New York By 1800, New York had passed Philadelphia and Boston to become the biggest city in the country with 60,000 people. With the rise of heavy industry and mining in New England and the industrial Midwest, many companies actively recruited in Europe for laborers. Many new immigrants had to squeeze into crowded tenements in urban cities. Cities like New York gained a reputation for overcrowding and criminal violence.

Children included in crime In the decade before the Civil War (1850’s), more than 3,000 homeless children roamed the streets of New York. Many of them became pickpockets and street robbers. One civic leader wrote in 1842: “Thronged as our city is, men are robbed in the streets…The defenseless and the beautiful are ravished in the daytime and no trace of the criminals is found.”

Where are the Police? Before the Civil War, few cities in America had anything like a police department to keep order. Boston had a night watch but it was mainly for fires. Watchmen were afraid to enter many neighborhoods at all. In some places, vigilantes were the only organized resistance to criminals. More murders took place in New York than London, a far bigger city

Wealthy not Excluded In Philadelphia, in the mid-1800s, bands of robbers began robbing wealthy people and stripping them of their cash. The problem? In many cities, jobless immigrants formed violent gangs in ethnic slum neighborhoods. In Philly, lower-class Irish and black groups formed gangs. Members (as young as 10) carried clubs, knives, brass knuckles and pistols. They attacked children, other ethnic groups and people walking by themselves.

New York gangs Well-organized adult street gangs controlled many of the lower-income neighborhoods. They grew famous for mugging people. Political parties recruited squads of tough guys from these gangs to intimidate voters.

The origin of police units Urban rioting broke out in many cities in the Northeast from the 1830s through the 1850s. The pressures on the urban slums boiled over. There were ethnic riots, labor riots, election-day riots, anti-Catholic riots and anti-black riots. In that period alone, Baltimore had 12 major riots; Philadelphia 11; New York 8. These riots led to what is the modern day police department.