 The Five Points was a neighborhood in downtown New York renowned for poverty and widespread criminality. Several gangs collectively known as the Five Points Gang ruled the neighborhood's organized crime activity. Under their rule, Five Points gained international notoriety for having the highest murder rate of any slum in the world and stories of violent confrontation between warring gangs became legendary. 

 One of the most dangerous areas controlled by the Five Points gangs pictured in 1896 at the height of gang influence in the area. The original street has now been changed in layout and replaced with Mulberry Street. The area was the original home of several of the most dangerous Irish gangs in the Five Points who lived in cramped tenement buildings surrounding the bustling high street.  

Jacob Riis, who took this photo, called Bandit's Roost 'the vilest and worst to be found anywhere.' Riis identified a tenement in his photo of Bandit's Roost as 59 &amp;frac12; Mulberry Street, the area of New York's Columbus Park where people now sit on benches and warm themselves in the sun    

 The 'X' denotes where police discovered a dead body. The body of a man was discovered in the alleyway behind a tenement building in the Five Points. According to local sources in one building known as the 'Old Brewery' there was at least one murder per night at the height of the gang's power  

 Pick-pocketing was one of the main rackets controlled by gangs in the Five Points who would divide up the loot from successful robberies. Alcoholism and poverty went hand-in-hand in the neighborhood which meant crude techniques like the one pictures were devastatingly effective and allowed thieves to easily get away with the crime  

An Irish-American gang who took their name from an old Irish-American militia, pictured relaxing in the docks near the Five Points. The original Montgomery Guards were an Irish-American militia company that formed in Boston in 1837 and were forced to disband the following year due to extreme nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment in the city    

 Included within newspaper "Four scenes from the riot in the Sixth Ward, New York City between the "Bowery Boys" and the "Dead Rabbits" showing: women and men throwing brickbats down on the police, a "Dead Rabbit," a "Bowery Boy," and a "Dead Rabbit," falling at the feet of policeman Shangles"  

 Shows Five Points and Mulberry Bend which served as a focal point for gang violence. Jacob Riis once described it as the 'foul core of New York's slums'.  

Five Points

Gangs of New York

An Irish-American gang that, at its peak, controlled most of Manhattan 

The Gopher Gang

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