You may have hear of the Bowery Boys , a notorious New York street ring of the mid-19th century . But there were plenty of other gangs fighting it out for turf during that time , and some of them had pretty great names . Here are 14 street bunch you would n’t want to mess with , even if their name calling made you express mirth .
1. Baxter Street Dudes
Teenage former newsies who went aroundstealingwhen notperformingat the theaterthey consort .
2. Boodle Gang
They specialized innabbing meatoff butcher handcart .
3. Corcoran’s Roosters
Also known as the Charlton Street Gang , they specialized inrobbing payload ships .
4. Humpty Jackson Gang
With a leader whose most noticeable feature was his hunchback , this gang work the Lower East Side , with their base of operation in agraveyard .
5. Molasses Gang
Their affair was to get a shopkeeper to fill ahatwith molasses and then slap it over his head and function off with the cash drawer .
6. Crazy Butch Gang
A riffraff , cagey bunch of adolescent pickpockets .
7. Tub of Blood Bunch
Theyworkedthe East River waterfront from their home office — a lovely - sounding bar called Tub of bloodline .
8. Whyos
One of New York ’s most powerful 1870s gangssupposedly useda special call that sounded like “ why - oh ! ”
9. Yakey Yakes
This mob was channelise up by leader Yakey Yake Brady andworkedin the vicinity of the Brooklyn Bridge .
10. Plug Uglies
A Baltimore gang active in pre - civic War politics , a.k.a.election twenty-four hour period riot .
11. Kerryonians
An Irish bunch from County Kerry .
12. Daybreak Boys
hump forwreaking havocon the New York waterfront in the 1850s .
13. Potashes
Potash(from the Dutch for “ pot ash tree ” ) is the name for atomic number 19 compounds once usually used in goop - making . This crowd was headquarterednearthe Babbit Soap Factory on the Lower West Side .
14. Dead Rabbits
Asplinter groupfrom the Roach Guard , this Irish gang fought hard against the Bowery Boys in over 200 battles .
A variant of this story operate in 2014 ; it has been updated for 2021 .
