Five Points

Five Points named for the intersection of the five streets over landfill that was old Collect Pond; houses built on the top of the site began sinking almost immediately due to decomposition and methane gas buildup.

During 1800s, Five Points was named for the intersection of the five streets over landfill that was old Collect Pond. Most know it as the seedy setting in Martin Scorcese's film "Gangs of New York", starring Daniel Day Lewis and Leonardo Di Caprio. It was the site of the city's first tenements and once housed America's most impoverished immigrants — the Irish, Jews, Germans, Italians, and African-Americans. Bad conditions worsened until Five Points gained reputation for being the dirtiest, most crowded, and most dangerous slum in the city. Tap dancing was also invented as a result of cultural diffusion among Irish Catholics and African Americans living in Five Points. By the end of the 19th century, the value of the real estate and the increase in the population compelled the city to transform the neighborhood by razing tenements and building newer and nicer structures, and this impoverished area ironically gave way to scenic parks and a host of administrative governmental buildings.

Hell-Cat Maggie (fl. 1820–1845) was the pseudonym of an American criminal and early member of the Dead Rabbits. She was a well-known personality in Manhattan's Five Points district and a noted fighter, her teeth reportedly filed into points and her fingers adorned with long, claw-like brass fingernails. She fought alongside the Dead Rabbits and other Five Pointers against rival nativist gangs from the Bowery, most especially the Bowery Boys, during the early 1840s. Although there is little information about her life, she is one of the earliest female criminals of the "Gangs of New York" era and has been compared to other female criminals such as Gallus Mag and Battle Annie, the latter leading the female auxiliary of the Gopher Gang during the 1870s.

Additionally, an Irish whiskey known as Hell-Cat Maggie is now sold through the Phillips Distilling Company to advertise the famous street fighter's life and ferocity.

One of Gotham`s earliest known criminal outfits, the Forty Thieves operated between the 1820s and 1850s in the Five Points neighborhood of Manhattan. This band of Irish thugs, pickpockets and ne`er-do-wells first came together in a grocery store and dive bar owned by a woman named Rosanna Peers. Under the leadership of Edward Coleman—a notorious rogue who was later hanged for beating his wife to death—what started as a motley group of petty criminals soon blossomed into a feared street gang with its own rules and organizational structure. Members of the Forty Thieves reportedly had quotas