The Bowery B'hoys: Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear...

The Bowery B'hoy was a term deemed to a certain type of man in the mid 1800s New York, he represented the rise of commercial culture and decline in the status of skilled trades. Often associated with drinking and rowdiness. His lifestyle was a fun, adventurous and colorful sub-culture. They mocked the dress and manners of aristocracy, and are seen as "icons of working class high spirits and urban Americans" 

Barnum's American Museum's often attracted people of this type, a place Whitman had been and wrote about, once even studying the people that visited it's slightly askew and interesting exhibits. 

Whitman was enamored with the Bowery lifestyle and slang. He often mingled with the men who made up the b'hoy population as their slang and vigorous outbursts was often a demeanor that Whitman was not afraid to accentuate in his poems. he wanted to capture the essence of a bowery b'hoy, one that stands up against what is and fights for what he wants,

he writes, 

"The boy I love, the same becomes a man, not through derived power,

  but in his own right, Wicked rather than virtuous out of conformity or fear"

It is said that Whitman is the "Bowery b'hoy of Literature"

The Bowery Boys frequented the five points of New York, which reminded me of the movie Gangs of New York. I found a clip where the Bowery B'hoys are mentioned in the beginning very quickly and I'm almost positive, the character Danilel Dae Lewis plays, "the Butcher" was a bowery b'hoy. As they were often, butchers, firefighters, ship builders or other working class men of that sort. 

And this video is just a crazy, intense opening scene of the movie, also as shows what i believe to be the fashion of the Bowery b'hoys, (the men behind Daniel Dae Lewis, The Butcher)

http://books.google.com/books?id=3ECRp9xNojoC&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91&dq=Bowery+b%E2%80%99hoy+and+walt+whitman&source=bl&ots=O6CUjMTysi&sig=Ezo587DpayPYSTSOQGgy-lkjkcs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bbhFT6vNMKSdiAKYzoCWCQ&sqi=2&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Bowery%20b%E2%80%99hoy%20and%20walt%20whitman&f=false


http://www.boweryboogie.com/2010/11/bowery-slang/