Mose the Fireboy

Mose the Fireboy (fl. 1840—1849) was the pseudonym of an American folk hero and supposed leader of the Bowery Boys during the 1840s, possibly based on Mose Humphrey. One of its most celebrated leaders during the period, he and his lieutenant Syksey were well-known for battling members of the Dead Rabbits and other Five Points gangs. His identity remains unknown, and it has been suggested by historians that he may have been a tall tale or urban legend, however ballads and songs were sung of him in the Bowery and was a common battle cry among the Bowery Boys throughout their existence ^[1]

Herbert Asbury describes the Bowery leader in the 1928 book The Gangs of New York.

He was said to have possessed the strength of ten men. When other Bowery Boys went into battle with the common brick-bat or stave, Mose carried with him a great paving stone in one hand and a hickory or oak wagon tongue in the other. When losing his bludgeons in battle, he simply pulled up an iron lamp post from the sidewalk. He was also said to favor a butcher's meat cleaver as opposed to the knife as the Bowery's weapon of choice. Once during a street fight with the Dead Rabbits, when they had overpowered his gang and threatened their clubhouse, Mose uprooted an oak tree with his bare hand and held it by the upper branches using it as a flail "smiting the Dead Rabbits even as Samson smote the Philistines". The Dead Rabbits fled before Mose who chased them back to the Five Points wrecking two tenement buildings while the gangsters hid in their "Paradise Square" dens. Mose then stood against a hundred of the best thugs and brawlers in the Five Points "ripping huge paving blocks from the street and sidewalk and hurling them into the midst of his enemies, inflicting frightful losses".^[1]

Outside of battle, it was common for him perform similar feats in his daily life. Sometimes he would lift a horse car off the tracks, with its passengers still onboard, and carried it on his shoulders for several blocks before setting it down with a laugh. His laughter caused the car to tremble on its wheels, trees to sway as though in a storm and fill the Bowery "with a rushing road like the thunder of Niagara". Mose would often unhitch horses from street cars and pulled it himself the entire length of the Bowery. He once was said to have lifted a street car over his head, with the horses still dangling from the traces, and carried it on the palm of his hand from Chatham Square to Astor Place.^[1]

When a becalmed sailing ship on the East River was drifting dangerously close to the rocky shore of Hell Gate, Mose took out a rowboat began smoking a cigar. The cigar was over two feet long and, once lit, "sent such mightily billows of smoke against the sails that the ship was saved, and plunged down the river as though driven by a hurricane". The force of the puffs from Mose's cigar were so powerful that the ship had sailed into New York Harbor and past Staten Island before it would respond to the helm. Mose would often amuse himself by sailing out to the middle of the river and blocking ships from passing him by simply blowing ships away. Indeed he was very much at home in the water often diving off the Battery and coming up on the beach at Staten Island, this distance usually taking steamboats 25 minutes to cover. He could swim the Hudson River in two strokes and only six to complete a lap around Manhattan Island. When he wanted to cross the East River to Brooklyn, he simply jumped across the river instead of swimming the half mile.^[1]

His appetite was equally legendary. He quenched his thirst only after drinking a drayload of beer specially ordered from a brewery and, in the summers, he had a fifty gallon keg of ale which he wore from his belt in place of canteen. The butchers of Center and Fly markets would have to prepare meals days in advance, preparing meals of roast hogs and cattle, holding huge feats in order to satisfy his hunger. His consumption of bread alone was enough to cause a panic in the flour market. He could also consume four quarts of oysters as an appetizer while soups and coffee were served to him by the barrel. Mose, who was fond of eating fruit for dessert or as a light snack, was supposed to have tore up the cherry trees of Cherry Hill and the mulberry trees of Mulberry Bend and ate all the fruit from them not wanting to wait until they could be picked. Historically however, the trees were removed due to the building up of the city during the mid-to late 19th century.^[1]

Shortly after his death, he was the subject of a play written by Benjamin Baker entitled Mose, the Bowery B'hoy which was performed by Frank Chanfrau at the old Olympic Theater in 1849, the same year of the Astor Place Riot. The success of the play created a near mythic figure of the gang leader, becoming known as "America's first urban folk hero", which toured throughout the United States during the late 1840s and 50s.^[1]

In popular culture

Mose appears in the 1999 historical novel Dreamland by Kevin Baker.

References

Further reading

• Adams, Peter. The Bowery Boys: Street Corner Radicals and the Politics of Rebellion. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishing, 2005. ISBN 0-275-98538-5
• Allen, Oliver E. New York, New York: A History of the World's Most Exhilarating and Challenging City. New York: Atheneum, 1990. ISBN 0-689-11960-7
• Blair, Walter. Tall Tale America: A Legendary History of Our Humorous Heroes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. ISBN 0-226-05596-5
• Botkin, B.A. New York City Folklore: Legends, Tall Tales, Anecdotes, Stories, Sagas, Heroes and Characters, Customs, Traditions and Sayings. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1976. ISBN 0-8371-9310-9
• Dunshee, Kenneth Holcomb. As You Pass By. New York: Hastings House, 1952.
• Harlow, Alvin F. Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street. New York and London: D. Appleton & Company, 1931.
• Jagendorf, Moritz Adolph. Upstate, Downstate: Folk Stories of the Middle Atlantic States. New York: Vanguard Press, 1949.