramatized in Chapter XVIII of MacKinlay Kantor's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Andersonville (1955).
In art
Artist
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 978-1412979535
- ISBN 978-0814755082
- ^ ISBN 978-0765809940
- ISBN 9781442275171.
- ISBN 978-0300182576.
- ISBN 9780743274784.
- OCLC 263375417.
- OCLC 57193072.
- )
- ^ "10 Deadly Street Gangs Of The Victorian Era". Listverse. 2015-02-19. Retrieved 2023-01-21.
- ^ "7 Infamous Gangs of New York - History Lists". history.com. Retrieved 2017-09-06.
- ^ "Rioting And Bloodshed; The Fight At Cow Bay. Metropolitans Driven from the 6th Ward. Chimneys Hurled Down Upon the Populace. 'Dead Rabbits' Against the 'Bowery hi.'", New York Daily, July 6, 1857.
- ^ "22 Sep 1869, Page 3 - The New York Herald at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2021-05-02.
- ISBN 1-903854-54-7
- ^ "Murder by Gaslight: The Saugerties Bard". murderbygaslight.com. Retrieved 2017-09-06.
Sources
- ISBN 1-56025-275-8
- Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001; ISBN 0-8160-4040-0