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A Newspaperman Reports on Election Day in the "Bloody Sixth"
This 1855 newspaper account of election day in lower Manhattan is filled with the reporter's assumptions about the Five Points immigrant neighborhood and its residents. Irish immigrants had by this time garnered a reputation for disorderliness and [...]
A Letter to the Editor Attempts to Explain Crime in Five Points
This letter to the New-York Daily Times, published on June 14, 1854, attempts to explain the high rate of criminality among Irish immigrants in terms of environment rather than temperment. The Irish-surnamed writer argues that the Irish are not [...]
A Protestant Missionary Describes Sabbath in Five Points
Troubled by evidence of extreme poverty in the nation's industrializing cities, many Protestant reformers set up mission houses in poor, immigrant neighborhoods to minister to the needs of the largely Catholic residents. But a cultural abyss divided [...]
An Engraving Depicts the Eviction of an Irish Tenant Family
Some half a million Irish were evicted during the Great Famine, especially following the Poor Law Extension Act of 1847 which shifted the burden of famine relief to the landlords. Rather than support poor tenants on their estates, many landlords [...]
The People of Ireland Ask the Irish in America to Support Abolition
This call for unity was written in Ireland by Irish and American abolitionists in the summer of 1841. The petition was eventually signed by 60,000 Irish men and women. Catholic abolitionists in Ireland wanted their countrymen in America to draw [...]
Artifacts from Irish Tenements and Saloon in Five Points
The archeological excavation of the Foley Square Courthouse at 500 Pearl Street, located near the former intersection that once comprised the Five Points neighborhood, yielded over 850,000 artifacts, some of which are depicted below. The artifacts [...]
A Member of the Ladies' Home Missionary Society Visits a Five Points Family
The Five Points Mission grew out of several Protestant missionary organizations that aimed to improve conditions in the Five Points. At first they attempted to convert residents from Catholicism; later the Mission obtained pledges from Five Pointers [...]
A Five Points "Orphan" Is Taken In by Reverend Pease and the Five Points House of Industry
The Five Points House of Industry was organized by the Methodist minister Lewis M. Pease and headquartered in a notorious former slum building known as the Old Brewery. It was the first missionary effort in the neighborhood to offer vocational [...]
An "Irish Agent" Describes the Classes of Tenant Farmers
The following excerpts are from Valentine M'Clutchy, the Irish Agent (1845), a melodramatic novel by Irish writer William Carleton. Himself the son of a farmer whose family was evicted from their land, Carleton here offers a sympathetic description [...]
"The Voting-Place"
During the 1840s and 1850s, anti-immigrant feelings grew among many native-born whites. Nativists argued that immigrants caused many of the nation’s ills by rejecting “American” work habits, culture, and religion. Nativists and and their [...]