"Bowery b'hoy" or "Bowery Boy"

Through searching for information regarding the Bowery B'hoy (B'Hoy being irish for Boy), I came across two divergent definitions. One, the "Bowery Boys," were an alleged New York gang in the 1800s. For example, the gang was referenced in the novel "Gangs of New York." However, academia had a slightly different response. Apprently, pre-civil war, the Bowery b’hoy was a symbolic figure for American middle and working class.  The figure was repeatedly utilized throughout artistic creations, plays, novels, music, etc., and came to formfit into a specfic type of dress and linguistic discourse. The second seems to relate more accurately to Walt Whitman- Being that Whitman repeatedly addressed and sought to represent this culture of society.

"The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes,
or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market,

I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and breakdown.

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,

Each has his main-sledge . . . . they are all out . . . . there is a great heat in the fire. " Here Whitman evokes two separate levels of the working class, a youth and an elder. These two could represent the Bowery B'hoy.