According to author and journalist Pete Hamill:
... The Irish hoodlums established the nexus between New York crime and New York politics that would last more than a century. A path was established among the Dead Rabbits, the Plug Uglies, the Bowery Boys that continues all the way to today’s Latin Kings, Crips and Bloods.[21]
According to Paul S. Boyer, a U.S. cultural and intellectual historian:
The period from the 1830s to the 1850s was a time of almost continuous disorder and turbulence among the urban poor. The 1834–44 decade saw more than 200 major gang wars in New York City alone, and in other cities the pattern was similar.[22]
As early as 1839, Mayor Philip Hone said:
This city is infested by gangs of hardened wretches ... [who] patrol the streets making night hideous and insulting all who are not strong enough to defend themselves.