3-011-650 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Election Day in New York: a polling-place among the "Lower Twenty", 1864. Crowds at a polling station on 8 November, '...the day of the Presidential election, as well as of the State elections...[Scene] in the dirty and unwholesome districts of the city, where the hard-fisted classes chiefly make their abode. In this quarter, on the polling-day, the police were in strong force, and the liquor-shops were all closed - that is, the shutters of those dens of iniquity were up; but as the doors were open there was no difficulty in obtaining strong drink. All circumstances considered, however, there were wonderfully few drunken men to be seen, and such fighting as did take place was of a desultory and insignificant kind. The locality of the polling-place is one of the very worst in New York, being in the heart of the quarter known as the Five Points - the head-quarters of the thieves, bullies, organ-grinders, and all other such types of ruffianism as go to the making up of the dangerous classes'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.