The film by Martin Scorcese, Gangs of New York, features a lot of historical accuracy but also created a lot of buzz among historians by painting a few inaccurate pictures within the movie as well. These were of course done on purpose by Scorsese since he wasn’t interested in shooting a documentary, but instead an entertaining film that would draw people in and perhaps even make them question what really happened. The funny thing about this is that historians can say whatever they want based on the evidence they find. The truth however is that no one would really know what really happened back in those days unless they were there. Think about this, anyone can write a book based on what went on, the facts don’t have to add up with what’s found to be believed. But in the case of Gangs of New York it seems safe to believe that the movie isn’t the real basis for what happened back in those days.
One thing that was very real was that the potato famine that occurred in Ireland in the 1840’s did in fact drive scores of Irish from their homeland toward America, where they had to fight for every inch they gained. They were looked upon with scorn and often mistreated when they arrived as it was believed that they were taking away the rightful jobs and place of born Americans. In the movie it was Bill Cutting, or Bill the Butcher, that was the main antagonist of the Irish, but as great as Day-Lewis was in his role, Bill Cutting was not a real person.
The person he was based off of was a real individual known as Bill Poole, who unfortunately was murdered before the end of the Civil War and thus would not have been around during the time of the movie. There were other individuals and groups however that were very real, such as the Dead Rabbits, the Bowery Boys, and even Hellcat Maggie. The role of the groups was very much played up for drama and to give the film a level of action that wasn’t inherent within New York at the time. While the Five Points was considered to be a dirty and disgusting slum the crime rate wasn’t as high as it was said to be in the film.
Scorsese took a lot of liberties with the film but again, he was going for a drama, not a documentary-type film that would detail the truth of New York and how it was born in the streets. While the reality of New York is that it does have a dramatic and sometimes tumultuous past, as the Draft Riots, shown in the film, were very real. The riots lasted two days however instead of one and were more about Irish working men going after black citizens with the fear that they would be losing their jobs to the black population.
New York has a very rich and storied past but Gangs of New York is by and large a fiction that has taken advantage of a reality that is far more mundane in nature. It was an interesting movie though.
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