Sadie Farrell

Sadie Farrell(fl. 1869) was a purported American criminal, gang leader and river pirate known under the pseudonym Sadie the Goat. However, there exists doubt as to her historical existence. Her character is part of the composite Hell Cat Maggie character in the film version of Gangs of New York.

She is claimed to have been a vicious street mugger in New York's "Bloody" Fourth Ward. Upon encountering a lone traveler, she would headbutt a man in the stomach and her male accomplice would hit the victim with a sling-shot and then rob him. Sadie, according to popular underworld lore, was engaged in a longtime feud with a tough six foot female bouncer Gallus Mag, who finally bit off Sadie's ear in a bar fight, as Mag was known to do, albeit usually with male troublemakers.

Folklore has it that, leaving the area in disgrace, she ventured to the waterfront area in West Side Manhattan. It was while wandering the dockyards in the spring of 1869 that she witnessed members of the Charlton Street Gang unsuccessfully attempting to board a small sloop anchored in mid-river. Watching the men being driven back across the river by a handful of the ship's crew, she offered her services to the men and became the gang's leader. Within days, she engineered the successful hijacking of a larger sloopand, with "the Jolly Roger flying from the masthead", she and her crew reputedly sailed up and down the Hudson and Harlem Rivers raiding small villages, robbing farm houses and riverside mansions, and occasionally kidnapping men, woman and children for ransom. She was said to have made several male prisoners "walk the plank". Sadie and her men continued their activities for several months and stashed their cargo in several hiding spots until they could be gradually disposed of through fences and pawn shops along the Hudson and East Rivers. By the end of the summer, the farmers had begun resisting the raids, attacking landing parties with gunfire. The group abandoned the sloop and Sadie returned to the Fourth Ward, where she was now known as the "Queen of the Waterfront". She then is claimed to have made a truce with Gallus Mag, who returned Sadie's ear. Mag had displayed it in a pickled jar in the bar. Sadie kept the ear in a locket and wore it around her neck for the rest of her life.

Sadie is referenced in several historical novels, most notably, J. T. Edson's Law of the Gun (1968), Tom Murphy's Lily Cigar (1979), Bart Sheldon's Ruby Sweetwater and the Ringo Kid (1981) and Thomas J. Fleming's A Passionate Girl (2003). She served as the subject of popular songs, including an historical ballad by the indie folk-rock band Nehedar, "The Ballad of Sadie Farrell", nehedar.com; accessed December 25, 2016.