She is believed to have been a vicious street mugger in New York's "Bloody" Fourth Ward. Upon encountering a lone traveler, she would
headbutt like a charging
goat a man in the stomach, and her male accomplice would hit the victim with a
slungshot and then rob him. Sadie, according to popular underworld lore, was engaged in a long-time feud with a tough, six-feet-tall female bouncer known as
Gallus Mag, who finally bit off Sadie's ear in a bar fight, as Mag was known to do, albeit usually with male trouble-makers. 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. and, 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, women, and children for ransom. She was said to have made several male prisoners
"walk the plank". She 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 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. ==See also==