The Kosher Nostra and other 19th century street gangs

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The Herman’s Got an Itchy Elbow Gang. Notorious in the 1850s because one of their members (not the leader), Herman, once had an itchy elbow.

The best thing about the Dead Rabbits (or worst, depending) is that, before a rumble, they’d catch and kill a rabbit and impale it on the end of a stick, carrying it into battle as their standard.

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Don’t forget the Yancy Street Gang!

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19th century street gang names = 21st century band names.

As far as I know, the name “Cosa Nostra” only became public knowledge when Joe Valachi dropped it during Senate hearings in the 1960s (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Mafia).

So “Kosher Nostra” doesn’t sound kosher to me.

I didn’t know that it was canon that Yancy Street was on the West Side; I’d always read that it was based on Delancey Street, in the Lower East Side, which is where Jack Kirby grew up. I wonder if the 10th Avenue sign was put there to imply that it was in Hell’s Kitchen, where Daredevil and (the original version of) Nick Fury grew up?

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TFA says the group was “More formally known as the Yiddish Black Hand Gang.” Kosher Nostra might have been a joke made by the writer of the Mental Floss post, or a later nickname for the gang.

https://www.google.com/search?q=“Kosher+Nostra”

Rehosted, because the original site eecue.com didn’t seem to allow hot/deep linking - though you wouldn’t know that if the image were still cached in your browser:

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