The Eastman Gang was the last of New York's street gangs which dominated the city's underworld during the late 1890s until the early 1910s. Along with the Five Points Gang under Italian-American Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, best known as Paul Kelly, the Eastman gang succeeded the long dominant Whyos as the first non-Irish street gang to gain prominence in the underworld during the 1890s. Its rise marked the beginning of a forty to fifty-year period of strong Jewish-American influence within organized crime in New York City.
Monk Eastman leader of the Eastman Gang from a New York Police Department mug shot, 1903
The Eastman Gang began in the early 1890s around Corlear's Hook, Lower East Side, New York City, in a photograph, circa 1876.
Gangster Christopher Wallace shortly after being arrested with Monk Eastman, 1904.
The Five Points Gang was a criminal street gang of primarily Irish-American origins, based in the Five Points of Lower Manhattan, New York City, during the late 19th and early 20th century.
Members of the Five Points Gang of New York City
Paul Kelly, founder of the Five Points Gang
A slum tour through the Five Points in an 1885 sketch
Biff Ellison, a former member and would-be leader of the Five Points Gang.
