Fwd: Murderer's Row

[Gerald Cohen]

Here's an item from the 19th Century Baseball discussion group:

>
>To: "19cBB" <19cBB at yahoogroups.com>
>From: "John Thorn" <john at toy-department.com>
>Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 14:38:05 -0400
>Subject: [19cBB] Murderers' Row

>More in the rummaging vein. I hope this of interest.
>
>While the usual etymology for this term is plausible--that it derives from a
>row of cells in New York's Tombs reserved for the most dastardly of
>criminals--this fact gleaned from Charles AHemstreet's Nooks and Cranies of
>old New York (Scribner, 1899) might give pause:
>
>Murderers' Row was an actual alley long before the Civil War, starting where
>Watts Street ended at Sullivan Street, midway along the block between Grand
>and Broome Streets.
>
>Now part of the fashionable Soho district, Murderers' Row was one of many
>mean streets in the neighborhood later known as Darktown (as the Chinese had
>Chinatown and the Jews had Jewtown--yes, that was what they called the Lower
>East Side in the years before 1900).
>
>
>
>John Thorn
>