Thirty years ago, when I came to New York, the Five Points were more talked about than Fifth avenue, or fully as much. People used to go see the Five Points just as nowadays they go to see Central Park, and I went to see ‘em, like everybody else.
Now the Five Points are no more; they exist only in the memory of the past generation, and pretty soon they won’t exist even in that. Even the policeman are forgettin’ all about ‘em, and in a few years there won’t be five people who can tell you anythin’ accurate about the Five Points.
Yet the Five Points were “a big thing” while they lasted, the biggest thing in the way of misery and vice ever seen in the United States of America, and not gone ahead of by anythin’ in London or Paris.
One of the worst places in all the Five Points was “the Corner House,” as it was called, because it stood at the corner of Park and Baxter streets. It was an old frame buildin’, almost black, in the last stage of goin’-to-tumble-down-ativeness (as I saw it), and without six whole panes of glass in its ten or twelve windows. The only thing that seemed to be abundant was dirt. The ground floor of this Corner House was “run” as a distillery by a man called Thomas Lane, and it was about the lowest possible sort of a barroom, frequented only by cut-throats and thieves. Underneath it was the den of a Mrs. Sullivan, which used to be called by the people in the neighborhood “Hell Let Loose.” It was a rough title, but it deserved it. It was a haunt for white and black pickpockets and bullies, and black and white women, who used to go round half naked and whole drunk, lovin’ or fightin’, as the case might be, and lyin’ drunk or bleedin’ on the floor.
Mrs. Sullivan, who kept this “Hell Let Loose,” was generally drunk about twenty-eight or twenty-nine days out of the month. The other two or three days she was worse than merely drunk–she was crazy and would have the jim jams and afford her customers any quantity of amusement and the police any quantity of trouble.
The upper part of this Corner House was “bossed over” by a big buck negro, who had a rather pretty white woman for a wife. She used to keep Mrs. Sullivan company in her “drunks,” and died herself of delirium tremens. The negro used to amuse himself throwin’ knives and forks at her–at least knives, as they didn’t have many forks around the establishment. All the negro’s boarders were thieves, and some of ‘em were arrested every day.
Right across the street from this Corner House was the Old Soup House, a small, tumble-down shanty, a cross between a tavern and a pig-sty.
They used to sell what they called three-cent soup at this place, and this three-cent soup was in great demand in the Five Points. It was only the ends of ham, boiled down in a wash-kettle. It was weak as water and dirty as pitch, and smelt abominably. But such as it was, men, women and children rushed for it, at three cents a bowl, and used to fight and steal to get the three cents to pay for it. A decent man wouldn’t have given it to a decent dog, but often a whole family would have nothin’ to depend on for a week at a stretch to keep soul and body together but this three-cent soup. Fifty or sixty thieves, cyprians, beggars, tatterdemalions, black, white and yellow could be seen any time, standin’ or sittin’ or lyin’ down in line, fightin’ for places or waitin’ for their turn for this three-cent soup.
There was an establishment started in opposition to the Old Soup House a little further down the street, where they managed to give one man, say, and two women, all three of ‘em, a pretty good time for five cents for the lot. The way they managed it was this: For a penny the man got a bowl of “soup”–worse stuff, if possible, than the three-cent soup, and not more than one-half as much, so they were about even–and he got three spoons, one spoon for each party, and about three spoonfuls for each spoon.
Then for another penny he would get a small glassful of a white liquor that was called, and was really “turpentine” gin–gin distilled right from the refuse of turpentine, and warranted to make the soberest man drunk in five minutes, from which reason it was sometimes called “five-minute gin.” Of course, as many people as chose could take a sip out of this glass.
Then the man could wind up his wild dissipation by “treating” himself and his “ladies” to three pipes full of tobacco at a cent a pipe, standin’ up at the bar while they smoked, and puttin’ back the pipes when they were done with ‘em. By this arrangement, you see, a “swell” of the Five Points could give two “ladies” a supper, a drunk and a smoke for five cents, and a very lively swell was he considered, and did he consider himself, if he could get the five cents.
Then there was Mother Shea’s den and Louisiana Hall, 42 Baxter street, a great resort for the colored people, and the “strongest smellin’” place of its size probably in the world; Saxton’s tenement, where about five hundred people lived, or tried to, huddled together; Barlow’s court, where Kindlin’ Wood Jake hung out, the man who is said to have been the first to introduce into the city of New York the peddlin’ of kindlin’ wood, commencin’ by stealin’ what he peddled; Jacob’s Ladder, the Steerage and lots of other places, famous for their misery, filth and crime in their day. But the boss place of the old Five Points, the show place of dirt, destitution, disgrace and despair was, the Old Brewery.
Nobody yet has ever written this place up as it was, and nobody is likely to do it at this late time, but I have often thought it was a pity that someone like Charles Dickens hadn’t tried his hand at it.
It was a large brick buildin’, and was really a distillery, though they called it the Brewery. An alley down one side of it, about fifty yards long and two feet wide, a horrid hole or sink (it was nothin’ else) which was called by the cheerful title of Murderers’ Lane, and rightly so-called, because it had been the scene of several murders.
But it wasn’t the dead people of the Old Brewery that made it so horrible, it was the livin’ people that swarmed in and around it. There was more misery to the square inch in the buildin’ called the Old Brewery than in any other in the city of New York, I take it.
Right in Murderous’ Lane, for instance, there was a hole which led to a cellar, which had no door, and where the rain and the snow fell, just the same as they would fall on the street outside. In this cellar, on the floor, was generally found huddled together a lot of men, women and children, white and black, well and sick; some of these poor devils would be lucky enough to have a lot of straw to lie on, or a bone to munch, but most of ‘em had neither straw nor bone.
Once a little child died of small-pox among this heap before anybody in the heap, except the mother of the child, knew the child was sick, and before the mother herself knew the child was dead.
The reason that the mother didn’t find out till the mornin’ that her child was dead was that the greater part of the night she was quarrelin’ with some of her neighbors in the heap. They had got hold of some pieces of raw meat which they were devourin’, but which they wouldn’t share with her. This goes to show more than any words of mine or anybody else’s how people lived in the Five Points.
But perhaps there was somethin’ more horrible even than this. Once an old beggar woman fell dead in Murderers’ Lane, from sheer exhaustion. The poor old thing was tired out with beggin’ and sufferin’, and if she had any sense about her, must have been glad to die, though I suppose she wasn’t.
She fell dead, right in the alley, and all at once an old hag, well known round the Five Points, called Mother Harrigan, who hadn’t a tooth in her head, nor a heart in her body, but was said to have some money in the bank, set up a plea of relationship to the poor old dead woman, and claimed her body.
Mother Harrigan had never paid the slightest attention to the old beggar woman when she was alive, and of course people wondered why she would lay such importance upon gettin’ her body when she was dead.
But it soon turned out what she wanted with the body, and she didn’t make much of a secret of it either. She wanted to sell it to the medical college for a “subject” for the dissectin’ knife. And the old beggar woman hadn’t been dead many hours before the medical students had her. They came for the body, and carried it right off from the cellar in Murderers’ Lane, where Mother Harrigan kept guard over it. They put a big bag and carried it off on their shoulders, like so much flour, and Mother Harrigan got several dollars for the body. Most of this money she kept for herself, but as the people in Murderers’ Lane knew all about the sellin’ of the body, she had to “shell out” some of the “rhino,” and divide it among the rabble, who went on a spree and got drunk on “turpentine gin” with the money paid for the carcass of one of their own number.
There was only one “funny” place in the whole Five Points. Only one spot where a really sensible, right-feelin’ man could find anythin’ to amuse him, and that was where the Italian organ-grinders lived with their monkeys, in the big buildin’ known as “Monkey Hall.”
The back yard of Monkey Hall was about the worst kind of a backcyard–just such a back yard is one would expect to find in the Five Points. It was a den of rags, as well as a den of thieves–full of foul stenches.
But on the first floor there was a rather decent barroom and a billiard table (the only billiard table in the Five Points), at which they charged 5 cents a game.
And the second floor front room was a sort of half-respectable boardin’ house–the only place of the kind in the Five Points. The room was divided off, and had two closets; and each of these divisions and each of these closets was rented out to separate families at one dollar and a half a week. The one room accommodated this way five families of fifteen or twenty people, which might be pretty rough for any other locality, but was doing very well for the Five Points.
But the monkeys, after all, were the best boarders in Monkey Hall, and the most interestin’. They didn’t pay any rent, but then they couldn’t be considered as beats or loafers, for they brought in the greater part of the rent that was paid by the organ grinders, their owners. You tumbled over monkeys all over Monkey Hall–or rather monkeys tumbled all over you. You met ‘em at the doors, at the windows, in the hallways, on the stairs. They were on the floor, foolin’ with your feet and legs; or they were on the ceilin’ and would drop down upon your head and shoulders. It was monkeys, monkeys, everywhere.
They tell me that these monkeys have got good memories, especially if anybody does ‘em an injury. They get attached to their masters, who often get attached to ‘em, but if anybody worries ‘em, they don’t forget it. There was a story floatin’ around Monkey Hall at the time I visited it, which may or may not be true, but which at any rate was told made by one of the policemen who showed me through the Points.
Two organ-grinders came to this country from Italy, and brought their monkeys with ‘em. One of the organ-grinders’ monkeys died, and then the owner of the dead monkey took his spite out for his loss on the livin’ monkey, and teased him in every sort of a way. He finally cut a piece of its tail off. Then he left Monkey Hall before the monkey’s owner could confront him.
Years afterwards a fine-lookin’ foreign gentleman was on a dock, waitin’ to start off on a steamer, along with a party of ladies and gentlemen, one of the ladies bein’ particularly sweet on this foreign-lookin’ gent.
While he was standin’ waitin’, and talkin’ to this lady who had just got out of her carriage, and organ-grinder and his monkey came along. The foreign-lookin’ gent and his lady, of course, paid no attention to the organ-grinder, but the monkey paid a great deal of attention to the foreign-lookin’ gent.
In fact, the monkey went up to the foreign-lookin’ gent and sprang at him viciously, bit him, and held on to him. Then the organ-grinder, goin’ up to the man to call his monkey off, recognized the foreign-lookin’ gent and called him by his name. He was his old comrade, and although the foreign-lookin’ gent (who had first been a barber, and then had made himself a bogus count, and as such had imposed on the lady at her friends) denied ever havin’ seen him, the organ-grinder knew him at once, just like his monkey, and so between ‘em they spoiled the other fellow’s game.
So much for injurin’ a monkey with a memory.
[Editor’s notes: According to the New York Times of March 29, 1873, the building known as Monkey Hall on Baxter Street was demolished recently.
In 1872, Thomas Lane, “formerly keeper of a notorious den at Five Points” was appointed federal election supervisor of the Seventeenth Congressional District in New York.
Oil of turpentine is used in making gin as a replacement for juniper berry extract, since they have a similar taste. Turpentine gin was a cheap mixture of alcohol, water, lead oxide (!!), sugar, sulfuric acid, oil of turpentine, and maybe even a little real oil of juniper.]
