Americans of a certain age may remember the Martin Scorcese street-violence film Gangs of New York. Without reviewing the movie (I’m a fan), it centers on Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher, a legendary gang leader of the Bowery Boys, the Washington Street Gang, and a semi-prominent politician.
If you’ve never seen the movie, it’s twenty minutes too long (a hallmark of a Scorcese film) but it’s very good. DDL also gives a performance worth the time commitment on his own, even if you don’t care much for the plot.
Was Bill the Butcher a Real Person?
Importantly to us, Bill the Butcher was a real guy named William Poole. He wasn’t exactly like the character in the movie (in fact, he’s William Cutting in the movie), but he was unquestionably a real person who was high-ranking in real gangs and operated in real politics in New York City. I won’t tell you how the movie ends (it’s only twenty years old, I don’t want to spoil it), but it’s not historically accurate. So what really happened to Bill?
John Morrissey happened.
John Morrissey’s family moved from Ireland to Troy, New York in about 1833, where John and his seven sisters then spent their childhood. The kid was an impeccable 1800s Irish stereotype: He apparently started working in factories at age 12, and in his mid-to-late teens became known as a leader of one of Troy’s gangs because he was constantly fighting. That is, of course, if you can imagine an Irish immigrant teenager working in a factory and getting into fistfights in the 1840s. Suspend your disbelief as you see fit.
He moved to NYC around age 17 to work on a steamer and promptly got married. But nobody cares about that – people want to know how he got the nickname “Old Smoke.”
According to the book The Notorious John Morrissey, our guy was in a particularly brutal fight with a man named Thomas McCann when McCann pinned Morrissey on his back on a PILE OF BURNING COALS. Apparently a stove had overturned, but you sort of want to imagine that there were just hot coals thrown around New York during this era. Anyway, Morrissey fought off McCann, leapt to his feet, and beat the hell out of his opponent while his flesh burned and smoke rose up off his body. The nickname stuck, though one would assume the skin on his back was less stationary.
Morrissey then took part in the gold rush and moved to San Francisco in 1851. He was reportedly not successful at finding gold but was very successful at gambling and swindling prospectors out of money. He also continued fighting, because, you know, old habits. He won a $5,000 purse for beating a guy named George Thompson in California, which prompted him to challenge the American champ, Yankee Sullivan, back in New York.
Morrissey did ultimately fight Sullivan. The highlights of that fight can be listed as follows:
- They fought in a field with a few thousand spectators
- The fight lasted 37 rounds
- THIRTY-SEVEN ROUNDS
- They got into a tussle on the ropes in round 37 and their seconds/corner-men got animated
- A “general riot” broke out
- Morrissey was awarded the win, though it’s unclear why (rumors suggest a low blow was committed or maybe that Sullivan left the ring during the riot)
- The entire thing somehow only lasted 55 minutes
At this point Morrissey was about 22 years old. He had been back in NYC for less than a year. I was always under the impression that things moved very slowly at this point in history – if you wanted to get from San Francisco to New York, you may have needed to take a ship (Morrissey did). You couldn’t just call someone up and get your message to them at a moment’s notice.
How Did John Morrissey Ultimately Kill Bill the Butcher?
So how in the world did Morrissey develop a high-profile rivalry with William Poole, aka Bill the Butcher, by 1854? Frankly, the answer is unclear. They were both involved in local politics, with Poole acting as a muscle guy for the Know-Nothing Party. One thing led to another and they scheduled a street fight. Here’s the wild thing: Morrissey lost.
Six months later, in what was surely an unrelated incident, two of Morrissey’s friends shot and killed Bill the Butcher. Morrissey and one of the men were tried for murder, but after three trials they were never convicted.
To recap: By age 25 Morrissey had moved from Ireland to Troy, worked in multiple factories, moved to NYC, gotten married, worked on a steamer, gained a rep as a street fighter, moved to San Francisco, got rich by hustling prospectors, won a bareknuckle prize fight, moved back to NYC, beat the national boxing champion, became involved in city politics, developed a political rival, lost a highly publicized fistfight to that rival, and was tried for murder of that same rival, a charge which he managed to beat.
I worked in retail when I was 25.
Morrissey wasn’t done yet. Despite moving back to Troy in an effort to settle down, he had one more fight in him and beat a highly touted opponent to retain his boxing champ title in 1858. Morrissey was something of a mythical figure at this point, for pretty clear reasons.
But a man has to grow up someday, so he did what anyone might do: He started opening gambling houses and racetracks. In fact, the famous Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, New York, was opened by Morrissey in 1863. It is one of the oldest sporting venues of any kind in the United States. To capitalize on its popularity, he also opened a gambling house nearby so guys could lose money to him while waiting for the horse races where they would lose money to him.
But again, a man has to grow up someday, right? With a checkered past that included bareknuckle boxing, murder charges, organized crime, and gambling, what kind of career make sense? Politics, of course. Morrissey served two terms in the US House of Representatives, followed by another two terms in the New York state senate.
He died at the ripe old age of 47 after contracting pneumonia.
If nothing else, John Morrissey lived a full life. Not always good, but he sure kept busy.