Five Points Movie Analysis

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Gangs of New York mostly took place in the streets of Five Points and Paradise Square. Five Points was named for the points created by the intersections of Park, Worth and Baxter Streets. By the mid-1800s, Five Points was known as New York City’s most notorious slum neighborhood. It was home to an infamous, overcrowded tenement., which throughout the movie is portrayed as a very dangerous place. This is said to be true, Five Points is alleged to have sustained the highest murder rate of any slum in the world. According to an old New York urban legend, “the Old Brewery, an overcrowded tenement on Cross Street housing 1,000 poor, is said to have had a murder a night for 15 years, until its demolition.” Five Points was also portrayed as a very …show more content…

He had served an “apprenticeship” with the Bowery Boys, was known to gouge out the eyes of his foes, stood more than six feet and weighed more than 200 pounds”(Wikipedia). The Irish-immigrant gangs of Five Points, who owed were under the power of the Democrats of Tammany Hall, were afraid of Poole. Even the Dead Rabbits whose chief carried a dead rabbit impaled on a pike avoided him. Although the movie "Gangs of New York" extends his life by eight years, Bill the Butcher was actually killed in 1855. Bill was actually killed during a bar fight where he was shot in the leg and then shot in the chest twice. One bullet going through his heart and one going through his abdomen. Despite his wounds, Poole lived for fourteen days after the shooting, to the amazement of his doctors, who said it was unnatural for a man to stay alive so long with a bullet in his heart. He soon took his last breathe as his friends watched him …show more content…

The Draft law states that any male individual over the age of 18 can be forced to be in the military. The only way to get out of it was to pay 300 dollars. This caused a problem because the wealthy were able to escape the draft because they were willing to pay 300 dollars. The poor on the other hand barely had enough money to feed themselves or their families so they got angry and started to riot. Which were later called the “Draft Riots”. Most men had absolutely no training for the military so they knew they would be setting themselves up if they cooperated with the

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