Random Things About Real Five Points, Neighborhood That Inspired 'Gangs of New York' (11 items)

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  (#5) The 'Firetrap Tenements' Bred Cholera And Typhus, Among Other Infectious Diseases

  Due to very poor living conditions, disease outbreaks in Five Points were extremely common. Records from the time are limited but reveal that only parts of East London were competitive with Five Points' severe disease problem. Cholera, measles, diphtheria, and typhus all raged through the community and claimed the lives of many infants and children. Local sanitation and safety efforts were lax, meanwhile, and the tenement homes were considered "firetraps."
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  (#7) Tourists From Around The World Visited The Squalor With Police Escorts

  Reporters and missionaries made Five Points a constant topic of their publications and discussions. The tales of the neighborhood were so shocking - and therefore, exciting - that some middle-class people traveled there to see the conditions of the slums for themselves.

  The lives of the rich were so unlike those of the poor that a visit to Five Points was practically an exotic excursion. However, they only came with police escorts along to protect them.
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  (#6) The Neighborhood Started Out As A Pond That Slaughterhouses Would Dump Into

  In the 1700s, Manhattan featured a five-acre lake called the Collect. It was initially a popular gathering place during summer and winter alike, but gradually, slaughterhouses and tanneries set up along the banks. They began dumping bodily fluids, offal, and chemical byproducts into the lake, which was the Collect's unofficial beginning as a trash dump.

  By 1813, the lake had been filled in, and buildings gradually popped up in its place. When Five Points was enduring its lowest point in the 1840s and '50s, the stench was still so bad visitors would use camphor-soaked handkerchiefs to block out the rotten smells.
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  (#11) Five Points Is Known As America's 'Most Notorious Slum'

  The conditions in Five Points were horrific. Apart from the poor repair of the tenement houses and outbreaks of disease, many Five Points residents were alcohol abusers. One female resident once told a public health official, "If you lived in this place you would ask for whiskey instead of milk."

  In his book Five Points, historian Tyler Anbinder referred to it as "the first slum in America."
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  (#2) One Clash Had Almost 1,000 Participants

  The many crews of Five Points would often come into conflict - and those conflicts occasionally turned devastating. Some fights had a cultural basis, with Catholics fighting Protestants, but more often they took place within religious groups for other reasons.

  One of the most infamous conflicts took place over two entire days, with an estimated 1,000 people joining the fracas over the course of the fight. By the time the dust settled, more than 100 had been harmed and eight people lost their lives.
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  (#3) Police Records Show There Were Brothels On Every Block

  Five Points residents had no shortage of gambling dens and saloons to pick from, but more than anything else, they had brothels.

  "Every house was a brothel, and every brothel a hell," missionary Lewis Pease once wrote of Five Points. Police records from the time show that the blocks in and around the Five Points intersection featured a brothel in nearly every building.

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