The true and bloody story of the “New York Gangs”

Once upon a time, New York had nothing to do with the cosmopolitan metropolis we all know today. Once upon a time and for many years, the gangs commanded the city and forced the police into the role of accomplice. Traffic was once banned in the city at sunset. Probably an unnecessary measure since on the one hand the gang members did not take the brunt of state bans, on the other hand the ordinary citizens, the civilian population, did not dare to leave their homes because everyone knew that they might even lose their lives.

We all got a small idea of ​​what was going on in New York at that time at the end of 2002 (beginning of 2003 in Greece) when his film was released in cinemas. Martin Scorsese “The Gangs of New York” with the amazing Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio to “hold” the leading roles.

Blood flowed abundantly in the late 19th century, the terror of gang action was pervasive, savage killings were a daily occurrence, lawlessness, corruption prevailed and when all this was brought to the big screen the younger ones got a little taste of what really meant Bowery Boys, Dead Rabbits, Short Tails, Gopher, Whyos and Montgomery…

The gangs of New York…

The Bowery Boys were a gang created by firefighters wearing red t-shirts and hats. Short Tails wore unbuttoned shirts. The Irish Dead Rabbits held sticks topped with rabbit heads. The Whyos had a special call that sounded like birdsong and was meant to warn people that they were on the road. More bloody against all that the anti-Catholic Bowery Boys had with each other with the Irish Dead Rabbits.

The busiest area was south of Manhattan. The deadliest point is an old brewery. There, the gang members gave their death appointments. No one approached the area. Nor, of course, the police.

There were Italian immigrants. Hard nuts that laid the foundations for the later development of mafia. The “natives”, that is, those who were born in America who considered their territory to belong to them. Of course, there were the Irish who were the fastest knives of all. If you got involved, you would hardly get out of it.

The battles between them may have lasted up to 48 hours. Dozens were killed and hundreds were injured. Then they were reorganized and the blood cycle continued. In fact, for a whole century the gangs “ruled” with their own laws and their own ways the New York without anyone being able to control them.

A central figure in all this chaos was a “local”. His name was William Poole. He was the leader of the Bowery Boys. He was the man who went down in history with the nickname “Bill The Butcher”. He was a tough boxer born in Sussex, New Jersey. In 1832 he moved to New York and opened a butcher shop.

William Poole was a ruthless man. It is said that one day he entered a bar and for no apparent reason literally crippled the barber in the wood. Such was the brutality of the attack that the owner of the bar was shocked and hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic so that he could recover!

Poole’s great enemy was the Irishman John Morrisey, also a very famous boxer. Legend has it that the feud between them started when the “Butcher” bet against the “Irishman” during a match. It is said that the “Irishman” β twisted and “set up” the fight, so that the “Butcher” would lose his money. He understood him and was not left with folded arms. He may have lost his money but he was waiting for the Irishman outside the shop where the match took place and when he saw him coming out, he literally crippled him in the wood. She sent him to the hospital for many months with one eye removed and one leg crushed.

The end of William Poole came on March 8, 1855, when an Irish friend saw him drinking at a bar in southern Manhattan, approached him and shot him in the face. Butcher died a few days later. Shortly before he breathed his last, he said: “Goodbye my boys. “I’m dying like a real American.”

Or Scorsese’s “Gangs”

In the early 1970s, the great Martin Scorsese read the book of the same name and, as he has stated, he wanted from the first moment to take it to the big screen. At the end of the same decade he buys the rights.

For many years he has been looking to find the producer who will finance the film. She finds him in his face Harvey Weinstein who is currently in prison convicted of sexual assault, rape and was the reason for the birth of the #MeToo movement.

Initially, Scorsese wanted him for the two leading roles Mel Gibson (as Walloon) and Willem Dafoe (as Butcher Bill). He then suggested the role of Butcher to Tom Hanks but he refused because he had already signed on to star in “The Road to Loss.” Eventually the roles ended up with the great Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio.

The great director did not just rely on the book to make the film. He consulted historians to be sure that he would be able to convey the climate of that time and avoid mistakes. It was his passion and dedication to getting things right that gave the actors a chance to listen to an 1892 recording in which Walt Whitman recited a poem in order to understand what their accent should be.

The two protagonists were so passionate about the roles they were in New York even outdoors rehearsing on their own.

Daniel Day-Lewis, in fact, proved why he is perhaps the greatest actor of his generation, when he hired teachers to teach him how to speak with the right accent, magicians to explain to him how to handle knives while he even went to a butcher shop. to show him how to cut the meat properly!

DiCaprio and Day-Lewis, however, also had a bad time when in a battle scene the former broke the latter ‘s nose with a powerful blow. The award-winning British actor, however, continued filming normally, as if nothing was happening, so as not to interrupt it.