Dead Rabbits

The Dead Rabbits were a gang in New York City in the 1850s, and originally were a part of the Roach Guards. They were also known as the Black Birds.

The gang achieved great renown for its organization and prowess as thieves and thugs. The fighting uniform of the Roach Guards was a blue stripe on their pantaloons, while the Dead Rabbits adopted a red stripe. In riots their emblem was a dead rabbit impaled on a spike. The Rabbits and the Guards swore undying enmity and constantly fought each other at the Five Points, but in the rows with the water-front and Bowery Boys they made common cause against the enemy, as did other Five Points gangs including the Shirt Tails and Chichesters. The gang was later led by Irish American Aidan Bourke, also known as "Black Dog" possibly due to a ruthless nature similar to that of the ghost dog in the folklores of the Celtic and British Isles.

New York's Democrats were divided into two camps, those who supported Mayor Fernando Wood, and those who opposed him. The Bowery gangs were one of the latter while the Dead Rabbits were proponents of Wood. Thus the Bowery Boys threw their support in league with state Republicans who proposed legislation that would strip Wood of certain powers and place them in the hands of Albany. One of these proposals was to disband the Municipal Police Department, in which Wood's supporters had a controlling interest, and replace it with a state-run Metropolitan Police Department. Wood refused to disband his Municipal Department, and so for the first half of 1857, the two rival departments battled it out on the streets of the city until the courts ordered the Municipals to disband that July. On July 4 a bloody fight, the Dead Rabbits Riot, occurred with the Metropolitan Police and the Bowery gangs against the Municipal Police, Mulberry Street Boys, Roach Guard, and Dead Rabbits in Bayard Street.

There was a similar gang in Liverpool, England in the late 19th century also known as 'The Dead Rabbits'.

The story of the New York Dead Rabbits is told, in highly fictionalized form, in Martin Scorsese's film Gangs of New York. The film's inspiration came from an essay by Herbert Asbury titled Gangs of New York.