Edwin Forrest was a nineteenth-century American Shakespearean actor. His feud with the British actor William Macready was the cause of the deadly Astor Place Riot of 1849.
Daguerreotype of Forrest by Mathew Brady
Forrest at 21
Forrest's castle-like mansion by the Hudson River in New York
Edwin Forrest home in Philadelphia
The Astor Place Riot occurred on May 10, 1849, at the now-demolished Astor Opera House in Manhattan and left between 22 and 31 rioters dead, and more than 120 people injured. It was the deadliest to that date of a number of civic disturbances in Manhattan, which generally pitted immigrants and nativists against each other, or together against the wealthy who controlled the city's police and the state militia.
Rioters at the Astor Place Opera House on the night of the riot. In the foreground is the New York Militia firing upon rioters.
Edwin Forrest, daguerreotype by Mathew Brady
William Macready, painting by John Jackson
A handbill, produced by Ned Buntline and the American Committee (also known as the Order of United Americans) and handed out prior to, and complicit in instigating, the Astor Place riot.