preview

Five Points Sociology

Decent Essays
Open Document

The Truth: Irish immigrants were driven to America by the potato famine of the 1840s. This caused a massive influx of immigrants to New York City who were forced to settle for the cheapest and shabbiest lodgings in a poorer area of the city, known as Five Points. These kinds of conditions resulted in dirty, overcrowded spaces with relatively poor standards of living. Men typically worked at a trade, what we would now consider blue collar, or working class jobs, to provide for their families. Due to the fact that in this time, women were still not welcome in the workplace, many unmarried or widowed women were forced to turn to prostitution in order to support themselves. Gangs were formed to promote political candidates, and sometimes fought among themselves. There was also a building known as the Old Brewery, where more than 1,000 people supposedly lived. It was torn down in the 1850s so that the land could be used for a mission to do charity work. In the 1890s, Five Points was converted to factories and public buildings, essentially ending the Irish occupation of the area. The Civil War began in 1861 and lasted until 1865, covering the majority of the events in the movie. In order to recruit enough …show more content…

The living conditions presented in the movie are an exaggeration of how most people actually lived, and there wasn’t as much crime and violence as the movie suggested. Although there were gangs that fought periodically, they were mostly Irish, so there wasn’t as much ethnic conflict as there was in the movie. The gangs were formed to promote political candidates, which they did show in the film, but they didn’t fight for reasons other than politics, and their fights weren’t as bloody. The Old Brewery that the Dead Rabbits use as their headquarters was a real building, but it was torn down roughly ten years before the events of the movie took place to be converted into a religious

Get Access
Related
Get Access