The Daybreak Boys was a New York City street gang during the mid nineteenth century.
Formed in the late 1840s, by 1852 the teenaged Daybreak Boys were suspected by police to have been responsible for 20 to 40 murders between 1850 and 1852 as well as stealing goods estimated at $200,000.
Under the leadership of members such as Nicholas Saul, Bill Howlett, Patsy the Barber, Slobbery Jim, "Cowlegged" Sam McCarthy, and Sow Madden, the gang was known for its reputation of unprovoked murder and sabotaging ships and other property, regardless of value, along the New York waterfront.
Led by New York police officers Blair, Spratt, and Gilbert, over 12 gang members were killed in several gunfights in 1858.
The Daybreak Boys, under the leadership of "Nick Saul and Billie Howlett," are brought to life in Chapter XVIII of MacKinlay Kantor's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Andersonville (1955).