Bowery b'hoy

The Bowery B’hoys were working-class single men living mostly along the Bowery in New York City in the early 19th century. Notorious for their rowdy behavior and bright clothes, these men participated actively in theatre audiences during their time away from work and their living wards.

In the Antebellum Period, the population of single working men living in lower Manhattan increased significantly. These young men were drawn to the city by rising wages for laborers, brought about by growing technology and industrialization that followed the War of 1812. Typically firemen or mechanics, b'hoys spent their free time in the theaters and bars that surrounded their living wards around the Bowery. The Bowery B'hoys were also known for their gang activity, engaging in fights and riots with members of opposing gangs such as the Dead Rabbits.

Writer James Dabney McCabe observed of the Bowery B'hoy in 1872:

“You might see him ‘strutting along like a king’ with his breeches stuck in his boots, his coat on his arm, his flaming red shirt tied at the collar with a cravat such as could be seen nowhere else...None so ready as he for a fight, none so quick to resent the intrusion of a respectable man into his haunts.”

The term B'hoy was also widely used to describe a young man of the working-class who enjoyed drinking, seeking out adventure, and finding fun. Bowery B'hoys had a distaste for aristocracy and a love of independence, bravery, and loyalty.

Appearance was of great importance to Bowery B'hoys, who dressed for both flair and convenience. A typical Bowery B'hoy wore:

“[a] black silk hat, smoothly brushed, sitting precisely upon the top of his head, hair well oiled, and lying closely to the skin, long in front, short behind, cravat a-la sailor, with the shirt collar turned over it, vest of fancy silk, large flowers, black frock coat, no jewelry, except in a few instances, where the insignia of the engine company to which the wearer belongs, as a breastpin, black pants, one or two years behind the fashion, heavy boots, and a cigar about half smoked, in the left corner of his mouth, as nearly perpendicular as it is possible to be got. He has a peculiar swing, not exactly a swagger, to his walk, but a swing, which nobody but a Bowery boy can imitate.”

George Foster, a travel writer, wrote in 1850:

“Who are the b’hoys and g’hals of New York?...sometimes a stout clerk in a jobbing-house, oftener a junior partner at a wholesale grocery, and still more frequently a respectable young butcher with big arms and broad shoulders, in a blue coat with a silk hat and a crape wound about its base, and who is known familiarly as a ‘Bowery Boy!'”

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