Descriptions of Manhattan from the 1850s seem to hover on the edge of myth and nightmare. The city is described as a squalid hell-hole in which gangs stalked the streets, perched on the rooftops, and made homes in the cities sewers. They weren’t lying.
Among the many gangs that ruled lower Manhattan in the 1850s few were as horrifying or as feared as the Swamp Angles. Among their common nightly larks was jumping new arrivals to Manhattan–
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“From the garret window of some hunchbacked house near the water, a woman would dump a bucket of ashes onto the head of a passerby. As he gasped and choked, the Swamp Angels would descend upon him, drag him down the basement steps, and pillage him.” – From “A Universal History of Infamy”
