BoxRec

I watched the movie for the first time last night and found it quite entertaining. I already knew about the attitudes of the population of New York at the time. Therefore, I just looked at the movie as a bunch of fictional characters who represented the attitudes of the time.

IE: The anger of the "Know-Nothing" party towrds Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants. The poor and frustrated Irish immigrants who looked for any jobs available, but being stopped by "Irish need not apply" signs. And the extreamly poor northerners who were afraid a union win would cause an influx of freed slaves to compete for jobs in the north.

However, I did not realize that one of the main characters Bill Cutter was actually Bill Poole a real NY knee breaker http://www.boxrec.com/boxer_display.php?boxer_id=156304

Why did Scorsese not dive into the role boxing/fight'n played in the movie. Nothing was mentioned of John Hennesy, who claimed the US heaveyweight championship at the time and got his butt kicked by Poole?

I know it would have made a long movie even longer, but it would have made an interesting angle.

This is just one website, but check it out:

http://herbertasbury.com/billthebutcher/billp.html

The film was historically innaccurate. The bowery boy gang were actually irish, and this vicious pogrom that old wasp writers tried to portray was nothing more than wishful thinking on their part. Bill poole was nothing more than a drunken mouthpiece who hung around with that spurious "sometimes" prizefighter tom hyer. The alleged "one on one" fight with john morrissey never happened. What occured was a sporadic string of blackly comical encounters between the two men. Pooles gang originally backed down from morrisey and his cronies, and then challenged morrissey to a no holds barred scrap which was scheduled to take place at a docklands area on native territory. Morrissey foolishly ventured there on his own, only to be battered by poole and forty other toughs, but apparently put up such a brave showing that the ryders put him up and nursed his wounds. This effectively meant pooles death warrant. Not long after this a dead rabbit named baker accompanied by a man named paudeen blew poole away in a salon shootout.