About the year 1855, two classes of "toughs," or, as they were dubbed in those days, "rowdies," appear to have had and maintained some control of the city, overawing the regularly constituted authorities, intimidating the police by their numbers, and carrying things with a high hand generally. One class consisted of the individuals comprehended in the title of "Bowery Boy"--a term which included that certain, or rather uncertain, element of New Yorker residing in the streets running into the Bowery and adjacent to it, below Canal street, and the other, a rival gang, called "Dead Rabbits," which unsavory distinction was adopted by an equally questionable portion of humanity dwelling in the Fourth and Sixth wards and streets in the vicinity of Catherine and Roosevelt. There were among these two gangs of the city's representative "toughs," materials of a far different kind from the actual felon, but who were none the less dangerous, and among them may be classed many leaders of ward politics and volunteer fire companies, and from which Lew Baker and his victim, Bill Poole, "The Paudeen," "Reddy, the Blacksmith," and numerous others were afterwards developed; but they were oftener far more guilty than the real criminals, for they aided and abetted, and in cases of arrest befriended them, causing their subsequent escape from the penalties justly due for their crimes. As a type of the veritable "Bowery Boy" may be taken the leader of that gang of notorious "toughs," one who, from his well-earned reputation as a bar-room and street rough-and-tumble fighter, has become a historical personage, under the sobriquet of "Mose." His faithful lieutenant, "Syksey," of "hold de butt" fame, will not soon be forgotten either, as both figured prominently in the terrible pitched battles the two rival gangs frequently indulged in, to the terror and consternation of all New York. Of the rival mob, known as "Dead Rabbits," Kit Burns, Tommy Hedden and "Shang" Allen are names long to be remembered by the terror-stricken citizens who lived in the days when the fights between these notorious aspirants for pugilistic and bloody honors were often of the deadliest and most sanguinary character, lasting for days at a time; when entire streets were blockaded and barricaded, and the mobs were armed with pistols and rifles. Even cannons were sometimes used, and the police, even when aided by the military, were powerless to suppress these battles until many were killed and wounded on both sides. In these desperate conflicts it was no unusual sight to see women, side by side with men, fighting as valiantly as their husbands, sons or fathers, and the records of the courts and prisons of those days tell dreadful stories of murders, robberies and other crimes done under cover of these periodical street fights.