The Tweed Ring

William Magear “Boss” Tweed was born on April 3, 1823, at 1 Cherry Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The son of a third-generation Scottish chair-maker, he grew up on Cherry Street. His grandfather had emigrated from a town near the River Tweed, close to Edinburgh. While his religious affiliation wasn’t widely known during his life, The New York Times later reported, quoting a family friend, that his parents were Quakers and members of the old Rose Street Meeting House. At 11, he left school to learn his father’s trade, later apprenticing with a saddler. He also studied bookkeeping and worked as a brushmaker for a company he invested in before joining the family business in 1852. On September 29, 1844, he married Mary Jane C Skaden and lived with her family on Madison Street for two years.

Tweed joined the Odd Fellows, the Masons, and volunteered with Engine Number 12. In 1848, invited by state assemblyman John J Reilly, he and friends formed the Americus Fire Company Number 6, or “Big Six,” adopting a snarling red Bengal tiger from a French lithograph as their emblem…a symbol tied to Tweed and Tammany Hall for years. Volunteer fire companies were fiercely competitive, often linked to street gangs and ethnic communities, sometimes fighting each other instead of fires. Known for wielding an ax in brawls, Tweed was elected “Big Six” foreman until chief engineer Alfred Carlson pushed him out. Fire companies also served as political recruiting grounds, bringing Tweed to the attention of Democratic leaders in the Seventh Ward, who backed him for Alderman in 1850 at age 26. He lost to Whig candidate Morgan Morgans but won the seat the following year, marking his first political role. He soon aligned with the “Forty Thieves,” a notoriously corrupt group of city aldermen and assistant aldermen. After beginning his association with “Forth Thieves,” Tweed started down the road to corruption. He rose to prominence in Tammany Hall, New York City’s powerful Democratic political machine, in the late 1850s. By the mid-1860s, he had taken over as its leader and created the “Tweed Ring,” a group that openly bought votes, promoted judicial corruption, siphoned millions from city contracts, and held a tight grip on New York City politics.

In 1871, the Tweed Ring hit its height of corruption with the remodeling of the City Court House, a shameless embezzlement of public funds exposed by The New York Times. Tweed and his cronies hoped the backlash would fade, but thanks to relentless critics like Harper’s Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast, who waged a fierce campaign against him, nearly every Tammany Hall member was ousted in the November elections that year. All members of the Tweed Ring were eventually tried and sent to prison. Boss Tweed served time for forgery, larceny, and other charges, but in 1875 he escaped and fled to Cuba and then Spain. On November 23, 1876, Spanish police arrested him, reportedly recognizing him from a well-known Nash cartoon. After being extradited to the United States, he was sent back to prison, where he died in 1878.