Gangs of New York: how it was

• Gangs of New York: as it was

Probably every person New York associated with Manhattan, Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, skyscrapers ... But what happened in the "Big Apple" to that?

Many of us (and maybe a few) saw the film by Martin Scorsese, "Gangs of New York" and assumed that all this is just fiction. But no matter how well :). The film actually has a real historical background. Brilliant director really showed those bands that raged at that time and kept at bay the entire city. And order prevailed in the city center of life for many was not Manhattan, and the angle of five streets ...

The end of the 19th century, New York: poverty, racism, immigration, corruption in government, the constant riots caused by the call to battle those who are unable to pay off or to immigrants who do not understand what they were fighting ... In such circumstances, the local population it was doomed: either fight or die. They chose the first and began to coalesce into a gang of gangsters.

It was a time when society was divided into "tribes" are constantly fighting with each other. The first bands were organized Irish, who came to New York every week and this cradle "robber bands" became "Angle of five streets" - the area formed by the streets Cross, Anthony, Little Water, Orange and Mulberry.

Each week, there appeared a new gang of gangsters with very unusual names: "untucked shirts" (got the name for the way to wear a shirt), "Chichester", "Roach Guard," "ugly cylinders," "The Dead Rabbits" and others.

gangs Center Old Brewery was once really are. Now the most famous apartment building in the history of the city has become a hangout, the inhabitants of which almost did not leave the building and to produce their own food blasphemous way. Hidden in the dark hallway, they were waiting for their neighbors, carrying something edible, beat them with something heavy on the head and took away their food.

Street, passing by the old brewery, stretched from north to south. South part was saying the name "Alley killers," North - "cave of thieves."

One of the most popular entertainment of the time in the region of five streets were dogfights. How much money they have earned the gang ...

ingenuity bands of that time was not to occupy. For example, in some of the gang took only a crime, and in one of the gangs was a price list for the crime: from punch ($ 2) to murder ($ 100).

There were other areas, as they say, with a high crime rate. This was the area of ​​the Bowery (inhabited by such bands as "Bowery Boys", "Real Americans", "American Guard", "O'Connell Guard" and others) and the once elite Fifth District (it was inhabited mainly the so-called river pirates ). However, extreme cruelty, in contrast to its "more farmers" from the angle of five streets, they do not differ.

But in his time in the ranks of "Bowery Boys" fought Bill "The Butcher" - a prototype of the Butcher Cutting of the film "Gangs of New York". He actively "crushes" on itself all known all his ways. He quickly established a "protection racket" of local drinking establishments, transforming not willing to pay a bloody mess.

Oddly enough, but there were even gangsters and fire, which extinguished the fires in the city, and was not satisfied with them. But they did it, of course, not for altruistic reasons - gang put out a burning house, looked much more noble in the eyes of the locals. But to the locals in any case will not mistake gang, they gave them a special name - "white spirit", "black joke", "Stomach herring", "Dry Bones", "Red Pirate," "Senny wagon", "Most six "," Yale girl "," bean soup "," Old rubbish "and even ..." old maid. " However, the case and so that the house is burnt out completely due to fight gangs wanting to put out the building.

The first gangsters began to use for criminal purposes and therapeutic drugs. The scheme was simple - one distracts (usually a woman), the other pours horsepower share sleeping pills. Oh, and then it is simple enough.

were widely known and cemetery thieves who dug up the bodies, and then sold them to medical students. But everything comes to an end. The civil war has fallen upon New York in 1863, a series of riots, which were the most terrible in the history of America. They lasted 4 days and 4 nights. The rebels burned and destroyed everything that came in their way. On the second day, when the city was under siege, the first troops came to New York in order to suppress the rebels.

From this point on gang activity began to decline, some of them have disappeared in other cities, someone went into politics, and some of them were transformed into so-called organized crime. Nowadays "angle angles Five" - ​​a tastefully dressed people who live and work in the famous American skyscraper, no marshes, mud and "gangster" of violence. Of course, the gangs lived not only New York, but that's another story ....