The Shirt Tails were a mid-19th-century
street gang
A gang is a social group, group or secret society, society of associates, friends, or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over Wiktionary:territory#Noun, territory in a ...
based in the
Five Points slum
A slum is a highly populated Urban area, urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are p ...
in
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
, United States, who wore their shirts on the outside of their pants as 19th-century Chinese laborers would dress as a form of insignia and as a sign of
gang group affiliation. Members kept their weapons—as many as three or four at a time—concealed beneath their shirts; this discreet measure stands in contrast to competing gangs who flaunted their weapons in order to intimidate.
Never numbering more than a few hundred members, the Shirt Tails, like many other gangs, disappeared shortly before the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
(although they did participate in a coalition of gangs under the
Dead Rabbits and fought against the
Bowery Boys during the
New York Draft Riots), with its remaining members dissipating or joining other Irish gangs.
References
*Asbury, Herbert. ''The Gangs of New York''.
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
: Alfred A. Knoff Inc., 1927.
Former gangs in New York City
Irish-American gangs
19th century in New York City
{{Manhattan-stub