The Five Points : Moral Perceptions of Poverty in Nineteenth Century New York
department or school: Arts and Social Sciences, Irving K. Barber Faculty of (Okanagan)
department or school: History and Sociology, Department of (Okanagan)
data provider: DSpace
creator: Dunbar, Caoilthionn P.
issued: 2025-05-23T18:59:28Z
issued: 2025-04
description: The Five Points neighborhood, located within the Sixth Ward of New York city in southern Manhattan, began to grow in the mid 1820s, following the filling of Collects Pond. The neighborhood gained notoriety as a slum by the 1830s, and the neighborhood and its denizens received substantial attention from journalists, popular authors and experts in poverty and crime throughout the nineteenth century. Journalists and authors such as the famous Jacob Riis, for example, successfully sold this image of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods to middle and upper-class readers, many of whom supported reform efforts to deal with the problems of crime and poverty. This presentation will discuss how nineteenth-century authors and reformers such as Jacob Riis, Charles Loring Brace, and William F. Barnard depicted the Five Points in a specific way, in order to justify reform initiatives in the Five Points specifically, and in New York City in general.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/91187
note: The Five Points: Moral Perceptions of Poverty in Nineteenth Century New York by Caoilthionn P. Dunbar Submitted in parti al fulfillment of the requirements of the Honours Program in History University of Bri tish Columbia, Okanagan 2025 Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Julien Vernet, Department of Hi story Author's Signature: Date: Supervisor's Signature: Date: Honours Chair's Signature: Date: 1 Abstract The Five Points neighborhood, located within the Sixth Ward of New York city in southern Manhattan, began to grow in the mid 1820s, following the filling of Collects Pond. The neighborhood gained notoriety as a slum by the 1830s, and the neighborhood and its denizens received substantial attention from journalists, popular authors and experts in poverty and crime throughout the nineteenth century. Journalists and authors such as the famous Jacob Riis, for example, successfully sold this image of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods to middle and upper-class readers, many of whom supported reform efforts to deal with the problems of crime and poverty. This presentation will discuss how nineteenth-century authors and reformers such as Jacob Riis, Charles Loring Brace, and William F. Barnard depicted the Five Points in a specific way, in order to justify reform initiatives in the Five Points specifically, and in New York City in general. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Julien Vernet for his invaluable guidance in the research and writing of this paper. I would also like to thank Dr. Ruth Frost for her assistance in proofreading and finalizing this paper. A further thanks to Dr. Tim Paulson, for his guidance in the preparation for and completion of this program. I am grateful to the New York Public Library for allowing access to their archived material and to the staff of that institution for their assistance in research. Lastly, I am deeply grateful to my family for their gracious emotional and financial support of this proj…
has type: Graduating Project
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0448930
language: eng
peer review status: Unreviewed
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Undergraduate
is part of: University of British Columbia. HIST_O 499
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/91187