Five Points Gang

The Five Points Gang was a criminal street gang, initially of primarily Irish-American origins, based in the Five Points of Lower Manhattan, New York City, during the late 19th and early 20th century.

The gang had its origin in the various Irish immigrant and Irish-American gangs in the Five Points area. Paul Kelly, born Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli before utilizing an Irish-sounding name, was an Italian-American who organized and founded the more cohesive "Five Points Gang". While the gang had some continuity with the prior Irish gangs of the Five Points, it eventually predominately consisted of the Italian immigrant and Italian-American gangsters that had begun to populate the previously mostly Irish-American Five Points. The gang eventually consisted largely of Italian-Americans and Italian immigrants living in the Five Points, though it continued to include Irish-American members and members of other ethnicities throughout its existence. Some of the gang's members later became prominent criminals in their own right, including Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, and Lucky Luciano.

The area of Manhattan where four streets – Anthony (now Worth), Cross (now Mosco), Orange (now Baxter), and Little Water (now nonexistent) – converged was known as the "Five Points". Mulberry, notorious for slum tenements, was one street down from the Five Points. This area, now the present-day location of Chinatown, lay between Broadway and the Bowery. By the 1820s, this district had been a center of settlement for poor immigrants and was considered a slum area of run-down wood frame and brick dwellings, warehouses and commercial enterprises dating from the late 18th century and early 19th century, populated by mostly poor English and Scots-Irish with increasing waves of German, Welsh and Irish refugees by the 1840s.

Gambling dens and brothels were numerous in the Five Points area, which was considered a dangerous destination, where many people had been mugged, particularly at night. In 1842, famous British author Charles Dickens visited the area and was appalled at the poor living conditions and substandard housing.

In the pre–civil war era, Catholic immigrants often dealt with ethnic prejudice and class discrimination from Nativist White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. As a result, many Irish immigrants formed local street gangs such as the Kerryonians, the Forty Thieves, the Shirt Tails, and the Chichesters, to rebel against their low social status. These street gang members soon turned to crime.

Shortly before the American Civil War, these gangs began to dissipate, with remaining members joining powerful gangs such as the Dead Rabbits and the Whyos. Eventually the influence and numbers of these Irish gangs started to wane.

By the 1870s a new wave of Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants were settling into the area. Criminal gangs of Irish, Jewish and Italian criminals began competing for control of the territory, rackets and revenue to be made from illicit activities. Monk Eastman's Eastman Coin Collectors originally had many Irish members before becoming predominantly Jewish.

Italian American Paul Kelly (born Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli), formed the Five Points Gang, then made up mostly of Italians. The Five Points Gang had a reputation for brutality and in battles with rival gangs they often fought to the death. The gang would then gain more power and members when Kelly recruited the remaining members of other Five Points gangs, such as the Dead Rabbits and Whyos, into his growing gang.