![]() ![]() The narrative is by no means chronological it skips from an 1838 description of Lower Manhattan - the Five Points area, the Tombs and the Criminal Courts, to the Slave Plot of 1741 to a description of the Collect Pond. This is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the book for historians. There are many references to newspapers of the time period, and few to actual statistics. ![]() This 1928 account of city life begins, "The first of the gangs which terrorized New York at frequent intervals for almost a century were spawned in the dismal tenements that squatted in the miasmal purlieus of the Five Points area of the Bloody Ould Sixth Ward, which comprised, roughly, the territory bounded by Broadway, Canal street, the Bowery and Park Row, formerly Chatham street." As can be expected, the anti-Irish bias of the book continues throughout in lurid prose. All of these groups added to the commission of general mayhem in the forms of fighting, rioting, murder, arson, robbery, and corruption. ![]() In fact, if you were to read no other history of New York, you would conclude that New York was made up of none other than gangsters - some of whom were actual thugs, some of whom were police and fire officers, and some of whom were the government. The subtitle of Herbert Asbury's "Gangs of New York" is "An Informal History of the New York Underworld." Informal is an understatement. To buy Herbert Asbury's book, click on the cover. REVIEW: 'The Gangs of New York' by Herbert Asburyīy Patricia Jameson-Sammartano Special to The Wild Geese Today ![]()
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