The Dead Rabbits were a gang

Gang

A gang is a group of people who, through the organization, formation, and establishment of an assemblage, share a common identity. In current usage it typically denotes a criminal organization or else a criminal affiliation. In early usage, the word gang referred to a group of workmen...

 in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in the 1850s, and originally were a part of the Roach Guards

Roach Guards

The Roach Guards were an Irish street gang in New York City's Five Points neighborhood during the early 19th century. Originally formed to protect New York liquor merchants in Five Points, the gang soon began committing robbery and murder....

. Daniel Cassidy claimed that the name has a second meaning rooted in Irish American

Irish American

Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau...

 vernacular of NYC in 1857 and that the word "Rabbit" is the phonetic corruption of the Irish

Irish language

Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

 word ráibéad, meaning "man to be feared". "Dead" was a slang intensifier meaning "very". Thus, according to Cassidy, a "Dead Ráibéad" means a man to be greatly feared. Cassidy's scholarship has been widely criticised by genuine linguists. Ráibéad is a very obscure word, which is only found in one Irish dictionary (Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla by Ó Dónaill) where it is defined as "a large person or thing" and it is not found at all in Corpas na Gaeilge 1600-1882, a searchable database of Irish-language texts. The name is far more likely to be English and to derive from some unknown story or incident. It is known that they used a dead rabbit impaled on a spike as their symbol and standard but of course this may date from after the coining of the name.

The gang was sometimes also known as the Black Birds.

The gang achieved great renown for its organization and prowess as thieves and thugs. The fighting uniform of the Roach Guards was a blue stripe on their pantaloons, while the Dead Rabbits adopted a red stripe. In riots their emblem was a dead rabbit impaled on a spike. The Rabbits and the Guards swore undying enmity and constantly fought each other at the Five Points

Five Points, Manhattan

Five Points was a neighborhood in central lower Manhattan in New York City. The neighborhood was generally defined as being bound by Centre Street in the west, The Bowery in the east, Canal Street in the north and Park Row in the south...

, but in the rows with the water-front and Bowery Boys

Bowery Boys

The Bowery Boys were a nativist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Irish gang based north of the Five Points district of New York City in the mid-19th century. They were primarily stationed in the Bowery section of New York, which was, at the time, extended north of the Five Points...

 they made common cause against the enemy, as did other Five Points gangs including the Shirt Tails

Shirt Tails

The Shirt Tails were a mid-19th century street gang based in the Five Points slum in Manhattan, New York, USA, who wore their shirts on the outside of their pants as a form of insignia and as a sign of group affiliation. The Shirt Tails were as violent as they were slovenly...

 and Chichesters

Chichesters

The Chichesters were an early Five Points street gang during the mid 19th century in New York. The gang began stealing from stores and warehouses and selling the stolen goods to local fences in 1820s, later becoming involved in illegal gambling and robbery...

. The gang was later led by Irish American Aidan Bourke, also known as "Black Dog

Black dog

Black dog may refer to:* Black dog , a ghostly dog in the folklores of the British Isles* Black dog , a coin in the Caribbean, starting under the reign of Queen Anne* Black Dog , a 1998 film...

" possibly due to a ruthless nature similar to that of the ghost dog in the folklores of the Celtic and British Isles

British Isles

The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...

.

New York's Democrats

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 were divided into two camps, those who supported Mayor Fernando Wood

Fernando Wood

Fernando Wood was an American politician of the Democratic Party and mayor of New York City; he also served as a United States Representative and as Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means in both the 45th and 46th Congress .A successful shipping merchant who became Grand Sachem of the...

, and those who opposed him. The Bowery gangs were one of the latter while the Dead Rabbits were proponents of Wood. Thus the Bowery Boys threw their support in league with state Republicans

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 who proposed legislation that would strip Wood of certain powers and place them in the hands of Albany. One of these proposals was to disband the Municipal Police Department, in which Wood's supporters had a controlling interest, and replace it with a state-run Metropolitan Police Department. Wood refused to disband his Municipal Department, and so for the first half of 1857, the two rival departments battled it out on the streets of the city until the courts ordered the Municipals to disband that July. On July 4 a bloody fight, the Dead Rabbits Riot

Dead Rabbits Riot

The Dead Rabbits Riot was a two-day civil disturbance in New York City resulting from what was originally a small-scale street fight between members of the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys into a citywide gang war which lasted from July 4–5, 1857...

, occurred with the Metropolitan Police and the Bowery gangs against the Municipal Police, Mulberry Street Boys, Roach Guard, and Dead Rabbits in Bayard Street.

There was a similar gang in Liverpool, England in the late 19th century also known as 'The Dead Rabbits'

The story of the New York Dead Rabbits is told, in highly fictionalized form, in Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese

Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

's film Gangs of New York

Gangs of New York

Gangs of New York is a 2002 historical film set in the mid-19th century in the Five Points district of New York City. It was directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan. The film was inspired by Herbert Asbury's 1928 nonfiction book, The Gangs of New...

. The film's inspiration came from an essay by Herbert Asbury

Herbert Asbury

Herbert Asbury was an American journalist and writer who is best known for his true crime books detailing crime during the 19th and early 20th century such as Gem of the Prairie, Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld and The Gangs of New York...

 titled Gangs of New York.

Song

Lyrics detailing the Dead Rabbits' battle with the Bowery Boys on July 4, 1857, were written by Henry Sherman Backus ("The Saugerties

Saugerties

Saugerties can refer to the following places in Ulster County, New York:* Saugerties , New York* Saugerties , New York...

 Bard

Bard

In medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.Originally a specific class of poet, contrasting with another class known as fili in Ireland...

") in Hoboken, NJ

Hoboken, New Jersey

Hoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region...

. (Lyrics - Backus; Music - Daniel Decatur Emmett

Dan Emmett

Daniel Decatur "Dan" Emmett was an American songwriter and entertainer, founder of the first troupe of the blackface minstrel tradition.-Biography:...

; originally "Jordan is a Hard Road To Travel")



Chorus

Then pull off the coat and roll up the sleeve,

For Bayard is a hard street to travel;

So pull off the coat and roll up the sleeve,

The Bloody Sixth is a hard ward to travel I believe.



Like wild dogs they did fight, this Fourth of July night,

Of course they laid their plans accordin';

Some were wounded and some killed, and lots of blood spill'd,

In the fight on the other side of Jordan.



Chorus

The new Police did join the Bowery boys in line,

With orders strict and right accordin;

Bullets, clubs and bricks did fly, and many groan and die,

Hard road to travel over Jordan.



Chorus

When the new police did interfere, this made the Rabbits sneer,

And very much enraged them accordin';

With bricks they did go in, determined for to win,

And drive them on the other side of Jordan.





Chorus

Upon the following day they had another fray,

The Black Birds and Dead Rabbits accordin;

The soldiers were call'd out, to quell the mighty riot,

And drove them on the other side of Jordan.