Dead Rabbits riot
Dead Rabbits riot | |
---|---|
Date | July 4–5, 1857 |
Attack type | Riot |
Deaths | 8 |
Injured | 30–100 injured |
Perpetrators | Dead Rabbits and Bowery Boys |
The Dead Rabbits riot was a two-day
Events
On the evening of July 4, 1857, while the rest of New York was celebrating
Altercations continued as far away as
The following morning, the Five Pointers returned to the Bowery with the Roach Guards and attacked the Green Dragon, a popular Broome Street resort and meeting place for the Bowery Boys and other local criminals. They managed to surprise the Bowery gangsters inside the building, and armed with iron bars and large paving blocks, they proceeded to wreck the bar room, rip up the floor of the dance hall, and drink all the alcohol in the place. News of the incident quickly reached the Bowery Boys, who then called upon other gangs of the Bowery to join them and confronted the Five Pointers at Bayard Street, where one of the largest street gang battles in the city's history occurred.[3]
At around 10:00 a.m., amid savage fighting, a lone patrolman bravely used his club to move through the gangsters in an attempt to take the ring leaders into custody. He was knocked down and attacked by the crowd, stripped of his uniform, and beaten with his own nightstick. He managed to crawl back to the sidewalk, and wearing only his cotton drawers, he ran towards the Metropolitan headquarters on White Street, where he informed the precinct of the fighting before he collapsed.[3]: 103
A small police squad was sent out to break up the fighting, but upon reaching Centre Street, the gangs turned against the police, who were forced to retreat after several officers were injured. They made a second attempt, this time fighting their way into the mob, and arrested two men believed to be the leaders. The gangsters responded by storming into the low houses lining The Bowery and Bayard Street, forcing residents out, and climbed to the rooftops, where they proceeded to shower the Metropolitan officers with stones and brickbats until they fled from the area.[2][3]
Brickbats, stones and clubs were flying thickly around, and from the windows in all directions, and the men ran wildly about brandishing firearms. Wounded men lay on the sidewalks and were trampled upon. Now the Rabbits would make a combined rush and force their antagonists up Bayard street to the Bowery. Then the fugitives, being reinforced, would turn on their pursuers and compel a retreat to Mulberry, Elizabeth and Baxter streets.
— The New York Times July 6, 1857
When the police left without their prisoners, the fighting stopped for a few moments. The truce lasted only an hour or two as fighting resumed near The Tombs,[2] supposedly brought about by a group of women from the Five Points who had provoked the Dead Rabbits into attacking the Bowery gangs. Bringing reinforcements, the participants were estimated at between 800 and 1000, armed with bludgeons, paving stones, brickbats, axes, pitchforks, and other weapons. Several hundred other criminals also arrived in the area, mostly burglars and thieves, who were not affiliated with either side and simply took the opportunity for looting. Residents and store owners all along the Bowery were forced to barricade their buildings and protect themselves with pistols and muskets.[3]
Fighting continued until early afternoon, when a larger police force arrived, sent by Police Commissioner Simeon Draper, and marched in close formation towards the mob. After hard fighting, they cleared the streets, forcing both the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys into the buildings and to the rooftops once again.[2] The police followed the gangsters, using their clubs at every opportunity, and began arresting large numbers of men. Some refused to surrender to police, such as one man who, while fighting police, fell off the roof of a Baxter Street tenement fracturing his skull. He was promptly killed by Bowery gangsters on the ground, who stomped him to death.[4] Two leaders of the Dead Rabbits were finally arrested by police despite heavy resistance from fellow gang members. The police took them to a nearby police precinct followed by a group of Bowery Boys.[3]
Fighting resumed as soon as the police left. Barricades were set up with push carts and stones from which gangsters fired weapons, hurled bricks, and used clubs against their enemies. At one point, a Dead Rabbit stepped in front of his barricade and used his pistol to kill two Bowery Boys and wound two others despite heavy fire. He was finally knocked unconscious, reportedly by a small boy whose brother was a Bowery Boy.[3]
The police returned to the area but were unable to re-enter and were forced to retreat several times with heavy losses. That evening, they called upon Captain Isaiah Rynders to use his influence to stop the battle. Rynders, the political boss of the Sixth Ward, was long associated with the underworld, and it was thought that he could force them to stop. He agreed, and upon his arrival between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m., he addressed the gangsters from the barricades. Although he tried to reason with them by telling them the futility of fighting, they refused to listen, and Rynders was forced to escape into the company of his henchmen, when the mob responded by throwing rocks at him. He then traveled to the Metropolitan Police Headquarters where he advised Draper to call in the military.[2][4] Meanwhile, fires had been set to two or three houses while residents remained under siege by looters and thugs.[3]
At around 9:00 p.m., the Eighth and the Seventy-First Regiments of the
Aftermath
During the two days, eight men were killed and between thirty[2] and a hundred others injured, roughly half requiring hospitalization. It was believed that many gang members were carried off by their friends and, over the next few days, those who were killed in the fighting were buried in cellars, hidden passageways, and other locations in the Five Points and Paradise Square. Many known "sluggers" from both sides were noticeably absent from the area following the riot. According to underworld legend, these sites would be used for secret burials by street gangs for the next several decades.[3][4]
Afterwards, occasional violence against Bowery Boys who ventured into the Five Points was reported, although none of these attacks reached the levels seen during the riots. The most serious incident occurred the next day, when a group of Bowery Boys fought members of the
Many of the Five Points gangs, most notably the Dead Rabbits, resented the implications made by police and newspapers that they had been involved in criminal activity. The Dead Rabbits paid for a letter to The New York Times, denying those assertions.[3]
We are requested by the Dead Rabbits to state that the Dead Rabbit club members are not thieves, that they did not participate in the riot with the Bowery Boys, and that the fight on Mulberry street was between the Roach Guards of Mulberry street and the Atlantic Guards of the Bowery. The Dead Rabbits are sensitive on points of Honor, we are assured, and wouldn't allow a thief to live on their beat, much less be a member of their club.[3]
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
The riot of 1857 is dramatized (briefly) in Chapter XVIII of MacKinlay Kantor's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Andersonville" (1955).
In art
Artist
See also
- New York City draft riots
- Orange Riots
- History of New York City (1855–1897)
- New York City Police riot of 1857
- Tammany Hall
- List of incidents of civil unrest in New York City
- List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States
Notes
- ISBN 9780313354526.
- ^ a b c d e f g Headley, J.T. The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873, Including a Full and Complete Account of the Four Days' Draft Riot of 1863. New York: E.B. Treat, 1873, pp 131–132
- ^ ISBN 1-56025-275-8
- ^ ISBN 0-06-059002-5
References
- Anbinder, Tyler. Five Points: the 19th-century New York City neighborhood that invented tap dance, stole elections, and became the world's most notorious slum (Simon and Schuster, 2001)
- Clark, Emmons. History of the Seventh Regiment of New York, 1806–1889. Vol. I. New York: The Seventh Regiment, 1890.
- Francis, Augustus Theodore. History of the 71st Regiment, N.G., N.Y., American Guard. New York: The Veterans Association, 1919.
- Katz, Helena. Gang Wars: Blood and Guts on the Streets of Early New York (2005)