MURDERERS’ ROW

Springs Toledo – one of America’s finest fight scribes – presents his third book

THERE used to be a particularly dangerous and crime-ridden alley located in what is now the Soho district of New York City; it ran between ramshackle tenements in a black neighbourhood known as Darktown in the early 19th century. ‘Murderers’ Row’ was no place for the decent or the delicate. By the 1870s, the term was used in direct reference to the second tier of the Tombs prison, which loomed a half-mile from the alley. In 1918,