From the New York Public Library

“Over a period of more than a half a dozen years Battle Annie was the Queen of Hell’s Kitchen and acquired widespread renown as the most formidable female of her time.” — Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York

I started a book about ‘high society’ in New York during the 1910’s. So how did I wind up researching gang life during the same era? The two worlds were not quite as separated as one might think.

The old captains of industry couldn’t always rely on the government to do their union busting and so they turned to gangs to unleash violence on strikers. Not to be outdone, the unions also employed gangs to support their side of the strike. Some of the most fierce hurlers, attacking both picketers and scabs, were the women. And chief among those women were the “Lady Gophers,” active in the 1870s and 1880s. Battle Annie was their leader. Asbury writes that she was “the sweetheart of practically the entire Gopher gang” and “she was partial to mayhem.”

There is very little information about Annie Walsh’s life, which leaves us to imagine her brash behavior and feral personality. In The Whispering Women I used Battle Annie as the inspiration for Battle Betty. A hellion in the 1880s, she claims to be reformed by 1913, but she still thrills to remember her youth:

“I don’t look like much now, but in my day there weren’t a Gopher in the whole of Hell’s Kitchen didn’t want to get ahold of me,” she said. She warmed up to her subject and seemed to lose herself in memories. “I was a fighter. Loved it all. The blood tingling my skin.” She rubbed her arms, then thumped her chest and said, “The pounding drum inside, the grunts, the moans. The smell of blood made me drunk. Better than sex. Better than money even. That sound, the crunch of bone.” She grinned. “I once made a bully club with a lump o’ lead in the corner of my kerchief and put down a Captain He-man with one swing. I’d rather have blood on my hands than flour. If I’d had a home, I would not’ve stayed.”

As much as we would probably not want to have lunch with the Queen of Hell’s Kitchen, it’s hard not to feel admiration for these women who rebelled so violently against the strictures that society tried to place on their gender. They had none of the advantages of wealth or education. They had no protection. And so they met the world on their own terms. They would not work for “the man.” They kowtowed to no one. It probably didn’t end well for them, but I bet when they looked back on their lives they had no regrets.