Today’s Riotous Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Most of New York City’s poor during the 1830’s, especially the Irish (the “b’hoys” – “boys” pronounced with an Irish accent), were loyal to the Democratic Party, and incited by such local politicians as the interesting but misguided Mike Walsh, they were opposed to the abolition of slavery, the local reasoning being that freeing black slaves in the South could only have a damaging effect on the lot of white wage slaves in the North. In 1833, when a prominent local Abolitionist named Lewis Tappan read the Constitution of the Anti-Slavery Society in public on the Fourth of July, he was shouted down by members of the crowd, who then followed him home and broke windows in his house, as well as in the house of other patrician Abolitionists who lived in the then fashionably residential Rose Street.
By the following summer, things were even worse. On the night of July 7, 1834, a black congregation was gathered at the Chatham Chapel, on Chatham Street, to hear a sermon by a visiting black minister. In the middle of the service a group of whites appeared, representing themselves as members of the New York Sacred Music Society, and asserting that they had rights to the use of the chapel on that night. What happened next is unclear, but somehow a brawl occurred. Lewis Tappan was recognized by the mob, who followed him and pelted his house with stones and brick.
On the following night, July 8, a crowd of whites forced their way into the chapel and held an impromptu meeting, with speeches attacking abolition. The current manager of the Bowery Theater was a man named Farren, who happened to be an English subject. A week or so earlier, he had fired an actor named McKinney, who had been giving him a great deal of trouble. McKinney seized the occasion to address the house from the balcony, claiming that Farren had insulted the flag. He made an appeal to the b’hoys who who broke into the theater and stopped the performance looking for Farren, who had escaped. The mob switched gears once again and headed back down to Rose Street, to Tappan’s house, where they smashed the doors and whatever windows remained intact, destroyed the interior, hauled the furniture out on the street, piled it up, doused it with oil, and set it on fire.
Five days of rioting ensued. Only July 10, mobs attacked residences and stores on Spring, Catherine, Thompson, and Reade Streets, and rampaged in their own territory, on Paradise Square. On both the tenth and the eleventh, property held by blacks was destroyed, including, on the first night, churches on Centre and Leonard Streets, a school on Orange (Baxter) Street, and tenements on Mulberry Street and in the Five Points. Dozens of white-owned buildings were looted and burned as well and five brothels were invaded and the whores taken out and gang-raped. A passerby was discovered to be English; his eyes were gouged out and his ears cut off. It was rumored that all houses in the Five Points would be destroyed save those that had a candle burning in the window. Instantly, every house in the area featured candles in every available window. A detachment of troops eventually appeared, at around one o’clock, and dispersed the mob. The following night was marked by more of the same, including the destruction of a black church on Spring Street and the erection of barricades across Chatham Square, but again the 27th Infantry arrived, though a bit late in the game, and dispersed the mob. The authorities could not let things get too heated, but at the same time they do not appear to have been overly energetic in their efforts to calm the troubles.
Culled from: Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
Morbid Mirth Du Jour!
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Morbid Trinkets Du Jour!
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