William Poole, known as Bill the Butcher, was the leader of the Washington Street Gang, which later became known as the Bowery Boys gang.
18 Facts About William Poole
2.
William Poole was a local leader of the Know Nothing political movement in mid-19th-century New York City.
3.
Volunteer fire groups, such as the one William Poole was in, were important for keeping fires under control.
4.
William Poole weighed over two hundred pounds and was about six feet tall.
5.
William Poole was a known skilled knife fighter, as a result of his profession as a butcher.
6.
William Poole closed his family's butchery business in the 1850s and opened a drinking saloon, known as the "Bank Exchange".
7.
The most well-known of these was the Bowery Boys, which William Poole formed from his own Washington Street gang and a collection of many other street gangs.
8.
William Poole made many alliances with other street gangs that supported his ideology.
9.
William Poole detested the Democratic Party's local political machine, Tammany Hall, because they accepted and included immigrants as members.
10.
William Poole was nominated by the Whig party in April 1848 as a candidate for alderman, representing the Sixth Ward.
11.
William Poole fared poorly in the general election, receiving only 199 votes and tying for last place with his ticket-mate against four other candidates.
12.
In February of 1853, William Poole was appointed to represent the Sixth Ward on the New York City Board of Education.
13.
William Poole's arch rival, John Morrissey, was an Irish immigrant and worked for the political machine at Tammany Hall.
14.
Several days after the shooting, on March 8,1855, William Poole died in his home on Christopher Street at the age of 33.
15.
William Poole was survived by his wife and son, Charles William Poole.
16.
William Poole was intercepted on the high seas on April 17,1855.
17.
William Poole later served two terms as a New York state senator and two more terms in the US House of Representatives.
18.
Daniel Day-Lewis played a heavily fictionalized version of Bill the Butcher, renamed William Poole Cutting, in the 2002 Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York.