3. Skinny Legs and All
 September 1, 1887 |
Michael Angelo Woolf drew cartoons that captured late-19th century urban life at street level. He drew cartoons about muggers, con men, drunks, shopkeepers, immigrants and public transit riders. His most popular work (and I'm not clear how that was determined,) was his cartoons featuring the children known, at least to his obituary writer, as "Woolf's Waifs." These were, for the most part, drawings of the children of the lower east side tenements. As
previously seen, they could be darkly humorous representations of the harsh living conditions found there or vehicles for lampooning the melodramatic excesses of popular culture. Here they offer commentary on the courting rituals, social customs and class distinctions of the time. It's possible that these children, who appear to be from 7 to 12 years old and seem prematurely interested in the opposite sex and dating and romance, not to mention death, are keenly observed portraits of childhood in the 19th Century. Some of the cartoons do seem to reflect children's concerns and might come from have something Woolf observed. More often, I think that Woolf was using children as tools for satirizing adult behavior, as cartoon kids have been used right up to the present day. In either case, they must have been a welcome relief for
Life's readers to the magazine's depictions of
children from the upper crust.
September 2, 1897
February 13, 1890
October 20, 1887
July 1, 1897
May 14, 1896
February 20, 1896
July 14, 1892
April 14, 1887Any suggestions as to what a "sykesy twist" might mean would be appreciated.
August 11, 1898
October 13, 1887
May 10, 1894
October 6, 1898
February 1, 1894
March 29, 1894
March 8, 1894
June 21, 1894
April 5, 1894Skinny, weak legs, which may have been the result of malnutrition or disease, probably weren't all that uncommon among the children on the Lower East Side, yet a few of Woolf's drawings indicate there was a substantial social stigma attached to this condition. I don't know if there's any historical truth to this. It's possible Woolf just thought skinny legs on kids were funny. I'm pretty sure that even an accurate explanation wouldn't make these cartoons seem any less bizarre.
December 8, 1887
May 3, 1894
March 25, 1896
November 10, 1892
December 3, 18984. Gangs of New York
Gangs existed in New York City from just after the Revolutionary War. With names like the Bowery Boys, the Broadway Boys, The Fly Boys and the Long Bridge Boys, their purpose was not initially criminal.
As a social unit the gang closely resembled such social organizations as the fire company, the fraternal order, and the political club, and all these formations variously overlapped; gangs might serve as the farm league or the strong-arm squad for the other entities. ... The principal pastime of these bands was warring with each other over definitions of territory.1
Woolf never created a recurring character among his waifs, but he did create an archetype.
Though the older gang "B'hoy" had been "depicted in the penny press and the popular theater"
2 prior to Woolf, his cartoons of younger kids emulating the speech and petty criminality of their elders are cited as a precursor to, or possibly the inspiration for, Outcault's
Yellow Kid. At
Life in the next century
Percy Crosby and J.R. Shaver would have their own takes on the streetwise city kid. (Crosby didn't miss the importance of the recurring character and created the popular Skippy.) Eventually the type would be all over the movie screen, from Our Gang to the Dead End Kids, lingering on into anachronistic absurdity at least through the last Bowery Boys picture in 1958.
February 17, 1887
June 30, 1895
January 18, 1894
April 7, 1887
July 7, 1892
April 12, 1894
November 17, 1892
March 8, 1894
October 17, 1895
May 28, 1896
March 5, 1896
June 16, 1887
April 30, 1896
January 27, 1887
August 6, 1891
August 11, 1892
Sometimes, though, Woolf's kids were just kids.
May 5, 1887
April 21, 1887
November 24, 1898
Unlinked sources
1. Sante, Luc. Lowlife. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1991.
2. Brown, Joshua. "Gangs." The Encyclopedia of New York City. Yale University Press, 1995.
