Abstract
Throughout the 19th century, the area east of the Collect Pond was home to the immigrant poor. Primary documents offer one view of the crowded and dilapidated living conditions, which characterized the district known as “Five Points.” The ceramic assemblage excavated at the Foley Square Courthouse site in 1991 sheds a different light on the people and their way of life in New York’s most notorious slum. Sets of Staffordshire tea and tableware, as well as Chinese porcelain, are present in the assemblage. Issues relating to the procurement and availability of seemingly fancy ceramics and their meaning to the mid-century Irish tenants who used them are explained. Meaning is considered in terms of Irish cultural traditions and middle-class Victorian values. The CC index value of the large ceramic assemblage is also compared to CC values for other assemblages from New York City and elsewhere and the implications of the differences are considered.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beaudry, Mary C, Lauren J. Cook, and Stephen A. Mrozowski 1991 Artifacts and Active Voices : Material Culture as Social Discourse. In The Archaeology of Inequality, Randall H. McGuire and Robert Paynter, editors, pp. 150–191. Basil Blackwell, New York, NY.
Blackmar, Elizabeth 1989 Manhattan For Rent: 1785–1850. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
Brighton, Nancy J. 1996 The Middle Class of People: The Archaeology of Households at 153 West 12th Street, Greenwich Village, New York. Masters thesis, Department of Anthropology, New York University, New York, NY.
Burley, David V. 1989 Function, Meaning and Context: Ambiguities in Ceramic Use by the Hivernant Metis of the Northwestern Plains. Historical Archaeology, 23(1):97–106.
Bushman, Richard L. 1993 The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. Vintage Books, Random House, New York, NY.
Clark, Clifford 1987 The American Family Home 1800–1960. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC.
Cook, Lauren J., Rebecca Yamin, and John P. McCarthy 1996 Shopping as Meaningful Action: Toward a Redefinition of Consumption in Historical Archaeology. Historical Archaeology, 30(4):50–65.
Dutton, David 1989 “Thrasher’s China or “Colored Porcelain”: Ceramics From A Boott Mills Boardinghouse and Tenement. In Interdisciplinary Investigations of the Boott Mills Lowell, Massachusetts, Vol.3, The Boarding House System As A Way Of Life, Mary Beaudry and Stephen Mrozowski editors, 83–120. Cultural Resources Management Study, No. 21. National Park Service, North Atlantic Regional Office, Boston, MA.
Geismar, Joan 1989 History and Archaeology of the Greenwich Mews Site, Greenwich Village, New York. Report to the Greenwich Mews Associates, New York, NY.
1992 Teacups and Opium: The Bishop Mugavero Geriatric Center Archaeological Field Report, Block 189, Brooklyn. Report to the Catholic Medical Center of Brooklyn and Queens, New York, NY.
Glassie, Henry 1982 Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Grafton, John 1980 New York in The Nineteenth Century: 317 Engravings from Harper’s Weekly and Other Contemporary Sources, 2nd edition. Dover Publications, New York, NY.
Griggs, Heather 1996 Emigrant Savings Bank Records: A Survey of Block 160 and the Sixth Ward, 1855. Manuscript, John Milner Associates, Philadelphia, PA.
Groneman Pernicone, Carol 1973 The “Bloody Ould Sixth “: A Social Analysis of a New York Working-Class Community in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, MI.
Ignatiev, Noel 1995 How The Irish Became White. Routledge, New York, NY.
Irish Citizen Weekly 1867 “Edward Rourke & Co.” advertisement. Irish Citizen Weekly, 21 December.
Kasson, John 1990 Rudeness and Civility: Manners In Nineteenth-Century Urban America. Hill and Wang, New York, NY.
Killen, John (editor) 1995 The Famine Decade: Contemporary Accounts 1841–1851. Blackstaff Press, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Klein, Terry H. 1991 Nineteenth-Century Ceramics and the Models of Consumer Behavior. Historical Archaeology, 25(2):77–91.
Kraut, Alan M. 1996 Illness and Medical Care Among Irish Immigrants in Ante-bellum New York. In The New York Irish, Ronald H. Bayor and Timothy J. Meagher, editors, pp. 153–168. The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, MD.
Ladies of the Mission 1854 The Old Brewery and the New Mission House at the Five Points. Stringer and Townson, New York, NY.
LeeDecker, Charles H., Terry H. Klein, Cheryl A. Holt, and Amy Friedlander 1987 Nineteenth-Century Households and Consumer Behavior in Wilmington, Delaware. In Consumer Choices In Historical Archaeology, Suzanne Spencer-Wood, editor, pp. 233–259. Plenum Press, New York, NY.
Maguire, John Francis 1864 Father Mathew: A Biography. D. & J. Sadler & Co., Boston, MD.
McCracken, Grant 1988 Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Indiana Press, Bloomington.
Miller, Daniel 1987 Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Blackwell Publishers, New York, NY.
Miller, George L. 1991 A Revised Set of CC Index Values and Economic Scaling of English Ceramics from 1787 to 1880. Historical Archaeology, 25(1):1–25.
Miller, Kerby A. 1985 Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
Miller, Kerby A., and Paul Wagner 1994 Out Of Ireland. Elliot and Clark Publications, Washington, DC.
Mooney, Thomas 1850 Nine Years In America. Pattison Jolly, Printer, Dublin, Ireland.
Mullins, Paul R. 1999 Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture. Kluer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, NY.
New York Evening Post (NYEP) 1842a R. Simpson. Advertisement. New York Evening Post, 3 November. New York, NY. 1842b D. Collamore. Advertisement. New York Evening Post, 5 November. New York, NY.
1858a CC. Leigh’s China Hall. Advertisement. New York Evening Post, 21 October. New York, NY.
1858b Ebenezer Collamore. Advertisement. New York Evening Post, 21 December. New York, NY.
New York State Census (NYSC) 1855 Census Returns for the Sixth Ward of The City of New York in the County of New York. Department of Records and Information, City of New York Municipal Archives, New York, NY.
Praetzellis, Adrian, and Mary Praetzellis 1992 Faces and Facades: Victorian Ideology in Early Sacramento. In The Art and Mystery of Historical Archaeology: Essays in Honor of James Deetz, Anne Elizabeth Yentsch and Mary Beaudry, editors, pp. 75–100. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Salwen, Bert, and Rebecca Yamin 1990 The Archeology and History of Six Nineteenth-Century Lots: Sullivan Street, Greenwich Village, New York City. Report to New York University Law School, New York, NY. from John Milner Associates, Philadelphia, PA.
Shackel, Paul A. 1993 Personal Discipline and Material Culture: An Archaeology of Annapolis, Maryland, 1695–1870. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.
1996 Culture Change and the New Technology: An Archaeology of the Early American Industrial Era. Plenum Press, New York, NY.
Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M., and Scott Heberling 1984 Ceramics and Socio-Economic Status Of The Green Family, Windsor, Vermont. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 13:33–52.
Transfiguration Church 1977 Transfiguration Church: A Church of Immigrants. Park Publishing Company, New York, NY.
U.S. Bureau of the Census 1850 Population Schedules of the Seventh Census of the United States, 1850. National Archives, Northeast Branch, New York, NY.
1860 Population Schedules of the Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. National Archives, Northeast Branch, New York, NY.
Wall, Diana diZerega 1991 Sacred Dinner and Secular Teas: Constructing Domesticity in Mid–19th-century New York. In Gender in Historical Archaeology, Donna Seifert, editor, Historical Archaeology, 25(4):69–89.
1994 The Archaeology Of Gender: Separating the Spheres in Urban America. Plenum Press, New York, NY.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Brighton, S.A. Prices that suit the times: Shopping for ceramics at the five points. Hist Arch 35, 16–30 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374390
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374390