User:Katchels/sandbox

Overview
The Bowery B’hoy emerged from the New York working class in the 1840s, and continued to exist as a group of radicals throughout the rest of the 1800s. The Bowery B'hoy belonged to one of many different groups with many different leaders, but is today the result of many generations of mythological embellishment. The Bowery B’hoy’s fashion and behavior, combined with biased reports have lead to a symbol largely based off of Mike Walsh’s gang, who was one of the more notable (and thus cited) radicals of the time. Walsh’s boys were a blend of gang member, insurgent Democrat, and labor radical, at a time when the city’s workers were losing ground to factories and sweatshops. The Bowery B’hoys generally shared views with far left of the Jacksonian democracy of 1840s and 1850s.

Not all young men who called themselves Bowery B’hoys were at the bottom of the economic ladder. Many were shipbuilders, carpenters, butchers, and printers. Some owned property or were tradesmen, making them middle class. Many worked for fire brigades, all of which were volunteer brigades (such as Lady Washington Company). Notorious for fighting over control of the fire hydrant during a fire, these brigades often rioted.

The Rise of the Bowery B'hoys
From the mid 1820s through the 1850s, a period known as the Jacksonian Era, the working class and specifically the male working class took over as the main audience for theatre and charged the theatre’s entrances and houses with it’s raucous presence. With the raise in working wages after the War of 1812 and the decrease in ticket prices during the 1820s and 1830s, the theatre became an extremely accessible place for men in the working class. It was not through “patronage” that these working men – the b’hoys – controlled the theaters, but through their rowdy and rambunctious behavior both in vocally responding to the performances onstage and in moments of extreme objection, physical intervention onstage. They made the theatre an interactive space with their active and often disruptive engagement with performances. The b’hoys brought their lifestyles into the theatre – establishing the presence of an extremely animated, collective, gritty audience, enjoying the performances whilst enjoying their own conversations and exchanges.

The b’hoys were a community of young working-class men who were not interested in respectable values, societal expectations or any of the pretentious values of the elite upper-class lifestyle. They stood as a stark contrast to the elite way of behavior and chose a robust presence and approach to life as a way of opposing those hollow and entitled values. The b’hoys valued their independence, their joie de vivre and claimed the name of American as everything gritty, true, manly, loyal and strong. They valued patriotism and comradery. The b’hoys became infamous for the behavior they exhibited on the street and in the theater. They lived as they pleased and fulfilled their own desires before bowing down to the ideas of others.

Bowery B'hoy Fasion
The Bowery B’hoys inspired a unique and precise form of culture, specifically within the realm of their fashion – this being everything from their attire and hairstyle, to their use of language and their mannerisms. The b’hoys were easily recognizable “by wearing distinctive and very colorful clothing, by displaying a hairstyle that had the hair cropped close at the back of the head and with long, curled front locks matted with pomade”. The B’hoys hair became a huge symbol of their identity and soon they were given the nickname of “Soaplocks”. They wore black frock coats and lots of jewelry. Another nickname they were given was “Butt-ender” as they were constantly smoking cigars. Furthermore they were described as having a particular type of swagger – with “a distinctive way of walking” and with a specific “dialect filled with slang and terms that only others in [that] subculture could understand”.

The Bowery Area
In the mid-1800s, the Bowery was an area known for drunken mayhem, conflict between Catholics and Protestants, and political debate over class and power. Most city shanty dwellers were Irish or German, and the city services for maintaining these shanties could barely keep up.

The B'hoys in the New York Bowery Theater
The symbol of the B’hoys power, the New York Bowery Theatre was built in 1926 and is the most famous theatre dominated by the working class and stayed open longer than any other of the working-class theatres including the Chatham Garden Theater (New York City), the Arch Street Theater (Philadelphia), the Walnut Street Theater (New York City), the Tremont Theater (Boston), and Pelby’s National Theater (Boston). It was originally meant to compete with the Park Theater in attracting a respectable audience – narrowly focusing on the upper-class. This was unsuccessful and after a change in management in 1830 to Thomas Hamblin, the Bowery Theater reflected the rise in working-class theatre going and being renamed the American Theater became the ultimate destination for the b’hoys. Focused on attracting the patriotic b’hoys, the theater provided a space for the types of action-driven, loud, manly, dramatic plays the b’hoys loved and celebrated.

The Bowery Theater was also novel in that the manager, Thomas Hamblin, began producing longer runs of plays as opposed to putting on a different play every night in response to the fact that most of his audience – the working b’hoys – could not afford to attend the theater all of the time. By doing this the b’hoys would have ample time to see all of their beloved melodramas that came their way. The Bowery Theater became the home of one of the most celebrated actors of the b’hoys – Edwin Forrest.

The B'hoys Acting Style
As mentioned, the b’hoys were known for being a raucous and active audience. They took over the theatre during the Jacksonian era and brought their loud, excited, patriotic values into the theater. Thus the theaters responded by entertaining their audience’s desires and playing the types of patriotic, macho plays the b’hoys loved. In order to properly put one of these melodramas, a specific type of large, manly, vigorous, physical, hearty acting style was required. This type of acting style was not respectable at all, and appealed to the b’hoys because it reflected their larger than life personalities. Two actors who created and adopted this type of acting style and who were most loved by the b’hoys were Edwin Forrest and Junius Brutus Booth.

Events
Summer of 1836: Lady Washington Company met up with Peterson Company on the way back from a fire and a riot ensued. Other fire brigades joined sides, and the Lady Washington’s fire engine was captured and vandalized.

1844: Mike Walsh convicted and fined on assault charges due to his violent temper.

Astor Place Riots: The Astor Place Riots came out of the rivalry between William Macready and Edwin Forrest. On May 7th 1849, the night of one of Macready’s performances of Macbeth at the Astor Opera House – Macready was “greeted by a barrage of catcalls and groans, not to mention pennies, apples, rotten eggs and old shoes”. This was a result of the Bowery B’hoys purchasing tickets to the show and flooding the audience. Needless to say this Bowery’ B’hoy dominated audience won in some ways because as the curtain fell Macready announced the American tour was over after this performance. The patriotic Bowery B’hoys felt defensive of their American actor and thus this occasion became a stage to play out their anti-foreign attitudes. Three nights later, on May 10th, the catastrophic riots took place the Astor Place Opera House. Macready had been convinced to stay and continue the run of the play. The city had prepared for unrest – stationing police around the Opera House. That evening, huge crowds accumulated outside of the Opera House and as the performance began there was not only unrest outside of the theatre, but also inside. Bricks and stones were thrown from the streets and the militia that had been put on reserve had to intervene. Macready was able to escape the scene incognito, but the riot continued and eventually the militia fired above the rioters heads and then fatally into the crowd. The riots resulted in around 30 deaths and 48 wounded.

People
Mike Walsh: Mike Walsh was the distinguished leader of one of many Bowery Boys groups. He created the Spartan Association, which was responsible for involving the Bowery Boys in the political and social struggles of the newly industrialized working class. He was a heavy drinker, a practical joker, and believed the best lessons were learned on the street and not in the classroom. Walsh argued that the disintegration of the English language was one of the greatest successes of his time. He is famous to have said, “any dead fish can swim with the stream, but it takes a real live one to go against the current.” The Bowery Boys said that, “if he loves, he loves ardently, and if he hates, it is with inveterate hatred”.

Edwin Forrest: Edwin Forrest was a Philadelphia born actor who was “beloved for his patriotism and plebian work ethic”. He was one of the most celebrated actors of the Bowery B’hoys due mainly to his adoption of the rambunctious, large acting style that they B’hoys loved to see. Because he was so easily relatable to the working class, the B’hoys saw him as a God – a God that understand their work ethic and the difficulties and excitements of being a middle class American during this time period. This type of brawny of working class charisma also led him to be notably physical with many of his actors – he was known to brawl before shows and during the rehearsals of many of his different shows.

One of his main reasons why the B’hoys were so attracted to Forrest, besides his working class morals, were the ways he illustrated this in his acting – the Shakespearean roles he played were mainly extremely dramatic, loud and aggressive. This loud and very “American-like” take on Shakespeare led to one of the most notable rivals between English and American actors in the history of contemporary theatre between Edwin Forrest and William Macready. William Macready, a British Shakespearean actor represented everything Edwin Forrest did not, specifically in regards to his take on acting – he was subtle, specific, and extremely composed and well mannered in opposition to Forrest’s brawny attitude. The Bowery B’hoys fed off this rivalry, and when Macready came to perform in the United States the B’hoys ensured a disastrous performance as they bought tickets to his show, provoking him and inciting problems. They believed it was Macready’s fault that their beloved Edwin Forrest’s tour had been ruined in London and felt it was their right to do the same to him. The tension surrounding Macready’s performance resulted in the Astor Place Riots.