The Roach Guards were an Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 street 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...

's 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...

 neighborhood during the early 19th century. Originally formed to protect New York liquor merchants in Five Points, the gang soon began committing robbery

Robbery

Robbery is the crime of taking or attempting to take something of value by force or threat of force or by putting the victim in fear. At common law, robbery is defined as taking the property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive the person of that property, by means of force or fear....

 and murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

.

The Roach Guards began fighting with rivals the Bowery Boys and former Roach Guard members known as the Dead Rabbits

Dead Rabbits

The Dead Rabbits were a gang in New York City in the 1850s, and originally were a part of the Roach Guards. Daniel Cassidy claimed that the name has a second meaning rooted in Irish American vernacular of NYC in 1857 and that the word "Rabbit" is the phonetic corruption of the Irish word ráibéad,...

. The feud between the Roach Guards and the Dead Rabbits was especially violent as they fought over the Bowery

Bowery, Manhattan

Bowery , commonly called "the Bowery," is a street and a small neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan...

 area. Despite constant fighting, they managed to hold their own in the "slugger battles" against the more organized and disciplined Bowery Boys. The Roach Guards, however, began to decline during the 1850s, disappearing entirely by the end of the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

 in 1865.

Further reading

• Asbury, Herbert
  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...
  
  . The Gangs of New York. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928. ISBN 1-56025-275-8
• Sifakis, Carl. The Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2001. ISBN 0-8160-4040-0