Sadie Farrell | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Irish-American |
| Occupation(s) | thief,river pirate,kidnapper, criminal gang leader |
| Known for | New York gang leader and river pirate; leader of theCharlton Street Gang (1869) |
Sadie Farrell[1] (fl. 1869) was an alleged semi-folklorish American criminal, gang leader and river pirate known under thepseudonymSadie the Goat.
She is believed to have been a vicious street mugger in New York's "Bloody" Fourth Ward. Upon encountering a lone traveler, she wouldheadbutt like a charginggoat a man in the stomach, and her male accomplice would hit the victim with aslungshot and then rob him. Sadie, according to popular underworld lore, was engaged in a long-time feud with a tough, six-feet-tall female bouncer known asGallus Mag, who finally bit off Sadie's ear in a bar fight, as Mag was known to do, albeit usually with male trouble-makers.[2][3][4][5]
Folklore has it that, leaving the area in disgrace, she ventured to the waterfront area inWest Side Manhattan. It was while wandering the dockyards in the spring of 1869 that she witnessed members of theCharlton Street Gang unsuccessfully attempting to board a smallsloop anchored in mid-river. Watching the men being driven back across the river by a handful of the ship's crew, she offered her services to the men and became the gang's leader.[5] Within days, she engineered the successful hijacking of a larger sloop[6] and, with"theJolly Roger flying from the masthead", she and her crew reputedly sailed up and down theHudson andHarlem Rivers raiding small villages, robbing farm houses and riverside mansions, and occasionally kidnapping men, women, and children for ransom. She was said to have made several male prisoners"walk the plank".[2][3][4][6]
She and her men continued their activities for several months and stashed their cargo in several hiding spots until they could be gradually disposed of throughfences andpawn shops along the Hudson andEast Rivers. By the end of the summer, the farmers had begun resisting the raids, attacking landing parties with gunfire. The group abandoned the sloop and Sadie returned to the Fourth Ward, where she was now known as the"Queen of the Waterfront". She then claimed to have made a truce with Gallus Mag, who returned Sadie's ear. Mag had displayed it in apickled jar in the bar. Sadie kept the ear in a locket and wore it around her neck for the rest of her life.[2][3][4][5][6]
