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bowery b'hoy: the comedy of a culture in rapid transition


The Bowery b'hoy and his g'hal were iconic symbols of working class spirits in the two decades preceding the Civil War in New York City. During the 1830s the "Bowery was best known for its entertainment possibilities, which included cheap dancehalls, dime museums, billiard salons, rowdy theaters, performing animals, and boxing." This icon was based upon the culture and dress of the real working class people of New York and eventually became a character type "depicted in print and onstage, a symbolic figure that represented the rise of commercial culture and the decline in the status of skilled trades that were altering social relations."The American Museum, under Barnum's ownership in the 1840s and 1850s, put on exhibitions that attracted the working class Bowery crowd. However, due to his desire to bring in more respectable patrons, he replaced much of these exhibitions with moral stage dramas.

"B'hoy and g'hal are meant to evoke an Irish pronunciation of boy and gal and were commonly used slang words used by the Bowery crowd. The Bowery Boys gang were prominent in New York City's Five Points district. They were a nativist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Irish gang that are even written about in Herbert Asbury's Gangs of New York.