Did the notorious 19th Century, savage, New York City Irish-American gang, The Dead Rabbits actually exist? What about other questionable groups that may or may not have existed in history?

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This was originally written several years ago for a blog. Therefore, like last week’s piece, it does not comform to academic standards and it does not use the Chicago Manual of Style format that I hope to use here whenever possible.

On the other hand, having reread it, I like it. It flows. It says what I want to say. It effectively illustrates and argues the points I want it to argue. Therefore, although I have done some editing, the bulk of it remains unchanged.

This article is a modified version of a piece that originally appeared on History for Fun, Profit, and Insight in March of 2020. It was entitled, Gangs of New York #2--Painting the "Dead Rabbits Gang," and did they even exist?

An 1857 newspaper illustration of the Dead Rabbit Riot 

Among my hobbies is miniature wargaming. Miniature wargaming is a hobby that dates back quite a while. H.G. Wells, the classic science fiction author was one early enthusiast, for instance, and it involves people facing off as either pairs or teams, playing simulated battles using detailed and carefully painted miniature figures, a table top covered with model houses, trees, and scenery, and complicated rules, dice, and rulers to engage in mock battle simulations.

Around the year 2019, shortly before the pandemic hit, I decided that it might be fun to paint armies that simulated the mid-nineteenth century gangs described in Herbert Asbury’s book, Gangs of New York, and the 2002 movie of the same title based on this classic work.

This required purchasing figures suitable for the gang members, as well as researching how to paint them. Also, when I do a project like this, I like to do as much research as I can on the period of history and the armies, wars, and battles that they fight in. I was especially interested in learning all I could about The Dead Rabbits Gang, as they sounded especially fearsome, weird, and interesting.

Alas, unexpected problems soon appeared and they look like another case of likely pseudo-science.

In an earlier post on the blog, ( History for Fun, Profit, and Insight: Gangs of New York gaming -- figure and rules availability ), I wrote of figure availability for Gangs of New York gaming. While a very obscure period for wargaming, there were a surprising amount available.¹ So, after one has figures representing the Dead Rabbits Gang, the next obvious question is how does one paint these figures? What did a member of the Dead Rabbits Gang wear? How, exactly, did these mid-nineteenth century slum brawlers dress? Did they have a distinctive look? Distinctive clothing or equipment? And what colors were their clothing? And who were they exactly?

When I set out to research these important wargaming questios, here's where problems started to arise.

I acquired what sources I could, but there were problems.

Let's start with a look at the sources. The first source I found was a reprint of “The Great Riots of New York, 1712-1873.” Published in 1873, it includes a chapter on three major New York City riots of 1857. For our purposes, the most important one of these was “The Dead Rabbits Riot.” ²

Writing 26 years after the fact, the author writes of the Dead Rabbits, "their uniform was a blue stripe on their pantaloons."  Alas, that seems to be it for this source. The entire description. All there is. However the author notes that one of their rival gangs, the Roche Guards, wore a red stripe in contrast.

If we turn to Asbury's classic work, The Gangs of New York, this one written in 1927, 70 full years after many of the events he describes, we get the following: on page 23, we learn that the Dead Rabbits had a red stripe on their pants, while the Roche Guards were the ones with the blue strip on their pants. The exact opposite, and, yes, I double checked that. In fact, I double and triple checked quite a few times, and they do definitely contradict each other. Asbury also describes the Dead Rabbits as "at the head of their sluggers carried a dead rabbit impaled on a pike." Asbury, by the way, does not footnote or give sources. (And I think in this context, a "slugger" is a violent person who fights, not a club or baseball bat.)

And, if you don't believe me, and wish to double or triple check for yourself, both of these books are available not just at many libraries, but also online through sources such as archive.org and project gutenberg among others, so you may check for yourself. (My personal guess is that Asbury went to the earlier Great Riots book and mis-copied in his notes, but that's just a guess.)

The Victorian Armchair General company's depiction of the Dead Rabbits Gang. Alas, no painting guide although the wonderful people at TVAG seem to offer everything else. http://www.thevirtualarmchairgeneral.com/200-bhoys.html

Scorsese's film, Gangs of New York, offers an alternative image.

If we go to Scorsese's movie, the Dead Rabbits are shown with the orange striped shirts (something that is nowhere in the book, and, at least sometimes, red striped pants.

The Dead Rabbits as shown in the film. Aside from the red (or is it orange?) stripe on the pants and the dead rabbit on a pole, the rest seems to be invented. I have not been able to find a source for those stripes on the shirts, for instance.

Searching further, I also found a source selling a pair of Dead Rabbit pants that were apparently used as props in the film.

So, that's the film depiction of the Dead Rabbits Gang of the mid-nineteenth century. But should we take the film seriously as a source of details on how the gang dressed? Sadly, absolutely not.

If you do searches to find what historians think of the film, you will soon learn that they universally note that the film was not intended as an accurate depiction of history. The article includes quotes from people involved in the decision making for the film making it clear that accurate historical representation was not among their goals. 

For instance, see: https://www.thewelcomeblog.com/stories-of-new-york/gangs-of-new-york-facts-vs-fiction/4/2/2016 for one source. It's an interesting, well illustrated read, with nice pictures of the buildings and neighborhood, that gives a good introduction to both the period and the controversies about not just the extent of Gangs of New York type gangs and gang violence, but hints at the issue of whether or not the even existed at all.

If one goes to JSTOR, an academic database for scholarly articles, and does a search on "Dead Rabbits Gang" and related terms, one finds surprisingly little on the gang, perhaps for reasons that will become clear later. It’s the same if you do a search of the archives of the New York Times for the period.

This becomes stranger if you google the term “Dead Rabbits.” You find a Dead Rabbits Pub, a Dead Rabbits brand Whiskey, and a Dead Rabbits named rock band, and the organization was referred to a few times in the later seasons of Hell on Wheels, a TV Western that ran from 2011-2016, where they are imaginatively portrayed as a sort of nation stretching organized crime group with ties to vice. But as for actual history, there’s very little there. There’s no single volume book or even an actual academic article describing the gang in any sort of detail. If one is familiar with the popular Osprey Books loved by hobbyists that describe military units and battles in great detail, there simply is no way one could create an Osprey Book on the Dead Rabbits or even the entire “Gangs of New York” period.

One explanation for this is offer in Tyler Anbinder's historical work, Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum. Anbinder argues that the Dead Rabbits Gang did not exist at all and was instead a creation of public fears exaggerated by the media of the time. Anbinder argues this well, and it is worth reading his arguments on pages 284-289. He argues that the predominant gang of that time and place was the Roche Guards, and the term "the Dead Rabbits" came from an incident where one faction of the group entered a meeting held by another faction and threw a dead rabbit on the table.

Which, by the way, muddles the whole "Roche Guard/ Dead Rabbit" / "Blue stripe / red strip" controversy completely, or perhaps just settles it for good, if we conclude that they were one and the same group. Perhaps.

Needless to say, if the group did not exist, it does pose a quandary for people like myself who wish to paint them in miniature in a historically accurate fashion. Alas!! It's not easy sometimes being a historical wargamer. Not only do people laugh at our strange modelling passions, but we have problems like this, problems that the general public just cannot begin to fathom or grasp. Alas! Tragic indeed.

To understand the argument that a violent and flamboyant gang was said to exist in New York City, when no group by that name actually existed, one underlying issue is just how strong and pervasive anti-Irish sentiment of the time was. The period cartoon below depicts the Dead Rabbits Riot of 1857 and illustrates this nicely. The rioters are depicted as absolutely sub-human and brutish. Personally, I think the Irish rioters shown look absolutely "Orcish," bearing a closer resemblance to fantasy gaming figures of goblinoids than actual humans.

Irish Rioters of the 1857 Dead Rabbits Riot in New York City as depicted in an editorial cartoon of the time. Personally, I think they look like Tolkein or Dungeons and Dragons Orcs. 

Crime Groups, Gangs, Reality, and Urban Legend in History and Popular Belief

It seems that there is a possibility that the Dead Rabbits were more of a legend than a reality.

This is not unique. There are other cases where reality and fantasy have overlapped in the minds of many people, and the public has come to fear groups that might not even have existed. 

In their book, These Fist Break Bricks, How Kung Fu Movies Swept American and Changed the World, authors Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali, describe how in 1964, fear of these new-fangled, scary Asian martial arts, combined with old fashioned fear of urban minorities, to manifest as newspaper reports of a non-existent kung fu trained African-American gang called “the Blood Brothers.” “Negro Karate Killers Stalk Whites,” said one headline. The analogies to the Dead Rabbits are obvious. (Poggiali and Hendrix, p. 24)

Some day, I hope to investigate and write about how rumors of “the biker enforcement task for a top secret federal law enforcement unit with the ability to perform extra-judicial slayings of outlaw bikers, spread through the biker community. (Alas, not today. If one gets a chance, they are discussed as fact in the very strange documentary, Hells Angels Forever, a film made even stranger when one learns that despite its unflattering picture of the Hells Angels, it was created as a public relations effort by the Hells Angels themselves.

In mid-nineteenth century India the British colonial officials became quite concerned about a group known as "the thuggee" or "strangler sect." According to popular belief of the time, members would travel around India, finding unsuspecting victims and then strangling them as a sacrifice to the god Kali. While I make no claim to be able to judge the controversy, some modern historians have argued that the sect never existed, at least not to the extent believed by the British officials, and the British attempts to outlaw and suppress the sect stemmed from fear and hysteria.

(See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee for an introduction to this controversy, and, yes, I just cited wikipedia and did so on March 1, 2020 if one wishes to know which version. Some day, particularly if I live forever, I hope to explore this controversy in depth.) 

In our own society, not too long ago (1980s and 1990s), there was or has been a controversy about the prevalence and acts of Satanic cults. While many believe these were or are active in the USA, commiting horrific crimes, the FBI actually went so far as to issue a report stating they were not real, then stating that it was not the role of the FBI to determine why therapists and their patients believed in them.( see: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/136592NCJRS.pdf )

In the 1990s, I did some writing about this issue and also concluded that these claims, although fervently believed by some, were not real. If asked enough, perhaps some day, I will share my views on this issue although it does not really fall within the scope of what I hope to do here. 

It is not unknown for people to believe in violent criminal groups that do not exist.Ninjas. Did Ninjas exist? And if Ninja did not exist, what are all these books and movies about them? The answer is definitional and depends on how one defines the term "ninja." It’s a fascinating topic, and, ishl Allah, the first of several pieces on that very subject should be released here one week from the day this is released.

Books and Media on The Dead Rabbits and the so-called “Gangs of New York” period. 

There is a variety of media one can get if you wish to explore this period of American history in more depth. Please remember, if you order through these links you are supporting this website.

First, we have Herbert Asbury's classic yet sensationalized work, "Gangs of New York." Asbury was writing in the 1920s about life in the mid-nineteenth century and historians who look it over pretty much universally feel he was more interested in entertaining the reader than sticking to the facts and presenting a historically accurate document. It's an entertaining read that has been through several editions, but should not be taken as gospel. This is probably why when you look for more details and other sources on some of the things he describes you simply don't find them, as it is likely that they never existed.

Asbury,  Herbert. The Gangs of New York, an Informal History of the Underworld. New York, NY:  Dorset Press. 1927, 1928, 1989.

Tyler Anbinder's "Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum," is a more serious history of the time and place written by a contemporary author. The two books at times contradict each other. 

Anbinder, Tyler.  Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum. New York, NY: Free Press. 2010.

The Great Riots of New York is a late nineteenth century work that describes historical events as the author understood them to have happened. It is probably one of the sources Asbury used to write his book and parts of it are well worth reading to understand this period.

Tyler Headley, Joel. The Great Riots of New York, 1712-1873. New York, NY: Thunder Press. 1873. 1970. 2004.

Yes, there was a big Hollywood movie in 2002 based on some of the events in Asbury's book. Perhaps unexpectedly, I was not a particularly big fan of the film, neither are the people at TVAG either by the way, they make that clear in the introduction to their wonderful rules, and it is also not particularly accurate in its depiction of history. Dates are mixed and some of the details not quite right.

If you are looking for another entertaining depiction of New York City during this time, there was a two season BBC America series called “Copper” that focused on the adventures of an American police officer during the Civil War. It’s a very interesting but very dark show. At no point, does it mention or feature the Dead Rabbits, perhaps for the reasons explained in ths article.

Poggiali, Chris & Hendrix Grady. These Fist Break Bricks, How Kung Fu Movies Swept American and Changed the World. Austin TX: Mondo Books. 2021.

1. If there is a market for mid-19th Century Gangs of New York wargaming figures, there surely is a market for the writing I am doing here. Please help me find and share these pieces on social media and with friends who might like them. Thanks.

2. Just because it is interesting, one of these was the so-called “Police Riot,” an amazing event which involved a large between the two different polices forces, one state and one municipal, that had been assigned to patrol the city and keep the peace, and were instead vying with each other for dominance.

#History, #Pseudohistory #Historiography #Crime #DeadRabbits #FalseClaims #FringeClaims