From The Peopling of New York City
Crimes in the Irish Communities
Irish gangs dominated the lower part of Manhattan in the mid 19th century, especially in Five Points, Manhattan. Since the Irish were greatly persecuted and discriminated by the natives, gangs were formed primarily for defense in addition to expressing Irish pride. Riots and fights often erupted between naive gangs and those of the Irish, with numerous Irish-American street gangs dominating New York's underworld for well over a century. However, by the 1880s and 1890s, the new wave of immigrants—primarily recently arriving Italian and Jewish gangs—soon proved too much for the Irish gangs, and the Italian mobs began to take over by the 1920s.[1]
A relatively current Irish-American gang called the Westies emerged in the mid 21st century. The Westies was a predominantly Irish-American organized crime association operating from the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan's West Side in New York City. They were most influential from 1965 to 1986. By the early 1990s, however, the old Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood was disappearing, and the gang was taken over by a Yugoslavian boss—Bosco “The Yugo” Radonjich. The blue-collar Irish-American residents were also being replaced by wealthy white-collar workers. With this demographic change came a decrease in street crime, and a new name for the improved neighborhood—Clinton.[2]
Irish Gangs
• 19th Street Gang
• 40 Thieves
• Dead Rabbits
• Gopher Gang
• Grady Gang
• Kerryonians
• Slobbery Jim
• The Westies
• Whyos
References
- ↑ http://mapsites.net/gotham/webpages/canfield/irish_gangs.html
- ↑ http://www.gangland.net/westies.htm