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The Dead Rabbits Irish Street Gang

The Dead Rabbits Irish Street gang, from the mid-19th century, was as vicious as any gang in New York City history. They ruled the seedy section of Lower Manhattan called the Five Points, and if a member of any other gang dared set foot on their turf, bad things happened very quickly.

There is some controversy as to how the Dead Rabbits got their name. One version is that the word “Rabbit” sounds like the Irish word raibead, which means “man to fear.” “Dead” was a slang word from the 1800s meaning “very.” So a “Dead Rabbit” is a “man to be greatly feared”.

Another version is that the Dead Rabbits were a branch of an older gang called the “Roach Guards”. Two factions within the Roach Guards were constantly fighting, and during a fistfight at an especially violent gang meeting, someone tossed a dead rabbit into the room. When the fighting subsided, one group took the name “Dead Rabbits”, while the other kept the name “Roach Guards”. Predating today’s street gangs, the Crips and Bloods by over 125 years, to mark which group a man belonged to, a Dead Rabbit wore a blue stripe down his pants, while a Cockroach Guard wore a red stripe down his pants. .

In addition to the Roach Guards, the Rabbits’ archenemy was the Bowery Boys. On July 4, 1857, the Rabbits and the Bowery Boys met at the corner of Bayard and Bowery. The incident began when a beleaguered policeman, being chased out of Five Points by a pack of Rabbits, stumbled upon a Bowery Boy saloon. The Rabbits followed the policeman to the dive and were driven back by an angry group of Bowery Boys.

The Bowery Boys were offended by the encroachment on their territory, so a large group of Bowery Boys marched into the Five Points area. They were cut down by a battalion of Rabbits and a two-day war began, with up to a thousand combatants fighting with axes, knives, stones, and even guns. The police sent reinforcements, but both gangs turned them back, telling them in no uncertain terms to mind their own business. The war swung back and forth in both territories, with Canal Street being the border line.

By the end of the second day, both bands were nearly exhausted, and New York Mayor Fernando Wood called in the 7th National Guard Regiment. The National Guard, along with the New York City Police, stormed into what was left of the skirmish and began to crack the heads of the weary warriors. When the dust settled, eight gang members were dead and hundreds more were injured.

This did not end the animosity between the Bowery Boys and the Rabbits. In August 1858, at the corner of Worth and Center Street, a small group of Bowery Boys were beaten by a larger group of Rabbits. As the Bowery Boys ran off licking their wounds, two unsuspecting men emerged from a house at 66 Center Street. They walked right into the path of the angry Rabbits, and thinking these two men were the Bowery Boys coming back for more, the Rabbits descended on them for revenge. One man was able to escape, but Cornelius Rady was not so lucky. He was struck on the back of the head with a stone from a slingshot and died shortly thereafter. Rabbit Patrick Gilligan was arrested for Rady’s murder, but it is unclear if he was convicted.

The Civil War began two years later and many of the gang members were recruited, against their will, into the war and sent to faraway places, mainly in the South. When the war ended, the Rabbits were either dead or in no physical condition to continue to haunt the streets of Lower Manhattan. But in New York City, the creature that it was, and in some cases still is, other street gangs soon followed to take the place of the Rabbits.