[Another chunk, somewhat tweaked, from my attempt to study women and slang, Bitching or, as bowdlerized by publishing’s fearful command, Sounds & Furies. It appeared in late 2019. Covid followed hard behind with the inevitable result. I offer it now for a little summer reading.]
Mid-19th century New York City abounded in what one might call embryo riot grrls. More so if anything, rejoicing in such names as Gallus Meg (she wore galluses or braces, which in turn went back to the gallows, more usually bearing a more melodramatic burden than the humble trouser; a tavern bouncer she chewed the ears from drunks and stashed them in a series of pickle jars), Sadie the Goat (speciality, a head-butt to the belly and a male accomplice with a swiftly wielded cosh; she later turned pirate and prowled the New York City seaways) and Hell-Cat Maggie (filed her teeth to points and lengthened her fingers with sharpened brass nail extensions).
Danny Lyons, head of the Why-Os (an Irish mob of thugs, brawlers, sneak thieves, burglars and pickpockets who Herbert ‘Gangs of New York’ Asbury names the ‘greatest’ of those that emerged immediately after the Civil War), was exceptional in such a macho cast (fellow members included Hoggy Walsh, Fig McGerald, Googy Corcoran and Baboon Connolly [see above]). He regularly used girls, albeit those he was already pimping, as consigliere. Lizzie the Dove, Gentle Maggie and Bunty Kate were among those who gave him strategic advice. They were less tolerant of each other. When in 1888 Lyons was hanged for murder Maggie and the Dove argued over who had been his real favourite and who had in turn loved and now mourned him more. They met to discuss the matter but drink got the better of their conversation and Gentle Maggie saw off Lizzie the Dove with a cheese-knife in the throat. Lizzie lived along enough to assure Maggie that they would meet again in hell, and promised there to scratch her eyes from her head.
Another of the Whyos’ heavy hitters was Beezy or Bezie (presumably from Elizabeth) Garrity, killed by accident in 1887 when she was hit by a stray bullet when her boyfriend, gang boss Dan Driscoll shot her dead when aiming for a brothel keeper who had insulted him. Beezie, according to the Oakland Tribune, was ‘a typical Whyo girl’. ‘Almost worshiped’ by the gang – both men and women – she was ‘so strong and coarse and violent and depraved.’
‘She was fairly good-looking with shoulders proportioned like the fore-quarters of an ox and yet with a waist that tapered till the belt of a Murray Hill belle would hang loose on it. She could drink like a brewer, could not speak a sentence or a phrase without an oath in it, could throw any man in the gang with a simple side hold and always stood ready to go to jail rather than tell a policeman anything.’ Sadly, yet again, no-one thought to take notes of her delivery.
Beezy’s pièce de resistance was an exhibition of what she called ‘nerve.’ This entailed challenging any of her male companions to hit her, as hard as they could, square in the face. Given that a Whyo liked nothing better – ‘hitting women and robbing drunkards are the joys [he] prefers to anything, even...robbing his parents of whatever they have that can be pawned’ – she didn’t lack for challengers. Beezy set herself, up strode a thug, drew back a fist and lashed out as hard as he knew. She might stumble backwards, but never, ever admit to pain. They loved her for it.
But outside these major-league hoydens, in gang herarchies women and girls remained subordinate. There are no ‘girl gangs’. Instead there were versions of what later generations might term ‘debs’, the female sidekicks and/or girlfriends of the gang’s male members. Thus the New York’s Bowery b’hoy came with his g’hal, just as Sydney’s larrikin had his larrikiness and London’s coster his donah.
The B’hoy himself might be a butcher, a manual labourer or a club bouncer; most often he was also a ‘fire laddie’, running to put out blazes with one of city’s fire companies, fiercely antagonistic groups whose scuffles over access to the nearest fire hydrant might well persist longer than the fire itself. Naturally, he had a uniform:
‘The Bowery Boy promenaded his favorite thoroughfare with his head crowned by a high beaver hat with the nap divided and brushed different ways, while his stalwart figure was encased in an elegant frock coat, and about his throat was knotted a gaudy kerchief. His pantaloons, out almost as full as the modern Oxford bags, were turned up over his heavy boots. The hair on the back of his head was clipped close and his neck and chin were shaven, while his temple locks were daintily curled and heavily anointed with bear's grease or some other powerful, evil-smelling unguent.’ [1]
He often sported a bright red shirt, indicating his connection with the fire companies who were similarly attired. He had a rolling walk, a surly manner, puffed regularly on a ‘long nine’ cigar1 tipped up at 45 degrees into the air and, of course, came out with a good line in slang.
The B’hoy was easily recognisable, and his gang was one of those who were exploited in the sectarian rivalries of contemporary politics. But if he was fact, it would take fiction to render him omnipresent. The first night of Benjamin’s A. Baker’s play A Glance at New York in 1848 opened at the Olympic Theatre on February 15th 1848. It starred the actor Frank S. Chanfrau as ‘Mose’, the Bowery B’hoy and member of the city fire department. Chanfrau was Bowery-born and had been a member of a fire company; and Mose had a real-life origin, one Moses Humphreys, who was a printer on the New York Sun and a runner with the fire brigade’s Lady Washington engine company No. 40; he was also well-known as a tough fighter. Like Pierce Egan’s Life in London, and the play based on his book, it was more tour d’horizon than sequential, plotted narrative, but unlike Corinthian Tom and his country cousin Jerry, the cast experienced only those scenes already well-known to working class New Yorkers. Though such plot as it did have – streetwise New Yorker Mose shepherding the naïve yankee George through the snares and delusions of the metropolis – was slightly reminiscent of Tom’s education of Jerry.
In the end there would be a procession of sequels, all capitalising on Mose and his associates: Sykesy, his second in command, Lize, his girl friend, and his pals Joe and Jack. Among them were The Mysteries and Miseries of New York (1848), Mose in California (1849), Three Years After; or, A Sequel to the Mysteries and Miseries of New York (1849), Mose, Joe and Jack (1849), Mose in France (1851) and The Newsboy of New York; or, Mose in Town (1852); the last, and somewhat belated, was New York As It Is and Was (1871). They were each toured across the States, opening in every major city.
Lize, like Mose a template drawn from thousands, was also deemed worth of description and analysis. For the first time young women had joined the workforce – other than as servants – and the writer G.G. Foster dealt with her at length in New York by Gas-Light (1856):
The g'hal is as independent in her tastes and habits as Mose himself. Her very walk has a swing of mischief and defiance in it, and the tones of her voice are loud, hearty and free. Her dress is ‘high,’ and its various ingredients are gotten together in utter defiance of those conventional laws of harmony and taste imposed by...the French mantua-makers of Broadway. The dress and the shawl are not called upon by any rule recognized in these ‘diggins’ to have any particular degree of correspondence or relationship in color—indeed, a light pink contrasting with a deep blue, a bright yellow with a brighter red, and a green with a dashing purple or maroon, are among the startling contrasts which Lize considers ‘some pumpkins’ and Mose swears is ‘gallus!’[2] But the bonnet!—that is the crowning achievement of the out-door adornment of the full- rigged g’hal. It is of various materials at different times— though without any special regard to the season—but we believe that white chip [i.e. wood, palm leaves, straw, or similar material cut and dried for weaving] and fancy straws are the favorite patterns. The outside is trimmed with a perfect exuberance of flowers and feathers, and gigantic bows and long streamers of tri-colored ribbons give the finishing touch to a hat which, resting on the back of the head, extends its front circumference just round from ear to ear across the top of the forehead, leaving the face entirely exposed, and the eyes at full liberty to see what is going on in every direction.
The newest invention in the costume of the g’hal is a fascinating article of outside gear, termed by some a ‘polka,’ but generally known as a ‘monkey-jacket.’ It is cut like a gentleman's tight sack to fit the back and shoulders smoothly, and reaches halfway down the thigh. When neatly cut and fitting to the figure of a plump, healthy and elastic- limbed g’hal, with the full-skirted dress swelling out voluptuously from beneath it and undulating like a balloon, it certainly has a very exhilarating appearance.
Both parties were keen on hairstyles, notably what he termed a soap-lock and she a spit-curl. Both involved the curling of one’s side hairs and the glueing of the resulting creation to the skull beneath.
The generic Lize came in two varieties. One was the relatively subordinate Lize of Glances at New York. (The character was only added after a couple of months’ performances; ‘Lize’ gave a part to a local favourite, the actress Mary Taylor, whose ‘luscious’ voice’ was much beloved of her fans). She has a couple of scenes and performs a song she’s picked up from the Christy Minstrels. We see her in a tea shop where she orders ‘A cup of coffee and nine doughnuts’ (Mose goes for pork and beans, adding ‘don’t stop to count de beans’). Mainly she acts as Mose’s adoring sidekick, telling her friend Jenny ‘that Mose of mine is such a dear fellow — he don’t care for expense — not he — he thinks there’s no gal like me in this village. You ought to see him in de market once, I tell you — how killin’ he looks. De way he takes hold of de cleaver and fetches it down is sinful! Dere’s no mistake but he’s one of de b’hoys!’ When Jenny suggests that Bill Sykes (Mose’s best pal Syksey) has been ‘cuttin’ round you’, Lize laughs her off: ‘Syksey tried, but I bluffed him off — he’s got to look a little more gallus, like my Mose, afore he can commence to shine.’
As a later commentator added, ‘Lize... shares with Mose his most endearing trait — a hearty, matter-of-face self-esteem. When Mose compliments her with “You're a gallus gal” she readily responds “I ain’t nothin’ else.”’[3] Mose is also worried about Sykesy’s advances.
Mose. Now, look a-here, Lize, I go in fur Bill Sykesy ’cos he runs wid our merchine—but he musn’t come foolin' round my gal, or I’ll give him fits!
Lize. La ! Mose, don’t get huffy ’cause I mentioned him; but I’d rather go to Christy’s. Did you ever see George Christy play de bones? ain’t he one of ’em?
Mose. Well, he ain’t nothin else.
Lize. And that feller with the tambourine musn’t be sneezed at neither.
Mose. Yes, he's some.
Lize. Do you know I've been learnin’ one of their songs—and if it wasn’t for bein’ in the street, I’d sing it for you.
Mose. It’s too early in de mornin’ for many folks to be out—so you’re safe. Blow your horn.
Lize offers ‘Lovely Mae’, a popular song of the time, and it has the right effect:
Mose. [Affected.] Well, I’m blowed if that ain’t slap up. Lize, you can sing a few.
Lize. You ought to hear Jenny Boget and I sing at the shop. We can come it a few, I can tell you. But I can't stand talking here—I must go to the shop. Drive on with your meat, Mose.
Mose. What time will I come up to your shanty?
Lize. Any time after tea. [Going].
Mose, in his rough-and-ready way, was smitten. Even if business has to come first:
She’s a gallus gal — she is; I’ve strong suspicions I’ll have to get slung to her one of these days. But I musn’t forget my butcher-cart. [Goes up.] I say, boy, yer better drive the cart right up to de slaughter-house. The customers are all sarved. What! yer don’t know where de slaughterhouse is yet? Well, drive up Chrystie Street till you smell blood, and dere stop.
Foster also notes her language, offering a contrast in class conversations in New York by Gas-Light. If slang made the streetwise man, then it also made the woman:
Do tell me all about your fine parade with the Hoosah troop yethterday, Mither Thmith,’ lisped a young lady of the Upper Ten to a dandy Hussar, the other evening at a party in the Fifth avenue.
‘Oh I assure you, we had a most chawming time, my deah madam—perfectly chawming.’
On the same evening Mose returned from a grand fireman's parade and target-excursion, and was met by Lize at the door.
‘Well hoss, what kind of a time’d ye hev—say?’
"Well now yer'd better bleeve we hed a gallus time! Give us a buss, old gal! Guess I seen ye lookin' out er ther winder this morning—I did.’
‘Oh git out—you Mose!’[4]
A second Lize, playing a substantial, even starring role in The Mysteries and Miseries of New York (1847) by ‘Ned Buntline’ (proper name Edward Judson) is a very different figure. Given the dates it is hard to work out the crossover, and the Mysteries was made subsequently into a Mose play. Copyright was hard to sustain on so hugely popular a set of characters.
Buntline offers readers a portrait of this Lize that, without going into her dress, suggests a very different figure to the happy-go-lucky g’hal of Glances.
‘Very tall, nearly or quite six feet in height; a form well- proportioned; a carriage rather graceful; features that once must have been remarkably handsome, and even yet are fine and regular, though the hollow cheek, and high cheek-bones, and narrowing chin, denote the havoc of time and dissipation; a large, piercing eye of hazel; lips which now are thin and close, set over white and regular teeth — lips which have firmness written in their expression; a high brow, upon which crescent shaped and delicately pencilled eyebrows are seen; dark hair, even yet soft and glossy, though thinned and shortened. See this — and fancy a touch of paint on either cheek, and a coat of powder on a rather slim neck and broad uncovered shoulders, and “Big Lize, of Thomas Street,” is before you.’
Her first appearance, rescuing a younger woman from rapists, is also some way from her doughnut-guzzling, up-for-fun namesake. If there is one thing that unites them, it is their use of slang.
‘ God protect me !’ murmured the girl, then with a kind of desperate firmness in her manner, she pressed forward to try to force her way from amongst the crowd of drunken libertines. But he who had won in the toss-up, clasped her firmly in his arms; in vain she tried to spring from his grasp. Then she uttered a wild, piercing cry — a shriek of terror and agony. And it was not in vain, for the next moment a tall form stood among the laughing young men; two or three heavy blows were heard and felt rather than seen, and with each blow one of the party laid down. Before Harry could turn to see who it was that interfered, a large bony hand reached his cheek, and though struck by its open palm, he let go of the poor girl and staggered up against the lamp post.
‘Big Lize, of Thomas Street !’ he muttered, as he saw the tall form of the one who had struck him and his companions.
‘Yes, I am Big Lize, you lushy Swell!’ cried the woman, ‘and I can maul every sneaking mother's son of ye! What d'ye mean by stoppin’ this ere gal against her will?’
'It's none of your business; go look out for yourself, you thieving catamaran !’ cried the young man...again springing toward the poor sewing girl, who shrank behind the huge form of her protectress.
‘You will have it then, my covey; you're mighty fond of my mawley!’ cried Big Lize, as with another blow, she landed him clear down the stairs of the oyster saloon, which was behind him ; and then turning to the girl, she cried, ‘Cut and run, my darling! Hays is the word, and off you go ! I'll see that they don't follow you.’[5]
If Lize’s slang – lushy for drunkard, covey as a term of address to a man, mawley for hand – seems reminiscent of what was used in London at the time, then so it was. As George Washington Matsell’s American (and thus essentially New York City) slang lexicon Vocabulum made clear a few years later, slang was one more of the emigrants who had brought the habits of the old world with them to the new.
But if there is misery in Lize’s world of crime there is also mystery: her own antecedents. Buntline’s plot is straight out of the penny-dreadful playbook. Angelina, the rescued victim, flees, the attackers slink off, and:
‘Lize stood and gazed at them a moment, while upon her dissipation marked, but yet firm features, a freezing expression of scorn and contempt settled ; then as she turned away and walked up the street, that expression gave way to one of deep sadness, mingled apparently with satisfaction at the act which she had just performed.
‘God bless me!’ she murmured, repeating the last, grateful words of the poor girl whom she had protected. ‘Yes, I have need of such prayers; for God, or man, or the devil, or all together, seem to have cursed me ! Oh God ! I once wore the stamp of innocence on my brow — once I rode along these very streets in my father's carriage, and now’
The soliloquy – no slang here, of course – is soon cut short as a voice breaks in:
‘Hallo, old gal, where are you stavin’ to? Have you lifted anything to-night?’
[...]
‘ How d'ye, Charley, my chum ! I haven't lifted nuthin’ as yet; but I mauled some o’ the bigbug swells a bit ago. If you'd been there you might have larnt ’em some lessons in the knucking line?’
‘What, warn't none of the files on the tramp?’
‘Not a mammy's son of 'em !’
‘ What did you maul the swells for?’
‘’Cause they were abusin’ a gal — a poor bit of a thing that hasn’t got hell’s mark on her yet — that’s as innocent as I was ten years ago!’
‘ You might have been in better business, Lize. You're too blasted good-hearted to be on the tramp : but stir your pegs, old gal. I'm agoin’ to the crib ; see if you can’t pick up some cove as wants to see the elephant.’
‘Well, tramp along, chummy,’ replied the girl; ‘Til see what's what, my chuck !’
And Big Lize leaves, off to seek a new victim for her panel-crib, ‘for she has long been an active panel-thief.’ She has indeed fallen very far. No matter: she has the obligatory ‘heart of gold’. Lize dodges in and out of the plot, sometimes speaking standard English, especially to the unfortunate Angelina who seems destined to fall foul of brutes, and sometimes ‘pattering flash’. Angelina will die as will Lize and they are buried side-by-side. It is all as mawkish as the most sentimental reader could desire.
The Mose and Lize boom wore itself out quickly; the papers were already saying their farewells to the Bowery’s finest by 1850. The last we hear from our happy couple are in a couple of letters published in the small-town press, suggesting that as they did on stage, the pair had set off to make their fortunes in the Far West.
[1] H. Asbury The Gangs of New York (New York 1928) p. 32
[2] this is not the gallus that holds up Meg’s inexpressibles but a variation on slang’s gallows, lively and spirited; first-rate and satisfactory. The origin either takes slang’s established bad=good trope to equate death on the hangman’s gallows as something admirable, or a link to Scottish gallows, rascally, dissolute
[3] Dudden: Women in the American Theatre: Actresses & Audiences, 1790-1870 pp. 104ff
[4] Foster New York by Gas-Light p. 174
[5] Buntline Mysteries and Miseries of New York pp. 11-12
[6] D. Symonds Broadway Rhythm: Imagining the City in Song (2017) p.36
For Mark Twain on the ‘long nine’, see: https://firecured.blogspot.com/2011/01/mark-twain-on-long-nines-cigars.html