Possibly the most infamous Irish slum in America evolved in NYC - the Five Points. Named for a curious five-cornered intersection formed by the joining of three streets in Lower Manhattan, it achieved an international reputation by the 1840s as a neighborhood racked by poverty, crime, drunkenness, rioting, and disease. The Irish formed these ethnic ghettos partly out of choice. Living among their own kind provided social networks, job opportunities, churches and charitable institutions. Yet "Little Irelands" were also as much a product of prejudice and poverty and American hostility. The Irish were often relegated to a few neighborhoods, usually near industrial sites and characterized by substandard housing and lack of urban services like running water and regular street cleaning. A recent archaeological excavation in the Five Points area, however, has called into question this portrait of unrelieved squalor and violence. Researchers found abundant evidence of family life and hard work which remind us that amid the troubles of urban life, residents struggled to live decent lives and raise their families. Anti-Irish sentiment was also inflamed by the prevalence of crime and disorder in Irish neighborhoods. In NYC, for example, 55% of those arrested in the 1850s were born in Ireland. One cannot attribute this to anti-Irish prejudice, however, given that 27% of the city's police force were Irish-born. Street gangs, i.e., the Plug Uglies, Kerryonians and Whyos emerged at this time and were predominantly of Irish background. The story was much the same in Boston, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. Few Americans at that time were willing to see a connection between the extreme poverty and poor treatment of the Irish and the disproportionately high rate of crime and disorder among them. Instead, they attributed criminality and violence to the "flawed Irish character." Like many of their counterparts, Irish immigrants brought with them a culture in which drinking was firmly rooted. For centuries they had equated drinking with socializing, celebrating and mourning. In Boston the number of licensed liquor dealers jumped from 850 in 1846 to 1,200 in 1849, most of the new licensees were Irish. Studies show that while Italians drank the same amount as the Irish they experienced significantly lower rates of alcoholism because they consumed their alcohol (mostly wine) as part of a meal at home. By contrast, the Irish consumed alcohol as recreation, most often than not in a drinking establishment separate from the home. Drinking in the male preserve of the tavern or saloon linked alcohol consumption to images of manliness and strength, a trend that promoted excessive consumption. Not surprising the stresses and strains of adjusting to the harsh life in American cities led many Irish immigrants and their descendants to develop high rates of mental illness. Three out of four admissions to New York's Bellevue insane asylum in the 1850s were foreign-born and two third of them were Irish. The numbers in San Francisco for the period of 1870 to 1900 paint a similar picture. The one man who did the most to publicize and sensationalize the Five Points was Charles DICKENS. During his tour of America in 1842, he stopped in NY. He was shown the splendor and wealth of Broadway, but he insisted on seeing the other side of New York life, and so with a police escort he toured the Five Points and found similarities to conditions in parts of England. His observations appeared in the book he wrote about his travels entitled "American Notes." (1842). "There is one quarter, commonly called the Five Points, which in respect of filth and wretchedness, may be safely backed against Seven Dials, or any other part of famed St. Giles (a London slum)...these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives are led here, bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors, have counterparts at home, and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of those pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all-fours? and why they talk instead of grunting?" The chief reason for Irish immigrant poverty was the lack of useful skills. Owning little or no land in Ireland, many arrived with little more than the clothes on their backs, having spent everything on passage. Doubtless, they possessed many skills, just not the kind that were in demand in an urban economy. -- Excerpts, "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Irish American History," Edward T. O'Donnell (2002).