Baltimore Through My Eyes

The Plug Uglies? Were actually a Baltimore gang.

Surprised?

Me too.

As promised – a little bit about Baltimore’s historical gangs.

If anyone has seen Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film, Gangs Of New York, it was a pretty brutal accounting of the New York Draft Riots in 1863 and other various and sundry gang activity in the Five Points area. Based on Herbert Asbury’s 1928 book, The Gangs of New York, it told the story of 2 gangs, The Bowery Boys and The Dead Rabbits and their fight for domination in the Five Points Area. Also mentioned in the movie is a gang called the Plug Uglies. Another actual gang? Yes. From New York? Nope. Scorsese should do a sequel and name it Gangs of Baltimore.

The Plug Uglies originated in Baltimore around 1854 and billed themselves as a street gang er… “political club”. Operating on Baltimore’s west side (sort of), the group originated as raucous and unruly go-fers affiliated with the Mt. Vernon Hook and Ladder company, but quickly morphed into a criminal enterprise that encompassed more than a few fire companies. Because of their street smarts, the gang became indispensable to politicians who wanted to control polling at election time. At the time, most of Baltimore’s fire companies were strictly volunteer organizations and sadly were populated with the unemployed. The actual Baltimore City Fire Department only had 45 members, and so the volunteers got most of the business and they would run out to fires (1/2 of which were arsons in 1858) and literally fight with other companies that had arrived on the scene as well, purely for the rights to put out the fire. Property owners were bullied into paying in advance, otherwise they risked having their homes and business burn to the ground. Some burned to the ground anyway, because there was more fighting going on with each other on than actually fighting the fire. People also paid for fire insurance, not knowing that some of the insurance companies were in cahoots with some of the fire companies and would pay a hefty kickback to the first company there. Cast-iron plaques were affixed to homes and businesses to alert volunteer firemen that the property was insured and by whom. While this deterred arson attempts, it not deter the fire companies from clashing with each other.

The Plug Uglies, Rip Raps, American Rattlers (am guessing that they bite), Butt-Enders (could this be a synonym for assholes?), the Blackguards (ha! – that just means scoundrels), the Wampanoags (because “Native” Americans?) and the Bloody Tubs were considered “Nativist” gangs – meaning that they were affiliated with the Native American Party, which became the American Party, which became the Know-Nothings. They were anti-Catholic, opposed to anything foreign and very antagonistic towards immigration. The Bloody Tubs were known for pouring slaughterhouse blood on political opponents, they blocked voting booths and even threatened to abduct Lincoln in 1860 after he became President-elect despite being pro-abolition. The Rip-Raps were named for the waters off Hampton Roads, most likely because several Baltimore sailors belonged to the gang. The Plug Uglies were named for their hats – a plug hat or an oversized top hat that they would stuff with wool and leather to protect their heads during fights. Basically? They were a not very nice bunch of right-wing, Protestants, who went so far as to promote conspiracy theories that the Pope was going to overpower the government simply by bringing more Catholics to the United States. They dealt in arson, stealing, assault, murder, kidnapping, bullying and coercion to keep their political rivals at bay. Given their names, they didn’t care who knew it either.

With the continued arrival of destitute Catholics from Ireland and Germany during the 1840s, and then having them crammed into tenements in cities like Boston, Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore, the number of immigrants positively soared, as did crime, the murder rate and welfare. Who got blamed? Immigrants. There was what is now known as the Great Famine in Ireland (1845-1852), the Highland Potato Famine in Scotland (1846-1857) and the European Potato Famine, which struck northern Europe. Over a million people died in Ireland, resulting in 2 million refugees; 200,000 were affected in Scotland and 100,000 in Europe. Political upheaval and what amounted to a revolution in Germany in 1848, caused even more people to flee to America. They came in droves to the land of the free and the home of the brave, hoping to not starve to death and to do better economically. Sadly, as with today’s immigrants, who are also escaping famine and violence, there were people who did not want them coming to the states. In the thirty years leading up to 1860, Baltimore’s population had gone from around 80,000 people to 212,000. Twenty-five percent of the city’s people were foreigners. Native born citizens felt helpless to stop the influx of the immigrants and their growing political influence.  The Democratic Party promised jobs and advancement to the newly minted Americans, resulting in the native-born folks flocking in droves to the Know-Nothing Party in an attempt to halt the rise of the foreign-born. Their slogan? “America for the Americans”. It’s so familiar it’s almost scary. As Martin Ford said in an article he wrote called “Gangs of Baltimore” for the National Endowment For The Humanities,  – Election rallies were massive provocations, mixing theatrical spectacle with guerilla warfare, Fourth of July pageantry with thuggery.

In 1856, there was a riot in Baltimore. Or rather rioting. Honestly, given the weapons in use, I’d call it a tiny war. Which began in September. Culminating in a month of deadly confrontation between gang members American Party members and Democrats. Strange how this keeps happening in my city. Mobtown? But I digress. In October, a heavily contested mayoral ballot ended with the Know-Nothing candidate, Thomas Swann being elected, but not before some very serious violence occurred. It is now known that there was some rampant voter fraud in place in order to actually get him elected. The gangs were literally kidnapping and marching people to the polls, forcing them to vote for their candidate, threatening them with violence if they didn’t. Additionally, ballots were color-coded at the time (aren’t you glad you can cast a secret ballot today?) so folks hanging around the balloting areas could see exactly who voted for who which just helped to ramp up the violence.

The City’s 8^th Ward (the area near Greenmount Cemetery today), known then as Limerick because of the heavy Irish population, rioted as members of the Plug Uglies clashed with Democrats at the polls. The Irish Bloody Eights had formed there as a countermeasure of sorts to the Know-Nothing gangs and had allied itself with the Democratic party. There was also violence in the 2^nd Ward (Central and Fleet Street) and the 6^th Ward (Orleans Street and Asquith). The Rip Raps attacked the New Market Engine Company near Lexington Market because it was populated by a bunch of rather unruly Democrats. Some of Baltimore’s citizens finally urged the current mayor, Samuel Hinks, to order Baltimore’s militia to readiness to control the powder-keg, but the mayor, who was also a Know-Nothing, rescinded the order almost as quickly as he put it in place. Total casualties? 17 dead and hundreds more wounded. If you think gang violence is bad today? They were using artillery. As in cannons. I can’t imagine people just randomly using howitzers in B-more today.

The same violence occurred in 1857, only this time it was Maryland’s Governor who pushed for the militia’s involvement. Swann agreed to a compromise and the militia was told to stand down, however Swann was again victorious and again he was accused of voter fraud. The only good thing that happened? There was less violence this time around.

In 1858, a member of the Plug Uglies, Henry Gambrill, was convicted for the murder of Baltimore Police Officer Benjamin Benton. The case was sensational at the time, given that the judge for the case, American Party member, Henry Stump, had a habit of not only being drunk on the bench, but of acquitting Know-Nothing members. By some strange miracle, and thanks to the testimony of Benton’s partner, Gambrill was found guilty and hanged, but not before Benton’s partner was also shot and killed in retaliation. Stump was eventually removed from the bench by the new General Assembly, the only time in Maryland History that this has happened.

The gangs were also instigators of the 1861 Baltimore Riots, which, if you read my previous blog entry on that, gave Baltimore the dubious distinction of having the first casualties of the Civil War.

Thanks to these gangs, the murder rate in Baltimore wouldn’t go up for over 100 years. On the flip side, thanks to these gangs, Baltimore saw major reforms in the actual Fire Department and Police Department as well as changes in the court and voting system. When Baltimore voted for a new city government along with a new mayor in October of 1860, the gangs slowly began to dissolve. Mayor George William Brown called for tougher punishments for criminals and made it very difficult to obtain a pardon. The new legislature promptly dethroned the city’s reps citing fraud and voter intimidation, the cities numbered wards were further divided into election districts and the political upheaval and violence that earned Baltimore the nickname “Mobtown” decades before, finally screeched to a halt. What was left of the Plug Uglies associated themselves with the Dead Rabbits in New York during the Draft Riots in 1863. In an attempt to continue their violence, and perhaps their relevance, they had literally switched sides and had allied themselves with a gang that supported the Democratic Catholics and the immigration cause, rather than siding with the Know-Nothing Bowery Boys. On July 16, 1863 the New York Times reported the presence of Baltimore gang members during the Draft Riots, along with the members of the Bloody Tubs and Philadelphia’s Schuykill Rangers.

The Bloody Tubs kept going until around 1870, but their continued outrageous violence began to anger the general public to the point that most politically inclined folks yanked their support. Police stepped in and the gang all but disappeared.

The only thing Plug Ugly related in Baltimore today is the Plug Ugly Publick House & Raw Bar in Canton, a restaurant whose logo is a top hat over a very Victorian looks font. There is even a bit of history on their Facebook wall, including the theory that were responsible for kidnapping Poe.

Sources:

~https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2006-01-15-0601130205-story.html; Think Baltimore’s A Rough Place Now? Try the 1850’s. By Carl Shottler, January 15, 2006

~Wikipedia.com

~https://www.facebook.com/pluguglys/

~https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/irish-potato-famine

~https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/immigrants-conspiracies-and-secret-society-launched-american-nativism-180961915/; How The 19th Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics; by Lorraine Boissoneault, January 26, 2017.

~http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/famine_01.shtml

~https://fire.baltimorecity.gov/history-0

~https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/the-surprising-irish-origins-of-baltimore-maryland; by Casey Egan, June 13, 2016.

~Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld, by Herbert Asbury, Pub. 1927; Garden City Publishing Company