Despite its reputation as one of the most notorious street gangs of New York City at the time, the majority of the Bowery Boys led law-abiding lives for the most part.

The uniform of a Bowery Boy generally consisted of a stovepipe hat in variable condition, a red shirt, and dark trousers tucked into boots—this style paying homage to their fireman roots.

[2]: 269–270 Writer James Dabney McCabe observed of the Bowery B'hoy in 1872: “You might see him ‘strutting along like a king’ with his breeches stuck in his boots, his coat on his arm, his flaming red shirt tied at the collar with a cravat such as could be seen nowhere else...None so ready as he for a fight, none so quick to resent the intrusion of a respectable man into his haunts.”[3]The term B'hoy was also widely used to describe a young man of the working-class who enjoyed drinking, seeking out adventure, and finding fun.

It is important to note that Ireland has a long and troubled history stemming from English colonization which had created an apartheid system called Protestant Ascendancy in which indigenous Catholic Irish were systematically oppressed and discriminated against where the indigenous population were denied access to education, the right to bear arms, political representation, certain jobs, religious freedom and ownership of property while being harassed by Protestant groups such as the Orange Order.

He reached the peak of his popularity in 1843, when he created the political clubhouse he called the "Spartan Association", which consisted of factory workers and unskilled laborers.

The front page of The Subterranean on April 4 read, "We consider the present infamous persecution of Mike Walsh a blow aimed at the honest laboring portion of this community".

Walsh eventually died in 1859 and his obituary in an edition of The Subterranean read that the leader of the Bowery Boys was an "original talent, rough, full of passionate impulses... but he lacked balance, caution-the ship often seemed devoid of both ballast and rudder".

He has a peculiar swing, not exactly a swagger, to his walk, but a swing, which nobody but a Bowery boy can imitate.”[2]: 178 George Foster, a travel writer, wrote in 1850: “Who are the b’hoys and g’hals of New York?...sometimes a stout clerk in a jobbing-house, oftener a junior partner at a wholesale grocery, and still more frequently a respectable young butcher with big arms and broad shoulders, in a blue coat with a silk hat and a crape wound about its base, and who is known familiarly as a ‘Bowery Boy!

Walt Whitman described the theater as "packed from ceiling to pit with its audience, mainly of alert, well-dressed, full-blooded young and middle aged men, the best average of American-born mechanics".

[1]: 50–51 Frances Trollope described similar behavior in Cincinnati audiences at the time, narrating, "the spitting was incessant; and the mixed smell of onions and whiskey was enough to make one feel even the Drakes acting dearly bought...the heels thrown higher than the head, the entire rear of the person presented to the audience...and when a patriotic fit seized them, and 'Yankee Doodle' was called for, every man seemed to think his reputation as a citizen depended on the noise he made.

"[9]Some found this behavior more tolerable: “Walt Whitman warmly recalled the Bowery Theatre around the year 1840, where he could look up to the first tier of boxes and see ‘the faces of the leading authors, poets, editors, of those times,’ while he sat in the pit surrounded by the ‘slang, wit, occasional shirt sleeves, and a picturesque freedom of looks and manners, with a rude, good-nature and restless movement’ of cartmen, butchers, firemen, and mechanics.”[8]: 25 The Bowery B'hoys, among other groups, participated in the Astor Place Riots of 1849, which were fueled by class tensions in New York City as well as a drawn-out feud between actors Edwin Forrest and William Macready.

"[10] Written phonetically in the b'hoys' typical accent, Mose's dialogue includes sayings that were picked up by audience members and used in daily life.

Travel writer George G. Foster wrote of the play: "With the exception of the single drama which Mr. Chanfrau, slight as is its plot and meager and commonplace as are its incidents, has been able by the force of his genius to confer a new character upon the stage, nothing has been adequately done to begin imparting to our literature the original and rich wealth lying latent in the life and history of Mose and Lize.