19th-century Criminal Gang
The Rip Rap shoals in Hampton Roads were likely also the source of the name of the Rip Raps, a notorious Baltimore gang during the Know-Nothing movement. The Baltimore Rips Raps included several sailors familiar with the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. They were affiliated with the American Party and specifically the Plug Uglies, another American gang. The Rip Raps fought several street battles with their sharpest rivals--the Democratic rowdies associated with the New Market Fire Company. At the October 1856 municipal election, the Rip Raps attacked the New Market engine house, leading to two deaths and the wounding of several prominent fighting men. The battle was one of a series of confrontations in the Know-Nothing Riot of 1856 that day and at the ensuing presidential election. The confrontations left seventeen dead. Prominent Rip Raps included Gregory Barrett Jr., William "Kitty" Chambers, Elijah "Boney" Lee, and Marion "Mal" Cropp.
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Famous quotes containing the words criminal and/or gang:
“Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their very sanctum sanctorum for an hour, ay, for many hours! to make a very barroom of the mind’s inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us,—the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts’ shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A general loathing of a gang or sect usually has some sound basis in instinct.”
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