Life in the Five Points

"How did they live in Five Points?" asked Gary Wills, one of America's finest journalists, in his article, "Salvage Archeology in Lower Manhattan." (Washington Post, Dec.29, 1991) The answer was, "Nastily, brutishly and often briefly. When after the 1832 cholera epidemic, the Mayor ordered the streets scraped of animal and human filth, a lady who had lived there all her life exclaimed, 'I never knew the strets were paved with stones.' In the 1849 epidemic, pigs rooting in the streets were, a report said, 'contaminated by the contact with children.' It was said that in death the victims continued the tenement system, buried six tiers deep."

Wills goes on to describe the conditions uncovered by "salvage archeology" at a construction site in lower Manhattan. "Most Five Points buildings, the rubble from which is now 15 to 20 feet below street level, contained a saloon. The police raided one in which 42 people were crammed in one small room, in the corner of which on a pile of dirty straw lay a woman just delivered of a child. Famous gangs like the Plug Uglies, Dead Rabbits and the Roach Guard fueled the riots of July 1863. They began as Draft riots, became race riots then turned to pillaging the rich."

The Orphan Train Era Moves into America's Consciousness

In America during a seventy five year period (1854-1929) over 400,000 homeless children were relocated by means of what were known as "orphan trains." Placing children to live with people other than their parents has gone on from the beginning of time. Known by various names, placing-out has come to be known as "foster care" today. The Orphan Train Riders were America's first documented foster children.

During my research on the formation of Happy Valley School I began to understand how life was in the teeming ghettos of New York City in the 1800's. Happy Valley School was an outgrowth of the work of the Five Points House of Industry, a private charitable foundation organized in the 1850's to relieve the terrible conditions of an area known as the Five Points District.

People poured into New York City from rural farms. Boatloads of immigrants crowded the docks and swams of peddlers hawked their wares in the city. The cacophony of languages was sweet music to the shrewd, enterprising denizens of lower Manhattan. Jobs were plentiful and acted as magnets to the poor. A man with grit, determination and imagination could succeed beyond his wildest dreams. The mansions lining Fifth Avenue acted as a beacon to able-bodied, aggressive men (and some women, too) whose vision and determination shaped our country to the powerhouse it is today.

This dynamic city had its dark side. Alcoholism, disease, poverty, and ruthlessness in pursuit of money scoured the underbelly of an economic giant. Street Arabs (the name given to homeless children) wandered the streets of the city in search of meager scraps of food and shelter. They engaged in gambling, drugs, prostitution, theft, and murder. Gangs roamed the streets of lower Manhattan. The Five Points area of lower Manhattan, long regarded as the toughest section in New York City, was recently featured in a major motion picture, "The Gangs of New York" starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Acknowledgments

Meaningful art results from a collaboration among many individuals. I would like to thank Mary Ellen Johnson for encouraging me to tell the story of the orphan train riders and for making available the index of names found in the Books of Surrender I found in an old barn in Rockland County, NY. The unamed volunteers of the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America who put in hundreds of hours computerizing the historical information found in those boxes deserve my deepest gratitude.

I would like to thank Connie Dipascuale for a "Partial List of Institutions That Orphan Train Children Came From" that was listed on the "The Orphan Trains of Kansas" website. I thank Gary F. Wills, one of America's finest journalist for the use of material from a newspaper article on "Salvage Archeology in Lower Manhattan."