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==What are the Five Points in New York City?==

The Scorsese movie has a definite sense of place, and the director sought to bring the Five Points neighborhood of the 1860s to life. There was a lavish amount of money spent to make sure that the motion picture was as realistic as possible and that viewers had a sense of what it was like to live in a 19th-century urban slum.

However, there are many inaccuracies in the movie concerning the presentation of Five Points. <ref>Czitrom, p 300</ref> Crime was probably worse here than in other parts of the city, but it was by no means as lawless as portrayed in the movie. In Scorsese’s film, the only characters portrayed are thieves, criminals, boxers, gamblers, and other undesirables. In reality, most of the neighborhood was populated by people who had regular jobs and worked hard every day. They were laborers and porters, who had tough jobs and could barely afford their rent. They constantly suffered from food insecurity and struggled to care for their families.

The movie shows Five Points as a place of unrelieved squalor and poverty, but in fact, the area by the 1860s had significantly improved. Evangelical Christian missionaries concerned with the Five Points' sinfulness had managed to persuade the New York city authorities to improve conditions in the slum. Scorsese’s portrayal of the area is not accurate as the neighborhood was a far better place than it had been in the 1830s and 1840s. <ref> Conway, K., McCormack, M. and Thomas, C., 2003. <i>Gangs of New York. Social Education</i>, 67(6), pp.313-317 </ref>