Gangs and Legends: Unraveling the Dark Secrets of Battle Row in Hell’s Kitchen

<Excerpt from New York Offbeat Walks: Hell’s Kitchen>

On the right, you pass West 39th Street, which—between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues—was once as a notorious slum known as “Battle Row.” Long before the Westies, the 500-strong Irish American Gophers gang controlled the area from the 1890s until around 1910, finding rich pickings by stealing from the nearby train yards and freight yards.

The Gophers, full of memorably-named criminals such as The Killer, Stumpy Malarkey, One Lung, and Goo Goo Knox, also had a female contingent called the Lady Gophers. One of their members was the feared “Battle Annie” Walsh, infamous for her ability to hurl bricks and known as the “Queen of Hell’s Kitchen.” She could raise a force of hundreds of women armed with clubs and hung out at the Gopher’s favorite bar—the Battle Row saloon run by Mallet Murphy.