Who Lived in the "Five Points"

AND WHY DID THEY RIOT ON THE 4th OF JULY?

"View of the battle, corner of Elizabeth and Bayard Streets, Sixth Ward, between the 'Bowery Boys' and 'Dead Rabbits.' Scene before the erection of barricade, as witnessed by our own artist."
Source: Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper

On July 4,1857, a bloody riot erupted in the notorious "Five Points" neighborhood of New York City. Hundreds of people were drawn into the street battle. Clubs, stones and firearms left a dozen people dead and many more seriously injured.

"RIOTING AND BLOODSHED" read the New York Times. "THE CITY UNDER ARMS!" The Times and other newspapers blamed the riot on the "wild, untrained natures" of the Irish immigrants and other "ignorant scoundrels" who lived in the Five Points.

Many New Yorkers of the 1850s saw poor Irish immigrants as mindless brutes. But the Irish themselves saw things differently. The FIVE POINTS video looks at life in this immigrant neighborhood through the eyes of an Irish family, the Mulvahills, and a New York reformer, the Reverend Louis Pease. Their contrasting viewpoints help us see the July 4th riot not as meaningless violence, but as a symptom of larger social and cultural tensions in America's past.

Photographs of Irish immigrant in the1850s are rare. The FIVE POINTS program uses engravings published in newspapers and books of the period. Many of these drawings reveal prejudice against the Irish. ASHP artists tinted and occasionally retouched illustrations to draw attention to stereotypes. (See "Seeing is Believing" for more about pictures.)
Source: Thomas Nast Harper's Weekly

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