“I need you to evict Bill the Butcher.”
I raise an eyebrow.
Bill the Butcher is a lot like Boss Tweed himself. There was a real person by that name once. In Gangs of New York, they called him “Bill Cutting”, which is juuuuust a bit too on-the-nose. I mean, it’s like calling the evil family in a certain famous chainsaw-based horror franchise “Sawyer” or “Hewitt”. The real person was named William Poole.
Interesting factoid: both real person and fictional character are actual, buy-your-brisket-from-‘em butchers, in addition to the other kind.
But even more than Tweed, the legend has almost nothing to do with the person, and it’s almost impossible to know if the human man William Poole has anything to do with the thing that now wears the name “Bill the Butcher”.
Continue reading “The Economancer Chapter 9 – Closing The Deal”