I saw Gangs of New York tonight and while I liked it, I was wondering how much of it actually was accurate.
I know that the navy did not shell the five points and that the draft riots were real, as well as that Decaprio’s character wasn’t real. However, other then that(IE the atmosphere and general squaror of NYC)?
Are are any good sites that compare the reality with what scosese made up? Goodfellas and Casino were easier due to the fact both were based off testimony from those invovled.
You could read the original book. IIRC it was written in the 1920s, so has a lot more first person sources. It has been criticised as not great history.
But, as I understand it from History courses in college, NYC was quite squalid and violent in the immigrant slums. Imagine people packed together, six in a one bedroom apartment, apartment on top of apartment, lack of indoor plumbing and people emptying their shit pots into the street, farm animals keep on roofs or in any open space available, butcher shops, fish markets, horses and stables, and buildings so tight that sunlight didn’t reach the alleys.
NY1 (our local news station) did a little human interest piece on this topic over the weekend. You can read it at their web site.
My favorite quote from the piece is:
"In fact, after a visit to Five Points, Davey Crockett himself was quoted as saying: “I would rather risk myself in an Indian fight than venture among these creatures after nightfall.”
Unfortunately, the link to the tour guide’s web site provided in the article doesn’t seem to be working, at least for me.
I was taking a walk in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery the other day, disporting myself amongst the tombs, and I came across a grave marker for a “William C. Cutting.” He’d died in 1872 and had a wife, leading me to conjure up an amusing alternate ending for the movie.
It’s about fifty feet in front of the big Delafield hillside mausoleum, just off Ravine Path at the intersection of Oak and Hillock Avenues.
Another resource is this interview with historian Tyler Anbinder. I heard an interview with him on NPR (you’ve gotta pay for transcripts, unfortunately), and in that interview he said that (paraphrasing) the overall look and feel of the movie, and the protrayal of the social feelings of the time (the attitude toward the Irish, for example) was well done (rating an A), but that the details (the amount of violence during gang wars, for example) were more fictionalized (rating a C).
The Herbert Asbury site is worth reading. I’d say the movie could be described as essentially accurate in its evocation of the appearance and atmosphere of this little-known period of US history, but inaccurate in juxtaposing characters who weren’t contemporary.
Another site with some snippets of information:
The Asbury book Gangs of New York is really more a collection of short stories and very short biographies. Asbury was a journalist, and the book was written in a very newspaper-y style. I believe he treats the draft riots in two chapters in the center of the book. I would not be surprised if much of what he wrote were tall tales and legends that had been passed down through the years in the city.
Bill “the Butcher” Poole was a real figure and is mentioned in the book. However, he was murdered in the late 1850s.
As I recall from the book, Navy ships were anchored off the end of Wall Street and their cannons were fired to keep the rioters from attacking what was even then the financial center of New York.
[Here](http://search1.npr.org/search97cgi/s97_cgi?CleanQuery=Tyler+Anbinder&ResultTemplate=allow_re_sort.hts&SortSpec=Date+Desc+Score+Desc&ViewTemplate=docview
.hts&collection=ALL02&Action=FilterSearch&filter=topic_filter.NEW.hts&QueryT
ext=&x=12&y=6) are two NPR stories that you might find interesing (one zut has already mentioned).
For background on the history, I recommend Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum by Tyler Anbinder. He gives a pretty thorough and fascinating history of the neighborhood.
Haven’t seen the movie yet, but why in Gotham do the newspaper ads show a modern day New York City skyline when the film is set in the 19th century? Or was the Empire State Building built in the 1830s?
Probably to relate the story to the evolution of what has become New York. To show how the events depicted in the movie helped shape the way the city is today. And the modern skyline (circa 9-10-01) is briefly featured.
Alto is quite right, the Anbinder “Five Points” book is excellent.
The movie takes the names of the gangs, and the general atmosphere of contempt for the Irish and their living conditions accurately, almost everything else is Hollywood. I think (might be wrong) that the Nativists were better known throughout the country as Know-Nothings, and were a political force. I don’t believe there was a major Chinese presence in 1863, and there sure as hell are no caves under what is now Chinatown - New York is really swampy until you hit thrity or forty feet underground. The Five Points were built on a filled in pond to begin with. (There were and still are tunnels between buildings, but no caves). I don’t think Tweed was at the height of his power just then (1863), maybe a few years later. A good alternative book to read is Paradise Alley, set at the same time. Forgive me, but I forgot the authors name. Also, I believe that there is an expression in Irish that sounds like “Dead Rabbits,” but actually means something else. There may not have been an actual “dead rabbits” gang, but several gangs to which that name might be applied. The draft riots were even more violent than portrayed, and the real gangs may have used the riots as cover to loot the homes of the wealthy. The soldiers who put down the riots were New Yorkers and veterans (or maybe better put, survivors) of Gettysburg. They were violently attacked (including by rifle and pistol fire) and returned fire into the crowds. The movie sort of showed a sissy-mary mob being fired on - the truth was much worse.
Here is an article from the NYT (reprinted in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune) with some insights.
Smithsonian magazine had a good story on the movie last month. IIRC, it gave the Irish meaning of the name “Dead Rabbits.”
The sheriff of New York at the time of the Draft Riots had an Irish surname, but he was not assassinated by a gang leader AFAIK.
The Draft Riots were indeed much worse than the movie portrayal. Army troops and police were beaten back at several points. A police captain who tried to return home to check on his property was recognized, beaten and tortured to death. Horace Greeley was nearly lynched and the Tribune Offices attacked. It was a full-scale insuirrection by the Irish, a Civil War in the North, and lasted nearly a week. Two thousand dead, the worst riot in American history.
The Colored Orphan Asylum really was attacked, and a little girl who didn’t make it out in time was killed by the rioters. (I felt the movie downplayed the violence against blacks. Police would come and cut down lynched blacks, and then mobs would take over that corner and string them back up again.)
The Metropolitan Police and the Municipal Police really were at odds, as in the movie, even having their own blue-on-blue riot in 1857.
Battling volunteer fire crews really did send runners out to put a barrel over the fire plug, and sometimes the houses did burn down while they were fighting.
Chinese immigrants were almost all men. They would have run gambling houses and opium dens, but not bawdy houses with dancing girls.
The big gang confrontation between the nativists and the Irish was on July 4-5 of 1857, not during the Draft Riots. According to Asbury, it was the Bowery Boys (nativists) versus the Dead Rabbits and the Plug Uglies (Irish). If the D.R.'s really existed, they certainly had not been “outlawed” at that time.
IIRC, it was true, as implied in the movie, that the ranks of the “nativist” groups were themselves filled with people of Irish descent, including the famous Bowery Boys.
Bill “The Butcher” Poole (not Cutting) was a Bowery Boy. He was fatally shot in a gambling saloon in 1855 by Lew Baker, a gangster from Five Points. Legend holds that he took a week to die, and he really did say “I die a true American,” as the movie’s Big Bill says. The Bowery Boys themselves were not a criminal gang until the late Fifties, but they were definitely interested in elections.
I liked it that the movie portrayed street gangs as politically savvy. I wonder what would happen if today’s street gangs decided to get into electioneering!
I also liked it that some of the Irish in the movie spoke Irish Gaelic.
I was disappointed that Mose the Bowery B’hoy, the trolleycar-toting eight-foot giant with hands the size of Virginia hams who could swim the Hudson in two strokes, was left out of the movie.
Well, the mafia was rather interested in them, as well as organized labor, and at one point, they were nothing more then street gangs.
I was thinking more of today’s gangs, which are notoriously apolitical and apathetic to larger issues.
It’s funny how political involvement is viewed by social workers and ex-gangbangers as a way out of gang life. This usually involves breaking up with fellow gang members, dissociating oneself completely with the old life.
What if gang members decided to get involved in politics, en masse, while still hanging out with each other? The police and middle-class opinion would no doubt see that as a threat. The L.A. gang truces of the early '90’s were seen the same way, and were even sabotaged and undermined by the police. Any collective action by gang members that doesn’t involve leaving your old friends is viewed as a threat.
This is a little-known bit of trivia: when I visited Nicaragua in the 80’s, the economy and US sanctions had spawned a youth gang problem. The Sandinista government dealt with this somewhat successfully by encouraging gangs to form sports teams, get involved in community projects, join the army together, etc. In other words, they changed the gangs without breaking them up. They even sponsored a National Convention of Youth Gangs.
Perhaps gangs are such a knotty problem in the US because we are telling youths that they have to leave their fellow gang members, who are often the only people who care about them. Maybe it’s time to try a different approach?
(Come to think of it, I think I heard something, within the last ten years, about Chicago’s Gangster Disciples reforming themselves and getting involved in politics, much to the consternation of many Chicagoans. Do any Chi Dopers care to comment?)
Caaaan youuuu diiiig iiiiit???
Sorry… had to throw that in there.
I picked up the Asbury book a couple of days ago, and it is an interesting read. But I get the feeling that it’s more a history that makes a good read than a real historical examination of anything. Will definitely have to check out the Anbinder if I can find it.
I haven’t seen the movie, however, and I honestly don’t plan to. There’s a lot that gets lost in trying to adapt books like this to film, and I never seem to find seeing the film a satisfying experience if I’ve read the book first.