The Tenth Avenue Gang was a
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
street gang and later became the city's first train robbers.
Formed by
Ike Marsh in 1860, the gang consisted of a small number of various burglars and other criminals. In response to the first train robbery by the outlaw
Reno Gang
The Reno Gang, also known as the Reno Brothers Gang and The Jackson Thieves, were a group of criminals that operated in the Midwestern United States during and just after the American Civil War. Though short-lived, the gang carried out the firs ...
in 1866, the Tenth Avenue Gang became the first street gang to commit a train robbery in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
in 1868 when Marsh and several members boarded a Hudson River Co. train at
Spuyten Duyvil in Upper Manhattan and, making their way into the mail car, held the guard captive and stole $5,000 in cash and bonds which was thrown out of the train. The robbery would gain the gang considerable notoriety from both the New York press and the city's underworld as Ike Marsh was said to have stated the gang was "''just as good as those cowboys.''". The gang continued to successfully raid New York rail yards however by the early 1870s the gang was forced to merge with the
Hell's Kitchen Gang as railroad detectives had killed several members.
Further reading
*
Asbury, Herbert. ''The Gangs of New York''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927.
*Sifakis, Carl. ''The Encyclopedia of American Crime''. New York: Facts on File Inc., 2005.
Former gangs in New York City
Street gangs
{{Organized crime groups in New York City