Editing William Poole (section)

== '''Street gangs''' ==
Street gangs in New York were fluid in their membership and name as they merged and found new leaders. The most well-known of these was the Bowery Boys, which Poole created from his Washington Street gang with a collection of many different smaller street gangs. Other key gangs included in the Bowery Boys were the [[American Guards]], [[Atlantic Guards]], [[True Blue Americans]], and the [[Order of the Star-Spangled Guard]]. These gangs were composed of Nativists who were opposed to encroachment of Irish based gangs due to immigration caused by the Great Potato Famine. Street gangs, like the Bowery Boys, "were bound by ethnic ties or nativist belief; the members tended to be deeply patriotic, and a common thread was the belief that the country was pretty well full, so that newcomers were not welcomed." Poole's gang was located close to the Five Points neighborhood, where many immigrants settled. Five Points is located in today's lower Manhattan, specifically Chinatown. Waves of Irish and German immigrants called the Five Points neighborhood home and their first stop on their American journey. Due to the large number of Irish immigrants, they too created their own street gang. The [[Dead Rabbits]] were an Irish membership gang and their biggest rival was Poole's Bowery Boy gang. Much of the tension that were between the two gangs was based on racial background and territory, "for years the Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits waged a bitter feud, and a week seldom pass in which they did not come to blows, either along the Bowery, in the Five Points section." Both gangs were primarily brawlers and street fighters, another reason why William Poole was a well-known fighter, and most of their battling was done in open spaces. Poole made a lot of alliances that supported his ideology and street gang, but so did the Dead Rabbits. One of the most noted female brawler was known as Hell-Cat Maggie. She fought alongside the Dead Rabbits during the early 1840s against rival nativist gangs, especially the Bowery Boys. She was said "to have filed her front teeth to points, while on her fingers she wore long artificial nails, constructed of brass.