The New York Irish [Paperback ed.] 0801857643, 9780801857645

Citation preview

The New York Irish P128.9.I6 N49 19

/ _

_

24532

lliillll NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA (SF)

«^^ 128.9 .16 York Irish The New

#16846

F

128.9 16

N49 1996

—

The New York Irish / edited by Sonald H* Bayor and Timothy J* Meagher* Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press* 1996. xxiit 743 p. : ill.* maps ; 27 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: The Irish and the eaereiner ci:l7 resettlement to 1844 / Leo #16846 Midwest $41.85. ISBN 0-8018-5199-8 (acid-tree paper) 1. Irish Americans — New York (State) — History. 2. Irish Americans— New York (N.Y. — History. 3. New York (N.Y. — Ethnic relations. 4. New York )

)

(N.Y.) 1944-

08 APR 97

History. I. Bayor* Ronald H.* II. Meaghert Timothy J.

32625550

NEVCxc

95-20319

1

fME LIBRARY

NEW COLLEGE OF CAL'FORNtA 50 FELL STREET

SAN FRANCISCO. CALIFORNIA 94 0Z

DATE DUE

THE

NEW YORK IRISH

library ol

New

College of California

THE NEW YORK

IRISH Edited by

Ronald H. Bay or

and

Timothy J. Meagher

The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore and

London

This book has been brought to pubhcation with the generous assistance of the Irish Institute of

©

New York,

Inc.

1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 1996

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 5 4 3 2 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96

The Johns Hopkins University

Press

2715 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4319 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data will be found at the end of this book. A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

In

honor

of the

members

of the Irish Institute of

New York,

both Hving and deceased,

and in

memory

Dennis

J.

who reminded us

of

Clark

of our obligation

* The past

is

prologue.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword Paul

and Tables xi

xv

O 'Dwyer

Preface

xvii

Acknowledgments Introduction

PART I

xxi

1

COLONIAL AND EARLY NATIONAL AMERICA Overview

The

Irish

to 1844

and the Emerging City: Settlement 11

Leo Hershkowitz Chapter

1

"Upon

a

bunch

New York City

of straw":

35

Joyce D. Goodfriend

The

Irish in Colonial

Chapter 2

VIU

and History: Clues to the

Religion, Ethnicity,

Cultural Construction of

Contents

Walter

Chapter 3

J.

The Development in

Law

48

Walsh of

an

Irish

American Community

New York City before the Great Migration

70

Paul A. Gilje

PART II

THE GREAT MIGRATION: Overview

"The Most

1

844 to

Great Migration, 1844-1877

Hasia

Chapter 4

R.

1

877

City in the Union": The Era of the

Irish

87

Diner

"Desirable

Companions and Lovers":

Irish

and

African Americans in the Sixth Ward, 1830-1870

107

Graham Hodges Chapter 5

Quimbo Appo's

Fear of Fenians: Chinese-Irish-

Anglo Relations in John

Chapter 6

New York City

125

Kuo Wei Tchen

Illness

and Medical Care among

Immigrants in Antebellum

Irish

New York

1

53

Alan M. Kraut Chapter 7

Shrewd Irishmen:

I

830-1 880

William Chapter 8

E.

Irish

Entrepreneurs and

New York's Clothing Industry,

Artisans in

169

Devlin

Union Green: The

Irish

Community and

the

193 War Edward K. Spann Civil

PART m THE TURN OF THE CENTURY: Overview

Forging Forward and Looking Back

Lawrence Chapter 9

1877 to 1914

}.

213

McCaffrey

Going to the Ladies' Fair: Irish Catholics 234 York City, 1870-1900 Colleen McDannell

in

New

Chapter 10 The

Language in

Irish

New York,

1850-1900

IX

252

Contents

Kenneth Chapter

1 1

Irish

E.

Nilsen

County

Societies in

New York,

1880-1914

275 John

Chapter

1

2

The

T.

Ridge

Irish

American Worker

1877-1914:

in Transition,

New York City as a Test

John R. McKivigan and

Thomas

J.

Case

301

Robertson

Chapter 13 'Tn Time of Peace, Prepare for War": Key Themes in the Social Thought of

New York's Irish

Nationalists, 1890-1916

321

David Brundage

PART IV THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY: 1914 to 1945

When New York Was

Overview

Irish,

and After

337

Chris McNiclile

Chapter 14 Striking Joe

for Ireland

on the

New York Docks

357

Doyle

Chapter 15 Of "Momin' Glories" and "Fine Old Oaks": John Purroy Mitchel, Al Smith, and Reform as an Expression of Irish American Aspiration

John

F.

Chapter 16 "From the East Side to the Seaside":

Americans on the Move

Marion

R.

in

Irish

New York City

395

Casey

PART V THE MODERN ERA: An End and a

Overview

374

McClymer

1

945 to

Beginning

1

992 419

David M. Reimers Chapter

1

7

The Neighborhood Changed: The Irish of Washington Heights and Inwood since 1 945 Robert W. Snyder

439

X

Chapter 18 Emigrants, firepreneurs, and Opportunists:

A Social Profile of Recent Irish Immigration in New

Contents

York City

461

Mary P. Coicoian Chapter 19

and Popular Music

Irish Traditional

City: Identity

Rebecca

No

Writing since the

Longer 1

960s

Stifled:

508

Charles Fanning

Conclusion

533

Appendix

1

Statistical Tables

Appendix 2 Maps Notes

565

575

Select Bibliography

Contributors

Index

New York 481

Millei

S.

Chapter 20 The Heart's Speech Irish

in

and Social Change, 1930-1975

715

709

703

551

New York

List of Illustrations

and Tables

Illustrations

The O'Connell

milk wagon Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights, 1834 William Sampson St.

Patrick's

Irish

Brothers'

Day

parade, 1871

Emigrant Society

office

July 12, 1871 Orange-Green riot

9 33 55 85 92 98

Sixth Ward, 1846 (map)

111

"How

133

the

Devhn

Chinaman Might Gain Favor"

& Co. billhead

Interior of

184

Knox Hats

187

Departure of the Sixty-ninth Regiment, 1861

196

"The

211

St.

Tiger's Share"

Vincent's Nursery

25th Precinct station house Cathedral Grand Fair The Gael. November 1900 County Monaghan Men's Society dance St. Patrick's

Laying street railway tracks, St.

c.

1891

Columcille Branch, FOIF

First grade class, St. Patrick's

Freshman

class, St. Francis

School

College

class

220 230 242 269 293 302 333 335 343

IRT motormen, c. 1929 St. Simon Stock baseball

player, 1939

Football players, Gaelic Park,

c.

1980

O'Dwyer and John F. Kennedy County Antrim Society Banner Paul

Michael Flannery Stouffer's restaurant, Pershing Square

Presentation of

UICA Feis

poster

Manhattan neighborhoods and parishes (map) Brooklyn neighborhoods and parishes (map) Bronx neighborhoods and parishes (map) Queens neighborhoods and parishes (map) Staten Island neighborhoods and parishes (map) Manhattan, Annexed District, Brooklyn and Kings County, Irish stock,

Irish-born,

Irish-born,

571

1890 (map)

New York City, New York City,

354 404 417 430 434 435 474 503 566 567 568 569 570

1920 (map)

572

1970 (map)

573

Tables

and African American Populations of New York City and Sixth Ward, 1830-1870 Sixth Ward Groceries and Porterhouses Population of Ireland by Province, 1881, and Irish Immigrant Arrivals to All Destinations and New York City, May 6 to July 29, 1 882 Irish Immigrants to New York City, May 6 to July 29, 1882

288

Immigrants to Manhattan and Brooklyn Number of Irish-born by New York City Borough, 1910-50 Irish Stock, New York City, 1 9 1 0-60

289 396 396

Irish

Comparison of City Population by Borough with Irish-born Population, 1910 and 1930 Net Irish Emigration, 1980-90 Immigrants Admitted to the United States from Ireland, 1980-90 Irish-bom Population,

New York City by Decade,

1860-1990

Manhattan and Annexed District, 1855, 1865, 1875, by Ward Irish-bom, Brooklyn and Kings County, 1855, 1865, 1875, by Town or Irish-born,

Queens County, 1855,

1865, 1875, by

Town

or

Ward

Irish Stock,

286

402 462 463 551

552

556

Manhattan, Annexed District and Brooklyn (Kings County) 558

Ward

Percentage of Irish-born NaturaUzations,

Percentage of Irish-born Population, of

19

557

Irish-bom, Staten Island, 1855, 1865, 1875, by Area

1890, by

1

554

Ward Irish-bom,

110

New York City,

New York City,

1930, by Year

New York City,

1930

560 560

Emigration and Borough

Family Size by Foreign-born Group,

1910-1930

561

Percentage of Gainfully Employed Workers in Foreign-bom Families,

New York City,

1930

Percentage of Foreign-bom

Xlll

561

Home Ownership, New York City,

1930,

by Borough, Value, and Monthly Rental (Nonfarm Homes) Persons Claiming Single or Multiple Irish Ancestry, New York City, 1980 Number of Persons Claiming Irish Ancestry, New York City, 1980 and 1990 Irish-bom Population, New York City, 1990, by Year of Emigration

Ust of Illustrations

^^d Tables

562

Number of

563 563

564

Foreword

Wh

HEN

looked through

I

my

books had been written about the Detroit, Lowell,

New Orleans,

Hbrary several years ago, Irish in Boston, Butte,

it

struck

me

that

Chicago, Cleveland,

St. Louis. Why New York City? We certainly have been in

Philadelphia, San Francisco, and

wasn't there a history of the Irish in

the city longer than any other ethnic group. With 300 years of continuous

emigration from Ireland, point,

and place

New York has been a port of entry, temporary stopping

of settlement for millions of Irish

women

and men. During

those centuries, the city has undergone massive changes, and the Irish have

played a crucial part in

The

its history.

incredible complexity of the subject

was no doubt

a challenge, yet

not since the days of Michael O'Brien in the 1930s have the Irish

had

say his

a historian to take

work

up their

tale.

O'Brien

is

now

New

dismissed

York

— some

lacks analysis— but at least he had enthusiasm and the

diligence needed to tackle primary sources.

With the year 2000 swiftly

approaching, there was an urgent need for the Irish

community to encourdocument the Irish

age professional historians to follow O'Brien's lead and role in

New

York's history.

In the 1980s certain events

came

to pass that allowed a financial

administrative collaboration between the Irish Institute of

and

New York, Inc., and

New York Irish History Roundtable. Together we had the means necessary commission the best scholars in the country to undertake primary research.

(VI

the

vreword

to

We asked them to examine our relationship to New York City honestly and to give us

no

credit but that

This volume

is

which we deserved.

the result.

It is

only a start

better understand our history in this city.

possible without the support of the

Its

—a collection of essays to help us publication would not have been

members

of the Irish Institute.

It is

their

legacy.

Paul

O'Dwyer

Preface

I N HIS essay

for this collection,

Charles Fanning recounts a story by Elizabeth

Cullinan called "Commuting." CuUinan's story traces an Irish Catholic

woman's journey to Manhattan of the outer boroughs. at

It is

after

being

let

a journey through

go from a Catholic college in one

time as well as space,

a recollection

each stop of her family's sometimes painful odyssey through different homes

and neighborhoods. At the end of her commute, she ponders the of this simple life its

bus

trip: "I've

larger

meaning

reenacted in spirit the journey that has given

my

substance and shape, color and brightness."

This book

is

an attempt,

if

not to reenact, then to remember the far longer

New York have taken over the past 300 or more years. The idea for the book was born in the Irish community of New York, in the shared conviction of the New York Irish History Roundtable and the Irish Institute that the Irish people of New York and their neighbors needed to know more about New joiumey the Irish people of

York's Irish history.

It

was not

a paean to past glories that the Roundtable

Institute sought, but a probing, scholarly

America's largest recruited a

city.

number

The Roundtable, with support from the

of scholars to advise

Those scholars included

Jay Dolan,

it

and

examination of Celtic experience in Irish Institute,

thus

on how such a book might be written.

Kerby Miller, Sean Wilentz, James Dormelly,

David Reimers, Leo Hershkowitz, Hasia Diner, Wilham

Griffin,

John Ridge,

Kenneth Jackson, the late Dennis Clark, and the coeditors. Those scholars, along with

Marion Casey and Angela Carter from the Roundtable and Paul OThvyer and Kevin Morrissey from the Institute, became the editorial advisory board for the project.

The board met

in January 1990 to discuss the nature

Although the advisers recognized the need

and format

of the book.

for a general synthesis of

New York

they did not believe enough scholarship existed for such a work.

Irish history,

They therefore agreed that the book should consist of essays summarizing what is

already

known about

New

the history of the

York

Irish in successive

chronological periods, followed by original essays focusing on specific events, trends,

movements, or persons that illuminate the

period.

The

Irish

experience in each

from more than 40 scholars and

editors solicited topical essays

invited submissions at important conferences. Sixty proposals were submitted,

and in August 1990 the advisers met again to consider these submissions.

The or

fit

essays in this

book were chosen not because they fill in any grand narrative

into broad thematic categories, but because they represent the best current,

on the history of the New York Irish. Indeed, they move the study New York Irish into entirely new areas or bring fresh perspectives to older

original research of the

topics. Joe Doyle's essay, for

example, departs from the usual treatment of

Irish

movements by considering the role of women in such movements, and Colleen McDanneU's investigates the critically important but largely ignored nationalist

fund-raising

mechanism, the

subsociety. Perhaps an even

Ladies' Fair, in the building of an Irish Catholic

more

radical departure

is

taken in John Kuo Wei

Tchen's piece on relations between the Irish and Chinese as seen through the eyes of

Quimbo Appo, a Chinese immmigrant who was ultimately confined in a lunatic

asylum, suffering, he believed, for Ireland imtil

it

won its independence.

Together, these specific essays and the introductory overviews in each section

present an intriguing chronicle of the

life

of the

New

York

Irish since the

seventeenth century and almost the very begirming of the city colonial history

is

not easy to recover, for

it is

itself.

Their

overshadowed in public memory

of the Famine migrants who came after the first Irish settlers. The overview of the early period by Leo Hershkowitz and the specific essays by

by the experience

Joyce Goodfriend, Walter Walsh, and Paul Gilje thus help to until

now

has remained sketchy.

They

tell of

fill

an economically,

even ethnically divided Irish people in eighteenth-century

in a story that

religiously,

and

New York. (The New

York "Irish" in those days included French Huguenots and German Palatines

who had

fled

wars in their

own

country to settle in Ireland before remigrating

New York.) That gave way slowly in the early nineteenth century to a more cohesive, working- or lower-class Catholic community. A remarkable trio of men—Thomas Addis Emmet, William MacNeven, and shortly thereafter to

William Sampson

—

presided over this transition and helped crack open a

The population

of the

crop failed in Ireland

New York

make space for the Catholic Irish. community exploded when the potato and hundreds of thousands of Irish men and women.

monocultural Protestant

new

to

Catholic

including skilled artisans as well as impoverished peasants, were cast out upon the Atlantic to seek survival in

seem more

eighteenth century.

The Famine,

massive tide

of refugees

imagination.

The

a tragedy of

essays covering this period

and Edward Spann

immense

proportions, and the

generated continue to figure strongly in the public

it

pieces by William Devlin,

—Hasia

Diner's overview and

Graham Hodges, John Kuo Wei Tchen, Alan

Kraut,

—flesh out this familiar story but also revise and extend

They discuss the poverty,

it.

degradation, illness, wartime casualties, and prejudice

suffered by these migrants. Irish

New York and other cities. The Irish of this era

familiar to us today than their predecessors of the seventeenth or

They analyze as well the bitter antipathy of the new

immigrants to the African and Asian Americans

borhoods in the slums of the Lower East

who

shared their neigh-

Side, pointing out also that the Irish

intermarried and sometimes cooperated with these neighbors.

War up to

In the years after the Civil

community changed dramatically.

It

the turn of the century, the

became much more diverse,

New York Irish

as a "lace curtain"

population grew up alongside the "shanty" one and the immigrant Irish were joined

by

their

helped

American-bom

make

the Irish

Upward mobUity and an expanding population

offspring.

community

pohtically powerful and institutionally rich, as

explained in Lawrence McCaffrey's overview and the essays by Colleen McDannell,

John McKivigan, and Thomas Robertson, Kenneth NUsen, and John Ridge. They trace the increasing conservatism of Irish workers ladder, reveal the vital role played

by

women

on in

their

way up

Cathohc

the city's economic

institutional growth,

and

analyze Irish efforts to maintain old coimtry allegiances through the Irish language,

movements, and the founding

nationalist

By the 1910s and 1920s, the

Irish

of Irish

county

community

societies.

forged in the early nineteenth

century and centered on the Catholic church, the Democratic Party, and the nationalist

movement had reached

its

peak. Irish Americans

moved up

Catholic Church reigned supreme

among New York City's religious denomina-

and the nationalist movement reached

tions,

America, as

it

its

apogee there and throughout

provided massive support to help Ireland win the

measure of autonomy since the seventeenth century. In

came

Irish also

to

dominate

keeper from the Gashouse

the

The

occupational ladder with considerable speed in the twentieth century.

city politics, as Charlie

district,

emerged

as

first real

this era of triumph, the

Murphy,

Tammany's

a taciturn saloon-

greatest boss.

The

overview by Christopher McNickle and essays by Joe Doyle, Marion Casey, and John

McClymer document

rising living standards as Irish of all generations

began to move to the outer boroughs, the roles of Irish

nationahsm, and the complexity of

from that

of blue blood

women in the mass revival of

Irish political perspectives,

"wannabe," John Purroy Mitchel,

ranging

to that of Alfred E.

Smith, the symbol of a new, street-tough, urban liberalism. In 1945 William

mayor

of

New

O'Dwyer, not only

York.

Two

Irish

years later the

but an immigrant no

St. Patrick's

Day

less,

was

elected

parade attracted

more

than a milhon spectators. Neither of these events, however, gave even a hint of the

decline in Irish political

way by

then.

power and

By the 1960s

of the city's political leadership. years,

failed to

it

been the one remaining

wracked by intemal clerical vocations.

Although nationalism revived in the next few

Irish bastion

New

York's immigrant Irish

the leadership of Cardinal Spellman had

through the 1940s and 1950s, was

The overview by David Reimers and

Irish hfe

now

and suffering a decline in lay allegiance and

conflicts

Mary Corcoran, Robert

changes in

was well under

almost disappeared from the top ranks

hold substantial support outside

The church, which under

population.

Miller,

institutional strength that

men had

Irish

Snyder, and

in

essays by Rebecca

CharUe Fanning probe the dramatic

during this period: the transformation of old Irish neighbor-

hoods, such as Inwood and Washington Heights in northem Manhattan; the struggles of

cultures to

new

Irish

immigrants in both the 1950s and 1980s to adapt their

American circumstances; and the

novehsts and poets to define what

Irish

it

effort

means

by a new breed

of

New York

to be Irish in America's greatest

city.

In his treatment of Elizabeth CuUinan, Fanning notes her

"There

why

is

no such thing

as the

history appeals to me.

hardly the final say on the historian's distance, is

run, the

I

whole truth with respect

like the finality."

New

which makes

life after it is

York it

Irish.

This book

Cullinan

envy

of historians:

to the living is history,

may have

which but

is

it is

envied the

possible to assess the race after the course

over, but that distance

imposes problems

too. Cullinan's

heroine could retrace her childhood through neighborhoods that were at least still

vaguely familiar and a

memory still fresh with its incidents. The New York

under concrete and glass. The people of that era remembered when the dead rise up to reassert their claims to memory through the discovery of some long-forgotten cemetery. More remains of the

of the colonial Irish is buried are only

mid-nineteenth-century Irish settlements in areas like the Lower East Side, but the traces of

O'Donovan

Rossa, John Devoy, and the

many less famous Irish are Italians, Jews, and now

hard to detect beneath the subsequent settlements of

the Chinese. Even the vestiges of the late-nineteenth-century Irish are sadly fading away.

St.

Stephen's Church, further north on the East Side, was the parish

of the great nationalist

and labor reformer. Father Edward McGlynn, and the

many rallies in his behalf. It still stands, but it is far too big for its current small congregation, who have had to alter its vast interior spaces to fit their own needs. The altered buildings are but a visible symbol of so much that is lost and site of

that historians seek in order to understand the past: letters, diaries, records, and all, the thoughts and impressions of people who never could or would them down. Histories, then, are never final because some historical conclusions must always be speculations built on mere patches of evidence.

worst of write

Histories are also tentative because there

is

too

much

to

know. This

is

certainly true for this book. Rather than a final say to the story of the Irish in

New

York, this collection of essays

attempt to

tell

—as

big as

it

is

—represents

that vast, complex, and fascinating tale.

but a

first

Acknowledgments

A. HIS BOOK, more than most, has been

many

to

The in

thank

for their support, guidance,

Irish Institute recognized the

New York City back in

1

need

a collaborative effort,

and

for a

and there are

interest.

one-volume history

of the Irish

988 With the enthusiastic approval of Paul O'Dwyer, .

who had founded the Institute in

1

948, president Kevin Morrissey took the first

making this book a reality. He contacted the sagacious Angela who put him in touch with the New York Irish History Roundtable. The

steps toward Carter,

two organizations soon began the collaboration cation of this volume.

commitment

It is

that has resulted in the publi-

clear that without Kevin Morrissey's long-term

to the project, a history of the Irish in

New

York might forever

have remained the product of wistful imagining. In consultation with a distinguished board of advisers, the Institute

Roundtable brought us on as

editors. Together,

we commissioned

and the

over two

dozen scholars with expertise in a variety of fields to focus their skills on the story of the

tions, the advisers

various meetings and through personal

in reading drafts of individual chapters. Their

book's initiation and completion.

Dennis

J.

telling

communicaoffered help in conceptualizing and developing this book and

Irish. In

Our

Clark, Hasia R. Diner, Jay

R

involvement was crucial to the

sincere thanks go to Angela

Dolan, James

S.

M.

Carter,

Donnelly, William D.

Griffin,

Leo Hershkowitz, Kenneth

T. Jackson,

Kerby A. Miller, David M.

Reimers, John T. Ridge, and Sean Wilentz. Special thanks go to Marion R. Casey,

our liaison with the institute and the roundtable,

who worked

diligently

us during every stage of the project, offering helpful advice and caring as as

we did about producing a significant contribution to urban, numerous ways, she was the

history. In

ethnic,

with

much

and social

third editor of this book.

The book also benefited from the patience of a group of dedicated men and women who, over the past seven years, have unfailingly supported the original vision. We are grateful to ail the members of the Irish Institute and the New York Irish History Roundtable, especially those who individually helped us to realize

We acknowledge

this book.

the major and generous financial contribution of the

which was made in the beUef that scholarship is a pursuit eminently remuneration. Additional support was provided by the Irish American

Irish Institute,

worthy

of

Cultural Institute through their Irish Research Fund, and assistance,

to

we thank them for their

which helped defray the expenses of those scholars who needed to travel

New York City in order to complete their research. During the evolution

of this book, several of the chapters

were presented as

works-in-progress at meetings of the Organization of American Historians, the

American Conference Irish Studies,

and the

leagues on these occasions

Our thanks

Columbia University Seminar on

for Irish Studies, the

New

York

is

Irish

History Roundtable.

The input

of col-

sincerely appreciated.

are also extended to Georgia

copying, and secretarial support.

Tech

for providing mailing, photo-

LaDonna Bowen was

faced with the difficult

task of consolidating twenty-five diverse text files into one and also with various

typing tasks. She completed this often maddening assignment with great skill

and effort, and we appreciate her good work.

We are grateful to Francis R Vardy,

John T. Ridge, Ty Ahmad-Taylor, and Marion Casey for helping to create detailed

maps from the confusion of neighborhoods, parishes, and census categories that represent

New York; to John T.

Ridge, Angela Carter, and Jackie Cavalla for the

statistical tables in the appendix;

and to Sr. Eleanor Nishio, R.S.M.,

Corry, O.S.F., and several roundtable

members

for sharing

Bro.

Emmett

photographs from

their collections.

LesUe Bayor proofread the entire

first draft of

her usual perceptive and careful work, found

the manuscript and, through

many

errors.

We

her help; and for the proofreading skills of Denise O'Meara and

Thanks Press,

also to Robert

J.

Brugger, our editor at the Johns

are grateful for

Ann M.

Shea.

Hopkins University

who recognized the uniqueness of this work and provided encouragement He was ever sensitive to the Irish Institute's wish that

as well as useful advice.

the book's production values reflect the quality of tion

is

also extended to his assistant, Robert

Finally,

their

our thanks to the

enthusiasm

tions,

many

J.

its

scholarship.

Our apprecia-

Anthony.

authors represented in this collection, for

for the subject matter, their cooperation in accepting sugges-

and their diligence in maintaining our publication schedule.

THE

NEW YORK IRISH

Introduction

xTA-ROUND the turn of this century, the people of western County Kerry along the Atlantic Coast of Ireland liked to

tell a

about Sean Palmer from Rineen Ban whose craving for tobacco led wild adventure.

One

quay.

saw

They then whisked him away

his brother, best friend,

a

smoke, Sean was enticed aboard a

night, desperate for a

boat with the promise of a fresh pipe by

story

him on

some men he had met near the

across the ocean to

New

and childhood sweetheart,

all

village

York, where he of

whom

had

emigrated there. After visiting with his friends and relatives and taking a short tour of the

city,

companions

Sean returned

as quickly as

trip for Sean, for his

him

that they gave

American

him

home on

he had come. relatives

substantial

the magic boat of his mysterious It

new

turned out to be a highly profitable

and friends had been so happy to see of money, a new "Yankee" suit, and

sums

a half year's supply of his favorite weed.

Sean Palmer's of Irish

tale subtly suggests several

important themes in the history

emigration to America. Three are worth noting here: migration to

America became so pervasive, so integral to Irish life, that one was as likely to meet one's brother, best friend, and old sweetheart on the streets of Manhattan or Brooklyn as in Rineen Ban,- most Irish immigrants, like Sean, never intended to go, felt that they had been carried there against their will, and always believed that Ireland was their real home; and when they did

leave, Irish immigrantsweremore likely to windup inNew York thanany where

2 The

New

York

else in

America.

Irish

Insh

men and women, as Kerby Miller has pointed out, clung to their Uttle island;

they could not conceive of leaving it voluntarily. Yet the economic revolutions that

had transformed the West and then the rest of the world since the end of the Middle

Ages would not

let

them remain

there.

The legendary Galwaymen on Columbus's

ship or in every other famous explorer's crew are symbols less of Irish enterprise

than of

Irish necessity

and desperation. The

Irish

migrated to America by the

hundreds of thousands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and by the

From the time

millions in the nineteenth and twentieth. of steamships,

Cormac O'Grada

points out, the Irish

of

may

Columbus

to the age

have made up close to

one-seventh of all voluntary migrants from the Old World to the Americas. By 1 980,

about one in seven Americans claimed some Irish

New

migration to

York City

is

Hershkowitz notes in the book's opening Isaac Jogues, in

late eighteenth century, Joyce

thousands of

essay, the

famous

itself.

As Leo

Jesuit missionary

New Amsterdam in 1643 while in transit from Canada to France,

heard the confession of a young Irishman

By the

Irish ancestors."

almost as old as the city

Irish

who had recently

immigrants were arriving in

migrations of the nineteenth century

than 200,000 Irish-born

arrived in the city.

Goodfriend points out in chapter

I,

New York every year. The great

made that river a flood. By the 1880s more

men and women and about as many of their American-

born children lived in New York. A century later, in 1 980, about one in six people living in the

family

tree,

New

York metropolitan area reported some

and in the decade that followed

Irish

Irish roots to their

immigrants began again to

pour into the city by the thousands.^

Even a simple roster of names can show how much the Irish have contributed to the city's history: John

McGraw, manager of the baseball Giants; William F. Mike Quill, radical head of the Transport

Buckley, conservative intellectual;

Workers Union; DeWitt Clinton, U.S. senator, governor, mayor, and candidate for president;

archbishop of

John Quinn, lawyer and art impresario; Francis Cardinal Spellman,

New York and sometimes called the

Higgins Sanger, birth control advocate;

Murphy, Crisis;

Tammany

"American Pope"; Margaret

Owney Madden,

Timothy Sweeney, head

boss;

of the

gangster; Charlie

Gay Men's Health

George M. Cohan, vaudevillian; "Fighting Father" Duffy,

gian and World

War I

hero;

and Frank O'Hara, the "poet

liberal theolo-

of the city."

whom New York

These prominent individuals are joined by countless others without the city's history

would not have been the same. Can anyone imagine

today without groups as

large, culturally distinctive,

scious as the Irish once were, groups such as the Jews

such as the Hispanics? Counterf actual speculation

Diner warns us in her essay, but clearly the

city,

is

and ethnically or,

more recent

self-conarrivals,

a tricky business, as Hasia

and every other group that lived

would have developed in a radically different way if there had been no Irish

in

it,

in

New York.

Simply as strong backs and dexterous

cheap labor offered by

3

150,000 Irish immigrants in the middle of the nineteenth century was essential

Introduction

fingers, the

economic growth and the

to the city's skyrocketing

manufacture. By 1860 one of every four

New

shift to labor-intensive

Yorkers was an Irish immigrant.

they had not been there, would the city have grown as

fast or as big, or would economy have taken the same shape? And who would have replaced them? If the Irish had not come in such great numbers, what would that have meant to the city's labor movement, relations between whites and blacks, neighborIf

its

hood development, or even the blend of saloons, songs, Yawkese"

dialect that

emerged

as a distinct.

prizefighting,

New York,

and

"New

working-class culture

in the antebellum era?

In time the Irish

became the

leaders of

some of New York's most important What would the church have been

organizations, such as the Catholic Church. like

without the Irish? Did they save it from the leadership of the "monarchical"

French and thus perhaps rescue

German,

Italian, Polish,

tion, to create a "republican"

were nearly

Irish

hard to conceive of

machine

politics,

emerged in

New

its

balkanization into a host of

as

it

emerging during and

effort,

after the Revolu-

church?

prominent and influential

the church. Indeed, they are so is

from permanent alienation and irrelevance

and other ethnic churches? Or did they bury forever a

native-bom American Catholic

The

it

Did they prevent

in a republican America?

enmeshed

in the city's politics as in

in the city's political history that

it

without them. Nevertheless, they did not invent

which, as Hasia Diner suggests, would in

York without them.

It is

also not clear

ment would have been more or less "clean" without the Washington Plunkitt, the "sage"

of

all

likelihood have

whether

city govern-

Irish in charge.

George

Tammany Hall and expert on "white graft,"

took great delight in Lincoln Steffens's conclusion that "Philadelphia ruled

almost entirely by Americans was more corrupt than

do almost

all

the governin'." Yet

it is

would have followed the same course without the have dominated the

city's politics

New York where the Irish New York's politics

difficult to believe that Irish.

Somebody

else

would

during those crucial decades around the turn

and conflict among the city's groups and would have shaken out differently, and, some historians suggest, the politics might even have had a more ideological cast.'*

of the century, the lines of division

classes city's

The New York Irish are important not only in terms of their long-time critical Irish

American history. American communities writ

Tammany

Hall; not just a cathedral but

role in the city's history but also in the broad context of Irish

The

New

large:

York

Irish

have always stood for

not just a political machine but

St. Patrick's;

not just a

St. Patrick's

Day

parade but a march up Fifth Avenue by

thousands upon thousands. This was at least in part because of

any

New

city in

New York's Irish population was the largest

America. Even though only a fraction of the

Irish

York in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries stayed

debarking in

there, the sheer

4 The Irish

New

York

volume of the city's immigrant traffic almost guaranteed that New York would become the nation's largest Irish city. From 1855 to 1860, for example, more than 40 percent of the 650,000 immigrants

New

their intention of settling in

became more Irish

York

who

State.

passed.

attractive to Irish immigrants, not less. In 1860 one-sixth of all

immigrants in the United States lived in

New York City;

close to one in five, and by 1960 nearly one in three. illegal Irish

New York declared New York City

landed at

As time

by 1920

it

was

Although the numbers

of

immigrants are by necessity hard to count, most experts would agree

New York has remained the principal destination of Irish immigrants, legal well. This constant flow produced the mammoth numbers claiming pure or predominant Irish ancestry in the New York metrothat

and illegal, in recent times as

politan area in 1980: twice as three times as

many

Some New York

many people

Irish politicians or

munity's vast numbers and riches to Charlie in

as claimed Irish ancestry in Boston;

as in Chicago.^

churchmen have mobilized

make

Murphy extended Tammany's power from City Hall

Albany and into national

making Alfred

E.

Smith

politics in the late 1910s

showed how

com-

to the State

House

and 1920s, eventually

a viable candidate for president of the

Francis Cardinal Spellman also

their

and them, national powers.

it,

United

States.

New

York's

to take advantage of

potential in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Sedulously cultivating

connections in sources of

American

New cations,

Rome and

New

Washington, and exploiting fully the financial

as well as a

New York

and the

arts.

New

the

re-

York chancery an

"powerhouse."^

York also became the center

influential Irish

made

York's Catholics, Spellman

By the end

of Irish

American publishing, communi-

of the nineteenth century

newspapers were located in

New York:

most

of the

Patrick Meehan's Irish

American and John Devoy's Irish Nation and later Gaelic American, and Patrick Ford's Irish World. By 1 882 Ford's Irish World had a readership of 60,000, which included subscribers from all across America; by the early 1900s the World's circulation had more than doubled. Major Irish Catholic publishing

houses like Sadlier's and

P.

Kenneth Nilsen chronicles American efforts to publish

Kenedy's also thrived in

J.

in chapter 10,

New

New

York, and, as

York was also the center

of

A steady flow of immigrant musicians and the city's early primacy in the recording industry helped New York surpass Chicago recordings of

in the Irish language.

as the capital of Irish

music

in

America. Indeed,

New York fiddlers filtered back to Ireland and had a significant

influence on the evolution of music in the old country in the 1920s and I930s.^

The

story of the

contribution to the

New life

York

Irish is

worth

telling not only

of the city or the nation;

it is

worth

because of their

telling

because

consists of a rich mosaic of experiences that reflect broad patterns in history.

The

story of the Irish

and early 1900s,

it

was the

is

it

human

in part the story of the migrant. In the 1800s

story of the rural migrant gone to the city, of the

encountering the modem world. That would be repeated many times in New York's history and is being repeated

traditional, often bewildered, peasant

story

today on

much

and the

its streets

in Shanghai, of

young Guatemalans making

their

way

it is

Norwood

gathering in the bars of Woodside or

knowledge

mercy

of

urban culture,

all of

in

New

just as

windows awk-

tentatively and

wardly along the streets of Los Angeles, and of today's

the

Thus

streets of cities all over the globe.

the story of sunburned Chinese country boys gawking at shop

Irish

immigrants

York. Whatever their

these people, like their predecessors, are at

changing world economy that continues to cast millions onto

of a

new

the roads or seas to find

lives far

The story of the New York Irish

from home.

make it in a new

also the story of trying to

is

economy, a story of peasants and their children and grandchildren wrestUng with the constraints and opportunities of an urban industrial economy. That struggle has

been

a central

theme

throughout the world, and shows

in the

little

West

for centuries, is

now common

sign of subsiding. That story has sparked

a sharp debate over the relative importance of culture, opportunity,

and even

genes in determining the economic success or failure of people from different groups. Since the Irish were industrial order it,

and

among the first peasant peoples to confront the new

wring a living or even some modest prosperity from

try to

their experience should offer a useful

measuring stick or

values, strategies, opportunities, or heredity shape

trouble

way out seemed

how well

few scholars can agree about

is,

they succeeded or

failed.

were they

failures

how

much less why

the Irish did,

Were the Celts successful because most worked

of degrading poverty, or

because too

to get stuck in the lower middle class too long?

or thrust

test case of

economic success. The

them forward? Were the values preached by

What

many

held

of

their

them

them back

the church a bulwark

against demoralization or a barrier to capitalist risk taking and intellectual

experimentation? for a people

Was

with few

carving a niche in public

skills,

or was

it

a dead

employment

a useful strategy

end that trapped the Irish in a morass

of clerkships?^

Perhaps the most intriguing and instructive part of this story values and strategies of the Irish but the opportunities that

northern cities provided for immigrants and their children. By the early to middle

1

if it

have higher IQ

not even the

all

accounts, in

800s Irish Protestants appear to have had all the advantages

of cultural preparation, capital,

men. (And,

is

New York and other

matters,

and

skills

Thomas Sowell

test scores

over their Catholic fellow country-

reports, Irish Protestants in Ulster today

than their Catholic neighbors). Yet in late-twentieth-

century America Irish Catholics appear to have higher occupational status and

incomes than

Irish Protestants.

That

is less a

testament to strategy or culture

may who settled there

than to the luck of landing in the right place: the Appalachian backcountry

have seemed the land

of opportunity for the Irish Protestants

in the eighteenth century, but

it

backwater ever since. Conversely,

has been a torpid, economically stunted

New

York's slums

may have seemed

sink-

5 introduction

The Irish

when Irish Cathohcs crowded dynamic economy gave some of them and more of their

holes of despair in the mid-nineteenth century

6 New

York

into them, but the city's

descendants (and the descendants of most white immigrants) a chance to

improve themselves and escape the horrors of the Five Points or Hell's Kitchen.'

The

story of the Irish

in addition the story of the

is

of ethnically diverse or plural societies.

It

problems and paradoxes

the complicated story of a people

who

have fought to push out the boundaries of American nationality to encompass their ethnic

and religious

beliefs

and in so doing sometimes helped to reinforce

the boundaries of race that kept African and Asian Americans from full partici-

pation in the city's or the nation's

life.

Throughout

their history in

New York,

the Irish have been at the border of the ins and outs, interpreting one to the other, mediating, sometimes including, sometimes excluding. They have been both victim and victimizer, "other" and definer of the "other," and, paradoxically,

sometimes played both

roles simultaneously. In Peter Quinn's recent

novel about nineteenth-century character. Jack Mulcahey, lating

in

and ridiculing the image

"show business"

of the Irish peasantry.

The

New

York

York, Banished Children of Eve, one

of blacks before

in the old country as a boy

who

Donegal landlord

New

wins great fame as a minstrel

in black face

manipu-

white audiences,- he got his

named

start

Sean, dancing jigs for his

delighted in demonstrations of the "primitive" culture

'°

Irish story is also

about the meaning of social or cultural

and communities. Few white groups in America have been more fiercely combative about their identity and more conscious of group boundaries identities

and borders than the Irish—a

legacy, perhaps, of their island's tragic history of

invasion and resistance and persistent,

bitter, sectarian conflict.

Yet the Irish

many immigrants America was exile. Think of the Fenian leader John O'Mahony plotting revolution or poring lovingly over identity has changed over time. For

Manhattan garret. Ireland was the him and his kind. They were "Irish" and "Catholic," which were treated as synonymous terms. For their children and grandchildren, his Irish language manuscripts in his lower real focus of identity for

Ireland grew distant, but Catholicism remained, perhaps even grew in impor-

tance as a focus of identity. In groups popular as the Knights of

among

the American-born, such

Columbus, mihtant Catholicism was blended with

a fierce

American patriotism. Today, some observers suggest, even religion and ethnicity have begun to disappear as important markers of identity. This is the case not only for the Irish but for other white ethnic groups, which as a result are merging into a broad white or European American group. The cultural substance of that

new white

identity,

however,

is

something

of a mystery:

heroes, customs, do these northern white ethnics share? officer

what myths, Italian police

from Canarsie asked Jonathan Rieder, "What the hell does white mean?

Such observations suggest that but, like

waked

As an

Tim

Irish ethnicity

Finnegan, Irish ethnicity in

just yet. For

New

'

has become an anachronism,

York

one thing, stock images of the

may

not be ready to be

Irish are clearly still alive

today in our written and visual language. figure prominently in

Tom

New

American popular culture

York's Irish cops continue to

7

and courageous in

introduction

as rugged

Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, sinister and corrupt in Caleb Carr's

and tough but vulnerable in the television

Alienist,

women, long symbols

women

of strong-willed

in

series

NYPD

The

Blue. Irish

American popular

culture,

continue to play that role as television writers seek images of resolute and

women

independent ters, like

homes still

of the feminist revival.

Nurse McMurphy, like

Some

inhabit, or

of these charac-

have inhabited,

TV

Cagney and Lacey or Rosie O'Neill,

New York's streets today—at least in reruns.'^ New York is the fictional depiction

walk

More

or

New York, but others,

from

far

wake

in the

"Murphy" Brown

quintessentially

of

romance

be-

tween Jewish boys and Irish girls. Intermarriage between the two groups has actually been quite low in New York or elsewhere in America for religious reasons, but the image of Jewish-Irish

romance has been very popular

for

more

than six decades. Abie's Irish Rose ran for more than 2,000 performances on

Broadway relations

in the mid- 1920s

between

Irish

and no fewer than 22 films were made about the

and Jews in that decade. The juxtaposition, however,

has remained intriguing to television writers and producers in the late twentieth century: Bridget loves Bernie from the 1970s, Chicken Soup in the 1980s (in

which

The

Mason played

Jackie

the

liberal),

and Brooklyn Bridge in the 1990s were

New York and all paired Jewish men or boys with Irish women or girls.

all set in

legacy of Abie's Irish Rose has, improbably, been

where

in the television setting of Cicely, Alaska,

urban smarts of

of all the Jewish

Joel

New York City,

most

fully realized today

Fleishman, representative

meets Maggie O'Connell, the

complementary embodiment of the physical toughness and resolute independence that Irish girls have personified in

Alaska

it

might

Yet there

be,

is far

America

for the past

century and a

half. Set in

New York.'^ contemporary New York than

but the roots of that frontier romance are in

more

to the Irish presence in

the persistence of older images. In 1980 nearly one million people in the

metropolitan area claimed predominately Irish ancestry. Irish immigration,

dormant through the 1960s and 1970s, revived

in the 1980s

and sent tens

of

men and women to New York. Although Irish political power there, Irish men and women still fulfill their roles as interpreters

thousands of Irish has declined of the city

and mediators among

its

groups, either as newspaper reporters and

columnists (Jimmy Breslin, Pete Hamill,

men (Raymond

Kelly,

Anna Quindlen, Jim Dwyer) or police-

William Brattan). There are fewer

Irish athletes

(though

Paul O'Neill and Pat Kelly have emerged as mainstays of the Yankees), but

Irishmen seem to have found success as coaches (Pat Riley of the Knicks or Mike

Keenan

of the Rangers).

powerful as

it

The church,

once was, but

over gay marchers in the

it still

St.

still

heavily

Irish, is

no longer as big or

retains a great deal of clout. Finally, the furor

Patrick's

Day parade

suggests that contested

definitions of Irish identity are central to broader battles over the entire city's

vision of

itself.'"*

This volume explores the history of the

8 The

New

Irish

York

these perspectives. articles

on

New

The

Irish

York and

New York Irish community from all

have certainly figured in mountains

New

of

books and

Yorkers, but only as a part of larger studies of

women, partisan politics, neighborhood development, or Thus far, no comprehensive history of the Irish in New York

the city's workers, religious history.

from the colonial era

to the present has

been attempted. Daniel Patrick Moyni-

han's wide-ranging, witty, and insightful essay in

remains, perhaps, the best single

Beyond the Melting

summary of their experiences.

Pot,

Historians have

New York's other ethnic groups or examined the Irish in other New York Irish may not have been ignored entirely, but, given the

studied in depth cities.

size

The

and importance

of their

community, they have been neglected,

until now.

li).

)i. ill.

^v

au

Settlement to 1844

PARTI

COLONIAL AND EARLY NATIONAL AMERICA

The O'Connell

Brothers' milk

wagon was

painted by Nicolino

New York street scenes, c. 1830s. Irishbom men and women made up 40 percent of the city's peddlers Calyo for a series of

as late as 1855, mainly selling farm

vegetables, Irish until

and

fruit.

German immigration

competition.

(Museum

Francis P Garvan.)

produce such as milk,

New York's comer grocery at

stores

were

midcentury brought

of the City of

New York. Gift

of Mrs.

Leo Hcrshkowitz

OVERVIEW

The

and the Emerging

Irish

City:

Settlement to 1844

VJeVERAL major

New

the Irish in early population,

which

York.

One

started out

themes emerge from the story

of

has to do with the perseverance of the Irish

with but a handful but by the mid-nineteenth

century, at the time of Hasia Diner's study, accounted for about one-third of the city's

population of almost one milhon.

Hunger"

of the

1

840s, but

Many

arrived following Ireland's "Great

some immigration had occurred two decades earlier, also

spurred to a great extent by poverty. In 1835 three-quarters of the laborers in

—more than two milUon people—were without employment of any kind.'

Ireland

Most

Irish

Protestant, in chapter

immigrants during the colonial and early national periods were

many from Northern 1,

"The

largest

Ireland,

although as Joyce Goodfriend writes,

number of Irish immigrants

to

New York came from

Dublin." This was a relatively small migration not stirred by any great catas-

end of the Napoleonic Wars and became predominant and "with posed an undeniable threat to the relatively homogenous

trophe. Catholic Irish began arriving after the

soon, as Walter their

aUen ways

J. .

Walsh .

.

relates in chapter 2,

metropolitan social structure that had existed during the Jeffersonian years."

more secure, were generally welcomed and met few social and economic barriers. Later, in Jacksonian New York, the welcome mat was withdrawn, and the largely Catholic and poorer Protestant Irish, on the whole financially

12

farmdwellers found a hostile climate of violent anti-Catholicism and chauvinnativism.

The sharp

Colonial and

istic

Early National

inequities as v/ell as

America

ruffled for

new

and space, resulting from economic

rivalry for jobs

opportunities of an emerging industrial capitalism,

raw nerves. Although rising democratic vistas brought universal suffrage free expression was accompanied by a lack of responsibility and

men,

restraint.

In chapter 3, Paul A. Gilje points out that the hostility

was

clearly evident

well before the "Hungry Forties" and that Irish Catholics and Protestants found increasingly difficult to

it

accommodate one

resentment among the general population,

another. Threatened with growing

many

Irish Catholics, especially in

the lowerclass, sought "to reject the multiethnic and nonsectarian approach of the middle-class emigre." ethnicity

would emerge.

It

would take decades, but gradually, haltingly, a new and scorn and hostility were

Barriers slowly lifted,

replaced by acceptance as jobs industry,

became

available in municipal offices, schools,

and commerce. Progress was creeping and painful but in the end

successful.

If

there

is

a single

theme

in this history

it is

that through their work,

courage, and perseverance the Irish people overcame huge obstacles to help

write definitive pages in history: from a "bunch of straw" they helped

make

a

city.

A few Irish were in New York from almost its beginning. While visiting the New Amsterdam) in 1643, Father Isaac Joques, a Jesuit from

settlement (then

Canada, heard the confession of a young Irish traveler from Virginia or Maryland.

Hays of Barry's Court, Ireland, was in the Dutch town in 1647. He had been a surgeon in Curasao. Through the following decades others arrived. Among them was Thomas Dongan, Irish bom, and the only Catholic governor Dr. William

of

New York until the twentieth century. Significant

numbers

of Irish

were not present in New York until 1700, when

four companies of soldiers, 400 in strength, with 150 from Ireland, arrived.

Governor Richard Coote

(Earl of Bellomont), of

County

Sligo,

remarked that the

came from Ireland are a parcel of the vilest fellows that ever wore livery, the very scum of the army in Ireland and several Irish Papists

"recruits that

the King's

amongst [them]." Something of a riot occurred and several citizens were wounded. Two "mutineers" were executed. It was not a pleasant beginning. What happened to the rest of the "recruits" is not known, though many surely remained in the colony. In

1

made of probably the first Presbyterian clergyman in New Makemie, said to be "a malicious man" and "a peace and quiet of all places he comes into,- he is Jack of all

706 mention

is

York, Irish-born Francis disturber of the Trades, he

is

a Preacher, a

Doctor of Physick, a Merchant, an Attorney, or

Councillor at Law, and, which

is

worse

of

all,

a Disturber of

Governments. " The

The

incident

of religion,

and gave

minister was arrested for preaching without a license but set reflected the early discord, established a degree of settlers further reason to separate

church and

freedom

state.

free.

Presbyterianism attracted

many, especially those from northern friend notes in chapter

1,

Ireland.

The

Irish were, as Joyce

Good-

"a vital element in that denomination."^

This small presence gradually expanded in the eighteenth century as vast

numbers

left their

troubled homeland,

some because

of religious persecution,

others because of land appropriations by the English, the lure of economic

more than a million exiles to The destruction of the linen

opportunity, or simply depressions. Ireland lost

various parts of the world between 1712 and 1785.

and woolen trades alone reduced the population a million people before 1776. According to of all

immigrants to the colonies between

by an estimated half

of Ulster

one historian, possibly one-quarter 1

700 and the Revolution were Irish

came

Catholics, but apparently few of these Catholics

to

New York.'*

Subsequently, however, thousands of colonists, mostly Protestants, were

drawn to New York as a result of the city's extensive commerce with Ireland. The usual exchange was flaxseed and lumber in return for linen and "Rose Cork butter," but Irish beef

and pork were sometimes imported

the local supply

"if

was low." In 1 772, 1,600 tons of general cargo left New York for Ireland and 915 tons came in from Ireland.^ No other colony, with the possible exception of Pennsylvania, had such a regular and important trade with Hibernia.

Many immigrants

during this period achieved fame and fortune.

and Chntons became outstanding pohtical

New

York's

portation.

reservoir (1774)

first

and

There were also printers

leaders. Christopher

The Duanes

CoUes designed

later suggested building canals to aid trans-

like

Hugh Gaine and merchants

like

David

Matthews, Robert Ross Waddell, Hugh and Alexander Wallace, and the firm of Greg

and Cunningham, which was "largely in the

Irish trade.

wine merchant, while Wilham Edgar engaged in many estate. Dr.

"^'

Thomas Roach was

activities,

a

including real

Samuel Clossey, professor of anatomy at New York Hospital (1771), hke

was James Duane in law. The who became part of a diverse community dominated by an Anglo-Dutch aristocracy. Through their labor and skill in trade and commerce they contributed to the growth and prosperity of Dr. John Charlton,

was prominent

majority, however,

were unheralded laborers and farmers

the general community. Friendly Sons of

Colonial tradition,

St.

New

and

(

1

Irish

in medicine, as

were often linked

784) maintained

York was an extension

anti-Irish attitudes

brated by almost as Irish

The

Patrick

much

and through the

bonds with each other.^

England in language, custom, and

were prevalent. Guy Fawkes Day was

revelry as

were "troublesome" was

of

socially,

it

was

in London,

just as prevalent.

cele-

and the view that the

But without large numbers of

people (about 20,000 lived in the city just before the Revolution) and without

entrenched political machines, there was

little

organized bigotry, although in

1712 and 1741 the fear of a supposed Catholic-led slave revolt produced anti-Catholic, antiblack hysteria. But with so few Catholics around, there little

In until

was

opportunity to bloody noses or worse.

September 1776 the city was occupied by the

November

25, 1783.

Many New

British,

1

The Insh and the

who remained there

Yorkers, including Irish citizens, stayed

Emerging Cit^

]^4

behind British Unes. Some fled to neutral

Colonial and

army. Edward

Early National

America

territory, some joined Washington's Hand from Clyduff commanded a regiment during the Battle of Long Island in August 1 776. General Richard Montgomery of County Donegal was killed in December 1 775 during an assault on Quebec. Some joined the British army and served in regiments such as the Volunteers of Ireland.^ Colonel Guy Johnson, for example, was an active member of His

Majesty's forces.

He was

a son of Sir

William Johnson, one

of the

most noted

figures in colonial history chiefly because of his remarkable relationship

the Iroquois. For a time during the war the colonel

was one

of the

with

managers of

the John Street Theatre and was described as "short and pussy, hair powder'd, of stern

countenance and haughty demeanor; his voice was harsh and his tongue

bore evidence of his Irish extraction."' General Henry Clinton wrote that he

had "recourse to those sources from whence the rebels themselves drew most of their best soldiers. I mean the Irish and other Europeans who had settled in America.

"^°

The Revolution promised all men life, liberty, and happiness, but did all men include the Irish? Catholics? What was happiness? The right to possess property or the right to vote? For postwar New York whose population was decimated, many of its buildings dilapidated or fire-ravaged, and trade and commerce almost at a standstill such gallant ideals seemed vague promises for a distant time. The dominant Anglo-Dutch aristocracy, still by and large intact after the war, was not anxious to open its doors to the Irish or any outsider. Even so, the

—

—

Revolution had begun a process of change. Emigration slowed during the war but resumed once again after the conflict ended, as Irishmen fled the suppression of Gratton's volunteers, the failed rebellion of

1

798,

and

their island's political unrest, including the dissolution

Parhament in 1800. Some fled police batons and others foreclosures, unemployment, and hunger. Postwar New York offered a more attractive alternative. The city was becoming increasingly accessible, productive, demoof the Irish

cratic,

and also urban. Theater,

arts, literature,

new attitudes and opportunities

were to be found there, but so were slums, crime, Probably the

first

social degradation,

and bigotry.

Catholic to be elected to public office from the city was

Francis Cooper, sent to the state assembly in 1806, but few others followed. federal period also fostered its share of hatred,

in earlier times.

The

state constitution of

more

bitter

The

and dangerous than

1777 separated church and state and

prevented any minister or priest from holding

civil or military office.

John

Jay,

principal author of the constitution, also had the ratifying convention adopt

stronger anti-Catholic measures, including the denial of naturahzation to

Catholics or to those not renouncing allegiance to "every foreign king, prince or potentate,

Most

which by

definition

Federalists, strong

would include the Papacy."

law and order advocates, saw a dismal future

if

hordes of ignorant, Catholic Irish immigrants were allowed to chase hard-

working Protestant Americans from

their jobs.

By contrast,

liberal Jeffersonians

saw the

new breed of English royalists seeking to maintain their The two groups had one of their 1 795, when two immigrant ferrymen, Thomas Burke and

Federalists as a

authority even at the cost of liberty and justice. first

confrontations in

Timothy Crady, seemingly Catholics, became involved in a fight with Federalist Alderman Gabriel Furman, who charged the pair with "improper, disrespectful" behavior. This led to their arrest and trial. Found guilty, both were jailed. Crady, who was also whipped, died soon after. The affair caused alarm. Democrats saw the event as a brutal example of Federalist elitism, while Federalists held the opposition to be a party that supported Irish ruffians and social disorder. ^^ These

views intensified over the years, especially as immigration increased, and gave rise to

ethnic conflict and political controversy.

Still,

New York was an American city in which the ideals of equality, liberty,

freedom

of expression,

and freedom

of religion

were praised,

if

not always

honored. Voicing those ideals, Jefferson welcomed newcomers: "Shall we whose forefathers received hospitality

from the savage

of the wilderness,

deny it to our

brethren in distress? Shall there be no where an asylum on the earth for a

persecuted humanity?"'^ In this

spirit.

president)

and his nephew, DeWitt, both

welcome

to attorney

DeWitt Clinton used his arrived.

Irish

(later vice

extended a

of Irish extraction,

Thomas Addis Emmet,

William Sampson, participants in the

like the

Governor George Clinton

warm

MacNeven, and

Dr. William

failed rebellion of 1798.

background and his association with groups

Shamrock Friendly Association (I8I6) to gain the vote of the newly Tammany Hall was at odds with Clinton, partly because he

However,

did not support the regular Jefferson-Madison ticket, and as usual Democrats split into several

really sought to

Tammany, while Irish

and in

this

angry factions. Neither the Federalists nor the Democrats

be identified with the it

attacked Clinton,

way

Irish since

made

both were nativists, but

a greater

show

of support for the

shattered the Clinton-Irish alliance.

It

was

temporary accord, but one that would be solidified by midcentury. In

1

82 1 the

at best a

^'^

New York Constitutional Convention eliminated property quali-

and provided universal suffrage for men, except blacks. This was the underpinning of a rising democracy and for the Irish represented empowerment. Numbers would now count. Politics became a vocation, a consuming passion. The day of the professional politician had arrived. Society now heard more and more strange voices, often producing a

fications for voting

momentous

step

bitter, violent

clamor. Partly as a result of the rapid development of capitalism,

banking, and large-scale industry (which threatened the livelihood of traditional

craftsmen and small entrepreneurs), the specter of widespread unemployment

haunted laboring and middle classes

for the first time. Riots

between Orange-

men and Catholics, between blacks and whites, between laborers and employers were frequent. The economic panics vulnerability of the middle class. This

of I8I9, 1837,

and 1857 underscored the

mix of democracy and the hazards of free

enterprise produced religious antagonisms, fueled by traditional Protestant-

1

The

Imh and

5

the

Emerging City

15

Catholic hatred. Added was a surge of emotional nationalism, which

Colonial and

mixed with

religious suspicion fed a

Early National

in loud vocal

America

tion,

when

growing xenophobia. Hatred expressed

and violent resentment, along with

a

more subtle discrimina-

could be found in literature, newspapers, and the living room. Former diarist Philip Hone chronicled the "dreadful" election riots of when bands of "lowest class" Irishmen attacked Americans. In Decem-

mayor and 1834

ber 1835 he saw the "low Irishmen again threatening order. Ignorance and vice go together.

patriotism

.

.

.

.

cry

.

.

These Irishmen, strangers among us without feeling

down with

of

the natives."

By 1835, such sentiments helped form the Native Americans Democratic Association, an odd mixture of restless middle-class citizens fearing Irish

competition, Protestant moralists seeking to maintain a society free from the threat of an "expansionist" Papacy,

and various "patriotic"

political opportun-

They formed themselves into a party to battle for "American" rights. Samuel F. B. Morse, artist and inventor, was one of the leaders of the organization. Another was Mordecai Noah, a native-born Jew, formerly an anti-Clinton, anti-Democratic politician, now a rabid Whig patriot who used his paper the ists.

Evening Star to

stir

W. Webb, publisher

up opposition of the

He and

to Catholic Irish.

others, like

James

Courier and Enquirer, called for strong registry laws

to keep out those "depraved foreigners" who were flooding American shores. They saw "Popery" and "despotism" as synonymous terms. Noah, like Philip Hone and many others, thought the Irish "could not understand or appreciate

the excellence of this [American] form of government."'^

A number of incidents further fanned the flame. The Mexican attack on the Alamo in 1836 was seen as an example of what Catholics meant to do to Protestants. The recently invented rotary press provided the means to mass-produce printed material, a good deal of the salacious and fictional Six

it

Months

anti-Catholic and anti-Irish. Books like

in a

Convent

(1835)

and newspapers

like

the Evening Star added to the explosive atmosphere. In February 1838

two

on the order

in the city

of the British consul.

Irish refugees,

of

John and James Bamber, were arrested

Governor William

L.

Marcy

in response to a request

A grand jury in England had indicted them for the murder

of a police officer in Ireland

some

ironically accused by the nativist

ten years before. Marcy, a Democrat,

was

Evening Star of "surrender" and of committing

an act "reprehensible to the highest degree. " Democrats were saved from further

embarrassment when the brothers were released

New

politics in affiliation

York was not

was frequently

Although

changed and party

tested.'^

as a third party the nativists never

Democrats and the opposition Whigs, reborn issues.

after a hearing. Obviously,

clear-cut: positions often

dominated the scene, they made Federalists,

aware

Both major parties sought some accommodation with the

of antialien Irish,

while

never fully supporting them. Always active, Morse helped form the American Protestant

Union

in 1841 to defend the "spirit of our ancestors."

The Mexican

War of 1 845^8 further stirred anti-Catholic bitterness. Patriotism was the order of the day and many immigrant Irish also became ardent flag wavers. The Protestant newspapermen John O'Sullivan and Michael "Mike" Walsh were superpatriots and jingoists. It was an angry time for a city clearly divided between Catholic and Protestant. Violence and social dislocation were increasingly evident.'^ In

May

1

849

a riot at the

Astor Place Theatre, near present-day Cooper Union,

now who had seem-

epitomized bigotry stirred up by a mix of nativism and chauvinism, directed against the British. English actor William Macready, ingly slighted his popular

American

rival

Edwin

was attacked on

Forrest,

stage

by a small organized group of local toughs. The affair spilled out into the streets,

some twenty-five people lay dead. Most of those killed and arrested were Irish. Members of the community like Mike Walsh, editor of the Subterranean (1843) and soonto-be assemblyman and congressman, denounced the murder of "innocent troops were called, shots were fired, and

Dozens were

jailed.

bystanders," whereas Horace Greeley's Tribune justified the actions as neces-

Newspapers placed the blame on lawlessness,

sary to maintain law and order. drink, poverty,

and the inpouring

mob" was now and time would erase some but "drunken

tives like

in

Irish

is

more immigrants. The image

of the

not

all of

the sharp edges. Later, archconserva-

lawyer George T. Strong held that the gorilla was superior to the "Celt

muscle and hardly their

Ireland

of

deeply engraved in the popular mind. Politics

in a

low

state

inferior in

moral sense." He went on, "Poor ould

because the majority of Irishmen are Jackasses." Strong,

a noted diarist, also hated Jews, "niggers," Wagner,

and

Berlioz,

with equal passion.'^ Confrontation was only part of the

among

others,

story.

For most of the newcomers, opportunities lay in carting, hauling, digging,

and low-paying manual labor

jobs,

more educated, by midcentury

but even those did not

come

easily.

For the

there were limited openings in public schools

and municipal government. Gradually, skilled workers could be found in shipyards, in newspapers, the small Irish press, or at the head of their enterprise.

There were grocery

stores, theaters, for

increasingly politics, though very few achieved

power was not

readily shared.

own

some the Church, and

dominant

positions. Political

None became a mayor and only a few were found

in higher office.

Most

of the early

sans, merchants,

immigrants were people of some means

some

discover "a free country, where a a

penny taken by government,"

City in 1818 thought.

guished Irish citizen

hack car

man who

I

—primarily —anxious to arti-

professionals, but also domestic servants

A

man is allowed to thrive and flourish without as bookseller John Doyle, living in

visiting lecturer

who had

remarked

so hospitably

New York

in 1835 that "the distin-

welcomed me

to

America was

a

had often hired in Dublin and who now rejoiced in the

possession of a two-horse coach. "'^ Here also thrived an Irish mercantile aristocracy. Later in the century,

however,

it

was not

so

much

the lure or promise of

1

The

Irish

and

the

EmergngCity

was the spur

18

America that attracted the immigrant

Colonial and

the old country. After the 1830s Irish immigrants were mainly poorer people,

Early National

many from southern or western Ireland. From the end of the eighteenth century,

America

a landlord class of foreign birth

as

it

of further suffering in

and religion dominated

Ireland.

The bulk

of

farmers were rent-paying tenants. The vast majority of the population consisted of cottiers, or landless farm laborers, living in grinding poverty, usually next to

a small potato patch, and virtually giving

were always being reduced

away their labor to the landlord. Farms

in size so that

by 1841, 560,000

of Ireland's 690,000

holdings amounted to less than 15 acres. About 400,000 Irish -bom migrated

permanently to England and Scotland.^" Following the Napoleonic Wars, grain prices fell

and there was more

additional

economic pressure on farmers, many

their holdings

and decided to

to find a better

life

in a new,

profit in eviction.

The

of

Irish

whom

Law of 1838 put to give

up

and hazardous sea voyage

risk the dangers of a long

if

Poor

were forced

not-so-welcoming country.

They left from Sligo, Cork, Dublin, Londonderry (Derry), and Liverpool. They left sadly, often to unhappy songs like the Lament of the Irish Emigrant: I'm bidding you a long farewell,

My Mary kind and true, But

I'll

not forget you, darling.

In the land I'm going to:

They say

And But

there's bread

and work

for

all.

the sun shines always there;

I'll

Were

not forget old Ireland,

it fifty

times as

fair.

The voyage cost about $ 1 5 a head in steerage, " tween decks. " The food and space were meager, the sanitary conditions poor. For many it was a miserable, if not fatal experience. Death came to thousands from such diseases as dysentery and typhus; countless children were

left

without parents.

It

was not

promises of fame and easy fortune made by the shipping their trip in

New York,

not so

much because

it

was

at all like the

lines.^'

Most ended

their intended destination

but because the shipping concerns deposited them there. The Black

Dramatic, and Red

lines, their offices

on the East

were

River,

all

national port of entry for

headquartered in

much

Ball,

overlooking the forest of masts fronting

of the trade

New

York.

The

city

was

also a

from the United Kingdom,

this

country's principal customer, especially in textiles. In 1825, 54 percent of

imported linen and a strong impact

flax

was

still

coming from

Ireland.

Such trade no doubt had

on immigration.^^

the number of immigrants grew slowly. In 1 8 1 7 all arrivals totaled Of this number, 3,131 were from England and 1 703 from Ireland. By 1 845

Initially,

7,654.

,

there were 371,000 immigrants living in the city, of

1855, of the general population of

the

total.

whom

97,000 were

Irish.

was the peak year before the Civil War. By 630,000, there were 176,000 Irish or 28% of

In 1851, 163,000 Irish arrived. This

There were 96,000 Germans.^

Once past customs and quarantine officials, many of the human freight found themselves alone, helpless,

if

not hopeless, ready victims of boarding house

"runners," "Cheap Johns," extortionists and ticket agents little

was

They sought the company

available.

who often took what

of fellow aliens in

crowded,

slum-like neighborhoods, the comfort of parish churches and of the 2,000

by 1840. For the more was Malachi Fallon's "Ivy Green Tavern," a rendezvous for David Sweeney's "House of Refreshment." Slowly, some gravi-

saloons, "shebeens," found in Irish neighborhoods

well-to-do there poHticians, or

tated to the local political clubs like

found ready acceptance. ment, as

much

into the interior.

but

Hall, but until the 1850s

moved by

few

and bewilder-

fear

good company, newcomers went whereever

as the desire for

there were kindred folk with at least initially, to

Tammany

A congenial people, whom

to share

memories

of

home. They tended,

remain together in the port city, though some moved quickly

Groups

like the Irish

Emigrant Society 1841 (

),

as well as other

The Shamrock Friendly AssoBy 1 8 1 7 it had found employment for

smaller benevolent organizations extended help. ciation

was

active after the

War

of

1

8 1 2.

1200 individuals. The Society for the Encouragement of Faithful Domestic Servants (1825), and the Irish Emigrant Association (1817) sought to advise and aid those in need."'* Social cooperation helped offset an always ever-present indifference,

if

not open hostility.

Protestant employers were leery of

with ways.

its

what they saw

menace,"

as a "Catholic

"forwardness and impertinence" and "free drinking" and "riotous"

"Woman Wanted—to

do general housework

.

.

.

English, Scotch, Welsh,

German or any country or color except Irish" was typical of advertisements and attitudes.^^

This prejudice, as seen in George T. Strong's and Philip Hone's

diaries,

was more apparent

blacks,

who were

after 1825.

The

unskilled Irish had to compete with

traditionally waiters, servants, cooks,

and

laborers.

This

competition aggravated the growing social antagonism, although there was

some intermarriage among the poor blacks and Irish women. Cheap Irish labor was a greater threat to Protestant mechanics and craftsmen already at the mercy of increasing industrialization.

Rapidly changing market conditions, however, gave

having an important

Workingman's Party

Irish

rise to a labor

movement

component. John Commerford helped organize the

of 1829

and the General Trades Union

of 1835.

Organized

labor even in an infant stage helped the immigrant gain a foothold."''

Corporate positions and the professions were

still

beyond the

pale,

however.

Banking, shipping, transportation, shipbuilding, insurance, and real estate were all

held in a tight grip by a Protestant aristocracy. There were but a few openings

here, a legacy of early

New York.

Michael Hogan from County Clare arrived in

Hogan on record with a "dark skinned Indian went into the shipping business, mainly in West Indian trade, and established himself as a "prince of a merchant." Also active in the early century were Dominick the city in

1

804, perhaps the only

princess and £400,000 in gold sovereigns." "This remarkable Irishman"

\

The

Irish

and

the

Emerging City

20

Lynch, George Bamswell, and Cornelius Heeney,

Colonial and

Joseph Moleneaux, "late from Dublin," was a watch and clockmaker.

Early National

the Irish

America

Charles

bom

P.

or the

generation were Charles O'Conor, John

first

At midcentury some 2 percent its

lawyers were

of

New

1

Irish in the professions.

York's 600 physicians and

1

percent or

There were four Bradys, but no Kellys. The founding

Irish.

of the long sought-after St. Vincent's Hospital

in

Among

McCunn,

McKeon, Thomas Addis Emmet, William Sampson, and

Daly, John

Dennis McCarthy in law. But they were among the few so of

importing merchants.

all

by the

Sisters of Charity occurred

849 and provided some further opportunity. Even fewer

were members

Irish

of the administration or the faculty (or for that matter, the student body) at

Columbia College the

Chamber

of

or

New

York University. The situation was no

Commerce, the

influential General Society of

different at

Mechanics and

Tradesmen, the Horticultural Society, or the New- York Historical Society. Even the militia and city government appeared impenetrable; in

members appear

City Council's thirty-four

Most

jobs

dirt

been

1

844, not one of the

Irish.'^^

were to be found not in government, big business, or the profes-

sions, but in the unskilled market.

resistance. In

to have

1

Even there the former

cottiers

found

8 1 8, the City Council proposed that Irishmen be allowed to "cart

and nothing

thus hoping to calm fearful licensed cartmen.

else,"

The

"nothing else," however, was gradually expanded to include work on city streets

and docks. By 1855, they were largest group of cartmen. Interestingly, those immigrants who had found work or had arrived a short time earlier now attempted to prevent newcomers from competing in the marketplace.^*

By the mid-nineteenth century, the

Irish

accounted

for

87 percent of foreign-

born unskilled laborers, but only 9 percent of some 14,000 engaged in the ^^

some 20,000 in the clothing industry. complemented housing conditions in the "Bloody Ould Sixth" Ward, site of the notorious Five Points at the comer of Worth, Baxter, and Park Streets (then Anthony, Orange, and Cross Streets), a slum

building trades and but

These rather dismal

1 1

percent of

figures

Charles Dickens described in 1843 as "loathsome, drooping and decayed.

'""^

Here immigrants usually lived in dilapidated, crowded wooden tenements, while children played in and around slaughterhouses, stables, packing houses,

and foundries. Horses, the Fourth

cattle, dogs, pigs

Ward housed 400 Irish

there had been only 120 famihes.

were

all

about. Sweeney's Shambles in

residents in 1857, whereas a few years earlier

On

Park Street near City Hall there were 50

families in a seven-story tenement filled with sickening smells, garbage, and filth.

There were no indoor water closets and no sewerage. Conditions were as

many had endured in Liverpool or on the crowded ships that took them to New York. Bishop John Hughes remarked that the slum dwellers were "the poorest and most wretched population that can be

bad or worse than the warrens that

found in the world

Trapped maintain

— the scattered debris of the Irish nation.'"''

in the city's

fragile families,

worst slums, toiling

many Irish

at its

worst

jobs, struggling to

slipped into alcoholism, insanity, chronic

The notorious Holy Ground around Murray

21

and near Columbia College expanded, as did prostitution. One minister

The Insh and the

welfare dependency, or crime. Street

estimated that

New

York had 6,000

By 1839, the

to 8,000 prostitutes in 1816.

The largest number of "nymphs of the pave" were from Ireland, with most under 23 years of age. Of some 3,100 patients at Bellevue Hospital in 1839, 2,052 were from Ireland, estimate had grown to 11,000, and by 1849 to 50,000.

whereas only 618 were from America, 138 from England, and 193 from Ger-

many. In 1 850, 2,742 persons died of cholera; 1 ,086 were Irish.

Common diseases

were cholera, typhus, dysentery, and consumption. In 1849 the Lunatic Asylum

New

admitted 228 natives of Ireland, compared with 84 from

York. In 1849

Work House: 252 were from Ireland and 33 from Germany. In the same year, there were 1,006 Irish in the Alms House, but only 89 from Germany. Interestingly, suicide was less common among the Irish than there were 34 1 foreigners in the

any other foreign-born group, possibly because

Death was ever present. In the Sixth Ward, 1

854. In Sweeney's

Shambles the rate was

1

of the church's influence.^^

out of every 17 persons died in

1

of 5 adults during a

22-month period.

The death rate among Irish families in 1850-59, now usually of consumption, was 21 percent, while among non-Irish it was perhaps 3 percent. Bishop Hughes thought the disease "the natural death of the

Although

beyond War.

Irish families

their parish or

Two

Irish emigrants.

moved from one

beyond Fourteenth

of every five people

who

"^^

place to another,

Street, that

is,

it

was seldom

until after the Civil

German) neighborhoods

lived in Irish (or

in

1850 had left by 1 860. These were replaced by new arrivals and the neighborhood remained.^'*

Perhaps, the most bitter adjustment the cottiers faced

was the

disintegration

wrote Thomas D'Arcy McGee, editor of the

of the family unit. "In Ireland,"

Nation and an exile because of his part in the revolution of 1848, "every son

was

a

boy and a daughter was a

girl 'til

considered subject to their parents

America

.

.

.

boys are men at sixteen

till

—

he or she was married.

.

They were

.

.

If

.

.

.

.

family

tie is

snapt

.

.

.

our

become our opponents, and sometimes our worst enemies." McGee

noted with considerable frustration and concern, as did failure of family discipline.

future of the

with the

.

They either live with the 'boss governor'

or 'old man,' or elsewhere, as they please.

children

.

they became parents themselves. ... In

The

community. McGee blamed

soil,

many Americans,

this

lack of stable relationships endangered the this

problem on the

loss of contact

the process of uprooting, and the newness of the American

experience with

its

blatant materialism.

He

established the

American

Irish

Society to educate immigrant adults to these dangers, believing that ignorance

must be overcome. He was an outspoken opponent of Bishop Hughes and the dominant role of the church, especially in education. He decried clerical opposition to the Young Ireland movement.^^ For all the great numbers that remained mired in the city's worst jobs and slums, there were at least a few glimpses of hope, signs of potential change and

Emerging City

22

upward movement. Some Irish men,

Colonial and

out niches for themselves in small business, publishing, the theater, or munici-

Early National

pal politics

America

at least a

as already mentioned, discovered or carved

and government. Such occupations seldom produced

few offered a modicum

kinsmen in Ireland or

of wealth, status,

and

riches, but for

security. Efforts to help

to establish institutions, particularly churches

schools, also suggested that

were attempting to forge

many had

a coherent

and

not been broken by their burdens and

community amid their problems and often

surrounding squalor.

Some found

opportunities in small business where low capital investment

provided attractive possibilities. In addition to the taverns, there were Irish-run hotels and boardinghouses like Patrick Garrick's Sixth Ward Hotel

(

1

850) or John

McDermott's (1832) hotel of the same name. Some were highly successful. P. L. Rogers arrived in New York from County Tyrone at the age of eighteen, engaged himself to a

tailor,

opened

a

small store, and by 1850 ran a huge six-story

Square. In

Wine merchant Dominick Lynch Jr. and &. Co. made "most fashionable shop" in Chatham Square and later in Hanover the 1830s, John L. Dillon's Old Established Ready Made Coffin

Warehouse

at

business at Fulton and Nassau Streets.

shipowner John Flack were also successful in business. James Leary hats in the

496 Pearl Street provided everything in the "English Style"

to

meet any solemn occasion. By the 1840s, Dillon and his brother Christopher had a major part of the funeral trade. Henry McCadden, at 51 1 Pearl, provided the same "ready made" service.'^^

Many

of these people

made use

of their expertise

with horses and carriages.

In 1817 John Carroll and one Byrnes advertised in the Exile as carriage

and

repairers.

James Murphy

line, four separate routes,

& Co. was in

makers

1847 the owner of the largest coach

having twenty-nine two-horse omnibuses and one

four-horse vehicle running between various parts of lower

Manhattan

to

South

Ferry.

Thomas Murphy

Street

and Hellgate Ferry. But the non- Irish Kipp and Brown line, though smaller,

ran three of his two-horse coaches between

Chatham

achieved greater historical fame.^^ Groceries, found mostly at street comers, "were as a practice occupied by the Irish,"

wrote a long-time

Germans

New

Yorker, though with the

in the late 1840s they replaced the Irish grocer,

opened "absurdly termed saloons.

"'^'^

mass

arrival of

many

of

more

whom now

Grocers in the early part of the century

rum" and oil, in addition to food. One English visitor commented 1 8 1 8 with some anger that "the Irish have got the greater part of this business;

sold "Yankee in

and they will

if

possible, prevent

an English journeyman from having employ-

They were more than grocers. Many were fish, oyster, and produce Germans were usually butchers and dairymen. Only 2 percent of the

ment."'''^

dealers. Irish

were so

engaged."*"

In 1844 there were 48 licensed secondhand dealers, 15 of

have been

Irish.

but only 11

Three years

later,

which appear

to

there were 71 licensed secondhand dealers,

— including Ann Mayo at

101

Chatham

Street (Park Row),

Hugh

—were Gaelic. These

23

trade centered in poorer

The Insh and the

neighborhoods in or about Chatham Square and Five Points. Most interestingly,

Emerging City

McCaffrey at three

78,

had been

and Ann McCaffrey at 30 Chatham Street in business three years earlier.

The

about 95-98 percent of the licensed junk shopkeepers were in 1844

and about 100 three years

time when an average working

A

later.

Irish.

There were 78

sum

at a

and a half a

day.

license cost S20.00, a fair

man earned a

dollar to a dollar

Dealers included James Boyle, 90 Sheriff Street, and John McCabe, 57 Sheriff Street.

Ann Regan was

428 Cherry

at

Most were

Street.

in the

Lower East Side

in the heavily Irish Fourth

and Sixth Wards. Of 35 pawnbrokers, four had

surnames, including Mary

Murphy

same by Irish,

at

68 Chatham

The

Street.

ratios

Irish

were the

1860. In that year approximately 95 percent of junk dealers were

now

but there were

By the

Civil

War

651

still

licenses.'*'

the ubiquitous junk dealers had multiplied. Henry Cal-

laghan was at 1 20 West 40th Street, while Martin McAleer was at 45 West 1 35th Street.

There were none on Chatham Street. Perhaps they went into the peddling

business because, as Italian and Eastern European immigrants would also

was little overhead and less worry about unemployment. In New

discover, there

York, most of the fruit and vegetable peddlers were Irish

women. The junk trade,

however, was not indicative of the whole, only one-half of

1

percent of the total

foreign-born merchants were Irish, the fewest of any national group.'*"

There were several Caleb Bartlett

at 76

Irish booksellers in

Bowery had

for recreation, along

antebellum

New

a general assortment of

York. By the 1830s,

books

for school

and

with playing cards. James Ryan, publisher and bookseller

at his Classical

and Mathematical Bookstand, 322 Broadway, sold and published

any number

math and

of

science books, including

In 1830 Denis Sadlier arrived in

New

some used

at

West

Point.*^

York from Tipperary. Sadlier had

learned the bookbinding trade and entered the business in 1836 with his

brother James, on Carmine Street. Here he printed numerous religious books,

including Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints. His sister-in-law a

voluminous writer of short

stories

of Catholic readers, advocating pride in old of religion, but also seeking

growing up in

two

many

of the

of her readers,

new

country. She

and her novels about

New York provided considerable insight into tensions between

societies.**

Some work was available The Shamrock,

opportunity. first

country values, including those

compromise with those

helped bridge the cultural gap for

Mary Ann was

and some sixty novels. She was a favorite

in special trades.

such example and concerned

to Irish nationalism.

The

A

small press provided a

or Hibernian Chronicle, printed in 1810, itself largely

Exile (1817),

with relating the new country

Emerald (1824), the popular Old Countryman (1833) and Free-

Globe

Truth TeUer{l815), the Irish Shield {1818),

little

was the

et)

man's Journal (1840) were examples of generally short-lived papers. Often torn between supporting Catholic and secular views, they nevertheless served an eager constituency.

The Truth

Teller

had a readership of 4,500 by

1

846.'*^

Leading

24

journals remained staunchly Protestant, however, and provided

Colonial and

nity for the Irish immigrant. Indeed,

Early National

Herald, Tribune, Evening Star, and later

America

attitudes.

many

little

opportu-

of the city's largest papers, like the

New

York Times, adopted anti-Irish

Characteristic of the nineteenth-century social w^orld were

many

clubs,

and

social circles, athletic activities, political organizations, lecture halls, libraries.

Many of these groups were founded by young men, in particular, some

with a passionate interest in art and the Irving and

Moore

literature.

Sons

of Erin

and the Thomas Davis Club in 1853. Non-Irish clubs

Century Club admitted few

Irish P.

1

854,

1841,

like the prestigious

important literary and arts establishment,

(1847), a socially

status. Charles

was founded in Club in

Literary Association in 1834, the Carroll

Americans unless they had attained considerable

social

Daly and Charles O'Conor were members along with the

The elite Union Club (1836) seems to have had only Sweeny (anglicized spelling), an influential New Yorker, included with the Griswolds and Grirmells. The doors were opened only so wide.

Astors and Roosevelts. native-born Peter B.

and

In 1842

in 1856 the

New

York Catholic Library Association succeeded

young members of the community. The library movement, name, was basically Irish rather than Catholic. There was some

in attracting forty

despite

its

interest in the publication of Gaelic manuscripts.'*''

Among the more eminent Irish artists were John Ramage, painted George Washington, and William

Guy

Wall,

a miniaturist who known for his New York One such artist was John

more moderate reputations. who came to the city as a child. Having studied wood engraving, he worked for Harper's and other journals, providing carefully drawn views and scenes, mostly of New York. Another was Thomas Kelly, bom in Ireland about 1 795. He was an excellent engraver and worked in various cities, including New York, between 1834 and 1841. Unfortunately, he died in a New landscapes. Others had

W.

Orr, born in Ireland in 1815,

York almshouse in 1841

after "contracting

bad habits." Dubliner Charles C.

Ingham studied art there and then settled in New York in one of the founders

of the

between 1845 and 1850. Basically a renderings of

81

7,

where he became

portrait painter,

he was well

known

for his

women and children.

Active in Ireland and England,

welcome on the in Ireland,

1

National Academy of Design, serving as vice president

many well-known

stage or in the concert hall.

actors received a hearty

Music and

theater, deeply rooted

were brought to New York. John Collins, Barney Williams, and Redmond

Ryan, however, too often

won

applause by playing hackneyed stereotypes,

acting frequently as drunken buffoons. Although Irish plays were popular and eagerly received, criticism later caused Collins to portray Irishmen with dignity

and

to avoid the "blundering stupidity"

bigoted.''*

Irish

Tyrone Power,

meant

to please the unthinking,

if

not

whom mayor and diarist Philip Hone called "the best

man I ever saw particularly in low farce" appeared at the well-known Park much admired Sir Patrick OTlaherty in The Irish

Theatre in August 1833 as a

Am bassador. For the next decade he was a star attraction in the playhouse. Bom London

in Waterford in 1797, he played in various

New York.

Power drowned

at sea in 1841

theaters before

coming

.''^

from Drury Lane. Critics thought him is

Light dashing

of

1

81

fresh

an excellent comedian. Said one,

to be

"one of the greatest acquisitions that

[Drury Lane] has ever had to boast

it

comedy is his forte and it

is

always faultless." Dwyer,

bom

O'Dwryer, wrote a well-circulated work. Essay on Elocution.^° Dion Boucicault, also of Dublin,

bom in

when he

playwright

1

820,

was already well known

arrived in

New

York

in Europe as an actor

late in 1853.

and

There he enjoyed

considerable success, especially with his play about slavery. The Octoroon (1859).

His Colleen

Bawn

(1860)

was the

first of

a long series of Irish

dramas. Boucicault was particularly famed for his high

The

spirits

comedy

and dash.

concert stage received the talented violinist Master Joseph Burke, the

"wonder and admiration

of

two continents." He

stage at the age of seven and in

1

830 came to

first

appeared on the London

New York,

where he appeared

the Park Theatre, leading the orchestra as well as performing on stage.

at

The "Boy

Phenomenon" played with the New York Philharmonic in 1846. He also taught and composed music and moved in the highest circles of New York society, "honored and respected by all who knew him." In 1872 a critic reflected that Burke, still unmarried, was a "good catch." For others, fame came via strong arms and legs. One of the more colorful figures was "Old Smoke," John Morrissey, who was born in County Tipperary in 183 1 He came with his family via Canada and Troy, New York. He was good with his fists and his feet. As a "runner" and gang leader, he literally fought his way to a high position. In 1 853 he won a championship prize fight before a huge, riotous crowd but was defeated the next year by "Big Bill" Poole. Members of Morrissey's gang allegedly killed Poole, who became a martyr for the nativists' cause. In 1858 Morrissey beat John J. Heenan, "Bonicia Boy," also from County .

Tipperary, for the heavyweight championship. Morrissey brought gambling to

Saratoga Springs and gained a seat in Congress. There were other Irish sports figures, especially in boxing, including

"Yankee Sullivan," born in Ireland

as

James Ambrose. Sports not only provided a sense of accomplishment and pride for

many, but was a means

By the

1

to achieve a voice in the political arena.^'

840s, Irishmen began to seek,

and were slowly being admitted

to,

public service. Until that time, public schools had been run by the private, Protestant-controlled Public School Society lic

By 1844, however,

teachers.

St. Patrick's

1 1

1

805 which hired few Irish CathoNo. 5 on Mott Street, near Old ),

McKeen and Margaret F. Ann Crawford were at School

Cathedral, the teachers included Joseph

Henratty, while

No.

(

in School

M.

J.

O'Donnell and Elizabeth

Street. Francis McNally taught at School No. 1 7 on ThirNot an impressive number, but they continued a long tradition

on Wooster

teenth Street.

of Irish teachers. Increased

25 The Insh and the

Emerging City

A native of Tipperary, John Hamburg Dwyer came to New York in he

to

resentment directed against the Public School

26

Society by Catholics and a growing city rapidly assuming a role as the custodian

Colonial and

of public interest, led, in 1842, to the creation of the

Early National

directed by the Board of Education.

America

presence. Boys at

Common School System Those schools had a much stronger Irish Ward School No. 8 were taught by John Tourney, P. Conelly,

Jeremiah Mahoney,

J.

Brody, and William Mullaney, while girls were in-

P.

structed by Catherine O'Rourke, Margaret Kevney, Catherine Murphy, and

Maria Belton. One could find Lyons, Carrigans, or Gallaghers throughout the system. By the mid- 1840s about one-third to one-half of the

by I860 the number was 40

staff

to 50 percent. Also by 1860, there

were were

Irish,

and

forty -four

common schools, eleven of whom seem to have been Irish.^^ The Police Department, part of an expanding city bureaucracy, also provided some employment, but again reluctantly. In 1 800 there were very few, if any, commissioners of

recognizable Irish policemen, but great changes occurred in the next decades, especially after 1840, although administrative appointments remained difficult to obtain. In 1844 there

were

six district

in the lower police section they

50 marshalls, about 12 were Irish in the Sixth

watchmen, none seemingly

were perhaps 6

Irish. In

Ward. In 1855,

1847 31 of

when newly

Irish;

1

constables.

elected

mayor Fernando Wood,

partly to curtail crime and partly to gain votes, appointed 246 officers, half Irish

surnames. There were then 800 on the

were probably from

force, of

had

whom approximately 400

Ireland.^''

The Fire Department, on

but

Of the mayor's 66 policemen were apparently

of 3

a voluntary

group from the colonial period until 1865,

had even fewer

Irish than the police, and none became chief engineer before the Civil War. However, some gained considerable

prided

itself

its

elitism.

It

fame, notably John Brice, born in Belfast in

1

823,

who

arrived in

New

York a

One of four sons, he and each of his brothers joined He was first elected foreman of the company in 1853

year later with his family.

Hose Company No. 42. and then elected city councilman in 1860 and alderman in 1865. In 1863, during the Draft Riots, Engineer Brice saw a mob trying to set fire to a house occupied by "colored people." In defending the property, he ordered his company

to "kill

any man who resists you." The home and a whole block of buildings were saved.

Thomas

Cleery, whose father was "an arch rebel to British domination," became a foreman with Washington Engine Company No. 20. Thomas P. Walsh, born in 1834, arrived in New York in 1838. He became assistant foreman of Engine Company No. 20 and later was elected an alderman.'''* Relatively few numbers in the department were Irish born, however, perhaps because there was no salary attached to the position or perhaps because of the inbred hierarchy of the department. Still, membership did provide some access to politics and society.

There were other areas of employment in the city government. John Clancy

was

a clerk in the

County Clerk's Office

recording clerk. John Kelly was sheriff and

in 1860,

Hugh

and Lawrence Clancy a

Kelly deputy sheriff.

Many

departments, however, like the Bureau of City Revenue or the Croton

Aqueduct, had few

Irish. In

whom appear to have of ninety-nine. In

1

been

1830 there were eighty-eight notary pubUcs, four of

and

in 1849 there

were possibly only

The Insh and the

847 only two Irishmen were working in the Custom House

Emerging City

out of a staff of seventy-three. By

1

860, the

numbers had increased only slightly.

For the most part, the remaining city agencies only offered a token presence.^^

Quasi-public institutions such as the or the

Roman

Roman

Catholic Female Orphan

Asylum provided

Catholic Orphan

a little

Asylum

employment, but

philanthropic organizations like the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile

Delinquents or the Institution for the Deaf and

Dumb were

dominated by the

Protestant cultural establishment, and thus doors remained closed to the

newcomers.

^^

StiU, the political landscape

McKeon, (1849),

was named

was changing

rapidly by midcentury. John

The

Irish

American

founded by Patrick Lynch, used McKeon's career as a model

for others.

Irish born,

"What he was, you

are:

.

.

.

district attorney in 1850.

what he

is,

any of you

may be.

Be honest,

faithful,

industrious and energetic, and the highest honors of the land are open to you."^^

A Democrat in the turbulent politics of the

1850s,

McKeon managed to have a

long and varied career. There were a few second- or third-generation Irish in

important city and state positions, including historian Henry C. Murphy, Peter B.

Sweeny, and jurist Charles O'Conor, but again the Irish presence was limited.

In 1867, 4 of the 32 state senators

18 of the 126 least

were

Irish

assemblymen were members

born or first-generation

Irish,

and

of the first generation. In I860, at

4 of the 17 members of the Board of Aldermen, were

Irish,

including

Terence Farley and John R. Brady, and 6 of the 23 Board of Councilmen, including Joseph Shannon and Charles McCarthy, were 14 city to

councilmen appeared to be

members

of

immediate

so. In

Irish decent.

1

800,

none

of the

The same applied

of the state legislature.

Ties of family and community, although stretched tight by so

nonetheless bound together

many

many burdens,

poor and not-so-poor immigrants. Perhaps

was the help they gave relatives and friends in the old country. and self-improvement. Money was raised to bring family members to America. More than half of the immigrants who arrived in 1838 had tickets purchased by friends or relatives. During the next decade, more than a million dollars a year was sent back to Ireland to pay the passage of kin. These were hard-earned dollars, back-breaking dollars, often raised in the most menial of jobs. But it was worth the effort to escape famine, tax collectors, rent the best evidence

There was a

agents,

and

spirit of self-help

civil strife.

Many thought not only of their own families back home An English visitor in the early

but of the fate of the old country as a whole.

1840s, Charles Lyell, noted a "grand Repeal demonstration" seeking an

the Act of

Union

27

five out

Irish,

(1800)

and "an endless procession

end to

of Irish parading the streets

with portraits of O'Connell emblazoned on their banners." For

Lyell, Irish

thoughts were of British, not American politics. He, like Philip Hone, disapproved of candidates appealing to Irish sympathizers and their "ignorant

and

economic

obstacles,

but a people had been successfully transformed. Ties of

Early National

America

Hostility remained, as did other social and

prejudices."

28 Colonial

community were also manifest in the growth and development of the

New York. By 1808, New York had a population of about some 13,000 were Catholics, and most of these were Irish. In 1810, there

Catholic Church in 80,000;

was one church

(

St. Peter's),

one school, and three priests.^' Pope Pius VII created

which was New York, and Reverend Richard Luke Concanen, a Dominican, was named first bishop. In 1809 a cornerstone for a new church was laid on Mott and Mulberry Streets. Known as St. Patrick's four Suffragan Sees, one of

Cathedral,

it

was completed

included the state of

and became the seat

York and part

New

of

was witnessed by some 4,000

dedication service

Mayor DeWitt

in 1815

New

of the diocese,

Jersey.

which

The impressive

persons, including former

Clinton.

Quickly joining

St. Peter's

in the first decades of the century, in addition to

was the Transfiguration Church (1836) on Mott Street (both Mott Street churches served the needs of Sixth Ward Irish) and St. James on James Street. By 1840 Transfiguration was the largest parish in New York, estimated St. Patrick's,

to

have 10,000 parishioners.

St.

in short supply.

New

Devotional

body"

to,

in

but not always with success. Somehow,

obtained.

still

life

also posed questions. Practicing Catholics, or at least a "great

them, received

of

Money was always

Pew rental, not often used in Ireland, became more common

York. Loans were resorted

revenues were

same

Patrick's ministered to almost the

number.*" Various problems plagued church administrators.

Communion at least once or twice a year,

according to

Bishop John Hughes, but attendance at Mass was often overlooked, especially

New York. A lack of priests and churches was, in part, responsible, A New York priest

in prefamine

along with a general lack of information about religion.

observed that "half of our Irish population here Catholicity

was the

attract churchgoers.

young

Music and song enlivened

priest, decried the fact that the liturgy

would be more as a social and

is

Catholic merely because

religion of the land of their birth."*'

"effective of good."

Still,

There were changes to

services. Richard L. Burtsell, a

was

in Latin

Latin held sway.

religious event, gradually disappeared

and believed English

The wake,

celebrated

from the home and was

adopted as a church function. Issues such as confession and salary also arose

and were more or parish

less settled,

and by the mid-nineteenth century the

was an established institution

in the city. Gaelic as a language

used in church services or elsewhere. Bishop Hughes believed of the past, society.

An

and

its

exception was Father Joseph Burke

With the founding minimal

Irish

rarely

was something

use would further separate newcomers from the general

Columba's on West 25th at least a

it

was

who

preached in

Irish at St.

Street.*"

of St. Peter's, the first halting steps

religious education for the

were taken to provide

few children

very small congregation. There was a "free school" at

who were

St. Peter's

part of a

by 1800 and in

1803 a building was constructed next to the church, especially for educational

29

attempts to form them in the

The insh and ihe

purposes. There were no public schools, as

first

colonial period had failed. Children were expected to be taught if

by parents, and

they had money, by tutors and church schools, or not taught at

for schools

grew as the population increased.

November 1815

Connolly, arrived in

1817

St.

New

first

York's second bishop, John

was opened

church. Priests and lay teachers were in charge.

Ehzabeth Seton and the

Sisters of Charity in the

The need

voyage from Dublin, and in

after a long

Patrick's Charity or Free School

all.

in the

basement of the

possible that

is

It

same year opened

Mother

New York's

orphanage in the Diocese and also conducted a free school. In 1814 there

were 486 Catholic students later,

a

in free schools

and 500 a year

later.

Twenty years

new two-story brick building, also on Mulberry Street, was erected. Boys

occupied the

first floor, girls,

the second, where the Sisters of Charity were in

charge.^^

The

role of public funding, as well as the competition for

money and

educational control with the Public School Society, founded in 1805,

The Public School

increasingly important.

Eddy and John Murray instill

Jr.

Society, led

became

by Quakers Thomas

and dominated by the Protestant hierarchy, sought

values of the ruling gentry.

to

Many Catholics eagerly sought an alternative

school. In 1806 the state legislature passed an act authorizing the distribution of public

run by

money

to all free schools in

St. Peter's.

New York City.

This included the school

Funds were administered by the mayor and City Council.

Peter's received a first grant of $ 1,565.78 in

May

1806.^"^

until 1826,

when such

great need

and the controversy surrounding the action. In 1830

150 boys and 120 interestingly,

600

girls in

Obviously,

attendance, while

was ended,

Patrick's

St.

despite their

St. Peter's

had

had 250 boys and,

were in the

In contrast, 6,000 pupils

girls.

schools, while 15,320

visitor

aid to the Catholic free schools

St.

Awards were continued

society's public

were in 430 private schools and 2,544 in charity schools.*^

New Yorkers still believed education was a private responsibility. A

from England, Henry Fearon, noted that "day schools are numerous.

Some of them respectable, none large. A teacher, that is, an usher, at any of these establishments,

is

a situation not

species of correction

is

allowed.

.

worth the attention

.

.

The emigrant

of the poorest

man.

No

proprietors of seminaries are

Scotch and Irish." Fearon observed no "respectable

"

to be seen here, "subordination being foreign to the

comprehension of the youth

as well as aged of the country."''^'

Still,

English school master was

education was a means of gaining a

livelihood.

The independence noted by Fearon was

a

a commumany church officials.

growing problem facing

nity threatened with assimilation, at least in the view of

The simmering controversy over school policy between Catholics and the Public School Society became more heated. By 1 826 there were 35,000 Catholics in New York, with three churches and five Catholic schools. The stakes expanded

accordingly.'^''

Reverend John Dubois,

New

York's third bishop, anx-

EmergLng City

ious not to stir up popular resentment, tried to have the society hire a Cathohc

30 Colonial

and

teacher at Pubhc School No. 5 on Mott Street, in addition to possibly having

The

Early National

the society sell one of

America

turned dow^n both suggestions, hoping more Catholic children v^^ould attend

discontinued buildings to

its

public schools.^^ Dubois, elderly and

St. Patrick's.

society

did not press the issue. His assistant

ill,

and more.

did,

John Hughes, son of a poor farmer, born in County Tyrone in 1797, arrived

became

in the United States in 1817,

a friend of Dubois,

and v^as ordained

1826 in Philadelphia. Hughes became coadjudicator bishop and

He was

fourth bishop in 1839.

a militant leader, forceful,

what he saw

unrelenting, especially with regard to

whether in school rooms or in the

streets.

uncompromising and

as Protestant bigotry, in his defense of

officials, at a

time of angry and

violent nativism, "if a single Catholic church were burned in

would become

a

Moscow."

in

York's

At one point

Catholics during the 1840s, he informed city

city

New

Earlier in 1831, St. Mary's

New

had been

York, the set afire,

Mayor James Harper in 1844, he was of his churches. Hughes replied, "No,

but not destroyed.^' In talking to nativist

asked sir;

if

but

I

he was frightened about the

fate

am afraid that some of yours will be burned. "^° In fact, no churches of

any denomination were destroyed by mobs in in Boston

New York,

though

it

did happen

and Philadelphia.

Hughes did not shy away from the school question. There were about 60,000 New York in 1839, seven churches, 1,200 students at three free church schools.''' These schools, he felt strongly, should be financed by the Catholics in

government. Hughes,

at

odds with

Tammany

Hall, obtained

an ally in Whig

governor William H. Seward. Aware that thousands of poor Irish as well as other

immigrant children were growing up without proper education or

care, the

governor proposed in 1840 the "establishment of schools in which they instructed by teachers speaking the fessing the

same

faith.

"''^

may be

same language with themselves and

Although the move

pro-

may have been a political ploy to

gain immigrant votes, Seward seemed to believe strongly in promoting equal

educational opportunity as a

The school city's history.

issue

came

When

means

of ending social inequality.

at a particularly troubled

and disjointed time

in the

Bishop Hughes and other militant Catholics spoke of

church schools supported by public money, part of which came from taxes paid by Catholics, and offering to teach Catholic children, rabid nativists such as publisher and

mayor James Harper, saw

a dangerous conspiracy. Bishop

Hughes

found the Public School Society and the idea of a common education profoundly anti-Catholic and believed for

it

would destroy religious freedom

in the state.

Why,

example, would Catholics who were forbidden by the church to use the King

James

Bible,

have to hear

it

read every day in public schools? Surely another

reason to have separate schools was the American Protestant Society, founded in 1843 in

New

York to convert Catholic immigrants, thereby continuing a

long-established program established in Ireland.

new many immigrants

Hughes's arguments along with those of Seward were printed in a newspaper, the Freeman's Journal,

first

issued in 1840. For

such arguments were persuasive, partly because of their dislike

for the en-

trenched Protestant estabhshment that ran the School Society. Hughes's position,

however, was not favorably received by the general public, the press, or

the city government. Even for 2,

the idea of a

common

some

Walter Walsh explains in chapter

Irish, as

education, with their children sitting next to other

ethnic groups and Irish lay teachers being employed, seemed a viable alternative to the church's position. In fight in Ireland,

some

where the more

in opposition to O'Connell's

Denman's the Truth this point ardently at

respects, the

argument continued the

radical, secular

Ireland

more church-oriented Repeal

Teller, part of

issue.

bitter

movement was Party.

the Irish-Catholic press, founded in

opposed Seward on the school

home and opposed any

Young

William 1

825, at

He felt religion belonged some 12,000

discriminatory legislation. Only Jews,

out of a population of 312,000 in 1840, supported Hughes on the issue. Though

commented

Jewish-Irish relationships are rarely

hated by

elitists,

on, both groups

were equally

but there seems to have been an undercurrent of resentment

between poor Irish and the rising Jewish middle class. The Civil War Draft Riots of 1863 saw Irish rioting in Jewish neighborhoods. The school issue, however, was an example of mutual interest and cooperation.'''^ The Public School Society was willing to expunge anti-Catholic material, but insisted on the separation of church and state and cited state laws specifically

prohibiting the use of the

common

school fund by religious societies. Seward

continued to hold Hughes's position. Supporters carried 7,000 signatures to

Albany in 1841

in

an

effort to

sway the

legislature. Meetings, handbills,

and

speeches added to the furor. Whigs and Democrats were caught up in a storm that they feared they could not control.

many Whigs moved to

support

Even

as

Seward clung to his position,

common education. The Democrats,

in

1

caught on

Hughes responded

a fragile fence, carefully measured the political winds.

late

84 1 with a proposal to form a separate political entity, the Carroll Hall

faction. For nativists like

Hone,

this

was

proof,

if

such was needed, that

Catholics really intended to rule the country.

As

is

victory.

usual in city elections, the

The

Hall's 2,000 votes gave

his actual influence.

same

rights as

A

bill

fall

election of 1841 ended in a narrow

Hughes

a balance of power,

much beyond

introduced in the legislature gave city wards the

towns with regard

to schools,

making each ward responsible

for

the administration and distribution of school money. After furious campaigning, the bill barely

passed and was immediately signed by Seward.

day, April 11, 1842, however,

many

voted with their

fists.

On election

Bishop Hughes's

was stoned and partly ransacked by a mob of nativists. Cathedral windows were smashed. Hughes was not home at the time.^* Victory even in the form of the Ward bill carried a price. Many New Yorkers found Hughes residence

threatening and dangerous.

31 The insh and

the

Emer^ngCity

The bill was not enforced and Catholic schools did not receive

32 Colonial

and

but the Public School Society did not survive the

public money,

crisis either. In

1

842 the

first

Early National

Board of Education was elected, controlled by non-Catholics. Daily Bible

America

reading persisted, despite Catholic protests. In 1853 the society the Board of Education. Hughes,

who became archbishop in

became

part of

1850, continued his

struggle for a strong but separate Catholic school system, although the

common

school system provided education for most Irish children and opportunities for teachers. Hughes's

now

dream

partly realized in the

of Irish Catholic teachers for

common

young Catholics was

school system, especially in heavily Irish

wards."

By midcentury the issue

of slavery

had come to the

fore

and become

intertwined with the always present concern with Irish nationalism. This issue

was a special component of continuing education as the Irish community became more an integral part of American society. American foreign policy, particularly America's role in helping Irish revolutionaries imprisoned by Britain, also

stoked the fires of mutual antipathy between the Irish and their nativist

opponents. The jailing of leaders of the Young Ireland revolt of 1848, including

Thomas

F.

Meagher, John Mitchel, and John Martin,

"cause," further stirred sympathy as well as action. after a split

with Daniel O'Connell's

now

martyrs to the

The movement developed

National Repeal Association.

less militant

Public meetings were held and petitions sent to Congress to try to persuade the

American government

to bring pressure

February 1852 William H. Seward, to the Irish

now

on the

British to free the group. In

a senator

but

still

a Whig, paid tribute

on behalf of the prisoners. Southern senators objected to the proposal,

fearing repercussions translate into

among

freedom

their slave population.

Freedom

for Ireland

could

for slaves.

The debate became unnecessary when Mitchel and others escaped from the Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). Mitchel arrived in New York in November 1853. He was warmly greeted at City Hall, but in a curious, heavy-handed way, he missed an opportunity to become an effective leader of the Irish community. He seemingly assumed that the tributes given to him were meant not as personal accolades, but as insults to the British government. Further, at a banquet he criticized Secretary of State William L. Marcy and American foreign policy, proclaiming himself "a professed revolutionist" who wanted America to become a "stamping ground" for revolution. In 1854 he British penal colony in

committed another error by stating he found no crime in slavery: "We, for our wish we had a good plantation, well stocked with healthy negroes in

part,

Alabama." For many

New Yorkers,

views weakened support

including the editor of the Tribune, Mitchel's

for those struggling to free Ireland.

Next Mitchel

angered popular Archbishop Hughes and his large constituency by supporting the seizure of

Rome

by

Italian republicans

and

their creation of a

new

civil

government. Mitchel also was willing to support the repressive Czarist govern-

ment if it would lead to a free Ireland.^*^ In October 1 854 William Smith

O'Brien,

another exile from Tasmania, arrived in

New York and also received an enthu-

siastic reception, including official greeting

to accept these plaudits

with

little

and a dinner. O'Brien

comment,

w^as willing

realizing the influence of Irish

voters in the city should be used to embarrass the British, not the

government.

The

He

did not take

on Hughes or the slave

American

issue.

slavery issue remained a contentious one. Distressed by a statement of

Daniel O'Connell and a papal bull of Pope Gregory XVI, both condemning the "peculiar institution," many, including the Citizen, founded by Mitchel in 1854, thought

it

was

who would jeopardize "the present men for the vague forlorn hope of elevating blacks.

a "bad Irishman"

freedom of a nation of white

The Irish Ameiican saw Republicans raising a banner inscribed, "Death to and down with Popery, Slavery, and Rum."^^ As a group, the Irish voted Democratic, partly because of their fear of opposition Republicans, popularly thought to be related to

Know-Nothings, and partly because

of job opportunities offered

Manhattan in 1834 as seen from Brooklyn Heights. Painting tradition

first

popularized by the Dublin-bom

artist

New York from

William

Guy Wall

"The Bay of New York taken from Brooklyn Heights" was reproduced tint

and on a plate by Staffordshire (England)

as the

city's

skyline changed.

(From the

in the 1820s.

It

this

by

prospect was a

(1792-c. 1862). Wall's

for sale as

an engraved aqua

was widely imitated, with variations,

collection of Leo Hershkowitz.)

33 The

Irish

and

the

Emerging City

34

the entrenched, though divided

Colonial and

as the Civil

Early National

They

America

of the nation.

v^ere

Tammany

War began, and most no small

Hall. Politics

of the Irish

part of the conflict.

marched

was

largely put aside

in support of the Union.

Immigrant or

not, they

were citizens

The road from colonist to citizen had been a long and difficult one.

It

was not

easy for immigrants arriving from farm or town during the colonial and ante-

bellum period to adjust

to foreign surroundings,

language. Wherever they turned, they

new

customs, conditions, and

met resentment and

were no official welcoming committees at the dock.

prejudice.

There

Yet, slowly, often painfully,

the Irish found a new life for themselves, as the following chapters attest. Slowly,

doors of opportunity to professions, trades, labor, and government were pushed

open by hard

effort

took a dreadful

and enterprise. The costs were high. Disease, squalor, hatred

toll of

human lives.

Yet,

with

spirit

and determination, the

Irish

gained a foothold and then secured at least a grudging acceptance. The next generations would have a firm foundation upon which to build. offered a pleasing prospect.

New

The climb was and would be arduous, but

from the summit would be worth the

effort.

York

the view

Joyce D. Goodjnend

CHAPTER

"Upon

bunch

a

THE

1

of Straw"

IRISH IN

COLONIAL

NEW YORK CITY

W.

HO WERE the Irish of colonial New York City?

men and women who

emigrated from Ireland to New York and other ports in British America have been pawns in a war of words between partisans of the Scots-Irish (those residents of Ireland whose ancestors originated in Scotland) and the Catholic Irish natives of the land.^ Exaggerated claims have been advanced on both sides, but the enduring legacy of the debate For nearly a century, the

has been the adoption by the historical profession of the Scots-Irish interpretation placing immigrants from Ulster,

most of whom were Presbyterian, at center

stage in accounts of the Irish in colonial America.

The tendency to early

conflate the Scots-Irish experience with the Irish experience in

America has not been challenged by historians

of colonial

New York despite

the prodigious efforts of early-twentieth-century researchers to

document the

presence in the city and countryside of Irish immigrants whose roots were not in Scotland. tion, the

Brimming with informative works

of

detail,

though imperfect in conceptualiza-

John D. Crimmins, Michael

J.

O'Brien, Richard

J.

Purcell,

and

Richard Doyle have been virtually ignored by the authors of the major studies of

New York.' Indeed, what is striking about New York, especially in light of the critical part

seventeenth- and eighteenth-century the historical hterature on early

played by ethnicity in the colony's development, the Irish in

is

the failure of vmters to discuss

New York before the Revolution in more than a perfunctory way.'^

36 Colonial and

The biases of historians alone cannot explain why a numerically considerable population has remained historically invisible for so long. Efforts to reconstruct

Early National

the history of early Irish

America

uniformity

among

New

Yorkers are also complicated by the lack of

who

those

emigrated from Ireland to

New

York in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At this time, Ireland was culturally and religiously diverse,

encompassing individuals of Irish, English, Scottish, French,

Roman

and German ancestry, as well as

Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians,

Quakers, Huguenots, and Methodists.'* Additionally, the problem of identifying city dwellers

who were Irish is thorny, since using nomenclature as an indicator

of Irish identity has

been called into question as a research method.^ In view of

the fact that certain surnames were not unique to the Irish but were shared by

other British people, for the purposes of this study

only those people

though

who were

this procedure

have categorized as

I

Irish

such in contemporary records, even

undoubtedly leads to an underestimate of the number of

Irish in eighteenth-century Irish

identified as

New York City.

men and women had found

their

way

to the shores of

Dutch

before England captured the colony from the

Manhattan even

in 1664. But in the late

seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the Irish constituted a minuscule proportion of the city's population. Only with the advent of a regularized

emigrant trade from Ireland in the

late

1

720s did the numbers of

York begin to climb.^ Ships that brought cargoes in the linen industry used their return journeys to

indentured servants and paying passengers. The alongside Irish- American profits of

commerce

merchants on both sides

American ports

human

1

New

to transport

developed

traffic that

in the eighteenth century

of the Atlantic

entrepreneurs for the colony. By the

Irish in

of flaxseed to Ireland for use

augmented the

while furnishing workers and

770s people of Irish descent had become

a substantial presence in the city.

Ships carried hundreds of immigrants from ports in northern and southern Ireland to

New

York City during the eighteenth century, but the majority

these passengers colonies. "There countries,

put

it

moved is

of

them

New

York colony or

room and employ

plenty of

where many

in 1774.^

to other parts of

for

them

Moreover, the paths of some

Irish

by way

of

back McRobert

in the

are gone," Scottish visitor Patrick

luted, as they traveled to the city

of

to other

newcomers were convo-

England or Philadelphia.

Bricklayer Patrick Blanchville, for example, noted in a 1768 advertisement that he

was

"lately

from Kilkenny in

Ireland,

and

just arrived

with Capt.

Gifford from Bristol."* Nevertheless, the overall pattern of Irish immigration to

resembled that to Philadelphia in timing gauge to the pace

at

which the

New

York,

which

if

not in volume, provides a rough

city's Irish

population grew.'^ From the late

seventeenth century until the American Revolution, ships regularly transported

immigrants from Ireland to

were sharp increases

in the

New

York. At two points in time, however, there

number of

ships reaching the city.

A cluster of vessels carrying indentured servants from Ireland docked in the city betv^een

388

1

728 and

1

The six ships for which statistics are available held

732.

men and women, many of whom were skilled workers. Over the next few ^°

made

decades, a variety of brigantines, schooners, scows, and sloops

from Dublin, Cork, conveying

human

Londonderry, and other Irish ports to

Belfast,

With the conclusion

of the

Irish ports

headed 1

1773 David Colden noted,

"I find

and

York,

French and Indian War, however, there was an

New York City in the early Britain

New

way

cargoes in assorted quantities.

upsurge in immigration from Ireland. Between

embarked from

their

Ireland. "^^

for

New

1

763 and

1

774

at least

39 ships

York.'^ Immigrants streamed into

good portion of them from Ireland. In August

770s, a

many

comeing in

settlers are

this Year

from

John Watts, a prominent city merchant, echoed Colden

Patrick

"many Scots and Irish are come here."''' That same year McRobert commented on "the arrival of so many adventurers from

Britain

and

in

1

774, observing that

arrived at

Ireland; they tell

New

me

that

no

than twenty two vessels have

less

York with passengers within three twelvemonths."'* The

veracity of these observations is substantiated by a report published in Gentle-

man's Magazine in July 1774 stating that 1,611

New

Irish passengers

York between August 3 and November

29,

immigrants, reflected in the 74 percent increase in lation from 10,768 in 1756 to 18,726 in

1

had landed in

1773.'^ This flood of

New York's white

popu-

771, undoubtedly swelled the city's

Irish population.

Those who

Ireland for the

left

American colonies

in the eighteenth century

did so in four ways: as indentured servants, as paying passengers, as of the British army,

to

New York,

but

and as convicts. Few,

it is

if

probable that a good

the colony were natives of Ireland.

any, Irish convicts

number

members

were transported

of the soldiers stationed in

Enlisting in the British

army

offered Irish

men a means of getting to America, where they could assess their prospects for future success.

Thomas

Once his term of service in New York's whose sister lived in Dublin, became

Scurlock,

Gilliland,

garrison had ended,

a vintner.'^ William

who established himself as a merchant in the city prior to promoting Champlain valley, left his home near Armagh in northern

a settlement in the

Ireland by enlisting in His Majesty's 35th

discharge in Philadelphia in 1758, he

Regiment

moved

fortuitous marriage to the daughter of a well-to-do

of Foot.

New

to

York

Following his City,

where

a

merchant launched him on

his career.'*

Whether impatient

to test their skills in the

new

labor market or just fed

up

with military discipline, a number of Irish soldiers stationed in New York during the years of the French and Indian into the city's population of

Regiment

of Foot at

New

York City between March 30 and April

included James Carson, a laborer

David Herron,

War deserted, and some undoubtedly blended

workingmen. Deserters from His Majesty's 22nd

also a laborer,

bom

in the

27, 1761,

county of Fermanagh, aged 25;

from the county of Down, aged 23; and two natives

37 j^g

j^d i^

Colonial

New

York City

County of Tyrone, 22-year-old James Gallagher,

38

of the

Colonial and

Robert Smith, a laborer.'^

and 23-year-old

The majority of Irish immigrants to colonial New York came as either paying

Early National

America

a weaver,

passengers or indentured servants, though in what proportions carmot be

determined from available evidence. Advertisements

monplace

in the

New

Gazeteer carried one in March

1

774 that read, "A few

from Cork, on board the Gallway Packet, Street, near the

for servants

were com-

York press from the 1720s on. Rivington's New-York

Exchange.

Irish Servants just arrived

to be sold

by Mrs. Lynch in Broad

"^°

Indentured servants have loomed large in accounts of Irish migration to the

American

who

colonies, but those Irish

possessed the

themselves or members of their families to not be overlooked. Visits

home by

means

to transplant

New York, though less visible, must

migrants, as well as letters, kindled the

interest of people still in Ireland. Impressed

by the good fortune

of a

kinsman

who had prospered as a merchant in New York, Robert Neilson, of Maddybenny, County Derry,

Ireland,

wrote his brother in Massachusetts in 1764: "William

now here and sold a large Cargo of flaxseed this season in Dublin, he sets out from home tomorrow on his way to London and from that to Newyorkc; Neilson

...

I

is

have

five

Children alive and Intend to send

Summer."^^ In some instances,

my oldest Son to Nev^ork this good in New York

men who had aheady made

allocated funds for relatives to travel there. Innkeeper David Young, one of

whose brothers of

lived in

County Tyrone, provided in his 1 769

will that "the sons

my brother John and the sons of my sisters, Jane and Mary,

come years.

to this city, shall

have their passage paid ...

if

they

such as choose to

come within

three

//22

Although the distribution

of

workers cannot be plotted as precisely as one

would wish, the occupational profile

of

New York City's Irish in the half -cen-

tury before the Revolution reveals a full range of occupations, including mer-

chants and professionals

who

belonged to the

city's elite, skilled

craftsmen,

mariners, and unskilled workers.

Heading the

men

Irish occupational hierarchy

were the merchants. After 1750,

of Irish antecedents engrossed the lion's share of

trade to Ireland.

"The

typical firm," states

Thomas

New

York's important

Truxes, "was a flaxseed

house that gathered, cleaned, and packaged seed and shipped exchange

for linens, salted provisions,

potatoes, coal, and shoes.

it

to Ireland in

and a few minor imports, such as

Most of the city's Irish merchants operated retail stores

through which they marketed a wide variety of British manufactures, along with

West India goods and

articles they

Estimated to number 30

took directly from home."^"'

at its peak, the city's Irish

included overseas merchants of the

first

merchant community

and second rank,

men who were

involved in intercolonial trade, and retail shopkeepers."'* Waddell Cunningham, in partnership with

Thomas Greg

of Belfast in the firm of Greg,

and Company, towered above most

of his competitors in

Cunningham

New

York as he

engaged in complex trading operations. Counted

among

merchants as well were Hugh Wallace, the son

of a

merchant, and George FoUiot,

who embarked on his

the city's principal

prominent Waterford

career in

New York under

the watchful eye of his uncle, a merchant in Londonderry. Lesser merchants

who imported

such as James and Acheson Thompson, capitalized

on

linen from Newry, also

their connections in Ireland.

The business

of other Irish

men was on

a

more modest

scale.

Mulligan, whose father was a perukemaker and whose brother

Hercules

Hugh was

a

Company, which traded to the West Indies, ran a shop specializing in men's clothing. The city's Irish entrepreneurs also numbered some tavemkeepers, among them John Hill of the town of Omagh partner in the firm of Kortright and

who

New

gave notice in 1774 that he had opened the

Beef Steak and Oyster

House.^^

men

Several professional

made

of Irish birth

their

mark

in late-eighteenth-

New York City, among them physicians John Charlton and Samuel Clossy. A Dublin native and graduate of Trinity College, Charlton came to New century

York as a surgeon in the British

embarked on the private

sion,

Army

in

1

762 and, after resigning his commis-

practice of medicine. Clossy, also a graduate of

Trinity College, Dublin, as well as a fellow of Ireland's College of Physicians,

was

invited to join the faculty of King's College soon after his arrival in

York.

One

of his colleagues there

was

who had

natural philosophy and mathematics,

Glasgow. Attorney Joseph Murray, an

Irish

studied at the University of

immigrant whose distinguished

career spanned the middle years of the eighteenth century, factor of King's College. John Wilson,

New

Irish-born Robert Harpur, a professor of

was a major bene-

who noted that he was late of the Kingdom

when he made his will in 1 749, was a schoolmaster.^'^' who worked with their hands undoubtedly outnumbered those of more genteel status. Printer Hugh Gaine, a Belfast native who achieved fame as the publisher of the New-York Mercury, stands out among the city's craftsmen.^'' The Irish artisan community also included Philip Brooks, a bookbinder,- Thomas Dunn, a combmaker; Richard Lightfoot, a pinmaker; Nesbett of Ireland Irish

immigrants

Deane, a hatter; John Hickey, a

silk

dyer and scowerer,- and coachmakers

Jeremiah Field and Elkanah Deane.^^ Advertising his

skills in

1

Thomas

768,

Vallentine boasted that he had "conducted the Gardening Business for the Right

Hon. The

Earl of Belvedere, a

Nobleman remarkable

for elegant taste, extensive

Gardens and Plantations."^' Greater numbers of Irish skilled workers, however, could be found as Scores of Irish privateers

who

tailors,

New

sailed

breeches makers, and weavers.

Yorkers were

from

men

of the sea. For

proved a bonanza.^" In the will he drafted in but

now

of

New York,

mariner,"

be owing, or coming to

them, the host of

New York harbor during the French and Indian War left to a

me by the

Commander, now bound on

1

758,

Michael Dunn, "of

friend "all

my Prize money

Ireland,

that

may

Privateer 'Royal Hunter,' Captain Harrison,

a cruise."^'

When

opportunities for signing on to

39 The

Irish in

Colonial

New

York City

war

40

privateers diminished as the theater of

Colonial and

mariners faced hard times. For many, the munificent bounties offered for

Early National

enhstment

America

who

shifted to the Caribbean, Irish

Of the 177

in provincial units proved irresistible.

Irish volunteeers

gave their occupations to recruiters, 66 (37%) identified themselves as

mariners. For enterprising ship captains such as

Thomas

Randall from County

Limerick, successful privateering ventures during the war were the springboard to mercantile careers.^^

A

men

host of Irish

New

earned their livelihood in

York City as

Forty-one percent of the volunteer soldiers (72 out of 177) were

laborers.

laborers.^"'

Shortly after the midpoint of the eighteenth century, Irish laborers began to enter the ranks of the city's cartmen, the

goods in the

city. In

estimate, Irish

men

men who were

licensed to transport

the years betweeen 1756 and 1765, in

Graham Hodges's

accounted for about 5 percent of the 386 cartmen enrolled

as freemen.^'* Irish

indentured servants bulked large in

decades leading up to the Revolution. They

New

York City's economy in the

filled a variety of jobs,

ranging from

barber to chimney sweep to tobacconist. But the majority probably worked in the cloth trades.^^

As a rule,

colonial

New Yorkers did not differentiate among immigrants from

Ireland. Perhaps influenced

by stereotypes perpetuated in theatrical productions

such as The Committee or The Faithful Irishman, presented in 1

762, or literary works such as

New

in

New

York in

David Garrick's play The Irish Widow, published

York in 1773, they tended to use the term "Irish" indiscriminately.^^

Yet the impression of homogeneity fostered by convention cause the

city's Irish

is

misleading be-

population not only was drawn from both the north and

south of Ireland, but was comprised of people whose ancestry was Irish, English, Scottish,

and German, and whose religious

loyalties

were divided between

Protestant and Catholic.

Pinpointing any pattern in the geography of Irish migration to

New York is

hazardous, given the fact that information on place of birth in Ireland is available for

only 19 percent (87 of 453) of a sample of the

eighteenth century. Nonetheless,

it is

city's Irish

(37%) of these individuals came from locations in Scots-Irish

population in the

more than a third northern Ireland, where the

suggestive that

little

were concentrated.

Although Governor Robert Hunter informed English authorities in 1 720 that "the Inhabitants increase day [daily] chiefly from

New

England

the North of Ireland," the subsequent flow of immigration to

Ulster never matched that to colonies to the south.^^ Irish

& of late from

New

York from

Among the city's northern

immigrants were James Cochran, a pedlar born in the parish of Coleraine,

County Derry, and perukemaker Hugh Mulligan and Antrim; and in

1

open a school in

Hugh

his family

from County

764 Thomas Carroll from Newry advertised that he planned to

New

York

City.'^*^

Immigrants from Belfast included printer

Gaine, merchants Hamilton Young and Robert Ross Waddell, and tallow

chandler Alexander Wallace,

James Wallace,

The

number

largest

Skilled craftsmen

ments

of the

1

who in his

1

772 will

"my honored father,

New

immigrants to

York came from Dublin.

emphasized their Dublin origins

760s and

1

770s. In his

1

768

will,

in

newspaper advertise-

merchant Hugh Kennedy Hoy

now

residing in Dublin, Ireland.

Immigrants from other places in southern Ireland included merchant Robert Pillson from Drogheda, mariner Charles

Bums from Kilkenny, and coachmaker

Jeremiah Field, whose brother John was a carpenter in Tipperary.'*°

Recent scholarship has cautioned that place of birth cannot be taken as

a

foolproof sign of ethnicity in eighteenth-century Ireland."*^ Anglo-Irish lived in

Dublin alongside Gaelic

Irish,

and

Scots-Irish,

though concentrated in Ulster,

did not form the entire population of that region. Nevertheless, the modest

dimensions of immigration from the north of Ireland, the center of Scots-Irish strength,

imply that Presbyterians were not the most influential group in

York City's

New

Irish population.

Historians have emphasized the distinctiveness of Scots-Irish immigration to the

munal

North American ties

among

colonies, pointing to the strength of family

and com-

these Presbyterians from Ulster. Readily identifiable

when

they settled in separate communities on the frontier, they were less visible in pluralistic

Though

urban settings. This was particularly true in the term

was not commonly used

City, in a handful of cases individuals

a 26-year-old mariner

who

New York.

in eighteenth century

New York

were referred to as Scots-Irish. Hugh Brady,

formerly had lived with

New

York City merchant

was called a "Scotch Irishman" when he deserted from a company of Foot at Albany in 1 746."*^ Sixteen-year-old Michael Daugherty was described as a Scotch-Irish servant when he ran away from James McHugh in 1 750.'*^ In a 1755 letter, Catharine Pemberton, whose husband Ebenezer had resigned his Jacob Franks,

post as minister of

New

York City's

First Presbyterian

Church, attributed the

disruptions in the church that had precipitated his action to "a party of the

begotted [bigoted?] Scots Irish Presbyterians."*"*

The

search for

New York City's Scots-Irish logically leads to its Presbyterian

church. Contemporaries as well as later denominational historians recognized that Scots-Irish were a vital element in the mixture of peoples in the city's

Presbyterian church.

When

they petitioned for a charter in

1

766, Presbyterian

leaders noted that the founders of the church included "sundry Protestants of their perswasion "'*'

The

who came

over into the Province from Great Britain and

Samuel Miller, working from documents prepared by Reverend John Rodgers, who had begun his ministry in 1765, noted that around 1750, "a large and respectable portion of the congrega-

Ireland.

congregation's earliest historian,

and the north of Ireland."'*^ When the Church was constructed on Beekman Street in 1 768 to house the overflow from the Wall Street church, "either by accident or, more tion consisted of emigrants from Scotland

new

Brick Presbyterian

41 7-;,^

of Irish

guineas to his mother, Zerviah Hoy,

left 15

£7 to

left

of Belfast.'"^'

j^sh in

Colonial

New

York City

42

probably, by the drawing together of congenial persons, the strong Scotch and

Colonial and

Irish

Early National

older church.

America

element of the Presbyterian membership remained

for the

most part

Determining how numerous Scots-Irish were in the congregation

them from

matter, distinguishing

instances Irish

when

a family's history

Scots

is

One

from northern

is

son of Scottish parents

that

of

their allegiance to the city's Presbyte-

of the church's founders,

Ireland.'*^

or, for

not possible except in the few

known. Therefore, the Scottish ancestry

New Yorkers must be inferred from

rian church.

in the

"'^^

merchant Patrick MacKnight, came

Robert Harpur, the King's College professor, was the

who had moved to Ireland. Samuel Johnson, the college's

Anglican president believed that Professor Harpur would "do very well," even

though he was a

communicants

name

Presbyterian.'*' Harpur's

appears on a 1769

of the city's Presbyterian church, along

Gilliland, the entrepreneur

list

of

with that of William

who planned to settle immigrants in the Champlain

valley.^°

A

New

few other

New York's New York

Yorkers from Ireland were associated with

Presbyterian church. Daniel

McCormick,

a

merchant who

settled in

City in 1766, was a trustee of Brick Church.^^ Mariner John Neilson, whose

1762 will mentions relatives in Bangor, County Down, Ireland,

£100 to be paid towards the purchase

of a

house

left

"the

sum of

for the residence of the Minister

of the Presbyterian Congregation in

New

evident in his instructions that his

nephew would

York." His Presbyterian values were receive a large legacy only

"provided he practices no immoralities of Gaming, Drinking, and other vices. "^'^

Though sufficient evidence exists to disprove James Leyburn's claim that few Scots-Irish settled in

New York during the colonial period, it remains true that New York were of Scottish origin. In this

only a minority of Irish newcomers to respect. Irish

New

York City

offers a

marked

formed a significant segment

contrast to Philadelphia,

New

of the population.^'^ In

where

Scots-

York City, the

dominant group among immigrants from Ireland were the Anglo-Irish. Anglicans, colonial

who made up

America between

were involved

Church

1

approximately one-fifth of the Irish immigrants to

700 and

1

776, comprised descendants of those

in the conquest of Ireland as well as

of Ireland.'"* Heirs to

power and

more recent converts

privilege in their

who

to the

homeland, they also

took advantage of lucrative opportunities in the American colonies. In

New York, Anglo-Irish immigrants gravitated to Trinity Church. Not every

who affiliated with Trinity Church boasted English lineage; printer Hugh Gaine had Scottish roots but became a loyal Anglican in his adopted city.^^ Irish

person

Nor, for that matter, did

all Irish

immigrants with English forebears adhere to

the Anglican Church. Quakers, the vast majority of

vania and Irish.''''

New

Jersey,

may

whom

have numbered a few among

settled in Pennsyl-

New

York's Anglo-

But the correspondence between English ethnicity and Anglicanism was

strong and therefore association with Trinity this important

segment

of

New

York City's

Church provides the

Irish population.

best index of

Anglo-Irish

men were

represented in the highest echelons of

government and society by Governor William Cosby and British naval officer with extensive property holdings

Joseph Murray defended the Crown's interests in

New

Sir Peter

York's

Warren, a

on Manhattan.''^ Attorney

New York courts and became A staunch

the second husband of Grace Cosby, the governor's daughter.^^

Anglican, he worshipped in Trinity as

Church along with wealthy merchants such

Hugh Wallace and Anthony Duane, who served on the vestry. Duane,

a native

County Galway, had been raised by his uncle, the Anglican vicar general of Tuam. Oliver Templeton, whose 1774 marriage was performed by Dr. Miles of

Cooper, the Anglican president of King's College, was a partner in the firm of

Templeton and Stewart.'^" Other Anglo-Irishman active were Robert Pillson and Hercules Mulligan. included sea captains

Cork who married

Among New

New

in the mercantile world

York's Irish Anglicans also

Thomas Randall and Thomas Roach,

in Trinity

Church

in 1778

a native of

County

and was buried there in

1795.^'

most

York's Irish immigrants, Anglicans were the

visible

and

successful.

The German Irish formed an anomalous but historically significant segment of colonial

New York City's Irish population. Descended from families that had

been transplanted to the estates of Lord Southwell in County Limerick in

when

homes

their

they sought

in the Palatinate

relief in

leaving Ireland,

1

709,

of Louis XIV,

New York from their travail as farmers in Ireland.''^ Before

some

of

when Methodist

religion

were ravaged by the armies

them had been converted

to John Wesley's

missionaries visited their

home towns

in

form

of

County

Limerick.

When

Philip Embury, a

Palatines migrated to

New

Wesleyan preacher in

and several other

Ireland,

York in 1760, they found no Methodist society

established and worshipped instead at the Lutheran church of their ancestors.

But after another party of Palatines arrived from Ireland in

1

765,

instigation of his cousin Barbara Heck, began to preach again a

body

was organized

of followers that quickly

Methodist society. The small number of German City in the

1

into Irish

Embury,

New

York City's

Irish,

first

who came to New York

760s are regarded as the pioneers of Methodism in the

The Gaelic

at the

and soon attracted

city.

with their rich culture and history of oppression, formed

the majority of Ireland's population, but constituted a minority in the transatlantic migration. Nevertheless, their presence to colonial

among

America can no longer be ignored, nor can

Kerby Miller's estimate, one-fifth to one-fourth

of

Irish

immigrants

their Catholic faith. In

emigrants between

1

700 and

1776 were Catholics. Most traveled to British America as indentured servants, while some arrived as soldiers.^^ Catholic worship was banned in

all

but Pennsylvania and parts of Maryland

during the colonial period and incentives to assimilate were strong, leading the great majority of Irish Catholic faith.^'*

New

immigrants

to

abandon their accustomed newcomers from

York's rigid penal laws constrained Catholic

43 j^e

Irish in

Colonial

New

York City

promoted

44

practicing their religion and ultimately

Cobnial and

tantism.^^ Faced with a host of negative sanctions, immigrants raised as Catholics

Early National

turned to the

America

children.

brides and

scattering of

grooms

when

men and women

listed in the

mute testimony

offers

churches

city's Protestant

The

their conversion to Protes-

they married and baptized their

with

Irish birthplaces

among

the

marriage records of the Dutch Reformed Church

of the pressures placed

on Catholic

Irish

immigrants to

New York.^^ The supposition that New York had a dearth of Catholics is given added credence by the comments

of

An Anghcan

Popery.'"^''

"there

is

Few

1

New

much

number and

Irish Catholics

York was 'very

infested with

minister living north of the city declared in 1748 that

New York the

not in

in

745 "Robert Janney

Anglican observers. In

thought that Philadelphia, unlike

least face of popery."^*

New

forced to remain concealed, colonial

were drawn from the ranks

York City's

of soldiers stationed in the fort

and

servants indentured to artisans and merchants. In 1700 Governor Bellomont railed against "the recruits that

and several

came from

wore the King's

fellows that ever

Irish Papists

livery, the

Ireland ... a parcel of the vilest

very

also included Irish Catholics, a fact brought out

"Negro

The

conspiracy."'''^

tured servants

who

probability that

labored in

New

faith in Ireland is strengthened

scum

of the

A later generation

amongst 'em."^'

army

by the investigation

more than

a

in Ireland

of British soldiers

few of the

of the

1

741

Irish inden-

York City had been raised in the CathoUc

by Cadwallader Colden's report to a correspon-

dent in 1742 of "the Irish servants of which

country [Ulster and Orange counties]

&.

we have

several in this part of the

the greatest

number

of

them roman

Catholics."^'

Andrew Bumaby, who visited New York in religion of the

church of England there

1

759,

remarked that "besides the

a variety of others: dissenters of all

is

denominations, particularly presbyterians, abound in great numbers, and there are

some few Roman

Catholics. "^^ Just before the Revolution, a Jesuit priest

regularly traveled from

homes

Maryland

of the city's Catholics.

to

New York to celebrate mass in the private

^^

Despite the paucity of direct evidence of an Irish Catholic presence in the city during the half-century before the Revolution,

New York City,

one of the two major ports

Ireland, sheltered

no Catholics

at a

time

it is

difficult to believe that

for ships bearing

when

their

immigrants from

number was spirahng

in

Philadelphia. William Penn's policy of toleration permitted Catholic worship in Pennsylvania,

the early

730s,

and a

when

Roman

Catholic chapel was opened in Philadelphia by

there were probably

no more than three dozen Cathohcs

By 1 757 Philadelphia's Catholic population had multiplied tenfold 378, "of whom 150 were said to be Irish or English," and the remainder

in the to

1

city.^'*

German.^^

Did the group loosely labeled

"Irish"

by outsiders have a

common

belief or a shared history that could serve as a foundation for the

of

an

Irish

community

in colonial

New York City? As early as

core of

development

1741, natives of

Ireland gathered

Accounts

on

Day in celebration of their verdant homeland/^

Patrick's

St.

of St. Patrick's

Day

festivities

appeared in the

succeeding years, including an extended description of the

1

New

York press in

766 celebration that

"Monday last being the Anniversary of St. Patrick, tutelar Saint of Ireland, was ushered in at the dawn, with Fife and Drums, which produced a very agreeable Harmony before the Doors of many Gentlemen of that Nation and others. Many of them Assembled and spent a joyous though orderly Evening noted,

at the

House of Mr. Bardin,

in this city where the following Healths

were drank.

A list of 20 toasts followed, one of which was "The Protestant Interest."^^ Some Irishmen

in

New

York City belonged

to a secret fraternal society

brought to New York in 1 76 7 by Irish officers in the British Army. This marching

knot of the Ancient and Most Benevolent Order of the Friendly Brothers of Patrick in the Sixteenth Regiment of Foot grew from the original 10

members in

to about 60

1

St.

members

769. "It included not only Irish officers in the Sixteenth

army and naval officers as well as several most notable of whom was Sir Henry Moore, the governor of New York."''* Announcements of dinners, theater parties, breakfasts, and concerts for the members of the organization were printed in New York newspapers Regiment

of Foot but also other

civilians, the

between 1769 and 1775.^'

The

society also engaged in benevolent activities. Presumably distressed by

some of their countrymen were languishing in the city's jail, members of the organization opened their pockets in 1 771 On March 25 of that the fact that

.

year, the

New-York Mercury reported

that "poor debtors in prison thanked the

'friendly brothers of St. Patrick' for their contribution sent to

day

'to

A

be laid out on necessaries for their

New

better indication that

coalesce into a unified bloc

heated political contest of Irish voters

1

York City's

comes from

Mr. Coxon this

relief.'"*"

Irish

their

immigrants had begun to

power

at the polls.

During the

769, a story surfaced of an alleged insult to the city's

during the previous year's election. In the words of Peter van

Schaack, "It was said, during the last election, that T. Smith had said that the Irish

were poor beggars, and had come over here upon

whole body

of Irishmen

hats."*' Lawryer

Thomas

the Livingston faction,

a

bunch

of straw.

The

immediately joined and appeared with straws in their Smith, the object of this rumor, was associated with

whose

leaders undoubtedly suspected that the rival

De

Lancey faction was seeking to discredit one of their members.*^ Keenly aware of the political cost

if

first

Thomas

day of polhng, they pubhshed

not cast aspersions on the city's

Whereas

remained alienated from their

Irish voters

ston's partisans rushed to

Smith's defense.

a broadside

On

side, Living-

January 23,

1

769, the

intended to prove that Smith had

Irish.

a Report prevails in this City, that Mr.

Thomas

Smith, during the last

on the Irish People, by saying, That they came into this Country floating upon Straws. We the Subscribers, as friends to Truth, and in Justice to Mr. Smith, Do HEREBY CERTIFY, That we were present with Mr. Election, did reflect

45 jf,e

Insh in

Colonial

New

York City

Smith, on the Stairs of the City Hall, during the

4g

came down

Colonial and

by the speaking

of the

when some Person

above Words; upon which Mr. Smith immediately

Early National

endeavoured to find out the America

last Election,

the Stairs, and complained that the Irish People had been abused,

Man that had spoke the Words; and was so far from

abusing or reflecting upon the Irish People, that he expressed his Disapprobation

such Conduct, and endeavoured to put a Stop to the Report, by having the

of

Matter cleared

up.*'^

Another broadside circulated in the same year provides further evidence

among

of

"The Irishmen's Petition" and signed by Patrick O'Connor, Blaney O'Bryan, Carney MacGuire, and Lawrence ethnic cohesion

the city's Irish. Entitled

Sv^eeney, the broadside appears to be a satire of the provincial patronage system

composed by representatives of the Irish men w^ho were routinely excluded from its favors.*'*

But as the number of Irish in the city multiplied, the divisions among them became more visible. The deepest chasm existed between native Irish of Catholic origins, who were primarily men low on the social scale, and the Protestant majority.*^ Compelled to disguise their beliefs so as not to imperil

New York City's hostile climate, Catholic workers, servants, and

themselves in soldiers

may

have secretly nourished elements of Gaelic culture such as the

Gaelic language. From the testimony of Elizabeth Ashbridge, an English woman who traveled from Dublin to New York in 732 with a group of Irish indentured servants, it is known that Irish was the first language of at least some servants.*^ 1

Occasionally, advertisements for runaway servants mention the fact that indi-

viduals

knew

the Irish language or displayed an Irish accent.*^ Dr. Alexander

Hamilton, socializing Dr.

McGraa,

at a

New

York tavern in 1744, encountered "one

a pretended Scotsman, but by brogue a Teague."**

Though immi-

grants were increasingly fluent in English as a result of the spread of Anglicization in Ireland during the eighteenth century, they

may

not have been willing

to relinquish their traditional values.

The Protestant majority of New York City's Irish was far from homogeneous. Religious differences rooted in ethnic identity separated Anglicans of English

ancestry from Scottish Presbyterians. With the city's political factions divided

along similar lines after midcentury. Old World antagonisms reinforced in the

new environment. Though

religious affiliations likely acted in unison

warranted

it,

may have been

Irish-bom merchants of differing

when

their

economic

interests

the barriers between segments of the Irish population remained

high.

The dissimilar backgrounds of colonial New York's Irish people hindered the formation of one Irish ethnic community in the city before the Revolution.

Immigrants might unite annually religious

and cultural

diversity,

to

pay homage to

St.

Patrick, but their

coupled with the sharp contrast in status

between indentured servants and freemen, precluded the elaboration of ethnic bonds. Unlike other immigrant groups, the Irish lacked the resources to con-

struct

an ethnic church or any other ethnic institution. Marriages, business

deahngs, or social contact might narrow the distance between the Anglo-Irish

and the Presbyterian

Irish,

but the Catholic Irish stood on the other side of an

unbridgeable divide. To weave the disparate elements of colonial City's Irish population into a viable ethnic

rewriting the history of Ireland.

New

community would have

York

required

47 jhg

j^sj, ;„

Colonial

New

York City

Walter]. Walsh

CHAPTER 2

and History

Religion, Ethnicity, CLUES TO THE CULTURAL

CONSTRUCTION OF LAW

XJL.S THE two-hundredth deathday of the

1

798 Rebel-

"What was the original meaning of Irish Republicanism?" Antebellum New York City might seem an odd place to look for an answer to that incendiary question, but it is actually a great place to start. The Uon

nears,

it

makes sense

to ask

busthng, burgeoning metropolis of the newly Uberated colonies offered a safe haven to

many

exiled United Irishmen. In the

1

790s, hard

on the heels

of the

American

and French revolutions, the United Irishmen cobbled together the first modem pohtical theory of Irish RepubUcan nationalism. By piecing together the barushed hves and forbidden thoughts of those determined outcasts, we recover fragments of a strikingly antisectarian, egalitarian,

and inclusive pohtical philosophy. Today,

seem ignorantly

forgotten or

cynically ignored, both on the mainland and among the Irish diaspora.

Even so, two

the original tenets of Irish Republicanism often

full

centuries later and a thousand leagues across the ocean, this distinctive pohtical

philosophy continues to echo from the rowdy immigrant streets of New York City's earhest visible non- African ethnic commimity.

Law, Culture, and Irish Republicanism

A

single act of attainder banished the four

in

New York City:

the advocates William

most prominent United Irish exiles Sampson and Thomas Addis Emmet,

the doctor William James

MacNeven, and the primer John Chambers

Anglicans except for MacNeven, the only Catholic

imprisonment and

Irish Directorate).' After their

France, these exiles of 1798 joined a growing

member

Ethnicity,

of their lesser- known

and History

New

Gaelic compatriots

who were

United

wielded unusual influence both inside and outside their

Irish leaders

gathering together in

York City. These

ethnic subculture.

From

United

a Hibernian perspective, the experience of the

brand-new republic

offers fascinating clues to

ill-starred rebellion

succeeded.

Irish in a

what might have been had

The revolutionary ideology

their

of their early Irish

immigrant community made an important contribution to an emerging United through their bold

States, particularly in heralding a multicultural society

assertion of their ethnic identity

and

political equahty.

The

and insistent demands

there

If

was one

tenet on

for religious, cultural,

exiles of 1798 introduced the

theory of the United Irish into the

advanced

political

New World.

which the United Irish agreed, modem polity. During the

inequality had no place in any

it

was

that religious

Jeffersonian era, the

New York Irish succeeded in establishing that ideal in American law by winning the

first

States. cate,

constitutional victory for the free exercise of religion in the United

On

that occasion, the impassioned rhetoric of their United Irish advo-

William Sampson, embodied the

and made

original Irish Republicans

fiercely antisectarian ideals of those

their political philosophy a part of the

new

republic's evolving constitutional structure.

Whatever

may come initial

its

as

novelty to ethnic, religious, and cultural historians, this story

something

of a surprise to

courtroom victory

of the U.S.

many

legal scholars. Recently, that

for free exercise has gained

new

significance because

Supreme Court's controversial ruling (in a case involving the spiritual

use of Peyote by Native Americans) that the government can enforce unin-

tended burdens on religious exercise even absent any compelling social interest. After heavy lobbying. Congress has since restored the constitutional standard

introduced in the United Irish exiles' courtroom triumph for free exercise.^ Yet, in the intense constitutional debate over this very history, the turbulent ethnic politics that

won that first free exercise exemption have remained hidden from

view.

Perhaps this

is

because American constitutional historians habitually trace

free exercise of religion to

such dominant intellects as John Locke in Carolina,

William Perm in Permsylvania and Delaware, Roger Williams in Rhode the Calverts in Maryland, and

founding period. In America's

Thomas

first free

Jefferson

49 Religion,

Napoleonic

a sojourn in

number

(all

United

of the

Island,

and James Madison during the

exercise case, only

Perm was mentioned,

and then in passing. Rather, the court was moved by a passionate firsthand account of systematic religious persecution in Ireland. Along with Emmet,

MacNeven, and Chambers, Sampson was imprisoned and banished

for trying

to dismantle the religious apartheid that excluded three-quarters of the Irish

population from that country's political and economic

50 Colonial

and

life.

Under the infamous

Penal Laws, the Catholic, ethnically distinct Gaelic masses paid tithes to the

Eatiy National

established church and were denied the rights to

America

children, celebrate their religion, hold

in Parliament, serve

on

own

government

juries, or act as

property, educate their

office,

judges or lawyers."^

vote in elections,

The

early

sit

American

republic's first constitutional victory for free religious exercise did not flow

from

cold textual analysis but was a gut response to an appalling and skillful United Irish rhetorical portrait of ethnic persecution against the native Irish. In its

inception, its argumentation, and

resolution, the first free exercise case

its

turned on the religion, ethnicity, and history of

immigrants.

It

offers

New

York City's early

important clues to the cultural construction of

An Hihemocentric

History of Religious Freedom in

In the colonies, with few exceptions,

Roman

New

Irish

law."*

York

Catholics did not enjoy the

guarantees of religious liberty that were gradually extended to other sects. In 1691, a couple of years after Leisler's Rebellion sought to drive Romanists from

New

York, the elective assembly added this proviso to the colonial charter of

broad religious freedom for Christian persuasions: "Allwayes provided that

noething herein mentioned or Contained shall extend to give Liberty

for

any

persons of the Romish Religion to exercise their worship Contrary to the Laws

and Statutes

instructed Governor

land,

required

it

Kingdom of England."^ Similarly, when the Henry Sloughter to establish the Church of Eng-

of their Majesties

Crown

him

"to permit a liberty of Conscience to

all

Persons (except

By 1701, the New York Penal Laws emulated their transatlantic counterparts by forbidding Catholic missionary priests from entering the colony Papists)."^

under penalty of

life

imprisonment and barring

Roman

Catholics from voting

Some of these legal restrictions against Roman Catholics can be attributed to the commonly held belief that the papacy was a worldly or holding public office.^

power.^ Because of their supposed civil allegiance to a foreign prince, for

example, Locke denied Catholics the sweeping tolerance he advocated for

all

other believers, including Jews.'^ Even in Maryland, founded by the Calverts as a haven for English Catholics, formal freedom to worship lasted only half a

century before being replaced by some of the harshest anti-Catholic laws in the colonies.

^°

The American Revolution

signaled a shift in popular thinking." In

immediate aftermath, although the principle

no means extinguished, the Church account of

its

links to the

of

Crown and

of

England rapidly

lost favor. Largely

the loyalist sympathies of

Anglican Church was disestablished in every state where including the four metropolitan counties of

New

York

it

its clergy,

Jay, later joint

author of the Federalist papers and

on the

formerly held sway,

City.'' Yet at the state

constitutional convention in 1777, a strong anti-Catholic faction

John

its

an established religion was by

first

was

led

by

chief justice of the

States. In the debates over religious freedom, Jay unsuccessfully fought

United to

deny

civil rights to

and declared

Catholics until they renounced the authority of the Pope

and wicked, the dangerous and damnable doctrine, that the

"false

pope, or any other earthly authority, have power to absolve

Nevertheless, through the continuance of

one

of four states that barred Catholics

means

it

Test Oath,

New

office,

sins."'^

York remained

and by the same

constitutionally forbade Catholic immigration until state naturaliza-

were preempted by the new national government. In a more

tion procedures

enlightened suffered

its

from public

men from

spirit,

no such

and an implicit acknowledgment

of Locke's influence, Jews

exclusions.''*

These remnants of formal discrimination aside, increasing religious diversity during the colonial period had already led to a large practical measure of religious toleration in a small ists,

New York City.'' At the dawn of the republic.

and powerless minority. They were

far

Catholics were

still

outweighed by Congregational-

Presbyterians, Baptists, and Anghcans, in that order. Four decades later,

signs of change

were readily apparent: close

worshipped

to 100,000 Catholics

them in New York City, making up about one-eighth of the city's residents. The earliest Catholics were generally Spanish or French, but by Jefferson's time the congregation was mainly Irish, with German immigrants soon to follow.'^ They joined the oppressed Africans as in the

United

States, 15,000 of

cultural outsiders in an anglicized Protestant society.

These demographics were heavily influenced by patterns. Before the

a shift in Irish

American Revolution, the Gaelic

seldom to Protestant America.

A

Irish

emigration

emigrated

less,

and

steady flow of Catholic emigration started

with the 1798 RebelHon.'^ Despite or maybe because of their minority ethnic status, the Irish Catholics

were quick

to defend their

honor on American

soil.

Sometimes blood was

spilt.

One taunt against them revived the anti-Catholic colonial symbols of Pope Day. From the 1 790s intemperate nativist youths insulted St. Patrick's Day by parading with their Paddies, crude straw effigies designed to ridicule Catholics in general religious

and the immigrant

Irish in particular. After the

1

798 exodus, nativist

and ethnic hostihty mounted and was met by the

measure with collective resistance and internal

solidarity.

Irish in equal

Following several

outbreaks of violence between nativist gangs and Irish immigrants, the city council passed an ordinance in

1

802 that outlawed the flaunting of Paddies or

other insulting effigies.'^

A

few years

later,

the Irish Catholics

demanded

Albany that they be put on the same formal footing political equality.

The infamous Test Oath

of the state

assembly in

of religious

freedom and

flagrantly discriminated

by exclud-

became the first New assembly. He was duly required to

ing Catholics from public office. In 1806 Francis Cooper

York Catholic renounce

all

to be elected to the state

foreign authority "in all matters ecclesiastical" as well as civil, a

declaration plainly contrary to the teachings of his church."

5 Religion, Ethnicity,

and History

At that time,

52

New York City's only Catholic parish was St. Peter's in Barclay

founded in 1786. Naturally,

was

Street,

Early National

religious gathering point for Irish immigrants.^"

Amenca

gation of

St. Peter's

it

and

a social, cultural, political,

Colonial and

On January 6,

1

806, the congre-

held a general meeting at which they adopted a petition to

the state legislature on Cooper's behalf. Within days, the petition carried more

than 1,300 signatures.

It

pointed out that the Catholics composed a considerable

portion of the population of to discharge their social

New

and

York City, but were denied the opportunity

civil duties.

The Catholics were deprived

benefits of the free and equal participation of all the rights

them by

Citizens" that were guaranteed to

of "the

and privileges

Especially in light of these solemn guarantees, the Catholics complained, frustrating "to have the

cup

of equalized rights

subsequent determination, and an invidious perjury or apostacy, placed between of their fellow-citizens in state."

The

sponsor a

petition

bill to

of

the state and federal constitutions.

dashed from their

barrier,

it

was by a

lips,

surmountable only by

them and those rights,

none

tho' yielding, to

attachment to the prosperity and independence of the

prompted

state senator

abolish the Test

Oath

in

and

city

mayor DeWitt Clinton

to

New York State. In the face of vigorous

Federalist opposition, the emancipation bill comfortably passed both houses of

the state legislature, and Cooper took his seat in the assembly. The Jeffersonian Ameiican Citizen applauded the outcome, saying that "religion is most prosperous when it is most free." '

Only the previous

year, the Catholic majority in Ireland

had

failed in their

essentially identical petition to gain admittance to the British Parliament in

ruling Westminster.^^ Daniel O'Connell and his peasant horde

another generation to achieve at

home what

would take

the Irish exiles had already

accomplished. In the meantime, as Catholic immigrants became more mmierous, religious passions in

New York City increased rather than dissipated.

Less

than a year after the Irish Catholics' successful petition to the legislature on behalf of nativists

Assemblyman Cooper, a gang of about 50 anti-Irish, anti-Catholic known as the Highbinders surrounded St. Peter's Church. A spirited

Irish defense against this threat

sparked off two days of rioting, leaving hundreds

injured and one guardian of the peace stabbed to death by the Irish.

For the immigrant as

much at

Irish,

^"^

an expansive and nonsectarian ethnic identity was

stake as religious beliefs.

A few months later, in the spring of

1807,

the United Irish flexed their muscles at the polls. Their target was Rufus King,

who had assumed the leadership of the Hibernophobic Federalists after Alexander Hamilton

was

killed in his duel

with Aaron Burr. The irony was delicious.

King had been the Adams administration's minister in London during the 1798 Rebellion. During

it

he described the radical ideals

of the

imprisoned United

Irishmen as "so false and so utterly inconsistent with any practicable or settled

form of Government."^'* Alarmed

at the prospect that the Irish state prisoners

might be banished to the United States, he fatefuUy warned Timothy Pickering, the American secretary of state, that "their Principles and Habits

would be

pernicious to the Order and Industry of our People, and that the Malcontents of

cannot persuade myself

53

any character or country will ever become useful Citizens

Religion,

I

ours."^^ King presciently added that nowhere would the United

be

Ethnicity,

more mischievous than in the United States, "where from the sameness of language

and History

of

and the similarity

of

Laws and

Institutions they have greater opportunities of

propagating their principles than in any other country. In the aftermath of the

1

official drily

"^^

798 Rebellion, King persuaded the

stration to exclude the state prisoners

government

Irish leaders

from the United

Adams

States.^'^

admini-

As an

Irish

explained to the captives, "Mr. King does not like to

have republicans in America. "^^ Prematurely, King bragged that his decisive action had

won him the

"cordial

and distinguished Hatred"

of the

United

Irish

Because no other neutral country was available, about 20 state

leaders.^'

prisoners spent the next four years incarcerated in Fort George off the Scottish

On

coast.

account of his poor health, Sampson enjoyed the privilege of being

transported to a Portuguese dungeon before eventually joining his comrades in

Napoleonic After

Paris,

where the

Thomas Jefferson's

Irish Jacobins

were greeted with

a hero's

welcome.

ascension to the U.S. presidency, Emmet, MacNeven,

Sampson, and Chambers trickled one by one into New York City (as did Thomas O'Connor, Joseph Cuthbert, Thomas Traynor, and the radical publisher Samuel Neilson,

who

died soon afterward). There they joined a religiously diverse and

rapidly growing Irish In

New

community.

York, the United Irish exiles delighted in fulfilling King's political

prophecy. In the April 1807 elections. King led the so-called American Ticket for the Federalists against the Clintonians,

who embraced the immigrant vote.

came back to haunt him. In letters Thomas Addis Emmet depicted gubernatorial candidate King as a "royalist" and an acknowledged enemy of liberty who had been the "political dupe" of the British and who had conspired "to torture oppressed King's treatment of the Irish state prisoners to the

American

Citizen,

Ireland and keep her bleeding patriots in dungeons. "^°

controversy as "a hinge of the election."^' Yet King,

Sampson described the

who had

lost to Jefferson

in the previous presidential election, aloofly chose "to enter into tions, leaving the Public to decide

between

me

and these

no explana-

foreigners.

"^^

The was a

public did just that and sided emphatically with the United Irish. "It

complete of

1

political

triumph," reported Sampson.''^ King's treatment of the exiles

798 proved equally damaging when he ran for governor again almost a decade

later. "Federalists of

at the

hands of the

our age," he acknowledged ruefully after his second defeat

Irish

immigrants, "must be content with the

The During the War

of

1

religious exercise in riots,

First Free Exercise

Case

812, the Irish immigrants

won

American constitutional

law.^^

the controversy at

first

past."^'*

the

first

victory for free

Compared with

seemed mundane. James Keating, an

earlier

Irish copper-

smith and a parishioner of

54 Colonial

and

St. Peter's,

reported a theft of

Early National

the justices of the peace,

America

he refused to say

who

it

emerged that Keating had got

some jeweky.

Upon

Keating mysteriously sought to withdraw his complaint.

Later,

questioning by

his property back, but

Only when threatened with jail did Keating reveal that the intermediary was his parish priest, Father Anthony Kohlmann, the rector of St. Peter's, which served a heavily Irish congregation. On other evidence, immigrants Daniel and Mary Philips were indicted as receivers by a grand

jury,

returned

and the Alsatian

it.

Jesuit

was subpoenaed to identify those whose Kohlmann shut up tight as a

repentance had led to the restitution. But Father clam.

come

He would not reveal even the color or the sex of the penitent who had him with a remorseful spirit and for whom he had made return of the

to

stolen goods a condition of forgiveness.^^

Kohlmann begged to be excused from testifying on the ground that his would not permit him to reveal anything that had reached his the darkness of the confessional. He vowed that he was bound both by

Father

religious scruples

ears in

the laws of

God and

inviolable secrecy.

the canons of the Catholic Church to a perpetual and Knowledge he had obtained during the sacrament of penance

could not be disclosed to anyone in the world without violating his religious tenets with the greatest impiety.

Much worse than any worldly misfortune that

his civil disobedience could bring

down upon him.

Father

Kohlmann

feared

sinning in the eyes of God, becoming an outcast from his religious community,

upon to testify in quality of a minister of which my God himself has enjoined on me a perpetual and secrecy, I must declare to this honorable Court, that I cannot, I must

and risking the

fires of hell. "If called

a sacrament, in

inviolable

not answer any question that has a bearing upon the restitution in question,- and that

it

would be

my

duty to prefer instantaneous death or any temporal

name of the penitent in question. For, were Kohlmann continued, "I should become a traitor to

misfortune, rather than disclose the I

to act otherwise," Father

my church, to my sacred ministry and to my God. In fine,

I

should render myself

guilty of eternal damnation.'"'^

Despite the conscientious nature of Father Kohlmann's objection, the Enghsh

common

law recognized no evidentiary exemption that would relieve him from

his obligation to testify.

On account of its importance, the case made its way to the

Court of General Sessions, presided over by Mayor DeWitt Clinton judicial capacity.^* Suddenly, the radical

leapt to his feet

United

and interrupted as a friend

Irish

of the court.

lawyer

sitting in his

WiUiam Sampson

Compulsion

to break the

solemn and inviolable secrecy of sacramental confession, declared Sampson, would offend the most basic principles of the young republic.

adjournment so that

this novel

The

and important point could be

court granted an

fully argued.'^^

While the argument was pending, the newly appointed

district attorney

generously offered to drop the prosecution out of consideration for the religious

sentiments of the Catholics. Significantly, after taking Sampson's advice, Peter's

St.

mostly Irish Board of Trustees said no. They were alarmed that any doubt

should exist as to the existence of an exemption upon which rested the free toleration of their Catholic religion. Illustrating the

American Catholicism, the

God and what

immigrants boldly requested an early

for all Catholics, as well as the rest of

would protect them

origins of

trustees apparently charted the course of their

church even in deciding what was owed to City's Irish

more democratic

mankind,

in the "free exercise

trial

to Caesar.

Gotham

so that they could secure

a judicial

determination that

and enjoyment

of their religious

""^^

The event ranks as perhaps the earliest recorded instance of impact litigation in American constitutional history a test case in which an insular minority deliberately sought to appropriate the power of the courts to transform the political structure of American society. profession and worship.

—

William Sampson, as published in the frontispiece to the second edition of his Memoirs

Sampson, a lawyer, was one of several rebellion

who had influential

Irish political exiles

careers in

New York.

cited today (Engraving

religion are

still

York Public

Library, Astor,

m

banished in the aftermath of the

His arguments in favor of the

1

798

free exercise

by E Grimbede. General Research Division, The

Lenox and Tilden Foundations.)

1817.

of

New

55 Refigion,

Ethnicity,

and History

The

56 Colonial

and

exercise case

first free

courtroom

EaAy National

had opened only the previous

America

United

and elder brother

Irish Directorate

Emmet, was supposed

to join

prosecution's argument

exempt

contrary, to

would be

in the summer of 1813 in a crowded McComb's magnificent new City Hall, which year. Thomas Addis Emmet, a member of the

was argued

in Irish architect John

to confer

a

was simple:

The To the

to another court.

was not

religious equality

Roman Catholic clergyman from

upon

martyr Robert

of the nationalist

Sampson, but was called

at stake.

his civic duty to testify

that religion a privilege enjoyed by

none

The

other."*'

logic of this contention conceals its doubtful premise. Minority religious

believers

—typically immigrants—cannot lightly assume that the goodwill or

them from conflict with positive law."*^ To counter the prosecution's argument, the Protestant Sampson painted a vivid portrait, drawn from his own experience as a United Irish lawyer, of the horrors of religious persecution in Ireland.'*'' He was well-quahfied to do so, foresight of the legislature will protect

having like

Emmet been imprisoned,

disbarred,

and banished

for his defense of

the indigenous Irish Catholics and his defiance of the colonial Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy to his trade defending a

which he belonged.

hundred or more

John Philpot Curran, with the United tables

by accusing the government

are few,

and

their

reward

is

ruin,"

In Ireland,

Sampson had learned renowned

political trials alongside the

advocates tirelessly trying to turn the

Irish

of treason.*^ "Alas! the advocates of the poor

Sampson lamented

His

after his banishment.''^

Sampson to emerge as America's first career preceding Clarence Darrow by almost a century. It also inspired

experience in the Irish courts enabled civil rights lawyer,

his jurisprudentially radical antebellum codification movement.''^

Sampson's rhetoric in the in the

United

Irish exiles'

republican historiography.*^

first free

exercise case occupies an important place

ongoing

effort to create

He

an

Irish nationalist

pioneered the principal aim of political

and

resis-

tance in the courtroom: to portray the lawmaker as unlawful, and the law-

breaker as lawful. Irish history

on

Sampson appropriated the

trial

and

to inject his

United

New York

courtroom both to put

Irish ideology into

American

law.

The most damaging precedent against Father Kohlmann involved an Irish priest jailed for refusing to disclose the dying beliefs of Lord Dunboyne, whose will had been challenged on the ground that he had relapsed into

popery.'**

Right

Sampson warned the American court to reject this Irish decision because it came from a land "where the people were catholic, and the law anti-catholiC; where the few trample upon the many, and where no concessions were made to the feelings of the proscribed, or the dictates of humanity or piety." According to Sampson, "if there be any country on the habitable globe, where we should not go to look for a pure and sound decision, upon the rights from the

of

start,

Roman

past, a

Catholics,

humanity." said,

it is

surely that one

code has existed, and been in Irish

full

.

law had been corrupted by

"though there

may

.

.

that Island,

and vigorous its history.

where

for centuries

which shames "Every where else," he

activity,

be madness, superstition, or idolatry, there

may

be

some chance of impartiality; but in Ireland there can be none!" Sampson argued that "we should never look to Ireland for a precedent, where the rights of catholics were concerned."'*^

At the heart

Ethnicity,

of the first free exercise case

"The

historiography.

rights, lives, liberties,

been assailed through successive

was Sampson's United

and feelings

ages, in every

vengeance and malignity could devise," he surprising that Protestant judges

soil.

Irish

of the catholics

wanton form

railed. Bigotry

denied them even an education on their native

was hardly

had

that avarice,

and fanaticism had

In such circumstances,

it

had rendered bad decisions. "The

system under which they acted; the barbarous code with which they were familiar,

was enough to taint

their judgement.

No judge, no legislator, historian,

poet or philosopher, but what has been tinctured, with the follies or supersti-

More

tions of his age." to

probably,

"may we not

well suspect those Irish judges

have imbibed the poison of their cruel code, and to have eaten of the insane

root that taketh the reason prisoner."

For Sampson,

and the it is

to

rights of

subdue

prejudice."

He

it was better to ground legal protections on reason, progress, man. He observed that "it is easier to excite wickedness than

it"

and noted how "dangerous

it is

to give the reins to cruel

pointed to the sufferings of the Quakers at the hands of the

colonists. "Thus did those who fled from persecution in England, become through ignorance most intolerant persecutors in America," maintained Sampson. "Such is the nature of that fiendlike spirit," be sighed, "which it requires but a moment to raise and centuries to lay. Thank heaven it is laid

American

in this land, In the

and

I

trust forever."

same breath, Sampson claimed

that only greed could fully account for

the persecution of the Irish Catholics by colonial settlers ancestors. "Mistaken conscience

who included his own

had nothing to do with the matter, nor religion

nothing; but that the love of plunder, power, and confiscation

was the sole and "it was their

only motive." Continuing this attack, he bluntly declared that

interest. They lived upon it. They had no living else than plots and forfeitures! They were not simple bigots, acting from mistaken conscience. They were pirates determined to hold what they had got, and rather than lose it scatter law

and

justice to the

The United

winds and waves."

States

must

learn from Ireland.

there massacres? Aye, to be sure, there were!

he that sows must reap!" Indeed, in

"Were there

They were

later times,

Were

rebellions?

the natural crop. For

added Sampson, "the continu-

ance of the catholic oppressions has taken the character of downright

folly."

After setting forth abundant examples of the civil rights denied to Irish Catholics,

Sampson

57 Religion,

offered his grim but inspiring account of the Irish

union of

1

798:

Then came the organized banditti. Then the no popery and peep of day men. Then the recall of faithless promises. And that government that refused to tolerate catholics, tolerated, instigated, and indemnified a faction, whose deeds will never be forgotten. Then came hangings, half hangings, conflagrations.

and History

plunder, and torture. Rape, murder and indemnity went hand in hand.

58

it

Colonial

and

new and

was, that a spectacle

And then

appalling, for the first time, presented itself;

and presbyterian, churchman, and catholic were seen to ascend the same scaffold, and die in the cause of an indissoluble union.

Early National

America

Although the United first free

had ended in bloody

Irish rising

that the great cause of

human emancipation

still

Sampson noted

tragedy,

proceeded in Ireland as the

was being argued.

exercise case

Why not contrast these histories and barbarous codes with Article New York state constitution, which protected its citizens against persecution? Like a beacon on a rock, this principle

and guide to

all

the world.

To Sampson,

it

was established

seemed "as

if

and the cradle

this land, to be the grave of persecution,

38 of the religious

to be a light

providence had decreed

of tolerance."

could not see the wisdom of this enactment, said Sampson, "let

If

anybody

him open

the

page of history, and read of the bloody religious wars of Europe, of which the

wounds

are

and bleeding. Let him

fresh

still

and he will find the cogency and wisdom

who

reflect

his

to the United Irish advocate. Catholic persecution received

the American Revolution. Although

it

own

fathers were,

of the act. " In this country, according

was

its

death blow from

true, as the district attorney

had

pointed out, that the United States was formed by Protestants, "in establishing a constitutional code, different from that of England, they did nothing but

unshackle themselves and the catholics together."

Exempting Father Kohlmann from

would not grant Roman CathoUcs

testifying

any preference over other rehgions. "We claim no supremacy,"

"We seek nothing but pure and perfect equality. From sincerely tolerate

you

all.

We

will lay

insisted

Sampson.

the bottom of our hearts

hands on none of you,

for

we

your worship or

and for ourselves, we claim neither more nor less. Hands off on all sides. And if any of you are aggrieved we will invoke the constitution in your favoiu-, as we do in our ov^m." Sampson's sudden fUp from the third person into the first person profession;

is

a stunning stroke of revolutionary political rhetoric. Like

once sworn the United

Irish

Emmet, Sampson had

oath in an Irish courtroom to display solidarity with

By inverting Ireland's

his Catholic clients. This symbolic act rewrites Irish history.

Sampson stands

past,

Ireland's future

Sampson, "every citizen here

is

on

its

head. In the

in his owti country

New

To the

Republic, argued protestant

protestant country; to the cathohc, a cathoHc country; and the jew,

may

establish in

it

his

his

own

yet it

I

for the Irish Catholics

Anglican upbringing.

pointed out.

"I

am

no

bigot,

claim the right to love

"I

is

a

was undoubtedly strengthened

have been educated in that church," he

no certain token

I

see in

it

it

above

all

others,

if

so

I

of exclusive grace,

am disposed;

and

and I turn

to

with the more affection because those nearest and dearest to me, by every

have been, and are

ministers, and have been good and virtuous

mortal

tie,

men.

challenge for the catholic the self

as

it

he pleases,

New Jerusalem."

Sampson's argument

by

if

I

I

should myself,

if

its

same

force or violence should

right,

and

I

should despise him

make him swerve from any

tenet

of a religion,

my

59

own wife, shall quarrel that he does not prefer mine, and and if he loves his own religion better, is that a groimd of enmity?

Ethmaty,

which he held

as sacred."

neighbour cleaves to his love her better; It

was an argument

More

Sampson

puckishly,

asked, "If

I

of extraordinary passion. "I

"Amongst the

ing an oppressive legal regime.

am

a friend to cathoHcs,"

own struggles as a United Irish advocate challeng-

explained Sampson, recalling his

friends

I

have had," he added, "none

have been more true, more loyal, or more noble hearted, than catholics have proved.

Without being a confessor, I have had occasions of knowing their inmost thoughts, in the

hour of trial and sincerity." The importance of religious freedom he had seen

at first

hand. "The pecuhar reasons

I

have had to dread and abhor every colour and

shade of rehgious persecution, has communicated to over eamesmess, " explained Sampson. "Those done,

my

argument, perhaps, an

who have not seen and felt as I have

may think it common place." He closed with the great Christian command-

ment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

DeWitt Clinton, the mayor decision.

of

New

Mayor Clinton came from

risen to governor of

New

York, delivered the court's

unanimous

and his uncle had

Irish Protestant stock

York and vice president of the United

States.

Only

the previous year, the younger Clinton had lost the federal presidential race to

James Madison, drafter of the his uncle as governor of

The Clintonian partly because In the

New

political

it

First

Amendment; he

later

rebounded

to follow

York, building the Erie Canal with Irish sweat.

dynasty was always sensitive to the

Irish,

no doubt

needed their growing vote.'°

first free

Mayor Clinton bought Sampson's United Irish tumed their attention

exercise case.

historiography lock, stock, and barrel. "With those who have

to the history of Ireland," said the mayor, "the decisions of Irish courts, respecting

Roman CathoHcs,

can have httle or no weight." Republican America had no need

for Irish legal authority.

"That unfortunate country, " declared Mayor Clinton, "has

been divided into two great parties, the oppressors and the oppressed. The Cathohc has been disfranchised of his

from the

common

civil rights,

rights of

deprived of his inheritance, and excluded

man; statute has been passed upon

statute,

and

adjudication has been piled upon adjudication in prejudice of his rehgious freedom.

That system

of discrimination

of toleration,

and the maxims

his condition,

would

of

surely collapse in time.

and wiU undoubtedly,

in process of time, place

footing with his Protestant brethren; but until he stands of equal rights,

all

spirit

decisions

which

fetter

him

him on

the

same

upon the broad pedestal

emancipated from the most unjust thraldom,

with a jealous eye upon

"The benign

an enhghtened pohcy, have recently ameUorated

we

cannot but look

or rivet his claims."^'

Invoking the social compact,

civil and religious liberty, and the republican American government, the court construed the New York state constitution and the First Amendment to exclude forever calamities that had

principles of

deluged Ireland and other countries with tears and with blood. The state had failed to establish that Father

Kohlmann's conscientious

refusal to testify

was

inconsistent with the peace or safety of the state. Even before a Protestant court.

Religion,

and History

50 Colonial

and

Mayor Clinton held, the fundamental religious liberty of American Roman Catholics was safe. "They are protected by the laws and constitution of this

Early National

country, in the full and free exercise of their religion, and this court can never

America

countenance or authorize the application of insult to their their consciences." In the face of Father

faith, or of torture to

Kohlmann's impenetrable

silence, the

defendants were immediately acquitted.^^

As well as being a historic new constitutional departure for religious freedom. People V. Philips was the jurisgenerative origin of the priest-penitent evidentiary privilege

and

its

progeny. ^^

The substance

of

Sampson's United

Irish

argument

and DeWitt Clinton's resulting opinion should confound American constitutional historians

who

trace the legal doctrine of free exercise primarily to

philosophical strides. Rather, the archaeology of the

first free

exercise case offers

fascinating clues to the ethnocultural and biographical construction of law.^''

New

Sampson promptly published his account of the first free name The Catholic Question in America. The printer was Edward Gillespy, who often serialized Sampson's works in The Shamrock, Gotham's earliest Irish newspaper.^^ To the advocates' arguments and the court's opinion, Sampson added his scathing abridgment of the anti-Catholic Penal Laws of Ireland.^^' Sampson's book also included Father Kohlmann's equally carefully documented theological defense of the sacrament of penance and his refutation of Protestant attacks upon it. Father Kohlmann's treatise provoked a nativist, anti-Catholic reaction, in a small way presaging the In

York,

exercise case under the

theological wars of the I830s.^''

Fully aware of the power of the word,

Sampson expressed his pride in making

the report public; he believed that "the general satisfaction given to every religious denomination,

by the decision of this interesting question,

calculated to dissipate antiquated prejudices, and religious jealousies. " that

"when

this adjudication shall

is

well

He added

be compared with the baneful statutes and

judgments in Europe, upon similar subjects, the superior equity and wisdom of

American jurisprudence and dicted that the report

civil

probity will be felt."

would constitute "a document

Sampson

rightly pre-

of history, precious

and

instructive to the present and future generations"!^^ Sufficiently edited to avoid Ireland's unforgiving seditious hbel laws,

Sampson

republished his The Catholic Question in America the following year in Dublin. It

was presumably seen by the

aspiring Daniel O'Cormell,

who had joined the Irish

bar as one of the earliest Cathohcs shortly before the United Irishmen were banished.

The work was

from the perspective pohtical

part of Sampson's lifelong effort to portray Irish history

of the vanquished.

satirist, historian,

for his radical pen. In his

and reporter

A

tireless

underground pamphleteer,

of pohtical trials,

Sampson was banished

Memoirs, his expanded edition of William Cooke Taylor's

History of Ireland and his other writings, Sampson recounted the events that led to

1

798. But he gradually sought to extend the imphcations of the

new United Irish

historiography into every area of repubUcan political theory and practice.

Most

of

he turned his mind to the inherently antidemocratic nature of the Enghsh

all,

common law

that he so frequently battled against.^^

In like vein,

MacNeven and Emmet brought

out their Pieces of Irish

History, an account of the 1798 Rebellion that sought to locate

it

firmly

within the tradition of the American Revolution. ^° The single most influen-

American work came from the pen

tial Irish

of

Sampson's son-in-law and

former apprentice, William Tone. The younger Tone edited and published the revolutionary diaries of his father, the romantic nationalist martyr,

was captured

in 1798 at the

head

of a

French

fleet. ^'

who

Theobold Wolfe Tone's

autobiography, filled with dark humor, gripped the Irish popular imagination. Its

cultish following

made it a central element of modern Irish nationalism.^^ is most remarkable for its romantic antisecThe maverick authorship, literary skill, and intellec-

Today, Tone's autobiography tarian republicanism.

works gained

tual nerve of such

New

York's exiled United Irish historians

an enduring influence upon public perception.

The Greenwich After the Irish

first free

exercise case

immigration into

after the

Treaty of Ghent, as

America even before the Famine. In reflecting

New York,

Village Riot

came another dramatic

New York City. many

as

With the

shift in the pattern of

embargo in 1815 newcomers landed in

lifting of the

one million

Irish

great exodus unleashed in midcentury

by the Potato

the immigrants were soon predominantly Catholic and,

worsening conditions in their homeland, drawn more and more from

the laboring classes.

Their daily increasing numbers magnified their

visibility.

With

their alien

ways. Papist religion, frequent destitution, and sometimes even their foreign language, the Irish ethnic village posed an undeniable threat to the relatively

homogeneous metropolitan

social structure that

had existed during the

Jeffer-

sonian years.

Within the

Irish

community, the change was equally great, and it resulted in

a gradual transformation of the

which was taking place on United

Irish exiles

leaders, that

meaning

of Irish republicanism similar to that

their native soil.

While the inclusive

ideals of the

continued to influence the public rhetoric of the immigrant

community turned inward

as

it

crowded into the increasingly

The efforts of SampEmmet, MacNeven, and the quietly influential Chambers to maintain the tolerant ideals of 1 798 met with growing indifference among the most recent arrivals. The choice between the older integrationist yet socially transformative ideology and an impatient new ethnic separatism was vividly shown when the hitherto United Irish immigrant community went to war with itself. A turning point in Irish history. Orange Day marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, when the Protestant armies of King William routed the African and Irish tenements of the notorious Sixth Ward. son,

61 Religion,

Eihnicity,

and History

Catholic troops of King James 11. By the early nineteenth century, the celebration

62 Colonial

and

of

Orange Day was deeply symbolic, with sectarian animosities much in

Early National

evidence on both sides. Imported into the United States by the newer immi-

Amenca

grants, these harsh feelings erupted into serious violence

on

On

July 12, 1824.

that day, the eve of General LaFayette's jubilant return to the city, Irish

Presbyterian laborers marched proudly through Greenwich Village where they

confronted an equally determined band of Irish Catholic weavers. The fighting

began when the Catholics demanded that the Protestants lower their orange flag.

Each side accused the other of throwing the first punch. Probably both were

guilty.

By the end

of the day, countless rioters fell to clubs

and brickbats,

woman who fearlessly charged into Sampson took the side of the Catholics. On this

including a pregnant Catholic

True to form,

was

joined by

hero of 1798.

the

fray.^"*

occasion he

Emmet, another disbarred, imprisoned, and banished Protestant The rhetoric of Sampson and Emmet constitutes another appeal

for acceptance of the inclusive

United

Irish political

democracy. Sampson insisted that "there

between him that seeks blood, and the friend

posterity will discriminate

mankind." Arguing associations down;

for the Catholics,

he urged the jury to "put these

you must avert the arm

drench your country in blood." As in the

Sampson used

a relatively

philosophy in a republican

holiness in the cause of Ireland:

is

of the

first free

mundane event

sanguinary bigot

of

illegal

who would

exercise case a decade earlier,

to put all of Irish history

on

trial.

Again, the courtroom became the crucible for the public adoption of a republican, egalitarian,

and anticolonial

political

philosophy true to the original ideals

oftheI798rebellion.'^^

At the

outset,

Sampson sought

to read

from Plowden's History of Ireland.

After accepting his commission from the British government, the English historian

and

Plowden had found his sympathies on the side of the Irish peasantry, had been harshly condemned by partisan English reviewers. Al-

for this

though Plowden

fell far

short of the United Irish effort to place the 1798

Rebellion within the eighteenth-century tradition of lawful revolution against unjust tyranny, he

was a great

favorite of the

United

Irish Republicans.

On that

ground, counsel for the Irish Protestants strenuously protested against the use of

Plowden

as evidence. In the end, after vigorous historical debate, counsel

on

both sides relied heavily on sharply divergent interpretations of Ireland's past to justify the

conduct of their respective

clients,

and

intolerance of the opposing rioters. In contrast to the

Greenwich

first free

and

exercise case, the

Village trial reveals not one account of Irish history, but two,

they cannot be

and

reconciled.''''

Curiously, the judge for Father

to discredit the bigotry

Kohlmann

after deciding that the

a

was Richard

Riker,

who had joined Sampson

in arguing

decade earlier (switching from prosecution to defense

exemption was

Recorder Riker fused the United

legal!).

Like DeWitt Clinton before him.

Irish political vision

with that

of the Jeffer-

sonian Republicans. In equal measure, he condemned the conduct of

all

the

rioters. In

the September

trial of

verdict to put a stop "to such

the Protestants, he charged the jury by their

open violations

of the hospitality

and laws

of the

53 Religion,

was constitutionally guaranteed, but

Ethnicity,

such freedom could never lead to anarchy and blood. "The equality and liberty

and History

American people. " Freedom of our

of conscience

known throughout

laws are

to the oppressed of every nation

the world. This happy country

on the face of the earth

and protection. What do we ask of them in return? their religious opinions

—to

renounce their

forms and ceremonies of their former

life?

privileges they enjoy, is that they will be

is

an asylum

—here they find security

Do we

ask them to change

political creed

No. All we ask

—to

abandon the

in return for all the

good and peaceable

citizens,

and obey

the laws."^^

A fellow Presbyterian, Recorder Riker chastised the Orangemen for the folly of their attempting to introduce into the

unbecoming

practices,

United States "those dangerous and

which had caused so much disorder and misery

in their

own [country]." He attributed their errors to "the recency of their sojourn here." Recorder Riker observed that religious persecution was the deadliest scourge

had ever been

that

inflicted

upon man, and that, wherever a religion arrogated was the natural consequence. Like Mayor

the right of dictation, persecution

DeWitt Clinton persecutions that

it

.

.

in the first free exercise case. Recorder Riker feared that "cruel .

existed in the afflicted country from

astonishment and so

whence they came, but

should be transplanted to this land of freedom was subject of equal regret,

many melancholy

and could scarcely be believed did not history furnish

human

proofs of this infirmity in

nature,

which nothing

but the best institutions and the light of reason and experience could subdue.

But the

Irish Catholics

after the Protestants,

"^^

were equally to blame. In sentencing them a month

Recorder Riker described the Catholics as valuable acces-

sions to the national strength, and ornaments to society, but lamented that they

had allowed themselves

to be

provoked into acts that had caused them so

He reminded them

difficulty.

of the trouble

and vexation these

much

broils

had

brought them into, and pointed out the advantage of forgetting all party feelings

which had it

was the

Now being settled in the United States, immigrants to bury the hatchet

harmony with each other. Although the Protestants had every right celebrate Orange Day peacefully, "it was irrational for Irishmen to go back

and to

their origin in sorry Ireland.

civic responsibility of all the Irish

live in

so far into history for causes to perpetuate quarrels and bloody affrays with each other." Binding

all

the rioters on both sides to the peace, he hoped that time, a

lenient sentence, and their

own

reflections

"would have the happy

effect of

healing the divisions and allaying those animosities which had been productive of so

much wretchedness

Through the

1820s,

to

unhappy

Ireland."^'

Sampson, MacNeven, Emmet, and Chambers continued

to insist that this socially transformative

the

way

religious

for

United

Irish political vision

opened

immigrants to advance in their adopted republic. The issue of

freedom remained

a live

one with mounting pressure

for Catholic

emancipation in Ireland. The agitation led by Daniel O'Connell, perhaps the

64 Colonial

and

Early National

Amenca

earliest

modem instance of nonviolent mass protest, kept Ireland in the public past, New York City's United Irish leaders had rallied their fellow

mind. In the exiles

behind the

Jef f ersonians, called

on them

to volunteer for the

War of

1

8 1 2,

published hints for emigrants, formed an emigrants' aid society, lobbied Congress for land to

and donated

form an

Irish

colony in the West, helped newcomers find

Neven and Sampson reached

jobs,

countrymen. In 1828, Mac-

their professional skills to indigent

outside the immigrant

community by launching

the Society for Civil and Religious Liberties, devoted to Irish CathoUc emancipation,

which

collection of

for a couple of years

New

drew together an impressively ecumenical

York public figures— including the mayor and numerous

prominent judges and lawyers. In the same

year, spurred

by Sampson's simul-

taneous codification campaign, the clergy privilege was endorsed by the state legislature (and has since

been endorsed throughout the United

overthrowing the English

common

O'Connor the Ireland in

exiles of

1

States,

thus

law nationwide). Together with Thomas

798 also organized the Association of the Friends of

New-York, which raised money from the

Irish

immigrant community

to contribute to the penny-rent O'Cormell collected outside Irish churches.''°

According to the Catholic Association's contemporary historian, the exiles' fiery

United

Irish rhetoric

New

York

sparked a radical resurgence at home, which the

normally conciliatory O'Connell contained only by adopting the uncompromising stance in Westminster that ultimately yielded CathoHc emancipation in

The Decline of the United Ironically, Catholic

Irish Political Vision in

emancipation

allowed Catholics to

sit

recognition of religious

split

the

York City

New York Irish. O'Connell's victory

in the British Parliament that governed Ireland. This if

not political equality in their homeland began the

gradual eclipse of the United Irish political ideal in

evident from the controversy over a memorial to

had died the previous

New

1829.'''

year. Since his

New

York City. This

is

Thomas Addis Emmet, who

Emmet had risen to

disbarment in Ireland,

such professional prominence that he was considered the foremost advocate in

New York and was ranked along with Daniel Webster and Charles Pinckney as perhaps the three finest in the nation. His funeral was by some accounts the largest public spectacle ever seen in the rapidly

growing

city.

His pallbearers

included Governor Clinton, two U.S. senators (including future president Martin

Van

Buren), several important judges (including one from the U.S.

Supreme

Court), Sampson, Chambers, and other well-known figures.''^

The passage

of Catholic

some unused funds in the hands MacNeven, Sampson, Dennis professional and merchant leaders. At

emancipation

left

of the Association of the Friends of Ireland, led by

McCarthy, and other well-heeled the time, these

men

Irish

were raising money

for a

monument

to the

memory

of

Emmet. Rashly, they decided to divert to the Emmet memorial the unused funds that had been collected for O'Connell's successful political movement/^ This provoked a sharp response from the Irish Shield, which heard murmurs of discontent and dissatisfaction from every quarter. It was true that Emmet, like Sampson and MacNeven, was a devoted patriot who had suffered the inflictions of despotism in his country's cause. But it was preposterous to compare his contribution to Ireland with that of O'Connell, who had achieved more without spilling a single drop of patriot blood. According to the Irish Shield, the diversion of unused funds to the Emmet memorial was presumptuous and oligarchical. It would be denounced and decried by considerate and intelligent Irishmen, and censured by

posterity.''''

Despite the fuss, a 30-foot-high obelisk was completed with inscriptions in Irish, Latin,

and English. Together with an equally impressive monument

Emmet memorial symbolically Broadway and Fulton in Lower Manhattan, the burial ground of city notables. Strangely, it was in the same graveyard that Sampson had prepared his argument for the first free exercise dedicated to the Catholic

flanks

MacNeven, Church

Paul's Episcopalian

St.

the at

more than a decade earlier.^^ wake of the Greenwich Village riot,

case barely In the

provides telling evidence that nity

New

the

Emmet memorial controversy Irish commu-

York City's hitherto United

was fragmenting. The incident was a metaphorical marker of the shift from

exiles to emigrants.'''^ After three decades, the

removed from the

message

of 1798

stark needs of the newest arrivals. This

by the 1830s' competing array of

St.

Patrick's

Day

is

seemed

dinners

—apparently

strongly nationalist, but attended by different classes of Irish immigrants. attracted politically well-connected United Irish exiles,

prominent

who were

all

Some

joined by

New Yorkers. Other celebrations were exclusively attended by Irish

Catholics, to judge by their Gaelic names.

Sampson's equality

far

further suggested

came

last great

blow

for his lifelong

in 1831. His friend

leaders invited

him

''^

cause of religious and cultural

Matthew Carey and other Philadelphia

to defend Irish Catholic

immigrants

after

Irish

another bloody

which the Irish Protestants were ominously joined by American Once more, Sampson put his United Irish historiography at once

July 12 riot in nativists.

anti-imperial and postcolonial Irish

for

immigrants was on the

King William

— —at the heart of the case. Bigotry against the new

rise.

Pointing out that his

at the Battle of the Boyne,

own ancestors had fought

Sampson accused

of raising a dangerous pretext. "I believe there

is

very

little to

the

Orangemen

be apprehended

by the people here," declared Sampson, "that the Pope will come to this country

wooden shoes or brass money,- but here they would same miserable feelings again that then existed, and disregarding the

to afflict us with either

revive the

peace and happiness of this glorious constitution, smother the steady lights

which the generous founders of this hallowed country, with such generosity of soul and purpose, established."''* After the trial, at a dinner held in his honor.

55 Religion,

Ethnicity,

and History

Sampson warned Carey and the Philadelphia Irish that "Divide and conquer is the

66 Colonial

and

tyrant's

In

Early National

America

1

maxim

—Unite and conquer,

is

the patriot's creed.

"^^

834 the city elections poignantly revealed the widening gap between United

integrationist

recent immigrants.

Irish ideals

As we have

and the

separatist tendencies of the

seen, the United Irish

Republicans, and the Jeffersonians embraced the United

America,

it

Jacksonian

Irish. In

was much harder to see where United Irish Republicanism

After the Jeffersonian era, the shifting and confusing party politics of

City defied summary;

it

most

embraced the Jeffersonian fitted in.

New York

will do to say that the forebears of today's parties

were

already taking embryonic shape as the Jacksonian Democrats (branded Tories

by

their rivals)

and the National Republicans (commonly called Whigs).

United Irish movement did not fall comfortably into this new dichotomy. As had the Jeffersonians before them, the Jacksonians embraced

The

ideals of the

immigrants and in that sense were obviously

attractive.

But the Jacksonian

version of democracy was very different from that proposed by the original Irish

Republicans.

common

The United

Irish

interests (such as

saw society

as a holistic, organic

human

freedom and equality) that

discern. This Englightenment conception justified their

whole with

reason could

American appeals

civic responsibility in the pursuit of a shared republican vision.

for

They accurately

perceived the Jacksonian democratic appeal as essentially populist, not principled.^°

With Emmet gone, MacNeven and Sampson supported President Andrew Jackson until he launched his controversial attack on the national bank as a

money and centralized private power. An Irish Catholic, MacNeven was unusually literate and cosmopolitan, having obtained in Vienna and

bastion of big

Prague the education he was denied

at

home. In

New York,

doctor and a pioneer in American chemistry. Like

many

more prosperous Jacksonians, MacNeven regarded irresponsible sop to public sentiment principle.

MacNeven predicted

omy would community,

collapse.*'

a

prime

Sampson defend

Jackson's decision as an of

sound economic

money

supply, the econ-

and a perversion

that without a central

This position put him

at

he was a successful

of the better-educated,

odds with his

own immigrant

target of Jacksonian populist reasoning.

Not only did Whig

his United Irish friend's integrity, but even ran as a

congressional candidate on the bank issue.

**^

At that time, before the 1834 spring elections

for the

mayor and the city was far from

council, the ethnic configuration of the emerging party system clear,

and both sides competed

for the

coveted Irish vote.*' For the

first

time,

the Irish poll split sharply, with the poorer immigrants choosing the Jacksonians

and the professional and merchant leaders going with the

Whigs.*'' In the fall

congressional elections, the contest for the Irish vote continued with

running as a candidate.*^ The returns from the heavily

represent documentary evidence of a new, inward-looking Irish ethnic nity,

Sampson Ward

Irish Sixth

breaking along class lines that had not been evident in the past.

commuThe new

Irish

immigrants did not see themselves as sharing

metropolitan establishment willing to place of parties,

than the

by the

—in which, when

MacNeven and Sampson.

Sampson was

it

common

with the

57

came time to choose, they were

Religion,

In keeping

interest

with his lifelong suspicion

a reluctant politician, standing

on high

principle rather

modem Jacksonian art of pragmatic campaigning. He was encumbered

fact that

one of his running mates was the son of Rufus King, ironically

enough, since Sampson was

among the United Irish

suffered at the elder King's hands almost

even in the heavily

Irish Sixth

exiles themselves

two score years

who had

Sampson lost

earlier.^''

Ward.

Many of the new Irish Catholics evidently felt that the older immigrants had The Whigs' more progressive attitude toward

betrayed their factional allegience.

an emerging industrial economy

may have

appealed to the United Irish exiles,

but the Whigs also harbored within their ranks a growing contingent

nothing but contempt for the

new

shanty

while the Whigs eagerly embraced the

Irish. It is

new cause of abolitionism,

ingly spoke of the poorer Irish immigrants in the

slaveholders used for their

At the polls, of rioting

human

an odd historical

same racist tone

the worst yet seen in the

York

that Southern

chattels.**

nativists

and

Irish

immigrants broke out around the

polling booths causing widespread injury and destruction.*^

New

fact that

they increas-

nativist against ethnic politics exploded into full view. Four days

between Whig

American

who had

Irish.

The

city.

They mark

The 1 834 riots were

a true watershed in the history of the

elections were contested at precisely the time that

nativist parties began to

emerge as

a

major force in nineteenth-

century urban politics. With the luxury of hindsight,

it is

evident that Mac-

Neven and Sampson were whistling in the dark. Shortly before the fall election, the Ursuline Convent near Boston was burned to the ground. The next year a riot broke out at a meeting in Broadway Hall to discuss whether Popery was compatible with civil liberty. Numerous scurrilous "disclosures" of convent life described nuns as baby-killers. The no-Popery press sprang to life. Samuel F. B. Morse, artist, snob, inventor of the telegraph, and wayw^ard Democrat politician, explicitly linked

no-Popery and Hibernophobia in his Foreign Con-

(New York, 1835) and Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States through Foreign Immigration (New York, 1835). The Know-Nothing movement was in the spiracy against the Liberties of the United States

making.'" In their opposition to Jackson

on the bank question, MacNeven and Sampson

among those None could imagine the full horror of the impending Irish Famine

foresaw the Panic of 1 83 7 in which the Irish of the Sixth Ward were hit hardest.'^'

that

would bring veritable hordes later. Whatever the merits

decade

of destitute Irish refugees to the city barely a of their eighteenth-century Irish Republican-

ism, the 1834 elections symbolized the passing of the United Irish political

influence within

MacNeven

New

York City's

berated in the heat of

Irish ethnic enclave.

party,-

Emmet was

and Sampson rejected

gone,-

at the polls.

Ethnicity,

and History

Including Chambers, by the early 1840s

68 Colonial

EaAy

and

folk

all

had passed on to a fond but fading

the deteriorating Irish ghetto.

Their United Irish dream of an inclusive and egalitarian Irish repubhcan

National

America

memory in

nationalism was no longer the politics

was ethnic

rhetoric of

than the ing.

The

mood

of the day.

From

that time onward, Irish

and machine

politics. Gone was the commonality and unity in which society was understood to be larger

sum

politics, class politics,

of its parts. Ethnic politics

Irish Protestants

became

brutal, intense,

and unforgiv-

continued to pursue the assimilationist

ideal,

while

the Irish Catholics were driven into a countercultural separatism. By the

mid- 1840s almost

all Irish

Cathohcs voted Democrat and almost

all Irish

Protestants voted Whig.'^ By abandoning the original ideals of Irish Republican-

community became

ism, the United Irish immigrant

a closed Irish Catholic

enclave, with the Irish Protestants being absorbed into the larger society.

came

With increasingly

rare exceptions, Irish

American Repubhcan nationahsm be-

nationahsm. The cultural diversity offered by the radical was replaced by a narrower maybe more pragmatic ethnic

Irish Catholic

Protestant leaders

—

—

identity.

Conclusion: The Forgotten Legacy of 1 798

By midcentury, the antisectarian republican ideals of Sampson, MacNeven, Emmet, and Chambers were seldom heard. The New York Irish faced open and organized nativist hostility and resisted diversity contributed

immigrants gave up their

and

it

without the cultural and ideological

by the radical Protestant dissidents effort to separate their

their individual politics.

The

of 1798.

The new

Catholicism, their Irishness,

reins of Irish ethnic politics passed into the

hands of hard-line Catholic churchmen such as Archbishop John Hughes, led the fight against Protestant

and

who

nativist instruction in the city schools

and

demanded equal public funding for parochial education. The Irish immigrant community found itself on the outside looking in. Their religion, their ethnicity, and their history constituted their social identity. Not for several decades did Irish immigrants attain comparable professional success and exert such immediate political influence as

But the story

I

had the

have told here

is

exiles of

1

798.

about more than a couple of generations of

New York Irish immigrants. It tells a great deal about the cultural and biographical construction of law, specifically, the

American constitutional doctrine

of

free exercise of religion. State intrusion into the secrecy of the confessional

threatened an important part of the Irish ethnic identity, just as outlawing spiritual Peyote use further attacks today's beleaguered ture.

religious a

Native American cul-

Far from being an inexorable application of constitutional guarantees,

freedom in

New York City emerged as the product of ethnic struggle,

continuing clash between the United Irish immigrants and the Protestant,

anglicized society into

which they had come. Law emerges from power and

resistance.

By rhetorically converting their

claims, the Irish opened the door for those establish our complex, of the

immigrant

demands

political

who

into legal

followed, doing

much

Religion,

demanding multicultural society of today. The story on postcolonial legal structure promises rich

and History

Irish influence

insights akin to such current legal methodologies as critical race theory and

feminist jurisprudence.

suggests the historical, ethnocultural, and bio-

It

graphical dimensions of jurisprudence.

Perhaps most important at this exiles in

New

critical

moment, the

York City teUs volumes about the

Republicanism. As

we

story of the United Irish

original

meaning

of Irish

enter the third millennium exactly 200 years after the

1798 Rebellion, that historical inquiry assumes infinite importance. For the original authors of Irish republican nationalism, creed

immaterial to a

common

political identity. Today, the

and ethnicity were United

Irish leaders

confuse Irish Republicans because they were Protestant, and equally confuse Irish Protestants

because they were Republican. At stake here

question of whether a

modem

is

the vital

version of Irish republican nationalism can be

founded on inclusion, not exclusion. The United religious diversity

and cultural difference

to their

Irish exiles of

1798 added

immigrant community. They

rewrote Irish history to create a shared national ethnic identity. Their privileged birth into a fractured society

made

the Protestant exiles of 1798 especially

powerful advocates for the cause of Irish Catholic equality in

New

York

City.

For a time, they served as a strong shield against American nativism and religious intolerance precisely because they stood

between two worlds: that

of

the Irish Catholic minority and the larger Protestant population. In the young republic of the United States, they found a second chance to realize the political

and

social ideals that

proposed a

and of

new image

had met with such miserable

failure in Ireland.

of republican society rid of barriers

ethnicity. Cultural difference

New York City's

exiles of

republican nationalism.

59

to

1

798,

was no excuse

They

based on creed, caste,

for bigotry.

With the passing

something very important was

lost to Irish

Ethnicity.

Paul A. Gilje

CHAPTER 3

The Development of an Irish American Community in

New York

City before the

Great Migration

JL HE

GREAT FAMINE

1844-45 marks an important watershed in

Irish

migration that began in

American

history.

The flood of

immigrants driven out of Ireland in the wake of the potato blight dramatically altered the demographic profile of the United States. Confronted with this rising tide of Irish immigrants,

most

of

whom

were Catholic, American society

entered a period of great adjustment, which was difficult for the newcomers and alike. Many Irish men and women found comfort own countryfolk. Distinct Irish American communities their own identity emerged in city after city. These Irish

more established Americans in settling

with their

trying to preserve

a vital role in New York City in that they acted immigrants on their way toward assimilation. Perhaps

American communities played as halfway houses for

more important, they exerted considerable influence, however unwittingly, on non-Irish society. The postfamine Irish American community stood as a great testament to the new polyglot democracy that was developing in America.'

The prototype

of these

communities had already appeared

in several cities

by the 1 840s. For well over a century the Irish had streamed into North America. In the eighteenth century

most

of these

immigrants were Protestants, although

by the 1790s more Catholics had begun thousands of

Irish Catholics

in cities. In

few places was the nascent

to arrive. In the years after 1815

emigrated every year. Irish

Many of these people settled

American community more

apparent than in the City of

New

York.

mistic estimate put the Irish American

As early as 1816 at component of the

one overopti-

71

city population at

Before the Creai

least

New York's total inhabitants. The New York's Irish American community cannot be fully under-

25,000, or approximately one-fourth of

development of

stood without considering how these pref amine Irish Americans interacted with

one another and with the larger society."

The New York Irish American community did not appear overnight, and the community was not fixed. Initially middle-

direction of the definition of this class

businessmen, lawyers, and professionals

tempted

wanted

to

mold the

Irish

to assimilate into the

elements of their

—Protestant and Catholic—

American community

in their

own

at-

image; they also

mainstream of society while retaining some

Irish identity.

This group was heavily influenced by the

movement in Ireland, and, following the lead of the United Irishmen, put aside religious and sectarian differences. They feared the worst

republican

hoped

to

an influx

effects of too large

of poorer

countrymen and therefore sought

immigrants, as well as limit the number of impoverished Irish

New

York City. Countering these middle-class

developed

numbers

among

the

mass

to help

settled in

were the bonds that

efforts

who

of largely Catholic Irish

who

arrived in growing

in the nineteenth century. This group pursued a less conscious policy

yet ultimately had the

most influence on the

final

shape of the Irish American

community. Although poor Protestants and Catholics increasingly distanced themselves from one another, special

ties

developed

among

the Irish through

neighborhood, workplace, and politics. Middle-class efforts at times merged

with the concerns of the poorer

Irish Catholics,

notions about respectability would pit

munity

of the lower class that

them

but for the most part their

against the Irish

American com-

had developed by the 1830s and 1840s.

For a time, the middle class dominated the Irish American community, in

voluntary organizations, the church, and the press. In

most

affluent Protestant

Sons of

St.

and Catholic

Irish

1

784 some of the

city's

Americans organized the Friendly

Patrick, a fraternal lodge typical of

many associations that sprang up

in the early republic. Similar Irish organizations appeared in subsequent decades. Several of these associations

movement. The impact

were influenced by the

Irish

Republican

of the political emigres after the failed revolution of

1798-99 can be seen in the toasts to an independent Ireland offered by the Hibernian Society on March

and American

liberty.

17, 1801,

which saluted both the United Irishmen

By the following year

this group

had written

its

own

constitution and called itself the Hibernian Provident Society.''

Some of these organizations continued to represent middle-class values. One Shamrock Friendly Association of New York, formed around and Catholics in an effort to aid the growing number of immigrants. They widely distributed a pamphlet that sent mixed signals to the poor in Ireland and reveals the middleclass effort to mold the Irish American community. It encouraged artisans to of these groups, the

1816, brought together the city's leading Irish Protestants

Migration

emigrate, suggesting that trained

72 Colonial

and

Early National

America

men would find plenty of work and contribute

mechanics and potential members

to the nation as independent

of the

middle

They did not want too many poor Irish to come to New York and therefore indicated that unskilled laborers would have to find employment in the coimtryside. Members of the Shamrock Friendly Association feared that the poor might pose a threat to the American republic because their dire condition would lead them to succumb to the evils of alcohol, which was cheap and plentiful in the United States. Drink would destroy one's sense of self-worth, prevent indeclass.

pendent judgment, and corrupt the individual. These middle-class

Irish

Ameri-

cans declared that "Civil liberty every where rests on self-respect, " which would

quickly disappear once intemperance took hold and dragged one

down into The pam-

"degradation or voluntary debasement" and eventually "despotism."

phlet praised the political system in America, declaring that immigrants had great opportunity, freedom,

was willing

to

and equal treatment under law, as long as he or she

work and be

industrious. Reading

between the

detect the middle-class apprehension over the growing

the city's poorer neighborhoods and creating an Irish

way

and 1830s groups

to associations

grants

coming

whose

like the

interests

Shamrock Friendly Association gave to those of the mass of immi-

were closer

to the city. Organizations such as the Hibernian Universal

Benevolent Society celebrated religious services,

businessmen and

St. Patrick's

Day with

a public parade, special

and festivities at plebeian establishments

Hotel. Although the

munity

one can

and American middle-class values.*

alien to both Irish

In the 1820s

lines,

number of Irish filling American community

membership

artisans, the

to develop

like the Sixth

Ward

of the Hibernians probably consisted of small

openness

of their celebration

allowed the com-

an identity that contrasted sharply with the more exclusive

dinners held by the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick at Banks Coffee House or Niblio's

Garden. Since this was a period of growing Irish American antipathy toward the English, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick endeavored to improve relations by

making

the British Consul a guest of honor.

The Hibernians

different level of society. Their Fourth of July parades included

and cordwainers.

like painters, coopers, tailors,

associated with a

mechanic groups

On such occasions the Hiberni-

made all Irish Americans feel proud. The middle-class difficulty in dictating the shape of the Irish American community can be seen in developments concerning the Catholic Church. ans displayed their ethnic insignias and

During the

wanted

1

780s organizers of

to avoid

any sign

St. Peter's,

the city's

The

of ethnicity.

first

leaders of

Catholic congregation,

St. Peter's,

including Irish

American businessman Dominick Lynch, prided themselves in their commitment to a universal church. This open-minded approach was not to last. In the early 1800s the Irish began to

dominate the parish.^

Worse, from the middle-class perspective, poorer very possessive of

St. Peter's.

In 1806,

when a group

the Highbinders threatened to disrupt

St. Peter's

of

Irish

Americans became

rowdy Protestants

called

on Christmas Eve, the poorer

Irish retaliated the

following night with a battle on Augustus Street in their own

neighborhood against Highbinders and the city watch that

one policeman

left

dead.

Migration

Such clashes along

crowd

1820, a large

group of trustees

pews

ties

in the

of

mostly

Irish Catholics

at St. Peter's that

church

within the church.

class lines also occurred

On April 4,

confronted an ethnically mixed

included Charles D'Eshinville, Lewis Larue,

James Lynch, and Matthew Carroll. The of

—probably because

rioters it

opposed the continued selling

violated their egalitarian sensibili-

—and determined to make their views known. In this instance the middle-

class trustees

had to face the disorder

trustees backed trustees

won

down

of the Irish

immigrant head on. The

Although the

that day, but continued the sale later on.

out in the end, this confrontation was an indication of the

assertiveness and growing predominance of lower-class Irish in the Catholic

community.

As the numbers of Catholic Irish swelled in the 1 820s and Church became an important the Catholic

was only natural

of their

focal point of the

1

community.

830s, the Catholic In the old country

Church had been a bastion of Irish nationality in the face of English

persecution. In America, it

where Catholics were set apart from the rest of society, view the church as

a refuge

and a reflection

own identity."^ Thus, even within the Catholic Church,

ethnic divisions

intensified.

for the Irish to

By the 1830s most

of the parishioners of St. Patrick's,

opened

in

same decade the Church of the Transfiguthe Sixth Ward. The parishioners of this church were

1815, were lower-class Irish.'" In the ration

opened

its

doors in

almost exclusively

Recognizing their separateness and afraid of being

Irish.

engulfed by the sea of Protestantism and non-Irish, to reject the multiethnic

many

Catholic Irish began

and nonsectarian attitude of the middle-class emigre.

'

This shift toward lower-class values can also be seen in the Irish American press.

Two Irish American newspapers appeared in the early nineteenth century,

both of which strived to shape the identity of the community, asserting Irish nationalism, adhering to republican principles, and expressing a concern for new

immigrants. There was, however, a subtle difference between the two. The

Shamrock or Hibernian Chronicle, which operated from

1

8

1

to a large extent the values of the middle-class emigres.

allegiance to the United States, the editor,

Edward

to

1

8

1

7,

reflected

While claiming

Gillespy, quickly spoke out

against the sectarian activities of the Protestant Orange societies in his native

land and defended Catholic emancipation in Great Britain in the interests of the

freedom

of religion.

Both causes were fervently espoused by Protestant and

Catholic middle-class emigres. tion, occasionally listing

make

73 Before the Great

a little

new

The Shamrock also took note of Irish immigraTo assist immigrants, and probably to

arrivals.

money, Gillespy ran an intelligence

agricultural laborers. Its purpose of " designing speculators "

was

to

office that

fanned out

keep the immigrants out of the hands

and sinister agents and funnel as many Irishmen into

the countryside as possible.'^

74 Cobmd

and

Early National

America

The city's second Irish American newspaper, the Truth Teller, began pubUca1 825 and appealed more directly to the lower-class Irish; it was fervently pro-Catholic— the founder was an Irish-bom priest and anti-English. Like its predecessor it focused many of its stories on Anglo-Irish relations. At the same time, it devoted a great deal of column space to domestic issues, particularly in defense of the Irish in urban and rural America. Occasionally the Shamrock included some national news and certainly complained when commentators assumed that any unidentified criminal was Irish.''' The Truth Teller took an activist stand as a mouthpiece for the Catholic Irish American community. In tion in

—

its first year, for

instance,

it

ran a series of bold essays attacking the Protestant

Bible societies for advocating religious principles that challenged the Catholic

Church. '** The poor immigrant also found a defender in the Truth Teller One article,

"A Switch for Libellers," decried the disrespect that many Americans who were widely "viewed with the most determined hostility,

held for the Irish,

hatred and contempt." For the author this "uncharitableness, ignorance, and illiberality"

was

especially galling since the Irishman in his native country

subject to tyranny because of his religion.

By the 1830s the Truth

Teller

was had

become embroiled in partisan Democratic pohtics and controversies even on '^ the ward level. The middle class failed in its effort to mold the Irish American community through voluntary associations, the church, and the press because

its

values did not reflect the day-to-day experience of the majority of Irish

and

York's

Americans. That experience took place in the streets and alleyways of New

York, where invisible bonds developed to

was

ideas

New

the Irish Americans together.

tie

It

in these neighborhoods that the true outlines of the nineteenth-century

American urban community began to take shape. As New York City's Irish Americans grew in number,

Irish

certain areas

came

to

These neighborhoods often contained the worst and most crowded housing, but offered their residents important bonds be identified as particularly

Irish.

and support mechanisms that came to form the very lineaments

American community.

In the

1

the East River docks, near Bancker and

Harmon

century, they expanded inland to cover this

ward was the Five

and Cross if

Streets.

most

Streets. In the early

of the Sixth Ward.

formed by the intersection

Points,

of the Irish

790s the Irish tended to settle not too far from

nineteenth

The center

of Orange,

By the 1820s the area had become the worst slum

of

Anthony,

in the city,

not the country. The cheapest housing was often on the northern edge of the

city, so, as

1830s

the city expanded uptown, the Irish

many

Irish lived in

Tax assessment

moved with

and above Greenwich

records, jury

lists,

it.

In the 1820s

and

Village.'^'

and other sources provide some insight

into the Irish pattern of settlement in this area. Since residential segregation

had not reached the

levels

it

would

later in the century, individuals

with

Gaelic-sounding names could be found in every ward.''' Interestingly, certain streets

had clusters

of houses

with

a larger percentage of Irish

than others. In

numbers 250, of

and 252

William Street in the Fourth Ward,

for instance,

75

and 46 out

Before the Great

65 residents were listed as "alien" (non-U. S. citizens). Similar concentrated

Migration

252,

half of the twelve

names

1/2

in the 1819 jury census appeared to be Irish

pockets of Irish can be found elsewhere: on Ferry, Rose, and Hague Streets in the Fourth Ward; Lombardy, Bancker, and

Henry

Streets in the Seventh Ward;

and Elizabeth, Mulberry, Orange, Greenwich, and Prince Streets in the Eighth

many

Ward. In the Ninth Ward Street

Irish lived

Only

in the Sixth

Ward

did the Irish begin to break out of this pattern and

dominate a whole neighborhood. With aliens, the Sixth

in the city.

Even

next to each other on Greenwich

and shared the same occupation, weaving.^*

Ward in

Many

819

a quarter of its 15,000 residents listed as

had the highest number of foreigners

of these aliens, as well as the citizens,

in the Sixth

packed with

1

Irish.

were

Irish

of

any ward

Americans.

Ward some streets had almost no Irish, whereas others were Only a small part of Chambers Street was in the Sixth Ward:

212 people lived on

this short section, including 15 aliens.

None had an

Anthony Street, however, 254 were aliens. Many of these were probably Irish. The census book listed 92 heads of household on the street, 32 with Irish names. One of the most notorious tenements in the city, owned by grocer Paul Healy was 122 Anthony Street. It housed 83 residents. Most of the heads of households (total 15) had Irish names. Irish-sounding name. Of the 643 residents on

Similar densities of Irish could be found elsewhere in the Sixth Ward, on

Catherine Lane, Orange, Mulberry, Cross, Augustus, Duane, and Elm Streets.^'

The census record reveals that grocer Patrick Mehan, laborer Terence McGowan, Mehan, waiter Drake Fitch, and rigger John Hoyt all lived

bottling porter Denis at 21

Orange

Street. In addition,

1

7

males and

1

7

females lived with them.

It is

not difficult to imagine what conditions were like there. This building was

probably crowded and the walls separating one apartment from another thin

enough to hear every argument and intimate exchange between family memThese individuals no doubt saw each other every day, but whether they

bers.

talked to each other's, drank together, and shared each other's secrets

we can

never know.^°

The filled

city census record does,

by the

Irish

however, indicate the variety of occupations

and thus provides some important information about the

American community. Up and down Orange avenues surrounding

it

in 1819,

Street

and the other heavily

one would find not only the occupations

above, but also carpenters, fruit sellers,

machine makers, masons,

Irish Irish

listed

tanners,

sawyers, tailors, painters, bootmakers, sailmakers, and a variety of other trades-

men.

In other words, Irish immigrants during this period

any number

of jobs.

Some

might have worked

at

some remained unskilled and worked

arrived with specific skills, others obtained

training in the United States, and

still

others

as day laborers.^'

Many journeymen bom

in

America complained that immigrants who were

hastily trained took their positions or lowered the going wage.

These complaints

were echoed by city cartmen during the 1810s and 1 820s as the number

75 Colonial

and

who made

their living as carters increased sharply.

During the War

of Irish

of 1812 the

Early National

City Corporation issued licenses to Irish immigrants because of the shortage of

America

labor. It was also a good way of ensuring political support. After the war, American-bom cartmen petitioned the Common Council complaining that "aliens" were making it difficult for patriotic citizens to earn a living and

own

pointedly reminded city officials of their

sacrifices as soldiers

while the

New York and made money. ^^ In response, the city government

ahens stayed in

limited ahens to carting

Irishmen quickly dominated this area of the trade

dirt.

and still continued to challenge American citizens in other areas. By the 1820s, the heavily Irish Sixth Ward was commonly referred to as the cartman's ward."

The Gaelic clannishness Isaac

on the

that non-Irish workers objected to

actually helped solidify the bonds of the Irish

Anderson found himself confronted by

American community.

a group of hostile

job

In 1826

cartmen asking

him if he were an Orangeman and announcing that only Roman Catholics were allowed to remove

dirt

from a particular construction

aroused suspicion by working faster than everyone

cartmen had attacked some

of their

else.

sight.

Anderson had

The year

before Irish

Connecticut counterparts during another

construction job because the Connecticut

men had loaded their carts too high.^*

Labor crews in the city were frequently organized by ethnicity, and the Irish guarded their jobs against

all

comers.^^^

Clannishness did not affect individual

many

groups before or since,

Irish

Like other immigrant

initiative.

were determined

to

make good

despite the

odds. Often this called for a high degree of job flexibihty. In 1818 John Doyle

wrote to

tell

his wife in Ireland that he had put aside his training as a printer

after arriving in

New

selling picture prints.

York and became a

street vendor, earning a nice profit

These entrepreneurial

activities eventually led

open his own store and to become a successful career

shows

had been

a similar opportunism. In

in the

United States

in Ireland, he at

employed a dirt for

offer

1

Although brought up as a farmer

one time had learned the weaving

great

many

people,

all Irish,

a

modicum

of success, but

it

John to

Robert Brunt's

833 Brunt was thirty-five years old and

for sixteen years.

trade. In 1833,

however, he

and worked as a contractor removing

construction on the northern edge of the

him

bookseller."''

city.

Not only did this position him to exert some

probably enabled

influence over his countrymen.^^

Like contracting, the grocery business created opportunities for ambitious Irish

Americans and allowed the nascent entrepreneur

to develop a small-scale

patronage network within the immediate neighborhood. Although information

about grocers

is

hard to

come

by,

it is

known

that they sold food, items for the

household, and any other product that the grocer believed he could make a profit on. Groceries were an adaptable institution and varied from location to location.

In

many areas they sold liquor, combining the function of grocery and grog shop. Some groceries

Groceries were also arenas of entertainment and conviviality.

served as the neighborhood gossip mill by day and offered fiddling and dancing

77

commu-

Before the Great

at night. In either case,

nity bonds

they were a place to drink and further cement

among the Irish. As a result the grocer became a central figure in the He often dispensed credit and may have even helped some

neighborhood.

individuals find a job. Groceries dotted every section of the city and wrere not a

uniquely Irish American institution. Yet they

may have been more

among the Irish than among other groups.^^ One measure of the grocer's significance in

the Irish American

When

can be determined from bail bonds.

important

community

the city police arrested and formally

charged an individual, that person had the opportunity to pay a bond to get out of jail until the trial. In the early

nineteenth century there were no bail bond

offices, as there are today. Instead,

the accused person needed to raise the cash

and find someone the poverty of

else to post

many

bond and swear surety and the lack

of the accused

good behavior. Given

for

of personal

connections with

those further up the social and economic scale, that task was not always easy. In a

random sample

of bail

bonds from 1810, approximately one-third, whether

they had Irish names or not, had grocers listed as surety. Irish

names, the

total proportion

Among those who had

with grocers signing surety increased to forty

names dropped to

percent, while the percentage of the remaining non-Irish

less

than 30 percent. ^^ Although these figures no doubt underrepresent the number of Irish involved, they

as a patron

within the larger

Not every success. For

do suggest that the grocer played

and protector within the

Irish

more

significant role

New York society.

grocer,

and certainly not every immigrant, could enjoy economic

many Irish Americans

it

was not easy

period an important pattern of working and saving

fund the immigration of relatives of migration, the

a

American community than he did

demographic

left

to earn a living. Yet in this

was established

profile of the Irish

American community was women outnumbered the

slightly

skewed. In most wards the total number of

men. In

1

8 1 9, for instance, there

in order to

behind.^° Because of this staggered pattern

were 5,644 women and 5,290 men in the Fourth

Ward. But among the 1,831 aliens

listed, there

were almost 300 fewer

women

than men. These same trends persisted in the Sixth Ward, which had almost

400 fewer alien

women than men out of a total

of 3,875 aliens.^'

A few of these women headed their own household. In was

a 56-year-old grocer living at

Widow McGee

Mulberry

I

A

ran a boardinghouse.

records indicates that these

women

Street,

1819 Mrs. McMurray

while across the street

perusal of the census and assessment

householders, while relatively rare, were

not unique. In 1819 on Mulberry Street in the Sixth Ward, for example, there

were 56 household heads with Irish-sounding names; 9 of these were female.^^

Most women,

therefore, lived in households

immigrants often became domestic servants

headed by men. Younger women

at first,

and thus found themselves

dispersed throughout the city. Like their male counterparts, these

money, helped their families come

to

New

women saved

York, and even continued to

Migration

it arrived. Younger women also formed bonds with own parties and attending church, but probably had

78

contribute to the family once

Colonial and

one another, holding their

Early National

to await marriage before they

America

neighborhoods.^''

Whether they were domestic

became

McGlone

American

servants, married or widowed, the archives give

only a small glimpse into women's Bridget

fully integrated into Irish

lives.

On

March night

a lonely

in 1820

her infant daughter on the steps of Bishop Cormoly's

left

house. She wanted to relieve herself of her infant burden, but feared for its future.

penned and attached

In the letter that she

had not taken the baby already

Alms House

to the

to the child she explained that she

—she had three other children there

—because she did not want the infant exposed to the Protestant teach-

ings of that public institution.

'''*

Faced with a similar situation, the widow Mary

Erwin took a different tack: she petitioned the city for money to return to Ireland had the rector

in 1810 and

of St. Peter's testify as to her character.''^

sometimes were the victims

of violence. Betsy

Bloomingdale Road and reported that the night of

November

belly even though she

12, 1824,

was

in the

Dougherty ran

Women

a tavern

came smashing

five or six people

in

on on

breaking her furniture and kicking her in the

advanced stages of pregnancy.^*^

also be the perpetrators of violence. Bridget

Doyle attacked

Women could Ann

Yates in

February 1827. Yates had a long-standing complaint against Bridget and her

husband. She declared that the Doyle grocery was really "a mere rendezvous of Riot and Dissipation, disturbing the peace of

all their

neighbors" both night and

day and was "a disgrace to the Neighborhood as well as the Society

at large.

'"'^

Piecing together these small snapshots of the lives of ordinary people,

combined with the begin to understand

munity of the

as

it

residential proximity of the urban landscape,

some

of the

key elements of the

Irish

one can

American com-

The hopes and ideals What counted was, the

defined itself before the famine migration.

middle class meant

little to

these people.

day-to-day experience of living in crowded neighborhoods, close to one's

countrymen, but Irish.

close, too, to others

who were

Driven to depend on each other,

Irish

upon their ties to one another. The solidarity among Irish Americans had

often openly hostile to the

Americans sustained and a great

impact on urban

built

politics.

In turn, political participation influenced the development of the Irish American

community. The date.

During the

Irish 1

became important

to

New

York

politics at a very early

790s the mistreatment of two Irish ferrymen by a Federalist

magistrate led to a major political controversy. Although the Alien Acts were

intended to limit the political input of immigrants, the Irish vote helped strengthen the Jeffersonian Party and set the stage for electoral victory in

1

800.''*

In the opening decades of the nineteenth century the voting patterns of the Irish

were

Federalist

of intense interest to the

Anglophile Federalists. In June 1807 the

New York Evening Post ridiculed a Democratic procession,

the green jackets

worn by some

of the

noting

marchers "in compliment to the new

made

citizens"

who had been

responsible for a recent Jeffersonian political

same newspaper had denied that there were any parallels between the failed Irish rebellion of 1 798-99 and the American Revolution and had cast disparaging comments on the character of the Irish.''^ If Federalist politicians refused to see a relationship between the Irish and victory. Before that election, the

American to

situation, this

was not

true for the middle-class emigres

who came

New York. In fact there was a close affiliation between the middle-class Irish

who were

attempting to mold the Irish American community and the

sonian Democrats. Not only did several of these politics of the for office,

men

Jeffer-

take an active part in the

day through electioneering, editing newspapers, and even running

but some of their fraternal organizations became overtly political.

When one member of the Hibernian Provident Society voted Federalist in the whole association

became gripped

in a debate over

1

809,

whether to reprimand

him.^°

What really counted politically, however, was what the mass of immigrants The political emigres had joined with the Jeffersonian Democrats because

did.

of their

shared republican sympathies. By the late 1810s, Irish involvement in retaining an ideological component,

politics,

while

machine

politics. In 1816, as the

still

was moving

closer to

New York Evening Post repeated its attacks on

immigrant voting, the Shamrock proudly declared the Sixth Ward Irish territory and cleverly reported that the voters there had struck a blow against monarchy by voting down Rufus King. The watchword

for all

Irishmen

at the polls

had

been "Refuse King."

During the

first

two decades

of the nineteenth century there

was

a close

association between the republicanism of the middle-class Irish emigres and the

emerging

street politics of the lower-class Irish. Indeed,

Thomas Addis Emmet, remained a

hero for almost

men like Protestant On April 24, 1817,

all Irish.

Tammany Hall, destroying furniture and injuring Tammany regulars had refused to nominate Emmet Emmet won special recognition from Catholic Irish

about 200 Irishmen rioted at several people because the for a seat in the assembly.

seven years later

when he

aided William Sampson in the defense of a group of

Catholics that had been arrested after a confrontation with Protestant

Orangemen in Greenwich Village. With a great deal of rhetorical flourish he had developed as a lawyer in both America and Ireland, Emmet seized upon the occasion to lecture the court on the historic mistreatment of the Irish in their native land.*^

Eventually the political significance of the middle-class emigres the Irish American street tactics of

community

machine politics.

to a certain extent, but

relied increasingly

It

that the nonethnic fraternal association of the its

political trappings

as

Men like Emmet participated in this endeavor

working the wards and watching the polls was a

those with less ideology and a stronger arm.

on

waned

on the rough and tumble

and started

to

was

in the years before the

Tammany

become

job for 1

840s

Society began to take

associated with the Irish.

79 Before the Great

Migration

Although

30 Colonial

and

it

Tammany remained in the

hands of the non-Irish, by the early 1830s

could count on Irish politicians regularly delivering the vote of the Sixth Ward

on the

Early National

as well as

America

this control

When

was

Irish

supporting other sections of the

Whig politicians decided

the

city.

Any

opposition to

likely to bring violence. to contest the

Democratic control

of the

Sixth Ward, serious rioting broke out in April 1834. This riot demonstrates the close association

between neighborhood,

politics,

and the

Irish in the develop-

American community. Whig political hacks, whom the Democratic papers said came from the First and Second Wards, appeared at the Sixth Ward poll on April 8 and attempted to intimidate voters. During the

ment

of the Irish

acrimonious exchanges that followed, some of the Whigs were quoted as saying,

"We

should get along well enough

was not

if it

for the Irish."

These heated

words, and others, led to a pushing match and the exchange of blows. Without too

much difficulty,

the

Whigs were driven from the

area.

On the second day of

the election the Whigs formed a procession and marched "in military order"

along

Duane

Street

and through the heart

of the Sixth

Ward. During this parade

damned Irish." After the Whig headquarters on Broadway at the

the Whigs shouted out terms like "low Irish" and "the parade, the Irish retaliated by attacking

edge of the Sixth Ward. The battle there was brutal, with injured.

the

A few

many on both

shots were exchanged, but further violence

mayor persuaded the Whigs, who had rushed

sides

was avoided when

to a nearby arsenal to seize

weapons, to disperse. By the third day only minor scuffles were occurring. The

had shown their political colors and successfully defended their neighborhood and their party."*^ When their interests seemed threatened, many Irish Americans in early-nineteenth-century New York were willing to disregard their middle-class leaders' notions of propriety and order and meet suspected enemies quickly and directly

Irish

with areas

force.

While

—marks

this characteristic

—evident in politics, religion,

and other

an important divergence from the goals of the middle-class

emigres, the exact nature of this violence bears closer examination.

The

will-

ingness of both the nativist Whigs and the Democratic Irish to resort to rioting in the 1834 election indicates that this violence

conditions.

It

was the

antagonized the

Irish,

nativists

who

and quickly turned

In the contentious world of Jacksonian

scrambled

for

was

a result of

American

entered the Sixth Ward, insulted, and to violence

America one

power and, denying the legitimacy

when

the Irish objected.

interest group after another of its opposition, eagerly

turned to blows to establish supremacy.*^ Despite the mutual culpability in creating disorder, many Anglo-Americans blamed the Irish for being too eager to join the fray. One Whig judge in 1832 was reported to have declared that the Irish took the idea of liberty too far: the Irish,

according to the judge, believed that they had the liberty to use the

shillelagh

on any

commented on

one.'*''

In

November

1814, a Federalist paper sarcastically

the riots at the Downpatrick Fair in Ireland, proclaiming that

"we

know

that an Irish fair

New

York

81

magistrates repeatedly lectured Irishmen on their rights and obligations as

Before the Great

may

Migration

all

is

nothing without a fight."

Americans. In July 1830 a judge told one such group that although they

have had reason to oppose the law in their native land, "in this country where all

can receive justice

—where the laws are made by the authority of the whole

people, and for the people's benefit,

persons of

self

government

no excuse, no

for resisting the

palliation can be offered

by

due execution of them.""*'

Such comments were hardly disinterested observations and often built upon blatantly racist assumptions about the Celts and their lack of control. Ireland,

however, was a stormy and rugged country in the early nineteenth century. This

was not because

of

any genetic predisposition

of the mercurial Celts. Indeed,

although some English contemporaries argued that this was the case, others

thought the Irish docile and amiable and attributed high rates of violence in counties like Tipperary to local inbreeding with the

many

descendants of

Cromwell's troopers and other "robust" Anglo-Saxons. Rather than genes,

Irish

violence was rooted in heated religious rivalry, nationalist frustrations, and the severe strains placed

on the

an expanding population. In

and industry by

island's limited resources of land 1

798, for instance, a rebellion, fiercely fought

cruelly suppressed, left 30,000 Irish dead.

and

Through the next three decades,

Protestant Orange lodges and Catholic secret Ribbon societies sprouted up

throughout the mixed religious areas of southern Ulster and northern Connacht

and Leinster, where they preyed upon each other through acts

of covert terror-

ism. Further south, running through the middle of the country, the rapid pace of

economic change and competition nourished more violent

split

secret societies

along economic lines; renters organized against landlords, peasants against

agricultural laborers, class

and laborers against peasants. Violence often cut through

and occupational

lines, as

meager rewards Ireland could

ment

groups of kin or "factions" fought for the few

offer its

impoverished masses. Rife with resent-

of authority, bitter religious antipathy,

and hopelessness, Ireland was a

fertile

and desperation

breeding ground for

bom of poverty mob action and

physical force in the early nineteenth century.'^

Where

the opponents and protagonists of

New

York's Irish

made

their

mistake was to assume the conditions that had encouraged the violence in Ireland

had evaporated in the "democratic" atmosphere

that the Irish brought with

them made them

of

America. The values

suspicious of those in authority

and quick to resort to violence. In the United States these tendencies were reinforced by experiences that led to rioting and thus helped to articulate the

boundaries of

New York's Anglo-American community. New York's police force was poorly

Before the 1840s

between the night watch, officers,

sheriffs,

organized, divided

and constables. Few Irishmen served as peace

and antagonism between the police and the

Irish persisted

throughout

the period.^' After Protestant and Catholic Irish fought in Greenwich Village in July 1824, for instance, the police arrested dozens of Catholics, but did not

Long before that

had become

82

detain even one Protestant.

Colonial and

suspicious of every

Early National

Augustus Street, the appearance of the watch, combined with some high-handed

America

tactics, led to

York peace

Some twenty

date, Catholic Irish

officer. In

an all-out onslaught by the

neighborhood.^^ the Irish

New

the Christmas riot in 1806 on

Irish in defense of their religion

years later that

same

street

May

1829,

two

American community.

In late

was

still a

officers

and

center of

attempted to

serve legal papers in a suit against the property of an Irishman on Augustus Street.

This act provoked a "general turn out of his countrymen" that could

only be quelled by police reinforcements.^'^ During the 1820s and 1 830s the

Irish

The magistrates wanted to clean up the city and remove all pigs from the streets. The Irish, and other lower-class New Yorkers, objected since the pigs provided a cheap source of food. From the Irish were strongly opposed

perspective, rioter

to antihog laws.

Dennis Dougherty eloquently explained, "the corporation

[the city government], the police

thieves"

who "were

and

their officers

.

.

.

were

a

damned

set of

stealing their hogs."^"*

The Irish found plenty of reason to resent the wealthy in New York as well. Most Irish immigrants, as already mentioned, were packed into crowded housing in areas like the Sixth Ward,

pushed

or,

especially in the late 1820s and early 1830s,

to the periphery of the city to live

on the

outskirts. This

newly

settled

was an odd mixture of housing. Interspersed between streets of cheaply produced wooden buildings were some fenced and hedged estates of the wealthy. This situation must have reminded many an Irishman of his homeland. Antagonism between the landed and impoverished occasionally broke out into acts of area

vandalism and collective violence. In one of the largest

of these disturbances,

focused against Stuyvesant property, the rallying cry was that the rioters "would

have the satisfaction of the Irish. circumstances.

"^^

Resentment of wealth also appeared in other

When a gig driven by a merchant came too close to a line of Irish

cartmen on Third Avenue and 1 8th Street in August 1 833, a disturbance quickly erupted. it

Some

of the

cartmen grabbed the horse

of the offending gig

and forced

onto the sidewalk. Enraged by this affront to his dignity, the merchant lashed

out with his buggy whip. That opened the floodgates for more violence. Irishmen

came pouring out after a day's

buggies.

taken In

of the Third

Avenue

groceries,

where many were drinking

work, and attacked the merchant and some of his friends in other

By the time the police arrived and made

—the merchants had been badly

arrests

—only the

Irish

were

beaten.''''

what must have often seemed a hostile environment, the Irish found other On more than one occasion, Irish workers

causes for resorting to violence. attacked individuals

who

they believed threatened their

jobs.

Ancient resent-

ment also explains some of the battles between Catholics and Protestants, such as the fight

between Greenwich Village weavers on July

12, 1824, the anniver-

sary of the seventeenth-century Orange victory at the Battle of the Boyne. There is

also

some evidence

to suggest a recurrence of conflict

factions during the 1820s.

The

Irish also

became involved

in a

between various

number of racial

which they attacked blacks, who shared some of the same neighfor some of the same jobs.^'' women seemed to take a more direct part in the violent world of the

incidents in

borhoods and competed Irish

than did other New York women. This activity suggests that Irish

street

operated from

somewhat

different values

Christmas 1806,

ing their

men

to fight

felt

Irish identity.

and were supplying them with weapons.

Similarly, the Gazette reported a July 4 riot

by the "low Irish" and declared that the shillelaghs

possessive about their neigh-

As early as the Augustus Street commentators mentioned that women were encourag-

borhood and strongly about their riot of

and

women

and that some

of the

on Anthony

women

women, "amazon

During the Protestant and Catholic

Irish clash in

Street

supplied the

committed

men

with

like," joined in the fray.^*

Greenwich

Village in

1

824,

woman was knocked down and another woman charged into the melee swinging a stick at all who stood in her way. one pregnant

This violence reveals a complex set of values reflecting a mixture of class Irish American community its shape and The Irish defended their neighborhoods, their jobs, and their church, while

awareness and ethnicity that gave the form.

expressing a strain of antiauthoritarianism and a resentment of wealth. Moreover, they streets

demonstrated

and asserted

a persistent faith in the

roughhouse democracy

their equal rights despite poverty

and

nationality.

of the

They

developed a special Irish identity, increasingly associated with the Catholic

Church, and thus perceived of themselves as a distinct group, as did others. is

this sense of identity that created the

It

New York Irish American community.

In the opening decades of the nineteenth century, middle-class Irish Ameri-

cans wanted to meld into the larger society while celebrating their ethnicity

and republican

ideals; this vision for the Irish

American community excluded

many of their poorer countrymen. By

the 1830s this

associations, the church, the press,

and even in

immigrants joined elements of the

Irish

effort, as

politics,

seen in voluntary

had

failed.

Poorer

and American cultures to create a

The mass of Irishmen understood that their new home had much to offer, but they also knew that even in the United States they remained

hybrid identity.

besieged by prejudice.

They

therefore clung to one another, secure in the

knowledge that they retained something unique and special that revolved around the bonds that tied them to their fellow they

left

Irish

an indelible mark on American history.

Americans. In the process

83 Before the Great

Migration

1844

to

1877

PART

II

THE GREAT MIGRATION

The

St.

Patricks

marchers and

up

Day parade

fifty

of 1871, with thirty thousand

bands, was the largest ever seen in

New York

to that time. Gallowglasses, the soldiers of ancient Ireland,

provided a very rare element of pageantry. Standing over 6

4 inches

tall

and dressed

in red, green, saffron,

feet

and gold

costumes, the long-haired warriors escorted a "triumphal car" bearing a bust of Daniel O'Connell, the leader of the Catholic

Emancipation movement

New

York.

J.

in Ireland.

(Museum

Clarence Davies Collection.)

of the City of

Hasia

R.

Diner

OVERVIEW

"The Most

Irish City

in the

Union"

THE ERA OF THE GREAT MIGRATION, 1844-1877

X HE MOMENTOUS YEARS

of the

mid-nineteenth

century shaped the histories of both the Irish in America and the city of the

New

Commencing with the Famine of the 840s, a great migration transformed small Irish community already there and facilitated the metropolis's mas-

York.

1

and economic growth spurred on even more transatlantic migration. In these years the destinies of New York and sive expansion. In turn, spectacular physical

the Irish

became

inseparable.

who trumpeted New York

Although the speaker at an 1844 Irish meeting "most Irish city" may have been a bit

as America's

premature, he was prophetic'

Three decades

later

New

York could legitimately claim that

not only housed America's largest Irish Irish

American

political, cultural,

been mixed, however, on whether

The Without the Irish, largest city;

produced

a

it

community but stood

distinction.

It

at the center of

and social activism. Opinions would have this distinctiveness constituted a blessing or

New

York Scene

New York might have evolved from a large city to America's

might have expanded beyond Lower Manhattan;

volume of goods and

services unequaled in the nation;

it it

might have might have

88

developed a complex political machinery and network of public services; and

The Great

its relations

Migration

But

when

with the state government might have been equally contentious.

New

century

Some

said

all is

and done,

York without the

characteristics of

New

it

would be

York

life

began well before 1 844 and the large-scale

been growing rapidly for some time.

with the completion

difficult to

imagine nineteenth-

Irish.

It

that later

had an impact on the

Irish migration.

Irish

New York had in fact

became the largest American city in 1825

New

of the Erie Canal, linking the port of

York with the

With this coup. New York became the center for national and international commerce and transportation and overtook Philadelphia as the chief commercial entrepot in the United States. Between 1825 and 1845 the city's population grew from 166,000 to 371,000. By resource-rich hinterlands of the Midwest.

1830

it

was the center

of the nation's

ready-made clothing industry.^

Well before the arrival of hundreds of thousands needing a place to

expanded the

live.

New

city's physical space. In

1816 Houston Street and Greenwich

Village constituted the city's northern rim.

commercial development stretched along with a smattering

New Irish

came

class housing,

commented on and the

In 1834 the city

the

houses sprouting up its

By the mid- 1840s

Fifth all

Avenue up

the

New

dirt,

way

to

residential

Twentieth

and

Street,

to Forty-second Street.'^

share of poverty's devastation long before the

to symbolize the horrors of urban

observers had

tal,

of

York saw more than

and sons of Erin

of daughters

Yorkers pushed out from Lower Manhattan and

life.

Even before the 1840s

the extent of poverty, the shabbiness of working-

crime, and disorder on the sidewalks of

government opened the nation's

first

York City Lunatic Asylum, drawing

its

New York.

municipal mental hospi-

inmates from the

Riotous behavior had punctuated the "tranquility" of civic

poor.''

life

before the tidal

wave of Irish immigration.^ The urban political machine, the complex power organism

that dispensed

favors to the masses in exchange for political fealty, existed in

before Ireland experienced the

men to

the

New World.

political historians, the

Famine and sent

According to

forth legions of

political scientist

machine predated the

New York decades

Irish

Tammany

women and

and had nothing to do with

their purported naivete, subservience, ignorance, or corruption. St.

its

Amy Bridges and other The Society

of

existed before the Irish migration and indeed before the drafting

of the U.S. Constitution.''

Americans

in

New

York City and the

state,

were already reacting

to the

growing immigrant and Catholic presence in their midst before the floodgates

from Ireland opened in earnest. Numbers alone were not the the 1820s, tension

Nativism as

mounted over the

a political

issue. Starting in

allocation of state resources and power.

and ideological issue surfaced

in

New

York

politics in

the 1830s, and in the municipal elections held in the spring of 1835, two wards

sported avowedly nativist

tickets.'' In

the years immediately preceding the

large-scale migration, controversy flared over Bible reading in the

common

common

and the relationship between the

schools and the Puhlic

89

School Society, a self-proclaimed Protestant organization. Anti-Catholics

The Era oj the

schools,

dominated the first elected School Board

(

842),

1

and in the

last

mayoral election

before the great migration, nativists enjoyed a landslide victory in municipal elections, capturing City Hall

and the

Common Council.^

Urban growth, economic expansion, the recognition industrial development, political machine-building,

these issues

became increasingly important

human

of the

cost of

—

and intergroup confhct

as the migration

all of

from Ireland was

transformed from a steady stream into a deluge.

The

Few

Isle

of Saints and Scholars

modern history transformed as many women and did the Great Famine, which hit Ireland in the summer of 1845 and then

single natural events in

men as

savaged the island for the next few years. patterns of existence, and Irish life,

its

economic and

social,

the majority of the population

felt

on other continents.

The potato was the

of potatoes

the basic

staff of life,

—that —to keep subdividing leases on tiny plots of land,

consumed at every meal and burned

since potatoes could be

transformed the country's basic

had centered on the cultivation

since the mid-eighteenth century. staple

It

repercussions were

for fuel.

It

enabled the poor

grown anywhere. The potato

is,

also played a key role in

the astronomical increase in the Irish population, particularly in the western part of the island, ever since its importation to Ireland in the early eighteenth

century.

It

enabled the poor to marry at a

increase their

fertility.

much younger

age,

and therefore

But with a larger population, they descended into even

greater poverty.

The impact

of the potato needs to be seen alongside British imperial policy.

In the eighteenth century

the basic foodstuff

home,

it

England began relying on Ireland to produce

much of

needed to undergird urbanization and industrialization

as well as to support imperialism

at

and wars around the globe. The mother

country, not the colony, reaped the profits of any agricultural exports, notably grain, that

flowed into the coffers of English owners of

Irish land. In order to

make this possible, England had to appropriate the common lands on which the poor depended. As a result, the energies of the Irish peasantry went toward the of crops for England and English landowners. The came to depend on the only available noncommercial crop:

commercial cultivation ordinary people thus the potato.

As one observer noted

in 1804,

"The poor Irish have to furnish other which they themselves are starving

countries with such vast quantities of that for

want

of."^

In addition, over the course of the nineteenth century the

devoted to

tillage increased,

whereas those

for pasturage

number

of acres

went down as absentee

landlords grew increasingly concerned about profits. Although Ireland's eastern

counties experienced

some economic modernization and

successful

commer-

Great Migration

and early nineteenth centuries, the western ones

90

cialization in the eighteenth

The Great

did not. Indeed, the dependence

Migration

communities a

in the west,

where

on the potato

its

started first with the poorest

cuhivation set the standards for daily

life.'°

Thus when Phytophthom infestans destroyed the tubular staple, it unleashed series of forces that proved devastating to the fundamental way of life in

Ireland. Starvation obviously resulted

from the

infestation. Every year

it

wors-

The crisis stretched into the methods of distribution, British their British rulers, made little

ened, and by 1846 almost the entire crop rotted. 1850s. Relief efforts,

antipathy to the

hampered by primitive

Irish,

and

Irish distrust of

difference."

After four years of continuous blight, close to one million people had

vanished. Hundreds of thousand had died because of starvation, typhus, and dysentery; others had fled the country.

One

historian puts the

number

due directly to starvation or the diseases attendant to malnutrition million.'^

Commentators

at the

time

of the

Famine wrote

in

their faces bloated yet wrinkled it

was too plain, grow up

The Famine

itself

million Irish people

Famine

also

to be

and

.

.

.

their

of a pale greenish hue,

.

.

1

of .

1

dead

to 1.5

harrowing terms

of starving beggars streaming through the countryside, of the dead

lying along the sides of the roads, of "little children

at

and the dying

Hmbs fleshless who would never, .

.

.

men and women."'''

contributed to a massive exodus to escape starvation: left for

.

1

.5

North America between 1845 and 1855. '* The

changed the composition

of the

stream of emigrants that had been

steadily flowing out of Ireland since the beginning of the nineteenth century. In general, those

who

left

Ireland in the decade after the

Famine came from the

poorer classes, and the Irish migrated in family units rather than as single men.

The Famine

also changed the basic structure of marriage

Ireland. Previously,

young. After the

1

and landholding in

because of the nature of potato cultivation, the poor married

850s, the Irish deferred marriage or just

eschewed it, with only

one son and one daughter in a family marrying and therefore inheriting the lease (or increasingly,

ownership) on the family holding.'^

This evolving system of nonpartible inheritance, coupled with a strikingly

low

rate of marriage, created

women. With no economic

an excess population of unmarried

development could absorb those passed over Ireland exported

men, and and

New

Irish

its

men and

opportunities at home, since no urban or industrial

young. The forces

at

for

marriage and inheritance,

work pushed out more women than

migration to the United States, as well as to Canada, Australia,

Zealand, became a heavily female-oriented trend, facilitated along

female kin and friendship networks.

'*'

America's Most Irish City

From 1844 on. New York and its Irish population grew rapidly. New York became an increasingly Irish city and the Irish increasingly New Yorkers. As a

result of shipping patterns

and economic developments unconnected to the

New

91

York emerged in

The Era of the

the 1840s as the premier port of entry for immigrants from Ireland, as well as

Great Migration

nature of Irish society or the devastation of the Famine,

from other sending

societies.

Few newcomers had

New

the resources to go beyond

York and therefore

stayed for negative reasons; most, although certainly not options.'^ Yet, as

more and more

all,

Irish settled there, creating

had no other

within the me-

with formal and informal

tropolis dense, throbbing Irish enclaves, replete

New York became an increasingly attractive destination. A French visitor to New York summarized it best perhaps institutions that sustained

communal

when he commented, "Emigration

life.

will soon cause

to be said that Ireland is

it

no longer where flows the Shannon, but rather besides the banks of the Hudson River.

"^^

Between 1847 and 1851

New

whom

York, of

a total of 1.8 million

848,000 were Irish

German. Between May and December landed in In the

women

immigrants disembarked in

and

of 1847, the

men and

the rest mainly

number from

Ireland

who

New York totaled 52,946, which was more than from any other place.

same months of the following year, the number rose to 91,061, and the it went up again, to 112,591.^' In 1851 the Irish influx peaked,

year after that

with 163,000

arrivals."^

It

who landed in New York,

should be remembered, however, that individuals

Irish or otherwise,

may not have stayed there

or

may

work opportunities for Irish male newcomers in

not have stayed very long. Given the explosion in unskilled particular

men on railroad or canal building projects, who disembarked in New York may have left

women as well as men, join other family of Irish

could easily have only landed in

members in Albany,

Buffalo, Rochester, or

communities sprouting around the country.

the best capitalized Irish immigrants were those (or

immediately. Others,

New York, going on to

It is

any of the hundreds

indeed possible that

who did not linger in New York

New York

Boston or the other east coast ports) but went elsewhere, making

and the other harbor

cities

somewhat

atypical of the rest of Irish America.

But even with these caveats in mind, a heavily Irish city,

York housed 12 percent

of

New York State

population)

bom

Irish parents,

New York evolved into New

city's total

population)

bom

in Ireland,

census of 1855 reported 175,735 (27.9% of the

there. (These figures exclude the

which would surely push the

The pressure

clear that

America's Irish population.^' The U.S. census of 1850

counted 133,730 people (26% of the while the

it is

and America's premier one. Between 1845 and 1851

of the Irish (and

German)

city's

American-bom children

"Irish" total

influx into

up

of

higher.)^"

New York led to the state

supervision of the immigration process. Despite the disapproval of the city's

Common

Council, in 1847 the state legislature created the Board of

sioners of Emigration.

Of the board's 10

belonged to the Friendly Sons of

Under the new

St.

original

Patrick,

law, ships' captains

an

members, 6 were

Irish

CommisIrish

and

benevolent organization.

had to report the names and port

of

immigrants and confirm that

92

embarkation of

The Great

themselves. Another state law of 1 848 set aside a separate pier for ships carrying

Migration

all

all

individuals could support

immigrants, and in 1855 the legislature designated Castle Garden a reception point for the

new

arrivals.

It

hoped thereby to protect the hordes

from unscrupulous "runners" and others eager

of

newcomers

to fleece the survivors of the

ocean voyage."

By 1 860 New York had more than 200,000 Irish-born individuals out of a total population of about 800,000, which

immigrant

bloc.

These

Irish

made

accounted

the Irish

New

York City's

largest

for 13 percent of all the Irish in the

United States and thus formed America's

largest

Hibernian

enclave.^'*

By 1870

the Irish percentage of Gotham's population had climbed to 21.4 percent of the city's total,

but Boston and Jersey City,

Irish concentrations, at 22.7 percent

New Jersey,

registered

and 21.5 percent

somewhat

larger

of their populations.

Irish Emigrant Society held its first meeting on March 30, 1841. Through its office, men and women could obtain advice and information, jobs and lodgings, as well as file complaints against

The

swindlers and protest conditions on board ships.

The

society also remitted

passage tickets back to Ireland in such volume that in 1850

Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank. (Bettmann.)

it

money and

prepaid

established a thrift institution, the

countrymen

visited his

93

Nev^ York

The Era of the

U.S. census, v^^hich

Great Migration

in the United States in the early 1870s, claimed that

deserved to be called America's most Irish

The 1880

city.^^

began to count both place of birth and parents' place of

finally

that a

who

Stephen Byrne,

respectively. Nevertheless, the Irish priest

whopping one-third

making

New York

of all

estimated

birth,

New York stemmed from Irish parentage, truly

an extension of Ireland.

Pockets of Irish settlement of varying sizes dotted most of developed

— New York. Equally important, the

undeveloped

Americans

—and

nineteenth-century

moved a great deal in their constant search for better, less They moved when jobs took them to other neighborhoods or

in general,

costly housing.

New

out of

Irish, like

York

entirely.

A New

York

Irish

newspaper noted with

regret in

1859 that "the immense majority are as yet but a mere floating population,

migrating from place to place wherever they

may

find a

market

for their

labor.""

With life

this transience in

mind,

in mid-nineteenth-century

homes

in Brooklyn,

into a greater

New York's

New

it is still

New

possible to pinpoint pockets of Irish

York.

A

substantial

number made

rival across the East River (to

York by the end

their

be incorporated

The Irish constituted when they numbered The number of Irish in Brooklyn

of the century).

Brooklyn's largest foreign-bom group as early as 1855,

56,753 out of a total population of 205,250.

jumped

to 57,143 in 1865, 73,985 in 1870,

outnumbered

these years the Irish

all

and then 78,880 in 1875. In each

Brooklyn, the largest Irish enclave sprouted around the

dubbed

"Irish

of

other nonnative Americans. Within

Town."^^ As early as the 1840s small

Navy

Yard, in an area

Irish areas

formed in the

Bronx clustering around such hubs of employment as the Harlem Railroad, the

Hudson River Railroad, and the Croton Aqueduct. The poorest Irish settled or squatted in shanty towns on the city's preceding the juggernaut of urban development. The most destitute numbering about 20,000

in 1864,

northern parts of the

They occupied

city.

rims, Irish,

found themselves in the sparsely settled the vast area that in the 1860s

would

be carved into Central Park and lived under the shadow of the slowly constructed

St.

Patrick's Cathedral

shacks, the Irish

newcomers

on

Fifth

raised pigs

Avenue. Here, in their

jerry-built

and goats as they had

in Ireland,

scavenged for food and hired themselves out as day-laborers, finding work as best they could.^^

The

Irish

made

their

homes almost everywhere

in the city in the 1840s

women went into domestic service, living women in particular, lived in some of the city's

through the 1870s. Most young Irish

with employers. Thus,

most

affluent

Irish

and "American" wards and therefore accounted

presence in unlikely places. In addition, those

who became

for

an

Irish

economically

when they moved "up," however, they continued to live predominantly among their own kind. The area around Grammar School 14, on Twenty-seventh Street between mobile sought out better housing in nicer neighborhoods. Even

The Great

Second and Third Avenue, represented an area of second settlement for the Irish, and Irish boys accounted for 4 1 .8 percent of eligible students. Thus, even among

Migration

the nonpoor, non-"green"

94

But as of the 1855

were

Irish,

residence and ethnicity went hand in hand."

New York State census,

in the First, Fourth,

the heaviest Irish concentrations

and Sixth Wards, as well as the adjoining Fourteenth,

which were nearly one-half Irish in their ethnic makeup. The more easterly Second and Seventh Wards, those facing the East River, also registered large numbers of Irish residents in the 1850s, accounting for about 38 percent of their all of

According to the 1855 count, the

totals.

Irish

made up 20

to 35.5 percent of 7 of 9.'''

the city's 22 wards and more than 35.5 percent of an additional

In general,

the Irish gravitated to Lower Manhattan, because this zone contained the oldest

and most dilapidated housing stock, the cheapest rents, and the available jobs for unskilled and semiskilled laborers. Occupation and class shaped the symbiotic relationship of the

lion's share of

Irish

and the city.

In Ireland the vast majority lived in rural areas. Peasants of various ranks had

command of the

skills appropriate to

an agricultural way of

They then found

life.

themselves in America's most urban of locations, where the

had

skills that

sustained their hves in the Old World served

them poorly in the New. They found

themselves on the bottom of America's, and

New York's,

The

literature

on the

Irish in the

occupational hierarchy.

United States has dwelt

indeed

at length,

perhaps obsessively, on this connection between the Irish and poverty. Scholars

have attributed such developments as Irish-black tension, the

Irish

connection

to the political machine, the devotion of the Irish to Catholicism,

and labor

radicalism to their impoverishment. In the usual telling of the story of the Irish in America, they are for the

most

part relegated to the

economic bottom until

well into the last decade of the nineteenth century.

This picture certainly requires some adjustment. The Irish community in York always contained many economic layers. They ranged from recent

New

immigrants, unskilled laborers in the main, to more settled, more affluent descendants of earlier Irish immigrants. They included merchants, large and small, and a small professional class of physicians, lawyers, teachers constituted its elite.

These successful and longer-term

New

York

Irish created

benevolent

associations to help their distressed countrypeople, both in Ireland and in

York.

They made up the backbone

of organizations like the Friendly

New

Sons of

Saint Patrick, the Irish Emigrant Society, and other such groups.''"

When

Jeremiah O'Donovan, a Philadelphia Hibernian came to New York in 1854 to sell a history of Ireland that he had written, he encountered his country-

men a

He met

in comfortable positions of all kinds.

widow, young, handsome, modest

and has a house

full of

young

ladies

.

.

.

she

is

sewing

journey contain flattering portraits of Irish

a

"Mrs. O'Doherty

.

.

.

both a milliner and dressmaker;

for her."

women

His recollections of his

and

men who "made

it,"

successful entrepreneurs, master artisans, professionals, and buyers of his

book!"

The usual portrait of the Irish as an impoverished group trapped on the lowest rung of the class structure can be refined by looking

at the Irish

concern with

the education of their children. Although few Americans living in the nine-

teenth century experienced rapid

movement out of poverty through

education,

was an antidote to community leadership, begin-

the Irish and their leaders did recognize that schooling

enduring poverty. The

New York,

Irish Catholic

ning with Bishop John Hughes, put tremendous emphasis on creating parochial schools, first at the elementary to

and then

at the

secondary

level.

They wanted

ward off Protestant and secular influences, since they assumed that

a portion

would and should go to school. Irish politicians maintained rigid control over the ward schools under their jurisdiction, making public schools in Irish neighborhoods community institutions.^'* By 1870 Irish women constituted some 20 percent of all New York City public school of the Irish population

teachers.^^ Scattered evidence indicates that a sizable percentage of Irish children

data. Irish

New York's

attended school with success, at least as measured by completion

boys

who made up

41.8 percent of the potential pupils of

Grammar

School 14 showed up as 40.8 percent of the attendees in 1855 and 25 percent of the graduates.

The

hefty dropout rate

was balanced by the number who actually

completed their education."**

Even

so,

the harsh reality for the Irish throughout the nineteenth century was

that their primary source of work lay in the least skilled, lowest-paying jobs that

New 1

York City

offered.

This applied to both

men and women. The

years

844-77, in particular, brought severe economic distress to the residents of New

York City, and the poor were the hardest

hit.

Depressions in 1854-55, 1857, and

1873 impeded the occupational mobility of the Irish in large-scale

economic debacles shaped the fortunes

cally as did the primitive skills they brought

New

York. These

of the Irish just as dramati-

with them, the social problems

they faced, and the antagonism they met. In mid-nineteenth-century

areas of

New York, Irish women predominated in several

employment. As already mentioned, they served, particularly

if

they

were young and unmarried, as domestic workers in private homes and in hotels,

A good number women, married or

usually living with their employer and saving their money.

sewed

in establishments of all sizes, although older Irish

widowed with children, found themselves often plying a needle in their own homes for contractors. Many married Irish women in New York took in boarders to compensate for the income that they lost upon marriage. Irish women could also be found on the streets of mid-nineteenth-century New York selling fruit and vegetables, and the more successful ones became owners of small grocery and liquor

Men

stores.''^

labored on the docks as longshoremen, in the factories as unskilled

hands, as porters, coachmen, boatmen, ferrymen, carters,

omnibus and

stage drivers,

needle workers, printers, and as undifferentiated "laborers." In the

building trades, they

made

a living as hod-carriers, brickmakers, masons.

95 The

Em oj the

Great Migration

and carpenters and performed

96

plasterers, bricklayers, glaziers,

The Great

task necessary for the continued expansion of the city.

Migration

those jobs that required physical strength and occupational

men,

it

about every

just

They basically performed flexibility. Irish

seems, worked foremost in ganglike situations. They tended to work

The

Irish

tended to cluster in those occupations that no longer functioned on the

craft

with other

Irish

men, cementing the bonds

system. Finally, Irish

men who were

of

work and

ethnicity.

unmarried and therefore did not support a

New

family had a degree of freedom in the workplace. They could leave either for good or for awhile to take advantage of

work

York

projects upstate or

out-of-state.''*

Wage demands

in times of labor strife give

some

indication of

people earned. In 1846 the 500 Irish laborers on Brooklyn's Atlantic

87 cents a day and for a workday of 10 hours. In 1853 the

for

what these

Dock struck

Irish

men who

made up the vast majority of the workers of the Erie Railroad went out on strike for $1.25 a day, also

In

some ways

"Laborer" for a

hoping to secure a 10-hour day.^'

male occupations resembled those

Irish

marriage constrained job fell

of Irish females.

man functioned much as did "domestic" for a woman. For both, flexibility.

Both were catch-all kinds

along a wide spectrum in terms of pay,

of jobs

work conditions, and real

and both

skill level.

In the main, neither earned an impressive income, although Irish female

much more of their some Irish men engaged in petty

domestics enjoyed the advantage of being able to save earnings than laborers could. Like their

sisters,

business, running liquor stores, saloons, oyster parlors, grocery stores, hotels,

and other kinds

of small enterprises.

Many of these shops served Irish neighbor-

hoods, making the proprietor, particularly the saloon-keeper, a well-known

community

figure.

And,

baskets on the streets of

just as Irish

New York,

women hawked

goods from carts and

so too did Irish men."*"

Irish men differed from that of Irish women in some men were heavily tied up with the political machine.

The work taken up by respects, however. Irish

They could secure employment powerful intermediary. This

is

with the machine in their search

born daughters of of the

Irish

in municipal services, with the

not to say that Irish for bread.

women had no

Some Irish women,

machine

a

connection

usually American-

immigrants, were able to teach school through the help

machine, and as the city expanded

its

educational services, these

benefited. Furthermore, shopkeepers of all kinds,

licenses to ply their trade,

women

male or female, needed

and peddlers also were required to secure permission

from municipal authorities

to sell

on the

streets.

But for men, connections to politicians, the ability to trade a vote for a

job,

helped them secure employment on large-scale construction projects, a labor sector that supported

many New York

Irish families.

When

York State Supreme Court building was being constructed,

in 1865 the

Irish

New

men made up

the vast majority of those drawing a paycheck.'*' Other heavily Irish male

occupations also depended on the machine and on the governmental process.

As

early as 1855 Irish

men were

the largest group of the cartmen of

including those that specialized in doing city projects, for the

and the

like.

To be

work on

cartman one required a

a private

New York,

sanitation, landfill, road license; to

work

municipal government in particular one needed good connections."*^

Even before the massive influx of famine Irish in 1 843, the Democrat-dominated

Common

Council gave

to the chagrin of native

Being a policeman

men, and

may

it

a large

number

of

market licenses

to Irish

men, much

American entrepreneurs.

may have been

the

most

with

visible job associated

have been the one most connected to

Irish

The machine

politics.

dispensed positions on the police force directly at the neighborhood or ward level.

By 1855 men born

city police force,

in Ireland

accounted for 17 percent of the

which roughly equaled the percentage

tion. Since police served the

wards

New

York

of Irish in the popula-

of their residence, the

predominantly

Irish

wards had the largest number of immigrant policemen.*'* In 1869 no police captains had been born in

immigrant

bloc),

Germany (Germans made up New

York's second

but 32 hailed from Ireland.*^ As of 1860, some 309

New

Yorkers of Irish birth listed their occupation in the census as "police," while

only 84 were born in Germany."^ After the Civil War, as the city increased the

number

of

policemen and the

Irish held firmer control

on the machinery

of

municipal government, the Irish came to be even more prominent in this highly political job.*^

How did Irish men function as defenders of municipal "law and order"? How did these relative

American

city?

of a bind.

The

newcomers with

Being a police officer

a sharp sense of "otherness" serve this

may

vast majority of those

have put an

whom

Irish

man

Hibernians. Did this cause emotional conflict? According to historian Wilbur Miller, officers with Irish Irish

male offenders

in

somewhat

he had to arrest were fellow

New York police

surnames made as many

as did native-born officers,

arrests of

presumably Protestants

of

English background. Despite the Irish reputation in America for violence and brawling, citizens filed

no more complaints against

Irish police

than against

native-born police. During the violent confrontations between Irish-dominated

mobs— such as the Astor Place Riot of

1849, the

Dead Rabbits Riot of 1857, the 1871— the Irish police did

Draft Riots of 1863, and the Orange Riots of 1870 and

not enforce the law any less punctiliously than did their American-born coworkers. During

New

York's frequent Irish street riots of the nineteenth

century, neither the Irish-born police nor their

American-bom children were

ever accused of treating the rioters with ethnic favoritism or "kid gloves.""**

Furthermore, the Irish policemen represented something of an elite within their

own community and

as such did not exactly come from the same ranks as They earned the income of skilled workers, while the masses in the community still found themselves in the ranks of unskilled laborers. Most police officers were married men, although those arrested were typi-

the offenders.

cally single.

"*'

The

97 Em of the

Great Migration

98

The economic adjustment

New

of the Irish to the reahties of

York

did

life

The Great

not proceed smoothly or evenly. Poverty remained a grinding and long ordeal.

Migration

Irish laborers in every enterprise

of the

economy, with

its

found themselves

constant cycles of

at

the mercy of the vagaries

boom and

They

bust.

low

suffered

who

wages, erratic employment, and the constant influx of newer immigrants,

were also willing to accept almost any wage. Indeed, by 1880 the Irish economic situation had not improved substantially. As of that year 20 percent of all the Irish still

found themselves in the category of "laborer," as opposed to 4 percent

of native-born Americans.^°

The shakiness

of Irish

economic adjustment can certainly be measured by

the intense activism of the Irish in

New

York's labor

movement. No passive

workers, the Irish frequently banded together and struck for better wages and better conditions. Their

unionism was not motivated by an ideological opposi-

tion to capitalism or support for

some other economic arrangement. Unlike

_

O-r-'

Mm mm

On July

12, 1871, Insh

longshoremen assembled outside Hibernian Hall on Pnnce

Street before

heading nonh to Lamartine Hall, where three Orange Lodges were housed on the top July 12 parading tradition in Ireland.

It

led to periodic confrontations

(Catholic Irish) deaths,

when

no

commemorated a seventeeth-century Protestant

less

on

the streets of

between "Orange" (Protestant

New York. The

than 165 injuries, and 92

the Eighty-fourth Regiment,

NYSM,

arrests.

floor.

Irish)

and "Green"

1870 and 1871 Orange parades resulted Most of the

casualties

fired indiscriminately

on

the

The

victory over Catholics

were

crowd

in

inflicted in

in

what the

76

1871 Irish

World called "Slaughter on 8th Avenue." The causes of one of the worst examples of urban violence lay in the turbulent

issues of race

and

Courtesy of John

T.

New York City political climate, where nativism and Anglo-centrism polarized class,

exacerbating ethnic tensions with roots in Ireland. {Harper's Weekly.

Ridge.)

some

of the

Germans who gravitated to socialism,

the Irish offered a pragmatic,

"bread-and-butter" resistance to poor wages.

Throughout these four decades

Irish laborers

with their employers. In the 1 840s

conflict

found themselves in strident

dockworkers had already begun

Irish

to organize, while in the 1850s Irish railroad Irish in the

workers went out on

strike.^'

The

1850s found themselves prominent in the unions or labor organiza-

tions of longshoremen, blacksmiths, cigar makers, boilermakers, shoemakers, printers,

and

in the construction field.^^

Groups

like the Operative

Masons, the

Quarrymen's United Protective Society, and the Laborers United Benevolent Society marched proudly in the Saint Patrick's Day parades starting in the

blending class and ethnicity, while in the effect

on the struggling

1

850s,

860s Irish laborers protested the war's

1

poor.^^

New

Beginning in the 1850s the

York

Irish press reported in

glowing terms

the heroic organization of laborers against oppressive conditions, and editorials in these newspapers

championed the

from their employers. The

Irish

workers to extract a living wage

right of

Wodd, founded

in

among the

Irish

favor of the Greenback-Labor Party in 1876.

The

vigorously endorsed labor activism

1870 by Patrick Ford,

and others and came out in rival Irish

American

also

expressed solidarity with trade unions but counseled the Irish to stick with their

well-proven friend and

ally,

the Democratic Party.

Labor activism among the

'^

immigrants reflected the relatively poor

Irish

economic position they occupied. Contemporary observers noted, often exaggerated, the poverty, destitution, disease,

The commissioner of

and wretchedness

of

much

of

New

New York's Almshouse,

which had more remarked that "many of [the Famine

York

Irish life.

than

its

Irish]

had far better been cast into the deep sea, than linger in the pangs of hunger,

share of "exiles" from Ireland,

sickness and pain, to draw their last agonized breath in the streets of

New

York."^^ George G. Foster, a journalist, described the Irish Five-Points neighbor-

hood of the Sixth Ward,

as "the great

.

.

.

ulcer of wretchedness

—the very rotting

skeleton of civilization."^^

Although such an assessment clearly overstated the for the rural Irish struggling to adjust to

housing find them living in Figures on

anyone

New

women and men on

civility,

put them either

among

Irish

city's

paupers than

the criminals or victims

and false arrests. Legions

the one hand offended

New

of destitute

Yorkers' sense of

but on the other became the objects of Catholic charity. In 1846

Bishop Hughes asked the Irish-based Sisters of Mercy to Irish

was not easy

York's most overcrowded neighborhoods.

of the police in regard to police brutality Irish

case, life

urban America. Statistics on

income put them more often among the

else. Arrest records

women

while the

St.

in

New

York

who had no home, no

come

in

and serve

work, and no prospects,

Vincent de Paul Society emerged as a alternative to Protestant

The Irish entered lunatic asylums, charity hospitals, prisons, and almshouses more than any other group. They had the city's highest rates of charity.^''

99 The Era of the Great Migration

100

typhus, typhoid fever, cholera, and

The Great

poverty,

Migration

The

all

accompany hunger,

the other diseases that

and congestion.^* Irish

newcomers

New

to

York faced not only

mountain

a

problems growing out of their poverty but also a metropolis "neighbors." Even before the Irish arrived in large

Famine,

and

number on

sentiment ran rampant in

anti-Irish, anti-Catholic

of social

full of hostile

the heels of the

New York, both city

Catholic newcomers were blasted from the politicians' stump,

state. Irish

columns of the city's press, and on the pages of popular pulp fiction, which screamed about the Irish threat to American liberty. The state legislature in the

debated a plan to dismiss

all

foreign-born

—a

code

for "Irish"

—from

public

employment. In the 1850s Reverend Daniel Parsons and the "Angel

service

Gabriel" (John

S.

Orr) ranted to crowds of

up

to 10,000

from the steps

of City

Hall about the evils of the Irish and their Catholic Church. Such militant and

popular organizations as the Order of the Star Spangled Banner actually went into Irish neighborhoods picking fights, and the at the zenith of their political power.

Know-Nothings

in 1855 stood

During the Civil War, despite the

large

number of Irish volunteers in all-Irish or mixed regiments, nativists condemned them as disloyal, cowardly, and unpatriotic southern sympathizers. In addition.

New York housed a large Irish Protestant population. This group shared with countrymen

their Catholic

a long history of

enmity and

conflict that

was

reinforced by class differences and clashes on this side of the Atlantic. Street fights

tuated just

and outbursts

New

of rioting

between the "green" and the "orange" puncThe notorious Orange Riot of 1871 offered

York's urban order.

one example

of intra-Irish fighting that non-Irish

New

Yorkers came

to consider a major social problem, a serious disruption of the social order.^^

When

Irish

workers went on

strike,

employers brought in others, usually

native-born whites, Germans, and blacks, as strikebreakers.^" Of the three groups, the Irish considered blacks to be a serious threat to their thin thread of

economic

security.

The

Irish

responded to their competitors with

venom and

New York's Irish and New York's blacks jostled with each for a place on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. When the Irish first entered the New antipathy.

York economy in

large

numbers, they depressed black wages and thus pushed

blacks out of their particular niche in the labor force. Friction

between

Irish

and black workers

flared often, particularly

on the

waterfront and in factories, as the two groups of poor struggled for economic survival.

It is

abolitionist

therefore not so surprising that

movement with enthusiasm,

New York's Irish did not greet the

did not celebrate the 1863 Emancipa-

tion Proclamation, or participate in other efforts addition,

many

Irish,

although by no means

supported blacks were precisely their

own

on behalf

all,

of free blacks. In

believed that those

enemies. That

is,

who

they associated

abolitionism with anti-Catholicism and nativism. In that context the causes of the Draft Riots of July 1863

seem

clear.

Economic and

cultural competition

provided the context for the Irish institutions,

But

which

left

in their

not all of Irish life in

mob

attacks on black people and their

wake hundreds

New

York

dead, injured, and arrested.

described under the heading of "social pathology."

poverty to small business. in the

New

York

It

setting.

Many

moved from

Irish

was not unheard of to capitalize on Old World skills

women who

Unmarried

opportunities in domestic service found

could take advantage of

New York a treasure trove of unimagi-

As one young woman wrote to her father from Gotham in must only say that this is a good place any man or woman without a family are fools that would not venture and come to this plentyful country." The New York setting and the thick clustering of the Irish in massive numbers made it possible for the Irish to create institutions to ease the ned

possibilities.

1850: "I

.

sure, out of poverty.

movement of some, slowly for The political machine and the machinery of urban govern-

Roman Catholic Church,

the social and cultural organizations of the

community, and the nationalist movements and a

New York urban life

These institutions of social

all

helped define Irish ethnicity

that transcended the pathos of poverty.

—the political machine, the Catholic Church, the panoply —did not

and cultural organizations, and the nationalist movement

the Irish masses in Irish into the

a group.

.

migration and to help sustain the

difficulties of

ment, the

.

New

York out

of poverty's grip. Rather, they

urban structure and defined the identity of the

lift

anchored the

New York Irish as

They bridged the chasm between being immigrants from

Ireland to

being Irish Americans.

The

political

machine and the

Irish

involvement in

it,

has long intrigued

become so adept at politics? How much of their political prowess came from Ireland and how much was a response to American conditions? Why did they, of all groups, jump into the political fray in urban America and learn with such savvy how to manipulate the machine for their own ends? Although no consensus has yet developed, historians have agreed on a few general points about the affinity of the Irish for

historians.

Why,

historians have asked, did the Irish

politics.

The

New

Irish arrived in

York

at a

time when conflict between a

rural-dominated, upstate-tilted legislature sought to dominate and control the affairs of the city.

As New York City became increasingly Irish and Democratic, became more

tensions between the legislature and the municipal government

acerbic and issues of ethnicity and religion charged already contentious inter-

governmental

and

relations.

their influence

mous with

A critique of the city amounted to a critique of the Irish life. A defense of New York City became synony-

on urban

a defense of the Irish.

After the late 1840s

it

was by and

large the

Democrats who controlled

municipal government, while the Whigs and their Republican successors held

power

in the legislature.

The Democrats

increasingly articulated a pro-Irish,

pro-immigrant position, while the Whig-Republicans owed

much

101 The Era oj die

in the nineteenth century could be

of their

Great Migration

102

strength to nativists, in the city and around the state. These battle lines

The Creat

in the 1840s

Migration

century.^

The

and 1850s played themselves out

New

story of the Irish in

York City

for decades until the

drawn

end

of the

around their

politics revolved

relationship to the Democratic Party and their almost visceral reaction against

among an ever-changing who could give them the best deal and who was most likely to win. Thus although the Irish may have As the Democrats

the Whig-Republicans.

splintered

among them,

set of factions, the Irish shifted

calculating

—one scholar puts —they did not box themselves into a single niche within The

aligned themselves overwhelmingly with one party

percent

shunned ideologies and jockeyed between factions

As

recognition.

New

it

at

York

the Democratic Party grew

and

in search of favors

more dependent on the

Irish

90

Irish

it.^''

vote in

City, its various factions catered to the Irish, offering favors,

both

concrete and symbolic, posturing as their friends regardless of real feelings, con-

demning nativism, and developing In the

840s

1

Tammany Hall and

nies, saloon keepers,

in the half decade after the Civil

them

fire

Irish)

War dispensed patronage

galore to the Irish to

New York Times of September

1869, his "Ring" had given a total of 46 jobs in the city government to

The

began their

political career in

New York as the pawns of the urban

Democratic machine. They exchanged their votes absolutely highest these impoverished rural

of

for unskilled jobs, petty

and other relatively low-cost benefits. These "crumbs" represented the

licenses,

grew

17,

Germans

New Yorkers.^'^

Irish

Irish

enig-

who dominated New York City politics

in to his faction. According to the

and 754 to

compa-

The

police, all heavily Irish constituencies.^^

matic William "Boss" Tweed (not

lock

strategies to get their considerable votes.^^

devised a plan to bring in volunteer

newcomers expected. But

as they

number, they became more American and experienced a modest degree

in

economic mobility,

demands

their

increased, their appetites

were whetted,

and the Democratic factions responded. The crumbs grew into substantial slices,

most

and by the 1860s, the time

jobs, the best patronage,

leadership roles.

York there

is

As

of

Tweed's hegemony, the

and increasingly

Irish

garnered the

significant positions,

even key

London Times noted in 1 86 1, "In of honour or distinction from the

a reporter for the

scarcely a situation

New chief

down to the police, that is not filled by the descendant of some who lived in savage hatred of England beyond the pale!"^^ After

magistrate

Irishman

Tweed's Party.

elected

Now City

in 1871, the Irish stepped into the leadership of the

fall

"Honest" John first in

instead of

Kelly, a

1854 to an alderman's

crumbs and

Democratic

former volunteer firefighter and businessman,

slices,

seat,

took over the helm of Tammany.

the Irish had the whole loaf of

New

York

politics.^'^

Where the

political

manipulated by the institution,

system was inherited from someone

Irish,

else's

and over time

the Catholic Church represented their ov^m key

which they made,

sustained, and dominated. Before the Irish

arrived,

New

respectable, Irish

York had

a small Catholic

and middle-class, and

immigrants

earlier in the

picture/" But the tidal

wave

it

community, predominantly English,

103

Even the

TheEraofthe

comfortably into this

Great Migration

maintained a low public

nineteenth century

of Catholic Irish

fit

profile.

immigrants of the 1840s and

beyond transformed the church into an immigrant institution that served the poor.

It

strove to

make itself a visible and powerful

institution in the

New York

landscape.

On

the eve of the

bishop of

New York.

Irish position

Famine immigration,

in 1842 John

Hughes became the

Until his death in 1864 Hughes staked out a Catholic and

within the church and without.

He

aggressively called

on

New

York's Catholics to defend themselves, symbolically and physically, against

attacks from Protestant nativists.

He called for the creation of separate Catholic and benevolent

institutions, including schools, hospitals, orphanages, banks,

associations to incubate an Irish American culture, blending Catholic piety, love of the Irish

homeland, and American patriotism.^' Internally, he made the

Catholic Church more responsive to the needs of the poor Irish masses. vigorously increased the

to the masses. Before 1844, there

and

of these

rest

were

1

were 14 Catholic churches serving

consisted of French parishioners and 2 of

Irish.

Of those

built

between 1844 and 1863,

the other 13 ministered exclusively to Irish

women

New York,

German. By 1844 the 6 were German while

and men. According

Hughes, even this growth had not kept pace with the influx of Catholic

immigrants and he wanted to build more.^^ Hughes also the

number

He

number of parishes to make the church more accessible

of clergy, priests

the need to increase

felt

and nuns. In 1846 he invited the

from Ireland to create a whole infrastructure of services

to

Irish

Sisters of

for Irish

Mercy

women in New

York.'^

Hughes recognized

that Irish immigrants

came

to

New

York

relatively

unchurched, and he hoped to transform them into avid churchgoers. The array of Catholic institutions that

Hughes and other

clergy created, particularly

parochial schools, cemented the bonds between the laity and the church.

Parochial schools developed slowly but tions in the 1860s

became

significant

community institu-

and 1870s, as they nurtured both Catholic piety and

Irish

ethnic identity.

Hughes, and his successor John McCloskey, enjoyed immense success,

making the Irish devout Catholics and the parish the central institution in Irish neighborhoods. By 1 877 the Irish of New York became a churched people: ardent worshippers at Mass, participants in parish devotionals, students at parochial schools, their sons in multifarious

and daughters joining the religious

church

societies.

But perhaps the

orders,

and participating

efforts of clerics alone

may

not have caused this transformation.

The shrill anti-Catholicism heard in New York may have heightened the Irish immigrant's latent devotion to the church. In Ireland Catholicism functioned as a folk rather than an ecclesiastical institution. In

New

York, Catholicism

more formal,

strident, affirmative

104

elicited a

The Great

a vehicle for expressing ethnic identity.

Migration

in

America and

their

memories

of

It

involvement. Here, religion offered

helped forge bonds between the

Irish

home, while expressing patriotism and

loyalty to America.^^

These same

goals, often unstated but palpable, nonetheless suffused the

various benevolent associations, volunteer

fire

companies, military societies,

and social clubs that mushroomed in the Irish neighborhoods. Limited primarily to

men, these organizations emphasized sociability. Much of neighborhood Irish centered around saloons and grocery stores, places where Irish men, in

life

particular, enjoyed

women

some

recreation after grueling hours of physical labor. Irish

tended to spend their social

life

on the stoops

of their

apartment

buildings and on the sidewalks of their streets, blending gender solidarity with

ethnic familiarity.

On

a formal level, the

integration into

New

York

Irish press

America and helped the

combined

Irish define

Irish ethnicity

themselves.

with

From 1 848

on,

communal public opinion and stake out an Irish position on public affairs. ^^ The annual St. Patrick's Day parade became a visible symbol of the bonds of Irish communal solidarity, and for that one day at least, editors tried to

mold

Irish

the Irish took over the streets of

New

York and announced

residents that they were a force to be contended with.

produced and gave shape to the parades, the ethnicity gave

them

to its non-Irish

American conditions

and the organizations.

press,

Irish

their distinctive character.

Like the church, the press, and the voluntary societies, the Irish nationalist activities of

New

York defined

Irish

communal

life

and

in effect

an

Irish

New York Irish and the Irish back home remained strong despite great distances. Irish New Yorkers sent hundreds

American

identity.

Connections between the

of thousands of dollars to their families in Ireland through the Irish

Emigrant

Society,

which in 1850 created the Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank. A constant

flow of

new immigrants,

settled

and friends kept the images and the

of Ireland vivid for

political "troubles" in Ireland

New York.^*^ New York, along with their meager possessions, deep and unshakable hatred of their British overlords, whom they saw as the

were sharply etched

root of in

in the consciousness of the Irish in

immigrants brought to

Irish

a

kin,

New York Irish women and men,

all Irish

misfortune and

evil.

That hatred carried over to

America, and not a few of the Irish-dominated

century

riots of

their civic lives

mid-nineteenth-

New York drew upon that antagonism. Old World sentiments became New York City politics, and Irish New Yorkers expected local Demo^"^

issues in

cratic politicians, regardless of their

of Irish liberation

own origin, to stand behind efforts on behalf

from England. Democratic politicians frequently came out to

greet heroes of the struggle, attend banquets in their honor,

and chair mass

meetings of nationalist societies.*"

New

York

nationalist

Irish life reflected the factionalism

movement. Every

faction had

its

and internal disputes of the

ideologues, advocates, organiza-

tions,

and publications

the Irish in societies,

New

in

New York. Support for one faction or another divided

York from each other, causing

rifts

The Era of the

New Yorkers saw the

Great Migration

and benevolent associations. Whereas non-Irish

kind of undifferentiated mass, internally the politics of Ireland divided

Irish as a

them and helped create a panoply of community institutions.*^' New York became the American headquarters for the Repealers, the Young Ireland group, the Fenians, and other organizations concerned with aiding the

cause back home. Political refugees from Ireland like John O'Mahony, John

Devoy, John Mitchel, O'Donovan Rossa, and numerous other heroes of the struggle, flocked to

New York and used the New York Irish community as the

springboard for their political causes. Conversely, Irish nationahsm became an issue in

New

political

campaigns into battles in the struggle

of

New

York City

politics,

and groups

York's position as the center of

virtue of

its strategic

throbbing size of

like the Fenians galvanized local for Irish

independence. By virtue

American journalism and

letters,

by

location as the chief port of entry, and because of the

its Irish

community,

it

became a valued

prize in the struggle

between factions and transformed New York from an American city with a large Irish

community

into the Irish city of nineteenth-century America.

Support for the struggles back to bring to

them from

American all

politics. It

home gave Irish New Yorkers a concrete cause gave them a distinct agenda that differentiated

other immigrants and from native-born Americans.

palpable measure of group loyalty and a sine qua

American-bom children By the end jobs,

they had began to dominate the

movement

were

still

city's political

the resources of a mighty church structure. respectable trade union

non

became

It

a

of "being" Irish, as the

of Irish parents increasingly predominated.

of the 1870s, although the Irish

The

clustered in low-paying

apparatus and

command

leadership of the increasingly

rested primarily in their hands,

and some

highly visible jobs, including teaching, police work, and firefighting, had be-

come almost synonymous with being Irish. The

Irish

had a

political cause they

could offer as a litmus test to non-Irish politicians and developed a hybrid culture that organically blended Irish and

over America, but more so in it

American motifs. This was true

all

New York, because it was New York. Its size made

sui generis.

This brief overview of the history of the

Irish in

105

within the church, press.

New

York, spanning the

middle decades of the nineteenth century, gives some idea of the general

The five essays that follow fill in some of the gaps. In Graham Hodges and John Kuo Wei Tchen accomplish at least two notable ends. They demonstrate, first, that studies of the Irish need to ask more sophisticated questions about adaptation to America. The Irish confronted a multiethnic society and interacted with all sorts of new people, including contours of that period. chapters 4 and 5

African Americans and Chinese. Second, these two essays venture well beyond

106

thestereotypesthatshowthelrishbecomingAmericanized through the accep-

The Great

tance of racism.

Migration

complicated ways to the American racial mosaic. Alan Kraut's discussion of illness

The

who emerge

Irish

and medical care among the

in these

Irish in

two essays responded

chapter 6

fits

into a

new

in

scholarly

paradigm that posits immigrants not as victims of discrimination and poverty but as active agents of their

own

destiny.

The

Irish

who came

to

New York did

indeed suffer a whole host of medical problems, but solutions lay firmly in the

hands of their middle-class

women

and men, within and without the church,

who shaped Irish American culture. The

New

Yorkers

Irishmen."

The

presence of a successful cadre of Irish

further confirmed in chapter 7 by William Devlin's

is

Irish tailors

and

hatters, skilled artisans

"Shrewd

and competent

entre-

preneurs, force one to think of the Irish in broader class terms than usual. in chapter 8

Edward Spann questions the

the Irish and the Civil for abolitionism.

New

War in which historians have emphasized Irish antipathy

Unionism, and conscription. For sure, Spann notes, some

Yorkers did oppose the Civil War, but this complex, diverse

responded in multiple ways. Patriotic pation need to be factored

These essays of

New

tell a

York and

also point to the of

New York,

New

York

calls

and high

levels of military partici-

in, too.

need

residents during the mid-nineteenth century.

for further research, particularly a

and geography make in shaping the

They

comparative analysis

the mega-city, and the smaller, inland Irish communities.

Irish

Irish

community

dramatic story of grand changes in the histories of the city

its Irish

difference did size

And

traditional retelling of the story about

Irish

What

community? The

need to be studied in the context of other immigrants of the

time and their process of identity formation. Jay Dolan

The Immigrant Church, and

his

first

raised this point in

model should be employed

in studies of other

women's history remains an open field for further exploration and refinement. Did patterns described in Hasia Diner's Erin's Daughters in America hold for New York? How did the size of the city and of the Irish community modify that portrait? Cultural and social patterns of the New York Irish represent the most unexplored aspect of the community's past. The institutions. Irish

internal

dynamics of Irish households, the entry of Irish women

teaching, the experience of Irish children in those schools,

in public school

male and female

leisure patterns, the role of small businesses in the life of the Irish enclave, Irish street life

on the "sidewalks

of

New

forge a self-conscious ethnic culture,

been taken up by historians. There Irish in the

York," efforts by the

New

York

Irish to

and myriad other subjects have not yet

is still

decades flanking the Civil War.

much

to learn about the

New

York

Graham Hodges

CHAPTER 4

"Desirable

IRISH

Companions and Lovers"

AND AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE SIXTH WARD, 1830-1870

I

.N 1 850 GEORGE FOSTER, while guiding his readers

through a midnight tour of the infamous Five Points, reflected on the frequency of intermarriage

among African American males and Irish women, who,

believed, regarded their

Foster

husbands as "desirable companions and lovers."^ Fos-

fall sharply apart from historical perceptions of the relationbetween Irish and African Americans in antebellum New York City. Pointing to an Irish embrace of pro-slavery ideology, opposition to black suffrage, antagonism over work, and periodic Irish violence toward blacks, historians have constructed a paradigm of irreconcilable racial conflict.^ A second, related approach emphasizes Irish acculturation through embrace of American racism. Designed to explain the role of race in working-class culture, this perspective, emphasizing the environmental and historical context of racial conflict, explains how the Irish earned "the wages of whiteness" to grasp a tenuous foothold in the American working class.^

ter's

observations

ships

In

numbers and commonality

of experience, the lives of Irish

Americans epitomize the experiences ing nineteenth-century metropolis. racial contexts of their relationships,

of ordinary

By adding consideration it is

and African

New Yorkers in the burgeon-

possible to

of the gender

and

move beyond the fractured

paradigm of class that pervades historical discussion of the antebellum working class in

New

York. Despite the extraordinary importance of the semiskilled

108

Irish

and black laborers in

The Great

have

little

Migration

reason

is

New

York during the antebellum

close description or succinct analysis of their

work

years, historians

or culture.'*

One

that historians of the antebellum working class have studied industrial

laborers primarily as prototypes of the

modem,

class-conscious proletarian or

as pursuers of the American dream, seekers of middle-class fortunes inaccessible

in Ireland.^

There

is, it

should be admitted, evidence of racial animosity over work even

before the notorious Draft Riots of 1863. In one incident, in 1855, after white

stevedores struck for higher wages, blacks replaced them. Fighting soon erupted

between the discharged

Irish

and blacks. After the

strike

was

settled,

white

longshoremen supplanted the blacks.^ However many disturbing examples one

may find of contention between the Irish and African Americans, there are some countervailing examples of cooperation. In 1853 black waiters agitated for

higher wages and

man

won pay

of

$16

a

month

to the white waiter's $12.

attending a later meeting of white waiters advised

higher wages. Irish waiters

On March 31,

1853, the

A

black

to go for even

New York Times reported that black and

had formed a union and gone on

and African Americans, often portrayed place, shared goals including

them

strike.

On this occasion,

the Irish

as irreconcilably hostile in the

wage protection and reduction

work-

of hours.

There are additional problems, beyond those tantalizing fragments, to

his-

torical visions of irreconcilable racism. Scant attention is given to variations

within the

Irish

populace

itself,

which, by virtue of more than

1.1

million

immigrants arriving at the port of New York between 1 847 and 1 860, amounted one in four New Yorkers by the onset of the Civil War. Some of the divisions among the Irish dated back to their home towns. Within the Sixth Ward, County to

Sligo

men and women

gravitated to upper Mulberry Street, Corkonians to the

lower part of Mulberry, and Kerryonians to nearby Orange

(later Baxter) Street.*

dwarfed the African American

Although the growth

of the Irish populace

population of the

concentrations of blacks in certain wards ensured daily

city,

contact between the two groups.

This chapter in the

is

about the complexity of

Irish

and African American relations

New York City's turbulent Sixth Ward between

1

830 and 1 870. This ward

was the crucible of Irish-black relations. African Americans had lived in the area since the 1640s and later shared it with republican-minded journeymen and carters. The remnants of the Negro Burying Ground was near, sustaining a spiritual sense of place

among blacks,

a trait noticed

by George Foster in 1850.

Known for decades as the Cartman's Ward, the neighborhood boasted a powerful tradition of assertive trade solidarity.

Another force was immigration. By 1810,

immigrants and blacks attracted by cheap rents accounted

for one-fourth of the

ward's population, the highest such percentage in the

The ward was home

city.

for 31 percent of all aliens in the city, primarily the Irish.'

Although

conflict

was

present, so

was

a surprising degree of

shared work experience, affection, and family building. In

community,

many

ways, the

relationships of Irish and African

Americans resembled the spontaneous "com-

munitas" described by Victor Turner in which daily relationships shaped their lives

and added symbolic meaning

becomes of rioting

clearer

to pedestrian occurrences. This relationship

when one examines

and crime on the ward,

the demographics of the ward, the effects

of race

and gender within

racially integrated

occupations, and of occupation and neighborhood on laborers' culture in the Sixth Ward. In a significant departure from other scholars,

I have deemphasized which included very few blacks, concentrating instead on three groups: laborers and domestics; city-licensed, semiskilled wage earners,

industrial occupations,

comprised of cartmen, porters, grocers, tavern and porterhouse keepers, butchers,

junk and rag dealers; and the "useless trades" of prostitutes and petty

criminals. '° These three groups of workers provide considerable insight into the daily interplay of gender, class,

and race among

Irish

and African Americans.

Each of these occupational groups was extremely important in the experience in

New

York City. In 1855 the two

Irish

largest occupations for Irish

immigrants were laborers and domestic servants, with 17,426 in the former category and 23,386 in the

46 percent of the 88,480

latter.

Irish

Together, these 40,812 workers constituted

immigrants gainfully employed in the

city.

These

citywide patterns were amplified in the Sixth Ward, where 53 percent of Irish

workers were unskilled laborers or service workers. About 12 percent had a

permanent status

as a carter, porter, or

hackman."

Other laborers sustained a tenuous relationship within the skilled trades in

New

York.

As

craft skills declined,

small shops

sector in the antebellum period. Although

made

still

dominated the industrial

journeymen and unskilled workers

occasional efforts to join forces, laborers generally formed their

unions.'^ Laborers' unions were the largest in the city and the Irish largest portions of the

Union used and push

strikes

own

made up the

memberships. In the early 1 850s, the 3,000-man Laborers'

and closed shops

for a 10-hour

work

day.

to protect standard

The

Laborers'

Union

wages

of $1.50 per day

also boasted successful

benevolent societies, associations, and cooperatives.'^ Irish

women crowded

exclusively by blacks. By of

into domestic work, an arena once controlled 1

855, over 45 percent of Irish females under the age

50 in the Sixth Ward worked as domestics: as hotel maids, waitresses, and

cooks, as well as personal servants, housekeepers, nurses, and washer-

women. Older

Irish

women

took in boarders, an ancillary occupation to

domestic work. Seniority did not insulate a

Almost 30 percent

woman

from domestic

of Irish females over the age of 50 in the

service.

ward worked

as

domestics.''*

The

semiskilled trades were also open to Irish and black

men and women.

For example, tavernkeepers and grocers opened their doors to

all.

Similarly,

crime had no gender or racial boundaries. The fleeting nature of prostitution

and other minor crime hampers any exact count census takers did

visit

the

Tombs

to list inmates.

of these occupations,

though

109 Irish

and Ajncan

Americans the Sixth

in

Ward,

1830-1870

TABLE 4. 1 1 1

The Great Migration

.

Irish

and African American Populations of New York City and Sixth Ward, 1830-1870

quality and the Bowery were clusters of boardinghouses that varied greatly in and purpose, produced by a combination of soaring property values and a either gender, on transient, immigrant work force. Operated by a keeper of homes property usually owned by a businessman, boardinghouses were older

chopped into single rooms, sailors, laborers,

A

number

Theater the

or,

of institutions

home

Sixth Ward, 1846.

tenements of four and five

stories

crammed with

cartmen, domestics, and seamstresses.

anchored the ward.

of working-class

On

melodrama. The

the east

St.

was the Bowery

Andrew's and Transfigu-

111 Irish

and African

Americans the Sixth

in

Ward,

1830-1870

1

12

ration churches served Irish

The Great

shows the Abyssinian

Migration

Episcopal for

Church

at

Roman Cathohcs. A map of the ward in Church

Baptist

at

44 Anthony and

85 Centre, both repaired after the 1834

1847 clearly

St. Philip's

riots.

African

Public schools

whites were located at Mott near Cross and Elm near Leonard; nearby were

schools for blacks at 145 Mulberry and 161 Duane.

The Tombs glowered over Elm

the neighborhood on a block bordered by Franklin, Leonard, Centre and

By 1851 the Five Points Mission had replaced the Old Brewery with

Streets.

House

a

of Industry.'''

What accounts for the ward's notoriety was the camivalesque Five Points, which New Yorkers. The triangular Paradise Square, the

excited and appalled moralistic

center of the Five Points, Little Water, Cross,

was located

a scant fifth of a mile from City Hall. Here

Anthony, Orange, and Mulberry Streets entered, hke

emptying themselves into a bay. Early in the century. Mulberry and Orange

rivers

Streets

became centers for laboring and immigrant boardinghouses, surrounded by dozens of groceries selling liquor

and by porterhouses and dancing

'^

halls.

George Foster's midnight tour at the Five Points highlighted

local landmarks.

Standing under a gaslamp next to a policeman, Foster drew attention

Old Brewery, erected

and transformed into a residence

in 1797,

first

to the

in 1837, into

which were crammed several hundred black and Irish men, women, and children. The Old Brewery, as Foster informed his breathless readers, housed countless prostitutes,

rooms shared with

many

of

whom,

their children.

Foster claimed, practiced their trade in

Crowded around the brewery, demolished

soon after Foster's description, were taverns, oyster cellars, and brothels. Patrons of the bars

were "mostly

sailors, negroes,

bonds." Every saloon employed a black

squeaking for sixpence a piece and a treat

open

all

and the worst

fiddler,

of loafers

and vaga-

"ready to tune up his villainous

at the end."

The

oyster saloons were

night and served a motley clientele of pickpockets, card-sharps, coun-

terfeiters,

gamblers, and thugs.

According to Foster, the brothels employed young, rural women, who, repressed

by severe parents, came their

to the city with desperation in their hearts. Arrival proved

undoing when "either murdering their infants" upon

them on

birth, or

abandoning

a doorstep, they prepared for "any course of crime that will procure a

Hving." Foster romanticized the reality of their origins, but was correct about the

prevalence of prostitution and pornography in the ward. Middle-class tourists found all

the vices ready in another hot spot. Peter Wilhams' dance

by Charles Dickens, had become

hall,

immortalized

a successful tourist attraction. Gleanings

from

contemporary observers suggest that the Five Points was an early version of the Black and Tan bars in Harlem in the 1920s, around Times Square in the 1950s, and later in the East Village.

Like their descendants, the Five Pointers were ripe for

Many of the players men and women.''

casual violence, carousing, and open love-making. daily

human melodramas were

In a

black and Irish

neighborhood where shared experiences surmounted

and people were identified more by work than

in these

racial differences

ethnicity, blacks

and

Irish

brushed regularly against each other. By 1820, the greatest concentrations of

113

blacks and Irish in the city lived along Cross Street between Augustus and

insh and Afncan

Duane, in the heart of the Five Points?'^ Thirty years

Moving up Orange

coexisted.

still

Doggett's

1

main

Street, a

later,

blacks and whites

Ward,

street of the Sixth

85 1 Street Directory points out Gilbert Palmer, an Irish liquor dealer,-

then Levi Marks, a Jewish used-clothing dealer; and Anaste Plete, a black barber

from Trinidad.

neighbor was Edward McDaniel, an Irish shoemaker,

Plete's

followed by Henry Mathews, a black porter from Maryland. Such random ethnicity continued throughout the principal streets of the ward.^^ Since activities

York

were pubhc,

after

it is

dark of "gangs of negroes,

"discussing matters

.

.

.

most

New

not surprising to read in John D. Vose's tour of

[in]

and

Irish,

around

sailors," standing

and

their line of conversation." Unrelated Irish

blacks lived together. In the early nineteenth century, a black recorded living in the

home of a white was invariably a servant or a slave. By midcentury, around

the Five Points, necessity obliterated racial differences. George Washington, one

men

of three black

in the city

named

after the first president, lived

black wife, Adelaide, another black woman, Harriet Morris, and an Irish

with his

woman,

Joanna Cosgrove. The 1860 census reveals Moses Downey, a 43-year-old black

musician renting space in his printer

and his

Often these

home

to

James and Mary Gallagher, an

Irish

wife.^^ ties

developed early in life as the agencies of social reform pressed

many Irish and blacks together. Through fiction, song, melodrama, and folk tale, a secularized version of Pilgrim 's Progress chronicled the lives of local Irish

and

African Americans. Sadly, unlike John Bunyan's hero, few of the residents of the

Ward achieved any

Sixth

immortal bliss.

Still,

earthly sanction and were dubious candidates for

missionary and charitable organizations labored to reform

the Five Pointers. For troubled Irish and black children, reformation began with

enforced training at the House of Refuge,

New

and African American teenage boys and

Irish

the school after committing a petty crime in

and orphaned. of

1 1

were commonly taken into

New York or for simply being poor

40 percent of the inmates

at the

House

percent were black. After a period of education and training,

and black youths were bound out together. Boys were most frequently sent

Irish

to

Irish children constituted

Refuge while

York's juvenile reform school.

girls

work on farms or to the

then, their lives

sea; girls invariably

were sent "into

seldom improved. After returning

Even

service."^''

to the neighborhood,

some

must have felt nostalgia for the rural institutions. Health officials noted Sixth Ward blacks and Irish lived in disease-ridden, overcrowded hovels. letter

In a

McCready described conditions for typhus "a covered alleyway" on Elizabeth Street just off the Five Points.

published in

patients in

that

1

845, Dr. B. W.

The

three-story building stood in the center of a yard surrounded by pig sties

and

stables.

yard.

Animal filth made the ground impassable, so boards covered the The part decayed boards, when pushed, yielded up a "thick greenish fluid"

through the

crevices.^'*

Americans the Sixth

m

Ward,

1830-1870

1

As

14

adults, African

Americans and Irish in

New York City suffered under the

The Great

implacable hands of charity and correction. The Five Points Mission House of

Migration

Industry tore

form

down the Old Brewery in 85 1 and offered shelter and hope in the and references. The numbers of needy were sufficiently great to 1

of schools

gamer a clientele, but the Catholic Irish and the Protestant missionary women were fundamentally opposed. With the loss of temporal salvation, Irish and black

New Yorkers

New York City in the

suffered from earthly purgatories. In

1850s, the Irish accounted for 60 percent of the almshouse population, 70

percent of the recipients of charity, and more than half of those arrested for

drunkenness. The "Bloody Ould Sixth" represented the deadly effects of poverty

on

and African American

Irish

highest death rate in the pleurisy,

death

New

city.

Yorkers. By 1855 the Sixth

Ward had the

Pulmonary diseases including

tuberculosis,

pneumonia, and hemorrhage

among

of the lungs

were the leading causes

of

the young. Intemperance devastated the Irish and black popula-

Laudanum and opium were favored drugs for suicide for black and women. Children died from neglect, convulsions, and suffocation. Such

tions equally. Irish

abysmal

statistics reveal shared hardship.^^

To contemporaries, the Sixth Ward, and the Five Points in particular, epitomized crime. By modern standards, individual attacks on persons were rare. There were only 13 convictions for murder in the entire city between 1838 and 1851, a figure matched in the next three years. Many New Yorkers blamed the increase

on conditions

in the Five Points.^^ This perception of a violent Sixth

Ward was enhanced by

the rise of Irish gangs, immortalized by historians in

their chronicles of the Forty Thieves, the Kerryonians, the Chichesters,

Roach

Guards, Plug Ughes, Shirt Tails, and Dead Rabbits. The stalwarts of the gangs

were the

them

clientele for the bars

and brothels around the Five Points, bringing

into everyday contact with black

men and women.

Fist-fights often elevated into riots. Historians cite Irish participation in

street battles as

overwhelming proof

of their hatred of the city's African

Americans. In the 1830s, rioting changed from an acceptable mode of political discourse to an unruly, dangerous expression of class, ethnic, and racial antago-

nism. The government's inability to control rioters deepened the widespread despair about the city's future and heightened the calls for a professional police force.''

The

July 1834 riots

before the Civil

War

were the

largest single action against African

years. Rioters, angered

by reports

Americans

of interracial marriage

and assertions of racial equality, rampaged through the Sixth Ward for three days St. Philip's African Episcopal Church on Centre went beyond past harassment of black churches with frightening intensity and marked an attempt to drive the established black community out of the city. The Commercial Advertiser, blaming abolitionists for the riots, reported that "whenever a colored person appeared, it was a signal of combat, fight, and riot." The rioters included professional and commercial

and demolished the venerable Street.

The

riots

men,

and tradesmen, and

skilled laborers

and

115

the Sixth Ward,

Insh and Afncan

a scattering of semiskilled

unskilled workers. Sixteen percent of those arrested

came from

while others came from wards with equal concentrations of African Americans.

most

Significantly, a

few

Irish

rioters

of those detained

and the

attacked in

came from

were

abolitionists.

established

New York families,

On the third day, rioters targeted both the mob charged down the streets of the ward, it

Irish.

As

the

random sequence black homes and churches and

though African Americans were the chief victims, the

from the rage

later

when the Irish battled "Americans"

days around the Sixth Ward. Stemming from a dispute between an Irish

man and a native-born apple vendor, Points.

Irish bars. Al-

were not exempt

Irish

of the mob.^^

This animosity became plain a year for five

and only

a riot quickly roiled the streets of the Five

Newspapers reported an ethnic texture

to the fighting.

During an

initial

night of fisticuffs between "citizens and foreigners," bystanders exhorted the

brawlers by shouting, "Well-done Americans," or "Irishmen."

The danger

these melees can be seen in one report of policemen arresting Irishman

Lynch

for

wielding a "wooden pallisade" studded with

circulated rumors that Irish gangs

nails.

in

Edward

Newspapers

were organizing an Irish guerrilla militia. The

ethnic nature of the conflict continued in the next few days as squads of

native-born rioters ransacked the els

homes of Irish Five Pointers, destroyed broth-

frequented by Irishmen, and wrecked a Bowery tavern, the Green Dragon,

also attacked in the riots a year before. forte

maker and

Two people were killed, an English piano

a doctor. Virtually all of those arrested

were

Irish residents of

the Sixth Ward.^^ In the aftermath, the

New York Sun blamed its fellow newspapers for the riot,

contending the city was suffering from irresponsible journalism practiced the year before by the Courier

and

Commercial condemn mob

Enquirer, the Times, and the

Advertiser Maintaining that civic authorities neglected to

violence, allowing the "spirit" of riot to remain respectable, the paper pro-

nounced the

city

that a popular

would now "reap the whirlwind." What

on African Americans the previous radical

Democrat Gilbert Vale

Ward attacked blacks of a party

is

significant here is

newspaper equated treatment of the Irish in 1 835 with the attack

"for

year. Reflecting this

mutual

insecurity,

editorialized in 1840 that rioters in the Sixth

no other reason except the incitation of a brutal editor

newspaper." Vale added that in 1 835 a mob attacked the Irish "because

they were

Irish.

"^^

Although the ward was the scene strikingly little violence occurred interracial lovers, black churches,

an escalating

of

innumerable

between

Irish

1

subsequent years,

and abolitionists remained in the ward amidst

Irish population, its residents did

against blacks. In

riots in

and blacks. Even though

not participate in future riots

849 the Irish-American congratulated the Sixth Ward

for not

brawling during the elections. In the worst incident of rioting before the Draft Riots, at least seven Irish laborers

were among the 22 people

killed in the bloody

Americans the Sixth

in

Ward,

1830-1870

115

fighting at Astor Place in

The Great

the

Migration

Americans or

Dead Rabbit

May

1849. In the greatest battle between the gangs,

was no mention

Riots of 1857, there

their institutions.

And

of abuse of African

while the rest of the city was aflame,

during the infamous Draft Riots of 1863, the ward was quiet.^'

As

the Irish battled against perceived grievances, African Americans dis-

played open hostility against slavery. In 1837 blacks formed a committee of vigilance that confronted slave catchers in the streets. Tugs of war over fugitives

often broke into violence. Policeman William H. Bell recorded one such confrontation in early 1851 Angered by the city marshall's determination to return .

crowd

a fugitive slave to his master in Virginia, a

of blacks

rounded a "Southern Gentleman" in City Hall Park ward. Before the police could get to him, the angry retaliation for the forced return of the fugitive.

provoke violence among

and whites

sur-

in the lower part of the

mob beat the

Southerner in

Such black assertiveness did not

Irish residents.

Perhaps the Irish were content with their enormous political superiority.

Organized political behavior clearly favored the

emerging working-class

Irish,

who

participated in the

two ways. They shared with

politics of the 1840s in

blacks the opprobrium of nativist politics and evangelical crusading. sion, Irish

newspapers even showed glimmers of sympathy

and Miscellaneous

in the century, the Federalist Political Bulletin

aimed

at

an

Irish audience,

On

occa-

for the slave. Early

published a number of abolitionist

Repository,

articles. Gilbert

Diamond in the early 1 840s, promoted much worse. The for slavery and commended Irish re-

Vale, the radical equal rights editor of the

opposition to slavery, though he argued that wage slavery was

Irish-American disavowed any support

former priest Father Theobald

demned black

Mathew

activist Frederick

for his abolitionist efforts, but con-

Douglass as a "sworn enemy of republican

institutions" and offered support to the

American Colonization

Society.^^

In truth, the Irish had nothing to fear politically from African Americans.

Emancipation from slavery in 1827 in the state of

New

awaited, but very limited, civil freedom to blacks.

The end

offer

economic,

political, or social equality to blacks.

and the unshakable racism

of the political parties

York brought a longof slavery did not

Their declining numbers

doomed

black clergy and activists to regain the vote for blacks.

the valiant efforts of

New

York remained

intransigent toward black citizenship. Voting restrictions limited the ballot to

blacks worth

more than $250 under the constitution

of 1821.

qualified black voters in a population of 1,073 in the Sixth

black male suffrage did not arrive in

Reconstruction

Amendments

New

There were

Ward

six

in 1845. Full

York until the passage

of the

in the middle 1860s."''*

Irish reaped many gains from Two major legislative drives propelled Irish citizenship and

Unlike African Americans, however, the political allegiance.

with

it,

access to government patronage and

Nativism spurred the

initial

work

in the licensed trades.

reform that emanated from a dispute between

native-born carters and butchers and the

mayor over

licenses awarded to

"aliens" during the

War of

1

8 1 2. This fractious quarrel culminated in legislation

in 1826 restricting permits to citizens. ily to

cartmen,

it

soon extended to

Although

all

this legislation applied primar-

licensed workers. Unintentionally, the

legislation greatly increased the value of citizenship to Irish aliens.'^^

more opposition

in 1829

from the Workingmen's Move-

ment, which attacked their privileges as authoritarian relics of English rule. The

Workingmen's Petition sought abolition

of all licenses, a position

the Irish and blacks. After the initial hubbub, the issue lay years. In

supported by

dormant

for several

1836 the Loco-Foco movement, a radical spur of the Democratic Party,

made equal

access to licenses

its

them

qualifying

cratic Party to

for licenses.

As

chief political goal.

gradually accepted Loco-Foco reforms,

it

sweep the Sixth Ward

the Democratic Party

massively enfranchised the

Swapping licenses

for votes enabled the

for decades.

Irish,

Demo-

This neat exchange further

encouraged municipal reformers to loosen regulations in the 1840s, creating structures this

mixing mercantile and capitahst allotments of patronage.

meant

Politically,

that the Democratic Party could advertise itself as the "true

home

The Democrats adapted the rhetoric of the American Revolution to fit the rise of symbolic leaders like Mike of the

working classes" while favoring the

Irish.

Walsh, and, most importantly, the spread of patronage throughout the burgeoning public sector. In addition, the Democratic Party rewarded Irish support with

appointments to the ranks of police,

The explosion

fire,

sanitation,

in patronage intensified the political

and minor

city officials."*^

weaknesses of blacks. The

Democrats refused blacks access to patronage and Whigs rarely mounted sincere efforts for their African

American constituents.

has been called the "wages of whiteness"

In short, Irish adoption of

came not from any

but rather from cooperation with the existing political

what

innate prejudice,

system.''''

To gain a toehold in society. Sixth Ward Irishmen poured into carting. Thomas Mooney, in his famous guide for arriving Irish immigrants, described the conditions of carting to aspiring immigrants as the "road to success

common

.

.

.

The task always earned "advanced wages," provided good connections for future mobility, and was a good "business connection." Carting, to all."

noted Mooney, cost

little

to set up; a horse, cart,

and harness cost about $150.

Upkeep was minimal. Empty lots served as stables,- horses could be fed for $ 1 .50 per week, the carter for $2.50; "cab-tax, horse-shoes, and wear and tear" amounted to half a dollar for a total of $5 per week, an outlay costing little compared with the benefits of the trade .^^

Mooney misled his compatriots somewhat. When licensed carters gained the right to "horse-hire" their carts,

by employing day laborers as drivers in 1844,

they expanded their holdings into fleets. Such growth required more stableroom. Virtually all the

owners

of cart fleets listed in the superintendent's roster of

licensed drivers in the 1850s lived in the northern wards of the city.

nearly six hundred Irish cartmen living in the Sixth

Ward owned

Americans the Sixth

Believing erroneously that their monopolies were spared, the nativistlicensed trades faced

117 Msh and African

Few

of the

their carts.

in

Ward,

1830-1870

I ]^8

These transformations instituted a

The Crcai

a fleet, or

even a good

class division

v^ragon placed

among carters. Ownership

of

one carter above another.

This division resolved the issue of race within the trade. There had been

Migration

periodic African

mayors

cited

American attempts

custom and law

to integrate the trade before 1840, but

as excuses to decline licenses to blacks.

By 1850

black carters are listed in the census, although they could not obtain licenses until the mayorality of

Fernando Wood. The few black carters working in the

1850s were harbingers of future changes. By 1900, more than 1,400 blacks drove public carts in the

meant

city.

The

class divisions

wage

that Irish and black carters as

and

racial integration of carting

had more in

laborers

common than

the monopolistic master carters. In addition, both Irish and blacks porters, the simplest

laborers shared

form

work experiences and

referral services),

The minor

and

as

Irish

philosophies.'*

Loosened government control allowed licensed trades.

worked

of transport worker. In both trades, black

Irish

and blacks access to other

trades of pawnbrokers, intelligence officers (job

and rag and junk dealers lining the blocks

of the

Bowery and

Orange and Centre Streets were of mixed ethnicity. Equal rights logic demanded licenses for all, and the city awarded individual franchises to a host of Irish and black petty entrepreneurs. By 1854 there were 32 licensed junk shop dealers on

Orange

Street alone.

Although displaying gratuitous anti-Semitism, George

Foster slurred these entrepreneurs as "jews of course," the diary of William Bell, a

policeman patrolling the Sixth Ward in

1

850, lists

many

unlicensed Irish and

black peddlers. Dealing in clothing, furniture, junk, and jobs, these brokers reflected the surface of an

citations to Irish

underground economy.

and black residents

of

Orange

A

licenses or for fencing stolen property.**^ interracial. For

example, hairdressers,

Bell's diary is filled

with

Street for selling goods without

number

of smaller trades

were

whom Mooney advised arriving Irishmen

were "generally black, or copper coloured men," was an interracial occupation of 29 listed barbers in the Sixth Ward, 12 were Irish, 9 were African

by I860;

American, and 8 were from France,

Italy,

or

Germany.

Irish

and black

men

shared the labors of public waiters and scavengers."*^ All of these trades were fairly low in status. In contrast, a more lucrative trade remained segregated. Butchers were another licensed occupation losing their exclusive monopolies. Once famous for their solidarity, the butchers found their

earning power and potential stores. Stall

now tied to ownership of a stall or, in the new setup,

owners remained ensconced

at older

markets downtown. Stores

became the venue for ethnic butchers, especially German ones, who operated beyond the scope of the butcher's downtown monopoly. Many of the younger butchers living in the downtown wards were journeymen without shops or stalls.

These changes were not as apparent as in other

political strength, stronger trade unity, a bank,

trades. Possessed of

and a boisterous culture,

butchers resisted industrialism until after the Civil War. While class differences

were

a distant threat,

meat cutting remained

a preserve for

New

Yorkers of

TABLE

4.2.

Sixth

Ward Groceries and Porterhouses

120

Grocers catered to the laboring class of the ward, selling items in infinitesimal

was necessary

The Great

quantities and remaining open

Migration

return customers. Grocers gained their greatest profits not from food but from

the sale of alcohol, legal after

1

1

8 hours a day. Credit

to secure

84 1 Despite attempts to curb liquor sales in 1 836 .

and 1856, which temporarily reduced the numbers

of groceries

and

houses, their numbers steadily increased.

The huge

and grocers did not mean

wealth because the hundreds

a broader base of

ale-

increase in porterhouses

and food vendors in the Sixth Ward were usually employees

of ale

of a distant

landlord.^5

The previous examples have emphasized

common.

public interaction

among

African

New York's homes, gender and racial equality were

Americans and Irish. Inside

women dominated the

In the Sixth Ward, Irish

with 10 entries in the 1 860 directory to 7

for Irish males,

boardinghouse trade,

and scattered German,

and English keepers. Black boardinghouses were known by word

Italian,

of

Thompson maintained a house sheltering seven sailors and three dressmakers. Next door Andrew Coleman, a black carter, mouth

rather than print. George

rented part of his house to an Irish cigar

maker and

Similar shared experiences took place middle-class houses of the

city.

his wife."*^

among domestics working

Although

domestic service seemed the most promising opportunity

women. During the colonial and early national period, racial hatred,

Irish.'*''

which

later influenced

field,

and black

became interwined

ethnophobic attitudes toward the

Domestic service expanded exponentially between 1830 and 1870. Two

factors fueled this transformation. First,

tion of slavery in of the African city.

for Irish

African Americans were

the largest body of domestics. Attitudes toward servants

with

in the

few males worked in the

a

New York State in

growing racism

after the final extinc-

1827 and the ensuing social disintegration

American community pushed the black population out

Second, as slavery ended, newly freed black

women

of the

asserted their inde-

pendence by constant shuttling between domestic employments. Third, as married

women of New York's growing middle class

discarded postrevolution-

work and sought relief from the unending if ill-paid opportunities opened. As early as 1826 the Society for the

ary antipathies against household chores, vast

Encouragement of Irish of the

of Faithful

Domestic Servants noted the growing significance

women in the occupation. By

domestic work

1

855 Irish women accounted for 92 percent

force.**

Domestic work had few rewards. The work was unceasing and drab. Domestics

hauled water and firewood, disposed of

cleaned

floors,

tion, at the

arriving in

and minded children

beck and

human and

other waste, washed,

atmosphere of hostility and exploita-

in an

call of their mistresses.

Nonetheless, young Irish

women

New York preferred the $4 to $7 per month plus room and board they

received for domestic

work

to the harsh, unhealthy,

factory labor. Like laborers, domestics exploitative nature of the

moved

work negated any

and insecure conditions

readily

from job

feelings of loyalty,

to job.

of

The

and female

domestics quickly learned to bargain for their value.

who

Mooney

asserted that

modes of housewifery and who displayed loyalty and hard work could expect up to $7 a month plus board in a comfortable home, "where she will be treated nearly as an equal by the Lady of domestics

quickly learned American

House." Despite his cheery words, played what

women

Irish

were

less

sanguine and

dis-

Mooney called their Irish spirit by frequently changing masters and

At the bottom of domestic work, blacks and Irish women worked washerwomen. The I860 directory lists eight Irish and eight black

mistresses.*^

together as

washerwomen

living in the Sixth Ward.

Boredom, poor conditions and wages, and

shrill

mistresses produced a rapid

turnover. Yet the occupation remained attractive because black and Irish domestics

shared equally poor chances for marriage and family life.

The demand for domestics

in the colonial period and after the American Revolution caused a gender imbalance

in the city's black population.

numbers whites.

of black families

With many black men employed

with female-headed households

far

as sailors, the

exceeded those of

Among blacks between the ages of 1 5 and 40 in 1 860, females outnumbered

males in

New York County by 4,267 to 2,672. Females accounted for 56 percent of

the black population. Similarly, 58 percent of the city's Irish were female in 1855. Irish

and black female domestics shared

children. In I860, there

a

second demographic

trait.

were ten percentage points fewer black

Few had

women

with

work also lowered the Irish birth rate. As poverty, drinking, fighting, and desertion undermined marital relations, matrimony became devalued, and Irish female-headed famihes became common. The decline of family life produced an advantage for a few women. Delayed children than white females. Domestic

marital patterns, access to education, and cultural influences trickling

from the mistress enabled black and

modern forms

of education

Irish

domestics to

move up

down

in society.

As

and medicine blossomed, single or late-marrying

women found opportunity and class mobility in school teaching and nursing.^^ Irish women and a few blacks gained employment as typists in emerging businesses. Sadly, such successes were rare. For those who did not marry, illness

and old age presented problems of support. Lacking children to look

from their communities and support networks, the single

after

them, cut

Irish

and black women who inhabited the prisons, asylums, and the poorhouse

off

were invariably spent domestics. ^^

A look at

the census taken in the

the conditions for

women

Tombs

in

1

860 dispels any illusions about

in the Sixth Ward.

As might be expected,

Irish

prostitutes were the greatest perpetrators of minor crimes of intoxication, public

lewdness, petty larceny, and, sadly, pauperism. Reflecting the troubles of their status,

however, there are significant numbers of servants, housekeepers

mestics), day laborers,

(do-

and washerwomen whose crimes commonly included

petty larceny and intoxication.

Weary

of their poverty

and the exploitative routine

of factory

piecework or

the relentless harassment of domestic service, and with the gender imbalance

121 insh and Ajncan

Americans the Sixth

in

Ward,

1830-1870

and Irish women, many of these women either fUrted with prostitution

for black

or

embraced

Love

it.

for sale

could be an avenue of mobility for

despair of moralists, prostitutes frequently earned

more than

women. To

their factory

the

and

Despite their lives of desperation, prostitutes had career paths

domestic

sisters.

to follow

and successes were folk heroes. Although prominent families actually

owned many brothels, the most common individual female property owners in the ward were madams. The center of love markets was the Five Points. Here, historian Timothy Gilfoyle has charted at least 17 domiciles for sex at the crossroads of Anthony, Leonard, Orange, and Center in each of the four decades to 1859.^*

from 1820

Five Pointers articulated their tough, raucous lives through a special night

speech

dance

known

halls,

sports.

as "flash talk," used to describe fast food places, drinking holes,

gambling halls, pawnshops, lodging houses, prostitutes, scams, and

"Going the rounds" or "on

sional thieves

a bender"

meant

a drinking spree. Profes-

were known as "crossmen," while burglars were called "crack-

men," who worked together "on the dub ... to crack a can" or break into a Anthony Street from Centre Street to the Five

house. Streets had slang names. Points

was Cat

Hollow,- Little Water, the southern edge of Paradise Square,

occupied by two black and two Irish taverns, was called Dandy

Language became song and dance

Lane.'^^

at the markets, hotspots in the public

economy, where black and Irish hucksters sold many varieties

of food

and filled

the air with their poignant cries and songs while Irish butchers watched as

blacks "danced for eels" at the nearby Catherine Market. Black and white female

and corn sellers shared territories on the streets, respecting each other's monopoly over favored comers. Originally a black tradition dating back into the eighteenth century, hot corn girls became universal during tough times in the 1840s. Legends grew about beautiful young women of indeterminate ethnicity fruit

and being the beloved

selling corn

Tavern

life,

genders in a sang,

of

gang leaders.^^

a staple since the earliest colonial days,

rum punch.

shook

races, classes,

and

In Five Points bars, Irish and black revelers danced,

and courted to popular melodies composed from European and African

One

rhythms. musical

visitor to a black tavern noted the

styles: "In the

metamorphosed from such Scotch jiggish air."

mingling of black and white

negro melodies you catch a strain of what has been or Irish tune, into

somewhat

One Irishman is said to have "commenced humming,

the popular negro melody of 'Mary Blane,'" but this to arrest particular attention."

it

of a in a

chiming low tone,

seems "there was nothing

in

Walt Whitman argued in his Daybooks and

Notebooks, that such mixing of cultures presaged a "native grand opera in America."'

Dance

halls,

attended by local blacks,

Irish,

and

sailors, created a racial

music played at Peter Williams': looks precisely as if he were blowing glass, which

blend. George Foster described the hot

"That red-faced trumpeter needles

[of

.

.

.

sound] penetrating the tympanum, pierce through and through

the brain without remorse

on every

.

.

.

the bass

side, in all violation of

drummer

.

.

.

sweats and deals his blows

123

was

insh and Afncan

the laws of rhythm." Another attraction

the fabled dancer, Juba, whom Dickens described dancing as Williams, performing the "single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross cut his toes

and heels

like

them

nothing but the man's fingers on the tambourine." Juba

1830-1870

as tame, preferring a dark cellar cellar

.

known

as the Diving Bell. Located in a

on the Bowery, here "blacks mixed

in freely with the gang" as

interracial rowdies danced.^*

was the neighborhood's

Equally shocking to the middle classes for

what the nineteenth century termed amalgamation.

sparked in such bordellos as the Diving

Orange

Street,

and

in the nearby

on again

by two policemen on a

and black

.

.

.

Swimming

1

Cow

predilection

was on and Squeeze Gut

Interracial love

Bath, and Arcade

Bay,

840s, Charles Dickens

beckoned

to his

and plunge into the Five Points." Accompanied

visit to Peter

men and women

Bell,

Yankee Kitchen,

Alley. Recording his visit of the early readers, "Let us go

Williams' tavern, Dickens gaped as Irish

drank, danced, and

made

love. After Dickens,

no

popular construction of the Five Points was complete without a description of a love affair

between a black

man and an Irish woman.^^

Brothels and dance halls were not the only venues for interracial love.

Although Irish

Irish kinship ties in the Sixth

Ward were very

and even married blacks. In the years

mixed couples appeared

regularly in the Sixth Ward.

such unions was the children

who fell

with his wife Deborah, a black blessed with

young

woman,

They

woman lived

after the

1

834

riot,

early indication of

House

of Refuge

Danish seaman, lived openly

from Maryland. Another union was

children. William Moore, a black

Winnifred.

One

into the clutches of the

after 1840.^° Peter Williams, a fifty-three year old

Irish

strong, occasionally

men and women took partners from other ethnic groups. A few brave Irish

defied social sanctions

male

laborer,

married an

with a 12-year-old son and a 2-year-old

daughter at 228 Mulberry Street. Perhaps the bravest was John Baker, a black

woman named Julia.

Baker faced burly opposition on which could provoke assault from thugs.''' In 1860, 10 years after the Fugitive Slave Act, which sent hundreds of New Yorkers fleeing to Canada, Stephen Sanders, a black chimney sweep from Virginia, his wife Mary, from Ireland, hosted assorted boarders from Germany, Ireland, and New York City. One home sheltered two interracial couples. John DePoyster, a black laborer and his wife, Bridget, from Ireland, shared a house with John Francis of Virginia and his Irish wife Susan.^~ Even in the late 1860s, several years after the fierce attacks on blacks during the Draft Riots, assaults that often took on a psychosexual tenor, interracial carter married to an Irish

the street while living in a marriage

couples thrived in the Sixth Ward. ward, surrounded by almost 12,000 stands out.

in

theSvdh Ward.

.

and Peter Williams became so well known by 1850 that local sports regarded remote

Americans

spinning about on

.

The men worked

When Irish,

only 203 blacks lived in the entire

the presence of

1 1

interracial couples

as laborer, seaman, boardinghouse keeper, carter.

and liquor

had Irish wives.

These marriages

124

porter, servant, sweep,

The Great

are not significant numerically but have great symbolic importance. Irish

Migration

and women, from a people not known

Americans and defied the

racist

dealer. Six

for intermarriage,

conventions of their times to build genuine

commentators generally

relationships and at times families. Although popular

sneered at such marriages, the men's occupations suggest serious rather than casual

is

commitment

romance.^

In sum, the relations of Irish

there

men

wedded African

no easy explanation

and lived closely together,

for

Irish

and African Americans were polyvalent, but them. Although they competed economically

and black coexisted

historians have suggested. Day-to-day contact

was

far

as

more peacefully than

harmonious

as could be

in a tough, urban slum, while nighttime leisure produced a syncretic culture.

few brave souls intermarried. The example

of the Sixth

Ward

A

contrasts with

James O. Horton's interesting findings on relations between blacks and Ger-

mans

in Buffalo,

New

York, in the nineteenth century.^* Blacks and whites in

Buffalo apparently got along

when

housing; blacks and Irish in the Sixth

was little competition for work or Ward cohabited in a slum where work was

there

scarce and casual. Daily contact created a toleration not present in wards of greater segregation,

which produced,

their racial terrorism.'^^ Although

also

many

for

example, the draft rioters of

1

863 and

disharmony and conflict abounded, there were

points of cooperation and exchange. In their mutual experiences in

the crowded Sixth Ward, black and Irish found

common ground and affection.

John Kuo Wei Tchen

CHAPTER 5

Quimbo Appos

Fear of Fenians

CHINESE-IRISH-ANGLO RELATIONS IN

NEW YORK CITY

IA -N

locked antiseptic room, the

man whom the New

York City newspapers dubbed "the Chinese devil man" was screaming that he

was being harassed by the "Fenian party" and that for political reasons, the Democrats had conspired with the governor to delay his release from prison. The year was 1883, a year after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Law. A doctor's typed notes documented the regularly drugged patient's statements over the years. Mar. 30, 1885. Has delusion that he has been, and of Ireland

and that he must

Feb. 26, 1890.

importance. ...

Is

at

He

times

is

suffer until she is free. irritable

now, suffering for the cause .

.

.

and always preserves a sense

horses outside of the asylum; says be

is

King

of the

very happy in bis delusions and says be

Nov.

7,

Sept.

9,

1893.

own

World and has power over

the sun, the wind, and over day and night, and that he is

of his

believes that he has grand hotels, palaces, servants and

Claims to have power

1895. Imagines that be

is

a

of taking

owns

is

omnipotent. Often he

Second God.

away

votes.

ten hotels and

all

the laundries in the

country. fan. 4, 1899.

the

first

Says he was China he ran the

Imagines that be owns Madison Square Garden.

Chinaman

largest tea trade of

that ever

any

man

came

to

America and while

in that country.

in

.

.

.

1 -, --

fan. 2,

1

907.

He says that he is the World Law and has immense sums of money,

has a number of hotels in The Great

Says that he has Migration

[Bjoxers are

Such

New York City where his National Palace is located.

many gun

coming

a sampling of this deluded

startling

when one

Hudson River and it

that soon 400,000

to the ground and release him.'

man's purported statements are

who this man used to be. Quimbo Appo, who two decades

all

the

more

learns

Five days into 1878,

by the

boats on the

to this institution, raze

earlier

had been cited

New York Times as the "exemplary Chinaman," was incarcerated in the

Matteawan

State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. His "certificate of insan-

ity" stated that the

once prominent tea merchant married to an

Irish

woman

had no known trade, was widowed, had two previous convictions, and was most recently convicted of manslaughter. His "form of Insanity" was described as

"mania with delusions" and its cause hypothesized to be "probably [from] ." Although he had a living son named George Washington Appo, the once popular leader of the community had "none" filled in for "Name confinement?

and address

—

of nearest relative or friend."

ment explaining

his reasons for

The

prison physician signed a state-

committing Appo to the insane asylum: "He

imagines and believes that great numbers of persons also the

visit

him

Holy Virgin and numerous other personages— with

delusions. His general condition

is

in his cell

and

a variety of other

such as not to be trusted out of close

He was to remain at Matteawan until his death in 1912.^ How can Quimbo Appo's variegated, cross-cultural delusions be understood?

confinement."

Conspiring political parties, Fenians, Ireland, Madison Square Garden, laundries,

Boxers on the Hudson? Should they simply be dismissed as the rantings

of a crazed

man?

Perhaps. Yet, Appo's paranoia

story bears reconstruction

was not without

and examination because

it

offers a

basis.

His

life's

glimpse into the

experiences of the Chinese in lower Manhattan, especially in relation to the

neighborhood's large Irish population and the metropolis's well-established Anglo-Protestant political culture. Mr. the profound shift of attitude

What happened

to

Appo over

Quimbo Appo's fall from grace embodied

New Yorkers had toward Chinese in their midst. his life in

Gotham? And what was the

social

and

historical context of his "insanity"?

An "Exemplary Chinaman" While conducting a survey British missionary

ing tea seller

of the

Chinese in lower Manhattan in 1854, the

Edward Syle was directed to Quimbo Appo, an English-speak-

who seemed to have been

the single best-known Chinese in

New

York. In contrast to the "heathens" Syle visited in their tenements, the missionary

was favorably impressed with Appo and his business acumen. "I saw a Chinaman," Syle wrote in a somewhat surprised tone, "playing his a salesman with an alacrity of movement and flourish of manner that

veritable part as

was quite exemplary."

In contrast to a troupe of stranded

and now-begging

New Yorkers viewed Appo as one who knew how of New York and as an independent,

Chinese actors on Broadway, to operate in the

commercial environs

From Syle's admiring vantage, Appo "wanted nobody to him but was abundantly able to be the guardian of his own

rational individual.

take care of interests.'"^

Appo told Syle he was born

in

825 in Zhusan, an island

1

off the

mouth of the

Yangtze River on the midcoast of China, and had lived through the British

bombing

of

Shanghai during the

be taken at face value

been one of the Chinese to

Opium

is difficult

who

Wars.

to say,

How much of his biography can

Appo, however, does appear to have

took to the trade routes to the West.

He claimed

have traveled with Prussian missionary Karl Gutzlaff into forbidden interior

sections of China. Gutzlaff mistakenly believed that the Chinese needed only

exposed to Christianity to convert en masse. (He had proposed that

to be

Americans emulate the Prussian practice trading vessels.) Living

West,

Appo was

in all likelihood

access to Western ships after the island for British

Buena

of sending missionaries

on an island under constant

1

among

by the

who

gained

those Chinese nationals

842 Treaty of Nanjing. Zhusan was a strategic

and American opium

in 1847, before the

on opium

battles for control

traders.

Appo said he then sailed to Yerba

United States claimed the

territory. After the discov-

went to the gold fields and was reportedly involved in killing two Mexicans in self-defense. They had killed one of his partners while ery of gold at Sutter's Mill, he

attempting to steal their gold.

Some time afterward he sailed to Boston as a cook

and steward on the Vandalia. Later in New Haven, he married an Irish American

named Catherine Fitzpatrick. They eventually moved to New York, where he found work at a tea store. They had a daughter and a son. Their son was born on the Fourth of July and they named him George Washington Appo."* Appo functioned well in English and was a shrewd storekeeper. While in the store, Syle was impressed by an incident Appo recounted. A customer wanted to change a dollar note for a small quantity of coffee. Appo told the customer: "You want to change this note, [you] must buy half a pound, then can do." The surprised customer then did as the savvy Appo required.'' Appo,

it

seems, was not totally self-serving.

reporter called

upon "Crimpo" Appo

An

1856

New

York Times

to gain access to cigar peddlers.

willing to talk to the reporter about his

countrymen

for

Appo was

he hoped "public

some of them — particularly those —for the cold of Winter would soon debar them

attention could be directed to the condition of

who

sold cigars in the street

from this mode of obtaining a sustenance." Appo took the opportunity to advertise the desperate plight of vendors through the totally

Times

article.

"Being

unacquainted with the language and customs of this country, they are

unfitted for almost any City work, but they are anxious to be employed, and

would

like situations

on

farms."''

According to journalist Louis Beck's often-cited 1898 book

Chinatown,

An

Historical Presentation of Its People

and

Places,

New

York's

Appo was

the

127 Chmese-lnsh-Angh Relationsin

New

York City

Chinese resident of

128

first

The Great

intelligence, gifted

Migration

came

New

in contact with him."

charmed with

his

He was

York.

man of great men who

credited as "a

with a mind whose keenness startled

all

white

"Those associated with him," wrote Beck, "were

winning manner, and there was no greater pleasure in those

when Chinamen were still but rarely seen on our streets, than to meet Quimbo Appo in a genial mode and listen to the endless stories he had to days,

relate."''

Appo

lived

and worked

at a tea store located at

apparently earned a decent wage. Tea

New

was

a

Street, well

above

the store, but

major import item

for the port of

New

York. By 1860 tea merchants in

50 Spring

own

He

the poverty of the Fourth and Sixth Wards.

did not

York handled $8.3 million

of a

national total of $8.9 million of imported tea.* Retailing tea promised opportunities for

Chinese in the

city.'

Four fellow tea dealers were visiting Appo when

"One young

the Times reporter arrived to meet him.

fellow, quite

announced

his appearance, wearing a shawl, and all that,

dandyish in

his intention of

become an American citizen, and to Appo must have been a successful role model. He could speak English and had married an American woman. Not having much of a Chinese constituency from which to draw customers, operating in a Chinese dialect was not a viable option for these merchants. Being able to effectively communicate with English-speaking New Yorkers, then, was a key prerequisite for these budding merchants to do well. The younger man's attitude clearly indicated a willingness to intermix with his learning to read and write the language, to

marry an American

girl."

non-Chinese neighbors.

For this aspiring tea dealer,

'°

Indeed, this anecdotal journalistic information

found in the telling

New York City census. From the

number

of

supported by what can be

is

1820s to the 1870s, a modest but

New York.

Chinese settled in the port of

pre-Chinatown settlement because Chinatown did not late 1870s.

During

married to

Irish

Anglo

names, and some took Anglo

first

citizens

this time,

women

one

of four

and many had

Chinese

and appeared to have every intention

example, was a Chinese

man who worked

can be called the

men

found in the city were

These Chinese

families. first

It

really develop until the

and

last

men

took on

names. They became

of staying.

William Brown,

as a ship steward.

He had

for

lived in

New York since 825 and was married to Rebecca Brown, an Irish woman who had come to New York at the age of 7 and lived in the city for 20 years. Their 6-year-old son William was a native New Yorker. John Huston was bom in China and he was 28 years old in 1855. He arrived in New York in 1829 and was 1

married to Margaret Huston, a 26-year-old daughters, Kate and Mary.

He was

a

Irish

woman. They had two young

seaman and

1870, William Assing lived at 66 Cherry

St.

a naturalized U.S. citizen. In

with his

Irish wife Bridget Assing,

They had four boys. The oldest was 14 and the youngest 2 months, indicating some stability and longevity in their relationship. He reported a personal wealth of $700, the equivalent of 23 months of pay for a sailor."

33.

It

should be emphasized that the documented settlement was small. In

1865, and 1870 only

Manhattan

some 65 Chinese were

Island. Nevertheless,

noticeable in

Chinese

855,

129

officially reported to

be living on

chmae-lnsh-Angh

were

sufficiently

Irish marriages

1

New York City to merit regular comment in the city's newspapers.

even warranting caricatures and drawings, which dominated the media's representation of Chinese in

women

Irish

New

selling apples

York. Harper's Weekly reported in 1857 that 28

have "gone the way of matrimony with their

elephant-eyed, olive skinned contemporaries." featured an Irish

on the cover. '^ In 1869, the completion a Harper's

And

in 1858

Yankee Notions

woman, her Chinese husband, and their two Irish-Chinese sons

Weekly graphic

of

Irish

woman, walking arm-in-arm

And

decades

Chinese

a

"Church

in front of the

1890, Harper's

later, in

of the transcontinental railroad inspired

two couples, both pairing Weekly devoted

man and an

of St. Confucius."'''

a double-page centerfold

spread showing a Chinese-Irish couple and their children.

Those familiar with

New York immigration and settlement patterns would not

be totally surprised by this Chinese-Irish phenomenon. Chinese immigres could

be foimd in the Fourth and Sixth Wards of Lower Manhattan. The Fourth was located below and eastward of

Chatham

Square, with the East River as

its

southeastern border. It was a maritime-oriented ward, the center of the shipbuilding

and the place where the industry's skilled workers

trade area's

many

the Sixth Ward,

town.

lived. Sailors

boardinghouses. Just above and to the west of

lodged in the

Chatham Square was

which encompassed the present-day commercial core

of China-

Many Irish hved in these two wards up until the time of the Italian and Jewish

immigration in the 1880s. Yet physical proximity alone would not necessarily account for these interethnic relationships. What might have brought Chinese men

and

Irish

women together other than physical proximity?

Carol Groneman's and Hasia Diner's research on Irish sheds light on

some

women

in

New York

of the shared experiences that laid the basis for these

that for Irish women between the ages women for 80 Irish men. Over the decades a significant number of these women married partners of other ethnic groups. In the 1855 census, some 6.7 percent of these Irish women married non-Irish. Of cross-cultural bonds. of 15

Groneman found

and 29, there were 100

the 1,430 Irish marriages recorded between 1853 and I860 at the Sixth Ward's

major

Roman Catholic parish, the Church of the Transfiguration, 4.7 percent women chose non-Irish partners. Though fairly modest statistically,

of the Irish

given the large numbers of Irish immigrants in significant

phenomenon. According

this

same

period, first

somewhere

Irish

New York child with New York Tribune in 1885.'^

recorded birth of a "pure, unadulterated"

both parents of Chinese birth was reported by the

The nature

York, this constituted a

women in New York married non-Irish. During no Chinese women were recorded by the census-takers.

between 2,707 and 3,762 Indeed, the

New

to the 1855 census figures,

of port districts

combined with

provided the conditions in which Irish

Irish

women and

and Chinese demographics Chinese

men

might come

Relations in

New

York City

Because they were immigrants, their comparably modest socioe-

]^30

in contact.

Thc Great

conomic standing may have been

Migration

Irish

women frequently

marketplaces. Irish "apple Printing

a further basis of shared experience. Poorer

sold fruits and vegetables

women" were

on the

fringes of established

often spotted near City Hall Park,

House Square, and the Bowery. From the mentions in newspapers, it number of them joined together with Chinese men, who also

appears that a

peddled such goods as cigars and Chinese candies in that area. Besides marrying Chinese men, as Irish

women

Graham Hodges

notes in chapter 4

some

entered into relationships with African Americans, despite the

concern among antiabolitionists that blacks commingling with whites were about to "mulattoize" whole neighborhoods. For this added reason, the already sensationalized Five Points

mixed

became

identified as a place in

which the

races

indiscriminately. In 1858 the xenophobic, Democratic Party paper, the

New York Evening Day Book described the Sixth Ward as "the only spot, thank God, in these United States where the Abolition ideas [and] whites, negroes,

is [sic]

reduced to practice,

and mongrels readily 'intermarry.'"

Although the phenomenon

of marriage across racial-ethnic lines

was

prob-

ably greatly exaggerated by the antiabolitionists, the area was indeed an international district in which cultures from around the world intermixed, forming a hybrid, creolised

was unusually

New York culture. The particular mix of people in New York The port of New York's rise to national and

diverse, however.

international importance brought ships and people from

all

around the world.

The early Chinese settlement embodied this multipUcity. In 1835, for example, Lesing Newman was a 23 year old Chinese -born, naturalized citizen of the United States who was signed on to the ship John Taylor of New York, bound for Liverpool. That same year Ben Sanchez of China was on the New York ship Adelaide heading for Havana. The 1855 census noted a 17-year-old Singmer Dosai residing in the Fourth Ward. He was listed as a "mulatto" sailor (possibly Portuguese?) born in China.

many" Chinese walking

A

1856

New York Times article noted "a great New York having escaped "brutal

the streets of

task-masters" of the Peruvian Chincha Islands, where indentured "coolie" labor

dug guano

for fertihzing

embodying

already

American farms. Chinese

a cross-cultural

mix

New Yorkers were therefore

of local, Peruvian,

Cuban,

Irish,

and

other cultures.'^

The

early small businesses of the area reflected this polyglot international

culture.

Ah

Sue, for example, has been credited with being one of the

Chinese to open a small business. Tired of maritime Cherry Street in 1847, married an

Irish

travel,

Sue landed

woman named Murphy, and

first

at

62

opened a

small tobacco and candy store serving non-Chinese customers. In order to find a niche within the neighborhood

what

their

economy, the Chinese had

to quickly learn

non-Chinese neighbors liked to buy. In the best of Lower East Side

traditions in the making, the

mixing

of

immigrants and native

New

Yorkers

brought about a mixing of cultural goods as well. This interethnic fertilization

also created at least

documented

as

one new form of cultural expression. Tap dancing has been

emerging from the Five Points mix of African and

Irish

dance

traditions.'^

Relations in

In 1871 the Anglo-Protestant Harper's

Weekly ran

a graphic

and

article that

underscored the creolised nature of these lower Manhattan wards. Entitled

"Along the

New

York Docks," the

tional restaurant" run

by

article pictured

an "unaristocratic interna-

a "good-natured, broad-breasted, jolly-faced" Irish

woman catering to "Irishmen [who] jostled against 'niggers'; Chinaman, Frenchmen, Germans, [mingling]

harmony." The quip about harmony was

in perfect

man being violently brought to his knees

powerfully contradicted by a Chinese

while others blithely carried on.^° This article articulated a double message characteristic of Protestant Victorian a definite fascination

was

there

with

great disgust

New Yorkers. On the one hand, there was

this creolised

and abhorrence

In this worldview, both the Chinese

The prodigious

diarist,

downtown culture; on

of

the other hand,

it.

and Irish were considered racial "others."

one-time mayor, and upper-class Whig George Temple-

how

ton Strong clearly articulated

distant they

normalcy in his view. Strong wrote that the

Irish

were from Anglo-Protestant were "almost as remote from

us in temperament and constitution as the Chinese."^' Yankee Notions' 1858

cover graphic mentioned earlier bears further examination in this regard.

mock Irish

The

dialogue of "The Result of the Immigration from China" between the

Mrs. Chang-Fee-Chow-Chy and the Chinese Mr. Chang-Honey expressed

Strong's sentiments but in

comic form.

Mrs. Chang-Fee-Chow-Chy (the better half of the Celestial over the way). then,

Chang-Mike, run home and take Pat-Chow and Rooney-Sing wid

bring the last of the for yer

puppy

pie for yer daddy.

—Now, ye,

and

And, do ye mind? bring some praties

mother, ye spalpeens.

—How he's ye, Chang Honey? — Sky we po kee bang too, mucho puck

(To her husband)

Chang-Honey

ti,

rum foo,

toodie skee

sicke.

From this vantage, both the Chinese and the Irish are beyond the pale of civilized behavior. In his

1

8 70 piece "John

Chinaman in New York, " Samuel Clemens expressed

one aspect of the dominant culture's fascination with the ethnic "mix-up."

Clemens described

a

walk

in

monster American tea stores it

Manhattan: "As in

New

York,

I

I

passed along by one of those

found

a

Chinaman

acting in the capacity of a sign. Everybody that passed by gave

stare as long as their

their necks,

131 Chineie-lrish-Anglo

him

a steady

heads would twist over their shoulders without dislocating

and a group had stopped to

meditation on

sitting before

how shameful Americans

stare deliberately." After a long

should

feel that

they "degrade a

fellow-being" in this manner, "I pitied the friendless Mongol." While liberally protesting the treatment of this

man, he

description of this stranger's odd dress:

titillated his readers

with a detailed

New

York City

j^

^

Men calling themselves the superior race, the race of culture and of gentle blood,

2

scanned his quaint Chinese

The Great

hat,

with peaked roof and

on

ball

and his long

top,

queue dangling down his back; his short silken blouse, curiously frogged and Migration

awkwardly put on his blue cotton, tight-legged pants, tied close around the ankles,- and his clumsy blunt-toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from head to foot, cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or his melancholy face, and passed on. figured (and, like the rest of his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and I;

Upon touching up

Clemens

the man's shoulder in sympathy,

stated:

"Cheer

—don't be downhearted. America and Americans are always ready to help

the unfortunate.

.

.

.

What wages do they pay you here?" The man replied in an but four dollars a week and find meself; but it's aisy,

Irish accent: "Divil a cint

barrin' the

troublesome furrin clothes

that's so expinsive."^^

Such a Chinese-Irish mix-up was funny within the dominant culture because both groups were represented as comic

nese caricatures as

foils.

A

Republican

figures. In this case, radical

sensibilities expressed their anti-Irish feelings

by using their sympathetic Chi-

disgruntled Bricklayer's

Union

representative, for

example, complained that the lack of proper building regulations to prevent the

was due to anti-Irish prejudice. "Our philanthropists say that they are less than the 'nigger'" hence Irish injuries did not matter. Whig and Republican politicians often advocated African frequent collapse of buildings upon workers

American

suffrage while

denouncing

Irish

immigrant

voters.

As

early as 1834

New York Journal of Commerce stated: "We have among us a large number of native born COLORED persons, whom the laws prohibit from voting, but who the

... are intelligent,

and in many respects FAR better qualified

our elections than the

[Irish] of

whom we

manner, many Whigs and Republicans believed sons," Chinese were often

more

fit

to participate in

have been speaking."

In a parallel

that, like their "colored per-

than the Irish Catholics to be citizens.

New

York Protestant pluralists rhetorically seemed to prefer blacks and Chinese over "their" despised clear limits, of

it

and

far

more numerous

Irish.

Although such pluralism had

formulated a widespread consensus

among

the Protestant elite

Gotham. Others of the mainstream

elite

chided

all

three groups,

making them the

brunt of crass, but totally acceptable and commonplace public humor that pitted stereotypes of one racialized group against another in

jest.

Irish-Chinese mix-

ups, for example, pervaded nineteenth century political culture,

Notions' 1854 "Hibernian Celestial" and Harper's 1879

Might Gain Favor"

(figure 5.1) to Allen's Jewel Five

"How

from Yankee

the

Chinaman

Cent Plug trade card and

John Denison's 1895 vaudeville farce and mix-up "Patsy O'Wang."

It

enduring cross-cultural theme demonstrating the longlasting tensions

was an felt

by

the Anglo elite toward their perceived Irish and Chinese inferiors.^^

This European Protestant obsessive fascination formed the basis of another

common Irish and Chinese New Yorker experience. As is well known,

the Irish

were a particularly favorite target of the Anglo-American himself a

German

Thomas

Nast,

133

emigre, studied the political drawings of Punch's Sir John

Chmese-Irish-Anglo

Tenniel and adapted

them

to the

elite.

American context. Acknowledged

as the

pioneer American political cartoonist, he fully accepted the physiognamatic

assumptions informing British caricature of the strated, Irish

men were

Irish.

As

others have

demon-

predominantly represented as an ape-like, prognathous

race of thugs.^^ Nast's Irish in Harper's Weekly, especially his riot scenes,

quite similar.^**

Such images were also typical

of the Irish. Keppler, the

successor to Nast."'

They

were

of Johannes Keppler's drawings

cofounder of the highly successful Puck, was the differed

mainly in the positions they took on the

so-called Chinese question. Nast, in a limited sense, supported the Chinese in part because of his radical Republican convictions, but especially because this

was

a

means

of demonstrating his antipathy for the Irish. Yet, both

Nast and

Keppler's representations of Chinese were also informed by the mid-nineteenth

century scientific theory and practice of physiognomy.

Not

surprisingly, individuals

''°

such as William and Bridget Assam also had to

endure the condescension of patrician society. Both Chinese and Irish were seen

HOW THE CHINAMAN MIGHT

This Harper's Weekly political cartoon (Apr. 12, 1879)

"mix-up." (From the collection of John

Kuo Wei

GAIN PAYOR

is

Tchen.)

a typical

example of an Irish-Chinese

Relations

m

Nw York City

comic and

inferior

by the upper

classes.

Such hierarchic relations were

]^34

as

The Great

encoded into the established areas of Manhattan Island

Migration

ethnicity,

and

class

were indelibly encoded into the

spatial

As the gentry moved uptown, immigrants, blacks and

early city.

poor remained behind. Blacks could only afford housing in the

swampy grant,

Indeed, race,

itself.

arrangements of the

Fifth

and

and Sixth Wards. Before the Draft Riots

racially diverse

downtown

sunken and

of 1863, a poor,

residential district

distinction to suburbanizing Anglo-

the working

still

was created

and German-Protestant

immi-

in contra-

elites

moving

uptown.^'

Whether they chose

to or not, these

Chinese

men

and

Irish

women

found

themselves entering the city in the same Lower East Side neighborhoods. Given the cultural geography of the urban landscape, their shared spatial relations in the city implied a shared economic, immigrant, and situational experience.

Differences of appearance, language, and cultural practices were in these cases of intermarriage

ences.

seemingly overcome by their

The Lower

common

concerns and experi-

East Side not only provided the basis for the intermixing of

phenomenon. The Appo household embodied the growing tween Chinese and Irish in Lower Manhattan.

cultures but also fostered a countervailing

catastrophic

violence that befell the

tensions be-

The

Trial

was not marital

Apparently

all

Fitzpatrick.

One

of their

page headlines in the

and Contested bliss

Stories

between Quimbo Appo and Catherine

domestic quarrels erupted in violence and hit front-

New

York papers. With subsequent cycles

imprisonment, violence turned into a way of

life for

the next two decades, the upstanding merchant citizen details of

of fights

and

Appo. Over the course of fell

from

grace. Yet the

what went wrong remained rather cloudy.

New York Chinatown, Appo And when he was inebriated he was "a veritable Caliban" who was "dead to all human emotions." "At such times he was transformed into a fiend, with an insatiable craving for blood." He apparently married "a woman of the slums" but "in a fit of rage" cut his wife's throat. He was sentenced to be hanged but on the intervention of his Christian friends gained a new trial and According to Louis Beck, the 1898 chronicler of

drank

liquor.

was sentenced for second-degree murder and 10 years' imprisonment. In 1863 he was pardoned. Within a year of his release he quarreled with "a Pole" and killed him. He served five years for this act. Once he was out again, he married "Cork Mag" an Irish woman whom he supposedly knifed. She lived, and he went back to prison for a year. He was then transferred to the State Hospital for the Criminal Insane at Matteawan, where he lived out the rest of his years.

'^

Appo was

still

living while

Beck published his vicarious and touristic book in prison. "To all appearances he is

on Chinatown, and Beck described Appo

perfectly rational,

and

for

hours he will entertain you with stories of the old

days in China and California. the Albany night boat passes

.

.

.

But

—bad as he —and this is

is pitiful

Matteawan Appo points to the big search

—when

light that

bow and says proudly; 'That is my diamond. They bring it to me every night.'" Appo apparently believed he was a thousand years old. For Beck, "There were two Quimbo Appos —or rather a Jekyll and Hyde Appo —one flashes in her

shrewd, entertaining merchant,

full of interesting

reminiscences, bright eyed

and smiling; the other an inhuman monster, delighting in the worst of crimes.'"'^

Beck used Quimbo Appo

and its residents behind good

The

at

as a

metaphor

New York's

for

Chinatown

—a community of unpredictable opposites in which evil lurked

every turn.

transcript of

Quimbo Appo's 1859 murder trial, examined against news-

paper coverage of his various crimes and

world as he saw

The

it.

some

trials, offers

character that emerges

is

insights into his

quite different from Louis

Appo "drank," creating in him an "insatiable craving for blood," which led him to cut his wife's throat, Appo was tried for the death of Mary F. Fletcher, his landlady. The location was 47 Oliver Street in the Fourth Ward. Quimbo Appo was returning home. It seems that during a fight between Appo and his wife, Mrs. Fletcher went to quiet them down. A scuffle broke out and she was stabbed and stumbled down the tenement Beck's Caliban. Contrary to Beck's assertions that

stairs.

to

Neighborhood Irish gathered and called for revenge. Emotions continued

run high the week

him. During the

after the arrests as people tried to steal

trial

no mention was made

Appo away to lynch

of his ever being drunk;

testimony

The jury convicted Appo of murder, but they "unanimously recommend[ed] him to mercy." The judge, however, for reasons not stated, sentenced him to be hanged.^^ The governor of New York State stayed his execution and ordered a retrial. In the retrial, the reasons for his temporary reprieve became obvious. Despite in fact indicated quite the opposite."'"'

being conversant in English, highly esteemed in the Chinese and larger communities, and a counsel.

He

man

of

some means, Appo was not

able to obtain adequate

retained a former judge as his attorney, but the

miserably, showing

up

for the trial a half-hour late,

an opening statement. Unfamiliar with the laws of the of the English language,"

and other problems In his retrial,

come home

Appo was unable

man

state,

to evaluate the

and the "niceties

magnitude

Appo took

the stand for the

to find his wife

him

a

came

drunk

first

time.

after celebrating

He

stated that he

had

Mrs. Fletcher's birthday.

women

in

They hit him with their fists and one called Another hit him with a flatiron. He admitted stabbing

to her rescue.

"China nigger."

his landlady, but only in self-defense "while endeavoring to escape

other

of these

of his defense."""

Angered, he began to beat his wife and Mrs. Fletcher, and then other the building,

him make

failed

unprepared even to

women." Other witnesses

testifying

on

his behalf said

from her and

he was

good "peaceable" character, confirmed that Fletcher was not dead

a

man

after

of

being

I35 Chmese-lmh-Anglo Relations

m

Nw York City

women

"had been drinking intoxicating liquors

136

stabbed, and that

all

The Great

to great excess. "^^

Testimony appealing to stereotypes of Irish intemperance and

Migration

the Irish

misogyny were used

to cast

Appo

as a victim

and the

A sympathetic reporter described Catherine

victimizers.

Irish

women

as his

Fitzpatrick as a "low

Irishwoman habitually drunk who would not cook his meals and neglected him in every particular"

and charged that she had

was

With the

in

jail herself.

appeal,

it

just

been convicted of larceny and

was decided

hanged but given a prison sentence of 10 years

that

Appo should not be reduced charge of

for the

manslaughter.^*

The

trial

testimonies suggest tensions over deployed stereotypes of race, to

be certain, but also over gender and class. Appo's view of what happened differed significantly testify for

Chinese

from the case of The People. In addition, the witnesses called

and against Appo represented opposing perspectives

of Irish

to

and

relations.

The prosecution constructed a case in which a violent, irrational, and misogynist Quimbo Appo struck out at his wife. The Irish women in the building came to Catherine Fitzpatrick's defense, and then several of them were

who escaped like a fugitive. Eight women testified Two were the murdered landlady's daughters, one her sister

stabbed by the crazed Appo, for the prosecution.

(who also lived in the proceedings depended

building), the sister's friend, little

Mary's husband, two police

on the

five

men who

and a coroner gave

officers,

one gave testimony that was withdrawn. The defence

Only fames Barnes,

and four neighbors. The

testified. Patrick Fletcher,

of

women

a wheelwright, testified that the

apartment door "thought he would

brief statements,

and

Appo was clearly inept. at the

Appos'

someone." Appo was then found guilty

kill

by the jury and sentenced to be executed.^'

At the subsequent appeal, Appo was able sharp contrast to the Irish

women

friends

testified for the prosecution, fifteen

authority, testified

A

on his

Doctor Elwood

person

all

Fletcher

who

in positions of

Appo was "an

active and enterprising

—sober and honest, and sociable, quiet, and peaceable in his intercourse six local

Briggs) signed a

men

(with such

sworn

names

as

affidavit supporting

statement. Next, six police officers (including three sergeants) stated that

Mrs. Fletcher and other F.

Mary

behalf.

Irish testified that

Burnham, Whyte, Neubauer, and

C.

relatives of

white male witnesses,

with his fellows and neighbors." Then

Irish's

to present his side of the story. In

and

women who

had

Williams, for example, stated that

affection" for his wife

testified

and often complained

of intoxicating liquors." In addition,

were known to be drunks.

Appo had expressed

"great anxiety and

of her "constant

on the day

and excessive use

of the incident Mrs. Fletcher

and two of the other witnesses were seen "drinking intoxicating liquors to great excess,

and

.

.

.

they had been in the almost daily habit of so doing for a long

time previously." Not only were these

women

represented as being habitually

drunk, but they were also portrayed as unreasonably clannish to the point of

When

women

about what

I37

happened, they refused to help him, stating "they were of the same country as

Chmae-Irish-Angh

not caring about justice.

the deceased, and beheved that

preserving the

life of

would disgrace them

it

if

they were to assist in

a Chinese, or even to testify in his behalf

Officer James Youngs, stated he

the officer asked the

who also testified at

the

first trial for

."'*°

the prosecution,

had known Appo for six years and "always considered him to be a very

man" who had never been known

industrious, quiet, inoffensive

to

commit

a

"bad act" or been found intoxicated. Indeed, he "was constantly in the habit"

and "inform the police" of "any bad countrymen" and often helped preserve "order among the Chinese the ward." In stark contrast, Mrs. Appo was identified as "an Irish

of visiting the station-house to get advice

acts of his living in

woman" who was regularly drunk and making "his" room "a place of resort for her friends to drink and carouse in," "much to the discomfort and annoyance of [the] defendant." In addition,

Mrs. Fletcher was described by Patrolman

Youngs

woman" whom he had found drunk

streets

as being an "intemperate

one day

and Mr. Grant, tated in any a

at eleven o'clock in the testified that

morning. Finally, two

"recommendation

jurors,

in the

Mr. Miller

they did not believe Appo's actions were premedi-

way and therefore believed he was not to mercy.

"guilty of

murder" and made

""^

men of fairly significant local authority testified against 8 neighborstory the women told was of neighborly concern and caring for an abused wife who was married to a violent, irrational, and dangerous In

hood

all,

15

Irish

women. The

man. Countering such a story was the portrayal industrious, peaceable

drunken

friends.

man who was

Appo

of

as a law-abiding,

driven crazy by a drunken wife and her

During the appeals process, white male authority held sway

and Appo's murder indictment was reduced good, hard-working, peaceable

member

image as a Lower Manhattan community

to manslaughter. His

of the

prevailed, at least for 1859.

Although there were only two sides to the articulated.

The prosecution represented

women who

sought to protect Mrs. Appo.

Quimbo Appo's views

as a respected

also the class, gendered,

Officer

Youngs and

all

who

may have been

protectors of the of

Irish,

trial.

dominant moral

And with such

Chinese community, but

of Protestant

city.

male

all,

authority.

the designated

Even though individual police

order.

At

this all

moment in time,

the alignment

the difference in the

Without such support during the original

his position.

was

defense represented not only

of the

they were in this instance deracinated and

such authority figures with Appo made

the

three viewpoints were

some neighborhood Irish

testified were, after

guardians of law and order in this Victorian officers

The

member

and ethnic perspective

the police

trial,

the views of

trial,

outcome

of

he was unable to plead

support in the appeals process, the women's case

easily supplanted.

A clear hierarchy can be teased out from this women

Relations in

New

legal proceeding. In

1859 Irish

had more authority than a lone Chinese man, however much

less

York City

1

38

The Great Migration

authority than a Chinese

man supported by

the powers that be. Indeed, from a

someone like Catherine woman. As long as Victorian society still valued the Protestant-like Chinaman, she stood to gain social standing. In this particular case, being a working-class Irish woman was sheer class mobility perspective, Fitzpatrick to

it

was

better for

marry a Chinese merchant than stay a

single

about the lowest position one could hold. Being male and behaving with "respectable" values

was

more powerful and important. For Appo, and

far

probably other Chinese men, Irish

away from to

their

women offered the chance of having a family

homeland, yet they remained extremely vulnerable. They had

behave in certain ways that the

real

else they could easily be victimized

with the

police, his English-language ability,

status enabled

Even

and symbolic authorities understood, or

and marginalized. Appo's regularly checking

so,

and his respectable tea merchant

him to be included within a Protestant pluralist moral economy.

he could not stand alone in the eyes of

New

York law. With an

incompetent protector, the tardy and ill-prepared former judge, he could not even defend himself against "low-class," neighborhood

Irish

women.

Clearly,

both Chinese men and Irish women were caught in precarious positions of social

and

status

At

rights,

first it

but what about the dominant culture?

would appear

male Victorian authority was

that

in firm control.

many white men on Appo's behalf? Shouldn't a few have been more than enough? And why so much journalistic attention to his trial? If elite authority was so clear-cut, why wasn't the adjudication of the case much more straightforward? Yet,

why the need to mobilize

The

order of

Irish Uplift

New

so

and Chinese Criminalization

York genteel society was

exploding population, the peoples from so

dehumanization gave

of the city, the

rise to great civic

itself in disarray at this

many different cultures,

time.

yawning divide between rich and penniless

and private insecurity. The

elite

The

the growing

—

all

had a double problem:

they had to reformulate British Victorian culture into American terms that

would

establish

norms

of behavior for their

own

guidance, and they had to

acculturate and then assimilate others into their Protestant pluralist hierarchic order. In this

time of great urban

to be reestablished for their

flux,

own

proper codes of behavior and conduct had

children and for the non-Protestant and

non-Western European entering Castle Garden."*^

Within

this context,

Quimbo Appo's private affairs became a matter of public

fascination. In the decade before the Civil War, he

as a

model

citizen of his "race." Yet

was represented by the media at war's end, Appo

when he emerged again

was presented as the embodiment of evil. Indeed, the local Chinese settlement itself became increasingly associated with opium dens, rats, and "criminal" activity. By 1882 Chinese workers were excluded from entering the United States altogether.'*"' Although the position of the Irish in the anti-Chinese

movement in California has been well documented, in this criminalization

the role of

New York's Irish

and exclusion process has never been explored."" During

1

39

Chmese-lmh-Angb

the antebellum decades, the Irish achieved great individual and group accom-

Relations in

plishments in Gotham. Yet many improved their status at the expense of others,

Nw York City

that

is,

by demonizing

racial "others."

Much immigrant and

ethnic history in the United States has been written

within the framework of Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick narrative: poverty, hard

work, individual

uplift,

and modest success. Mobility

is

often ascribed to the

abihty of an ethnic group to take advantage of opportunities faire ideal, to create their

or, in

the laissez

own opportunities for advancement. Such a unilateral

approach often acknowledges the complicating factor of the stereotypes imposed on the group or their relations to the dominant structures of

politics,

economics, or morality. Hence what can be called a bilateral history discusses both fighting discrimination and making contributions through honest hard work.''^ Yet this effort to unravel

Chinese and

Irish relations

within the

dominant Anglo-American culture suggests an even more complex dynamic. trilateral analysis of Irish

race, class mobility,

and gender

issues, is

needed here.

1 863 Irish and other denizens Lower Manhattan attacked fellow African American residents, leaving scores

It is

of

known

A

and Anglo-Americans and Chinese, complicated by

well

that during the Draft Riots of

lynched and permanently driving them out of the Five Points area. Indeed, the great majority of Irish

immigrants and their families became Democrats, the

party that fiercely fought against Republicans and their abolitionist sermonizing

about freeing blacks. The rebellion also spread to attacks on brothels and

Chinese peddlers in the Fourth Ward,

who were

"suspected of liaisons with

white women. " The agitation had now become what seemed an " indiscriminate race riot.""*^ Yet, the shift of anger as "indiscriminate" as

from African to Chinese Americans was not

might appear on the

surface.

Within the worldview of

two were intimately interconnected. Economic competition has been the most commonly cited reason

the Irish immigrant worker, the

antipathy to both blacks and Asians. Certainly, vulnerable working-class occupations: "Both Irish

competed

for positions as

blacks, waiters, in the Pacific

manual

laborers, hodcarriers, white-washers, boot-

coachmen, cooks, and servants."*^ The recruitment

West and

for Irish

worked in and black men and women three groups

all

of the Irish for labor

on the

railroads

anti-Chinese agitation increased in the West, Chinese

who

is

of

Chinese

well known.

As

migrated eastward

took on the lower-status occupation of laundry work, which did not compete

with the work of European American men. The

elite

Republican families of

New York usually preferred to hire African American and later Chinese servants and cooks over the "intemperate" efforts to recruit

strikes in

Irish.

The

first

and nationally publicized

Chinese laborers in the East were undertaken to break Irish-led

North Adams, Massachusetts, by replacing

union of male shoe and boot makers and in

Belleville,

a

Knights of

St.

Crispin

New Jersey, by replacing

140

3 group of organized Irish

The Great

Strikes.

Migration

An

1

women. Black workers were

862 Brooklyn race

riot

also used to break Irish

was, in part, caused by tobacco workers'

demands to fire black employees and rehire Irish, and the subsequent Draft Riots were led by displaced Chinese

New

longshoremen."^ During the 1870s,

Irish

York

men were commonly represented as displacing Irish and black women.

Or, in the nineteenth-century language of urban stereotypes, "John

was soon competing with "Bridget" and "Dinah"

in

cleaning houses, and cooking for Victorian urbanites. clearly delighted in this competition as a

way

washing

Chinaman"

dirty clothes,

And the New York media

to solve the

annoying "servant

problem."*^ Irish

competition with blacks and Chinese undoubtedly existed, and the

strategy of replacing organized workers with unsuspecting workers of another

culture

was

quite

common,

yet

not a sufficient explanation for Irish

is

it

antiblack and anti-Chinese feelings and actions. Irish

work; in

fact,

quite the opposite

Chinese workers in California. both

for

groups.''^ Irish fears

was the

Few

case.

blacks actually took over

The same can be

Irish aggressively displaced

said for

occupational niches

need more than a socioeconomic explanation.

In finding a place for themselves in

New York, the Irish among others sought

and

to affirm their personal identities

to

improve

The

their lot.

creolised,

international culture of Lower Manhattan at once dissolved national boundaries

and reinforced them. Recent

arrivals

from Ireland found themselves rather

unexpectedly to be hyphenated Irish-American ethnics by "descent" and denizens of a very mixed port neighborhood. Irish

men and women could intermin-

both culturally and physically with individuals of other cultures, while

gle

discovering

how

"Irish" they truly were. Hence, distinctively

tionships were formed by the coupling of Irish

men also

women

New

York

rela-

and African American

or Irish women and Chinese men, an intercultural relationship practice common in other port cities such as the Limehouse District of East London,

and especially in the more

fluid plural cultures of the

Caribbean and Latin

American. Within the Anglo-American context, however, such practices were abhorred.

On

specifically to

this count, the

New

York Evening

Day

Book, which catered

Democratic and working-class sentiments, identified an

Irish

Five Pointer's existential dilemma. In 1858 the xenophobic newspaper wrote: "Sin, debauchery,

and crime have destroyed all natural and truthful perceptions

of their specific relations,

and the white woman, corrupted and

sinks to the level of the negro. "^^ non-Irish

women Good

The

practice of Irish

men became a public and political matter.

lost, of

women

course

marrying

Here a survival strategy

for

clashed with that of politically oriented men. Irish

male Democrats, who since 1827 were qualified

to vote,

were

caught in a highly vulnerable and contradictory position. Reigning "scientific" notions of "natural" and "truthful" "specific relations" dictated that the mixing of races resulted in harmful

and

what were The very coining of that

tragic consequences, debasing

considered higher pedigrees to lower bastardized ones.

ugly and still-used term "miscegenation" illustrates the position that Irish

men

141

women's sexual and conjugal

rela-

chmac-bish-Angh

would increasingly play

in repressing Irish

tionships with non-Irish and particular non-European Americans.

On Christmas day in

1

pamphlet were sent out to

Relations in

complimentary copies of an anonymously penned

863,

number

a

prominent antislavery leaders in the

of

The seventy-two page pamphlet, Miscegenation: The Theory of the Man and Negro, was being sold at New York newsstands for a quarter. The author asserted that the commonly used term "amalgamation" was an inadequate word. It referred to the "union of metals with quicksilver, and was in fact only borrowed for an country.

Blending of the Races, Apphed to the American White

emergency, and should

now

be returned to

proper significations." Instead,

its

building on the popular racial sciences of physiognamy and phrenology, the

pamphleteer offered a combination of the Latin miscere

The writer also argued

(race).

that a

more

(to

mix) with genus

precise term could be found for black

and white unions, that of melaleukation, from the Greek melas

(black)

and

leukos (white). Written with the flourish of a seemingly committed abolitionist, the pamphleteer stood on the side of monogeneticists, arguing that "all the tribes if

which inhabit the earth were

"any

races are

much

it is

"all that is

precious because

our national

it is

mixed

and morally, to those pure or

needed to make us the finest race on earth

upon our stock the negro element; the blood

engraft

from one type" and that

that the miscegenetic or

superior, mentally, physically,

unmixed." Hence,

of

originally derived

fact is well established in history,

is

to

most

of the negro is the

most unlike any other that enters into the composition The writer further asserted, far more radically than any

the

life."

abolitionist of the time, that "our Presidents" thought

it

"desirable the white

man should marry the black woman and the white woman the black man— that the race should become melaleuketic before it becomes miscegentic." And the next steps would be to open California to an Asian racial intermixture that

would

create "a composite race

which

will hereafter rule this continent."

The

"leaders of Progress," to use the language of radical Republicans, "urge miscegenetic reform. "^^

What was

Manhattan, was

ascribed by the

now confirmed

commingling with blacks and Chinese

The pamphlet,

New York

it

turns out,

was

Day Book

to be developing in

Lower

—whites

freely

to be the abolitionist ideal

a

to create the

new America.

Democratic hoax, written by two reporters

Goodman

Croly and George Wakeman. Of the known. He was 22 years old, a "clever young journalist" who the Croly had drawn into the collaboration. More important, in any case, was

for the

World, David

latter, little is

elder

He was an Irish immigrant who was a proud, independent, and successful He began in New York as a young apprentice silversmith, married a pioneer female journalist, bought a midwestern newspaper owned by his wife's relative, and made it into an "independent" Democratic newspaper. He returned Croly.

Democrat.

to

New

York to become the city editor of the World

Croly and

Wakeman

just before the Civil

War.

never revealed their hand in the pamphlet and their

New

York City

1 42

authorship was not made pubhc until Wakeman's World obituary tipped his role

The Great

in 1870. Their "clever"

Migration

newspapers

work sparked

a firestorm of controversy reprinted in

across the nation and in Europe and ultimately echoed in the

all

During

halls of Congress.

War

this Civil

period, miscegenation

became the

central issue in the national debates for the 1864 presidential campaign, eventually forcing radical Republicans like

As an

New

Irish

Yorker, Croly

Thomas Nast

was well-attuned

to retreat.^^

mainstream

to both the

image of Five Points Irish and the actual experience of the international district.

With the Draft Riots pamphlet picked

which

exists

fresh in the

still

raw

at a

between the

Irish

minds

of the reader, the Miscegenation

"Notwithstanding the apparent antagonism

scab.

and negroes on

masquerad-

this continent," the

ing Republican writers focused on Irish-African sexual unions, "wherever there a poor

is

negroes Irish

.

community .

.

women

prejudice

of Irish in the

North they naturally herd with the poor

connubial relations are formed between the black .

.

.

which

pleasant to both parties, and were

exists,

it

men and

white

not for the unhappy

such unions would be very much more frequent." Then,

in spirited exaggeration, Croly and Wakeman deliberately transgressed the usual

bounds

of radical

Republican arguments.

the negro The white Irishwoman loves the black man, and in the old country The fusion, is sure of the handsomest among the poor white females. whenever it takes place, will be of infinite service to the Irish. They are a more .

.

brutal race ful,

City of

of

.

.

.

coarse-grained, revengeand lower in civiUzation than the negro below the level of the most degraded negro. Take an equal negroes and irish [sic] from among the lowest communities of the .

uninteUectual

number

.

New

.

.

.

.

.

York, and the former will be found far superior to the latter in

cleanliness, education,

moral

feelings,

beauty of form and feature, and natural

sense.

The very same racial scientific language that was being used against and blacks was used here

were biologically flat

to assert that the Irish

inferior.

The "prognathous

and open nostril" were stated in

the Irish

were lower than blacks.

skull, the projecting

Irish

mouth, the

positivist fashion to be characteristics of

the "inhabitants of Sligo and Mayo." Only genetic intermixing could improve

such lowly

human

stock.''*

Republican views were taken to such an extreme

that they had to inflame even the

most Protestant-oriented of lace curtain

Irish.

Croly understood what would raise the "ire" of his fellow countrymen and used this insight to

advance the cause of the Democratic Party and those who rebelled

against conscription. election, that the

It

was not

until

November

I,

just before the actual

pamphlet was revealed as a "hoax" and that "two young |and

unnamed] Democrats humbugged the political world. "^^ David Croly was but one of a number of Irish male New Yorkers who played a

key role

to

in further racializing the political culture of the era. In various efforts

improve

their lot, aspiring Irish writers

opportunities available to

them

in the

and performers took advantage

of

expanding commercial culture. The

publishing industry was already well established by Protestant ehtes; however,

I43

new forms of commercial culture were open for Irish involvement. The Bowery,

Chmese-Imh-Angh

with

its

forms of entertainments, as opposed to the

accessible, popular

more

far

proper Broadway venues, was a dynamic commercial marketplace for mechan-

And such creative individuals as Ned Harrigan and Chuck Connors who made their careers on the Bowery stage showed how generations of Irish performers were ics, self-styled

"Bowery Boys," and newly

arriving immigrants.'^^

on stereotyped representations

able to build their success

of

themselves and

others in this dynamic, complex popular culture.

Edward Harrigan has been often partner

Tony

Hart, the

strelsy for variety theater in

everyday ethnic

life

called the

"American Dickens" and with his

"American Gilbert and Sullivan." After leaving min1

in the

873, Harrigan wrote a series of plays that portrayed

Lower East Side

for the basically male.

Bowery

theater-going audience. In contrast to the gross Irish caricatures of minstrelsy,

much

Harrigan developed Irish portraits of

greater depth

borrowed on the long-established stereotypes of Hibernian and drinking, but the main character, realistic figure that Irish

and range. He

Dan Mulligan, was more of a positive and

audiences could identity with. Mulligan immigrated

in 1848, fought in the Civil War,

community, and became

bought a grocery

about his

store, cared

a successful local politician.

As Robert

Toll has

Irish. '^

He wrote

pointed out, Harrigan's audiences laughed both at and with his for a

still

laziness, brawling,

popular multiethnic, Euro-American, male audience that wanted a fast

pace and clear-cut contrasts. In

effect,

Harrigan broke through the Anglo-Pro-

and

testant representational hierarchy of ethnic

positive Irish

image onto the commercial

somewhat normative.

racial

stage. Irish

groups by injecting a

were in

effect

made

^^

Chinese and African Americans were also among his stock characters.

Although his

Irish representations

minstrelsy, his depictions of these

had broken past the anorexic bounds

two groups had

of

not. Blackface minstrelsy

provided Irish Democrats with an empowering sense of their place in American culture

and politics.^' The significance

to policies of

of

Chinese stage caricatures with regard

Chinese exclusion and segregation in the United States has yet to

be fully explored. While Denis Kearny was leading the Workingmen's Party

movement

against Chinese immigration

representing Chinese on the caricatures in

New

York

on the

stage.

melodrama and minstrelsy from the 1870s

clothing was Harrigan's

of all types,

main comic antagonist of Dan Mulligan. to be filled

Hog-Eye was the heathen's heathen, the

Chinese

A lustful, laundry

spoke pidgin-English and had a penchant

which Anglo-and German-Protestants considered

of

into the 1880s he

regularly referred to Chinese as part of the Five Points scene.

man named Hog-Eye who

was

Pacific Coast, Harrigan

Drawing on decades

for stealing

In this district,

with "heathens"

Irish other's other.

His

exaggerated "yellowface" appearance, his bumbling yet constant desire to lure Irish

women into smoking opium,

his inability to honestly

compete with

Irish

Relations in

New

York City

1

44

The Great Migration

washerwomen, and his childHke speech were all performed with great comic effect on the white male audiences.^" Harrigan drew on the well-known presence of Chinese-Irish couples and families in the Lower East Side and played out scenes pitting his oddball Chinese against his dignified, if sometimes flawed, Irish

heroes and heroines.

In contrast to African

New

Yorkers, Chinese did not have any individuals

successfully writing or performing as minstrels or in variety venues. Their small

numbers and language

combined with

difficulties

societal marginalization did

make for a hospitable environment for such involvement in commercial theater. They had no Harrigan, no Bert Williams, and no audience base to break not

the bounds of one-dimensional portrayals fostered by the commercial culture.

vacuum,

and performers played a particularly

Given

this

role in

presuming to represent "Chinese" on the

of Harrigan

sional

Irish writers

Bowery B'hoy persona

of

media eager

East Side that

Irish

He

cultivated his persona by

was now displaced by Italian and Jewish immigration,

He spoke

uptown "rubberneckers"

Pell Street, "exotic" gift shops,

women. Richard

Fox, one

of the Police Gazette,

and

artist

New

the growing, late- 1890s interest in

Given

some minor

immigrant bravado and community on the Lower

and was a masterful performance

else.

York's best-known local

a prizefighter of

as a street-wise philosopher to a metropolitan

celebrated by the elder Harrigan.

tours to

New

Having been

to feature stories of local "color."

evoking a fading era of

work

of the profes-

"Chuck" Connors.

celebrities at the turn of the century.

promoted himself

strategic

stage, in the

and then, in more pronounced fashion, through that

George Washington O'Connor was one of success, he

New York

of

Mott

in a

of the type

heavy "dese-dem-dose" argot

storyteller.

He took advantage

of

York's Chinese settlement by giving Street stores, Chinese restaurants

on

and staged opium dens with scandalous white

among many

of

Connors' notable friends, publisher

claimed Cormors knew Chinatown better than anyone

this self -cultivated image,

Connors was regularly

referred to

by the

"mayor of Chinatown." Besides his regular mention in New York papers, he had enough of a popular following to appear on stage, was featured in pamphlet versions of his tours, and had a book entitled Bowery Life featuring media

as the

his routines.^'

By becoming the tour guide

sizing the "otherness" of Chinatown,

for

uptown Americans and empha-

Connors was able

to endear himself to

the media and the media-consuming public. In a sense, by playing the role of

an interpreter on behalf of the voiceless Chinese, he was able to gain authority

and win a

role

within mainstream society.^"

Edward Harrigan and Chuck Connors, by virtue of the Irish proximity to New upward mobility into commercial

York's Chinese settlement and the

helped

craft stereotypic representations of the

theater,

Chinese. Because the Chinese

lacked the power to speak for themselves, these two Irish cultural producers,

among others, were

able to fabricate

popular culture. By mimicking this

how Chinese were to be represented in the

community with certain elements of Lower

made into Irish "others." This phenomeamong other European American actors and

East Side verisimilitude, Chinese were

non occurred with many

Irish,

I45 Ounesc-b-ish-Anglo

representing blacks in blackface. However, to the limited degree that

Relations in

African American performers were able to enter into the commercial culture,

Nw York City

artists,

may well

they were able to somewhat mitigate anti-black stereotypes. (And one speculate:

black

the predominantly Irish Draft Riots had not pushed out the local

if

community "mayor"

of the

in 1863,

this

like

Connors have assumed the

What becomes

quite clear, however,

is

role

that

on the Chinese was fully embedded within the preestablished

the Irish discourse

power

would someone

of "Little Africa"?)

relations of

New

York

City. Harrigan's

and Connors' representations

of

group were essentially identical to those of Nast and Keppler. Those graphic

assumption of the

artists'

racially

informed principles

of British

physiognamy-

informed drawing were made three dimensional by Harrigan's stage caricatures

and Connors' tours. In their

effect,

these

two performers were

able to break out of

Lower Manhattan ghetto by using the Bowery stage

as their vehicle for

success and recognition.

How

can this phenomenon of

Sociologist Emile

Durkheim

New

York

insisted that

at the inception of a society"

Irish prejudice

"frameworks

of

be explained?

knowledge

.

.

.

built

were important in structuring the relations

power between dominant and marginalized

of

Race became a

social groups.

fundamental marker determining U.S. social relations in the country's European colonial past, when, as part of the so-called New World,

discussion,

it is

important to note that the port of

New

during the search for an alternative passage to the "Indies."

development

of the trade

was " discovered"

Western orbit

York was founded

And the subsequent

with India and China involved those two empires in

the periphery of the globalizing system. Africa

elite

it

expanding world system of capitalism. For the purposes of this

as part of the

was

also

drawn

in to the

— deemed useful to the West mainly for the slave labor

were willing

to offer to traders.

A racially

its tribal

constructed hierarchy, then,

was structurally embedded with the codification

of Africans

with slavery in

and with the Edward Said has used the term,

the Virginia slave laws of the later seventeenth century inherited "orientalism," in the sense that

from Europe.^''

Given the fundamental domestic

social

dichotomy

of

white and

free versus

black and unfree, American social identities have been inextricably tied into a basic hierarchy of race

—a hierarchy quickly complicated by other migrants and

immigrants variously defined as "ethnic" or "racial" groups. Within the

dis-

course of Irish-British relations, colonized Irish Catholics were de facto cast as

an inferior race. Yet States,

when

Irish entered the

black/white discourse of the United

they could occupy a more ambiguous position in the social hierarchy.

Irish Catholics

were both despised by Protestant patricians and privileged over many Irish were able to gain certain power

African slaves and freed men. Yet,

and improve their

lot via

westward migration, involvement with urban politics

1

46

The Great Migration

(taking advantage of the

1

827 amendment of universal white male

suffrage),

and

entry into the burgeoning commercial culture of the American stage.^ In the face of

mainstream antipathy, positive

Irish

American

identity

was being forged

within the preexisting discourse of pro-Protestant white and anti-black Americanism. The classic means for Irish Catholics to defuse longstanding Anglo-

American and European-Protestant hatred toward them was to symbolically displace such low valuation placed on them onto an even lower group. Chinese entering the port of

New

New York after the

842

1

Opium Wars and after

York had already benefited from the China trade were treated by the

Anglo-Protestant elite in an ambivalent manner.

somewhat influenced by

Still

romantic Enlightenment interest in Confucius, the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, the civil service system, and most of all the highly desired luxuries China

produced

for export,

"gentlemanly" Chinese, such as

Quimbo Appo, were

still

admired. At the same time, Protestant missionaries and traders eager to increase their profits

from opium and other goods resented all resistance Chinese people and modernization. Once admired for its became increasingly measured by how friendly it

offered to their notions of progress

splendors and wisdom, China

was to Western economic and cultural expansion. Chinese workers entering the port of

New

York

at this

hierarchy but were also

time not only walked into a preestablished spatial

deemed targets of racial backwardness and ridicule,

the

and Protestant patrician society

be-

perfect foil for progressive, Anglo-Saxon,

coming more and more assured Within

this

of its self-declared special destiny.

Anglo-Saxon discourse,

Irish

New

Yorkers played a key role in

broadening the Anglo-American identity to include Celtics, another constructed "race" as part of a pan-European race of "whites."

humanity and exaggerating African and Chinese parameters of New York commercial culture, the

By emphasizing Irish

differences within the given

performers were able to

Irish

re-create themselves in the eyes of the larger society. Their "otherness" could

be reified in the United States into a pan-Euro-American "whiteness" precisely

who Quimbo Appo a

because of the existence of African Americans and Chinese immigrants could be constituted as Irish "others." Irish

"China nigger" was

a

means

often associated with in referred to their

to further distance Irish

New

Irish

York. Indeed, native

of tragic proportions.

from those that they were

New

Yorkers frequently

but Irish families in general, played out a real

and by torturing and

were exorcising their guilt

feelings,

killing

Chinese

more

prosti-

community, and

dreams." Their "others" must be created and defeated, so that

The competing

Negro

denying their fantasies, and

re-affirming their allegiance to their families, their

identities could flourish

life

"By castrating Negro men, by rending asunder an

woman guilty of intermarriage,

tutes, the Irish

calling

Roman Catholic brethren as "white niggers" or "Irish niggers."

Irish patriarchs, in particular,

drama

women

Irish

their

American

freely.*'^

configurations of a shared low

(to

men and Irish women and Nast's Anglo/high,

upper-low) position of

Chinese/upper low, and

Irish/low formulation ultimately gave

way to the Anglo/high, Irish/upper low, and

Chinese-black/low hierarchy of moral and social value.^^ The alliance between local Protestant,

his second

trial,

male authority, and Appo over

Irish

had been displaced by an alliance

women,

as demonstrated in

of pan- white racial purists over

New Yorkers. my historical research

non-European Americans and mixed "mongrel"

The which

intercultural

New

dynamic indicated by

York's Irish had a special,

Chinese community. Although

enough

if

earlier in the

to produce Irish-Chinese families,

and

in

century the two groups had shared

in reality, took advantage of their

moving uptown, both

figura-

unique experiential resources

elaborating ethnic and racial stereotypes gained from living in tan.^^

one

by the end of the century several

generations of "professional" Irish aggressively tively

is

ambiguous, relationship to the local

for

Lower Manhat-

And because they had prerequisite talents and skills for entering into New

York commercial stage culture in a unique position to build

just at the point of its expansion, the Irish

up

their

own image

in

were

mainstream society while

creating new "heathens" to displace their longstanding negative image. In much

the

way that Jean Baker analyzed the

cultural milieu of Irish

Democrats

in

New

—a milieu that effectively marshaled political support in opposition to the freeing of blacks and radical reconstruction — have attempted to provide the York

I

cultural

background that made possible the passage

of the

1882 Chinese Exclusion

Law and segregation of the Chinese into isolated ghetto communities. The Irish did not magically become white. They helped to make it so, after the Civil War. They became active players in city politics but still experienced discrimination based on their ascribed racialist "character" and their nonProtestant religion and values. Yet

New York pluralism became more complex

and segmented; and in addition to class and Protestant values, "whiteness"

new

making it possible for the Irish and other become more integrated into the ever-reformulating hierarchy, while at the same time satisfying the Victorian need to discipline the self and obsess on targeted others. In this regard, Irish women became the target for what nowadays would be termed "ethnic cleansing." Irish men were able to become Americanized by actively participating in racial masquerades of the established political culture. And by so doing they became increasingly viewed as "white." Upward mobility within this highly constrained and segmented became

a

unifying category,

non-Protestants to

hierarchy privileged ethnic politics over multiethnic racial combinations. Being

an Irish American, even within the highly negative view created by Republicans, constituted the primary

and

a

chance of making

life better.

means

elite, radical

for a positive identity

Irish Catholics

formation

could join mainstream

Protestant audiences and voters in laughing at the wretched,

comic antics

of

whites masquerading in blackface and yellowface. Just as Yankee Notions depicted Irish Chinese mix-ups decades earlier, in post-Reconstruction America

many

Irish joined in

had the power

to

laughing at their

own

mix-ups. Now, however, they also

dehumanize others and humanize themselves. During an

era

1

47

Chmese-lnsh-Anglo Relations in

New

York City

1

43

The Great Migration

which Irish and Anglos railed against crossing the racial borders they created, men and Irish women took on a highly moral tone. Their amorous relations were now taboo and not simply descriptive and odd. To transgress such borders meant degradation of a whole people. in

the skits and short stories about Chinese

Therefore, to laugh at a postcard of a vaudeville sketch showing an aggressive

lowly

wench

Irish

Townsend's in

lurid short stories of

Chinatown was

was a way to To thrill in the reading of Edward

trying to attract a Chinese laundry operator

reassure oneself that oneself was not that

a

way

silly.

Chinese

men intermingling with Irish women

to be both titillated

and repulsed.^* The comedy and

drama did not lay with the African and Chinese caricatures; it was thought those folks could not help but be the way they were portrayed. The action was with the Irish women who had some choice. They were "white" and did not need to lower themselves. Irish

advancement

in

New

York, therefore,

was

in part

premised on their

learning the unwritten rules of racial pluralist politics in the metropolis. In sheer

power could be gained by appealing

political terms,

to

and reformulating the

prejudices and emotions of a pan-European-American, male, working-class

audience composed of both immigrants and natives to unite in fighting against

and laughing

at

lowly non-whites and miscegenators. By

women, from Catherine Fitzpatrick told to make a choice, or else.

late century, Irish

to the staged "Bridgets,"

Appo

were essentially

Revisited

Appo was pardoned from prison and moved back to Lower Manhattan. the 1859 trial, Catherine Fitzpatrick moved with their daughter to Cali-

In 1863,

After fornia

where her brother

everyone was raised

killed.

lived,

but the ship crashed

on Donovan's Lane.^^ Quimbo Appo did return

tan haunts.

If

the Pacific coast and

off

Their son, George Washington Appo, was

he was not a

left

to his old

behind to be

Lower Manhat-

man who used physical force before he went to prison,

he appears to have become prone to fights

after release.

He was

accused and

convicted of "justifiable homicide" in the killing of a Lizzie Williams, for which

he served one year. ruffian,"

he

Now

by newspapers as "the notorious Chinese

identified

was found guilty He was pardoned in

later

of assault in a fight

and sentenced to

five

which time he was again convicted for brutally kicking a German woman. Six months later he set up a cigar stand but was arrested for not bearing the required tax stamp license.™ years in prison.

In 1876

1

875, at

Appo committed another murder, an incident that characterized his and was perversely reminiscent of Bret Harte's fictional Chinese

acts of violence

character

Ah Sin in his wildly successful

1870 "Truthful James" poem.^' While

man man several times, winning small wagers each game. Appo went to bed while the much larger Kelly lodged at a boardinghouse on

named

Kelly.

Proud of his

Chatham

Street,

skills at checkers,

he played checkers with a

he beat the

went

and had a few drinks. Later Kelly returned to the lodging house,

off angrily

dragged

Appo out

of bed,

blackened his eye, and kicked him

down

the

stairs.

Appo drew his penknife and stabbed the approaching Kelly three times. Kelly died and Appo was once again sentenced to manslaughter, this time for seven years.

^~

The coincidence tion

without

of fiction preceding event is not entirely

rela-

—experience as lived was undoubtedly influenced by developing stereo-

types, popular representations in the

commercial culture, and the dominant

The scapegoating

political culture of the city.

of Irish "others" during the

Draft Riots and Appo's return to the neighborhood should be understood

together as formulating a calculus of violence between ethnic racial groups.

Any sympathy

for

Appo expressed no doubt,

intolerance. In part,

earlier

by reporters had

this shift reflects

involvement with violence, but

it

was

now

also indicative of a larger change in

the representation of Chinese between the 1850s and 1880s.

Times called him "one

of the

York Herald described

him

turned into

Appo's later pattern of

most desperate criminals

as "a fiend in

human

The

New York

in the city."

shape."

And

the

The New-

New York

Tribune revealed more about the cultural issues by writing about him within a specifically racial discourse. Appo's actions, according to Horace Greeley,

was "an instance

of the

uncurbed barbarian temper

collision with the colder habits of our

Saxon

of the East

brought into

Not only was

civilization."

it

thought that more stringent laws should be passed to keep recidivist criminals in

jail,

Appo's criminality was used as evidence that

all Chinese immiwas so deeply associated with Appo 1912 he was still referred to as the "famous

gration should be curbed. This image that even

upon

his death in

Chinese devil man."^^ It is

clear that

Quimbo Appo had become a violent man. The doctor explained

Appo's violence as follows: Patient says that ever since the close of the late Civil revelation from the spirits

and "ciples"

(disciples)

War he

be considered a good act by light of the

human

law.

He

has received

and that he has had assur-

ances from these sources that whatever he should consider

it

God Almighty, no matter what

do would might be in the

right to

it

further says that he has been the special subject of

the "temptations" by evil spirits for

many years and that these "tengatations," aU his crimes. He says that whenever

as he calls them, have been the source of

one of these temptations has been about to beset him, he has been forewarned

by

spirits

and assured that he would come out all "light" (right) in the end, no did; and, on studying the homicides he has committed, it will

matter what he

be found that in nearly

commission

of the

all,

some aggravating

act of the victim led to the

crime and to a mitigation of the punishment. From his

frequent escapes from capital punishment, patient has acquired the delusions

no one can kill him or seriously injure him,- and from his many years' imprisonment (18) he regards himself as a protegee of the State. Patient is a that

.

devout

he

is

Roman

.

.

Catholic; expresses himself as ready to die at any time and says

"going to Heaven, sure."

1

49

amcse-lnsh-Angh Relations in

New

York City

would be easy

Appo

150

While

The Great

delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex, such an analysis would tend

Migration

to underestimate

it

First, his

to diagnose

two powerful

in

contemporary terms as having

social influences of his time.

patient records were full of late-nineteenth-century scientific lan-

guage premised on racially charged notions of biological determinism. In

judgment

striking contrast to the

Appo

as a

shrewd and most

authoritatively stated

type" and "he

is

New-York Times reporter who observed

of the

intelligent businessman, this

Appo "has many

possessed of

little

or

no education and

all

culture,

Appo was

the pidgin-English-speaking and childlike

As evidenced by

their

the "foetal" stage of

human

these qualitative racial

who were

development, but

who were

"Chinamen"

in popular

thought to be suspended in

far inferior to

"small and well shaped" head.

And in full

considered

full adults.

if

to prove

as

having a

the empiricist tradition of Drs. Morton,

page of 24 "cephalometrical" measure-

of his head, including that of circumference,

volume, "great transverse

diameter," facial angle, and "angle of prognathism," filling

European and

As determinations, the doctor described Appo

Gliddon, and Nott, he attached a

when

Mongolian

an inferior order of

once great culture, the Chinese were clearly superior to

European-originated whites,

addition,

of

described within a scientifically "proven" racial hierarchy.

lowly Africans and African Americans

ments

is

many respects a child." Like Harte's Ah

intelligent development, resembling in

Sin and

examining doctor

of the characteristics of the

out "Is the patient addicted to

all

self

in centimeters. In

abuse?" he rendered

the less-than-exact answer: "probably." In Victorian science masturbation

commonly thought

to be a cause of insanity, especially

among

was As

women.'''^

further evidence of Appo's childlike nature, the doctor recorded examples of

Appo's delusions. The loss of a game of checkers was said to be due to a political or professional party of one type or another,

"Abe Lincoln's party, " the "Doctor's

The doctor also him because they enjoyed "lisAppo's irritable nature made it easy

party," the "Superintendent's party" or the "Fenian's party."

reported that fellow inmates purposely teased

tening to his 'pidgin' English." In a sense, for others to

provoke him into putting on what could be described as a

mock-yellowface show, replete with the comic and childish expressions of an

Ah

Sin.

What was the process of Appo's criminalization? What was the danger he came to represent to society? Contrary to the representation of Appo as somehow being imprisoned by his biological racialness, he clearly exemplified strong intercultural influences.

had Western tattoos on both arms,

His doctor's notations indicate that he a possible practice of

Chinese

who had

visited international port cities. According to one prison admission record, the left

forearm featured "the Goddess of Liberty

forearm displayed a "Spanish dancing Girl

&

cross bones."''''

He

&.

the Crucifixion" and the right

&. Girl

with a

flag &.

emblem

skull

did not shave his head, nor did he wear a queue as

all

Chinese men, even those overseas, were subject to wear. Indeed, he adopted the

distinctly

wig.

of some bald men by wearing a imbued with Roman Catholicism that even his delu-

European and American predilection

He had become

sional fantasies

so

were punctuated with Catholic imagery, such

as his vision of

was remarkably similar to committed to an asylum in France in 1 723.

the Virgin Mary. In this regard, Appo's experience the conversion of John Hu, the Jesuit

In both cases, these Chinese Christians experienced their faith too vividly

seem "normal." Appo

too excessively to

in fact occasionally claimed he

the "All Powerful" and the "Second God." identified

with the

he was "suffering

Irish. In

for the

and

was

At other times, he either feared or

1885 he so identified with the Irish that he believed

cause of Ireland and that he must suffer until she

is

free."^^

What drove Appo to insanity? It is probably impossible to arrive at a definitive answer. For whatever reasons, he clearly suffered from delusions of grandeur

and suspected myriad conspiracies.

sional authorities isolation of the his lashing

were hostile

was skewed, the

social

"Fenians," and profes-

to the Chinese. In contrast to the self-protective

back had repeatedly landed him behind prison racial hostility

Chinese and Irish, Appo had

Chinese

his response to life

Chinese within the occupational protection of the hand laundry,

mounted increased of

If

Many political parties,

pressures he felt were quite real.

New York man who

little

bars. In a society that

toward being Chinese and being a mixture

room to breathe. As a once highly respected

repeatedly rebelled against those

who he

sensed

him an injustice, he became a criminal and was declared insane. If Appo was not insane when he entered Matteawan, he surely lost touch with any semblance of reality the longer he was jailed. In 1882, the year in which the Chinese Exclusion Laws were passed by the U.S. Congress, Appo complained to prison officials that he should have been released but "the Democratic party" was in conspiracy against him and had did

prevailed

upon the governor

political reasons. ^^

to

withhold his commutation of sentence

His seven-year term was in

fact

completed by that

date,

for

but

did he realize that he would never be released. In an oddly insightful way, Appo had diagnosed the source of his woes. Shifting political winds had conspired against him, though of course not in the personal and paranoid way little

that he

felt.

Quimbo Appo,

like Irish

women who

had relations with non-white men,

transgressed the reformulating racial boundaries of

had committed his crimes Chinese settlement,

it is

of passion

questionable

notice. Appo's crimes, however,

defined as a "miscegenator," a

if

If

Appo of the

they would have been given any public

were directed

with and came into contact with. In

Lower Manhattan.

and violence within the confines at the

non-Chinese that he lived

Appo was what Croly would have person who mixed with non-Chinese New effect,

As a free-spirited and intelligent individual acting on his own behalf, he was viewed as dangerous and had to be controlled. And as a cultural symbol Yorkers.

of racial impurity,

he had to be made marginal and criminalized. In this sense.

152

Appo's paranoia about Fenians, Democrats, and politicians trying to get him

The Great

were not simply delusional. These fears were grounded in actual power dynam-

Migration

ics

occurring in lower Manhattan. His

fall

from grace as a respected merchant

and spokesman to a loathed Chinese "devil-man" was not entirely

of his

own

doing.

While living in life

New

York and living in prison, Appo's hybrid, multifaceted

became increasingly

limited. Both scientific

and popular yellowface

stereo-

types were used to measure his "normality." Even in the asylum, fellow inmates

provoked him so that he would perform in pidgin English

for their amusement. became a source of amusement and terrible fascination, which ultimately had to be punished. The signals to the Chinese community were clear, within Anglo-American orientalism these people would be forever viewed as foreigners. Settling and intermingling was

In effect, his efforts to cross cultural borders

discouraged.

What

sociologist Paul Siu has called a "sojourner" mentality

developed. Hence, post- 18 70 Chinese increasingly gravitated toward opening

small hand laundry operations that were highly mobile and insulated from the larger society.^^ Laundries, then,

became the dominant occupation of New York

Chinese right up to the recent Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Chinese did not

and could not represent themselves. That

terrain

had been claimed by Irish New

among others. The sympathy and respect that Appo held with the press in the 1850s gave way to Chuck Connors acting as the "mayor" of Chinatown for uptown rubbemeckers. Quimbo Appo and, by extension, other New York Chinese came to be Yorkers,

represented as either Dr. Jekyls or Mr. Hydes. Yet

between such Victorian

polarities of light

it

was the

historical terrain

and shadow, good and

evil that the

New York was actually lived. The particular, local experiences of a group such as the Chinese New Yorkers, necessarily leads true experience of the Chinese in

to larger questions of interracial relations,

as Chinese-Irish relations.

which

in this case

That configuration leads

to

were played out

an understanding of the

broader relations of historical power as expressed in New York City and provides a penetrating and reaUstic historical analysis of the shared, interrelated,

usable past.

and still

Alan M. Kraut

CHAPTER 6

and Medical Care

Illness

among

Irish

Immigrants in

Antebellum

O.

'N

old

whom

the

New

1,

1892,

Annie Moore,

a 15-year-

York Times described as a "rosy-cheeked Irish girl" from

County Cork became the Island, the federal

JANUARY

New York

first

immigrant

to enter the

United States via

government's new immigration depot in

Ferried from her ship, the

Nevada,

to Ellis Island

New

Ellis

York harbor.

with her two brothers and

Moore was was met by a beaming John B. Weber, immigration commissioner for the port of New York. Weber came forward after Moore's name was written in the registry book and presented other immigrants for medical inspection and processing, young Ms.

preselected to be

the

girl

with

a

first off

the boat and into the depot. She

$10 gold piece

to

commemorate

the occasion.'

After quickly passing before the watchful gaze of the inspecting physicians of the U.S.

Marine and Hospital Service and answering the questions

gration Bureau Officials, the three youngsters were admitted.

of

Immi-

Annie Moore's

"rosy-cheeks" had not deceived. According to the Ellis Island physicians, she

was physically and morally

The opening immigrant

girl

for

fit

of Ellis Island

America.

was news, but the

and two boys in

New

nineteenth century. Almost four million Ireland's southern provinces,

arrival of yet

another Irish

York was hardly a notable event Irish,

most

of

in the

them Catholics from

had arrived in the United States in

hunger, poverty, Protestant abuse, and English domination.

flight

Nor was

it

from

surpris-

154

ing that the newcomers, including Annie Moore, were required to stand the

The Great

scrutiny of the uniformed physicians of the United States Marine and Hospital

Migration

Service (later renamed the U.S. Public Health Service). Apprehensions about the

health and vitality of immigrants arriving in the United States long predated

both

and even the germ theory

Ellis Island

of disease derived in the

1

880s from

the research of Germany's Robert Koch, France's Louis Pasteur, and England's

Joseph Lister.

The menace refugees,

from

of diseases

and the American

afar,

borne by the bodies of immigrants and

have been

public's response to that possibihty

intertwined with nativism and ethnic prejudice throughout American history.

welcomed immigrants contingent on their most fit

Often, the native-born grudgingly

physical health and intellectual vitality, striving to admit only those

and able to compete

for the material

often, the native-born

rewards of

life

United

States. Just as

who was

admitted, the

in the

have suggested that regardless of

country's unique blend of individual liberty, capitalism, and political democracy

could transform downtrodden and oppressed humanity from every corner of the globe into

new and improved

beings, denizens of a country singled out

by

Providence for special blessing. Always, Americans have believed that immigrants posed a threat.

might make

of

They have

feared that poor health and

immigrants burdens rather than

assets;

frail

physiques

might spread infectious

among the native-born, undermining the advantages of the very society who could find it nowhere else.

diseases

that offered freedom and opportunity to those

Historians of immigration and historians of medicine have only begun to explore the linkages between nativism and the social construction of health and disease in different eras of

mid-nineteenth century

is

American

One such study treating the now classic volume. The Chol-

history.^

Charles Rosenberg's

era Yeais.^ Rosenberg demonstrates how nativists in New York City stigmatized Irish

immigrants with responsibility

disease that

was

for this dreaded infectious disease, a

actually triggered by living conditions in the host nation. In

Rosenberg's study the voice of nativist prejudice historian of medicine Gerald

tionaUzed

Irish

teristic of the

by

is

unmistakable. Similarly,

Grob has described how mental

illness of institu-

immigrants was attributed to an inherent instability charac-

new

arrivals. In

both instances, disease was socially constructed

nativists to stigmatize Irish immigrants.

The next logical step for historical and disease within the

inquiry

larger context of

is

to place the association of the Irish

immigration to America. Medicalized

pubhc to demand protection from state governments, new era in immigration inspection and processing. Likewise,

bigotry caused a worried

thereby ushering in a nativist

antagonism prompted a response from the

Irish

community.

Irish

immi-

grants were not passive pawms, nor were those individuals and institutions

who

assumed responsibility for their welfare content to look on passively, as newcomers suffered physical pain

customs

and spiritual deprivation, bartering ethnic pride and rehgious

in return for badly

needed medical

care.

The experience of Irish immigrants in New York during the nation's first wave of immigration, which occurred before the Civil War, offers an

great

opportunity to analyze the foreign-horn's response to medical stigmatization. also provides an opportunity to

comprehend the means and motives

It

of those

individuals and institutions that sought to deflect the nativist assault while

providing for the health care of Irish arrivals.

The

earliest precaution

taken against the threat of disease from abroad by

Americans concerned only infectious ships, a procedure

known and

disease.

It

was the quarantine

of arriving

practiced throughout Europe. In the late eight-

eenth and early nineteenth centuries, transatlantic voyages were perilous and public health in ports such as

New York City were protected only by quarantine

procedures. Bedlow's Island (later spelled Bedloe's)

with a port physician appointed.

He was

vessels that he suspected of carrying infection to the governor or, at times, to the mayor,

ship should be quarantined and for

length of time in the port of

Hospital at

Red

how

New

was the quarantine station all incoming

charged with inspecting

and reporting conditions aboard

who would

long.

then decide whether a

Immigrants quarantined

York were generally sent

to the

for

any

Marine

Hook.'*

Because shipmasters sought to maximize profits by cramming into their

many immigrants as possible, shipboard illness and even mortality was common. Typhus and diarrhea often ravaged tightly packed passengers to

holds as quite

the

New World.

tion,

Friedrich Kapp, one of

New York's

Commissioners

wrote in 1870 that "the lower deck of an emigrant vessel as

was no

of

Emigra-

late as 1819,

better than that of a slaver or a coolie ship; the passengers were just as

crowded, and just as

little

thought

or China." According to Kapp,

of,

as those unfortunate beings

from Africa

"Ten deaths among one hundred passengers was

nothing extraordinary; twenty per cent was not unheard of; and there were cases of

400 out of 1,200 passengers being buried before the ships

York, the Marine Hospital filled to capacity

when

left port."^

several ships

In

docked

New

at the

same time. But the Asiatic cholera epidemic of 1832 proved that quarantines were insufficient.

A silent traveler from abroad, cholera rode into New York and other

east coast ports arriving.

An

even as an increasingly large number of foreign-born were

acute infection with

symptoms

of diarrhea, vomiting,

muscular

cramps, dehydration, and collapse, cholera in the nineteenth century was a deadly disease.

It is

now known that cholera

or foods contaminated by the

excrement

is

caused by the ingestion of water

of infected persons. In 1832,

Americans believed that cholera was caused by the

Why

the Irish? Between 1820 and 1830, America's busiest port.

received 92,884 newcomers, 81,827 of

many

Irish.

them from England and

New

York,

Ireland and

another 7,729 from Germany.*^ Later, between 1840 and 1860, hard times would

send an additional

1.8

majority of the Irish

million Irish hurtling toward North America.

who arrived in New York

A

great

City migrated elsewhere within

156

three to four years, only to be replaced by others.

TheGreai

203,740 foreign-born Irish living in

Migration

Yorkers was Irish/ There they were reviled by the native-born, largely of

New

by 1860 there were

Still,

York City; one

of every four

New

Protestant English ancestry, sometimes for their Irishness and at others for their

Catholicism.^ Living in run-down shanties and tenements, Irish immigrants felled during the

1

832 cholera epidemic were believed by

many

of the native-

born to have died of individual vices typical of their group, a punishment divinely determined that might be spread to those undeserving of such retribution.

And what were

the character flaws

these vices? Intemperance and a lack of cleanliness were most responsible for the sickness suffered by the "low Irish"

New

who were crammed

into city slums, according to a

report.' Irish-haters

such as journalist Hezekiah Niles, editor of Mies Weekly

Register,

blamed the

York Board

Irish for taking the jobs of native-born workers,

the public's burdens by

cramming the urban almshouses with

of

Health

adding to

their destitute,

opening saloons to lure thirsty and gullible workers, and perverting local politics

with their smooth-talking ward heelers. ^° Was cholera bred in bars and

political

clubhouses? Anti-Irish nativists were only too anxious to answer with a grimace

and a nod. That so many

of those Irish stricken in

not escape public notice. However, not

New York were Roman Catholic did

all

Protestant clergymen agreed on the

details of cholera's social construction as the Irish Catholic disease.

clergymen saw the disease as a preached on a day of "public

literal result of

Some

man's sinfulness. In a sermon

fasting, humiliation,

and prayer," one minister

was "not caused by intemperance and filth, in themselves, but it is a scourge, a rod in the hand of God."'' Others, of a more liberal bent, suggested that cholera was not a scourge sent by God with the intention of punishing man, but rather a disease that existed in nature and was the result of declared that cholera

man's violations of natural law. Thus, drinking or eating to excess, or

failing to

keep oneself clean were failures to conform in body and soul to the divine plan. Still,

most native-born Americans did not suggest

ently flawed. Rather, the success of

the influence of priests in the Irish

Roman

that the Irish

among

the Irish and

attributed by

many Ameri-

Catholicism

community was

'^

were inher-

can Protestants to environmental factors such as poverty, oppression, and

misgovemment. Catholicism

thrived, Protestants thought, because Irish

minds

were limited in their imagination by a lack of education and economic independence. The church merely benefited from Irish ignorance and desperation. Similarly, the inclination of the Irish

toward drink was seen as

a

moral

failing

derived from the need to escape the misery of their condition. In short, Irish

immigrants were often regarded not as moral sins

were disease, but

could be Irish in

cured.'"'

New

as victims of

Yale president, the Reverend

England had

profligates, the

wages

of

whose

bad circumstances, whose shortcomings

Timothy Dwight, denied that the them to immoral

a "native character" that inclined

ways. His prescription was: "Give them the same advantages which are enjoyed

by others, and they will stand upon a level with any of their neighbors." level field of

A

competition could be achieved by changing the immigrants' living

conditions; the individuals themselves need not be excluded from society.

However, others were

Samuel

telegraph,

were Catholics,

less sanguine. In

Morse, despaired because so

B.

F.

one of his nativist

who "obey

tracts, the sire of the

many

their priests as demigods,

of the

newcomers

from the habit of their

whole lives, " and were unlikely to be disabused of their illusions simply because United

of their arrival in the

The famine Atlantic. a

States.

mid- 1840s loosed yet more

of the

Irish Catholics across the

Those leaving from the English port of Liverpool were required to stand

medical inspection conducted by British government physicians.

A

doctor

who made the crossing many times on American ships wrote a letter to the New York Times in 1 85 1 describing a perfunctory exam at best, but one that bordered upon charade. Each passenger "inspected" by the doctors was required

to stick

out his or her tongue while overburdened physicians barely glanced up from their papers. Passengers infested

On

were often overlooked.

many

as a

with vermin or in the early stages of smallpox

busy days when several ships were departing, as

thousand travelers might pass before a team of two doctors who,

standing behind a small window, asked each emigrant whether they were well,

glanced at tongues, and stamped tickets speedily. ^^' Complaints did reach the

commissioners urging more thorough inspections to

ears of British emigration

prevent shipboard disease. However, the commissioners dismissed these complaints, arguing that

most shipboard disease was the

seasickness, fear, and other such conditions that it

vulnerable to disease.

^^

Examining physicians that,

result of changes of diet,

compromised the body, making

freely

admitted that emigrants were not stripped and

beyond taking pulses and examining tongues, they closely scrutinized only

hands in the search

for

symptoms

of serious ailments. Rejections

were

for

typhus fever, childhood diseases, or infectious eye diseases such as ophthalmia.

The physicians defended their exams, noting that they differed little from those army inductees and convicts, where prisoners were lined up in the jailyard as a doctor walked before them in search of those who might be ill. When asked

given

if

immigrants suffering from consumption were

because

it

was not an

rejected, a physician said no,

infectious disease.'^

Medical inspection of emigrants certainly cannot be characterized as thorough, but

it

would be

a mistake to dismiss

them

as egregiously superficial.

By

the 1840s and 1850s the state of medical knowledge, especially that relating to infectious disease,

remained

thin. Diagnostic techniques

were few

in

number

and highly impressionistic in nature. Acute observation and the physician's judgment were

may

still

the

most

reliable

instruments

at hand.^''

Equally significant

be the method of physician payment, a pound for every hundred persons

inspected.

By 1854, Liverpool had three

from piecework to

a fixed

full-time positions and had switched

annual salary of £400.^°

157 Illness

and Medical

Care among

/rish

Immigrants

158

A second cholera epidemic struck in New York and Boston.

The Great

Philadelphia to

Migration

wealthier, native-born

1849.

It

appeared to spread north from

Although the figures were skewed by

Americans who tended

Brooklyn, Boston, and

New

when

to avoid hospitals

tabulation of hospital statistics for six cities (Cincinnati,

New

ill,

a

York, Buffalo,

Orleans) compiled by Charles Rosenberg reveals

that 4,309 of 5,301 patients during the height of the

1

849 cholera epidemic were

More than 40 percent of those dying of cholera in New York were of Irish birth.^' As in 1832, the connection seemed obvious to many. Were not the Irish homes the poorest in drainage, least well ventilated, and most crowded? And was not poverty a product of moral shortcomings? listed as foreign-bom.

Fewer native-bom Americans in 1849 than in 1832 viewed cholera as a direct act of retribution

upon the

sinful

Although many continued to see a

and spiritually unworthy social

dimension to the

Irish Catholics.

disease, the

pubhc

response was more directed at blocking the entry of those already diseased than in deciphering God's judgments.

In

May

1855 an old

fort at the tip of

renovated, and on August

1

Manhattan, Castle Garden, was leased,

reopened as a state immigration reception center:

New York's Emigrant Landing Depot. The quarantine procedures would now be supplemented by the individual examination

of immigrants. Every vessel

bringing immigrants had to anchor at the Quarantine Station, 6 miles below

New York City. There, a New York State emigration officer boarded to ascertain a count of passengers, deaths during the voyage, the degree and kind of illnesses suffered during the trip,

and the overall cleanliness

of the vessel.

A report was

sent to the general agent and superintendent at Castle Garden and the boarding officer

remained on the ship as

it

steamed up the bay

to ensure that

no one from

the ship contacted anyone on shore before the authorized disembarkation of emigrants. This prohibition

swindlers

Once

who

was destined

to inhibit the activity of runners

and

accosted arriving immigrants with schemes and scams.

the ship

detailed to Castle jurisdiction of the

was anchored near the

New

depot, a

York City policeman

Garden assumed authority. Passengers were transferred to the Landing Department. After a customs inspection

of luggage,

the immigrants and their belongings boarded barges and tugs that took

them

to

the Castle Garden pier. There, passengers were examined by a state medical officer to discover "if

(who

any sick have passed the Health authorities

are thereupon transferred

by steamer

Blackwell's Island), and likewise to select

law

all

to the hospitals

at

Quarantine

on Ward's or

subject to special bonds under the

—as blind persons, cripples, lunatics, or any others who are likely to become

a future charge." After examination, the migrants

in the center of the depot,

were directed into a rotunda

where they registered

their

names, nationalities,

former places of residence, and intended destination.^^

Thus by the mid- 1850s each immigrant was subjected

to

two medical

examinations before landing in the United States, followed by a more general health inquiry by the quarantine officer. Fear of infectious disease from abroad

had triggered entirely new processes and procedures in public health

many Americans continued

Still,

disease in general, not just cholera.

wrote in 1856, "In the yellow lanes,

fever,

and

A

nativist physician. Dr.

Samuel Busey,

those direful and pestilential diseases, ship fever,

cities,

and small pox, are almost exclusively confined

streets,

policy.

to hold the foreign-born responsible for

and low, damp,

filthy

and

to the filthy alleys,

ill-ventilated haunts,

which

are

exclusively tenanted by foreigners."^

Whether or not the

new arrivals,

Irish

were suffering more or less than other impoverished

certainly true that their plight often led to institutionalization

it is

where they could be counted. Natives

New

of Ireland

accounted for 53.9 percent of

York City's foreign-born population in 1855, but

Hospital, 85.0 percent of Statistical data

allowed

all

at the city's Bellevue

patients of foreign birth had been

New

York

officials to appreciate the

bom in Ireland.^"* dimension

of the

problems facing the newcomers and their hosts. At times, however, distortions in the data of

mental

Mental

shed

false light

on the extent

of the plight of the Irish, as in the case

illness. illness, if

not an epidemic disease such as cholera, nevertheless

seemed to native-bom Americans every bit

as pervasive

among the Irish.

In the

mid-nineteenth century, insanity was defined by aberrant behavior. Discussions of etiology were protean and quite general in character, reflecting broad social perceptions

and prevailing

religious, moral,

and cultural values. Most

physicians believed that insanity grew out of a violation of physical, mental,

and moral laws

that,

when

properly understood and obeyed, resulted in the

highest development of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant race, indeed of civilization.

Abnormality

rigors of civilization, the

in the population

all

might be traced to the increasing

immigration of those already on the road to degeneracy,

an inherited predisposition to mental

illness, or

extemal elements

—an endless

that included alcohol, sexual excesses, improper nutrition, grief, or anxi-

list

ety.^5

Irish

immigrants appeared to have the highest rates

of illness in general,

and

the highest rates of insanity, according to published data of the era. In New York, three-fourths of the admissions to the city lunatic

asylum on Blackwell's Island

from 1849 to 1859 were immigrants; two-thirds of these were

Irish.

Trying to

account for these skewed figures, the asylum's resident physician speculated that "either the ratio of insane

is

kept at their homes. Probably the part

from the shipment

very first

much less among the natives, or they are supposition is tme, and this may arise in

of the insane

from Europe during a lucid interval."

Clearly, the native-born preferred taking care of sick relatives at left a

Edward up

home, which

preponderance of foreign -bom in existing institutions. In 1854 physician Jarvis calculated that,

while only 43 percent of the poor insane ended

in a state institution, almost every

one from among the foreigners

reason was the stigma attached to those native-born hospitalized in an era

when

who

did.

One

allowed kin to be

the curable were expected to get better at home.

159 Illness

and Medical

Care among

Irish

Immigrants

150

and hospitals were places

The Great

desire

Migration

on the

for the

more

part of the

impoverished to

die.

Another reason was the

affluent to avoid exposing loved ones to the poor

conditions in mental hospitals where they might associate with society's

bottom rung, especially the foreign-bom.^^' Although there

is little

doubt that

Irish

immigrants in

New

York City and

elsewhere were institutionalized while the native-born deranged were treated at

home,

rates of institutionalization

the Irish immigrant population.

were not disproportionate to the

More

size of

sophisticated techniques of statistical

analysis developed after 1900 suggested that mid-nineteenth-century data

on

the admissions of immigrants to mental hospitals were greatly distorted:

"When

the institutionalized population was analyzed in terms of the age

distribution of the entire native and foreign-bom population, for example, the

immigrants in hospitals declined precipitously." Addi-

relative proportion of

and urban

tional corrections for sex distribution

explained the discrepancy between

rural residence still further

newcomer and

native-born rates of mental

disease.^^

Data inaccuracies Irish

aside, the

popular perception at midcentury was that the

immigrant had a greater propensity

to

mental

illness

than his or her host.

Patterns of aberrant behavior diagnosed as insanity in the 1840s

common among newly Almshouse

arrived immigrants.

The governors

attributed the condition to "privations

seemed quite New York

of the

on shipboard," or "the

changes incident to arriving in a strange land," and "to want of sufficient

nourishment." At

least

some

of these conditions

In 1854 of the 100 patients admitted to

were judged

New

to be temporary.

York's Lunatic

Asylum and

chargeable to the state's commissioners of emigration, 35 had been in

City less than one year.

and were Both

later

Irish

pronounced recovered and

released.

and alcohol-related syndromes

cian, perhaps looking

it

^^

after

to

mental

combined moral and physical influences

of their childhood, their

coming almost

after great suffering."^' Irish

disease than

women

immigration.

through the gender kaleidoscope of his

women arrivals seemed especially prone

to "the

New York

diagnosed as temporarily deranged

men and women were reported as being particularly susceptible

to schizophrenia

young

Many of these were

women

era,

illness.

One

He attributed

one to care

for for

by the

them

destitute to a strange land, and often

appeared to be more vulnerable to mental

of other groups

many

fact that

in

time of

homes

of their leaving the

if

judged by the large

number found

in

may

be

hospitals and asylums. However, the high rate of institutionalization

accounted

physi-

claimed that

Irish

illness.

women

emigrated alone and had no

A New York physician treating patients

on Blackwell's Island commented on the

large

number

of Irish

women

there,

but he attributed their illnesses to environmental strains rather than to a predisposition to mental instability. Other sources observed that Irish

who

often married late and

came

to

America alone

in search of

women, work as

domestics or teachers, seemed more homesick for the parents and siblings they

left

behind than did

the males

Irish males,

although more recent scholarship suggests that

may have been even more

more than

into the twentieth century

women and the

insane were

vulnerable than the females.^°

Irish

Still, w^ell

tw^o-thirds of institutionalized Irish

continued to be the largest immigrant group

in

American insane asylums/'

Once

institutionalized, the Irish suffered

of

many

Protestants in charge of mental institutions.

from anti-Catholicism on the part

The

trusting relationship

between physician and patient necessary for therapy was disrupted by unbridgeable ethnic differences

and prejudice.

Common

religion, values,

were absent and even sympathetic physicians found themselves

and culture

at a loss.

One

physician confessed his inability to approach his foreign-bom patients "in the

He puzzled, "Modes of address like those used in our intercourse own people, generally fall upon their ears like an unknown tongue, or

proper way."

with our are

comprehended just enough

excite feelings very different

to render the

whole misunderstood, and thereby

from such as we intended." Another superinten-

dent regretted that his personnel could not easily gain the trust of immigrant patients, "for they difficulties,

seem

jealous of our motives"

and embarrassed by language

together significant obstacles to successful therapy and recovery.

The very foreignness

of the

'^^

immigrant mental patient seems to have contrib-

uted in part to undermining "the original postulates of the asylum that sought to "re-create both in

and out

of the

movement"

asylum, a well ordered, balanced,

harmonious, and ultimately homogeneous community." Homogeneity was impossible in an ethnically pluralist nation. However, dangers posed by the

mentally

ill,

perhaps even criminally insane, from abroad lent support for

"straight-forward incarceration" as legitimate use for the asylum in protecting society

from these

Some

less

than desirable newcomers."'^

who undertook among them to benefit

professionals believed that the inner strength of those

a journey to a foreign land predisposed the

mentally

ill

from treatment. But again, cultural imperative influenced medical assessment.

Germans were praised for possessing "a healthy and elastic mental constitution." They seemed "docile and affectionate" to their doctors and quick to express gratitude. The reverse was said of the Irish, who were described as less

Lunatic

Asylum on

Ralph

L.

Parsons, superintendent of the

Blackwell's Island described

He many

bom or paNew York City

than the native

intelligent, resourceful, refined, or self-possessed

tients of other groups.

many

of the Irish

he saw as

"persons of exceptionally bad habits."

believed the Irish patients to be of a

"low order of intelligence, and very

of

brains.

When

prognosis

is

them have imperfectly developed

such persons become insane,

peculiarly unfavorable." In

some

I

am

inclined to think that the

cases superintendents sought to

ill from the native-bom on the grounds that two groups of patients differed so in temperament.^" The prevalence of insanity among the Irish contributed to an evolving racial

segregate the foreign-bom mentally

the

nativism.

As

historian John

Higham and

others have noted, concepts of race

161 lUness

and Medical

Care among

Irish

Immigrants

]^g2

remained vague before the Civil War and the obvious physical similarities Irish immigrants and native-born Anglo-Americans hardly encour-

The Great

between the

Migration

aged serious scientific argument for the two as distinctive

opponents of continued

Irish

immigration argued that

races.'^^

However,

was more than the

it

economic circumstances engendered by the famine that made the

Irish

undesirable additions to the republic; hereditary characteristics defined the Irish as beings of an inferior order.

Although few actually read the studies

European ethnologists, many

of

humankind. The popular press was filled with speculation on the value of various techniques to measure and define Americans were interested

in the study of

national characteristics with scientific precision, often referring to nationality as "race."

Not

their features analysis.

An

surprisingly, Irish

were subjected

immigrants were

a topic of

to frequent phrenological

interest

and

1851 Harper's Magazine article discussing two Irish newcomers

described the "Celtic physiognomy" as "distinctly

somewhat upturned nose, the black

now black;

much

and physiognomical

marked

tint of the skin; the eyes

—the

now

small and

looking gray,

the freckled cheek, and sandy hair. Beard and whiskers covered half

the face, and short, square-shouldered bodies were bent forward with eager impatience."^'' Similar descriptions appeared frequently. Faces

were often por-

trayed as simian-like with extended cheekbones, upturned nose and protruding teeth.

Newspaper and magazine caricatures reflected these stereotypes or traced

out derogatory phrenological charts of the head. Late in the nineteenth century,

renowned cartoonist Thomas Nast continued

to depict the

Irishman and ape as

closely related.

Irishmen were also portrayed as short and stocky, the very physique that pseudoscientists associated with people

what "slothful"

or "lazy."

hair, precisely the

Many

not very active, but some-

kind thought to indicate an "excitable," "sociable," or

"gushing" personal manner. a sign that they

who were

Irishmen were depicted as having coarse red

If

Irish

were ruddy-complexioned,

this

was seen

as

were given to raw, unrestrained passions and self-indulgence.

Those with dark eyes could be expected

to be arduous or excessively sensuous.

According to phrenologists in the 1850s, such individuals would not be contented with indoor or sedentary labor but would gravitate toward outdoor

occupations because they required "a great amount of

many

of the Irish

who

arrived in midcentury

That air and exercise. " worked on the docks or the

seemed to confirm their "scientific" profile. It did not occur to readers Orson and Lorenzo Fowlers's New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology (1859) or James Redfield's Outline of a New System of Physiog-

railroads of

nomy

(1850) that the authors

might have ascribed a certain personaUty

profile

to those physical characteristics already part of the Irish stereotype.

The

Irish

response to nativist charges that they were health menaces were

not collective or systematic. But or social inferiority; they

many seemed

sensitive to charges of cultural

seemed determined to demonstrate

that the Irish

were

already fully capable of holding their

own on the

level

American playing

field.

A compendium of commentary on the physical attributes of the Irish published ample testimony from

in 1899 contained

earlier in the century attesting to the

robust good health of the Irish population, that "the Irish are dowered with

any people on earth." Objecting

to the

of the Irish in the English journal, Punch,

where

nature's gifts in as high a degree as

demeaning characterization the Irishman

was parodied

as a

"low and savage type" adorned with "a tattered

coat kneebreeches, a battered hat, a clay pipe, a sillelah," the author was equally

vehement those

antebellum American nativist

in his denunciation of

which "surpassed

who

literature,

As

in savagery even the odious caricatures" of Punch.

claimed

product of the potato

Irish inferiority a

for

an eighteenth-

diet,

century Englishman, Arthur Young, was quoted observing that "the food of the

common

and milk;

Irish is potatoes

it is

said not to be sufficiently nourishing

hard labour; but this opinion

for the support of

very amazing in a country,

is

many of whose poor people are as athletic in their form, as robust, and as capable of

enduring labour as any upon

earth. "^^

Of course

physical trials of emigration and settling in a

new

After the exodus to America, well-off Irishmen

bom

to

some measure

social values

that

was

true before the

country.

who had

achieved or been

wealth and social standing sought to impose their

of

on the Irish-immigrant masses

influence and prestige in the

new

land.

as a

They

means

of ensuring their

own

often forged alliances with the

Catholic Church in America. Both hoped to impose social control upon impoverished Irish Catholic immigrants by encouraging "industry, self-control,

Church

in

thrift, sobriety,

and domestic purity," habits that would cement newcomers

America and shape

citizens willing to be led by those

who

to the

already

considered themselves to be their group's stewards.'^'^ These patterns also held true for matters of health

Educated

and health

care.

shared the prevailing belief that the origins of disease were in

Irish

miasmas, gaseous vapors arising from decaying organic matter. The idea that filth

caused disease was beginning to take hold in Ireland in the early decades

of the nineteenth century

much as it was elsewhere in the Atlantic community.

With qualified physicians

"rare and expensive," however, their services

been largely limited to the rich in Ireland, while the majority of the local healers

armed with

folk remedies to treat the

symptoms

ailments."*' After emigration, Irish-born physicians living in the

extended medical treatment to the needy newcomers in a to prevent the

ill

health of impoverished

from becoming an embarrassment to in

New

all

had used

of particular

United States

spirit of

newcomers and

Irish

altruism and

their folk remedies

Irishmen. Prominent Irish physicians

York, committed to encouraging American middle-class behaviors

among the newcomers, took special care of their own, perhaps because they had the most to lose

masses to

if

all Irish.

Americans attributed

their negative perception of the Irish

One of these was Dr. William James MacNeven, who arrived

in the United States

on

July 4, 1805.

1

54

The Great Migration

William MacNeven's background was atypical every

respect.'*^

He was born to wealth in

of Irish

newcomers

in

almost

763, the son of landed Irish Catholic

who was titled nobility and a became a physician, completing his studies in Vienna Ireland, where he sought a cure for his countrymen's ills in

He was

aristocracy.

1

raised in Prague by an uncle

physician. William, too,

and returning to politics.

He was a delegate to Ireland's Catholic Convention of 1 793, commonly 1 798, when he was arrested for

called the Back-Lane Parliament, serving until

his role in the Irish rebellion. After his release in 1802, he emigrated with

other Irish radicals,

MacNeven

two

Thomas Addis Emmet and William Sampson.

New York City,

settled in

where he taught medical sciences and

New

York's literary society. He many Irish exiles who were too busy with the issues to touch the lives of individual sufferers, MacNeven used his medical skills to help his fellow immigrants, whom he well knew were

established himself as a respected

continued to work for

member

Irish nationalism,

of

but unlike

not inherently diseased, but suffering the side effects of emigration, poverty, and

He was known to treat the poor for no fee.*^ He often attended sick who were stricken during their journey to America and were in desperate need of care when they reached New York. He offered individuals instruction in how to live a healthy life in America and created an deprivation.

or dying immigrants

emigrant aid society that sought to relieve unhealthy urban congestion by colonizing

newcomers

in the West.

William MacNeven's

poor and his

efforts in behalf of the health of the Irish

advocacy of standards of health and hygiene drew the approval of those of his

own

class

immense

—both

Irish

popularity.

and non-Irish

When

alike,

and

may

in part account for his

he died in 1841, he was regarded by

"recognized leader of the Catholic Irish community in New York.

many as the MacNeven

"*''

looked upon the cholera epidemic's victims with compassion, but also as

newcomers whose

habits of

life

must be changed

if

they were to be healthy

wage-earners and acceptable to their non-Irish countrymen.

The clamor for Irish immigrants to assimilate, to become more "American," was heard and answered at the altar where most of them worshipped. The Roman Catholic Church set out not only to assist stricken immigrants but to do so in a manner consistent with the faith, as it had done historically in other countries.*^ Individual religious responded promptly to the 1832 epidemic. The Sisters of Charity nursed cholera victims in

Felix Varela, a native of

New York and other cities. Father New York's

Cuba who became much beloved among

Irish Catholics, "lived in the hospitals"

during the epidemic.'** Even

so,

attacks

on the Catholic clergy by Protestant newspapermen were not uncommon. During the 1849 cholera epidemic, the distinguished editor of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, chided New York's equally well-known Catholic

bishop, John Hughes, for vacationing at Saratoga Springs while his clergy

labored to comfort those dying of cholera.'*^ Neither the church nor indifferent to the suffering

among newcomers

or to the

Hughes was in which

ways

opponents of the Catholic Church sought to capitalize on

In 1830

New

it.

Their response was

New York City.

institutional, the building of a Catholic hospital in

York's Bishop John Dubois wrote to the secretary of the

Association for the Propagation of the Faith in Lyons, describing his diocese and its

needs.

of the

One of the most

emigrants

who

urgent was "a hospital in

daily arrive

and

both corporal and spiritual health."

suffer for

He

New York, where a number

want

of attention

regretted that

might regain

newcomers

in

medical care were being treated in a hospital three miles outside the

need of

city,

one

"administered by Protestants." Nor could he even adequately care for the spiritual

wants

of "the seven

hundred Catholic sick

who are

in that institution

[probably Bellevue]."'*^ Four years later, after the onset of the cholera epidemic

had created even more pressing needs. Bishop Dubois called

would

a Catholic hospital that

Ireland, the necessary relief,

for the creation of

"afford our poor emigrants, particularly

from

attendance in sickness and spiritual comfort,

amidst the disease of a climate

new

to them."'*'

Dubois was one

of

many

Catholic priests troubled by the Protestant ethos of American public institutions,

including schools and orphanages, as well as hospitals. In private and

public institutions operated by Protestants, priests were frequently denied access to Catholic patients. Protestant clergy converted the elderly on their

deathbeds and often conducted Protestant services in juvenile wards to capture

young minds and

hearts. ""^

The

New

York bishop well understood that main-

taining a hospital, especially one that

be a

way

to battle Protestants for

would serve the immigrant poor would

newcomers'

identification for Catholic migrants,

much

souls, to provide

in the

way

an institutional

that churches and

fraternal organizations did.^^

In 1847, a year after a

second cholera epidemic in 1846, Bishop John Hughes

published a pastoral letter attacking the intrusion of Protestant clergy upon Catholic public hospital patients and called for the establishment of a Catholic hospital in

was

New York to care for immigrants.^^ Examples of the warfare for souls

plentiful. In early

1848 a young

illiterate Irish

Catholic

girl,

Ellen Duffy,

published an affidavit in which she claimed that, while living in the House of Industry, a private nonsectarian benevolent institution to help the poor find

employment, she took sick and was denied the ministrations of a Catholic priest after specifically requesting

agers of the institution, a

them. She claimed that one

Miss Balch, had told

of the assistant

her, "Ellen,

man-

you do not want any

my minister." Father George McCloskey, who summoned by one of Ellen's friends and was denied access to her until she was moved to Bellevue Hospital, confirmed that he had been summoned by one of Ellen's friends and denied access to her until she was moved to Bellevue Catholic clergyman, you want

had been

Hospital.

Even

his efforts to secure the intervention of a

New

York alderman

had come to nought.^^ As in the case of the parochial school, the Catholic hospital

seemed

to church leaders

proselytizing Protestants.^"*

an essential

165 lUness

fortress against the assaults of

and Medical

Care among

Irish

Immigrants

156 The Great Migration

In 1849 St. Vincent's Hospital

The

13th Street.

first

opened

its

doors in Lower Manhattan, on East

published report on the institution

left little

doubt about

why it was founded. "Although a Catholic institution, its doors are ever opened to the afflicted of all denominations who seek admission, and who may be "^^ St. Vincent's attended during their illness by their own ministers, if desirable. was not only a response to the specific disease accusations of the cholera years, it was a response to persistent Protestant conversion efforts. The hospital was staffed

by the

Sisters of Charity

Mary Angela Hughes. The the

first

canonized saint of

Bayley, a physician

under the leadership

of

Hughes's

sister. Sister

Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton (later American birth), was the daughter of Dr. Richard

Sisters' founder.

and health inspector of immigrants

in the port of

New York.

He died of yellow fever contracted from his patients at the Quarantine Hospital on Staten

Island. Elizabeth

Seton married, but by 1803 was a penniless widow.

She converted to Catholicism the following year and

five years later

founded

the Sisters of Charity.^^

The Sisters were well experienced with hospitals and understood the enormous potential for linking cures for the body to those that their faith offered the soul. Indeed,

and

some argue that the Sisters' spiritual concerns both for themselves

their patients fueled the fires of their zealous efforts to offer medical care

and comfort to beleaguered newcomers.^^ In 1828 first

Catholic Hospital in the United States in

St.

five of

them had

started the

Louis. ^^ Later, in 1834, they

were asked by the governors of the public hospital in New Orleans to take charge of the Charity Hospital, which was sinking under the burden of victims of a hurricane and

fire,

as well as

were already well known

numerous leprosy cases. work with cholera

for their

In

New York,

the Sisters

patients during the 1832

epidemic. In 1849 St. Vincent's Hospital had a 30-bed capacity; by I86I, the hospital

had moved

to

West

1th Street and

1

its facilities

had been expanded to accom-

modate 150 patients. At the turn of the century, it was treating in excess of 3,500 patients annually. ^^ Although the hospital was open to all the city's Catholics, the inability of the Sisters of Charity to speak

becoming

German

contributed to

Sisters of the

Poor

East Side in

865.

1

St.

Francis founded

By the turn

St.

Francis Hospital on

of the century,

New York's Lower

even as immigrants from southern

and eastern Europe were pouring into Lower Manhattan, more than of the hospital's patients St.

Vincent's Hospital

surgeon. Dr. William

remained

made

we need not modations

say,

remarkable

for a large

a favorable impression

on the distinguished

facility early in 1850. In a

"We found the hospital rooms large and airy and

for cleanliness

number

a quarter

Irish.*°

Van Buren, who toured the

published article he remarked,

its

German

a largely Irish Catholic institution, especially after the

of patients

and

order.

There are ample accom-

and everything betokens the

careful,

kind and conscientious attention to the needs of the sick which so powerfully assists recovery

from disease." Even more important,

St.

Vincent's quickly

captured the hearts of those

whom

it

was founded

was feehng

inquiry about the discomfort he his lip

and cheek,

Savior suffer

after the

this patient answered, "Sure

more

pleased to send St.

was the patient

to serve. Typical

surgeon Van Buren described as "a true Irishman." Responding to an

for

me

me on the cross?

here,

where

I

I

I

removal of

fees rather

rid of it!"^'

upon the comforts

enhanced patients' dignity by charging modest

it

than setting up as an almshouse. In 1858, a physician in Manhattan's

New York Hospital observed that working-class Irish preferred St. own

from

thank God Almighty that He has been

have so well got

Vincent's Hospital not only allowed patients to draw

of their faith in their suffering,

a cancer

suffered, but did not our Blessed

Vincent's to

mind paying their way. The Sisters of Charity well understood the charitable needs of the community they served. As

his

St.

institution

and seemed not

to

Vincent's annual report noted in 1858, "Although the terms for board and

medical attendance are three dollars per week, nevertheless

many patients

are

received free." there were never

Still,

enough

[the Sisters of Charity] obliged,

affUcted one

whose means

asked for admission. patients

who

furnish

some

patients."

As

will not allow

him

to

pay even a part of the small

of

them with

articles of clothing, besides receiving

always, the church appealed to the philanthropy of

all

sum

the poor

them

its flock,

as free

encour-

New Yorkers to purchase "yearly subscriptions which would secure

and thus afford rehef to

many

(a third),

were paying

community were not

poor suffering creatures. "^"^ By the

Of the 3,68 1 patients treated at the 1,255 were receiving partial assistance, and

for their care.^ Clearly, the

atypical. In

orders in the United States,

of the

still great.

were total charity cases,

hospital, 1,161

that

report lamented, "Daily are they

impossible for the Sisters to accommodate

turn of the century, the needs were

1,265

The

apply for aid and medical treatment. Often are they obUged even to

aging Catholic free beds,

It is

resources.

with pain and sorrow to turn away some poor

needs of the

New

York

1885 there were 154 hospitals run by Cathohc

more than the

total

number

of hospitals of all kinds

had existed when the Civil War ended in 1865.^^ To paraphrase the

title of

Charles Rosenberg's volume on hospitals, Irish CathoUcs truly did transform the "care of strangers" into the care of their own.

The

arrival of millions of Irish also did truly transform the face of

American

immigration. Vague fears of strangers coalesced into specific stigmatization of a particular group. Preexisting anti-Catholic sentiments

the migration sent shock

waves

of

cans, especially in port cities such as

was most

visible

size of

New York where the presence of the Irish

and where sick or disabled newcomers most strained existing

facilities for care of

would again

and the sheer

apprehension through native-bom Ameri-

the sick and impoverished. Half a century

justify their restrictive policies

later, nativists

by claiming that the Chinese

brought plague, the Italians polio, and the Jews tuberculosis.

This medicalization of prejudice against the legislation

and the establishment

Irish inspired the

passage of state

of administrative procedures to effect the

]^

58

The Great Migration

inspection and regulation of immigrants

.

No longer did perfunctory preboarding

medical examinations and routine quarantine procedures seem adequate to protect the public health from foreign health menaces. Indeed, during the next great

wave

of

immigration responsibilities

for the inspection

and processing

immigration would be further formalized and transferred from

of

state to federal

jurisdiction.

Even the

as nativists

Irish,

enemies

marshaled their

legal

immigrants learned that they,

and administrative resources to repel

too,

must coordinate

a response to the

who would stigmatize them as unfit for America and bar the country's

door against them.

Newcomers with needed skills and resources defended then-

group's welfare through the direct delivery of services, including medical care.

Others channeled their philanthropy through their church or other organizations to build institutions that

would

parallel those of the native-born. Prece-

dents of self-help set by the Irish and the Catholic Church in antebellum

York would become routine among immigrants arriving

The

New

half a century later.

association of the Irish and disease in the mid-nineteenth century

marks

an early appearance of the medicalization of prejudice, an important theme of

American nativism, and

a historical perennial that

must be placed

in the dual

context of both the history of migration and the history of American medicine.

Like

all

perennials, this one continues to flower periodically.'^^ In the 1980s

1990s, the United States again has been in the midst of a

that nativists abhor

and

again, a disease has

disadvantage of a particular group. grants, stigmatized a decade ago bility to

of

and

immigration

been socially constructed to the

The sad experiences

of the Haitian

immi-

with accusations about their alleged suscepti-

AIDS, stands as a contemporary reminder that

lifestyles, foreignness

wave

illnesses

and danger continue to be metaphors

to nourish preexisting prejudices.^^

However, patterns

ism, too, often reappear and, at times, the

same

for

and values,

each other and

of assistance

and

altru-

institutions that served the

foreign-born in the past continue their mission in the present. Haitian immigrants and other Catholic

newcomers from the Caribbean and Southeast Asia

receive free or low-cost health care and attention to their spiritual needs at St.

Vincent's Hospital,

antebellum

much

New York.

as Irish

immigrants of

earlier generations did in

William

E.

Devlin

CHAPTER

7

Shrewd Irishmen IRISH

ENTREPRENEURS AND ARTISANS IN

NEW YORK'S CLOTHING INDUSTRY, 1830-1880

I N 1852

a reporter for a grandiloquent

New York City

paper called the Atlas penned a description of a prospering men's clothing store,

Union Hall. The six floors of this "splendid freestone edifice" at Nassau and Fulton Streets, in the heart of what was then the city's garment district, were apparently a hive of activity. Each floor housed a branch of the men's clothing trade as it was then practiced: custom tailoring took place on one floor, the manufacture of "ready-made" clothing for men and boys took place on another, and a retail salesroom and wholesale warehouse space occupied the remaining floors. As a men's clothing store. Union Hall could be "surpassed by few in the city, " the writer declared. He was "surprised and amazed ... by the amount of commerce and thrift [he] witnessed. On every side were large cases and other packages, addressed to merchants in almost every state and city of the Union, waiting only to be transmitted to their respective places of destination, a

Success stories in the garment business are a

with a Jewish protagonist. But native, Patrick Rogers.

careful

watch on his

at the

"He has by

credit,

helm

of

la

New

railway and steamer."

York

Union Hall was

industry, intelligence,

staple, familiarly

a

County Tyrone

and prudent and

succeeded in building up a large business," a

hard-nosed credit agent wrote of Rogers in 1852.

He had

landed in

New

York

only half- trained as a tailor a scant 16 years before. By 1852 he owned, besides his business, a comfortable

home

in Williamsburg.'

This chapter examines

170

New

York's clothing industry as an avenue for the

and advancement

The Great

economic

Migration

the middle years of the nineteenth century, particularly for artisans and entre-

survival, assimilation,

of Irish

immigrants during

The

preneurs who, like Patrick Rogers, had aspirations beyond mere survival.

discussion focuses on two occupational groups, tailors and hatters, distinct but

which some

related trades in

Irish

immigrants enjoyed

visible success.

During the period of the Great Migration not only did individuals

make

mark

their

in the city's clothing business but the industry

point of entry into the economic grants. In 1855 the

New

born

York State census

suits, shirts

thousands of

identified

and shoes, hats and

and millinery. They accounted

employed

of the city for

in the city

work force.^ The workers

of

and

for

for

caps,

one

Rogers

major

a

Irish

immi-

more than 11,000

Yorkers working in what had become the

making men's skirts,

New

life

like

was

Irish-

city's largest industry,

and women's

dresses,

of every eight Irish

hoop

immigrants

approximately 36 percent of the local industry's

concern in this discussion consist of the presumably skilled

and sometimes entrepreneurial population probably numbering about 2,000 by

who

1860, that included artisans and merchants

clothing but did not necessarily produce

emerged leaders

it

sold "ready-made" or used

themselves. From their ranks

—in business, in the union movement, even in the creative side

of designing clothing. Yet these trades, especially tailoring,

doned by the

Irish

by 1890. The central questions

the clothing industry period,

how

it

became so important

nity,

to the

New

York

Irish

why

during this

might have led to individual economic independence and secu-

what consequences

rity,

were largely aban-

to be considered here are

and why the

Irish

this

might have had

were supplanted

for the Irish

in the industry

immigrant commu-

by newer groups, in a

process of ethnic succession that continues to this day.

This

is

largely unexplored territory. Studies of

New York's clothing industry

unfailingly note an Irish presence during this period but supply few details.

the

army

of

domestic servants and day laborers

from the famine-stricken

command the

Irish countryside

who

streamed into

New

And York

during this period has tended to

attention of scholars and popular historians alike, monopolizing

the usual image of this immigrant population. Therefore, although the plight of

the nineteenth-century seamstress, often an immigrant, has been studied in

some

depth,

left

unanswered

is

the question of whether there were identifiable

groups of skilled Irish workers in the city and

how they fared during this period.

A number of questions immediately arise in the case of tailors and hatters: Were they simply victims of a ruthlessly exploitive industry undergoing a transition

mass production? Was their presence an indication of a decline of artisanal and traditions? How were they accepted by native workers and employers? What skills did they bring? How were they able to adapt to conditions in the industry, start businesses, compete with native Americans, as Patrick to

skills

The answers

to these questions begin to

emerge

an examination of

in

prefamine Ireland. There, tailoring was a significant urban trade, one of the island's five largest trade

practitioners.

Both

groups in 1831, claiming between 15,000 and 30,000

tailors

and hatters tended naturally

to live in Ireland's cities

and larger towns. They also tended to be concentrated in

better-developed

its

where they serviced the gentry, prosperous farmers, and fellow town dwellers. Cottiers and other rural and urban poor whose clothing was not areas,

homemade fairs

relied

on

huge trade in secondhand garments, originating

a

at

huge

outside London. Travelers in prefamine Ireland seldom failed to note the

multitudes of people they observed wearing rags or clothing long out of f ashion."* In Ireland both tailoring and hatting were organized trades in the early

nineteenth century. Tailors in particular were considered "a strong combination,"

with rights under the

to regulate

wages or

Irish statutes to petition for increases in

work hours. Irish hatters reportedly had ties to English journeymen's

societies in their trade.

But most Irish clothing artisans faced a bleak future of insecurity and poverty if

they remained at home. Their living standards and social status were not high

to begin with:

"most townspeople

—artisans and laborers—lived barely above

subsistence level in filthy, congested and disease-ridden slums and 'cabin

was rudimentary and

suburbs.'" Their education

with an apprenticeship at the age of 12 or

14,

if

short, invariably terminating

not younger.

And British society

The masculinity of tailors was derided in the popular expression "it takes nine snippies to make a man," while hatters had to contend with "drunk as a hatter" or "mad as a hatter," the latter expression a reference to the uncontrollable palsy some older hatters developed accorded low status to most tradesmen.

as a result of long exposure to the

mercury used on fur to help make

it

into

felt,

from which most hats were made.''

Most

of Ireland's

nascent industries collapsed under the Union, and as the

early decades of the nineteenth century progressed the agricultural deteriorated.

economy

Many of the big provincial towns began to lose population. Those

who drifted into the towns and cities tended to be landless paupers evicted from nearby estates, hardly a promising clientele for the makers of clothes. While the hopeless country folk

swarmed

into the city slums, the skilled artisans of the

towns joined with shopkeepers and professional exodus to America, where

Some emigrated first a brief memoir of

left

.

.

.

[they]

were

to England, like

his eventful

men

Dublin-born

life.

in "the vanguard of the

likely to succeed."^ tailor

Crowe learned

Robert Crowe,

apprenticeship "in the sweating dens of London. " Like Crowe, in England often

moved on again to America,

who

his trade in a brief

many Irish tailors

attracted especially to

New York.

There, wages for tailors during the 1830s were reputed to be one-third higher

than in London. Moreover, costs

may

New York's already notorious high prices and living

not have been a significant deterrent to craftsmen accustomed to

those of Dublin, considered the most expensive city in the British Empire.*

\'J2

The vanguard of emigration

The Great

New

Migration

tailors

of Irish clothing artisans

York; city directories of the

1

780s and

1

790s

list

and hatters. Newcomers generally found their

began to arrive early in several Irish-surnamed

first

homes

in the city in

new tenements within walking distance of the Second Ward, where the city's clothing businesses were concentrated, among the huge, fluid, and largely Irish population of sailors, laborers, and smiths of the downtown the old houses and

wards. Even in these generally poor locations, newly arrived artisans of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s could find visibly successful predecessors. During the

New

1820s a city's

York-born

Irish

American, James Leary, had revolutionized the

hat trade by introducing a low-priced hat napped with nutria fur for half

more styUsh beaver. By the late 1840s Leary, who frequently up on the latest French hat styles, was being touted

the price of the

traveled to Europe to pick

as "the arbiter of fashion" for the city's retail hat trade, his shop a training ground for

many

of the city's hat retailers,

some

of

whom

were

Irish

immigrants. But

A handful of New York State census of seven downtown wards

there were also precedents for success by recent Irish immigrants. tailors identified in the

owned

real property,

1855

and

about 3 percent of the

24,

total,

had

their

own

household servants.^

The numbers

of Irish tailors

and Irish-owned clothing businesses in the

city

surged during the 1830s, and during each year of the famine period of 1847-55,

about a hundred Irish tailors settled in the

city.

U.S.

Census Bureau figures from

when immigrant tailors began to be identified by nationality, record between 40 and 77 of them entering the United States directly from Ireland each year. Some of these settled in New York, and Irish the years between 1875 and 1914,

1

tailors

no doubt accounted

for a substantial proportion of the nearly 8,000

recorded as arriving from England during that period.^

The that

New

most

training

York State census

Irish

who

immigrant

of 1855

tailors

and

much

anecdotal evidence suggests

and hatters were artisans with some

level of

emigrated in their 20s or early 30s with the expectation of

supporting a family. Sixty percent of almost a thousand tailors sampled from

seven wards in the state census were married and 46 percent had between one

and four children. Moreover, they were

likely to be the sole, or at least the

primary support of their families. Only a small percentage (6%) lived with parents or other kin. Only 10 percent had working spouses or working children,

and almost

a third of these lived in

one ward, the Sixth. Only 16 percent kept

The range of age levels found also suggests that both tailors and hatters tended to remain in their craft through their lifetimes. The rate of literacy was high, suggesting at least some schooling, although those in the postfamine group

boarders.

were three times as likely to be

illiterate or semiliterate

(10%) than those

who

The 82 Irish hatters sampled were working in a conservative trade in which traditional craft practices were only slowly giving way to mechanization. They were quicker than tailors to become naturalized (43% as opposed to 27%), and more likely to have father and son in the same had arrived

earlier (3%).

profession (12 examples), reflecting a still-breathing tradition of passing on traditional skills. Less than half of the hatters

were married, none

of those

who

were had working spouses, and only one-fifth had children. These living arrangements allowed them freedom to travel and fend about for work

and where

was

it

available, as true

when

journeymen. Whether they emigrated as

trained artisans or learned their trade here, the Irish in the hatting trade appear to

have adapted readily to an artisan culture with roots in the Middle Ages."

This was clearly a population possessing at least some skills, and, usually, some education. They had as well some experience of urban living and condi-

New York, a city that worked at same urban background would suggest that most, if not all, were English-speaking, a factor that would have allowed them to move tions,

if

not on quite the scale they found in

"a railroad pace." Finally, that

directly into the

mainstream

of the

growing clothing industry.

That growth since the beginning of the nineteenth century had been nothing short of spectacular.

made

clothing (today

American

dress.

South and Pearl to sailors

The

The beginnings of mass production of presized, or readyit would be called "off the rack") created a revolution in coalesced around the docks of where ready-made clothing originated as a convenience

city's first clothing stores

Streets,

who could not wait for fitted,

tailor-made garments. During the early

decades of the nineteenth-century dealers in presized, manufactured clothing, or clothiers, began to sell to the general

modes of male

male populace. The more

and trousers) made men's clothing easier to mass produce, and

made it popular. Soon ready-made coats, to the

egalitarian

dress ushered in by the French Revolution (especially frock coats

felt hats,

South via the "cotton triangle" between

its

convenience

and suits were being exported

New York's port, southern ports,

and Europe, and to the West via the Hudson River and the Erie Canal. The industry entered a prolonged period of takeoff, protected by a

percent and fueled by the

demand

New

By 1860

sional population.

of a

tariff of

up

to 50

growing urban middle class and profes-

York City's 30,000 clothing workers were

aimually producing about 40 percent of the country's total output of clothing. Later, strengthened

by the beginnings in earnest of a garment industry

women, production

tripled

between the end

of the Civil

War and

for

1880. Analo-

gous developments occurred in hatting. Manhattan became the nation's capital for the

production of the

chief role

was

tall,

expensive silk hats favored by the

as the entrepot for millions of hats produced in

and

particularly in centers in Connecticut

New Jersey,

and

its

later

elite,

but

its

hinterlands,

Brooklyn and

Yonkers.'^

A

city, centered on the Second Ward and downtown in the Nassau and Fulton Street area, but by the 1 840s

clothing district developed in the

emerging

moving

first

to lower Broadway,

where the multitude

of retail stores

and fine hotels

appealed to country merchants on semiannual buying trips to the

moving northward over time up dry goods trade.

A

that

city,

avenue following the movement

and

of the

cheaper mirror image of Broadway competed a few blocks

on the Bowery, while Chatham Square became

X74

east

The Great

destination for middle-class

Migration

phere of

New

who

Yorkers

mostly Jewish-owned secondhand clothing

its

stores. Finally, sailors'

many of them with

clothing stores clung to the seedy docks around West Street, a grog shop

on the

side.

The

Irish

slumming

a favorite

enjoyed the bazaar-like atmos-

would work and

start businesses in all these

locations.

Throughout alities

this period of growth,

were welcomed.

"It is

always

immigrant clothing artisans

difficult to get skilled labor

manufacturer complained to Clothier &) Furnisher Magazine in always a demand

for

good workmen, and we

all steal

a clothing

,

.

1

883, "there

.

is

from each other without

compunction." Some immigrants even followed traditional

craft practices in

Robert Crowe brought with him a letter of

securing employment.

The

recommendation from

his previous

tailor

of all nation-

.

employer when he emigrated

to

New York

which "procured [him] immediate work." Irish workmen in these trades seem to have borne no particular stigma,- the British hatter James Dawson in 1856,

Bum, who worked of the

New

"among country

many

beside immigrants of

York metropolitan area in the

.

.

not less industrious than the

perceived insults and

nationalities in the back shops

860s, found Irish

members

the most useful of the industrial .

1

workmen

to be

community in this Germans," but more sensitive to of the

"^^ more "impulsive.

But the clothing industry also fed unashamedly on immigrant labor, both skilled

and unskilled.

No

other American industry was so dominated by the

foreign-bom: 53 percent of

all

tailors

and

tailoresses in the country

were

foreign-born in 1880, according to federal census figures, while 95 percent of

New York's tailors and two-thirds of its hatters were

in this category in 1855.

The demands of mass production and the availability of sources of potentially cheap labor fundamentally changed the clothing trades, especially

tailoring.

Instead of mechanizing hand processes, as occurred over a long period of time in hatting,

garments came to be designed and precut in huge quantities by highly

skilled tailors called cutters, then contracted out for

journeymen

tailors,

assembly (sewing) to

seamstresses, or virtually any responsible party willing to

contract or subcontract for the work. census, particularly the

newly

Many Irish

arrived,

tailors listed in the

had been sucked into

1855 state

living in boarding-

houses owned by grocers, liquor dealers, or other tailors who contracted for work

from clothing manufacturers. Forty

of these proto-sweatshops for tailors

shoemakers existed in the Sixth Ward alone in 1855. Virtually paid at piece rates, which could fluctuate

all

and

workers were

rapidly.'"*

The practices of contracting and outwork continually drove wages down with the result that the ready-made clothing industry became the lowest paid in the city. Union leader Edward Mallon told a rally of striking tailors in 1850 that those employed by southern trade manufacturers could expect "75 cents a day .

.

of

.

(and) the majority and I would assert that far the greater number make less them have families to support. The average number of members in each .

.

.

may be taken at four. A man cannot rent a room, and bedroom to shelter them on the third story of an ill-ventilated house, for less than $6 a month. Then he has $12 per month to provide fuel, food and raiment for them. Thus family

they are entirely debarred from subsist in the

all the enjoyments of life, and scarcely able to most wrretched and miserable manner." Wages were better for

hatters, w^ho retained a

rough parity with other skilled trades, but even the $10

weekly foreman's pay offered Charles Knox by his employer in 1844 would translate into a

$500 annual wage, a figure rated by contemporary city newspa-

per editors as "a bare

The

minimum"

to support a family in the city "without

subdivision of labor in these two crafts had other impacts on the

Irish.

ways was gradually reduced to doing essentially semiskilled assembly work or machine operation. The remaining jobs in the two trades that required special skills became more valuable, and

In both tailoring and hatting the average craftsman trained in traditional of

making

a product

from

start to finish

the resulting job hierarchy favored the well-connected. Cutters in the large

on average

clothing houses, for example, earned

were seldom do.

laid off,

a third

more than

The new semimechanized hatting

and

practiced during this period nonetheless

required deftness of touch and experienced judgment, especially the finishers

tailors

even during financial panics when they had no work to

who used sandpaper,

on the

part of

blocks, irons, and other tools to shape rough

cones of felt into finished hats. The Irish were at

first

barely represented in these

upper levels of the job hierarchy. Only seven Irish-born cutters could be found in seven

wards in the 1855 state census, and almost

identified themselves as finishers

all of

those hatters

who

were American-born or Germans. And with

the glut of readily available immigrant workers, the long-troubled institution

withered away in the city's tailoring trade. In 1861 the Times would be hard to find six American boys in the city who are being brought up to the tailoring business." Newly arrived Irish tailors would have worked primarily on coats, the heaviest and most complex of male of apprenticeship

reported that "it

garments, and would have had to compete with the city's

women

for

work on pants

Most

or vests.

New

finishing shops or in silk hat manufactories of

many low-paid sewing

York hatters worked in small

up

to

60 workers.'^

The clothing trades were a harrowing way of making a living for other reasons as well. The industry's traditional production schedule, centered around spring and fall buying seasons, made employment unsteady and necessitated a constant shifting about for work. Clothing workers their lives

worker were in late

and

their families regulated

by the production seasons. For example, four children all

born between

May

August or early September,

1

and June

a "dull

of

one clothing

23, indicating a conception date

season" in the trade. Because they

produced consumer products sensitive to demand, the two trades under study here were hard hit by the financial panics of 1854, 1857, and 1873, which abruptly disrupted

employment

for the majority of the city's clothing workers.

own unique

176

And

The Great

indigestion, poor posture

Migration

and consumption; hatters from the

each trade had

security

its

health hazards. Tailors suffered from

and stooping, poor eyesight, exhaustion,

was nonexistent except among

cutters

provision for old age existed in either trade.

Cornelius Doris of Hudson Street, reports of the R. G.

Dun

&.

is

wood

effects of

and other top hands, and no

The pathetic fate of one Irish

later,

"in

ill

Co. Doris arrived in the city in 1841 and worked

health

.

.

.

Edward Ryan wrote that even the

was described as "drying

about used up." The Irish American Daniel aristocratic clothing cutters

and foremen had

reason to dread advancing age. Their reward, he wrote, "after a slaves years

upon years

.

.

.

tailor,

recounted matter-of-f actly in the field agent

actively into the 1850s, but by the end of the decade he

out" and

liver diseases.

alcohol and mercury. Job

[was] premature old age,

and a bench in a comer

life

of

of the

cutting room, as a 'Buzzard cutter' on a legacy of a boy's wages."'''

That the record victimhood

is

of the Irish

surprising. But

it

under these conditions was anything besides also reveals,

on the

part of some, adaptability,

opportunism, and assertiveness of their rights as workers.

One

reason for this

was the incredible diversity and complexity of New York's clothing industry during this period. The industry was subdivided into numerous distinct trades, market segments, and work practices. The existing evidence suggests that Irish tailors gravitated toward the areas they were most familiar with in Ireland: custom tailoring, unions, even the secondhand clothing trade. The U.S. Industrial Commission reported in 1901, after the Irish had largely disappeared adaptability

from

tailoring in the city, that "it [had been]

work

in the

back shop of the merchant

customary

tailor." In his

for the Irish tailor to

1905 study of the

city's

clothing industry. Professor Jesse Pope asserted that the custom trade had been

the Irishman's ticket to upward mobility, that as a group the Irish had been

pushed upward wrote, "they

in the industry

by newcomers. "From the custom trade," he

became the manufacturers, the

cutters, the

foremen

who directed

the industry," controlling the cutting trade into the 1880s.'*

Contemporary sources corroborate tailoring.

The market

at least

an

for custom-tailored clothes

Irish attraction to

remained

custom

large in the city,

One reason for this demand was was quality. It was not until the late 1870s that manufacturers felt confident enough to proclaim that ready-made clothes equaled the product of the custom tailor. The average journeyman's skill thus remained essential, and merchant tailors (those who owned their own shops and employed journeymen) as well as the custom departments of the large men's clothing houses paid more than the ready-made manufacturers for their higherquality garments. But the selling season was short in the custom trade, sometimes only 24 weeks or less. Off-season, depending on the demand, journeymen despite the popularity of ready-made clothing.

timewom

tradition; another

could produce cheaper clothing for their employer, shift to taking out ready-

made work

for

themselves from the big men's clothing houses, or become

contractors and subcontractors, employing other journeymen or seamstresses.

Some

contracting journeymen were capable of producing up to a thousand

coats in a week, and "by the tailoring

some

many journeymen

in

shoemaking and

of the prerogatives of the small employer," albeit at the cost of

exploiting their as

fifties,

—either as heads of households or as garret masters — also exercised

most

own countrymen. But it was thus possible for skilled tailors,

of the Irish

seem

to

have been, to manipulate the seasonal production

schedule to their advantage,

if

times were good.

A

kind of independence

could result, bemoaned by a manufacturer in an article in Clothier and Furnisher in 1883: "In the Fall (the best hands) return to their custom work at

about such prices as they choose to ask. You can't talk any 'poor

tailor' to

more independent than the men who make clothes." Independence was taken for granted in hatting, where skilled journeymen customarily shifted from shop to shop or even from city to city for work between seasons or for better wages. '9 The record also shows some Irish families adapting to conditions by working as a unit. As already mentioned, the sons of several Irish hatters in the city in 1855 were learning the trade as apprentices, presumably with their fathers. The state census of 1855 also reveals that a number of tailors' wives in the Sixth Ward were sewing at home alongside their husbands as " tailoresses. " Some Irish tailors also apparently practiced what was called "the family system," usually associated with Germans, by putting all the family members to work. An R. G. Dun & Co. field agent reported of merchant tailor James Murray of 18 Clarkson Street during the 1850s that "he works hard at his business and makes all his family work hard ... he and his family do nearly all the work."^° me," he complained, "no labor

There

some

of

is

is

also evidence that Irish clothing artisans placed great value in saving

what they were

able to earn.

An

80 percent

Irish,

of depositors

found clothing workers as a group to be the third largest group

by occupation,

after

domestics and boardinghouse keepers. Most

were small amounts, between $10 and $20. Although a majority

of the deposits of depositors

New York savings Bank whose depositors were

1857 survey of six

banks, including the Emigrant Industrial Savings

surveyed were women, some 1,200 were male

tailors.

Savings

provided the capital for numerous Irish clothing businesses, and the adjectives "frugal" field

and "saving" appear frequently in the credit reports of R. G.

Dun & Co.

agents on Irish tailors, hatters, clothiers, and hat dealers.^^

Irish tailors

and hatters were also quick to

eventually to organize

them where they

journeymen's societies

at first resisted

join labor organizations

did not exist.

New

and

York's existing

admitting immigrant artisans, but by

1850 the Irish were so numerous in them that an English-speaking union of tailors that participated in a

was

citywide strike against southern trade employers

called the "Irish" union, even

alities. Its

leadership

was

Irish;

though

men

it

contained

men

like Joseph Donnelly,

of several nation-

George Clancy, and

William Leonard forged a coalition with German-speaking unionists and acted as

spokesmen

for

both groups to employers and to the

press.^'^

Trade organizations were often short-lived in the clothing industry, with

178

its

The Great

plethora of employers and contractors, reliance on piecework, and competing

Migration

forms of cheap

But among custom

labor.

permanent union emerged

trated, a

Tailors Benevolent

an account

tailors,

in 1862.

One

where the

Irish

were concen-

of the founders of the

Custom

and Protective Union that year was Robert Crowe, who

of its founding. In his autobiography,

left

Crowe described how wartime

conditions had inflated prices in the city while wages had remained stagnant, while, he recalled, "no form of combination then existed to protect the interest of the worker." In six

enticed to join the prices of

months, he reported, 2,000 journeymen

new

garments throughout the

city."

literally

tailoring trade, despite the

hundreds of employers.

city's trades in the

had been

Over the next 15 years Crowe's union

exerted a stabilizing influence on piecework prices and on

custom

tailors

union, and the organization's efforts "had doubled the

New York

A

complex task

employment

in the

of negotiating piece rates

Times in 1876, when they were still suffering from

the panic of 1873, rated both the tailors' and hatters' as "strong societies."

survey found that most "society

men" continued

depressed times at prepanic wages. Robert secretary, participated in

with

survey of wages and unemployment in the

to be

Crowe served

The

employed during the as the organization's

an abortive effort to found a national organization after

the Civil War, and chaired the 1883 convention in Philadelphia that created the

permanent national

first

tailors'

union, the Journeyman Tailors' Union of

America.^ Irish leadership is

the 1870s, Irish

when

more

were strongly represented

including James

P.

among

the hatters in the city until

in the leadership of national hatting unions,

who grew up in Brooklyn during the latter part of the and who later became treasurer of the United Hatters

Maher,

period under study here

and

difficult to find

several Irish officers appear in hatting organizations. But the

a U.S. representative

New Jersey.^'*

from

The most prominent Irish clothing worker in the city's labor movement was a radical tailor named Robert Bhssert. A skilled and inflammatory speaker, the Irish-bom Blissert emigrated to New York from London after the Civil War and began working for fashionable Park Avenue tailors. Already a socialist, he was appalled by conditions in

New

York, particularly by the tenements, which he

called "little better than cages." Tailors'

a

Union, and in

1

He

quickly became active in the Journeyman

870 he emerged as one of a group attempting to organize

workingmen's party in the

city.

A

year later he was an officer of a national

parent organization for workingmen's cooperatives. Blissert's voice of disillusion and revolution soon began to appear in the city's press,

quoted his speeches to strikers reached an apex in 1882,

for

which

in 1872

an eight-hour day. His career as a labor leader

when he was chosen

as the first acting president of

New York City's Central Labor Union. As that body's president, Blissert, whose radicalism

was tinged with

Irish nationalism,

organized a mass rally in Union

Square to welcome Land Leaguer Michael Davitt to the

city.

Soon

after that.

Blissert

dropped out of the public eye to run his

own

tailoring business for the

& Co. field agent's report, his credit

Dun

next 12 years. According to an R. G.

was guaranteed by "a wealthy merchant," whose patronage allowed continue his radical activities to

some

Blissert to

extent.^''

upward mobility into "the cutting trade" and manuwas another form of adaptation that has some basis in fact. The

Pope's scenario of Irish

facturing

cutter's trade

could be a step toward a foreman's position and even higher

management; during the 1850s Irish-born cutters William

P.

O'Hara and John

Devlin became partners in major city clothing firms despite having no capital to contribute.

handful

—only

Between 1855 and 1880

wards in the state census of 1855

surnames

from a bare

—to a substantial number. Cutters with Irish

listed in Trow's City Directory of

number accounts Irish

Irish cutters increased

seven Irish-born cutters could be found in seven downtown

1880 number 169. But even that

for at best 15 percent of the city's total. Pope's perception of

may have been

"control" of the cutting trade

colored by the fact that in

the 1870s and 1880s Irish cutters and foremen were being

employed by some

of

the leading clothing houses, including Brooks Brothers, and by the influence of

Daniel Edward Ryan.^''

Son

of

an

who had settled in Kentucky, Ryan began designing was recruited by New York clothiers impressed by his

Irish tailor

clothes as a youth and

exhibit at the Cincinnati Exposition of 1873.

independent designer, but instead

Ryan dreamed

of being

an

wound up working at good salaries ($5,000 in

1880) for a succession of big clothing houses, including Browning, King, and

He may have been the earliest recognized American clothing He was noted in the trade for the fine fit of his design and his attention detail, particularly in boys' suits. He did public relations for the American

Sweet, Orr &. Co. designer. to

Vandyke beard, flowing moustache, and was dubbed "the very embodiment of what a well-dressed gentleman ought to be" by the Tailor and Cutter magazine of London after a trip there in 1885.^^ clothing industry abroad; with his neat

ramrod-straight posture, he

For several years

Ryan

led a campaign, at least partly successful, to

the professional standards and pay of clothing cutters and foremen.

the organization of the

improve

He oversaw

New York Cutters' and Tailors' Association in February

1881 and edited the organization's journal for a year. In his writings

Ryan urged

clothing manufacturers to abandon their concept of a foreman or head cutter as a glorified

shop manager and think

of

him

instead as a creative designer, "your

Rubens, your Raphael, your Vandyke." The obvious embodiment of this image, of course,

was Ryan himself. His influence seems to have waned after the

1

880s,

although he continued to work in the industry until his death in 1912.^* Finally, starting a clothing business of their for Irish

immigrants during

own became an

attainable goal

this period. Indeed, the clothing industry "provided

the best opportunities for immigrant workers to advance to ownership status." Capital requirements for a

custom

tailoring, hat contracting, or

small

retail

180

clothing business or hat dealership were relatively light during this period,

The Great

generally less than $1,000, as the prevalence of

Migration

need for any extensive investment in machinery or plant. Manhattan rents v^^ere

most

high, but

hand production obviated the

immigrants began their businesses, naturally enough, in

Irish

modest low^-rent locations, then moved to progressively better situations as they

became more

The

successful.

portrait of the startup of

R. G.

Dun

&.

Co.

field

agent reports provide a

one clothing business involving an

Irish

American.

William Braisted and William Dougherty, both newly married and each with living expenses of "but

With

$250 a year," began a custom

joint capital of $1,000,

erty's father for the

store" at 299

tailoring business in

which they had saved while working

for

1

854.

Dough-

previous nine years, they rented "the rear of Bodine's hat

Broadway and purchased

a

supply of cloth. By 1858 they were

reported to be "doing a large and fashionable custom business," and by 1864

they had two locations on Broadway and were worth $10,000-12,000. Hatter Charles Knox recorded a similar beginning, starting a small contracting business in a

basement with

Little

$250 bonus from his former master, then moving

a

on the corner

6-by- 10-foot space

of Fulton

to a

and Dutch Streets known as "the

Hole in the Wall," where he could reach any hat on the shelves while

standing in the center of the room. But once established in a good location like

Broadway, success could come swiftly. R. G. that 31 -year-old tailor Daniel

fashionable Astor

he doubled

this

Kennedy

House hotel

set

up

Dun

&.

a shop

Co.

field agents

on the ground

recorded

floor of the

in 1855, using $2,000 in savings. In a year's time

investment on the strength of $20,000 in

sales.^^

Another advantage to the new immigrant was the absence

of sophisticated

business practices in the city's clothing industry during this period. Retail clothing businesses projected an air of gentility and sophistication, but their actual operations were quite casual. "Advertising recalled one veteran of the retail trade

bearing the firm

name

was not thought necessary,"

Street in the 1870s, "just a sign

over the door and a stock of goods inside the store.

There was no dating of understood by the

on Fulton

seller

bills

or trouble about terms

and buyer." One R. G.

Dun

&.

.

Co.

.

.

.

.

.

everything was

field

agent recorded

was "a shrewd Irishman," but did "a peculiar keeps no bank account, gives no notes." Into this milieu the Irish, knowledge of English and previous urban experience, could move

that clothing dealer James Casey

business

.

.

with their

.

readily.^"

The prevailing practice of intracommunal patronage further aided the immiTo the clothier or hatter, New York City was filled with

grant entrepreneur.

potential customers.

Between 1840 and 1860

312,000 to 813,000, while

most

of

them on

of others

way

who

it

its

population increased from

some 20,000 travelers a year, mass of hundreds of thousands

regularly attracted

business, as well as a floating

passed through the port or remained briefly in the city on their

to other destinations.

Permanent newcomers during these years were

the most part immigrants, mostly Irish and

for

German, who swelled the ranks

of

the city's working class and usually

showed

marked

a

interest in bettering

themselves. For the recently arrived, dressing like an American was an indispensable part of becoming one.

writing in the

The

British hatter

860s, observed of the young Irish in

1

in this country

.

.

.

James Dawson Burn,

New York that "after arriving

young Hibernian speedily has himself tailored into begins to walk with his head erect, and soon that

the

He

external respectability.

slouching servility and fawning sycophancy to people above his

which made him

a slave in all but the fetters [in Ireland],

is

own

grade,

cast aside, as he

dons the character of a free citizen of the United States." These newly arrived Irish

tended to patronize clothing businesses run by their fellow countrymen,

some of whom advertised in The Irish- Amehcan and other Irish newspapers. Thus an R. G. Dun &. Co. field agent could report in the 1850s of Irish-born tailor

James Lapin,

who had started his own

"fashionable tailoring" business at

23 Chambers Street after working as a cutter for another Irish clothier and saving about $400, that he "has done very well ...&(. has a good run of custom, from his

Countrymen

particularly,

who pay

cash."

Bowery

advertised heavily in the city's Irish newspapers before

hatter John Callahan

St. Patrick's

Day, touting

himself as "the outfitter" for the parade, and keeping his store open late for

weeks beforehand. The immigrants who patronized such businesses

several

tended to pay for their purchases in cash, an advantage to the small or large clothing merchant or artisan trying to save or deal with

complex credit arrange-

ments. The other side of this coin was the practice of intracommunal hiring.

Those

Irish

who founded

trymen. There

is

successful businesses often hired their fellow coun-

evidence that large employers like Devlin

& Co., James Leary,

and Edward Fox employed Irish immigrants,- hatter Charles Knox hired so

many

from his native County Donegal that a county society sprouted in the vicinity of his

Brooklyn

factory.''^

Finally, the diversity of

what economists

call

New

York's clothing trade, with

its

By the 1850s Irish-owned clothing businesses in

preneurs.

multiplicity of

"niche markets," was a stimulus to immigrant enter-

New

York City

numbered

in the hundreds, exploiting a broad range of such niches.

The 1855

New York

State census identified as Irish 8 1 of

New York City's 403

clothiers,

about 20 percent of the

total.

The business

listings in Tiow's City Directory of

1854 also show 86 Irish-surnamed merchant dealers,

and 26

retail dealers in hats. Irish

tailors,

16 secondhand clothing

immigrants continued to

the 1870 U.S. Census of Industry recorded 30

new

new when

start

clothing businesses in the city through the immediate post-Civil War era,

Irish-owned garment enter-

Ward alone. Some Irish immigrants who could combine skills with personal charm succeeded in the city's ehte

prises in the Fourteenth

superior artisanal

custom order trade this time.

in

men's clothing or

hats, the carriage trade as

it

were. At

New York City "boasted the wealthiest elite market in the country."

Of several successful examples, the best-known was hatter Charles Knox, who could,

it

was

said, "step

up

to the

bench and perform any operation

of

manu-

181 Irish

Entrepreneurs

and Artisans

New

in

York's

Clothing Industry,

1830-1880

workmen. Knox

182

facture as well as the best" of his

The Great

well as the custom of the city's newspaper editors, political and business leaders,

Migration

and visiting celebrities, measuring them personally

them

chatting with

in

Windsor chairs

up

set

cultivated the friendship as

new silk hat while room of his Broadway

for their

in the front

and keeping their head measurements systematically on

store,

At the other end

of the scale, the city's

file.'^^

secondhand clothing trade consis-

tently attracted Irish dealers from the 1850s on,

who numbered between one men and

and two dozen in any given year until the 1880s. They included both

women;

half a

dozen of the

in the early 1870s

Irish

secondhand clothing dealers on Baxter Street

were women. This

London exchanging crockery

of East

women

not surprising; Irish

is

an integral part of this trade as "mokers"

had been

who wheeled carts through the slums

for "the

workmen's

Sunday clothes."

castoff

The secondhand trade in the city was dominated from the beginning by Jews, and among the Irish secondhand dealers was one, Henry Regan, identified in credit reports as Jewish as well as Irish. For some the secondhand trade was profitable.

It

included "renovating" clothes and had a national as well as local

men

market, serviced by

like John K.

Murray who sold both new and used

clothing in the city and western markets. off

.

.

.

He was

reported in 1850 to be "well

easy in his circumstances.'"^^

Irish

women

also

seem

to

have sometimes found other opportunities

for

clothing businesses besides the secondhand clothing shops of Baxter Street.

There were artisans like Rosanna Donnelly,

who was

listed in the

1870 U.S.

census of industry as owner of a "shirt manufactory" in the Fourteenth Ward

with $1,200 capital invested. She was producing $2,000 worth

on

a single

sewing machine. In general, however,

women

of shirts a year

could be found in

business in poor neighborhoods, working with husbands or fathers or inheriting

businesses as

widows

or heirs, in line with the

the time. Despite these limitations, abilities.

at

it

1

850.

sailor's

clothing

with the help of her daughter

22 years. "She continues the business and is well able to do

commented in

of

for their business

Catherine Hanley took over her husband's business in

213 West Street when he died in 1849 and ran

for

customs and property laws

some were recognized

it,"

a credit agent

A daughter of "shrewd Irishman" James Casey singlehand-

edly ran one of her father's businesses, another sailor's clothing store at 199

Roosevelt Street. Casey

left

two daughters when he died If

his substantial estate (worth about $20,000) to his in 1866.'^'*

starting a small business

immigrant

to

move

was not uncommon,

it

was very

difficult for

an

into the ranks of the city's big clothing manufacturers and "all of

whom

displayed a strong talent for organizing large enterprises efficiently," and

whose

retailers.

Yankee merchant-capitalists

partnerships consisted primarily of

like the

men

Brooks Brothers,

related by blood or marriage, domi-

nated the ready-made clothing industry. Most catered to the as well as supplying

city's retail trade

ready-made coats, pants, and vests to distant domestic and

sometimes foreign markets. They

raised

"imposing downtown structures of

four to seven stories situated in the heart of the business district."

The most

successful of the city's hat dealers had started out as artisans but occupied similar buildings, floor

where customers browsed or were fitted for hats on the ground

while journeymen labored on the upper floors/^

immigrants faced a number of special problems in breaking into

Irish

this

exclusive world. Capital requirements were substantial, particularly for cash on

hand

to

meet obligations through

payments terms of

of faraway

credit.

As

a

"dull seasons," and while awaiting the

customers in the West or South on six-month

consequence good

wealthy backers were

vital for

(or longer)

and usually

credit, the trust of suppliers,

even the largest firms. Management

skills

and a

"system" were considered indispensable. Moreover, an immigrant wishing to

compete in the national marketplace had

little

or

no knowledge

of

American

regional tastes in clothes.

The business carried substantial risks, of clothier

of

which the ill-starred business career

Rogers provides a running catalog. In the years following the Atlas's

glowing portrait of him, he experienced virtually every disaster inherent in the clothing business, forcing

overextension,

him

repeatedly to "take in sail," as he called

which forced the closing

of

two

of his three stores,

one in

it:

New

York and one in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1852; the depressions of 1854

and 1857, which he withstood " to the surprise of many" in the trade,- the burning of his

remaining store in 1 855 (he was insured); and in 1 856 a suit brought against

him by

a

former partner (he won). By 1860 he had been forced to bring in

partners and

seemed

new

secure, but only a few years later he died in a carriage

accident at the age of 46. His sons took over the business but gave up after they, too,

were burned out the following

Patrick Rogers

year."*^'

was not the only Irish immigrant to reach the top in New York

City's clothing industry. Clothiers

Edward Fox

of

Broadway and the McEvoy

family of Grand Street, the hatter James Leary, mentioned

middleman

(jobber) Patrick Corbitt,

earlier,

Connecticut and sponsored by some of that

and hatting

woman

son of a widowed Irish

state's biggest hat

accumulated fortunes or a net worth in the range of $100,000

all

times. But

most

of these

were

short-lived, brought

investments in Fox's case and premature death in

Two

Irish

Even

1870s a

Knox name ties

their buildings

were landmarks in

real estate

Corbitt's.^''

ways influenced the industry

their day.

During the 1860s and

New Yorker strolling up Broadway could not fail to notice the six-story

Building at 212 Broadway, every available space emblazoned with the of its owner,

where most

bought their hats. Just

a

of

New York's bankers,

politicians,

&

Co., surrounded

Devlin

&.

celebri-

by a ground-floor

colonnade of Corinthian columns and boasting the biggest display city.

and

few blocks north was the white marble Renais-

sance-style building of Daniel Devlin

the

at different

down by poor

immigrants deserve attention here, as they not only founded

successful and lasting businesses, but in different itself.

raised in

manufacturers,

window

in

Co. had pioneered quality discount clothing and was the

]^34 The Great Migration

biggest men's clothier in the city outside of Brooks Brothers.

The owners

of these

two leading garment businesses, located just blocks apart in downtown New York, had grown up on opposite sides of Lough Swilly, in County Donegal. Both had changed the way their respective trades were practiced and were among the

best-known businessmen in

their fields in the nation as

weU

as the city.

Daniel Devlin had emigrated to the United States in his teens as a "merchant tailor"

with a sense of adventure and a desire

to

work

for himself.

Landing in

went west, where he clerked on a Mississippi River steamboat and for a maker of "Kentucky jeans" before establishing a successful clothing business in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1844 he came to New York to 1834, he immediately

marry the daughter of a wealthy

Irish

immigrant

fruit importer,

Luke Corrigan.

His father-in-law then backed him financially as he set up a Western trade business in ready-made clothing, capitalizing on his Louisville connections.

He

soon added a profitable custom tailoring business that captured the patronage of "the city's leading Catholics," providing

him with

a cash base

with which to

expand. By 1849 he had brought his brother Jeremiah over from Ireland as a partner and had built up a business of close to $160,000 a year.

A decade later,

move to Broadway, he was doing nearly 1 times that. By then Devlin Co. claimed a work force of 150 cutters and clerks and 2,000 outwork hands

following a &.

and shipped

its

products to

South America, and Hawaii. Civil

War

the

all parts of It

company had

would

the United States, as well as to Cuba,

last for

53 years, and at

its

apex after the

three big stores on Broadway; had branches in

Washington, D.C., Richmond, Virginia, Annapolis, Maryland, and Lexington,

^/^

.

.

(

'^'^'^^

*-^£,^

yUj^L^r.l llrimdwayy;^^

I

Daniel Devlin, from County Donegal, was one of the pioneers of the men's ready-to-wear

market. This detail from a Devlin building Society)

at

the corner of

& Co. billhead dated October 7, 1863, shows the company

Broadway and Grand

Street. (Collection of

The

New -York Historical

Kentucky (and possibly one

and supplied fashionable

in Londonderry, Ireland);

men's clothing and military uniforms to a nationwide clientele that ranged from small-town bands in

New England to the U.S.

Naval Academy.^^

Early on Daniel Devlin established an efficient system of production, organization,

and

and Hatter

sales that

was

"running like clockwork" in 1877, the Clothier

still

reported, 10 years after his death. His idea of departmentalizing the

different branches of the operation

was imitated by others

like Patrick Rogers.

Cutters were transformed into specialists in one article of clothing. Partners

managing departments, and

participated in

his extended family played an

important role in the operation,- brothers seem to have handled company in Charleston

and

clerical clothing

affairs

New Orleans before the Civil War, and cousins managed the

department and the branch store in Richmond in the 1870s.

Devlin was quick to adapt other innovations as well; he was one of the only city manufacturers to be using sewing machines in 1855. Service was a keynote of the stores; they

swarmed with made from

recalled a lot of suits

The company

and in the 1870s the company even

clerks,

a material that

advertised liberally

all

over

was found

to fade in sunlight.

area (even in small

its selling

town

Centennial Exposition, and during the

papers), exhibited at the Philadelphia

1870s published a series of catalogs and guidebooks to popular places like Central

Park.'''

Daniel Devlin also broke the prevailing practice of negotiable pricing, usually

He introduced a form of discount pricing

bargained to the advantage of the seller. that, the firm claimed, &. Co.'s advertising

that "gentlemen

arrayed in

all

"caused a revolution" in the

motto was "low

profits,

and lads can walk in

.

.

and in

.

the glories of the well-dressed

pricing for good-quality clothes

made

city's

clothing trade. Devlin

promptness, and cash"; five

man

it

claimed

minutes walk out again,

of the period."

The lower

the store popular with upwardly mobile

immigrants, a factor that became a keystone of the business's success. The agent reports of R. G.

Dun

large

custom from the Catholics,"

large

Roman Catholic trade throughout the country

that

the most influential Catholics in this parts of the country as well

South and West."

field

& Co. state repeatedly that the firm had not only "a

.

.

.

is

to say, the Irish, of .

.

.

New York,

but "a

having the patronage of

they exert a great influence in other

city,

[giving him] a large wholesale patronage at the

And whether from

a sense of justice

and charity or the

"shrewd" business sense he was credited with by his contemporaries, Daniel Devlin also encouraged intracommunal patronage by identifying himself strongly

with the interests of the

city's

immigrant working class. He paid his employees

adequately by the standards of the day

employers

(

as did several other successful Irish

—Charles Knox, Patrick Rogers, and Edward Fox—according to avail-

able statistics).

He extended production

seasons to keep his workers employed,

and was so well-liked by the unions that a speaker

at a tailors' strike rally in

1850 singled him out as "a friend of the workingman." in a multitude of the city's Catholic

and

He was deeply

involved

Irish institutions, particularly the

Emigrant Industrial

186

Institute for the Protection of Catholic Children, the

The Great

Savings Bank, for which he served as treasurer for seven years, and the Friendly

Migration

Sons of

St. Patrick.

During the Civil War, Devlin

gratis to the Irish Brigade,

&

Co. furnished uniforms

while Daniel served as chairman of

its

Executive

Committee.'*"

Daniel Devlin's "shrewd" business sense, his ability to "make

by anticipating trends ruthlessness were

in a volatile business environment,

money

fast"

even his occasional

much commented on by his contemporaries. He was the only

immigrant clothier to be active in public service during this era of Mayor George

Andrew Johnson

Opdyke and

President

chamberlain

(treasurer)

(both former tailors); he served as city

from 1860 until he died in 1867. Devlin

his death but floundered badly during the 1870s. oil

land in Ohio was settled against his estate after his death.

of depression

books that drained

its

company shut down store,

all its

limping on until

The long

it

the firm, particularly a

all its profits for

period

skimming

several years. In 1880 the

branches and consolidated into the Warren Street

was assigned

Charles Knox parlayed a genius for to the rich

Co. survived

and stagnation between 1873 and 1877 was complicated by

mismanagement and corruption within operation on

dk

A stock fraud case involving

in 1897."^'

self -promotion

and famous into a national

and a reputation as hatter

line of fine hats that

proved to be the

most enduring of the Irish-owned clothing businesses of the period. Knox built his reputation on the quality of his hats. The trade magazine Clothier and Hatter credited

Knox with having

of English styles

"led the

by proving his

way

in asserting (American) independence

ability to originate

more

graceful shapes than

could be imported. " Even more significant was his innovative use of advertising,

on which he lavished huge sums for the day. Knox bypassed the ad columns for the news pages. Newspapers eager for filler material were happy to print seemingly informative articles Knox sent them on current topics, but which after a

few paragraphs turned into paeans to Knox

hats.

publicity by leading the two-year public fight against the

Broadway

at

He garnered much free Loew footbridge across

Fulton Street (the structure blocked light and access to his store)

in the mid- 1860s.

Knox expanded steadily through the 1870s and 1880s, establishing a store uptown under the Fifth Avenue Hotel, called by Clothier and Hatter "the most elegant establishment of this kind in the country." Despite the elder Knox's solid reputation,

he nearly met ruin twice, in 1 863 and 1 878, but wealthy friends

He gradually built up a wholesale operation, which by 1885 had grown too large for his downtown building, and he moved his manufacturing facilities to a huge new factory in Brooklyn. By that time his product line had bailed

him

out.

expanded from

silk hats to include

standard issue for

many

items like police helmets which became

of the country's big-city departments. Like Daniel

Knox had also been an active supporter of the Irish Brigade, company of troops when the war broke out. His son Edward was a

Devlin,

recruiting

a

colonel in

the unit and was awarded the Congressional

over the

began to

company fail

after his father's

in 1913 the

Medal of Honor. Edward Knox took

death in 1895, but

company was

when his own health Knox Hats were

sold to outsiders.

eventually absorbed into the giant Connecticut-based Hat Corporation of Amer-

which continued

ica,

to

make and market

the line into the 1950s.'*^

much the same who had succeeded. They tended to move out of the

Successful Irish entrepreneurs in the clothing trades behaved as did their contemporaries city,

particularly during the early 1850s, to the then-suburbs: Rogers to Wil-

liamsburg, Leary to an estate on Staten Island, Daniel Devlin to an Italianate villa

overlooking the Hudson in Manhattanville. James Leary sent his children

to be educated in the city's best private of

William

B. Astor,-

and public schools alongside the

Daniel Devlin entertained fellow members of the

Catholic elite on board his yacht. Daniel Devlin and Charles acreage, houses,

owners in the

and hotels; Knox was said to be "one of the

city,

likes city's

Knox owned

largest property

owning 28 private houses, three hotels and a farm of 33 acres Edward Fox, one of the pioneer clothiers of Broadway,

in the Bronx." Clothier

The

interior of the

Knox Hat store at No. 212 Broadway, corner of Fulton Street,

Donegal native Charles Knox, one of

New

York's

most important

hatters,

c.

1870s. County

was a genius

at

self-promotion and advertising. The extenor of this five-story building was emblazoned on every available space with the

(Collection of

name "Knox," and Knox hats were nationally known down to the

The New-York

Historical Society)

1950s.

188

owed much

The Great

hits," the

Migration

modest means put some in

makes good of more

of his six-figure wealth to real estate speculation; "he

New

York Trade Agency reported. But even individuals of their resources into buildings

and undeveloped

Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Westchester. Patrick CoUigan, owner of business at 323 West Street, not only "had

sailors' clothing

but

owned

five dilapidated old

money

a

lots

small

at interest"

frame buildings with three storefronts "worth

$10,000 mortgaged." Even the radical labor activist and tailor Robert Blissert

caught this speculative fever in the 1 880s, buying acreage and lots at Whitestone at auction for $200;

in the R. G.

by 1886

it

was reported

to be

worth $1,500. In

more

fact, of

Irish clothing business

owners, both large and small, found

Dun & Co. field agent reports,

about a third owned real estate, often

than 60 entries on

undeveloped or

rented.*'^

The strong Irish presence in the clothing trades came to an almost abrupt end in the

870s.

1

were in

By the end of that decade, the Irish in New York's clothing industry

a swift decline in

numbers and

influence, as evidenced by the listings

in the city's business directories. In Wilson's Business Directory for 1880 only

7 Irish-surnamed clothiers are listed, as opposed to 56 (81 in the state census) in 1855,

and the number

secondhand clothing dealers had

of Irish-surnamed

dropped to 7 from 1 5 only five years before. Only the number of retail hat dealers held steady at 25, and a

number

of

new Irish-surnamed

dealers in the

new

specialty of gentleman's furnishing stores

had appeared. But in Trow's Business

Directory for 1892 the Irish presence

a

clothiers

and 5 secondhand clothing

that had been such an important

is

mere

dealers.

The

trace: 5 retail Irish

and wholesale

abandoned

this industry

economic gateway for several reasons.

Clearly,

they no longer saw the clothing industry as a source of real opportunities. The long depression that followed the panic of 1873 not only shook giants like

Devlin

& Co. and Knox but it wiimowed out many smaller Irish-owned clothing

firms. Moreover, even

if

tailoring

and hatting in the city started a road to

riches for a few and brought others to the brink of entry into the city's middle class, for

most these trades meant

a lifetime of struggle to

keep working,

of

near-poverty and tedious work, "a fight against mishaps, disappointments

and adversity, " as an Irish immigrant shoemaker described his lot Unions could .

help guarantee good wages and continuous work, but none of the trades could

As immigrants who had arrived in the 1 840s and 1850s way to get out did so. By the 1870s, Unionists George Clancy and Robert Crowe had jobs as city inspectors, and many others had left their trade or the city. Most of the second generation of Irish in the city looked for opportunites outside the largely sweated clothing trades. As the offer security in old age.

aged, those

who

could find a

Brooklyn Eagle noted in 1884, "American boys,"

who by

this

time included

second-generation Irish Americans, "avoid tailoring, preferring to enter stores as clerks to sitting cross-legged

on

a table or trying to learn the genius-requiring

art of cutting," despite the fact that "a cutter

makes

a salary nearly four

times

as great as that given an adult clerk." Moreover, Irish-founded clothing busi-

nesses,

with the notable exception of Knox Hats, were not carried on

beyond the lifetimes

The

of the original founders.

businesses were small, and turnover in the style-sensitive industry

Dun

Irish-owned businesses identified in the R. G.

a

&

the

1

Dun

&.

850s, 7

went out

Co.

high.

my sample from

field

the

agent reports of 44 Irish-owned businesses active during city,

3 proprietors died, and

end

1

5 failed or

of the decade, a turnover rate of

otherwise

more than

50 percent. Moreover, the movement of the Irish masses out of their first downtown neighborhoods depleted the ethnic population base for intracommu-

had helped

and sustain their countrymen in the

to establish

retail trades.'*''

The Irish were replaced on the ground floor of the clothing industry by newer immigrant groups. Germans had begun to outnumber them as early as 1855.

The of

late

and

later

tailors,

emigrating from

from Russia. Only 3.5 percent

United States between 1875 and 1898 were percent counted as English. Over the next tailors

new wave of hundreds Germany and Austria-Hungary

1870s and 1880s saw the beginnings of a huge

thousands of Jewish

at first

1

Irish,

of the tailors

who

entered the

along with a portion of the 7.3

6 years, as the immigration of Jewish

swelled to a total of nearly a quarter million, that percentage declined to

an imperceptible 0.5 percent."^ Technological changes in clothing manufacturing favored these newer immigrants.

Most

significantly,

with the increasing use of sewing machines

(first

introduced two decades earlier but slow to be adopted) and the cutting knife, the first

clothing factories began to appear in

New

York

operatives in these factories assembled garments at

in the 1870s.

huge banks

growing number of German employers hired Jewish male

machines

to replace

sewing

women

Hundreds

of machines.

tailors to operate

of

The

sewing

because of their physical strength. Finally,

during the 1880s Russian Jewish tailors introduced the task system, wherein teams of tailors working on specialized tasks

the mainstay of Irish

American

lowered the labor cost of making men's coats,

tailors,

by 25 percent between 1876 and 1883.

Hatting in the city changed as well. As the silk hat declined somewhat in popularity after the Civil War, losing ground as a dress hat to the

newly

introduced derby, production shifted from the city's small manufactories to Brooklyn, which developed one of the nation's largest concentrations of hat factories (Knox's

New

in

York's

1830-1880

of business before the

custom and

and Artisans

Clothing Industry,

moved out of the

nal patronage that

Entrepreneurs

most common; the outbreak

few cases and overextended or shaky credit in others. In

R. G.

was

Co. field agent reports

189 Iriih

business misjudgments; a corrupt partner; alcohol abuse in

failed for a variety of reasons: financial panics, the of "the Rebellion";

for long

great majority of their

among

them). Manhattan, however, retained

and distribution center, and continued to provide businesses. In this line, the

numbers

of Irish

fertile

as sales

for retail hat

remained steady as they declined

elsewhere in the clothing trades. There were as retailers in the city directories of the

its role

ground

many

Irish-surnamed hat

1880s and 1890s, about two dozen, as there

had been in the 1850s, the only area where this was

true."*^

Moreover, the

190

Irish

had almost nothing

to

do with the period of takeoff

when pent-up postwar soaring. Some

The Great

experienced by the clothing industry after the Civil War,

Migration

demand, population growth, and immigration sent production Irish entrepreneurs

had proved astute in finding ways to expand the markets

their products through pricing of the industry that

for

and advertising, but they operated within spheres

can be seen as readily transferable from Ireland, as witnessed

to custom tailoring and to the trade in secondhand clothing. would be entrepreneurs from other groups, particularly German and later Russian Jews (along with the few surviving Yankee firms like Brooks Brothers

by their gravitation It

and Browning,

King),

who would

bring the industry into the mass consumer

markets of the twentieth century through product innovation.

women's clothing. A few of the city's biggest hoop skirt manufacturer in the

first

is

A case in point

cloak dealers were

Irish,

and the

was an immigrant from England with the intriguingly Gaelic name of Austin Kelly. But on the whole the Irish had almost nothing to do with the rise of the women's garment industry, the fastest-growing segment of the industry after the Civil War, which in only 50 years achieved parity in production with men's clothing. It was pioneered by Jews, as were most other new product lines in men's clothing. In city in 1860

the 1850s Jewish enterprise had been largely confined to the secondhand clothing

Chatham Street and to a few shirt manufacturers. By 1887, after earUer German Jewish entrepreneurs had become estabUshed and the influx from Russia trade of

had begun, the trade magazine Clothier and Furnisher credited Jews with "control of seven-eighths" of the clothing trade,

with "a monopoly" of the

turing industry, and with pioneering the

mass production

shirt

of cloaks

manufac-

and undergar-

ments for both men and women. Jewish entrepreneurs had Uttle competition from existing businesses in these new lines, and opened up the potential for Hterally thousands of Jewish contractors to supply them."*^

This process of ethnic succession in the garment industry continues to this

day and has been documented in recent years. In the contemporary women's

garment industry in

New York, Chinese and Dominican workers and entrepre-

neurs are replacing the Jews and Italians factors at

work here

who were

are "opportunity structures"

—which

specific industries

formerly dominant. Several

—economic factors within

encourage entrepreneurship on the part of

immigrants and are as essential to the success of their enterprises factors

hard.

such as

a historic predisposition to business or the willingness to

These internal

factors include

immigrant access

to

new

as "cultural"

work

ownership positions

because of expansion within an industry or abandonment by the native-bom;

low entry

barriers, including

low

capital requirements,- "blocked mobility" or

a lack of opportunities in other fields, and "ethnic resources," including access to capital

and ethnic networking, which

for

some immigrant entrepreneurs

enabled them to hire reliable and motivated workers.

how

a convergence of these

of the 1830s

same

factors in

and 1840s created a window

It is

not difficult to see

New York City's clothing industry

of opportunity for the Irish: a rapidly

expanding industry that encouraged newcomers and accommodated a plethora of

market niches; low capital requirements

New

tendency within nities to

for starting a

small business,- and a

York's huge and rapidly expanding immigrant

buy from and employ people from

commu-

suggests in part an entrepreneurial spirit not usually associated with them, but

seems

to

have existed among them in other

fields in

experience of the Irish in the clothing trades in that of the Boston Irish. There, the "Boston

New

New York as well. The

York clearly

differs

from

system" of ready-made clothing

manufacturing, a form of factory production combining limited mechanization with

an "infinite subdivision of labor" to virtually eliminate the skilled

was

artisan entirely,

with

little

built

on unskilled and cheap

New

York,

space available on Manhattan for heavy industry, the city's manufac-

economy mushroomed

turing

Irish labor.'*' In

in the early nineteenth century through an

expansion of what has been referred to as the skill-intensive "consumer finishing trades."^"

These included trades that in

skill-intensive

and attracted individuals trained in them

tries.

Some

their preindustrial

form were

home counand German

in their

recent historians have seen the entrance of Irish

immigrants into contracting-dominated trades like tailoring as evidence of those trades becoming "de-skilled." tailoring

and hatting in

and their multitude skilled artisans.

workers

of

New

On

the contrary, the bulk of the Irish in

York, with their gravitation to the custom trade

small and large businesses, suggests a population of

Their early tendency to organize also suggests they were

who were aware of the value of their skills. Some of the Irish tailors who settled in New York seem to have attained a kind of stability

and hatters

and independence, and a few made tailors,

it

into the middle class as cutters,

or small business owners. R. G.

to Irish subjects as "frugal," "saving,"

Dun

effort to

put

to protect their gains

money away by acquiring

custom

Co. field agents frequently refer

"hardworking," or "shrewd," hardly the

stereotype of the famine-era immigrant.

made an

&.

Most

have

of these artisans appear to

in banks; the

more entrepreneurial moved

real estate.

Moreover, the tremendous diversity and expansion of industry attracted the creative, like Daniel

New

York's clothing

Edward Ryan, and those with

clearly

entrepreneurial goals, like Daniel Devlin or Patrick Rogers, along with those

focused simply on surviving and supporting a family.

among them were

The

earliest-comers

clearly favored as the industry's expansion accelerated, but

the Irish continued to perceive the clothing business as a source of opportunity after the Civil

War. The most successful of these Irish clothiers,

hatters eagerly

embraced

tailors,

and

a role as gatekeepers to respectability for the city's

immigrants, the source for a $5 hat that looked just like an expensive beaver or for a

discounted suit from one of Broadway's most elegant clothing palaces.

Neither initiators nor the sole proponents of the

Entrepreneurs

and Artisans

New

their old homelands."*^

The Irish never dominated the clothing industry in the way that the Jews came to. But the fact that they took advantage of such opportunities as they saw it

191 Irish

movement toward

the

in

York's

Clothing Industry,

1830-1880

192

"democratization" of dress in America that began during the nineteenth century

The Great

and that virtually erased the visual distinctions in status signaled by

Migration

kinds and grades of clothing, they nonetheless seem to have been

most enthusiastic proponents. The presence carmot account

of

for the proclivity for business

different

among its among them

some Scotch-Irish some of them showfed. Of

three major figures studied here v^^hose religious background

the

known, two,

is

Rogers and Devlin, were Catholics, as were James Leary and hat jobber Patrick Corbitt.

That the former two and Charles Knox were natives

mainly that because

it

they were better able to

of Ulster indicates

most prosperous and urbanized province envision and plan for success than were those from

was

Ireland's

poorer parts of the island.^' If

political prowess, rather

than business enterprise, has traditionally been

credited for the eventual Irish success in America, then perhaps

New York's case The numbers

deserves a closer look, particularly in terms of elite formation.

and percentage

of Irish in the city's construction

and maritime trades in the

1855 state census closely resemble those in clothing. Although some recent historians have seen this influx as evidence of a decline in artisan traditions in

these trades, to the ethnic historian they can begin to

opportunity perceived by artisans trained elsewhere. largest population center, busiest port,

too, the

another story, of an as the nation's

and financial hub, was likewise an

incubator for small and large businesses.

abundantly represented here,

tell

New York,

It is

significant that the Irish

were

1855 state census revealing them to be

the single largest ethnic group of "shopkeepers" in the

city. Irish

immigrant

businesses founded or active during this period ranged from neighborhood grocers

and junk dealers

T. Stewart

to the city's largest, the

the shipyard of John Roach.

on the

department stores of Alexander

and Hugh O'Neill, the construction company of John Crimmins, and

Irish

The success of these businesses had a

direct

impact

immigrant. Most of them provided employment, of course, but

perhaps the most significant effects were connected to the strength of institutions that sustained or helped the immigrant advance in his or her

new country.

For clothier Daniel Devlin had counterparts in other fields in the city: successful Irish-born businessmen

Hugh

Kelly,

elite that

hke James

Kerrigan,

Andrew

Carrigan,

Terence Donnelly, and numerous others

Henry Hoguet,

who formed

a Catholic

helped finance and provide lay leadership for the growth of the

Catholic Church in the metropolis, and that founded and directed other

insti-

tutions that assisted the immigrant, from the Catholic Protectory to the

Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank.^^

Edward

Spann

K.

CHAPTER 8

Union Green THE

IRISH

COMMUNITY AND THE

-L HE CIVIL

WAR

CIVIL

WAR

offered Irish

Americans

New

in

York and elsewhere a unique opportunity to establish themselves as American citizens Irish

and

patriots. After

decades of nativist agitation against them,

volunteered to defend the nation against the rebellious South.

many

The

Irish

Union cause, said Charles Halpine, himself a volunteer as well as a journalist, was motivated by "the thought that he was earning a title, which no foul tongue or niggardly heart would dare to dispute, to the full equality and fraternity of an American citizen." In all, more than 140,000 men of Irish birth soldier in the

fought for the Union, roughly a third from

New York City and vicinity.

In four

on America, although achievement became tinged with disappointment and was obscured by

years of bloody conflict they strengthened their claim this

increasing opposition to the direction of the war.'

Throughout, this "Union Green" was motivated by special

Irish

concerns as

well as American patriotism and did not claim to stand for a true blue devotion

war effort. From the start, the Irish had no confidence in Union government of Abraham Lincoln and his Republican party. Before

to every aspect of the

the

the war, they had supported the Democratic party, identifying the Republicans

with a nativistic "puritanism" that threatened their religion and their general interests.

They especially condemned Republican leanings toward abolitionism

as favoring black people over

white people like themselves.^ Although not

many sympathized with

194

necessarily sympathetic to slavery,

The Great

south as a defender of the established order against abolitionism and intrusive

Migration

power. In February 1861, for instance, the

the slaveholding

New York Irish-American

urged

its

"We deprecate the idea of Irish- Americans — who have themselves suffered so much for opinions sake not only at home but here even — volunteering to coerce those with whom they have readers not to fight against southern secessionism:

no

direct connection."

It

was with such thoughts

Mitchel, the grandfather of a future

that the Irish patriot John

mayor of New York,

joined the Confederacy,

eventually sacrificing two of his sons to that cause.''

When most the

the Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, however,

of the

New York

were ready

Irish

to defend the

Union.

men had participated in various militia units like the

"Irish National Grenadiers." Generally, these

marching in the annual little

St. Patrick's

many

of

amateur soldiers did little beyond

Day parade, but they

experience with arms and tactics.

Earlier,

"Erin Guard" and the

Many believed

did acquire at least a

that they were training

themselves not only for the defense of America but also for the armed liberation of Ireland

weaken

from English

rule. In 1853,

British power, they

1859, with the prospect of

declared

it

when

Crimean War promised

the

formed three regiments

for that purpose,

to

and in

war between England and France, the Irish-American

"the sacred duty of every Irishman at

home and

abroad to prepare

himself to fight the battle of his country [Ireland] and kindred

when and how

he may."'* In

1

860

this militancy

made

the strongest Irish militia unit, the Sixty-ninth

Regiment, a focus of controversy. By then, the regiment had elected as

commander a future military hero, Michael Corcoran. Bom in Donegal in Corcoran had in 1849 migrated to in the Fenian

when he

movement

its

1827,

New York, where he became a leading figure

for Irish freedom.^ In

1860 he

won much

attention

refused to parade the Sixty-ninth for the visiting Prince of Wales, a

disobedience that involved

him

in a lengthy court-martial proceeding in early

When the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, however, Corcoran called on all men to defend the Union and his trial was quashed, encoiu-aging a rush 1861.

of Irish volunteers into the military, especially into the Sixty-ninth Regiment.^

Not

all Irish

that

it

editor,

effort. The Freeman's Journal, the was so hostile to the Union govemment

opinion favored the war

leading Catholic newspaper in the

was banned from the

city,

federal mails

James McMaster, pledged that

of the Constitution

it

(it

was, in

effect,

suppressed) until

would "not be devoted

to the

its

overthrow

and the Union." Even the Journal, however, expressed pride

in the willingness of Irishmen to volunteer for service. In any case,

its

influence

was outweighed by the Irish-American, the leading journal of secular opinion, which ardently supported the Union military effort throughout the war despite its dislike of Lincoln and abolitionism. This newspaper which devoted most of its front page to "home" news from Ireland claimed a circulation of more

—

—

than33,000inl861.^

Additional support

came from

the Irish-Catholic hierarchy, most notably

from Archbishop John Hughes. Soon tially to

sisted &.

The Insh

the Lincoln administration that since the Sixty-ninth regiment con-

Community and

almost entirely of

Irish Catholics

he took "a deep interest on the honor

bravery with which they shall conduct themselves during the campaign."*

The archbishop's

interests extended

to a southerner's

argument that

that

beyond

his favorite regiment.

Irish Catholics

had often despised them, he declared that

defend the nation that had granted position, churches in

them

Responding

had no obligation to a society

all

naturalized citizens ought to

citizenship. In confirmation of this

New York flew the national flag,

Catholic to warn that their practice might "bring

provoking one southern

down

the curse of

God" on

them.'

Such support was important for the Union cause. In 1 860, there were upward of

200,000 Irish-bom people in

New

York, a full one-quarter of the city's

human mass at the economic center of the nation and manpower. Irishmen volunteered for service in many other

population, a formidable a

major source of

regiments besides the Sixty-ninth. Another was the Seventy-fifth Regiment, the "Irish Rifles," originally

formed

in 1861, the Seventy-fifth

count, at least

The Union

was

in the 1850s

with the hope of freeing

Ireland;

recruited to near full strength in a week.

By one

other regiments formed in the city had numerous Irish recruits

1

said the Irish-American, "shall never be trailed in the dust

flag,

Irish-American hearts and heads can keep

it

gloriously aloft.

if

"'°

Undoubtedly, one cause of this rush to service was the high rate of unemployment among Irishmen, which was bad enough during normal times but was made all the worse by the economic uncertainties arising from secession. In April, the Irish-American said that

many of the volunteers were

workers whose situation had become "almost disastrous. " for

money, though,

of military life

a dual patriotism

^ ^

Beyond the need

— one often enhanced by the glamour

—inspired men to volunteer both to prove their devotion to

Union and to advance their hopes for a free Ireland. In 1862, Archbishop Hughes said that many had enlisted with the thought of preparing themselves, by "becoming thoroughly acquainted with the implements of war," for the liberation of their homeland. In this American and Irish patriotism there seemed no contradiction.'^ Although there were enhstments in many mihtary units, it was the Sixtythe

ninth that symbolized Irish involvement in the war, and left

New

York

it

societies joining

ners

195

Sumter, Hughes wrote confiden-

after Fort

was given an enthusiastic it

when on

April 23

it

send-off, the various Irish civic

in a procession through the streets

under "waving ban-

— the harp of Erin kissing the stars and stripes." When the regiment reached

Washington,

it

marched through

a cheering

crowd of onlookers to its temporary

home at Georgetown College. After receiving some training in mihtary tactics, the Sixty-ninth was moved to the Virginia side of the Potomac for the defense of Washington.''^

the Civil

War

196 The Great Migration

In May, the Freeman's Journal expressed the hope that the Confederates would not attack a regiment of "men who have been in politics the steadfast friends of the South." This hope was shattered in July by the first battle of Bull

Run. In what was otherwise an ignominious defeat

for the

Union, the Sixty-

won praise by bravely sustaining the fight until, under orders, it withdrew without panic, but it suffered heavy losses, including 39 killed. Many of its men were captured; one of them was Colonel Corcoran, who was to spend the next ninth

year in a Confederate

prison.'"*

These losses deeply affected the impelling

war

years.

fighting

it

Irish

American community

to initiate cooperative efforts that

From

men.

the begirming, the

to help equip

Daly headed

a

committee

York State

Meagher

Militia,

later that

for its

Patrick contributed P.

to provide similar support for the Seventy-fifth.

,

at

St.

York,

during the

and sustain the Sixty-ninth, and Judge Charles

Departure of the Sixty-ninth Regiment on April 23, 1861 as

and Hibernian Hall

New

it

community had provided support

In April, for instance, the Friendly Sons of

some $1,500

in

were to strengthen

Mott and Prince

Streets.

which became part of the

it

passed Old

The Sixty-ninth was an

Irish Brigade that

year Recruiting for the Union army

among

St.

Patricks Cathedral

all-Irish unit of the

New

was formed by Thomas Francis the

New York

Irish

emphasized

support for the Constitution and duty to one's country that was easily reconciled with the sentiments of Irish nationalism. The green flag of Ireland flew patriotism (that the

Gem

is,

good

citizenship)

was

reflected in headlines like

of the Ocean." (Lithograph by Sarony, Major

Historical Society)

at all recruiting rallies

"The Emerald

Isle

and

Irish

Will Aid

& Knapp. Collection of The New-York

Recognizing that the famihes of volunteers often had nity

formed

committee

a relief

thousand dollars had been

The a class

money, the commu-

By May

several

with contributors vowing to continue their

in the field.

'^

by holding

was estimated

that

a "festival" at Jones' Wood, charging 25 cents admission. some 60,000 people attended the event, one of the largest

crowds ever to assemble in the dollars raised at Jones'

city.

Until the end of winter, the thousands of

Wood and elsewhere were

distributed to the dependents

who had been killed, wounded, or captured. Although assistance became available from other sources, including the city government, community support for families met a critical need. In December 1861, when public '''

of volunteers

relief

some 200

temporarily ran out,

Tompkins Square into the souldiers,

This organized

to protest, as

and now you have relief effort

desperate wives of soldiers gathered in

one of them put to

it,

that "you have got

kepe us from

helped to prepare the

me men

starving."'''

way

for the greatest Irish

military adventure of the war. In late July the Sixty-ninth returned home, having lost nearly its

20 percent of

march through the

its

city.

1,276

men.

It

received an enthusiastic

When its battle flags came into view,

welcome on

said a reporter,

"their rapped

and discolored appearance excited the most vehement applause."'^

Technically,

it

which

it

was

to be disbanded, having

had been enlisted, but many of

its

completed the three months

for

men were eager to return to combat.

Moreover, the regiment was becoming the nucleus for an ambitious military plan, the creation of a

whole

Irish brigade consisting of several

New York City. The idea had the sanction of tradition,

regiments from

there having been Irish

brigades in service for various governments as early as the eighteenth century. In the late

1

850s an Irish brigade had fought for the Papal

gratitude of the Pope for

More than

a

states,

winning the

its faithful service.''

month before

the Sixty-ninth returned, the Irish-American had

urged the organization of Irish soldiers from the city into one powerful force:

"Would

it

not revive the inspiring memories of the Irish Brigade in other lands,

and stimulate our armed countrymen in the ranks

of the

Union host

to rival

which history has immortalized." There were some doubts about the Although Archbishop Hughes liked it as a way to protect the Catholic

the deeds plan.

faithful in a largely Protestant

warning that

if

army, he was concerned about ethnic labeling,

military units were specifically linked to Irish,

other ethnic groups "there will be trouble

enemy comes

into sight. "^°

ready to create

its

197 The

among

German, and

the troops even before the

By September, however, the

own brigade, and had found the man

Irish

community was

to lead

it.

With Corcoran in a Confederate prison, attention focused on Thomas Francis Meagher. In 1849, the rebellious Meagher had been exiled by British authorities from Ireland to Tasmania, from which he eventually escaped to New York City.

Irish

Community and the Civil

Run abruptly forced an expansion of this effort by creating of widows and orphans, and in August the community raised money for Battle of Bull

their relief It

raised,

men were

support as long as the

little

to provide for their support.

War

1

98

Within a few years after his escape, he had become an American citizen, married

New

Yorker, and founded the weekly Irish iVevvs.^'

The Great

the daughter of a rich

Migration

brought this same energy to the mihtary.

company, the

Irish

Zouaves, and succeeded in attaching

ninth Regiment. At Bull Rim, he

He

splendid white horse.

urging his

won

lost his cap,

it

to Corcoran's Sixty-

the notice of one observer:

"He rode

a

and was remarkable in his bare head,

men forward." Not all reports were so favorable: Some officers of the

Sixty-ninth later told Maria Daly, the wife of

community

R

enough sense and elation

Daly, that in the battle

forward and afterward troopers.

He

When war broke out, he raised his own

Meagher "had

fell

just

leader Judge Charles to rush

from his horse drunk, and was picked up by the

"^^

Whatever the

truth,

Meagher succeeded

in

wirming community support

for

himself and for the brigade, in part by carrying his message to such places as Niblo's Theater, where he spoke to a packed audience gathered to see the Irish

comedy, "Colleen Bawn." Recruitment began with the Sixty-ninth, each of the its own office in a distinct men in a company would be drawn from

eight companies of the regiment recruiting through location, increasing the chance that the

same neighborhood. Father William Corby, a chaplain, said later that the members of the brigade were "healthy, intelligent men far above average, " many the

having a good education including "seven 1861,

first-class lawyers." Before

more than two thousand volunteers had been organized

regiments from

New York City,

the end of

into three

the 63rd, 69th, and the 88th."

The months of preparation in late 1861 energized the community. Determined to "sustain the Brigade at every cost," businessmen and other leaders formed the Irish Brigade Committee to provide long-term support for the men and

their famihes.

collecting field life.

Soon

its

various subcommittees were "earnestly at work"

money, encouraging recruitment, and equipping the

and banners

for the regiments, a task that fell especially to

were intended

inducement

to represent the

community

in battle

women,- such

flags

and became a strong

one member of the Sixty-ninth had disRun by abandoning the regimental flag, Maria Daly noted

for heroic action. After

graced himself at Bull

with some relish that he did not dare show his face in

men

men for battle-

Of great symbohc importance was the effort to furnish identifying flags

having "declared he shall be shot

if

he

does."""*

New

York,

some

of the

This disgrace was not

repeated. In the middle of

November,

a

crowd gathered

at the

camp

of the Sixty-third

regiment (the third regiment of the brigade) to witness the presentation of the regimental colors. With the troops drawn up in formation nificent,"

wrote a reporter, the young

women

— "they looked mag-

responsible for

making the

flags

formally presented their work, including a special green flag inscribed with the

motto, "wounded but not conquered." Similar ceremonies were held for the other units. Mrs. Meagher presented the colors to the Eighty-eighth Regiment,

making it as it was sometimes called "Mrs. Meagher's Own." To the Sixty-ninth

went the a

special flag

committee

of

made by

women

Tiffany and

Company under arrangements with

headed by Maria Daly

—a green flag with an Irish harp

Threaded through these ceremonies was the hope that service and

war would,

words

in the

of

unworthy

American patriotism were avowals

this

of citizenship."

America

one green regimental

said of

native land

.

.

.

less

flag that "it

Dillon,

reminds us

we

are exiles

from our

"^^

was infused with the Catholic

Irish Brigade also

which

M.

the symbol of the hopes, the memories, the past glories and

Archbishop Hughes had warned against ethnic in

J.

but he loved Ireland more." Another speaker

future destinies of a chivalrous people.

The

Often

of continued devotion to

the Irish homeland, such as the declaration of a brigade chaplain, that he "did not love

sacrifice

one speaker, end "forever the charges against the

naturalized citizen and the Catholic, as being

mixed with

Irish Catholics

labels,

Although

religion.

he favored military units

could practice their faith under the guidance of

Catholic chaplains. Chaplains had served from the beginning with the old Sixty-ninth.

Square,

Reverend R.

J.

Mooney, pastor of St.

Bridget's

Church

in

Tompkins

accompanied the regiment south, endeavoring with some success to

make the men "good christians and brave soldiers returned

home before the

—a body of patriots.

"

Mooney

Battle of Bull Run, but his successor. Father O'Reilly,

narrowly escaped death in the battle, "his clothes being perforated with bullets, while attending the

wounded

in the field.

"^'^

Such

men

helped to set the

standards for the chaplains of the Irish brigade. In a predominantly Protestant military, the priests played a special role as

protectors of the Catholic faith sions,

and giving

and their families

last rites.

at

and morality, holding

They

also

services, hearing confes-

were important links between the

men

home, helping to maintain a correspondence between them

men used their pay—eventually millions of —to support their dependents. In August 1862, for instance, the wife of

and also trying to ensure that the dollars

one soldier wrote to Father William Corby (chaplain of the Eighty-eighth

Regiment and a future president

of

Notre

she had not heard from her husband for the children are in complete want.

gave you ... 24 dollars and

if

He

Dame

University) complaining that

more than

toled

[sic]

he did please send

five

me it

months, "and

me

and

in his last letter that

he

on." Corby and the others

acted as bankers for the men, arranging the transfer of their pay to their

homes

and also taking charge of their savings. ^^

And so priestly black mixed with Irish green and Union blue to make a special Corby would describe the Irish Brigade as a "body of about marching— most of them— to death but also to the glory of their Church and country." The full extent of this destiny was not immediately unit. Later, Father

4,000 Catholics

reahzed. In late 1861 the brigade left

goodbyes. Throughout most of its of the

Irish

Community and

at its center."

in

199 The

Potomac,

it

was

New

first six

York, evoking cheers and tearful

months in Virginia as part of the Army

generally sheltered from both glory and death by the

the Civil

War

200

cautious strategy of General George B. McClellan. In the spring of 1862,

The Great

however, McClellan initiated the Peninsula Campaign, and in June the brigade

Migration

received

its

baptism of blood

with more to follow. In July

1

at the Battle of Fair

Oaks, suffering heavy losses,

^^

New York hoping to recruit 2,000 men to On July 25 people crowded into the Seventh

862 Meagher returned to

bring the brigade to full strength.

Regiment Armory

to hear

him recount

his losses

and appeal

to their Irish as

well as American patriotism.^" Indirectly, his effort received the support of

who had spent the previous months in Europe speaking for Union cause. Returning in July, Hughes gave what the New York Times termed a "War Sermon," in which he urged a maximum military effort to bring the war to an early end. Later, he justified his call as being in the interest of humanity and peace, adding that "the country, as I knew it was one, and I hope it shall never be called upon to recognize it as two.""" Both Meagher and the Archbishop were soon overshadowed by Michael Corcoran, who in August was finally freed in a prisoner exchange from a Archbishop Hughes, the

Confederate prison. Having been appointed a Brigadier-General, he reached

New York City on August 22, where he received what the Irish-American called the greatest "ovation extended by the Empire City to any public man of modem times," including a grand procession of the Irish civic societies. Such

was the

enthusiasm, said the Irish-American, that Corcoran could have raised a whole division of 10,000

men, exciting hopes that

"all the Irish valor,

endurance, and

energy that this war had called forth might be concentrated in one grand army." It

soon became apparent, however, that Corcoran had no interest in sharing a

command with Meagher. By the end of September he had begim to organize his owTi brigade, the "Corcoran Legion," having persuaded the city government to give a special bonus to early enlistees in In a

month, more than 4,000

recruits,

it.^^

many

of

them from outside the

were hastily assembled into four regiments, and in

late

city,

October Archbishop

priests, gave them a mass blessing. One of the recruits was the archbishop's nephew, Tracy R Hughes, a member of General Corcoran's staff. It was, said a reporter, "a most impressive sight to see over four thousand

Hughes, assisted by 10

men kneeling,

in reverence,

under the bright sky." In November the regiments

boarded transports, and by the end of the month they were in Virginia. After

whirlwind organization, however, the Corcoran Legion was to see

little

its

action

for nearly a year.^^

In contrast, the last Brigade.

On

months

of 1862 brought bloody disaster to the Irish

September 17 Meagher's partly reinforced regiments were thrown

into battle at Antietam, of the battle the of deadly fire

men

where they fought with reckless courage.

advanced up a

hill

from entrenched Confederate

they had forced the

enemy

to retreat.

In

one phase

under their green banners in the face

The

units, cheering as they

went

until

colors of the Sixty-third Regiment,

wrote a reporter, "were shot down sixteen times, and on each occasion a

man

was ready to spring forward and place the colors in front " During this one battle, 506 of the brigade's 3,000 men were either killed or wounded.^'* .

Five years later, John

F.

Maguire, in The Irish in America, said that Irish

American mihtary organizations like the brigade imposed on their members far

more than the ordinary dangers of military life: because of his dual loyalty, the Irish-American soldier was doubly driven by concern for reputation, "for if he fought as an American citizen, he also fought as an Irish exile. "^^ Beyond that,

members

New

of the brigade also felt a special obligation to the Irish

community

in

which they were reminded by their battle flags, the gift of the community. It was a heady but also dangerous mixture of loyalties, a recipe for York, of

reckless heroism.

Less than

two months

On

after

Antietam, this pattern repeated

itself at

Freder-

men to wear sprigs of green boxwood in their caps as signs of their Irish identity. On that day, icksburg.

December

the morning of the battle,

13,

Meagher instructed

his

they were ordered to charge the Confederates entrenched on

Marye's Heights. They had advanced to within a hundred yards of the top

like

"corn before the

when

mowed them down, said one observer, sickle."''^ Perhaps as many as half of the men involved in

they were hit by a barrage of

fire

that

the charge were either killed or wounded. "It will be," predicted one of the

"a sad, sad Christmas by

survivors,

many an

Irish hearthstone." After

Fredericksburg, said one observer, "the Brigade, in fact, no longer exists!" In three

main

battles

between June and December 1862,

it

had suffered

at least

1,200 casualties.^^

One glimmer to the

of light in this

wounded, thanks

in

gloom was the improved medical care given

no small part

for instance, visited the sick

to the efforts of

and wounded in

women. Maria Daly,

a local military infirmary,

bringing old sheets, towels, clothes, and anything else that might serve as

bandages.

More

nuns. In the

professional care

first

month

came from

a dedicated

group of nursing

of the war, the Sisters of Charity in the

New

diocese volunteered to serve as military nurses. Initially, Archbishop

balked

at losing

women needed for the care

of the sick at

York

Hughes

home, but he soon

and by June 1861 the Freeman's fournal could announce that nuns from several orders were "hurrying to scores of the Hospitals" set up for the relented,

Union Army. And more were to follow: in 1862, for instance, nine Sisters of Mercy left their convent on Houston Street to take charge of a military hospital at Beaufort, North Carolina."** Much of the nursing was done in New York City. At Saint Vincent's Hospital, the Sisters of Charity took care of some of the wounded soldiers returned to the city. Lieutenant Bernard S. O'Neil, seriously wounded in the left arm at Fredericksburg, resorted to Saint Vincent's in early

were unable to repair

cover—only

all

to rejoin the

1

863

when military surgeons

the damage; at the hospital, he

war and

was

able to re-

to die in 1864. After Antietam, the sheer

volume of casualties demanded a rapid enlargement of care, and in October 1 862

201 The

Irish

Community and the Civil

War

Academy

202

the former

The Great

hospital,

Migration

mission, involving 20 wards, it

St.

Joseph

with the

in Central Park

was converted into a mihtary It was a demanding

Sisters of Charity in charge of nursing.

some

large

and many

filled to

—and

overflowing

could be dangerous: Sister M. Prudentia Bradley died in 1864 of a disease

contracted during her work, but these devoted their reputations as, in the

the world.

words

of

women succeeded in confirming

one admirer, "the most

faithful nurses in

"^^

community was attempting to take care of compounded in the fall of 1 862 when the Catholic Orphanage in Brooklyn was destroyed by fire. Following the bloodbaths at Antietam and Fredericksburg, one community leader, Richard O'Gorman, estimated that nationally there were "tens of thousands of orphans whose fathers had given their blood to this country." Especially disturbing was the increasing number of homeless children. Some of them came under the care of the Children's Aid Society, but this was of little comfort to Irish leaders, who At the same time, the

Irish

children orphaned by the war, a problem

had long viewed the Society

as a Protestant agency eager to kidnap Catholic

away from their faith. In December 1862 laymen like O'Gorman met with Archbishop Hughes to organize the Catholic Protectory for homeless and wayward children, and in May 1 863 the new institution opened its doors. By the end of the year, the Protectory was providing a home for over a thousand children

children.'^°

The war years spring of

1

also

saw other organized

efforts to aid the unfortunate. In the

863 the community was active in raising

money for

the relief of the

homeland being threatened by a famine as severe More attention went to meeting needs at home, especially

suffering poor of Ireland, the

as that of the 1840s.

the needs of

women.

In February

in a project to resettle

1

863 Maria Daly tried to interest the church

widows and orphans

in a Catholic farm colony, each

widow's family to be attached to a family with a male head. Nothing came of this,

but the often desperate needs of poor working women,

Irish,

did bring the formation in late 1863 of the

Union, headed by Maria's husband. Judge C.

P.

many of whom were

Working Women's Protective

Daly. This organization provided

support for seamstresses and other workers throughout the war, in 1865 helping first known Catholic day nursery for working mothers.'" The community had some opportunity to celebrate its wartime contributions. In January 1863 it attended a "Grand Requiem Mass" held at Saint

to

form the

Patrick's Cathedral for all those

who had

died in Irish units since the fighting

began. In his panegyric. Father O'Reilly (the chaplain of the old Sixty-ninth at Bull Run) declared that the

men

under their green

flags

and star-spangled

banners had marched gladly into conflict, "rushing joyously to the battlefield like bridegrooms to their nuptials."

They had done so,

said O'Reilly, out of deep

reverence to the nation, the Constitution, and to God, guided by a profoundly conservative respect for

more

joyful

when on

all

legitimate authority. In

Saint Patrick's

Day

a large

March

the celebration

new gunboat was

was

christened

the

Shamrock to honor Irish patriotism. "No ship launched at Brooklyn," "was ever greeted with applause so boisterous."'*^

said

a reporter,

The year 1863, however, brought a severe crisis in the community regarding both the war and authority. Early in the year, Meagher attempted to replenish

much

the depleted ranks of the Irish Brigade without resulted

from his

condemned him

own much for the

were new rumors supporters

drunkenness.

failure

permit the brigade to return situation

critics

horrendous losses suffered by the brigade, and there

of his

blamed the

success. In part, this

diminished image: within the community,

on the

home

On

the other hand, Meagher and his

refusal of the Lincoln administration to

for purposes of rest

grew even more desperate

in

May when

and recruitment. The

fighting at Chancellorsville

reduced the brigade to a few hundred men, evoking charges that the administra-

Green" to the last man. When men home, Meagher resigned his command. The brigade survived without him, but in a much diminished form, fighting at Gettysburg as a battalion of six companies under the command of tion

was willing

to sacrifice "the heroes of the

he was again refused permission to bring his

Colonel Patrick

Kelly.*''

Resentment was intensified by the Emancipation Proclamation, which, in Irish eyes,

changed the character

had invited patriotic

efforts to

of the

war

for the worse.

Where

defend the traditional Union,

it

the early war

now seemed

to

demand acceptance of a hated abolitionism, leading the Irish-American to condemn the "Negrophilism" of the administration and "the irredeemable mahgnity

of the Abolition hatred of our race."

to the battlefield

Emancipation threatened to

and to extend that competition

intensify the competition of blacks for Irish jobs

by opening the ranks of the Union

diminishing the sacrifices

made by the heroes

Army

of the green

to black soldiers,

and weakening their

When it was argued that black military service would diminish the number of white casualties, the bitterly antiwar Weekly Day-Book warned that "equality as a soldier means equality at the ballot-box, bid for acceptance as citizens

equality everywhere," an equality that

meant

that Irish workers

would be

"degraded to a level with negroes."'**

Tensions were further deepened by economic conditions. In some respects,

war brought significant benefits to the Irish population, providing employment for thousands of men and women in war-related industries and generating

the

millions of dollars in mihtary pay and support money. welfare agency could conclude that "there

was

By 1865 the

less suffering

city's leading

from indigence in

At the same time, the war brought a vicious inflation that bore heavily on workers, especially on the city than in any proceeding four years in our history."

unskilled laborers,

many

of

whom were Irish.

In

March 1863 some 6,000 angry

workers met to protest this situation and to hear their chairman, Charles

McCarthy, of higher

call for the creation of

one big union

of all-white

workers in support

wages. Tensions were further increased by the use of blacks as

strike-breakers. In June 1863, for instance,

some 3,000

203 The

striking longshoremen,

imh

Commumty and the Civil

War

whom

204

most

The Great

protection, took their jobs

of

were

Resentment found

Migration

were forced

Irish,

on the

to

watch

as black

men, under police

docks.'^^

a focus in the

Conscription Act passed by Congress in

March 1863. Earlier, Archbishop Hughes and other leaders had favored a draft as a way to ensure that it would not be only the Irish poor who bore the brunt of battle, but the Conscription Act seemed like more discrimination, since it exempted those men who either paid $300 commutation money or provided a

make The result was widespread condemnation of the act even though its enforcement in the city was assigned to Colonel Robert Nugent, one of the heroes of the old Sixty-ninth Regiment. As if to light suitable substitute. Contrary to Hughes's hopes, this draft threatened to

the war even

more

a

poor man's

fight.

the fuse, the Freeman's Journal declared that not to resist the "outrage" of

would be "an apathy that denotes an "'^^ There was no apathy.

conscription

evervated, emasculated and

slavish people.

When on riots

July

1 1

an attempt was made to begin the

broke out in the Irish sections of the

city.''''

draft, a series of

savage

Much of the accumulated anger

was vented against blacks, some of them being thrown into the river by outraged longshoreman and others lynched. But the rioters attacked whites as well. They attempted to burn Colonel Nugent's house, entering one room that contained portraits of Nugent, Meagher, and Corcoran; they slashed the pictures of Nugent and Meagher but

left

that of Corcoran untouched. Within hours after leading a

small military force to beat back one mob. Colonel Henry O'Brien

fell

into the

mob's hands and was cruelly beaten and shot, his broken body finally being hung

on a

lamppost."*^

was four days before what the Irish-American called "a saturnalia of pillage and violence" was suppressed by the police and by mihtary units called into the It

The extent of the violence and the Union army has led some historians to city.

fact that call

it

required intervention by the

the riots an "insurrection."

On the

whole, however, this violence lacked the organization and direction of a true revolt against authority. Basically,

accumulated throughout the past feelings and

it

was an eruption of the frustrations that had

first half of 1

more tangibly

862, serving both as a catharsis for

as a modifier of draft policy. Subsequently, the

threat of conscription and, therefore, of further rioting was substantially reduced

by

local policies encouraging voluntary

money

for,

of disorder.

The

among

enUstments and providing exemption

others, the city's volunteer fire companies, a leading source

''^

affair

of the rioters

was

a severe

were not

blow

Irish,

to the reputation of the Irish

community. Many

and many of those who opposed the

riot were Irish; was young Paddy McCafferty who the Colored Orphan's Asylum from a

indeed, one of the few undoubted heroes

organized a rescue of the children in

many of the most identifiable rioters were Irish, women men. "Stalwart young vixens and withered old hags," wrote George

threatening mob. But as well as

Templeton Strong of Irish women, "were swarming everywhere,

all

cursing the

'bloody draft' and egging on their

men

to mishcief." In

American indignantly denied a rumor that

August the

Irish servant girls

Irish-

were planning

to

bum down the homes of their employers. Undoubtedly, many influential people agreed with Strong that "the atrocities these Celtic devils perpetrated can hardly

be paralleled in the history of

human

cruelty." In contrast, social leaders

who were reported by the

applauded the victims of Irish rage, black Americans, city's

leading charitable society to have been "honored by the elite of the city

with public ovations. They have been marshalled stances of glorious war'

pomp and

'in all

on our public squares, and escorted

circum-

in military array,

with banners and martial music, through our busiest streets and most beautiful avenues.

"^°

This contrasting treatment and the growing military involvement of African

Americans in the war only added to the gloom of a depressing year. In December 1863 Irish military zeal was further diminished greatest hero,

accident.

come

who

Michael Corcoran,

when

the

community

lost its

died not in combat but from a riding

Many mourned his death, some because it left Meagher, who they had

to detest, as the foremost Irish military leader,

and others because they

saw in Corcoran not only a war hero but a future redeemer of Ireland from British nile.^'

Amid the gloom

of 1863,

New

of the Forty-seventh

one joyful ray was shed by "Private Miles O'Reilly

York Volunteers," the

fictional hero created

by

Charles Graham Halpine. Halpine, a native of Ireland, had left a career as a writer

and joumahst in Sixty-ninth

New

York to

Regiment and then

an

join the war, first as

as a

member

officer in the old

of the staff of General

Hunter. After the Draft Riots, he was reassigned to

New York City.

David

By the end

1863 he had published enough pieces featuring Miles O'Reilly for the Insh-Amehcan to say that only the president was better known than O'Reilly of

and

for

Horace Greeley's Tribune to declare that he projected "a halo

of gayety

over the harsh and rugged features of these anxious days." Halpine soon collected his pieces in

The

of Private Miles O'Reilly,

type of Irish forehead

and Adventures, Songs,

Services

and Speeches

as having "the usual strong

—the perceptive bumps, immediately above the eyes being

extremely prominent.

As the

Life

where he described Miles

"^^

nation's leading "military minstrel," Miles

composes verses

in

support of the war, including defense of the use of black soldiers, "Sambo's

would not object More idealistically, he

Right to Be Kilt," where he says he

stopped a bullet directed at him. of the Soldiers":

By the baptism of the banner. Brothers of one church are we! Creed nor faction can divide Still

whatever

fate betide us.

Children of the flag are we!

us,

if

"Sambo's body"

writes in his "Song

205 The

Irish

Community and 'he Civil

War

such

Iri

The Great

same time

Migration

Halpine worked against

lines,

206

from the war and at the what the Ihsh-Ameiican termed "the

Irish alienation

called national attention to

military glory of the citizen soldiers of America," especially the

New

York

thereby undoing at least some of the damage resulting from the Draft

Irish,

Riots.^^

The opening of 1 864 brought another break in the gloom when the remnants of the Irish Brigade fiurlough,

dedicated to

were

were

finally

filled

all

home

allowed to return

and on January 16 Meagher and other

banquet galleries

many war widows

with onlookers, including

men,

York on

whose

the veterans of the brigade. In the banquet hall,

officers saluted the enlisted

New

to

officers held a great

dressed in black, the

a characteristic Irish gesture, said the Iiish-

American, "of the blood and brotherhood that united the chieftains of old to his clansman."^*

The banquet initiated a generally successful effort to replenish the three New April, it was back in Virginia preparing for a new phase of the war. Combined with the Irish Legion, which had yet to experience numerous losses in battle, it represented a renewed Irish mihtary presence in the war. This new force, however, was soon to experience the same old bloodshed. In his poem "April 20, 1864," celebrating the third aimiversary of the Sixty-ninth Regiment, Charles Halpine remembered when the regiment had first entered into what was then thought to be a short conflict, when York regiments of the brigade. By

"beneath a cloudless heaven twinkled a thousand bayonets." But the war had not been short:

Of the thousand stalwart bayonets

Two hundred march Hundreds

lie

today

in Virginia

swamps

And hundreds in Maryland clay And other hundreds less happily

drag

Their shattered limbs around.^^

And so it was to be again in the months war. Soon, both the brigade and the legion

campaign

to take

who had fought

in every

burial in an impressive

had replaced

campaign at

in Grant's bloody

terrible losses. In

commanding

ceremony

officer,

an assault on

Colonel Patrick Kelly.

of the brigade,

was brought home

for

Calvary Cemetery. By this time, funerals

most common military ceremony. The two months totaled nearly a thousand men, and

flag presentations as the

brigade's casualties in less than

more were

became involved

Richmond, each suffering

Petersburg, the brigade lost its Kelly,

that followed the brigade's return to

to follow, leading military authorities to order the consolidation of

the remains of the three

New York regiments into a single unit.^^

Again, the Irish had reason to be dissatisfied with military policy, and this

time during a presidential election year. Whatever their view of the war, the great majority

had remained loyal

to the

Democratic

party, leading

ated Meagher, one of the few exceptions, to complain in a

an exasper-

pubhc—and much

condemned

—

letter that

most

of his

countrymen had allowed themselves "to

be bamboozled into being obstinate herds in the political

field.

there

During the war more than $6 million to assist the indigent famiUes of volimteers. And the New York Coimty Board of Supervisors provided more than SIO million in bonus money for military government provided millions

of dollars of aid for the Irish poor.

years, for instance, the city council appropriated

volunteers also,

—a program that not only gave as much as $700 to volunteers but

by encouraging voluntary enlistments, reduced the threat of a local

money was

draft.

County Committee on Recruiting, whose most conspicuous member was Willam M. Tweed; with the help of such programs, Tweed would soon make himself the "Boss of New This bonus

distributed by the five-man

"5^

York.

Beyond

self-interest,

the Democratic party also appealed to the average Irish-

man's vision of the American Republic. Of generally

were the most conservative,

for traditions.

all

major ethnic groups, the

Irish

their Catholic faith reenforcing a reverence

Their deeply traditionahst view of warfare, with

its

emphasis on

personal honor and reckless courage, undoubtedly contributed to the high casualty rates of the Irish Brigade, fighting

under the conditions of perhaps the world's

modem

war. This

thought,

which strongly favored individual

same traditionahsm was evident

first

in Irish political and social

rights, local control,

and the preserva-

tion of the existing social order, especially in race relations; Irish

Democrats had

been the most hostile to eliminating discrimination against black voting in

New

when in October

1861

York. Archbishop

Hughes siunmed up the general

attitude

he warned that while his flock was willing to fight to the death to preserve the old Union,

it

would "turn away

in disgust" from a

Whereas the principles and practices

war against

of the

slavery.'^'

democracy appealed

to Irish

conservatism, the Republican party stood for threatening change, for a meddle-

some and

it

that

disagreed with the Iiish-American

Although the Irish community was antiadministration,

it

leader,

as

Few

denounced the "narrow bigotry and persistent intolerance"

party.

and

intrusive government, for efforts to change the social order,

the competition of black people.

of Lincoln

for

when

and his

this did not

mean

was necessarily antiwar. Charles R Daly, an important community was bitterly anti-Lincoln but was also a strong supporter of the war effort,

was the important Democratic

politician,

James

T. Brady; in

one speech,

Brady alluded to his Irish heritage in virtually the same breath in which he

proclaimed himself a "Yankee," defining that term to include anyone

who

supported the war against the Confederate South. In 1864 Brady, Charles Halpine, and other Irish Democrats favored committing their party to a vigorous

prosecution of the war as the best

way

to achieve a favorable peace

and the

restoration of the old union.*°

At the same time, the disillusionments

of 1863

207

"^^ Actually,

was reason for this loyalty since the Democrat-controlled city and county

had strengthened antiwar

tendencies within the commimity, providing encouragement for Copperhead

The

Irish

Community and the

Cml War

208

opposition to the war

The Great

of

Migration

wartime

effort. Irish leaders

relief efforts)

hke Richard O'Gorman

(an organizer

and Daniel Devlin were prominent in the movement

to achieve peace at virtually

any

price.

Among Irish newspapers,

the Freeman's

Journal supported the movement, as did the Metropolitan Record, whose editor,

John MuUaly, was arrested in 1 864 for publishing allegedly "incendiary,

and traitorous" general,

articles;

MuUaly had condemned

with the warning that they could bring "five hundred thousand more

victims to Abolitionism." The chief political agency for the peace

was a 1

movement

by John McKeon. In running against other Democrats as well as Repub-

faction within the local Democratic party headed

McKeon faction,

863, the

licans,

had been able

mayor

of the city,

On

disloyal,

the draft and war policy in

to elect an antiwar extremist, G. Godfrey Gunther, as

much of Gunther's

support coming from Irishmen.*'

community was deeply more than balancing Mullaly's

the question of continuing the war, the Irish

divided, the strong pro-war Irish-American

Metropolitan Record, but this disunity was countered by a general aversion to 1 864, Republicans made some effort to win Irish votes, recognizing their importance in winning the city

Lincoln and his party. In the presidential election of

and the

the election, Daniel Daughtery warned that would simply allow the Confederacy the opportunity to find "Hessians" to fight its battles and continue the war. "Was any Irishmen in favor of that?" The community, however, heavily favored the Democratic candidate. General George B. McClellan, whose cautious polices as commander of the Army of the Potomac earlier had at least saved lives and who plainly was no abolitionist. More than 90 percent of the vote in the heavily Irish Sixth Ward went for him, and he carried the entire city by a more than two-to-one majority. state. Shortly before

Lincoln's defeat

Lincoln

may have

isolation of the

lost the city, but

he

won

the presidency, underlining the

New York Irish from national trends.*^

Grumble though they might, critics had no choice but to accept Lincoln's it was linked to what was plainly becoming an inevitable Union victory. Although most Irishmen continued to despise the Great Emancipator, some were saddened by his assassination in April 1865, concluding with the Freeman 's Journal that the president had started to move toward more moderate policies and away from "the fanatical portion of the reelection, especially since

Puritans"

who favored

the abolition of slavery and interracial justice.^

The war dragged on into 1865, producing more casualties, one of the last being Colonel Matthew Murphy, the commander of the Irish Legion. Two hundred seventy died in April from wounds received two months earlier, but by that time Lee had surrendered at Appomattox. And in the early summer, the Irish units of a rapidly demobilizing Union army returned home. In mid-June came some 700 members of the Irish Brigade, marching one last time through the streets of the city:

by the exposure as cheer

"The men looked strong and

of years,

upon cheer

hardy,- their faces,

bronzed

were wreathed with smiles and bestowed with

rent the air."

Soon

after,

tears

the remnants of the Irish Legion

reached the Street

city, to

be given a similar reception as they marched to the Centre

Market Armory, where they stacked

their

arms and were treated

to "a

beautiful collation" before dispersing into civilian life.^

Notably absent from these

affairs

Community and

was Thomas Francis Meagher.

In the

Meagher had openly supported Lincoln, and he expected to be rewarded for his services with an appointment as a territorial governor. In

presidential election,

May

1865 he resigned from the military, eventually to be appointed

territorial

new

but short

and acting governor of Montana Territory.

secretary

It

was

a

adventure for the 42-year-old Meagher, for on July 1,1867, after a drinking bout,

he toppled

the steamboat on

off

which he was

riding

and drowned

in the

Missouri River.^^

And so,

in such varied ways,

remained the old hope

— at least for most. For some, there This idea animated

for a military liberation of Ireland.

which had organized numerous

the Fenian Brotherhood,

Union army.

ended the war

"circles" within the

In January 1865, with the prospect of peace, the strongly Fenian

Iiish-Amencan dreamed of uniting Irishmen who had fought in the Confederate as well as rule.

of

—battle-hardened veterans —to overthrow British

Union armies

all

But many of the Fenians, like Corcoran, had died in the war, and the dreams

grand conquests fizzled in an unsuccessful invasion of Canada in

The Fenians attempted another invasion

in 1870 with the

same

May

1866.

result.^^

By then, probably most Irish Americans of the Civil War generation had come to identify themselves their

with the United

States,

whose

soil

had both absorbed

blood and provided a ground for their aspirations, while their loyalty to

the old country

was fading into sentiments

war had brought profound disappointments, involvement in important

affairs.

for St. Patrick's it

Day. Although the

had also forced an unprecedented

Four years of cooperation in support

of the

home had strengthened the commuin American conditions. And four years of

regiments in the fields and of the needy at nity in

New York,

rooting

it

firmly

outrage over Republican policy had deepened involvement in the Democratic party, bringing

would

one step closer the time when the

make themselves

party and

forge a coalition

a

power

in

Irish

American

would dominate the local

politics. Eventually,

with the Democratic South, which would revive

they

much

of the old racial order.

it

The war by no means eliminated nativist hostility to the Irish, but it did make more difficult to deny them a place in America. As memories of the Draft

far

Riots and of

Copperhead

politics faded away, there

remained in

battlefield

accounts and on the markers over thousands of graves concrete evidence that the Irishman was, in the words of one citizen."

Union general, "a gallant soldier and loyal Irish Americans had been on the

Although in important respects

"wrong" side regarding war policy, in the

was much

less reason

light of their service

and sacrifice there

than before to doubt that they were citizens and patriots

in their adopted land.^^

209 Thelnsh

the Civil

War

THE TIGERS SHARE Tammanv—*I

ni'uian h of

1*111

rum Harlem I

m

all

I

survey;

down to the bay the man and the brute.

right

lord oi

1877

to

1914

PART

III

THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

The "Tammany Manhattan

Tiger,"

in this

Tammany was

c.

sits astride

closely associated with Democratic politics in

New York County Irish

with a shamrock in his hat,

1890 lithograph. The Society of St.

immigrants,

from the middle of the nineteenth century

spumed by Republican

nativism, voted

Democrat. Their party loyalty on election day was in exchange for social benefits like jobs, food, shelter, loans, recreation,

solidarity In 1872,

leader of

John

Tammany

Kelly

Hall; until

honed an urban

political

and

employment

civil

service

Tammany was behind

became

the

first Irish

and

Catholic

1948, a succession of Irish bosses

machine for

that

provided public works

thousands of immigrants.

the election of the City's

first Irish

Catholic mayor, the businessman William R. Grace in 1880,

and groomed men such

Wagner Sr of

for state

New York.

as Al Smith, James Farley,

and national

politics.

and Robert

(Museum

Gift of Mrs. Bella C. Landauer.)

of the City

Lawrence]. McCaffrey

OVERVIEW

Forging Forward and

Looking Back

I N THE McCaffrey,

left

SUgo on

a

Unlike most of the young

White

my

father,

Star Line passenger ship

bound

summer

men and women

of

1912

John

Thomas

New

for

York.

leaving Ireland for the United States,

he had a farm, 40 acres of mostly bog and rocks in the townland of Dowra, County Cavan, at the foot of Cuilcagh Mountain, a few hundred yards from the Shannon Pot, the source of Ireland's

magnificent

river.

Economic

realities

drove most Irish

emigrants from the land of their birth. Only one son could inherit the farm; only

one daughter could have a dowry to marry. Outside the Belfast area there were few

employment prospects

in industry,

and small

Irish

farms needed

little

agricultural

Some lads joined the Royal Irish Constabulary, enlisted in the British armed forces, or found jobs in towns. Some lassies worked in shops or as domestic servants labor.

in the big

houses of a fading gentry

class, in cottages of

prosperous farmers, or in

homes in Irish cities and towns. And there was always the church. A considerable number of young Catholics became priests, nuns, or brothers. But the vast majority had to leave home to make a decent living, and after 1840 most of middle-class

them preferred the United States

to Britain or other parts of its Empire.

religious also departed Ireland to serve the spiritual

Many Irish

needs of the diaspora or to do

missionary work in the British colonies.

From 1877

to I9I4

young

Irish

Cathohcs continued

they had in earlier times. This group of emigrants,

to flock to

America

my father among them,

as

left

214 The the

Tum of Century

Ireland

first

because of the agricultural depression in the late 1870s, which

hit

the western part of the country particularly hard, and subsequently because of a desire to escape a lifetime of

boredom

in a stagnant

economy and

a peasant

Catholic Puritanism that encouraged gender segregation and hard drinking as a

monotony but celibacy.

also arranged

and usually loveless marriages or permanent

Options were particularly limited

more than their brothers, decided ships, was a promising alternative

The

meant not only depressing

sexual frustration. Staying in Ireland

relief for

Irish

young women, and

for

that the United States, with

they,

even

all of its

hard-

to rural Ireland.'

who

Catholic immigrants

entered the United States during the

nineteenth century were for the most part socially and economically handicapped.

Many were

illiterate,

few were skilled in either agriculture or industry,

and some were more fluent in

Irish

than English. These

liabilities froze

them

into the lowest levels of the unskilled labor and domestic servant classes.

Famine

refugees, especially those

who

1847, represented the nadir of

left after

the Irish exodus. Life in a rural. Catholic, Irish

immigrants

transition

sometimes Irish-speaking culture did not prepare

for urban, industrial, Protestant

from the familiar Old World

America. Traumatized by the

New World,

to the strange

they experi-

enced a slow and painful adaptation. They became urban America's social problem. Their crime, filth, alcoholism,

family collapses irritated Anglo-Protestants, but not as

Anglo-America inherited

its

first

group

mental disorders, violence, and

much

as their religion.

no-popery bigotry from Anglo-Saxon England as

the core of a nativism insisting that Catholicism represented an alien, subversive religion that threatened

American culture and

My father's generation participated in whose members had experienced economic fortunes since

1

institutions.'^

the final stages of a mass emigration

a steady

850. Because the

improvement

in education

Famine had eliminated

and

at least 272

million people from the landscape, forced survivors to take a more prudent look at marriage,

and institutionalized emigration,

it

cleared the

way

for a

more

prosperous Ireland. Tenant farmers replaced agricultural laborers as the most

numerous

class,

1900, as Ireland

and the

size of their holdings gradually increased

went from Europe's most

from 1840

to

to least densely populated country.

Political activity also contributed to positive change. In response to

Catholic, agrarian, and nationalist agitations, British Liberal governments

between 1860 and 1890 disestablished the Protestant church, legalized secure tenures at fair rents, loaned

money

to farmers to purchase their

holdings, democratized the Irish franchise, and concluded an alliance with Irish constitutional nationalism,

encouraging hopes

for self-government. In

the 1880s and 1890s, British Conservative governments, hoping to discour-

age nationalist enthusiasms, converted tenant farmers into peasant proprietors; created a congested districts board that

opened agricultural and

technical schools, equipped and instructed fishermen, and organized a cottage

215

and financed public works projects such as railway and road

Forging Forward

textile industry;

construction and land- improving drainage projects.

and hookingBack

By 1914 Ireland was considerably more prosperous than

in 1870,

though

still

underdeveloped country. With the help of the population decrease, the

a poor,

reform

efforts,

and dollar

gifts

from children in the United

standards rose appreciably. Rural cottages were larger and

States, living

more comfortable.

Potatoes remained a key element in the diet, but farmer's wives supplemented

them with bread,

butter, milk, eggs, cereals, vegetables,

and occasionally meat.^

Education also improved. In 1831 the British government established a

system of national education to Anglicize recently emancipated Irish Catholics. National schools probably hastened the decline of Irish and the spread of English as the vernacular, but increased literacy multiplied the reading

nationalist books, newspapers, a

audience for

and periodicals. In general, the schools provided

sound basic education. By 1900 about 95 percent of

Irish

emigrants were

literate."*

My father was a tribute to the national schools. He was forced to leave school and work on the farm and

sisters

inspired

had died

him

after the sixth grade (his father

of his brothers

Master

McHugh

to read nationalist versions of Irish history, pre-Revival Irish

literature (especially the novels of

Charles Kickham), and Shakespeare's plays.

Better living conditions, literacy, lic

and seven

of tuberculosis), but the instruction of

and nationahst aspirations reduced Catho-

and Gaelic fatalism and pessimism. Furthermore, a reformed and revitalized

church helped to refine and discipline the

Irish character.

On his visit to Ireland

in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Irish Catholics

were more devout

than those on the Continent, but ignorance, superstition, and religious indiffer-

ence pervaded the poor, largely Gaelic, underdeveloped, and densely populated parts of the country.^

The people

in these areas lacked adequate

numbers

of

clergy

and chapels. Priests were not well educated, and bishops scandalized their

flocks

by publicly quarreling over the relationship between Catholicism and

nationalism and the British government's Irish policy.

The Famine had poorest

a brutal effect

on

Irish Catholic society, particularly its

members, and therefore the most ignorant and superstitious portion

the population.

With

their disappearance, the

and minister to the more In the last year of the Irish college in

of

church was better able to instruct

affluent, better-educated survivors.^

Famine, Pius IX appointed Paul CuUen, rector of the

Rome, archbishop

of

Armagh.

In 1852 he

moved

to Dublin,

where, until his death in 1878, he dominated Irish Catholicism. Cardinal Cullen

reformed and romanized the religion in Ireland, building chapels and schools,

improving clerical education, enforcing a public appearance of harmony the bishops, and persuading the laity to attend

mass and devotions

among

diligently,

215 The the

Tum of

receive the sacraments, and contribute pennies, shillings, and pounds to the

church in Ireland, Rome, and foreign missions/

CuUen distrusted nationalism because it presented both secular and Galilean

Century

competition to his ultramontane Catholicism, but

when

"devotional revolution." Since the 1820s,

formed the people's religious identity into a sense

and Irishness had become inseparable. Young

of nationality, Catholicism

Ireland's cultural nationalism,

increased literacy, and agitations for tenant rights and

And

intensified nationalism.

became more devoutly

did contribute to his

it

Daniel O'Connell had trans-

home rule had spread and

became more

as the Irish

nationalist, they also

tum became

Catholic. This religion's affiliation in

a

visible sign of ethnicity.^

Although the devotional revolution played an important role in civilizing and disciplining the Irish character,

economic need

for

it

also

had a negative

more prudent marriage

effect.

Reinforcing the

patterns, the church's

emphasis on

chastity and its obsession w^ith sins of the flesh contributed to the dullness of Irish rural life

many to

and the

social segregation of

men and women

that persuaded so

leave the country.

Not only were

Irish

immigrants in the

nineteenth and early twentieth

late

centuries culturally, socially, and religiously

more scrubbed and polished than

preceding generations, they also had a more pleasant journey to and reception in

New York.

from

five to

Since the 1850s steamships had reduced the time of the journey

two weeks or

sailing vessels. Arriving in

less

and were more comfortable and sanitary than

New York, new Americans no longer had to suffer a

barrage of ruimers, mostly Irish, meeting scruffy baggage,

whose

and hustling them

them on

off to filthy

landlords, again usually Irish, cheated

the dock, grabbing their

boardinghouses/grog shops

them out

of their

meager poke.

In 1855 Castle Garden, at the lower tip of Manhattan, opened to help

immigrants make the transition from Europe Clinton and then an opera house,

it

to the

United

States.

Once

Fort

had facilities for bathing, cooking, changing

currency, collecting and mailing letters, depositing valuables, purchasing

rail-

road and riverboat tickets, and obtaining advice from representatives of religious

and benevolent consult

societies.

When

employment agencies

they

staffed

left

the

with

main

building, immigrants could

translators. Castle

Garden

officials

provided luggage carriers and directed them to respectable boardinghouses. In

1892

Ellis Island replaced

Castle Garden and improved on

When my father arrived in New York, In 1870

more than 200,000

Irish

it

was

its services.*^

a city with a strong Irish flavor.

immigrants (21.4% of the

city's

population)

and 73,985 (18.7%) resided in Brooklyn. '° By 1884 some 40 Yorkers were of Irish extraction, 5 percent more than Germans,

lived in Manhattan,

percent of

New

the second largest group.'' In 1890, 196,372, or 24 percent of

all

Brooklyn

Caucasians, had Irish immigrant mothers, the largest foreign-bom maternity figure for the city. For

New

York the numbers were 399,348, or 26.8 percent.

second to the

German 27

percent.

~

New

In 1898 the Greater

York Charter

merged Manhattan and Brooklyn, the number one and number three Irish metropolitan centers in the United States. ^^ Although Russian Jewish and Italian late

immigrations reduced

New

York's Irish and

German ambiences

nineteenth century, in 1900 people of Irish stock

New York's almost three

percent of

still

in the

accounted for 22

million residents.'"

Despite their improved quality, post- 18 70 Irish immigrants

still

arrived with

fewer skills than Anglo-Americans or immigrants from other parts of northern Europe, particularly Germany. Consequently, they had to settle for casual, unskilled, dangerous, dirty, unhealthy, or drove horses as

and menial

jobs.

Men worked in stables

dairymen or cabbies, loaded and unloaded ships on the docks,

swept out factories and saloons, dug foundations and carried hods on construction sites, and served people in restaurants

and bars.'^

Some women found employment in factories, garment district and restaurants, and others became domestics, an occupation Protestants tended to dismiss as degrading. also worried about having their daughters to single Irish

women, domestic

service

Many

sweatshops, that Anglo-

parents of non-Irish ethnics

work in the homes of strangers. But meant comfortable living quarters,

nourishing food, clean clothing, a taste of civilized living, and, in view of the

room and

board, offered better pay than

industry. In general, Irish

men. They saved

their

siblings or in cash or

significant If

amount

women

money, sending

bank

work

in a factory, mill, or the

it

home

in the

form

drafts to help their parents.

of their

garment

were more sober and responsible than

income

Irish

of ship passages for

And

they contributed a

to the Catholic church.

husbands did not desert them or perish early from diseases associated with

hard and hazardous labor, married Irish

women were

unhkely

to

work outside

the home. Matriarchs concentrated their energies on their famihes, pushing

spouses and children toward middle-class respectability. Abandoned wives or to

work outside the home, but many supported them-

selves and their children

by taking in borders and by sewing. Occasionally

widows often returned

married women with working husbands also became landladies or seamstresses to

supplement family incomes."'

Around the turn

of the century, the health

and

social

ills

poverty continued to plague Irish neighborhoods. There was cleanliness or privacy in overcrowded tenements. toilets spilled into streets

Irish

little

The contents

space for

of outdoor

and courtyards. Odors and bacteria from

excrement and urine, slaughter and gas houses, and animal

from cart horses, fouled the

associated with

air

offal,

human

particularly

and contributed to disease and high mortality.

neighborhoods on the Lower East Side (Five Points and the Fourth Ward),

the middle East Side (the

Gas House

district),

and the middle West Side

(Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen) were afflicted with alcoholism, brutality, crime, despair,

and family confhct. Physical and mental disease also took a heavy

Tuberculosis, depression, and schizophrenia ravaged Irish

toll.

America as they did

217 ForgingFonvard

and Looking Back

Husbands sodden with drink beat wives who often

218

Ireland.

The Turn of

fists, skillets,

the Century

lies.

or other kitchen implements.

Men

with

retaliated

frequently deserted fami-

streets. A few young women became prostiyoung men were more likely to turn to a criminal gangs proliferated in Irish neighborhoods. Some were connected

Youngsters ran wild in the

tutes and petty thieves, but life.

Street

with volunteer

fire

companies and

Tammany

politics.

Gang members

pro-

tected the ballot boxes of their patrons and destroyed those of their enemies.

They also intimidated opposition voters. Hell's Kitchen probably was the most violent Irish section of New York. Police found it impossible to control the gangs there, leaving the turf to the Gophers, Gorillas, the Parlor Mob,

and the Rhodes Gang.'^

Male recreation reflected the cruelty and crudity of tenement life. Boys swam and sewage-infested East and Hudson rivers. Their older brothers

in the garbage-

and fathers enjoyed bare-knuckle fighting or placing bets

at the

where assorted mixed and pure-bred

in killing rodents

terriers

competed

dog and

rat pits,

and

each other. Cock fighting was another wagering "sport" relished by men. Upper- and middle-class

New Yorkers still remembered the Irish violence of

the Draft Riots of 1 863 and the Orange Riots of 1 8 70 and 1871.'^ Those incidents

and the heavy Irish involvement in crime and social disorder confirmed nativist opinion that Irish Catholics were a cancer eating away at the vitals of their city. Inheriting Anglo-Saxon or Scots-Irish ancestral prejudices, they were convinced that Protestantism represented liberty, reason, industry, and order, whereas

Cathohc authoritarianism nurtured ignorance,

irrationahty,

and superstition.

As leaders of the Catholic Church in the United States and as influential citizens in urban politics, the Irish took the brunt of anti-Catholic prejudice.

American novels and plays featured negative foolish Biddys

and Paddys wandered through

Thomas Nast, its army of

Haipei's Weekly cartoonist

during the late 1800s, depicted

Irish stereotypes. Ignorant

fiction

and across theater

and

stages.

in his attacks

on Tammany Hall

Irish voters as

menacing, simian-

featured monsters, a caricature projected in other newspapers and periodicals. In cartoons, novels, and plays the Irish were either alcoholic, shillelagh- wielding

thugs or loquacious but ignorant fools, blundering through

life,

obviously in

need of Anglo-Protestant guidance. Anti-Irish Catholic prejudice had overtones, suggesting that only inferior people

would choose such

a

racist

debased

religion.^'

Although their faith targeted the

Irish for nativist animosity,

Catholicism as

well as nationalism and politics instilled pride, dignity, and hope. Catholicism

played a particularly important

chasm between spiritual

rural Ireland

role: its liturgy

and sacraments bridged the

and urban America, providing psychological and

comfort in a strange and hostile environment. Catholic parishes in

American

cities

functioned as rural villages preserving a sense of community.

'°

Cullen's devotional revolution spread to the American branch of the Irish spiritual empire. Post- 18 77

immigrants knew their religion and practiced

it

more diligently and regularly than those who had come before."' Compared with

men were well represented at church services. McDaimell explains in chapter 9, Irish women were the pillars

other ethnics of their gender, Irish

But as Colleen of the

church

just as

their attendance at

they were of the Irish family. They were more regular in

mass and devotions and the reception of the sacraments, and

they gave their enthusiasm, as well as their time and money, to the support of the parish. Irish

of

American bishops,

like their Irish counterparts,

were strong champions

ultramontanism and displayed an aggressive Catholicism in promoting the

building of churches and schools. In 1864 John McCloskey, America's cardinal,

became archbishop

construction of

St.

New York.

of

Patrick's Cathedral

first

Fifteen years later he completed the

on Fifth Avenue,

started by his predeces-

was a monument to the spirit and zeal of Irish American Catholicism. McCloskey was an organizer as well as a builder. He divided parishes into smaller units, strengthening them as commusor.

Archbishop John Hughes.

nities,

St. Patrick's

enabling priests to establish closer contacts with the

New

York's archbishops

would have

liked to shelter

all

laity.

Catholic children

from Protestant and secular influences through parochial education, but in 1 870 only 68 percent of

New

York parishes had schools, which enrolled about 19

percent of the city's Catholic youngsters.

They had difficulty achieving the ideal

because the church was dependent on the generosity of devout but economically strapped parishioners. In addition. Catholic leaders had few reasons to complain

power kept

of public education. Irish political

neighborhood schools, and

women, were

many

nativist propaganda out of

of their teachers

and administrators, usually

Irish Catholics.^^

Because Catholicism insists that the sacraments are essential to salvation, priests have enjoyed more respect and power than the clergy of other faiths. And in Ireland the laity have been especially partial to their priests because they its

symbolize a religion that

is

also part

and parcel

Unlike Continental Catholicism, the

of Irish culture

Irish variety

and nationality.

has been associated with the

peasantry not the aristocracy. Priests praised popular sovereignty and participated in agitations for economic and social justice and national independence. Priests,

nuns, and brothers were the only educated Catholics in rural Ireland,

with the exception of teachers. Parish priests shared influence and competed

with Anglo-Protestant landlords for peasant deference. Irish Catholics sent their best

and brightest sons and daughters into the church.

brought distinction to

all of its

members. Because

as religious importance, parishioners

A

priest in the family

of the clergy's secular as well

asked clerical advice on worldly and

spiritual matters.

In the Irish life. old,

United

States,

Not only

Catholicism continued to be a significant presence in

did priests say mass, hear confessions, visit the sick and the

marry the young, and bury the dead, but they also verbally chastised

alcoholic and abusive husbands,

wayward

wives, and delinquent children and

219 Forging Forward

and Looking Back

and moral discipline

220

adolescents. Clerical guidance

The Turn of

brothers in Catholic schools speeded Irish economic mobility and respectability,

the Century

The Catholic Church functioned as

a social service as well as a religious

when

educational institution. At a time

by nuns and

instilled

city

governments did

little

and

to lessen

the effects of poverty, Catholic hospitals, orphanages, and shelters for the

hungry and homeless did

much

to alleviate

human suffering. The clergy also much Irish misery: alcoholism.

attempted to address one of the main causes of

From

the time Father Theobald

leader, visited the

alcohol addiction.

temperance (1872) all

Mathew, the Cork Capuchin temperance

United States in 1 85 1, American Catholicism had challenged

The

societies,

De

Vincent

St.

Paul Society, church councils, parish

and the Catholic Total Abstinence Union

denounced excessive drinking as a cause

of

America

of immorality, family

disharmony, and poverty.

The

Sisters of

Mercy cared

the immigrant poor at

St.

for

and educated hundreds of the neglected or orphaned children of

Vincent's Nursery

here in 1902. After 1875,

when

institutions. Catholic child care

the Children's Aid Society

industrial

expanded rapidly

public funds available to religious

offering alternatives to Protestant efforts like

women were caring for more than

homes throughout the

Mission of the Immaculate Virgin Mercy, Brooklyn Regional

Street (Taaffe Place) in Brooklyn, pictured

Law made

which had been looked upon with suspicion. By 1890,

of Irish and Irish American

and

on Graham

the Children's

at

1

3,000 children

in

religious orders

orphan asylums

city including the Catholic Protectory in the

Mount

Community)

Loretlo

on

Bronx and the

Staten Island. (Courtesy of the Sisters of

Many young Catholics members

older

took total abstinence pledges

of congregations at parish missions.

was "what birth control was

teenth century

at confirmation, as did

Temperance

Forging Fonvard

to mid-twentieth-century Catholi-

and Looking Back

cism; the cause celebre of moral reform."" Catholic pressures did curb the beer

and whiskey thirsts of

many

Irish Catholics,

tant part of their culture (the

and often

club),

it

but drinking remained an impor-

neighborhood saloon was a social and

was an escape from the anguish

Although Catholic social services did of poverty, the

of

wretched

much to ameliorate

political

lives.

the consequences

New York hierarchy and clergy failed to attend to its causes. As

John Cardinal McCloskey's coadjutor from 1880 to 1885 and then as his successor from 1885 to 1902, Michael Augustine Corrigan established

New

York as the citadel of American conservative and authoritarian Catholicism, reputation

much

it still

retains. Corrigan

was

a pious

and dedicated

priest

of himself to the administration of his archdiocese, but

concern for the material needs of his people. Like

more often

priests,

many

a

and gave

he had

little

Catholic bishops and

in the East than in other parts of the country, Corrigan

believed that working-class reform

movements were tainted by secular mateThe archbishop viewed poverty as part

rialism or the Protestant social gospel.

of the natural order, a product of original sin. He promised his flock that those who suffered the misfortunes of this world with Christian resignation would be

rewarded with eternal

bliss in the next.

Corrigan warned reformers that they should not try to eliminate poverty by interfering

labor

with private property. ^"^ Convinced that

movement, he

to organize

encyclical

socialists

had infiltrated the

led other bishops in opposing unions. Corrigan advised

Xni to proscribe the Knights of Labor,

American workers on

Rerum Novarum

a

Leo

who had made the first significant attempt national scale. When the pope issued the

in 1891,

New York's archbishop interpreted it as a

defense of private property and an attack

on socialism more than an appeal

for

social justice.^^

Corrigan distrusted American culture, which he saw as a threat to the faith

He and his mentor, Bishop Bernard McQuaid of Rochester, allied German American prelates in the Midwest, promoted ethnicity as a form of Catholic cultural isolation. Corrigan and McQuaid battled Archbishop John Ireland (St. Paul), James Cardinal Gibbons (Baltimore), and other members of of the laity.

with

the hierarchy

who

insisted that not only

were Americanism and Catholicism

compatible, but liberal democracy gave the church an opportunity to flourish.

Americanist bishops encouraged Catholics to fraternize with members of other faiths,

praised and tried to cooperate with public schools, and believed that

if

their

church refused to identify with the economic and social problems of the

laity,

it,

visit to

like the

Rome

Leo XHI,

European church, would lose the urban working class. Gibbons'

prevented a condemnation of the Knights of Labor, but in 1899

at the urging of Corrigan,

McQuaid, and members

hierarchy, labeled distorted views of Ireland

221

in the nine-

and his friends

as

of the

French

an Americanist

222 The

Tum oj

heresy.

The archbishop

of

New

York won a major victory over

enemy, but the controversy cost them both red

the Century

Catholicism was

If

politics

religion, culture,

his St. Paul

hats.^^

and nationaUty

for the

New York Irish,

gave them access to power and economic opportunity.

It

was the only

they brought with them from Ireland. In agitations for Catholic emancipa-

skill

tion and repeal of the union with Britain, Daniel O'Connell organized the Irish

masses for political action and instructed them in the effectiveness of organized public opinion.^^ In the 1880s, under the leadership of Charles Stewart Pamell,

members

of Parliament

who promoted home

rule

were the most disciplined

at

Westminster. Since nationalist politics in Ireland opposed Anglo- Protestant landlordism, it

was only natural

that the Irish in

antiaristocratic party of Jefferson

America would

feel

comfortable in the

and Jackson. Actually, pragmatic more than

ideological considerations determined their choice. Democratic politicians

were

less nativist

than Federalists, Whigs, or Republicans; hastened Irish

naturalization; and found the immigrants jobs.

The

idea that politics enabled the Irish to achieve

mobility has been rejected in actually kept

Although

them

some

social

in low-level blue-collar or white-collar employment.^^

true that the Irish

it is

economic and

quarters for the view that political jobs

were so fascinated with

politics that they

neglected other American opportunities, until well into the twentieth century Protestant control of business and the professions in

New York and other cities

excluded or put quotas on Catholic and Jewish as well as African American participation. Therefore the Irish applied their talents to the

power and influence For people

was

who

in the Catholic

politics,

achievement

of

and the labor movement.

suffered poverty in rural Ireland and urban America, security

a primary objective.

stable

Church,

Employment connected with

politics

was

and often supplemented by pensions, thus providing a base

that eventually lavmched Irish

America into the middle

relatively

of confidence

class.

Tweed Ring in 1871, intelligent, self-educated, devoutly Catholic, American-bom John Kelly became Tammany leader, initiating an Irish ascendancy at the hall that lasted until after World War II. Distinguishing between "honest" graft, which was a fee for services rendered, and "dishonest" graft, which he defined as outright stealing from the public purse, Kelly purged Tammany of the flagrant corruption of the Tweed years. He also restructured Tammany on the hierarchical model of the Catholic Church.^^ In 1886 Richard Croker, Kelly's protege, replaced him as Tammany boss. A Famine refugee at the age of three, Croker began his political career as a Tammany street thug. He was shrewd, if ignorant, and skilled at manipulating political power. His reign was a record of ruthless power and massive corruption. Scandal finally forced After the

fall

of the

Croker's resignation. In 1903 he retired to Ireland as a multimillionaire horse

breeder and a verbal supporter nationalism.^"

of,

and financial contributor

to,

home

rule

Under Kelly and could do for

for

most

of Croker's tenure,

working

Tammany was limited in what

class constituency because of its alliance

223

with

Forging Forward

Democratic Party factions Irving Hall and County Democrats, or Swallow Tail

and looking Back

it

its

bankers, businessmen, industrialists, and lawyers with a conservative agenda.

Popular maverick politicians, such as Sheriff

Jimmy "The Famous" O'Brien and

who became a reform Tammany leadership in Irish circles. Unhke more recent political machines, Tammany could not really former heavyweight boxing champion John Morrissey,

member

Congress and a state senator, challenged

of

select candidates or control

them once they were

in office.^'

Despite the complaints of nativist writer Paul Bocock and Theodore Roosevelt that the Irish were corrupting actually declined as their

numbers

New

York

increased.''^

politics, their influence

From 1844

to 1884 the Irish

percentage of the population rose from about 20 to 40 percent, but they held only 14 percent of

low

Tail's

Tammany

leadership positions compared with the Swal-

64 percent.^^

Although

Tammany was

negligent in responding to working-class

plaints, individual politicians

such as Big

Tim

Sullivan in the

com-

Bowery and

George Washington Plunkitt in Hell's Kitchen did cater to voter needs. Sullivan, the

most powerful

teetotaler,

politician in lower Manhattan, a

nonsmoking, nongambhng

bought food and clothing and paid rent

for the

poor from vice

was accused of but denied prostitution connections). The the Bowery" also championed organized labor and social and political

protection graft (he

"King of

feminism.'^* Plunkitt's "diary" records conscientious attendance at Irish, Ger-

man,

Italian,

and Jewish wakes and weddings,

gifts for

the bride, flowers for the

deceased, licenses for push cart operators, shelters for fire victims, and bail for prisoners.

The concerns and

services of individual

Tammany

politicians

blunted working-class anger, curbing violent protest, but like Catholic social services, they did

program

not attack the sources of poverty or institute a comprehensive

of change.

American nationalism provided an idealism missing in politics and, agenda missing in New York Catholicism. In 1858 Michael Doheny and John O'Mahony, two veterans of the 1848 Young Ireland Rebellion, founded the Fenian Brotherhood, the American wing of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.^^ Fenianism expressed the alienation of bitter people living in ghettos of mind and place and blaming British rule in Ireland for banishing them to a land where they continued to Irish

to a certain extent, a social justice

experience Anglo-Protestant nativism.

Because of the movement's failed 1867 uprising in Ireland and unsuccessful invasions of Canada, the hostility of the Grant administration in Washington,

and internal factionalism, by 1870 American Fenianism had almost died out.

The Clan na Gael took nationalism. Jerome

J.

the Clan in 1887, but

its

place as the most effective voice of Irish American

ColUns, science editor of the it

was

Irish

New York Herald, founded

Republican Brotherhood exile John Devoy,

224 The

Tum of

who settled in New York in the 1870s as who became the Clan's dominant personality.

^ British prison parolee

Gaelic American,

editor of the

At its peak, the Clan had about 40,000 members and the emotional and financial

the Century

backing of

many

other Irish Americans.

Its

and sentiments lay more

aspirations

with the upper-working and middle classes than did Fenianism. Clansmen were

hungry

for respectabUity.

Many were convinced that Irish Americans had failed to

be accepted socially because of Ireland's state of bondage. They believed that

if

they

could Hberate Ireland from British colonialism, they would be able to elevate their

own status.

But the ties between Irish nationahsm and Irish Catholicism, and the

fanatic Anglophobia of the former, antagonized American ehtes who viewed Britain

as their cultural

homeland.

Irish

nationaUsm's provocation of American nativism

was evident when Irish and German Americans agitated for neutraUty in the early stages of World War I. Most Anglo-Americans shared the British view that the 1916 Easter Week rebelhon in Dublin was a despicable stab in the back, and few of them sympathized with

Ireland's struggle for

freedom during the 1919-21 Anglo-Irish

War.^* Irish

American nationalism had important economic and social implications

as well. In 1870

Galway

native Patrick Ford, infuriated by his experience with

anti-Irish nativism in Boston,

began publishing the Brooklyn-based Irish World,

the most widely read and influential Irish American newspaper in the country. Its

columns and

editorials linked landlordism in Ireland

and industrial

ism in the United States as twin scourges and urged populist both. Ford complained that the Clan na Gael

republicanism, and that

enthusiasm of

it

Irish peasants

was too focused on revolutionary

needed an economic dimension to capture the

and

American workers.^^

Irish

Ireland's agricultural depression of the late 1870s gave

position.

As

a result, the

which consisted

of a

Clan in 1878 formulated

campaign against

support of the rural masses for

its

Irish

States,

weight to Ford's

New Departure strategy,

its

landlordism designed to enlist the

ultimate revolutionary objective.

Michael Davitt, a Fenian paroled from a British prison United

capital-

revolts against

Devoy sent

who was visiting in the

back to Ireland to mobilize and organize farmers for the land war.

Davitt founded the National Land League in 1879. Charles Stewart Pamell, a Protestant landlord

member

of the Irish Parliamentary Party, but a dissenter

from the conciliatory policies of its chair, Isaac Butt, decided to offer his services to the league.

On Davitt's

invitation, Parnell

The American Land League launched

in

became

New

its president.'*^

York,

its

many

branches, and

other Irish American organizations financed the campaign against landlordism.

American money, Irish peasant determination and solidarity, and aggressive tactics, mainly economic and social isolation (boycotting) of those who cooperated with landlordism, eventually Liberal

government conceded

won

out. In 1882

William

fixed tenures, at fair rents,

interests in holdings to Irish farmers.

This legislation was

E.

with the a

Gladstone's free sale of

major step toward

the final solution of the Irish land question, peasant proprietorship.'*'

Pamell used agrarian agitation to capture the leadership

mentary

of the Irish Parha-

225

American revolutionary he used surplus Land League funds and other Irish American

and Looking Back

Much

Party.

republicans,

to the consternation of Irish

complete

financial contributions to support local self-government rather than

Most Irish American nationalists affiliated with organi-

separation from Britain. zations in favor of

home

rule,

such as the

Irish

National League of America and

its

successor the United Irish League of America, which funded the Irish party

at

Westminster. The Clan na Gael, however, in conjunction with the Irish

Republican Brotherhood, upheld the objectives of revolutionary republicanism. John Devoy and others participated in planning the Easter

American nationalism

of Irish

Week

rebelHon. All

Sinn Fein cause during the 1919-21

rallied to the

Anglo-Irish War. In chapter 13 tactics

David Brundage argues that the Clan na Gael was

and goals, but conservative in regard to economic and

radical in its

social issues.

The

New Departure pleaded the case for Irish tenant farmers as a short-range strategy to enlist

them for revolutionary republicanism.

of social justice.

It

was not

a long-range

Clan leaders were too focused on Ireland

problems of the American working class.

And after the

1

to

880s Catholic pressures

once radical voice of Patrick Ford. At the same time,

stilled the

program

worry about the

Irish

home rule nationalists, while fearing socialism, sympathized with

American

trade union-

ism and the women's suffrage movement. In Ireland, following the

and the nine-year

split in

1

890 divorce scandal, the subsequent

the Irish

the emotional and intellectual loyalty of

explains in chapter

1 1,

fall of Parnell,

Home Rule Party, a cultural revival captured many

nationalists.

As John

T. Ridge

the spirit of revival spread to America in the 1890s in

the form of county social clubs. Inspired by the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland,

New York.

county teams competed with each other in

Kenneth Nilsen, reveals a "Hidden Ireland"

Chapter

10,

by

of close to 80,000 Irish speakers in

New York at this time. He discusses Irish language sections of such newspapers as the Irish

American and the United Irishman,

and Irish language groups

all

over metropolitan

as well as Gaelic organizations

New York. According to Nilsen,

Irish-language enthusiasts in the United States anticipated Gaelic League efforts in Ireland.

Concerned with the problem Michael

J.

of preserving Irish culture in the

United

Logan, an immigrant from Galway and principal of

States,

Our Lady

of

Victory school in Brooklyn, began publishing the Gael {An Gaodhal] in 1881. It

survived until 1904, four years after Logan's death.

Americans and study

of the richness of Irish art

Irish literature

on Gaelic nationalism

The Gael informed

and music and encouraged them

and history. From

activities in Ireland

its

Irish

to read

Brooklyn base the Gael reported

and

all

over the United States and

advertised the existence and times of meetings of organizations involved with

the Irish language and culture. In 1890 there were

two such organizations

Brooklyn, three in Manhattan, and one in Yonkers."^

in

Forging Forward

Irish

226

and Irish American cultural nationalism

of the late nineteenth century

The Turn of

responded to Anglo-Saxon racism that was popular in academic,

the Century

joumaUst circles and among the British and American upper and middle classes.

new

This

political,

and

version of nativism described Catholic Celts as unstable, emotional,

and slavish, badly in need of Anglo-Saxon masters. In its most malicious forms, it

much

insinuated that mentally and physically the Irish had not advanced

beyond

apes.''^

Cultural nationalism did

an ego

lift.

But

it

much to instill self-esteem in a people who needed many Irish Americans to escape into a largely

also permitted

romanticized Irish past while ignoring the reahties of the American present, thereby increasing rather than diminishing their alienation. Cultural national-

ism had a negative that

it

effect

on the development

of Irish

American

literature in

postponed honest investigations into and descriptions of Irish American

urban misery.

It

literature.''^ In

1

also fostered a

91

1

narrow-minded provincial approach

to art

and

the Abbey Theatre's presentation of John Millington Synge's

The Playboy of the Western World received the same kind of negative reception

New

in

York that

it

had experienced four years

earlier in

Dublin. Defensive

thin-skinned audiences in both cities could not tolerate the playwright's depiction of the Irish peasantry as less than the idealized spiritual, antimaterialist

Gael.

Most of the New York Irish did not flounder in the mists of a Celtic twilight. They directed their energies to more immediate and pressing concerns. Impatient with Tammany's conservative Swallow Tail alliance and its reluctance to respond to working-class issues, Patrick Ford and Father Edward McGlynn, pastor of St. Stephen's parish, supported the 1886 mayoral candidacy of Henry George, the single-tax proponent. George's advocacy of the Land League and close ties to Michael Davitt and Ford gave

him many

friends in the Irish

community. Archbishop Corrigan, however, feared that Cathohc workers were under the

spell of a pied piper of socialism

and ordered McGlynn

to

withdraw

When the priest refused to obey, Corrigan suspended Rome later reversed."^ Combined with Tammany voter

from George's campaign. him, a decision that

manipulation, the archbishop's opposition no doubt helped Swallow Tail Abram S.

Hewitt win the election. But the 67,000 votes that went to George indicated

strong Irish (especially second-generation) and

He

German working-class support. midtown districts."*^

received 34 percent of the votes in Irish lower and

Clan na Gaelers also challenged Tammany. Devoy and others despised the

compromise and the pragmatism the

way

that

Americans

of Irish

Democrats took the

American

politics.

Irish vote for granted

They

also resented

and advised

to cast ballots for pro-Irish nationalism office seekers of

any

Irish

party.

Devoy and

his associates endorsed Republican presidential

candidates, but by engaging in

American politics they shattered many idealistic

In 1884 and 1888

illusions that surrounded revolutionary republicanism,

compete with

politicians closer to

and they could not

and more familiar with the needs

of the

people. Irish voters did not have difficulty voting for of Ireland,

Henry George,

a friend

227

but did so for a party crusading against "rum, Romanism, and

Forging Forward

rebellion.

and Looking Back

Increasingly, Irish

redress their

Americans turned from

economic and

politics to the labor

movement

to

social grievances. But their skills in the former

meant that they were overrepresented

in the upper echelons of the latter. In

Chapter 12 John R. McKivigan and Thomas J. Robertson discuss Irish leadership of

New York unions, the Knights of Labor, and radical political movements such

as the

Independent Labor Party, the Socialist Labor Party, and the United Labor

Party.

The

prominent in

Irish w^ere also

a

more conservative expression

of

working-class consciousness. In 1900 Irish Americans held almost half of

American Federation

of Labor

union

presidencies.''*

More than Tammany political or Catholic values, Irish nationaHsm inspired Irish American labor radicalism. Boycotting was a contribution of the 1880s Irish land war to the American labor movement. In Ireland the strategy socially ostracized agents of landlordism. In America it was applied through economic sanctions against unfair employers."*^ "Cautious and conservative in local pohtics, the Irish-controlled building trades set a record for industrial conflict,

generating nearly three times as as other industries

many

such as mining.

strikes, boycotts,

and sympathy

strikes

"^°

There was a negative as well as a positive side to the Irish impact on the labor

movement. As McKivigan and Robertson point

out, early in the nineteenth

century Irish stevedores banded together to exclude African American and other

They

ethnics from the docks.

also

show how

Irish-led

unions of the

late

nineteenth and twentieth century manifested prejudices against non-whites

and new immigrants in accepting and rejecting members. After

Tammany

ism, its leaders

survived confrontations with Irish labor and Irish national-

came

to reahze that they could

voters with coal, food baskets,

and

no longer appease working-class

political blarney.

SulUvan in the Bowery and Henry Purroy, a city Twenty- Fourth Ward,

Following the lead of fire

Tammany established political clubs throughout the city.

These groups provided social entertainment, including boat bakes, for the entire family, people. Factionalism in

Tammany

and took a close personal

Swallow

to fight off threats

candidates, control

Tim

commissioner, in the

them

Tail ranks

trips

interest in

and clam-

neighborhood

and social networking enabled

from mavericks,

select

and mobiUze votes

for

in office, and formulate policies attractive to an

essentially proletarian constituency.^'

McKivigan and Robertson emphasize

that the conservative urgings of the Catholic

Church combined with Tammany its employment of Irish civil

patronage of and alliance with organized labor plus servants, policemen,

and firemen,

as well as

some

Irish occupational mobility,

took the strength out of lingering Irish radicalism. In 1902 of

American -bom, working-class Charles Francis Murphy took charge

Tammany. Although

a conscientious, puritanical Catholic

who never cursed

smoked and seldom

drank,

Murphy owned

or

The Turn of

as Irish political

and

the Century

political genius, a

master organizer, and a shrewd judge of situations and

Alfred

four saloons,

which functioned

228

Although verbally

social clubs.

inarticulate,

Smith, a multiterm governor in Albany and pioneer of the

E.

and Robert

New

Wagner,

F.

he was a talent.

New Deal,

York's effective and distinguished senator in

Washington, were Murphy proteges.

Murphy believed that the government had an obligation to serve the common social problems. He had more influence

good and thus to solve economic and

Albany than Kelly or Croker. Friendly governors provided patronage funds

in

Tammany and vetoed the antimachine bills of hostile legislatures. When many middle-class Protestant opponents of increased assessments moved to the for

Murphy

suburbs.

taxed absentee landlords and businesses and applied the

income and patronage funds

to public

works and

Many joumahsts and novelists have tive side of Irish politics

machines

political

Tammany

and

its

social welfare programs.^^

exaggerated and romanticized the posi-

power broker

significance.

clearly reserved the largest share of patronage

satisfying others

Although the

may have helped incorporate other ethnics into the

with such trinkets as

coal,

plums

system,

for the Irish,

food baskets, and push cart

li-

Under Tammany rule. New York fell far short of paradise and Irish politicians were mostly concerned with their own kind. At the same time, they had a more benevolent attitude toward other Catholics and Jews than did Anglo-Protestants, who conceived of reform in moral rather than in economic censes.^^

or social terms.^''

The same year

that

Murphy became Tammany

boss, Irish-bom John M. became New York's second he was warmer and more flexible than his

Farley succeeded Corrigan as archbishop and later cardinal.

While

far

from

liberal,

predecessor. Farley encouraged the endeavors of priests at at

Dunwoodie

United

in Yonkers,

States. In

1905 Fathers Francis

philosophy department started the dent.

St.

Joseph's Seminary,

one of the few Catholic intellectual centers in the P.

Duffy and John

F.

Brady of the

New York Review with the seminary presi-

Reverend James A. Driscoll, a highly respected theologian, as

reading audience

was

editor. Its

small, but the journal represented an important European

and American Catholic voice in opposition to a

rigid

Thomistic philosophy and

theology that insisted on a static church impervious to the contemporary world.

Newman, the Review's editor and writers believed God and his purpose evolved through time. They wanted the church to accept historical development and to come to terms with discoveries Like John Henry Cardinal that knowledge of

and ideas in the sciences, encyclical, Pascendi

social sciences,

and humanities. In 1907 Pius X's

Dominici Gregis, condemned

as heretical the criticism of

neoscholasticism and the effort to bring the church up to date. Farley and other

members in 1908

American hierarchy submitted to Rome. Pius X's "reign of Modernism and intellectualism shut down the New York Review

of the

terror" against

and forced Driscoll and Duffy out of the seminary into parish work.*^

Duffy became pastor of Holy Cross in Hell's Kitchen and then the famous chaplain of the Fighting 69th in World

War

229 Forging Forward

I.

and Looking Back

At the turn road to

of the

American

workers in the their

brawn

century the

success.

city,

New York Irish were still stumbling along the

They had

the highest percentage, 39.3, of unskilled

and 25.4 percent were semiskilled. Both groups supplied

to the construction of the East

and West Side elevated railways in

between 1869 and 1883, and the

the 1870s, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge

digging of the

subway system

part of the service

after 1900.

economy as waiters,

Many Irish men and women remained

waitresses, hotel employees, bartenders,

and domestic servants.^^ The slow pace of occupational mobility perpetuated the social problems of alcoholism, crime, and brutality that victimized Irish individuals and neighborhoods.^^ Irish bigotry

of

toward other minorities expressed American disappointments,

and insecurities. Physically, the

failures,

American

unfamiliar.

cities,-

Much

of their

resentment of Eastern European Jews derived from

traditional Christian anti-Semitism, later

and rose

faster.

Even Patrick

some from jealousy of a people who arrived Ford's Irish

American populism on usurious Shylocks.^^ to African

most cosmopolitan

Irish resided in the

psychologically, they lived in peasant villages, fearing the

Americans and Jews;

it

was

World echoed the attacks of was not restricted

Irish prejudice

also directed at Italians,

who were

considered inferior non-English speaking Catholics.^'

Despite the poverty and social disorder, the sluggish rate of occupational

and the idealism

mobility, the moral discipline of Catholicism,

the situation was getting better for the of Irish

workers were

skilled,

New York Irish. By

second to the

German

1

of

nationaUsm,

900 about 23 percent

29.9 percent.^"

On

the

on construction sites, they were foremen as well as laborers. On railroads there were fewer Irish navvies and more engineers, firemen, switchmen, levermen, clerks, and telegraphers. Streetcar, elevated railway, and subway riders noticed that quite a few

waterfront, in packing houses, in factories, and

conductors and

motormen spoke with

a brogue.

On

building

sites, Irish

bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, painters, plumbers, steamfitters, and electricians

began to match and then exceed the numbers of diggers and hod carriers.

Political

power meant

who employed

that city public

works projects went

coethnics in the skilled building trades.

unskilled Irish laborers.^'

to Irish contractors

They

in turn hired

The distinction between unskilled and skilled became

generational, the difference

between immigrant greenhorn fathers and narrow-

back sons.

The security of the civil service greatly attracted people who could still remember poverty, eviction, and famine in Ireland and difficult American adjustments. The Irish staffed the police and fire departments, the post office, and the government bureaucracy. Curiosity, writing skills, the search for adventure, and a hearty drinking tradition drew Irish talent to journalism. From

230

1890 to 1900 the number of

The Turn of

grew from

the

Century

above that of Irish

New

4.3 to 10.3 percent,

York

Irish in

high white-collar occupations

which was below the German

famihes provided the Cathohc Church with most of

As

18.8 percent but

New Yorkers with British and Canadian backgrounds.^^ its priests,

nuns, and

—

became more connected with law than with saloons not necessarily a moral improvement many young men became attorneys. And Irish brothers.

politics

—

medical school graduates served the health needs of their people. Between 1870

and 1910

Irish

small businesses also increased in number; there were

many

Irish

saloon keepers, Irish-owned grocery, clothing, hardware, and other smaU shops that catered to neighborhood chenteles.

Nuns, many from hospitals, for

young

York

Irish

vants or

Ireland, taught in parochial schools,

Irish lay

women who

were in the vanguard

community. Daughters

who had worked

of

mothers

parents."^ Eight years

The opening of a new in

police station at

November 1887. The 25th

between 57th and 79th

1

Streets, a

ward

that in

York

City, partly

among

Irish

New

domestic

ser-

women with Irish-born

Street

20.7 percent of

was

New

York's

the occasion for a formal portrait

Precinct covered the blocks from Fifth

neighborhood cop was one of the most visible

models

female teachers with English or

later, fathers of

53 East 67th

role

an advancing

garment industry sweat-

shops became teachers and nurses. In 1900 American all

of

who had been

in factories, mills, or the

parents exceeded the "combined total of

German

nursed in Catholic

and operated orphanages and sanitariums. They were

Avenue

to the East River

1890 was 26 percent Insh by birth or descent. The "Irish" occupations in late -nineteenth-century

New

because of Tammany influence and partly because of the 95 percent literacy

immigrants. (From the collection of

Anne

T.

Murphy)

rate

public school teachers

had been

bom

Nuns and

the

women

they

231

taught and inspired achieved leadership positions as school principals, college

Forging forward

presidents,

sional

and hospital

directors.

in Ireland.^"

They were America's

first

group of profes-

women.*^

With rising incomes and expectations, many Irish famiUes in the upper-working and lower middle class deserted their old neighborhoods for

new

ones in

Manhattan's Upper East and West Side and the Bronx. In Brooklyn they vicinity of the

Navy Yard

for Flatbush

and other residential

families sent their sons to St. John's College

Bronx to be educated by the

areas.

left

the

Ambitious

(renamed Fordham in 1907) in the

Jesuits, to the Christian Brothers at

Manhattan

College, to the Vincentians at St. John's College in Brooklyn, or to the Francis-

cans at

St.

Francis College, also in Brooklyn.

the Sisters of Charity's College of

women

Mount

They

enrolled their daughters in

Saint Vincent in Riverdale.

Young

from affluent families attended Manhattanville College of the Sacred

Heart. But

most

Irish

women trained for professions in teacher's

colleges or in

hospital nursing programs.

Show

They They also served as ethnic heroes. Urban poverty and adversity bred strong, hard, and bitter young business and sports featured Irish performers and athletes.

entertained and released the frustrations of the general public.

naturals for the boxing ring. Until Joe Louis in the that violent sport.

At the turn

of the

1

930s, the Irish dominated

century they also were closely associated

Bill McGurmigle as manager and named Collins, Bums, O'Brien, Corkhill, Daly, and Terry, the Brooklyn Dodgers won the National League pennant in 1890. In 1899 and 1900 they again were champions when McGann, Daly, Casey, Keeler (Wee Willie), Kelley, Farrel,

with baseball, the national pastime. With players

Jennings, for

McGuire, Durm, Hughes, Kennedy, Mcjames, and McGirmity played

manager Ned Hanlon. In 1 904 John J. McGraw managed the National League

champion

New York Giants. A year later they won the World Series,

Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics.

defeating

McGraw had McGann, DevUn,

Donlin,

Sharmon, Browne, Bresnahan, McCormick, Donhn, and McGinnity in the starting line up.

191

The McGraw-led Giants won National League pennants

in

1912, and 1913, with the assistance of players Doyle, Devlin, Murray, and

1,

Bums. The Giants owned but shared the Polo Grounds with the Yankees, a team that also featured a baseball

number

was the country's most popular

image of a rural Protestant nation, adaptability

and their

skills in this

New

of Irish Americans.^^

sport, closely linked to the

York

Because

mythical

came to represent American arena gave them a more acceptable persona Irish players

than boxing prowess. But athleticism also reinforced nativist opinion that the Irish

were strong

Irish

of

American

back but weak of mind.

actors, dancers, singers, acrobats,

vaudeville stages and in theaters. In plays and

evolving into

more acceptable

and comedians appeared on

comedy sketches

the Irish were

representatives of their people than the Paddys

and Biddys of former days. People were laughing with, rather than

at,

them.

and Looking Back

232 The Turn of the

Century

Dublin-bom playwright and actor Dion Boucicault (1820-90) settled York and had an important impact on the development of American His work influenced George M. Cohan, the Boucicault's Irish plays

O'Dowd

(1873),

The Colleen Bawn

Irish

American king

(1860),

in

New

theater.

of Broadway.^^

Armh-na-Pogue

(1864),

and The Shaughiaun (1874) remained popular with

The

New York

audiences into the twentieth century. His peasants were witty not fooUsh,

courageous without being violent, and intelligent instead of ignorant or stupid. In clever ways, they outsmarted landlords, constables,

and

British officials.

Boucicault's plays were pro-nationalist, but inoffensive to Anglo-Protestants in

the audience.

The sketches

that

Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart (Anthony Cannon) wrote

and performed from the 1870s through the 1890s, included songs composed by Harrigan and his father-in-law, David Braham. They depicted in

humorous

yet sympathetic interactions

ethnics. Despite their foibles, Harrigan's

New York's Irish

among themselves and with

and Hart's characters were

other

likable,

hard-working, and decent people.^^ In addition to the comic songs of Harrigan and Braham, other forms of music

celebrated Irish America. In 1906 the great Irish tenor John

make

McCormack began

They and his concerts popularized Irish music in theaters and drawing rooms as well as in music halls. McCormack's renditions of Thomas Moore's Melodies advanced the Irish quest for respectability. Chauncey Olcott to

records.

(1860-1932), an actor-singer, wrote plays filled with songs,

about Irish subjects.

He

tried

them out

in Irish Brooklyn

hoods before taking them to Broadway. The

many

of his

lyrics Olcott pleasantly

sentimental and romantic, and about the Irish icons of

own,

and Bronx neighbor-

home and

sang were

mother, but

they appealed to the Irish upper working and middle classes, as well as to other

Americans.

They

He popularized "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" and "Mother Machree." some Irish hearts.

still thrill

Songwriters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries found the Irish is

good subject material and treated them favorably. ^^ An interesting question

why

the "hard-working, disciplined, sober, competitive, Protestant America

of the early twentieth century [bought] into the

image

of the light-hearted,

home-loving, quick tempered but genial, sentimental, loyal, extravagant, hard-drinking, Irish,

who

dared to love Ireland as

much

as America."

The

answer perhaps lies in the timing: "In the early decades of the twentieth century, as the culture of the factory

and

office

reshaped the American character, the

popular image of the Irish represented an alternative to the white-collar, organization

man

of the

new urban

business culture.

The

Irish of the

popular

songs had come to embody simple, old fashioned virtues: simple, romantic love,

mother love and filial piety,- geniality and neighborliness; hard work and hard play; loyalty and patriotism. The more America changed, the more Ireland and Irishness became repositories for the quaUties that might be as opposed to sex:

lost."™

George M. Cohan was appreciated.

The son

Americans

233

the most famous and

Forging Fonvard

a personification of Irishness that other

of vaudevilhans,

Cohan became

successful combination of actor, singer, dancer, songwriter, the United States. His

work was

filled

with

and playwright in

humor, and exuberance

Irish wit,

and unabashed American patriotism. Diu-ing World Wars I and II, Cohan's songs lifted the

morale

of country.

of

Other

American servicemen and civilians and increased their love

Irish

Americans shared

others might think, they

were

red, white,

After passing through Ellis Island,

view that no matter what some

his

and blue Yankee Doodle Dandys.^'

my father went to work in one of the Butler

grocery stores, found a place to live in an Irish widow's crowded Hell's Kitchen

rooming house, sharing space with old Cavan friends and new ones from other Irish coimties.

member, and

He

quickly became a staunch Democrat, a dedicated union

a baseball fan.

He improved

job as a streetcar conductor, but in strike. In

1916

his

lost

it

economic situation by taking

a

to scab labor in a transit workers'

new one, he dug ditches in Lynn, Massachusetts, and way to Chicago, where he worked in packing houses, steel Pullman company plant, and finally ended up as a lever man on the search of a

eventually found his mills, the railroad.

My

father considered his

exciting period of his Ufe.

New

York introduction to urban America the most

During World War n, when I would return home on leave

from Coast Guard duties in New York, he would grill

me for hours about the places

he formerly frequented. In the late 1950s he revisited them personally.

From

my

father and other Irish immigrants of his time,

I

learned that their

experience in a Protestant nativist country, propelled by competitive industrial capitalism,

was

difficult.

Frequently they nostalgically recalled the relaxed pace

of Catholic, agrarian Ireland, but not for long.

tional exiles that inhabit the pages of

overwhelming majority cities

knew

of Irish

Unlike the culturally dysfunc-

Kerby Miller's Emigrants and

immigrants in

that the United States liberated

New

Exiles, the

York and other American

them from the

dreary, static life of

Urban America was a formidable challenge, but one full of adventure and promise. In it Irish Americans found a permanent niche as labor leaders, professionals, athletes, and entertainers, and as decent, hard-working family men and women. Many had the opportunity to see their daughters and

rural Ireland.''^

sons rise to heights unthinkable in the Ireland they

left.

My father insisted that his children be Irish; his lessons in Irish history were continual. But he frequently said to forget that

America

period, 1877-1914,

opinion.

is

me: "You know

I

love Ireland, but never

the greatest coimtry in the world." In the transitional

most of the New York Irish were begirming to have the same

and Looking Back

Colleen McDannell

CHAPTER 9

Going IRISH

to the Ladies' Fair

CATHOLICS IN

NEW YORK CITY,

1870-1900

l\c(i :CORDING TO American

religious historians,

Catholicism in the United States has been dominated by the children.

They

cite statistical

and nuns to prove that

Irish

and

their

surveys of the ethnic heritage of bishops, clergy,

Irish

Americans embraced the

religious life with

unsurpassed enthusiasm. Sociologists and novelists detect a distinctly

Irish

combination of spirituality and culture. Even a musicologist has recently argued that the influence of Irish

American sentimental music explains why Catholics

do not sing in their churches.' In standard American Catholic history, the

—in some ways—like the Puritans.

are presented

shaped Catholicism

"The"

just as "the" Puritan experience

Irish

Irish experience

has

shaped American Protes-

tantism. Puritanism provided the foundation both for American virtues (hard

work, piety, the sense of mission) and for American vices (prudery, arrogance, religious intolerance). In the

same way, the

Irish

have been portrayed simulta-

neously as the reason behind the success of the American Catholic Church (financial support, concern for vocations, devotionalism) and the source of its problems (narrow religious legalism, hierarchical power monopolies, sentimentality). The critical difference, however, lies in the extent to which scholars have

attempted to understand these two influential religious forces in American culture.

The Puritans have received longstanding and sophisticated scholarly From the insightful concern of Perry Miller to the revisionist impulses

appraisal.

of

Amanda

Porterfield, scholarly studies

have explained

a great deal

about the

complexities of Puritanism(s).^ Irish American Catholicism, by contrast, has received almost no attention from historians.

With

New

few notable exceptions, Cathohc behef and behavior have not been

a

considered a significant category for historical investigation.'' Even f ew^er historians

have attempted to describe the characteristics of

Irish

American Cathohcism.

Although they have rushed to document labor patterns, working-class entertainments, and the social construction of gender, historians have in understanding the reUgious

mentahty

shown

of ethnic groups. Scholars

Uttle interest

have rehed on

overgeneralized, underresearched, and historically imsubstantiated descriptions of "Irish

American Cathohcism" such

as this one: "the Irish immigrants preferred

the Gothic-style church they had known in Ireland; emphasized the glories of Saints Patrick, Bridget, Brendan,

with

Cathohc

Irish

and Columbau; wanted a simple ascetic piety consistent

culture; expected to hear

sermons on temperance and sexual

morahty; joined the Ancient Order of the Hibernians with as

much enthusiasm as

they did the Archconfratemity of the Holy Rosary; continued practicing the devotions they had learned in Ireland; and

Cathohcism If

of studies

exists

and that

on

it

has not changed over the centuries.

why the paucity of historical

Irish

scholarship?

went

Why is there no tradition

studies?

American Catholicism that can be challenged and revised by

One

of the reasons is that, unlike the Puritans, the Irish did

not feel compelled to write Irish

Irish-American

Irish or

the Irish are to American Catholicism what the Puritans are to American

Protestantism,

new

demanded

Scholars and writers assume that something called Irish American

priests.""*

down

their spiritual trials

to mass, sodahty meetings,

and triumphs. While the

and parish schools, they did not put pen

known about how

to paper

and

they

going to confession or challenging the authority of the parish

felt

detail their feelings

about Catholic

life.

Little is

priest. If

such reflections were written down, they have not been preserved in libraries

and archives. Although

it is

possible to construct the religious worldview of

early-twentieth-century Catholics through oral history, one

and

that those Irish attitudes

generations.

And

activities

What might

it

sources that might not at left little

Were the

look like?

first

glance

How

—

has

Is

it

tracts,

Irish really like this?

there an Irish

changed?

seem particularly

and

To

American Ca-

—one must consider

spiritual. Since the Irish

written evidence about their religious feelings, their religious behavior

must be the

guide.

In this chapter

I

Catholicism. Rather, to

beliefs of earlier

although there are Cathohc novels, devotional

answer this question and some related ones tholicism?

must not assume

merely continue the

schoolbooks, the nagging thought persists:

do not attempt to speak about "the" I

concentrate on one group of

Manhattan parishes during the

determine what the

Irish

last third of

were doing

Puritans and keeping spiritual diaries,

if I

235 j^fi catholics

Irish,

Irish

those

American

who

belonged

the nineteenth century.

To

they were not behaving like good

searched the

New

York archdiocesan

York

in

City,

1870-1900

236

archives, located the dusty records kept by parish priests,

The Turn oj

city's

the Century

their parish fairs.

newspapers.^

What

found was that

I

These fund-raising

fairs

and

average Irish

on

woman, man, and child. Thus what kind

at the fair,

of

goods were

events. Fairs were essential to parish

organized by the

of the religious behavior of the it is

useful to consider

what went

and

who

helped organize the

because

Irish

Catholics expected

raffled,

life

labor, as well as attending

Rome and

the event. Unlike church activities directed by

an indication

and scanned the

Yorkers wrote about

involved the whole parish, with

lay people providing the organization, design,

clergy, parish fairs provide

New

Irish

fancy churches, useful social services, and free parochial schools. They were willing to pay for this elaborate institutional Catholicism not only by

attending fairs but also by paying attention to every aspect of their religious lives. Irish

ers

Catholics were not otherworldly, ascetic, anti-Protestant believ-

devoted to

St.

Patrick.

They represented

a diversity of religious experi-

ence, as can be seen by comparing the parish fairs to the

Day

Patrick's

St.

century, Irish

The life

parade.

With the decline

American Catholicism entered

charity bazaar or fund-raising fair

that

it is

is

so

more well-known

of the fairs in the early twentieth

a

new

much

phase.

a part of

American

almost invisible. The typical nineteenth-century

fair

a holiday or in the period before Christmas, in public rented space, and

were involved

in the organization

handiwork produced by

cultural

took place on

women

and execution.^ In the antebellum period,

women dominated the fairs. By midcentury the handi-

work had to be functional as well as decorative. The envirotmient of the fair was constructed to encourage people to visit and to buy. Donated goods and foodstuffs were sold, and the profits went to the community, church, or social organization. Most fairs were modest in scope and accomplishments. The antislavery fairs of the 1 830s, however, set the stage for the monumental Civil War fairs of the 1860s. The first Sanitary Commission fair for the support of the Northern cause was held in 1863 in Chicago and netted between $68,000 and $100,000. A later Boston fair raised $146,000, and the Philadelphia fair more than $1 million.'' The publicity surrounding these fairs heightened the interest in fairs everywhere. Whether the fair was a small event to help raise money for a local church or a large one expecting to gross thousands of dollars, the basics

were the same: women raised money for communal needs through the exchange of goods for cash.

During the nineteenth century, raising funds for earliest

mention

orphans held

New

of a Catholic fair that

at "Niblo's Saloon."

of "fancy articles

the

fair.*

Mention

late 1850s.

"ladies' fairs"

were a successful means

York Catholic parishes as well as I

for other groups.

have located was an 1834 benefit

Advertisements for the

fair

of

The for

described the sale

from France" but gave no information on what happened of fairs in Catholic

at

newspapers became more frequent in the

A Catholic newspaper article compared Catholic fairs to the exhibi-

A flurry of

237

870s and 1 880s, perhaps following in the footsteps

Irish Catholics in

tions held in the Crystal Palace (1853) before its 1858 fiery demise.

parish fairs took place in the

New

1864

of the

1

York Metropolitan Fair and the 1876 Centennial Exhibition

held in Philadelphia.

The Metropolitan

the Northern cause in the Civil War.'°

cheese at the Dairy Fair."

New

Fair" in the

New York Catholics in

American

the latest inventions at the

Fair, for instance, raised

Institute Exhibition

Or they could

$2 million for

1878 could view

and a 1,500-pound

read about the "Methodist

Church

York Times or learn "Some Hints for Charity Fairs" from

Harper's Bazaar}^ For

New

Yorkers, exhibitions and fairs provided popular

entertainment in the days before Coney Island and nickel movies. They were the primary

department

way

to display

store. Fairs

jumped on the

"fair

manufactured goods before the advent of the

were so popular and so successful that Catholics quickly

wagon."

For the Irish Catholics of the city fund-raising fairs not only

church

life

in the

into an

fit

who dominated parish fairs on every level, American

Old World. Charity

fairs

social pattern, they also recalled

were popular in Europe as well as in

America. Between 1840 and 1870, bazaars in Ireland helped pay for church building.'^

The

"would make the

fund-raising enterprises of the European Irish

most hard-headed exponent

of the Protestant ethic gasp."''' Bazaars

popular in England; in 1904 a society periodical reported on

were also

more than 50

on both sides of the what fairs were and their significance to the community. Fairs were not a strange American custom but an activity the Irish understood. Likewise, fairs were not something exclusively Irish. They were both European bazaars in a six-month period.'^ Consequently, the Irish Atlantic understood

and American. Like other groups. Catholics held fairs either in public buildings or at the church. In 1868

Tammany

Vincent Ferrer parish held

St.

Hall and II years later

it

the Paulist Fathers had their fair at Lyric Hall."^

was held

its fair in

provided space for

St.

the newly built

Ann's

The grandest

fair.

fair of

In 1879

the period

in the nave of St. Patrick's Cathedral, before its dedication.

frequently, fairs

were held in the basement of the church

(St.

More

Anthony, 1869;

St.

Lawrence,

Agnes

all

in 1879) or in a school hall

1879; St. Francis Xavier, 1880).

As

parishes built churches and schools, fairs

Teresa, St. Peter,

and

St.

(St.

were moved from civic buildings, but Catholics continued to emphasize their

pubHc nature. to attract

Fair organizers

wanted to appeal to all of New York City's citizens

both donated goods and dollars.

After an initial call from the pastor,

running of the

ment

fairs.

They

in the hall, staffed the tables,

supervised the whole

women took over

the organization and

collected donated items, created the festive environ-

affair.

While

cooked and provided the foods, and

men might build booths,

act as bouncers, or

women typically directed male activities. Women made up the general plans, told men how to execute them, and supervised the collection of take tickets,

money. In the

fair

environment, male and female roles were reversed. There

New

York City,

1870-1900

Because of its size and prestige, the cathedral

238

were a few exceptions to

The

fair of

1878 did have a male "committee of managers," and

(1869)

had male

TutTi of

the Century

fair,

and

officers

however, those

who

women

activities.

Through such

Since most Catholic

month, parish pastor of

St.

women

fairs

events,

were no

women

social

at the cathedral

from other fund-raising

different

fairs

with socially approved

roles

concems

pubhc

in the

sphere.

stayed open late into the night every day for one

fairs

took on tremendous responsibilities. In 1886

when

was invaded by

pencil, persuasive tongue

eyes."'''

women

The women possessed both

as a

Newspaper

women

articles

and

the powers of "persuasion and argument" of soldiers."'*

might be viewed as unsuitable

for

There

such public

is

same manner

security of their parishes It is

by

as all fair

women,

fair

influenced the growth and

their fund-raising activities.

impossible to identify precisely the

Although the cathedral

no

duties,-

they were perceived as naturally inclined for such work. Catholic in the

fair

combination of soldier and

and were "as regular and well ordered as a regiment indication that

with book and

this small army, equipped

and beseeching

souvenir booklets describe these

women,

the

up. According to parish reports, "Immediately not only our

parish, but the city

rather,

fair

developed and demonstrated their crea-

James asked for "lady" volunteers for the church's biermial fair, 250

women showed

seducer.

Anthony's parish

and collected the donated goods were

staffed the fair

and

St.

male executive committee. Even

supplemented their domestic

energy, ambitions,

tivity,

a

women. Catholic

primarily

where

this pattern.

fair of

women who worked at parish fairs. lists of women who staffed the

1878 published

various parish booths, the similarity of Irish

names makes

it

difficult to find

Women also tended not to list their occupations in city directories.'^ The few women located suggest that fair workers reflected the class and occupation of Irish women in general. Miss Nora these individuals in census materials.

Cunningham, who

staffed Transfiguration table at the cathedral

fair,

worked in

gentleman's furnishings. Miss Mary Reilly was a teacher. Miss Annie Campbell,

from

St.

Dunn

James's parish,

(St.

was

Bernard) and Miss

needle trades. Married

a nurse

and Sarah Kane a dressmaker. Miss Maggie

Mary Dowd (Holy Name

of Jesus)

were also

in the

women were frequently listed with only their husband's

name. Mrs. Jeremiah Devlin's husband (St. Francis Xavier) was in clothing, Mrs. (St. Anthony) was a laborer, and Mrs. Owen Moran's

William Clary's husband

husband

(St.

Vincent Ferrer) a mason builder. Widows also helped with the

Since these occupations were typical of the Irish in nineteenth-century York, the

fair

workers probably reflected the female

Irish

fair.

New

population in general.

Although the notable absence of servants might indicate the middle-class natvire of the cathedral

fair,

it

more

likely that Irish domestics did not list their

occupations in city directories. The

women who helped with

widows and single and married women of all classes. The fair women created a "fairy land" environment.'^" from

New

York Mutual

lit

parish fairs were

In 1878 gas donated

the interior of the cathedral. In 1886 donated

electricity

made St.

James's basement glow. Banners, mottos, pictures, and flags

decorated the walls. (St.

Cut flowers were

Patrick's Cathedral, 1878) or

grand ladies'

fair (1879)

woven

creatively

"bowers"

into floral "pavilions"

Agnes, 1879).

Lawrence's

NewYorkCity.

not only had potted plants and flowers but canaries in

1870-1900

cages and an aquarium.

St.

Agnes's

(St.

St.

exhibited "a statue of 'liberty lighting

fair

the world,'" executed in nougat. In

all

and bands

of the fairs, orchestras

serenaded the fairgoers with music. Refreshments at the cathedral

fair

included

oysters (stewed, pickled, raw), salmon, sardines, turkey, chicken, chicken lobster salad, cold cuts,

and various

or

ale, beer,

however, they were limited to coffee,

amused themselves

Men

and lemonade.

tea,

and in smoking rooms

in the shooting galleries, at billiards,

watched demonstrations

and

washed down their and lager. At St. Ann's

desserts. Fairgoers

dinners with wine, sherry, port, claret punch, fair (1879),

newly invented telephone and phonograph.

of the

Punch and Judy puppets, miniature horse races, minstrel performances, and magic lantern shows delighted the children.^' Even more impressive was the vast wealth tables.

The dazzling

people to buy

and 1 5

1

array of booty

the fairgoers. Rather than sell the goods, as

most

tables, the fair at the

was aU within the grasp Catholic

fairs did.

the donated items the

raffle tickets for

on draped

of goods displayed

While most parishes maintained between

Cathedral boasted 45.

fairs

of

asked

women had collected. They

could buy several chances to win a particular item they liked. Toward the end of the fair, everything

was

raffled.

The

raffling of

goods was most likely due to

the lack of Catholic purchasing power. Whereas the Protestant population

comprised rich as well as poor individuals. tionately

from the working

members

to

New York Catholics were dispropor-

had depended on their wealthy buy expensive items, they would have found that Catholics came

to look but not to buy.

By

class. If parishes

raffling the goods, parish fairs

from diverse social backgrounds. Rich and poor could

all

drew

in

many

buy chances

people

for goods.

Luck, rather than wealth and status, played an important part at the Catholics were not merely consumers purchasing donated goods as they at any

department

fair.

would

emphasized that wealth could be accumulated

store. Raffling

through luck or the grace of God, in addition to hard work and sharp trading. Prizes challenged the rational

market system,

in

which

Raffling goods introduced unpredictable elements into

the

more

affluent could afford to

buy

several tickets

prices

were

fixed.

consumerism. Because

and thus increase their

chances of winning an item, however, purchasing power was not entirely irrelevant. Nevertheless, the organizers

promoted the

illusion that the fair

was

fair.

The types

of the

goods did not

parishes merely displayed

differ

from parish

fair to

parish

fair;

wealthier

more articles. Donations included basics such as coal

and flour as well as household goods, Tiffany's,

239 insh Catholics in

art,

and religious

articles.

Lord

&. Taylor's,

and other department stores contributed furniture, pianos and parlor

organs, sewing machines, "a

new

patented type-writer"

(St.

Francis Xavier,

240 The

Tum of

the Century

1

and baby carriages. Parlor and dining room accouterments included china

880),

and even a case

tea sets, silver pitchers, fire screens, a Swiss clock, birds.

His Eminence Cardinal McCloskey

Men could come home with gold pens, gentlemen's toilet kitchens, a

model

cunning wagon"

won by

(St.

and even a

Mrs. K. Emerson at

throughout the

Not

fair.

walking canes, fishing equipment, and

live goat

"with a silver-mounted harness and

Lawrence, 1879). Perhaps the most unusual

lamb" bedecked in pink

of stuffed

a bird cage at the cathedral

Children marveled at dolls and their carriages, toy

sets.

ships,

won

St.

fair prize

was

She acquired a "bleating

Patrick's Cathedral.

ribbons, christened "Mary's Little

Lamb," and present

fair in a cage.^^

most

surprisingly,

did not include live animals.

fairs

explicitly Catholic chromolithographs, paintings, Illustrations of the pope,

American bishops, and

More

typical

and embroidered

local priests

were

pictures.

were numerous.

Chromos and oil paintings included those of Christ (Ecco Homo, Sacred Heart, Easter Mom), Mary (Mater Dolorosa, Our Lady with Lilies, the Grotto of Lourdes), and the saints

Joseph, St. Aloysius,

(St.

St.

Cecilia, St. Patrick). Tables

at the cathedral included a "picture of the Infant Jesus

an original

oil of

worked in floss

silk"

and

the Virgin and Child by Father Richard L. Burtsell, supporter

of the controversial Father of the delights of the

Edward McGlynn.^ The

arts

were an

integral part

fair.

Religious goods crowded the tables, often acting as centerpieces. Lucky ticketholders

won

finely

wrought crucifixes in gold and ebony, as well

imported holy water fonts. Religious books, including family popular.

As would be expected

at a Catholic fair, the

women raffled

the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Sacred Heart, and the various saints Louis, St. Teresa, Infant Jesus). Elaborate shrines

St.

as

were quite

Bibles,

statues of

Stanislaus,

(St.

were also donated and

homes via the fairs. At the "Children statue of Mary was "enshrined in a

eventually found their ways into Catholic of

Mary"

table

(St.

Lawrence, 1879), a

beautiful niche of pale blue

and white muslin" complete with lambrequins

silk chenille fringe. St. James's parishioners (1886)

8-foot-high altar displaying a statue of

cathedral (1878),

St.

Our Lady

Francis Xavier (1879),

St.

were especially proud of Lourdes.

The

fairs of

Gabriel (1879), and

(1879) all offered large shrines of the Lourdes grotto.

At

of

St.

of

an

the

Teresa

least five parish fairs

wax crosses, while others offered marble and Easter crosses, a doll dressed a Sister of Notre Dame, and even prie-dieus.^"* The assembled wealth included goods that reflected the Irish heritage of the

raffled

as

fair

organizers and participants. While the

New York archdiocese had German,

French, Itahan, Polish, and Canadian national parishes, apparently none of these

churches held major

fairs

between 1870 and

the "bazaar," which

was

of shorter duration

them, often

just before

1900.^''

Other Catholics preferred

and sold goods instead of

raffling

Christmas. Irish Catholics asserted their national

heritage by taking chances to

win

portraits of political figures,

bog oak canes,

paintings of scenes from the "Emerald Isle," or a "Tipperary Flag of the 69th."

The pastor

of St. Teresa's

to Ireland,

including a banner from nuns in Kildare.

table staffed

donated several

gifts

he received during a recent

& Taylor's

by salesmen from Lord

St.

Lawrence's

an autograph

in Dublin,

of

a

that boasted "a 'maid of Erin,

dressed in green satin and leaning against a harp entwined with ivy, " the

Commandments written in Irish,

trip

had

fair

a portrait of Daniel O'Connell

from

a

Ten

convent

O'Connell "embellished by real shamrocks," a "bog

deal cross," a "blackthorn walking stick," an oil painting of St. Patrick, a shield

white satin embroidered with shamrocks, and a Belleek whisky

of

Although Swiss clocks and Japanese vases had their places Irish

goods

made statements

of ethnic sentiment.

Fairs not only displayed elaborate

opportunity for friendly competition personality contests included parish as public,

flask.^^

at the tables, only

goods and foods, they also provided an

among individuals and organizations. Fair men, women, and Catholic clergy, as well

non-Catholic figures and groups. In order to raise money, organizers

developed popularity contests in which fairgoers could purchase a vote for a

regiment

favorite parish city militia (St.

Lawrence), boat club

(St.

Francis Xavier), police captain

Francis Xavier), military general (Cathedral), or

(St.

was held between beer The company that garnered the most votes won a silver-mounted ale keg described as a "very handy work of art." At St. Agnes's fair, the most popular lady would be presented a pair of earrings, the fireman

(St.

Agnes). In

1

880

at St. Bernard's fair, a contest

brewers and "maltsters" of the

city.

most

best-beloved clergyman a liturgical stole, and the gentleman with the votes

would receive

'gold in his hand,'

if

a gold-headed cane so he could

not in his pocket.

on personality rather than success. necessarily the

taking chances

fairs

It

was the most popular fireman, not votes. As in the case of

work led to

luck and popularity could

success,

The

which in turn

led to wealth.

make one a winner. Men and women won

were accomplished

they had appealing personalities.

who

with

Catholics constructed contests based

on donated goods rather than buying them. Catholics subverted

prizes not because they

Those

life

most successful one who would win

the Victorian notion that hard

At the

"walk through

"^^

in their occupations but because

person, not the job,

visited the fairs that flourished in

New

was rewarded.

York between 1870 and

1890 must have found the cause, environment, and goods appealing because they joined in the festivities and spent their money. including the

mayor and various

More than 20,000

celebrations at St. Patrick's Cathedral fair in 1878. In spite of the

depression of the late 1870s,

people,

New York dignitaries, attended opening night

New

economic

Yorkers paid the quarter admission fee and

chances for one dollar. Not everyone who came to the was willing to gamble on raffle tickets. The New York Times reported that two men were arrested for "attempting to steal a gold watch and chain from St. Cecilia's table. "^* Such pilfering had no financial impact. The Catholic Herald estimated that fair receipts averaged $6,000 a day and would

most bought

raffle

cathedral fair

realize half a million dollars at the

end

of its 42-day run.^'

The success

of the

241 Iriih Catholics in

New

York City,

1870-1900

which most

New

242

cathedral

The Turn of

encouraged other parishes. In 1879

the

Century

fair,

in

of

St.

York's parishes participated, probably

Rose and

earned upward of $5,000 while spending only a

bit

on expenses. In 1 880 St. Alphonsus raised $ 1 1 ,000, almost the same amount

Comparing

how

than

1

churches each

($10,800).''°

income

to the other

significant this activity

reported in less

fair

St. Bridget's

more than a hundred dollars and two years later it grossed

was

means

of parish support demonstrates

to the life of the parish. St. Bernard's

church

879 that its three-week long fair grossed $8, 764. This was only $550 yearly

its total

pew and

seat rental income.

That same

year, the

wealthier Holy Cross church, received $19,693 from yearly seat, pew, and plate

crowd of twenty thousand who attended the opening celebrations of the Grand Fair Roman Catholic Churches of New York City on October 22 1 878. The fair was held in the unconsecrated nave of the new St. Patricks Cathedral for forty-two days and netted $172,625 Detail of the

of the

,

toward the completion of

by

a booth, laden with

and consumerism" was the City of

its

construction. Each of the

goods available

New York. J.

common in

for raffle,

and

city's forty-five

staffed

the nineteenth century (Frank

Clarence Davies Collection.)

parishes were represented

by women. Such "mixing of Leslie's lUustraled.

religion

Museum

of

collections while its fair grossed $5,013. Their ladies' fair

and a one-day "Festival

Elm Park" earned almost five times as much as a revival mission held by Dominican Fathers ($6,684 versus $1,431).^^ Not surprisingly, v/hen bad weather slowed down attendance at a 1875 fair, Father Richard L. Burtsell would in

write in his diary that he "spoke plainly at

all

the Masses complaining of the

wretched attendance at the Fair/"'^ Successful fairs were crucial well-being of

New

for the financial

York's parishes, and the clergy expected their parishioners

to contribute.

The

flourished in

fairs that

New

York parishes from 1870

to 1890 provide a

degree of insight into Irish Catholicism as experienced by urban immigrants.

New York

Fairs

occurred frequently in the late nineteenth century because the

Irish

were willing to support an expensive, and expansive, parish system. In 1 850

Manhattan had 21 Catholic parishes. Twenty years doubled, to 42.

Between

Manhattan

bringing the

1890 and 1910,

when

1

8 70

total to 72.

This growth was duplicated again between

more parishes were

31

number had

later the

and 1 890, the archdiocese added 30 more parishes, established.

By 1920 there were

114 parishes in Manhattan, with only Christ Church having closed in 1837. After the First altered the

World War, population changes

number

of Catholics in

sharp decline in their congregations. It

one.

cost

more

The churches the

latest

Some

Irish

New

York City radically

eventually had to

to create a Catholic parish in

statuary, ornate altars, fine

in

Manhattan, and churches experienced a

New York City

close.'''^

than a Protestant

attended were decorated with imported art and

wooden pews, and grand organs. They included

the

innovations in heating and lighting. Priests required sets of embroidered

vestments and sacred vessels. At

first,

a congregation

might hold services in a

simple sanctuary, perhaps in the basement, while saving to build a more elaborate sacred environment.

Holy

Name

(founded in 1868) and

Our Lady

of

Lourdes (founded in 1901 illustrate this trend. Both originally had simple altars )

with limited amounts of statuary. Over the years, each became increasingly laden with French gothic decorations. In 1898 the newly rebuilt St.

Agnes had

five altars instead of the

Church

of

former three, marble floors instead of

wood, a new organ, and 50 stained-glass windows. Frequently, churches, and this provoked renewed building spurts.

St.

fires

destroyed

Augustine's church in

in 1849, renovated in 1881, received new stained glass new vestry in 1885, a new rectory in 1886, a new parish school in 1887-89, a new grand organ in 1890, and then the whole complex burned to the ground in 1894. When new forms of technology arrived, chiu-ches did not

the Bronx

was founded

in 1884, a

hesitate to utihze them. In 1899 St. Teresa's that could be seen

"from any point

church erected

of greater

a

huge

electric cross

New York."^"* The Irish gave their

money, and energy to build palaces where the "Real Presence" of God would dwell. The dazzling delights of the church were to lift the soul into the time,

realm of the

divine.''^

243 insh Catholics in

New

York City,

1870-1900

The

244

Irish ran fairs not

only to build churches but to support other ancillary 860s, bishops

had assumed that parishes would

The Turn of

religious institutions. After the

the Century

maintain a parochial school. Bishop John Hughes school-house

first

1

(d. 1

and the church afterwards. "''*

864)

My

wanted "to build the

calculations based on

Catholic directories and parish histories indicate that by 1 870 at least 50 percent of

Manhattan parishes sponsored

either parochial or private schools.

close to 60 percent of all parishes

parishes had schools.

If

and 62 percent

of all

The 1 884 Baltimore

Council declaration that every parish should have a school and that parents should send their children to

The

Irish

the churches founded before 1900 are counted, 80

percent had parochial schools by the turn of the century.

parishes.

By 1880

predominantly

it

had a major impact on

all

Cathohc

New York City they could

Irish sent their children to these schools to the extent

was a child who was not working. School funding would prove to be a continual financial concern to Manhattan parishes. In addition to school expenses, the parish would need to buy, furnish, and afford

since a child at school

it,

maintain a suitable

home

for five or six priests

and

their servants.

The

sisters

would also need a convent. Most of the women who taught New York's Catholic girls were not cloistered nuns, but in 1907 the 30 cloistered sisters who staffed St.

Michael's parish school were provided a paved, roof-top recreational area for

their private use. convent.^''

New

The

sisters also

merited an "electric elevator" in their

York Catholic parishes also supplied housing

for the brothers

who taught the boys.''^ In addition to schools, some parishes supported their own orphanages. In 1888 St. James's parish orphanage sheltered 200 children,- it operated until 1929.^' Parishes like St. Paul the Apostle and St. Ann organized day nurseries. During 1 892, the church's

mothers ran an

of the children

employment

By the end

St.

Paul's nursery fed

Monthly Calendar boasted

more than 1 4,000 children and

that because of

its activities

have earned $10,000 during the year."*"

service for

"the

Paul's also

St.

women.

of the century, parishes

would

also be expected to contribute to

building the diocesan seminary in Yonkers, constructing the Cathohc University in Washington, D.C.,

and supporting a variety

of national charities

determined by

the bishop. In 1890 these charities included the African Mission, Colored

and the

St.

Home,

Vincent de Paul Society. Sometimes pastors questioned the continual

collecting for national Catholic concerns. Father

Cardinal John

M.

J.

H.

McMahon

Farley in 1904 asked for permission not to take

for the Catholic University, noting that

it

in a letter to

up

a collection

was "merely a university" and therefore

did not merit special attention.'" In 1878 New York Catholic churches had a combined debt of $3.04 million, which was three times the debt of New York Episcopalians, who were the second most indebted group, and six times that of Presbyterians.'*^ Although similar statistics are

not available for the latter part of the century,

became even more numerous

in

New

York, the

list

when

Catholics

of parish activities only

increased over the years. Paying for fancy churches, schools, social welfare

organizations,

and diocesan and national

heavy burden on

charities placed a

made about

parishioners. Perhaps the only unarguable statement that can be

New York Irish

Catholicism

Parish fairs were only one

is

that

way

was expensive.

it

New

—albeit a very lucrative way—of supporting

Catholic activities. Catholics were charged for every aspect of their religious life.

pew

Parishes charged quarterly

were charged

suU charged

dime

a

Those who could not

rents.

1894 the Paulists, noted

a seat fee. In

for a seat at the 8:00, 9:00,

nickel for 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. services.

was free.''^ In addition

for their

afford

pews

American outlook,

and 10:30 Sunday masses and a

The 5:30 Sunday morning mass, however,

to seat rentals, plate collections

were taken up during the

Offertory of the Mass. In 1889 St. Bridget's church collected $1,824.90 in quarterly

pew

sodalities

and societies charged

Although

and $4,723.70 from the monthly membership fee.

rent, $6,703.61 in seat rent,

it

was not

a

obligatory. Catholics

funeral masses said for the dead.

All

plate.'*'*

were strongly encouraged to have

The family had to pay for such masses because

they required the services of priests, altar boys, and sextons, and perhaps even the choir. Part of the rest divided

among

payment went

the others.

to the priest

St. Bridget's

who

said the

mass with the

church required the expenses

funeral masses to be paid in advance, "and the corpse

[to]

.

.

.

without

its

for

be brought to the

Church before 10 A.M. The Mass will commence at that hour even [group] is not present.

if

the funeral

observance the Clergy are kept uselessly

waiting for an entire afternoon and prevented from attending to other duties."

The was

cost of a $40.

If

solemn high mass with

celebrant, deacon, subdeacon,

only the priest and choir were present,

requiem mass with no singing was only to

waste their

money on wakes and

$10."*^

it

and choir

dropped to $25.

A

low

Parishioners were enjoined not

elaborate funeral sculpture but, instead to

pay for a solemn high funeral mass and a series of masses said for the deceased person's soul. All parish activities involved

From the accounts

of the fairs

elaborate churches and

money.

and the descriptions

early-twentieth-century parishes,

it is

were willing

clear that the to

pay

for

of late nineteenth-

and

New World Irish expected

them. The parish was not

infUcted on the Irish by bishops and priests looking merely for self-aggrandize-

ment and

social status. Parishes fulfilled the social, emotional,

needs of the

Irish.

and

spiritual

The enthusiasm with which the Irish participated in the fairs

suggests that the fantasy environment that they created reflected the lush

atmosphere of the churches. Paid choirs, orchestras, processions both inside and outside the church, and the ever-increasing

windows made the church, for instance, St.

number of statues and stained-glass

like the fair, a journey into another world. In

James church paid more

for its choir ($1,991

)

than

it

York City became increasingly baroque in decoration and theatrical in that the Irish

were

satisfied

1

890,

did for

orphanage ($1,375).*^ Between 1865 and 1910 Irish Catholic churches in

The notion

245 insh Catholics

its

New

liturgy.

with austere physical surroundings

in

York City,

1870-1900

246

while the French and Germans indulged in religious sensuality

The Turn of

New

the Century

Catholic who did not want to have the elaborate parish with

York

school,

and

social services could

Through the

fairs,

the

have resisted paying

for

its

wrong. The The average

is

like other Catholics, built ornate churches.

Irish,

dazzling church,

it.

New York Irish created an environment for unabashed

consumer voyeurism. These Cathohcs did not distinguish between tic

sentiment, domesticity, and enjoyment. Placing a shrine of

Lourdes on the same table with tea

sets,

piety, artis-

Our Lady

of

gold watches, a painting of Mt. Etna,

and a sewing machine caused no consternation. Religion was not

trivialized

by

setting statues of the Blessed Virgin next to household goods. In keeping with

general Victorian sentiments, the Irish did not see material wealth as a barrier to the Christian

The sacramental

spirit.'*''

character of Catholicism, which

can be present in the physical world, permitted an

asserts that the divine

additional theological justification for the association of material goods and spiritual values.

Contrary to the view that

Irish

Catholicism contains an ascetic

New York fairs reveal a people fascinated with American economic

streak, the

abundance. Likewise, the image of Irish Catholicism as dreary, pessimistic, guilt-ridden,

and not sensual is challenged by the vibrant fantasy and good humor of the fairs.

At the means

entertainment and piety went hand in hand. The

fair,

even

of enjoying,

if

fairs

provided a

only for an evening, the lush materialism of urban

existence. Like the department store, fairs displayed the

consumer goods

of a

flourishing industrial society. Parish fairs served as legitimate avenues for socializing, witnessing the

religious duty. In

the Church of

an

Agnes

St.

"walking vinegar-casks of

called Protestant critics

who

disapprove of

fairs

New England theology." Father Brann relates the tale

an angry Scot who, on seeing a jolly Irishman going to mass asked rhetorically,

"Dinna ye know that extremely successful

an environment

of

of

city, and having fun while doing one's "The Theology of the Fair," the pastor of

wealth of the

article entitled

of

it is

na allowed to whastle on Sunday?" Parish

at luring

fairs

were

people to spend their money because they created

materialism and fantasy blessed by religious associations.**

The fairs of the 1 870s and 1 880s depended on the willingness of large numbers Catholics to each contribute a small amount for the general good. The large

donations that supported

were unavailable even social standing of

New

York's Protestant and cultural establishments,

for the cathedral. Parishes

but then that Vanderbilt would have

St.

might put up our splendid school and

Paul's bulletin explained that "Vanderbilt hall;

took seriously the diverse

New York's Catholics. To encourage support of their fair, all

the glory and honor and merit, and

thousands of people in our parish would be cast aside and deprived of their share of the glory

and honor and merit. Thank God! we have no millionaires to deprive

our people of the opportunity of showing that they have in them a virtue

which

rich

men seldom

self-denial!"'*' Fairs

possess

were essential

—the

virtue of generosity that

for the

demands

growth of the church, so the parish-

loners,

involvement and interests had to be taken seriously. While priests

247

work

Irish Catholics in

were leaders in

certainly

together

on communal

their parishes,

it

was the

ability of the Irish to

projects such as fairs that enabled the parish to prosper.

Since items were raffled rather than sold, even the poor had a chance to bring

home

wanted

a

"everything

The

fairs

prize. "In a

word," summarized

St.

James's

fair organizers,

is fair."^°

suggest that Protestant-Catholic relationships in

be amiable and supportive. In 1886

St.

New York could

James parish reported that among the

"vanquished victims" of their donation solicitors were "The American, the Celt, the

descendant of Abraham, the sojourner from the Celestial Empire

and Catholic, politician and lawyer, statesman and mestores, the gas and

[Chinese], Protestant

chanic."^'

The non-Catholics who owned department

companies,

electric

art galleries,

support Catholic parishes.

The

and jewelry shops willingly donated goods

Irish

Although the

elaborate fairs without the help of wealthier non-Catholics.

majority of fairgoers

most

likely

to

could not have been able to put on such

were Cathohcs, the cathedral

many non-Catholic dignitaries, and most raised came out of non-Catholic pockets.

fair attracted

likely part of the half million dollars

raffle

and use what might be considered

Protestant religious goods. Family Bibles and

wax crosses found their way onto

Irish

many

Catholics also seemed willing to

While the family Bibles probably had approved Catholic

fair tables.

wax crosses have no connection to Catholic iconography and were

translations,

popular Protestant parlor decorations.^^ Catholic

New Yorkers

apparently had

accepting certain nonsectarian Christian artifacts.

little difficulty

adapted Victorian fancywork, such as embroidery with silk

They

floss, to

also

Catholic

themes. While the poor and working class could gain spiritual merit from contributing to the

fair,

the displayed objects reflected a middle-class Victorian

by Protestants and Cathohcs. Through the fairs, an informal education was offered in what should be consumed and how one should behave in elegant surroundings. The table displays helped the upwardly mobile (or

taste shared

upwardly aspirant) learn what was considered beautiful, Fairs

showed

New

that those desired goods

become

a part of America's

The Catholic items raffled at

up either their religion or their

consumer

culture.

the fairs not only schooled the Irish in Victorian

consumer culture, they also defined Irish private

piety.

certain religious figures entered Irish devotional

life.

Joseph and the Blessed Virgin were quite

become icons Devotion to

of

St.

art,

but again,

During this period, only

Statues and pictures of

common, but

the saints

St.

who would

Catholicism in the twentieth century are entirely absent.

Jude and

St.

Therese, the Little Flower, did not exist in the

The Sacred Heart of Jesus also appeared both in statuary not with the same strength as it would later. By far the most

nineteenth century.^^

and

and pious.

were not in conflict with religious sentiments or

pohtical ideology. Cathohcs did not need to give ethnicity to

tasteful,

York Catholics what they should desire and demonstrated

New

York

City,

1870-1900

Our Lady

248

popular sacred character was

The Turn oj

Mary

the Century

introduced in the United States until 1870. Rather than promoting Irish saints

to the French peasant Bernadette

like Patrick or Bridget, the

of Lourdes.

Although the appearance

of

had occurred in 1858, her cult was not

New York Irish preferred to focus on this contempo-

rary apparition.

Nineteenth-century church

were run by women.

flavor,

women, however, managed skills:

an understanding

fairs,

New

of

whatever denominational or ethnic

York parish

fairs

were no

different. Irish

successful fairs because fairs utilized their social

of Victorian middle-class culture

and confidence in

women's economic prowess. Fairs provide another example of how Irish women introduced the "manners and accouterments of the middle class" and "spearheaded the push upward" on the social ladder.^'^ Irish women not only understood what was needed to put on a tastefully proper fair, they also knew how to manage money so the fair would reach its financial goals. Women's contributions were not

overwhelmed by the philanthropy

true that

women claimed the economic

political,

then the

fairs

would

fall

Irish

women,

glance at

own

few wealthy men.

men

under women's purview.

ized parish fairs not necessarily because they

because they and the

of a

arena while the

men understood each

felt

If it is

appropriated the

Irish

women organ-

they were more pious but

other's sphere of competency.

as well as their parishes, benefited

from

fair activities.

A first

New York churches reveals that women fully used the parish for their

social,

economic, and spiritual growth. Although the exact number of

women and men who attended Sunday mass is not known, a survey of missions by the Paulist fathers in Manhattan parishes indicates that more women attended their revival missions than men. At a typical mission, roughly 60

women and 40 percent were men. Irish women prayed in the churches they funded. Because of the larger number of Irish women domestics, some parishes had extremely high numbers of women. percent of the communicants were

In 1888 a Paulist priest a

commented that Holy Innocents,

'woman's parish: that is,

having in

composed

it

it is

parish

was "decidedly

situated in a 'hotel and brownstone, district, and,

but few tenement houses, the church going population

of domestics. "^^ In every parish school, the

number

is

chiefly

of girls in

attendance outnumbered the number of boys, the difference ranging from slightly more than 50 percent girls to as high as 60 percent. Boys were put to work while girls could more easily be permitted to stay in school. Women took advantage of church nurseries and employment bureaus. At St. Teresa's church, the notes of the St. Vincent de Paul society indicate that women came to collect shoes and rent money for their families. While women's names were noted in the society's minutes, their husband's names were not.^^ Women helped with fairs not ordy because it was a womanly thing to do but because the parish helped them survive in a harsh urban environment while furnishing them a place to

cultivate their spiritual selves.

For women with middle-class aspirations, organizing parish fairs taught them valuable skills for supporting future political or social causes. Since Irish

American

women did not have the leisure time available to their more affluent

Protestant neighbors, parish fairs could not rely on selling ladies' fancywork.

The

New

York

Irish probably

on pincushions,

women had

and penwipers in any

dolls,

to find

would not have spent

their hard-earned

case. For Catholic parish fairs,

merchants willing to donate bedroom

sets, coal, flour,

hunting equipment. Free gas and electricity also had to be found. to

money and

Women had

know who would donate what and how to exert the right amount of pressure.

Design and

artistic skills

were exercised cleverly to transform a school base-

conducive to risking 50»ew "?cnrk wmnetJcuaalv-aunatdKClajr;? Cgtumiy -jume wgeaectmmmttett-u dielnargira^gdBgrdieyMwgg

Itisviiificuit-ixr -xdifflTw.

"Uingrm rmr

hit wrrh- rfriR

Icmf .t*- •a«CTt«fTiartir

-

aitnTirrinarmw- tmi- ,nhv;r^ Tmw

Jis*

many women who may have had qualms,

332

have simply accepted the subordination as appropriate. But

The Turn of

sympathized with the ultimate goals of the movement

the Cencuiy

not only about the role of

women within it,

but also about the violent methods

advocated by revolutionary republicans, methods that conflicted sharply with the conception of

As

"womanhood" that many Irish American women maintained. "we women have hesitated to give our

Dr. Gertrude Kelly explained,

adherence to the physical force party, not that

utmost with

hoped to

its

we

did not sympathise to the

aims, but that in our capacity as conservators of the race

call a halt to the

the Clan prior to

1

immolation

we

;

of Irish youth." In addition, the style of

j

916 revolved around a kind of cult of male revolutionary

"brotherhood," an aggressive assertion of masculinity that

left little

j

space for j

women. It is not surprising that many Irish American women kept their distance from

this

wing

•

of the movement.^''

Although the Clan did

attract Irish

American working-class men,

almost totally indifferent to the question of class inequality. Devoy,

it

it is

was true, j

got along well with James Connolly during the latter's stay in

because both

home

j

men shared a hostility to what they regarded as the timidity of the

movement

rule

New York, mainly

in Ireland

asserted that upper-class Irish

and America. Like Connolly, Devoy often

Americans were unlikely

i

to be staunch nation-

simply because they were too contented. But Devoy was no more

alists,

I

sympathetic to Connolly's socialist views than he had been to Davitt's and Ford's social radicalism in the 1880s. Indeed, for the

New Departure,

over his entire career: he resisted

kind of social program.

with the exception of his support

the Fenian pioneer demonstrated a striking consistency all efforts to

dilute pure nationalism

There were others in the Devoy wing of the movement

more conservative

garment

position. In the 1910

Court Justice John W. Goff, a prominent

state history,

permanently restrained

them from

prohibited

American Federation an example

of the

interfering in

strike.

who

New

Irish separatist,

sweeping injunction against the clothing workers

York

with any

^^

handed down a

that, for the first

strikers

took an even

York Supreme time in

any way with those seeking

of Labor president

New

from peaceful picketing and

Samuel Gompers

to work.

called Goff's ruling

"tyranny of autocratic methods of concentrated capital and |

greed.

A The

"^^ I

similar conservatism could be seen in the Clan's views on Catholicism. original Fenians

had been thoroughly secular, many

of

them adopting

strong anticlerical positions. Yet the church's growing importance in both Irish

and

Irish

American

life

after the so-called devotional revolution of the

mid-nineteenth century caused to

back

off

from

this stance.

later generations of separatist revolutionaries

Nowhere

in the ranks of the

Clan na Gael could be

found the kind of anticlericalism exhibited by John Quinn supporters of Henry George and Edward

or,

McGlynn. Even the

before him, the socialist

James

Connolly gave support to the church, striving in his writings and speeches

to

-

I

prove that Catholicism and sociaUsm were compatible. Roger Casement, the

most famous Protestant connected

to the 1916 Easter Rising

and a figure with

Clan na Gael in America, symbolized the near

close ties to the

tion of Catholicism

total identifica-

and revolutionary separatism: shortly before

his execution,

he was received into the church.^°

The more

radical ideas

almost no role at tists

all in

rule

and programs

of the

the social thought of

Land League

New

era, then,

played

York's revolutionary separa-

between 1890 and 1916. Class inequality and socialism were simply not

more conservative than

their counterparts in the city's

home

and John Redmond's decision to support the British war

effort

movement.

World War

I

and accept a postponement of

movement

in

home

New York and elsewhere,

rule transformed the Irish nationalist

undermining support

leading to a sharp rise in the fortunes of the revolutionary

ment. "The general impression here

Members

i

Day

in

of the

St.

is

that

ColumciUe Branch oi the Friends

i919, one year after

women made

their official

Redmond

UILA and

of the

move-

either a bungler or a

is

of hish rreedoin

appearance in

for the

wing

marched on

Si,

Patrick's

New York's annual parade. in New York. The FOIF

The FOIF was an American organization with national headquarters

'

;

supported Ireland's Britain.

new republican party,

Sinn Fein,

There were scores of local branches in the

I

1

Chelsea.

(Museum

of the City of

in the

Social Thought of

New

York's

Iiish Nationalists,

matters of concern for most of them. In their ideas on gender and religion, they actually appeared

333 Key Themes

New York.)

in its effort to gain

city, like

this

independence from Great

one from

St.

Columba's parish in

1890-1916

334

traitor,"

The Turn of

city has

the Century

for a

wrote

a

New

York home ruler in early 1915. "The UIL

convention of the

Irish race that

Friends of Irish Freedom, a mass

an independent

The

in

New

York

been reduced to a skeleton." The Clan na Gael now sprang to life, calling

would

lead in 19 16 to the creation of the

membership American organization favoring

Irish republic.^'

Easter Rising and the British executions of

UILA and the IPP alike,

in both Ireland and the United States.

York was opened by

a

its

leaders finished off the

further strengthening nationalism's revolutionary wing,

The new phase of the movement

in Newi,

May 1916, where John who now repudiated many of

huge Carnegie Hall meeting in

Devoy shared the platform with Bourke Cockran,

would soon become a; mass movement in New York and other American cities: the Friends of Irish Freedom claimed more than 275,000 members by 1919, for example. Yet, in his earlier positions. Revolutionary Irish nationalism

ways

that require further investigation, the character of this

continued to be shaped by the social thought of the

dominated

Irish

American nationalism

in the years

mass movement

men and women who

between 1890 and 1916.

1914

to

1945

PART IV

THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

The

grade class

first

south of the

at St. Patricks

Navy Yard

School on Kent Avenue, just

in Brooklyn, in 1917.

At a time

when

the antihyphenate climate was calling the loyalties of Insh

Americans into question, Catholicism emphasized patriotism. Patrick's

was a

an

order of nuns

Irish

education in

free parochial

who had come to Brooklyn in 1855. An New York City had an distinct Irish flavor from the

second half of the nineteenth century In addition religious orders

working

women began

public school system. (Courtesy of the Sisters of

Community)

to several Irish

in Catholic schools, large

second-generation Irish American

Regional

St.

school staffed by the Sisters of Mercy

numbers of

teaching in the

Mercy Brooklyn

Chris McNickle

OVERVIEW

When New York Was

Irish,

and After

B

Y 1914, a second and third generation of Americanbom Irish had not only figured out how the nation's premier metropolis worked but had given it an indelible imprint of their own and had begun to enjoy the comes with commanding a city's affairs. By 1945, when the United behind the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression and assumed its position as the world's most powerful nation, the Irish were merely first among equals in New York and fading as a group. Their moment was ending, while the rapid economic and educational advances of Jewish New success that

States finally left

Yorkers, apparent as early as the

first

carrying that group to the center of

The

Irish ruled

the 1920s.

New

decades of the twentieth century, were

New

York's ethnic kaleidoscope.

York from the end

of the nineteenth

century through

They controlled its government and politics, dominated construction

and building, moved into the professions and managerial classes, and benefited, perhaps disproportionately, from the general prosperity of the times. By the third

decade of the twentieth century the group was economically and socially diverse, and its sense of identity was weakening. Then came the depression. The economic collapse hit the Irish very hard and appears to have halted their upward momentum in its tracks. The financial decline coincided with a political lapse for the Irish, so the

group faced tough times without control over

City Hall and without the help, just

when they needed it most,

of

an institution

come

own. The difficuh struggle

338

they had

The Early

resolidified the sense of cohesion that Irish

Twentieth Century

to think of as their

The group renewed

its

upward ascent

of the 1930s

New Yorkers felt toward each other. end

after the

of the

Second World War,

but by then Irish domination of the metropolis was over.

New

The way

York's Irish thought of themselves

period. Their rise in stature a

made

downtrodden yet defiant group,

Americans.

It

was tougher

cry discrimination

when

in flux during this

hard for them to maintain a self-image as

set

upon by wealthy, mean-spirited Protestant

to feel like the

the

was

it

men

underdog when they were on

wielding power were of their

own

top, to

stock, to

the lack of respect for their customs when American traditions and own flowed increasingly together into a single pool. The arrival of millions new immigrants more different from old-stock Americans than the Irish

bemoan their

of

intensified the confusion. reality

fit

By comparison, the

them uncomfortably

for a

Irish

were respectable. This new

time as they searched

for a

way

to be

wealthy and powerful, yet remain simple and humble as they liked to think

of

themselves. This theme recurs in a variety of ways in the next three chapters.

The Irish impact on the politics of New York was especially pronounced. 27 years, beginning with "Honest John" Kelly in 1 871, led

Tammany

Hall, the

political affairs.

power.

The

The

Democratic organization that dominated the

Between 1902 and 1932 the organization was

basic premise of the

Tammany machine was

overcome

life's

daily challenges.

Democratic organization earned the gratitude

on election

day.

The

politicians then used the

enrich themselves and to offer

more help

at the

peak

simple and

city's

of its

effective.

its

immigrant slum dwellers,

By

offering tangible help the

vast majority of a city's people, especially

struggled to

For

Irish Catholic politicians

of citizens in the

form of a vote

power that came with victory

to

to the people in their districts, thus

perpetuating their rule.'

The

Irish

proved masters at providing political patronage positions to

satisfy

the immigrant's desperate need for a job and to create a loyal voter at the same time. By the turn of the century

Tammany controlled about 60,000 government

posts with salaries totaling $90 million a year. But always

than

jobs, so professional politicians relied

support.

They

on additional

more voters

tools to

existed

expand

their

exercised influence over judges and police on behalf of potential

voters, they offered families help in the event of eviction or a

summer picnics and social

clubs,

fire,

they sponsored

and on and on. And when these many

proved insufficient to keep their candidates in

office,

Tammany

tactics

politicians

resorted to fraud.^

New York's Irish were well suited for the

tasks of politics. At the end of the

nineteenth century their numbers were great, and geographically concentrated.

This made organizing easy. The hierarchical nature of the Catholic Church and its

demand for discipline offered an effective model for a political party to follow.

And when

they arrived in the United States, the Irish already had a long,

perverse acquaintance with an Anglo-Saxon political system.

if

They had learned

from the English about electoral fraud, judicial chicanery, and manipulation of the rules for partisan advantage.

group used to secure power for

had nothing to do with differed

it,

They understood

itself,

to hold onto

it

and to exploit

nor did any grand ideology. For the

from other professions only in

detail.

It

was

means one

politics as the

a

way

it.

Morality

Irish, politics

to earn a living.^

The system was well established when Charles Francis Murphy inherited control of the machine in 1902, but it was under siege. Twice within a decade, in 1894 and again in 1 90 1, reformers had turned Tammany from office by persuading large numbers of non-Irish immigrants, principally Jews, to vote against the Democrats. Under Murphy, the machine solidified the allegiance of Jewish voters and added

Democratic Party's

them

Irish base.

to the traditional electoral strength of the

This coalition was powerful enough to win his

candidates an impressive string of victories. Between 1903 and 1921 the crats

Demo-

conquered the mayoralty five times in six contests and controlled the

Board of Estimate and Board of Aldermen. Murphy's machine dominated the state legislature for

York State

much of the period, and it elected Al Smith governor of New

for the first

time in 1 9 1 8 Smith went on to run for president in 1 928 .

Murphy's genius lay in his recognition that building a winning coalition required

Tammany

to respond to the rapidly

changing composition of the

city;

enormous numbers of Italians and Jews was diluting the influence of Irish voters. In 1880 more than one-third of New Yorkers were of identifiably Irish stock, a higher proportion than any other group. By I9I0 the proportion had dropped to less than I in 5. By 1945 it was fewer than I in 10. In contrast, Jews contributed just 5 percent of the city's total population in 1880, but more the arrival of

than 17 percent by the turn of the century. In 1920 nearly 30 percent of Yorkers were Jewish, and by 1945

some two million Jews

still

constituted

New more

An

insignificant number of Italians in more than 10 percent of the city's population at the time. Two decades later more than a million Italians made up 20 percent of the city, with their numbers increasing modestly thereafter.''

than a quarter of the total population.

1880 exploded to half a million by 1910,

New

York's large Italian population consisted principally of immigrant

peasants with no formal experience with democracy and the electoral process.

They tended

to be

was not the

Irish

Italians

Yorkers

—who

—who

became

who Murphy needed

colored the

Democratic

Tammany had

Democrats when the quest

to a greater extent

New York City. Consequently,

to bolt to the

machine.

It

it

was Jewish

voted in greater proportions than any group save the crucial to the

required three things. First,

this issue

understanding of

about the right to vote. According to one estimate, as late as 191

indifferent

only 15,000 Italians were registered to vote in

New

little

unconcerned with citizenship and

to

coalition. Bringing

remove the moral

for riches led

them

them

in

taint that

to protect criminals

than voters could bear. Jewish voters were more sensitive to

than other immigrants, and reformers periodically used

complicity with organized vice as a lever to pull

them away from

Tammany the

Demo-

339 when New York

Was

Insh,

and After

Second, the machine had to use

340

crats.

The Early

anti-Semitism. Third,

Twentieth Centuiy

of the Socialist Party,

pohtical power to defend Jews against

its

had to defuse the philosophical appeal

it

and

of the

to Jewish voters

Republican Party, which possessed a strong

wing in New York early in the century.^ Removing the moral taint on Tammany came easily to Murphy. Although he was a street-toughened barkeeper by profession, he was also a "thoroughprogressive

going puritan" according to his biographer.

He

barely drank and prostitution

deeply offended his religious convictions. After rising to power he rapidly the party of the

members most

rid

infected with vice. Protecting Jews against

anti-Semitism required symbolic gestures more than anything

else.

As

a

group

that

had known its share of discrimination, many Irish found the task appealing,

and

it

did not require

much

sharing of the jobs and contracts that the Irish

coveted for themselves.^

The most enduring characteristic of the machine under Murphy, and a crucial it, was the party's commitment to far-reaching social legislation. The huge influx of eastern European Jews famihar part of the effort to attract Jewish voters to

and comfortable with socialist thought provided a strong electoral base York City's

for

New

Socialist Party beginning in the last decade of the nineteenth

century. For a time, in an effort to maintain a broadly based and ideologically

pure appeal. Socialist organizers denied the increasing Jewishness of their party. (The denials were typically

made

in Yiddish.) But the party's tacticians learned

that fusing socialist thought to Yiddish culture strengthened core.

By the

first

it

with

its

Jewish

decade of the twentieth century the Socialists threatened

to

become the political voice of Jewish immigrant workers. The risks for Tammany Hall were great.^

Encouraged to respond by his most talented young candidates Robert

Wagner, Jimmy Walker, and others

F.

people what they want."

He allowed

his

men

that helped workers and the poor provided

—Murphy elected

—Al Smith,

to "give the

to pass social welfare legislation it

did not

weaken the

political

prerogatives of the machine. This important decision in great measure neutralized the attractiveness of the Socialists.

appeal to

many of New York's

also robbed the Republicans of their

It

influential

German

Jews.

The

first

decade of the

twentieth century was the era of Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes,

and Oscar Straus fide progressives

for the

who

New

York State GOP. These party leaders were bona

appealed to the cautious liberalism of the

Jewish eUte. The combination of Democratic

commitment

city's

German

to progressive

reform and a resurgence of Republican conservatism after the failed Bull Moose

campaign

The

of

1912 pushed the group toward the Democrats.*^

Irish built political

machines

in cities

throughout the United States

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but the

was

distinctive in its reliance

city's

1

in

York machine

on an alliance with another group the

size of the

New

York had

enormous Jewish population. The number

surpassed the Irish by

New

of Jews is

914, yet the Irish continued to dominate the machine

for

decades because of their ability to coopt Jewish poUtical priorities.

American

cities,

important. political

It

New when New

and cooperation among diverse groups has been particularly

Was

may be

days, has

that Murphy's genius resulted

from having grown up in a

environment that demanded an unusual degree of accommodation

to

succeed.'

Compare the experience in New York in the first half of the twentieth century with that in Boston, for instance. At peak times, the Irish constituted an absolute majority in Boston, but only a third of the population in

New

York.

machine never ran as efficiently on the Charles River as it did on the Hudson. Boston's Irish clansmen spent nearly as much time battling among Yet, the

themselves as they did combating the is

well remembered, but

spectacular

it

one-man show,

city's

Yankee elite. James Michael Curley

for his personal outrageousness.

is

irrepressible,

to give

it

an identity and to

it

in the 1930s.

cooperation

among

name

A coincidence,

like

Tam-

Chicago, the

to the city's machine,

and

it

a

perhaps, but

it

may be

that establishing

Chicago's Irish required an outsider, a leader neutral in the

fratricidal battles of that city's Celtic chieftains. ent. It

a

Czech named Anton Cermak to politicians to a smoothly functioning

had required

reduce the conflicts of Chicago's Irish

machine

name

reflect a special standing. In

senior Richard Daley ultimately lent his

functioned as well as any. But

He was

but not responsible for the creation of

an enduring institution. Boston's Democratic Party bears no

many

New York's tradition is differ-

was an Irish Catholic leader. Murphy, who proved the greatest of the city's

coalition builders.

And when he ruled, Tammany

any political machine of inspired

its

Murphy's penchant

time. for

It is

reached greater heights than

worth emphasizing that pragmatism

accommodation. The force

strength motivated him; Italians received short shrift from

1930s and 1940s, election

when

of Jewish electoral

Tammany until the

they began voting in numbers large enough to affect

outcomes."

Implicit in

Murphy's rule was the recognition that respectability mattered.

Winning the confidence of the

city's

population required adherence to certain

moral standards and a commitment to using the tools of government to help 1

9 13 a police scandal and the fallout

from a political battle between Murphy and

New York State governor William

people, not just to plunder public coffers. In

Sulzer prevented

Tammany from

portraying

itself as respectable.

These events

non-Tammany Irish Catholic Democrat, John Purroy Mitchel, to win the mayoralty for a single term. In chapter 15 John F. McClymer compares Mitchel's career with Al Smith's to show how much some Irish aspired to respectability, as well as how difficult it was to achieve and still retain the

allowed a

common

touch the

Irish

The tension between

considered part of their heritage.'^ respectability and Irish authenticity emerges persist-

ently during this period because the Irish especially in

341

been more intensely cosmopolitan than other

its earliest

York, since

were becoming respectable so

comparison with the large numbers

of Jewish

and

rapidly,

Italian

immi-

York Irish,

and After

New

newcomers were more different from They had just landed and did not know their new nation's customs. They spoke different languages, dressed differently, and behaved differently. The Jewish religion, as practiced by the eastern Europeans crowding into the Lower East Side, was foreign to Americans. York. These

342

grants arriving in

The Eady

older-stock Americans than the Irish were.

Twentieth Centuiy

In the early years of the century

many New Yorkers thought that the city's large

Jewish population was the source of

commissioner

of

most pressing problems. In 1908

the

poUce declared (without evidence) that Jews committed

half

the crimes in the flavor to

Itahan Catholicism had an unfamiliar Mediterranean

city.

and the influx

it,

its

hundreds of thousands

of

men and women from who suspected

of

the land of the pope intensified the fears of Anglo-Saxon nativists

United States and Rome. By the end

a dual loyalty to the

come

public had Irish

to associate organized crime with

were highly respectable by comparison, more

Americans who to determine

still laid

what

Yet, the greater

others, but Irish

from

claim, even

meant

if

New

of prohibition the

The

York's Italians.

like the older generations of

with decreasing confidence, to the

right

American and to hold American values.'^ respectabihty of the Irish came not just by comparison with it

to be

ovm accomplishments

their

Some time

as well.

before 1910 the

began attending college in greater proportion than the national average

for

non-Hispanic whites: about one out of four Irish Catholics of college age compared

with about one out of

By the 1930s the

five of the general population.

Irish

had

achieved rough parity in educational level with the population at large across age groups. In the early years of the century the Irish

—

lower-middle-class jobs

clerk,

pohceman,

city

still

held

many

all

of the city's

government employee,

transit

worker, and the Hke. But by the 1920s they were already more Ukely to hold a

managerial or professional job than was the typical American. The trend continued until

it

became twice

as Hkely for the Irish to have attained that level than others.

Some evidence suggests that Irish educational advancement was greater in midwestem and nonurban settings than in New York (and Boston), but there is httle doubt that the Irish were moving up in Gotham during the first decades of the twentieth century, even

if

modestly slower pace than elsewhere.'^

at a

Academics have given scant attention acknowledge that the group ran

its

to Irish success in business. Scholars

share of neighborhood franchises

saloons, restaurants, groceries, and hardware stores. to advances

by

late in the last

The

— such as

research also admits

century in the fields of building and contracting,

businesses that benefited from Irish ties to local politicians. These tended to be small, family-run affairs that yielded

but risked bankruptcy rarely grew

when

beyond local

handsome

livings

when

things

went well

they did not. Even those that survived lean times

stature. Like other

immigrant groups, the Irish financed

home

construction in their neighborhoods through the creation of savings

banks.

The Irish-dominated Emigrant

York's largest, and

its officers

swelled to comparable size.'^

Industrial Savings

Bank was one

of

New

were wealthy men, although few savings banks

Chapter

16,

by Marion Casey, brings to

New

residential patterns in

included a

These

fair

men

number

(and

it

of

light several points

about Irish

343

New

York's Irish

VVht-n Nevt' York

York. By early in the centiuy

wealthy

real estate developers

and land speculators.

appears they were only men) constructed middle-class

housing and benefited from the growing ranks of Irish

New Yorkers who sought,

and could afford, better living conditions. The evidence suggests that the period

between 1910 and 1930 was one

of rapid

advancement

for the Irish in a

range of occupations, including business and the professions. also

makes

many Irish

clear, for

the quest for

broad

As the chapter

more pleasant surroundings was

not linked to a desire for greater stature or a better address. Even as their lot in life

improved,

many

trappings of success.

Irish It

The 1919 freshman Latin

shown wth

found themselves ambivalent about the outward

confhcted with their sense of themselves.

class at St. Francis College, in ihe

their Classics teacher. Brother

Cobble

Hill section of Brookl)!!,

Columba Reilly, O.S.F. Reilly, a native of County Meaih,

became president of the College in 1925. The Franciscan Brothers came to Brooklyn from County Galway in 1858 at the

in\atation of Bishop Loughlin.

By the end of the nineteenth centur); Brothers

from Ireland were teaching the sons of Irish immigrants in a dozen elementary schools, two high schools,

and a

young men

liberal arts college in the

for the professions

1847) on West 16th

Street,

included

Diocese of Brookl)Ti. Other Catholic colleges training

St.

John's in

Fordham

and Manhattan College

Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn.)

(est.

(est.

1841),

St.

Francis Xa\ier

(est.

1849). (From the Archives of the

Was

Irish,

and After

Traditional interpretation of Irish participation in the world of finance

344 The Eariy

the serious

Twennah Century

into real

money was

(and

in

power and influence on

Keimedy came from Boston

—where

New York, and where achievement translates

a national scale

The exceptions

half of the century.

first

is)

—

is

that

it

was

off limits in

the

are used to prove the rule. Joseph

him

to pursue his ambitions, but Wall Street kept

He prospered from his own shrewd judgments but was never invited closed club of old-stock Protestant investment bankers who thought

at its edges.

into the

the

little of

Irish.

There is much that is true in the picture, but it does not seem entirely correct.

New York because

he perceived it as being more wide someone like him to maneuver. New York's financial elite was simply no match for Boston's Brahmins when it came to directing hostility toward the Irish, and New York's financial industry was too big in national and international scope to control tightly. It seems hard to

Kennedy

left

Boston

for

room

open, offering more

for

contend that Kennedy's career suffered because of discrimination against him,

even

if

elite to

many

disliked

him and he resented

Anecdotal evidence of the

the unwillingness of Wall Street's

accept him."'

first

Irish

success in

New

York's financial industry during

three decades of the century abounds, particularly during the 1920s

when markets soared to dizzying heights and the local and national economies knew extraordinary prosperity. For example. Tommy Corcoran, one of Franklin Roosevelt's chief aides, arrived at the

New Deal

one began to find obituaries

in the

McDermott, who entered Wall to

become

a

own

brokerage firm in

as a director of the Hibernia Trust

by WASPS.

New York

In 1961,

when

1

It

law firm that

that by the 1960s

Times that read

Street as a runner

wealthy broker, died Tuesday."

established his

via a Wall Street

Shannon pointed out

specialized in securities law. William

and office boy

like this: "Peter in

1

902 and rose

man

goes on to note that the

925 and that he served

for several years

Company, a bank unlikely to have been owned two of New York's largest banks

consolidation of

i

created the fourth largest banking corptjration in the country, Manufacturers

Hanover

Trust, Horace C. Flanigan

became the chairman

of the

new

entity's

executive committee with compensation in excess of $2 million, a suite at the

Waldorf Astoria Hotel, a corporate

jet,

and

a limousine. Flanigan

i

was an

j

|

Irish |

Catholic

who had

graduated college with a degree in engineering in 1912, and

who had become a vice president and director of the Hanover Bank by

193 1 The

contrast between these profiles and the position of the Irish a century as Lefj Hershkowitz and Hasia Diner describe If

it

.

(

I

earlier,

in their overviews, is vivid.

one adds the economic boom times of the 1920s to the simple but

impressive fact that the Irish were more college bound than others by then, and

on average about as well educated,

it is

hard to imagine that their role in

New

York's major industries, including the financial industry, did not progress strongly during this time. institutions; that

was

still

They

did not yet run the city's national financial

the province of Morgan, Rockefeller, Harriman, and

I

and

their crowd, into

of

German Tews who had followed their need to

investment hanking. But the

Irish

rcnef ited significantly, and set the stage in the

prominent role in research

on the

New

topic

is

first

half of the centurv for a

York's financial industry in the second half.

more More

in order.

More widely recognized

is Irish

success in literature and the theater. In the

nineteenth centur\- Irish American writing went through three phases. The first, in the years before 1S40. consisted of a confident A rote self-deprecating stories for a

prefamine generation that

highly literate general audience.

The second

generation emerged from the famine Irish in the years between 1S50 and IS~5.

These novels were conserv^ative and practical, offering guidance to recent

immignmts from Ireland

to help

them make

in the

it

new

world. Characters

were stereot>-pes, the rhetoric was sentimental, conflicts were simple and the

The

moralizing clear.

third generation appeared in the last quarter of the

nneteenth centurw The audience had become more middle-class, but was .irgelv Irish.

The

stories

had more texture than those

human

and with greater

.-.

critic of Irish

American

s

experience

,

still

of the earlier generation,

insight began to "count the costs

damages of the pre\ious genemtion

and assess the

'

according to Charles Fanning,

'

literature.'^

For a generation after the tiun of the century Irish American writers produced ttle of

note.

The

nativism in the a>untrv- discouraged people of

rise of

all

The pressure to define neself as 1 00 percent American during World War I was great, and the two vears troubles" that reduced Ireland to civil war foUowng the partiuon of 1921 eft Irish Americans less eager than thev had been to insist on their cultural

.backgrounds fn>m celebrating their ethnic heritage.

t

ttliem

roots. II

veialw

1

Not (rf

until

lames

Farrell created Studs

Lonigan in 1932 did a

new

generation

thoroughly authentic Irish American writing begin. But in 1925, with

publication of The Great Gatshy.

F.

Scott Fitzgerald

became America's

first

major Irish Catholic novelist accepted by a bR^ad public audience. Gatsby has

me

the

work

of fiction that captures the spirit of

1920s. Fitzgerald

around

To hold

the

New York ;s

fidl a

New

bom

York, and

literark-

Citv

was

is

it is

America s national metropohs. Nowhere and the

else could pm\-ide

itzgerald's

himself

made

little

of

it.

but

all

his stories:

it

is

a matter of

when Malcolm Cowlev gave

sjuvi-ned.

morals."*^

work, he concluded that his "Irishness was a

emained an undenone in

it

can follow when people

trageds- that

significance of Fitzgerald's Irishness to his writing

He

in

and around the citv where the plot unfolds. book has achieved it had w take place there.

ecumulate monev rapidlv and without regard to

.ebate.

life

in

context for a vignette of the iazz age, the superficial society

le spectacle of great wealth,

The

luban American

in St. Paul, Minnesota, but he \\-rote ujrsh>- in

position the

him

hat sharpened his obser\'ation of social differences.

"

little

some

assessed

disguised, but

a sense of standing

Another

34s

finance trade

by the 1920s worked in financial firms,

critic.

it

apan

Roben

E.

When

.\v>» Vi>Hk

ttizs IiisJi,

jnd After

346

Rhodes, detects in Fitzgerald's works an evolution of his attitude toward the

TheEarly

Irish that

Twentieth Century

unquestioning adulation of wealth in This Side of Paradise to vaguely ambiva-

counterbalances his view of the rich. "From something close to

The Beautiful and the Damned to fairly strong condemnation The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald moved to severe criticism in Tender Is the

lent feelings in in

Night. This

movement

paralleled by that

is

moderate acceptability, to

Irish, to their

from

Irish

Fitzgerald's rejection of the

Dick Diver's victimization by

power and wealth [in Tender Is the Night]."'^^ To judge from his novels, Fitzgerald became increasingly comfortable with his Irishness as his life progressed. As a young man he moved away from his Irish Cathohc roots as a matter of philosophical disposition, but also to distance

il

;!

:i

himself from the stereotype of the unskilled and uneducated worker. Recogni-

shows how

tion of Fitzgerald as a major novelist

far Irish

by the 1920s, and the recognition mattered quite a

Americans had

lot to the

man.

Fitzgerald's

Princeton education and his acceptance by the nation's substantially Protestant literary elite

meant

that he had achieved respectability. Yet, his wild behavior

seemed almost a personal statement acceptance to force

him

to conform.

that he

He once

I

risen

would not allow the quest

:j

'

for

described himself as possessing a

"two-cylinder inferiority complex," the result of a youth spent "alternately

crawling in front of the kitchen maids and insulting the great. "

ongoing tension

many

Irish of the period

It

experienced between a desire for

This same tension Catholic writer

mid-1920s. He

who

first

apparent in the career of John O'Hara, an Irish

is

traveled to

New

York from rural Pennsylvania

in the

1

achieved fame in 1934 with his novel. Appointment in

;{

Samarra, followed rapidly by publication in 1935 of Butterfield

James Malloy, a young

Irish

talk with his girl friend this way: "I

suits

tell

8.

In the

.

.

First of all,

.

I

am a Mick."

her not be fooled by the fact that he wears Brooks Brothers

and does not eat salad with

a spoon.

He

is still

a

Mick, and the

Irish,

he

declares, are, "non-assimilable."^^

The segment for acceptance

recounted

is

more than used to

sit

,i

I

a little autobiographical. For O'Hara, the desire

by the non-Catholic world was intensely obvious. One

how he

;

newspaperman, begins a heart-to-heart want to tell you something about myself

that will help to explain a lot of things about me.

He goes on to

i

and an unwillingness to submit entirely to the ways of the

respectability

latter,

:

suggests the

in the

window

friend

of his East Side apartment and

watch the yachts go by. Armed with binoculars and a copy of the

Social Register,

he used to check the flags of the boats to see whose was whose. While his success

much knew him. Another friend

brought him close to the affluent and socially prominent, "he was as observer as participant, " according to one writer who

recalled that "he yearned to belong to a socially elite club." his

complex that an

Irish

It all

had to do with

Catholic from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, could never

achieve real respectability in the United States. In the words of one

critic, to

i

O'Hara, being Irish

was an "underlying dominant problem

who had the misfortune to find his or her way deprivation with

.

.

into his stories

.

and every 'Mick'

had

a share in the

which he believed life handicapped him. " For many Irish such

doubts and ambivalences about their ethnic identity persisted throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

Not

until the country elected John

Kennedy president

in 1960

''

would the

insecurities finally recede.

Fitzgerald

and O'Hara made

Americans

representative of Irish

James

period,

their

marks

New York,

in

the country's literary

Both were Irish Catholic writers, but neither one wrote novels that were

capital.

He

T. Farrell, did.

South Side of Chicago. Farrell

as a group.

A third great Irish novelist of the

created the character of Studs Lonigan on the

the story of a young Irish American boy

tells

coming of age and growing into manhood in a working-class Irish neighborhood during the depression. The story fits better in Chicago than New York. The stark

what

authenticity of the tale, Irish

American working

measure of economic

hand most

Farrell called the spiritual

class that

stability,

endured even

makes

it

harder to set in

and attitudes

of the conditions

impoverishment

after the

New York. On the one about existed in New

Farrell writes

York's Irish neighborhoods. Indeed, a literary school of regional realists

Gaffney 1940) about the Brooklyn Irish, (

South Bronx in Let

Go

Howard Breslin wrote of the Irish living

of Yesterday (1950), and there

New York City possesses a glamour, interferes

grew up

New York contingent. Harry Sylvester wrote Moon

in Farrell's wake, including a

in the

of the

group had achieved a

with the insularity of

included. In Chicago, Bridgeport

its

were others.

Yet,

an excitement, and a national stature that

communities, the working-class

Irish

spawned Richard J. Daley; in Manhattan,

ones

Hell's

Kitchen spawned Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The similarities are evident, but so are the differences.^^

Broadway

is

part of

New York's glamour,

and

it

was

there during the 1920s,

and 1940s that Eugene O'Neill made his mark with The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night, and other plays. This is another example of

1930s,

A an

Irish

American achieving new heights during the first decades of the twenBecause New York was the nation's drama capital, O'Neill's

tieth century.

career could not

exhibited a

have reached the same degree of success elsewhere. His plays fatalism, an ambivalence toward alcohol and sex, and

romance and

was evident

in

much

of the

drama

a fondness for the dark side of

life

emerging from Ireland in the

quarter of the twentieth century. These works

first

also accurately reflected the attitudes day.

It is

that

and emotions

of the

American Irish

Journey into Night, the Tyrone family, display universal emotions. appeal of O'Neill's

work

much

is

about

local bar in

The If

of his

through the prism of their Irishness that the characters in A Long Day's

Irish

it

that

is

New

Greenwich

achieved with a distinctly Irish

York as

well.

for

The broad

and there

The Iceman Cometh takes place

Village, for example.

were fending

style,

is

in a

^^

themselves quite well in

New York by the

1920s.

they were not yet rich as a group, increasingly they lived in middle-class

347 when New York

Was

insh,

and After

348

comfort.

The Ear/v

felt

Twentieth Century

Many

of their

own had

discriminated against, but

achieved notable national success. They

momentum was

that holds ethnic consciousness in place

is

on their

One

side.

still

of the glues

the threat from others, and

its grip

on New York's Irish was starting to weaken as the power the Irish wielded became ever more apparent. Between 1915 and 1917, for example. Mayor John

known

Purroy Mitchel instituted educational reforms

many

New

Irish

education delivered to the children of the

numbers

Gary

as the

Plan.

To

Yorkers the program appeared to sacrifice the quality of

of Irish Catholic students, to

city's

working

including large

class,

keep the taxes paid by the wealthy low.

In response, Irish Catholic lay and religious leaders

same

leaders to have the plan repealed. In 1917 this

teamed up with Jewish coalition helped topple

Mitchel's administration. In the short term, the effort by a public official to

impose an unwanted policy on the

Irish

no doubt increased the group's sense

vulnerability. But the completeness of their victory

made

it

clear that

of

New

York's Irish held the power to protect themselves against perceived cultural onslaughts.^^

Contrast this episode with the group's experience in the 1840s. As the incipient national

movement for public education gathered momentum in New

York, the city's Irish Catholics wanted schooling for their children, but faced a conflict.

"How can we

every artifice

is

think of sending our children to those schools in which

resorted to in order to reduce

Power, the vicar general of the archdiocese of

them from

New

their religion?" John

York asked

the philosophical orientation of public school classes.

after assessing

The curriculum was

indisputably Protestant. In response, John Hughes, the city's fierce Irish Catholic

archbishop, created a vast parochial school system financed by the city's

many Catholic

parishioners.

It

was

the only

could educate their children in their

own

way

to ensure that his worshipers

faith. In short,

unable to control the

formal powers of government held by Protestants, Hughes did what the

had done

for centuries to

circumvent British laws in Ireland.

He

Irish

instituted an

Irish-dominated shadow system.^*

By 1917 things were

different.

New York's Irish exerted enough control over

the formal government to insist that their views be respected. For three decades following the Gary Plan controversy.

New

educational issue of comparable emotional intensity to Catholics. leader dared raise one.

It is

more than

York experienced no

No prudent

no coincidence that the next struggle over New York's

school system to strike a raw Irish Catholic nerve did not occur until 1949. That year Representative

Graham Barden proposed to forbid the use of federal funds and many New Yorkers supported the bill, even though

for parochial schools,

the Irish opposed

it.

By 1949 the

Irish

were

first

in the ethnic pecking order of

the metropolis by only a slim margin, and once again others were prepared to test them.^'

The role

of the Catholic

twentieth century

is

Church

in

New York City in the first decades of the

instructive. Late in the nineteenth century a significant

minority of radical Catholics, of

whom

Father Edward

McGlynn was

the most

noted leader, militated for social change. As the Irish continued to rise in wealth

and stature, this wing faded until traditionalists completely dominated the leadership of

New

The church tended

York's archdiocese.

to its flock

and

ministered diligently to the needs of the poor during the depression but did not

maintain as high a profile during the 1920s as In significant

measure,

it

did not have

dominated the Catholic Church in

at other

times in the

city's history.

New Yorkers —and the Irish

Catholic

to.

New York— were well protected and served

One result was that when Francis Spellman was named archbishop of New York in 1939 he inherited an impressive organization with more than 2,500 priests, 10,000 nuns, and 2 million members, but it was $26 million in debt. He rapidly set about reversing by other institutions. They could afford a weaker church.

the church's fortunes lest

it

New

lose its place.

York's Irish, by then, were

beginning to fear as much.''° If

hostility

from others

is

one glue that binds the members

common

together in the United States, a ancestral

homeland

another. In

is

New

of

an ethnic group

sense of purpose regarding their

York, throughout the late nineteenth

and early twentieth centuries, a small, committed band of nationalists called

on their fellow

Irish

Americans

movement

to support a

to chase the English

from Ireland by force of arms. Daniel Florence Cohalan, an influential local politician, eventually

promoted by Tammany

was prominent among New York's more of the

to a

New

York State judgeship,

radical Irish leaders. In the first decade

twentieth century he became a moving force behind the Clan na Gael, a

brotherhood bound together by secret oath,

first

established in 1867 to help

organize support for Irish radicals fighting the English. Fiis created

The Gaelic American

ally,

weekly adopted an

in 1903. This

opposed to the efforts of Irish leader John

Redmond

John Devoy,

editorial policy

to achieve

home

rule

through compromise and accommodation with the English. The newspaper ultimately achieved a circulation of 30,000. lished Irish-American,

which hewed

family succession led to a

new

a

editor

It

rivaled in size the

pro-home

more

rule line until 1913,

and a new policy in support

estab-

when of full

independence. Together, these two publications provided a consistent forum for

promotion of the

Irish republican cause.'^'

The men and women

living in Ireland

had to contend with the

practical

considerations of dealing with English rule in their daily lives and benefited

from incremental improvements on specific

issues.

temper their political opinions toward the English.

These Irish

realities

tended to

Americans, on the

other hand, had the luxury of indulging fully their emotions about centuries of cruel injustice.

They

also experienced a

need to assert their identity in a land

result, Irish American rhetoric on was more uniformly radical than the opinions of the Irish still living in the country at the turn of the century. The shared emotion gave Irish Americans a unifying sense of purpose with respect to their

filled

with people different from them. As a

the subject of Irish independence

349 when New

York

Waslnsh, and After

World War most

350

homeland.

The Early

Americans were content with proposals for home rule, and few spent much time

Twmtieth Centuty

actively

working toward the cause

to their

own

Yet, despite the harsh words, before the First

of Irish freedom.

They were too busy tending

parochial needs.''^

During the

first

two decades

of the

twentieth century, a period of radicali-

zation took place in Ireland with respect to English rule.

fought the Boer

War

for control of

militant, anticolonial

with renewed force

movement

at the

Home

Rule

When

the British

South Africa, Ireland developed in opposition.

outbreak of World War

When

to serve in the British army.

submitted a

Irish

a strong,

movement erupted and many Irish refused

This I,

the Liberal government in England

galvanized Ulster Protestants in the

Bill in 1912, it

north and Catholic nationalists in the south. Secret military organizing accelerated

among both groups

laying the foundation for civil war later. In

19 1 6 the failed Easter Rebellion originally elicited only modest reaction.

Many

dismissed the rebels as dreamers or fools to have thought that seizing

downtown Dublin post office by force of arms would ignite a general rebellion. But when the English imposed the death penalty on the principal the

organizers, they created martyrs, and Irish their destiny took Irish

on renewed

demands

for greater control

New York, the Gaelic American adopted a pro-Ger-

position at the outbreak of

independence to the defeat of the

war

in Europe linking the cause of Irish

British.

Most

Irish

Americans opposed U.S.

intervention on either side. There was certainly no desire to

the English, but there was either.

to

pay

The

over

^^

American radicals intensified their efforts in response to the accelerating

pace of activity overseas. In

man

force.

Simply put, except

little belief

come

that support for Germany

for the radicals, the cost of

to the aid of

was worthwhile

war was too

great a price

for the goal of Irish freedom.^'*

attitude of the majority of Irish

Easter Rebellion executions. uprising shocked

Americans began

The harshness

to

change

after the

of the English response to the

them and created a ground swell of emotional support for when America entered the war on the side of the British,

independence. Yet,

only the most radical Irish leaders refused to salute smartly and rally 'round the In

flag. Irish

New

Americans volunteered

for the

armed

forces by the thousands.

York, Catholic Church leaders sought to remove the issue of Irish

independence from public debate until the war ended of America's British ally

would be perceived

for fear that criticism

as unpatriotic. But other

New

Yorkers, including Daniel Cohalan, insisted that Irish independence be

among America's war

aims.

And

as the

war drew

to a close, Irish

Americans

sensed a match between their desire for Irish independence and President

Woodrow

Wilson's

commitment

to a

new

set of rules for international

behavior, particularly his call for national self-determination for ethnic minorities.^^

America worked with ferocious

351

vigor to force the administration to include Ireland under the umbrella of

when New York

American war aims," historian Joseph O'Grady has written. The major Irish American organizations in New York the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the Ancient

Was

"

From January 1 9 1 8

to June 1919, the

Irisli

in

—

New

Order of Hibernians, the

York Chapter

by thousands

petitions signed

Freedom sponsored

Friends of Irish

of the Knights of

to the president.

a rally at

—sent

Columbus

On December

10, 1918,

the

Madison Square Garden attended

by 15,000 people, according to newspaper reports. Frank Walsh, a prominent Irish

New

Yorker, led the

American Commission on

Irish

traveled to France to insist that the president respect the

When Wilson

Independence that

demands

of the Irish.

returned to the United States without a treaty granting

land's freedom,

he was perceived as a

traitor to the Irish cause,

and

Ire-

bitterly

denounced.^^ In the

immediately following

years, the

New

York

Irish

adopted wholesale

the stand that radical Irish leaders had taken for decades. Strong support

emerged

who fought against the British in the Anglo-Irish War of and when Eamon de Valera traveled to New York in 1920 seeking

volunteers

for Irish

1919-21,

New

support for Sinn Fein and an independent Irish Republic,

York's Irish

population raised $10 million for his cause. Joe Doyle captures the emotional

commitment

New York's Irish felt toward the demand for independence at this

time in his discussion of the 1920 dock strike in chapter dockers he writes about were themselves leadership of the

American

Women

War Aims who supported the middle

class.

barriers. It

members

of the

14.

Although the

working

class, the

Pickets for the Enforcement of American

strikers

was decidedly from the middle and upper

Dedication to bringing independence to Ireland cut across social

provided

New York's Irish,

by 1920 a diverse group

of people

broad range of educational, social, and professional backgrounds, a

with a

common

sense of identity.''^ Events, however, left Irish as the 1920s began.

Americans confused about

On December 23,

governments in Ireland

—one

their ancestral

home

1920, the British Parliament created

in Belfast for the 6

two

predominantly Protestant

counties in the north, and another in Dublin for the 26 overwhelmingly

Catholic counties in the south.

When

the Irish and English signed a treaty

ending formal combat in 1921, the nation was

split.

Some

Irish

thought the

arrangement was an enormous step forward and that in time the northern counties

would reunite with the south. Others thought that if they did not insist

on one united republic then and there, they would miss the chance tions to

come,

if

not forever. The dispute erupted into a

political factions

civil

for genera-

war that hardened

within Ireland for decades. Choosing between brothers was a

very different proposition for Irish Americans than siding with their relatives against the English. Irish

American

but with diminished intensity.

interest in Irish affairs persisted, of course,

And the complexity of the new situation and the

Irish,

and After

among

the Irish themselves over

how best

352

disagreement

The Early

group of a unifying cause. Perversely, the success of the

Twentieth Century

movement

to respond robbed the Irish nationalist

in securing independence for 26 counties w^eakened a

helped Irish

bond that had

New Yorkers maintain their identity.^^

Perhaps the economic

boom and good

times of the 1920s eased the pain

New

York's Irish. All the city's people

that the conflict in Ireland caused

economy

benefited from the strong

development and growth, but

that fueled

New York longer than other immigrant groups, and

because they had been in

because of their unique political connections during a time of extensive building and construction, the Irish probably prospered more than most

The decade

others during the 1920s.

which

New

and while the gangsters

rich,

also

saw the imposition

Yorkers ignored with a vengeance. Illegal liquor of the

time were not notably

of prohibition,

made mobsters

Irish,

prohibition

enrichened an Irish-dominated police force that participated eagerly in the effort to frustrate federal agents trying to enforce

thought was a In 1925

what many Americans

silly law.''^

New

Jimmy Walker mayor.

Yorkers elected

A

handsome man,

a

one-time song writer and singer. Walker possessed a wit that charmed the public. In his dress

and style he epitomized the

ever rising aspirations of

its Irish.

those aspirations to be higher

city's sophistication,

Al Smith's bid

still

for the presidency

and the showed

in 1928. But the nation's rejection of

Smith, by an embarrassingly large margin, was quite a blow. The challenger's

was due

measure

to the prevailing prosperity, and to Smith's America beyond 14th Street. The Tammany man simply did not realize how much so many American men and women distrusted the country's great urban centers. But there was a strong measure of anti-Catholic bigotry behind the defeat, and it was on this that the Irish focused, because it stung them. America roundly rejected their quest to be respectable and Irish.'*" loss

in great

lack of understanding of

An undertone of harsh nativism had accompanied the prosperity of the but in

New

York the

Irish

had dominated

1920s,

local affairs sufficiently to insulate

themselves and other immigrants from the hatred festering in the land. Smith's battering reminded

them

that they

still

won complete acceptance. The

had not

stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed reminded

them no

less

than others of the

fragility of their

economic

security.

Yorkers suffered horribly from the depression, but perversely the off

than

many

other groups,

were upwardly mobile

times, and more vulnerable

had a

lot lost a lot,

Italians,

but

may

at the time,

still

have

felt

Most

New

Irish, better

They more than most from good

the greatest relative decline.

poised to benefit

when the prosperity faded. Wealthy Protestants who lot left. Newer immigrant groups, notably the

had a

were still struggling in poverty and typically had relatively little

to lose.

There were some Irish in the poor, but

it

camp of the wealthy, and many in the camp of the a disproportionate number in between, a rising

seems there were

middle class on the verge of making

it,

who

felt

cut off at the knees by the

Irish lost their

informal support system as well. In tough times they

should have been able to use their political control of government to reduce

They could not. When Smith ran for president was replaced by Franklin Roosevelt as governor. Roosevelt became president in 1932 and was succeeded in the governor's mansion by Herbert Lehman. The first man was Protestant, the second Jewish. Roosevelt was at odds with the New York machine, and Lehman, although he owed his the impact of the depression. in

1928, he

Tammany, was never

career to

really

one

of

them. Jimmy Walker, when not

too busy entertaining himself with a high-profile extramarital affair in illegal

speakeasies around the city, took enough graft to get caught by a special

committee and resigned the mayoralty in disgrace in 1932. The win Jewish voters away from Tammany in 1933, which, coupled with strong support from his fellow Italians, put the Little Flower in City Hall. The irrepressible reformer stayed there for a dozen investigating

scandal helped Fiorello LaGuardia

The

years.

tions

result

from the

was

New

that

when

York's Irish received fewer patronage posi-

and federal government than they had

city, state,

while, at a time

they particularly needed

began to go to Jewish

New

much

it.

in a long

A disproportionate

share

Yorkers. (Ed Flyim in the Bronx maintained

excellent relations with President Roosevelt

endured

and Governor Lehman and

better than other Irish Democratic political leaders.)"'

Tough economic times often bring out the worst

in a people.

Displacement

by others tends to do the same. The Irish faced financial hardship and a loss of place as the 1930s evolved.

Many

bore their burden with Irish stoicism, but

others responded differently. Father Charles E. Coughlin's radio messages inspired a broad following

enough. At

first,

hostile.

among New York's Irish. His appeals began temperately

they seemed to offer spiritual nourishment and economic

programs for a more

became

humane and

They

cast

just society. In time,

blame

for

they shifted in tone and

hard times on an amorphous group of

domestic and international conspirators, including Jews. In and of themselves the anti-Semitic tracts caused fear and anger

population.

When groups of Irish

cranky calls to put

down

among New

York's large Jewish

Catholics responded physically to Coughhn's

Jews, the anxieties

moved from

the abstract to the

real.«

Part of Coughlin's appeal to the Irish

came from

his fierce

anticommunist

By 1930 Pope Pius XI had urged Americans to be wary of commimism avowed atheism, lest people facing economic hardship be seduced by its

rhetoric.

and

its

allure. In

Was

Irish,

and After

economic decline.

The

353 w^en New York

1937 he declared

communism

the world's greatest threat and called

on Catholics

354 The Early

Twenmh

Century

to crusade against

In

it.

New

York, during the depression, the

Communist Party was indeed gaining momentum, and the party was associated with the city's Jews. While Jewish involvement in Commimist organizing has been exaggerated, the

political traditions eastern

United States included a typical of the Irish.

much

And by the

cally, educationally,

European Jews brought to the

higher tolerance for

communism

than was

1930s Jews had advanced on the Irish economi-

and in terms

of social status.

The combination turned

out

to be potent.'*^

In 1938 a group of disaffected Irish in Brooklyn created the Christian Front for the specific

purpose of taking up Father Coughlin's

call to repress

"Jews

two terms were used almost interchangeably). The front included some Germans and Italians, but its membership was overwhelmingly Irish. It boycotted Jewish stores and plotted violent acts against Jewish organizations and in Jewish neighborhoods. An even more extreme and Communists"

(the

offshoot, the Christian Mobilizers, developed in the

Bronx and Manhattan.

Marlin Kelly and Michael Carroll, both from Ahascragh, County Galway, model their new

IRT motorman uniforms in the Bronx,

and were thus one of the

last

c.

holdouts

1929. Train drivers were an to the labor

Transport Workers Union. During the 1930s, about 50 percent of the

were natives of Ireland, including its president, Michael J. Quill. Many the Clan na Gael, an American branch of the Irish republican of Martin J. Kelly)

elite

organizing efforts of

group

New

in transit

York

City's

TWU's membership

were recruited through

movement. (From

the collection

Vlany Irish Catholic leaders supported the group, while others at least tolerated

355

Only occasionally did Irish leaders speak

when New York

t

to avoid offending their fellow Irish.

)utagainst I

it.

foreign foe

During the Second World War the imperative

overpowered the appeal of the

he war met with

little

success. In the

front,

and

wake

of

for

unity against

efforts to revive

it

after

Was

Irish,

and After

Nazi death camps and

;xtermination furnaces, anti-Semitism found few champions in

New

York

:ity.'*^

right-wing fanaticism was one reaction to the 1930s, left-wing

Irish

nilitancy

was another.

Irish

)eriodically included radical

union organizing

movements

in the

like the

Pennsylvania coal fields. In the late nineteenth century )een

home

)ants.

to potent

worker groups and the

During the depression the

eenergized labor

New

of the

York City had

had been active

partici-

New

York's

Quill, for instance, helped seize a

power

Irish

movement. Mike

Irish

United States had

Molly Maguires

played an active role in

make the point by force of arms that workers had the right to )rganize. He ended up heading the heavily Irish Transport Workers Union md remained one of the most colorful and powerful union leaders in the city )lant to

or decades, unsurpassed in his ability to his behavior

was more tame than

launch rhetorical rebellions, even

his

words and gestures. The

i:

I'

;;

jj

city's

-^

jowerful trade unions, heavily Irish in composition, developed during this

jJ

f

ime

as well.*^

..

Most of the Irish, of course, were neither left-wing nor right-wing extremsts. They endured the depression as best they could without dramatic ictions. As World War II approached, most Irish supported a policy of leutrality. The group displayed scant enthusiasm for a U.S. alignment with ;ither England or with the Soviet Union. Once war broke out, most Irish oined the effort to defend the United States with full patriotic fervor, ilthough isolationist elements persisted. Irish soldiers came home from the A'ar, like others, matured by the experience and ready to return to civilian ife

and a better future."^

In 1945 things appeared to return to elected Z!ity

Hall was welcome, but to win,

:icket that :n

normal

Irish

when New York

Catholic Democrat to

O'Dwyer had campaigned with

a

no escaping the conclusion that

emerald than

New

all of

the citywide posts. There

York's future

would be colored

literary

less

its past."^

In the decades that followed the Irish returned to a path of

nobility.

balanced

included an Italian City Council president and a Jewish comptroller.

days gone by the Irish typically had claimed

ivas

for the Irish

William O'Dwyer mayor. The return of an

The group knew more success

upward

in business, the professions,

endeavors, and belatedly academia. But their numbers in the city

iwindled, and their presence diminished. metropolis, even

if

the city

owed much

They ceased

of its style to

to

dominate the

them. By the 1960s

\])

••!

U

^ f

S

New

356

Jewish influence was predominant in

The Early

their place alongside the city's other ethnic groups.

Twentieth Century

the most important elements of

New

York, and the Irish assumed

They remained one

of

York's constantly changing

human

mosaic, and one of the few that could claim they once ruled the

city, as

the next three chapters

make

clear.

Joe Doyle

CHAPTER

14

on the York Docks

Striking for Ireland

New

O.

'N august 17, 1920, a spectacular strike broke West Side piers. Thirty women, protesting the arrests of two Irishmen, Archbishop Daniel Mannix, and Cork mayor Terence Mac-

out on Manhattan's

Swiney, incited the coal stokers aboard a British passenger liner to strike their

The Irish longshoremen working the West Side docks immediately joined them on strike. The women protesters convinced the African American longshoremen and Itahan coal passers at work that day on British ships to strike as well. By midafternoon thousands of longshoremen were marching up the West Side waterfront crying, "All Off," and shutting down loading operations on ship.

every British ship in port.

The

strike lasted three

and

men and caused more than

a half

weeks.

It

idled thousands of longshore-

100 "British seamen" (including a

number of Irish

cooks and chambermaids working the transatlantic liners) to be fired and blacklisted.' It spread to Brooklyn and Boston and was called by the NewYork Sun: "the

first

purely political strike of

workingmen

in the history of

the United States" (Aug. 28, 1920). This little-known strike, the led

it,

and their ad hoc organization, the American

Women

women who

Pickets for the

Enforcement of America's War Aims, illuminate a crucial period in the history of the Irish independence movement in America, from the 1916 Easter Rising until the 1921 treaty that established the Irish Free State.

358

During these

The Early

ship in the nationahst

Twentieth Century

crucial years

women provided some

of the

most dynamic

leader-

movement.

The American Women Pickets' campaign in 1920 for Ireland's freedom had The Ladies Land League, from its founding in October 1880 to its demise in August 1882, electrified the nationalist community both in the United States and in Ireland. That movement, led by Charles Pamell's sisters Anna and Fanny (assisted by scores of American Irish, including Marguea pov/erful precedent.

rite

Moore,

who 38 years later played a role in the events leading up to the

strike), built

enormous support

a prisoner in

Kilmainham

for the

1920

Land League while Charles Pamell was

i

Jail.

Charles Pamell's mother, Mrs. Delia Pamell, and Ellen A. Ford

(sister of

Patrick Ford, editor of the Irish World and American Industrial Liberator) spoke three and four nights a

week

in

towns throughout the United

thousands of dollars to aid Land League organizing

States, collecting

efforts in Ireland."

Within

months of its founding the Ladies Land League had organized dozens of branches nationwide, boasting 50 to 200 women apiece.^ that they were organized

New York had so many branches

ward by ward in Irish neighborhoods.* In Ireland, Anna

Pamell was even more successful, organizing 420 chapters League.^ Soon after Charles Parnell

was

of the Ladies

Land

released from Kilmainham, however,

he pressured the Ladies Land League to go out of existence. (And no

women

were permitted to join the reorganized Irish National League.) In their two years of operation, the Ladies

Land Leaguers had proved themselves able administraand propagandists.^ Why is it then, that "for women activists emerged"?^

tors, tacticians, orators, fundraisers,

the next 20 years no group of

Historian Hasia Diner contends that most nineteenth-century American Irish

women

apparently believed that

women

and

men

should have "separate

women's sphere (after marriage) principally in the home.* Diner documents a proliferation of single Irish women in the Ameri-

spheres," with the Professor

can work force and chronicles a dozen nineteenth-century

Irish

American

women who achieved prominence organizing women workers. But apart from those who were active in the Ladies Land League, she found no women who figured prominently in Democratic Party politics or in the nineteenth-century nationalist struggle.^ It is

possible that activities of Irish

American women

nationahst

movement simply went undocumented.

World had

a

weekly circulation

of 125,000

in the nineteenth-century

Patrick Ford,

whose

Irish

by the turn of the century and was

"the paper of record" in the American Irish community, disapproved of women activists. '° After 1882,

century

women

when the Ladies Land League folded, until the twentieth movement virtually disappear from

in the Irish independence

the pages of the Irish World.

The only women Ford chronicled during on

rare occasions,

showing

women

women involved

that period

involved in labor disputes. in the nationalist struggle

were

The was to

saints, nuns, and,

closest he

came

to

print iconographic

:

i

engravings of

page in of

1

women symbolizing distressed Ireland.

Ford did begin a woman's

359

894 (perhaps in response to the sanctioning that year of Ancient Order

Sirikingfor

But he restricted the women's page to

Ireland on the

Hibernians women's

recipes, fashion

auxiliaries).

news, and child-rearing

In the twentieth century,

New

tips.'^

on the other hand, the

Irish

World reads

York Docks

like a

newspaper. Even before Patrick Ford died in 1913 and his brother

different

women poets, women active in the inde-

Robert took over as editor, issue after issue featured articles about

women

patriots in Irish history,

and contemporary

pendence movement: Constance Markievicz, Helena Maloney (who reportedly threw a hatchet at Prime Minister Herbert Asquith 1912),

when he

visited Ireland in

and others. ^^ After the Easter Rising, interviews appeared regularly with

widows of the executed I9I6 leaders. What happened to make women so visible in the twentieth-century Irish movement in the United States? Clearly, the surge of activity in Ireland by Lady the

Gregory,

Maud Gonne, and women active in the Gaelic League and nationalist women in the United States. The burgeoning women's movement encouraged American women to play an active role in a

j

cultural revival inspired suffrage

movement that had been hitherto dominated by men. The new ladies auxiliaries to Irish American fraternals gain power and authority in the nationahst movement. McWhorter, president

of the Ladies Auxiliary to the

ans (AOH), led a delegation to the White

House

of

;

;!

;j

also helped

women

In Jime I9I8

Mary

Ancient Order of Hibemi-

mothers with sons fighting

'j

,, '^

jt^

demanding that

((

pressure England to free Ireland after the war.

'q^

McWhorter's Ladies Auxihary to the AOH numbered 75,000 members in 1920!

J

overseas.

They delivered

President

a petition bearing 600,000 signatures

Woodrow Wilson

Perhaps most important,

women

in the nationalist

movement

in the years >l

following the Easter Rising, like their Ladies Land League forebears, were able to

fill

a

vacuum

1917, Irish

of power.

Once

the United States entered World

American men who continued

War I,

to speak out against the

in April

war were

The British-bashing satirical journal Bull, which Jeremiah O'Leary published, was suppressed by the government and O'Leary tried for sedition. American Irish women, however, could and did criticize the war denounced as

traitors.

without governmental

Women

reprisal.

reached a watershed in their

rise to

prominence in the

Irish nation-

movement in the United States in October 1914. Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly, a revered name in the American Irish community, issued a call, "to the women

alist

the first American chapter of the Cumann na mBan, the Women's Council.'"* Hundreds of women responded, gathering the following month at a public meeting at the Hotel McAlpin. Their first task, as outUned by Dr. Kelly and Mary Colum, wife of poet Padraic Colum and a Dublin member of the recently formed Cumann na mBan, was to follow the lead of the Cumarm na mBan in Ireland and raise funds and public sympathy for Eoin MacNeill's of Irish blood," to join Irish

nationahst militia, the Irish Volunteers.

Q

C

To

360

Women's Council invited many movement, especially those touring

that end, Dr. Kelly's chapter of the Irish

The Early

leading figures in the Irish independence

Twentieth Century

America, to address their meetings. Her

to the nationalist struggle.

Eamon

efforts

were reproduced throughout the

Irish women committed Between 1916 and 1921 Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington,

United States by similar groups

of Irish

and American

de Valera, Nora Cormolly, and Mary and Muriel MacSwiney spoke to

women nationalists all across America. When America entered the war, women of the Irish Progressive

meetings of

a robust grouping of militants

and

socialists,

League

wrote pamphlets, spoke on

comers, and staged protest demonstrations denouncing British rule in

(IPL),

street

Ireland,

men in movement demurred from criticizing America's wartime ally. Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington and Mary McWhorter secured White House meet-

AOH,

while the

the Friends of Irish Freedom, and the most prominent

the nationalist

ings with President Wilson to present their appeals for Irish freedom. Leonora

O'Reilly corralled support from leaders of the American labor movement.'^ Eileen Curran and Deborah Bierne organized Irish theater companies.

After the close of the war the Irish nationalist

swelled to

immense proportions.

movement in the United States

A single organization, the American Associa-

tion for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, had 700,000

And its rival, It is

no exaggeration

community

in

New

1921.

to say that a fever for independence gripped the Irish

York City in 1920. Parochial school children marched

Fianna battle sashes on 15,000-seat

members by

the Friends of Irish Freedom, had 95,000 followers as well.

St. Patrick's

Day. Independence

in

rallies regularly filled

Madison Square Garden (twice in the month of August alone). Street week" in Irish neighborhoods:

orators for Irish freedom spoke "every night of the

Tremont and Washington avenues in the Bronx, on Monday evenings; at Street, on Tuesdays; at Broadway and 37th Street, Wednesdays; at Willis Avenue and 148th Street, Thursdays; at Fourth and Atlantic Avenues, Saturday nights; and at 14th Street, at Times Square, and at at

Seventh Avenue and 125th

elevated

subway platforms. They took time

off

only on Friday nights to attend

Jeremiah O'Leary's fiery training sessions.'^ At every turn in the feverish

months

of 1920,

American

Irish

women

played principal roles in the inde-

pendence movement: sharing the work, the headlines, and the decision making.

The Women

War Aims was

Pickets for the Enforcement of America's

con-

women voters with some 60 Irish American women were recruited

ceived originally as a lobbying group of newly enfranchised

an

Irish agenda. In

March 1920

for a congressional lobbying

in the

American

members

of

Irish

campaign by Dr. William

J.

Maloney, a key

figure

independence movement.'^ The lobbyists were to

Congress on their attitudes toward

Illinois

,

poll

Representative William j

Mason's bill to open up consular offices in Dublin

(as a first

step toward formally

j

recognizing the Irish republic). j

On March 20, however, Cork mayor Tomas MacCurtain was shot dead in his home by Royal Irish Constabulary troops. Three days later, British troops killed

two more Irishmen and began a massive deployment

was imminent,

and

351

that a massacre

Stnkmgjor

of British gunships

Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington telegrammed from Dubhn

troops.

to frighten Irish rebels into submission.'^ Sheehy-Skeffington

Maloney asked Gertrude

Dr.

prominent

Irish

Corless, an editorial writer

and wife

American, to convene an emergency meeting in her

of a

New York

The women who were to have conducted the lobbying campaign for the Mason bill were requested instead to take part in a protest at the British embassy in Washington. Maloney and Corless hoped that a spirited protest apartment.''^

would generate enough publicity internationally to focus press attention on the

army in Ireland and prevent a bloodbath. The American Women Pickets for the Enforcement

actions of Britain's

Overnight,

of America's

War Aims took form. Gertrude Corless contacted women sympathizers from Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh. Gertrude Kelly's American arm of the Cumann na mBan was enlisted, as was the Irish Progressive League.^" The group's first contingent marched on Congress the following day, April I, 1920. The organization took its name from Woodrow Wilson's "war aims" of self-determination for small nations and "a war to end wars."^' The Women Pickets asserted that the self-determination of the Irish people

had been mani-

fested in the 70 percent majority (73 of the 105 Irish seats in Parliament)

won

by the nationahst Sinn Fein Party in the December 1918 parliamentary elec-

The Women Pickets wanted President Wilson to recognize the Irish mandated by the those elections, and to enforce an end to England's

tions.^^

"republic"

war on

The

Ireland.

protest at the British

story the next papers.

With

day in the

embassy took off Uke a rocket April

New York

Times, the Washington

their strident placards: "England,

American

Star,

2. It

was the lead

and many other

Women Condemn Your

Reign of Terror in the Irish Repubhc," "America Cannot Continue Relations with an England Ruled by Assassins," and Corless's inflammatory rhetoric: eted the

the

Women

ites,

"We

pick-

embassy on Good Friday to remind Great Britain and the State Department

of the crucifixion of Christ

and to

call attention that Ireland

was being crucified,"

made great newspaper "copy." Made up of suffragists, socialwomen, mothers of World War I soldiers, and actresses, the

Pickets

professional

Women Pickets were articulate and colorful.'^'* The

Women

ington base for

Pickets set up headquarters in the Hotel Lafayette, the Wash-

many of the women's suffrage leaders. Corless and her chief aide,

Kathleen O'Brennan 19 1 6 leader

up

Eamonn

recent Irish immigrant and sister-in-law of executed

(a

Cearmt), posted pickets outside the British embassy, drew

shifts of duty, sent

out fresh pickets every two hours

announced a campaign

for operational funds,

with the

—by motorcar—and

Irish

World newspaper

to act as fiscal agent."^

The

Women

Pickets

seem

to

have modeled their campaign on

Alice Paul's strategy of deliberate provocation.

Ireland on the

New

implored her American colleagues to protest immediately.

suffragist

Among their leading members.

York Docks

362

Dr. Gertrude Kelly and Leonora O'Reilly were prominent suffragists, as were

The Early

Marguerite Moore and Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington

Twentieth Century

Pickets

knew from

work

her agitational

(whom many of the Women

United States in 1 9 1 6 and

in the

Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington wrote an article in 1918, Vote," applauding Alice Paul's confrontational

"How

the Pickets

the

keeping with these

tactics.^^' In

aggressive tactics, they carried placards with slogans like:

1917).

Won

"Down with British

Hands off the Women of the Irish Republic."^^ They even chained themselves to the embassy gates to guarantee they would be like Alice Paul's arrested. Once arrested, a number of the Women Pickets suffragists before them refused bail.^^ They adroitly manipulated their press coverage. Newspapers ran photographs of elegantly dressed Women Pickets behind bars and quoted their Militarism," and "England,

—

—

truculent statements about English rule in Ireland. Reporters and newsreel

A week into the campaign the embassy with leaflets denouncing "The Irish aviatrix" doing the bomb-

crews delighted in their quirky militancy.^

Women

"bombed" the

Pickets

British

campaign in Ireland. Manhattan actress of Irish parentage, Mollie

Britain's military

ing

was

a

so dashing in aviator's garb that her photo

Carroll, who looked made newspapers across the

country the next day.^°

Newspapers ran

editorials excoriating the pickets as "petticoated friends of

Irish

independence," while printing enthusiastic front-page stories about each

new

stunt the

reporters:

women

"Our numbers

The Women

pulled.^'

Picket captain Mrs. James Walsh assured

augmented hourly."

are

Pickets set out to prevent a massacre in Ireland by creating a

publicity blitz, and for the

embassy no casualties

two weeks that the women picketed the British were inflicted on the Irish people. Dr. Maloney

at all

expressed his thanks to the

women

for their

marvelous work, expecting they

would disband. To Maloney's consternation, they did not. In subsequent months the Women Pickets lobbied individual members of Congress, arranged protests in a dozen states, interrupted "Empire Day" at the Philadelphia Opera House, picketed British diplomats visiting the United States,

and burned British flags (on the steps of the Treasury Department, in one

instance, before an audience of 500 bystanders 1,

and federal employees).

1920, they invaded Congress, disrupting the

ously with speeches from the galleries on the order of the Savage

Hun Out

On June

House and Senate simultane-

"Why

Don't You Take

of Ireland?"''^

Maloney began to consider the Women Pickets cranks, an embarrassment United States. To judge from the financial contributions streaming into their Picket Fund, the nationalist community Dr.

to Ireland's diplomatic efforts in the

disagreed.''''

Buoyed by the community's response, the leading players

Women Pickets'

"Washington skirmish"

(as

they called

it)

took on key roles in

the waterfront strike later that summer, adding further to their numerous activities

on behalf

of the Irish cause.

;

in the I

One

of these

surgeon

bom

key players was Dr. Gertrude

in Waterford

B. Kelly,

and raised in the United

founding the American chapter of the

New

an eminent

York

353

States. In addition to

Strikingjor

Cumann na mBan in

1

the Irish Progressive League in 1917 and belonged, by her

9 1 4, she co-founded

own

admission, to

"every Irish society on record." Kelly had been very active in the Redmondite

United Irish League and involved in political

affairs as far

back as Henry

George's 1880s single-tax movement.^* Like Gertrude Corless, she had cham-

pioned Jeremiah O'Leary during his imprisonment and

World War

sedition during

trial for

I.''^

Washington pickets Helen Golden, Margaret Hickey, and Leonora O'Reilly

Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, Peter Golden, Mary Colum, guiding forces behind the Irish Progressive League.^^ In her memoirs, Colum calls the IPL "the young people's organization." IPL members were for socialism, suffragism, and a Gaelic-speaking Ireland. They distrusted John Devoy's chief adviser Daniel Cohalan, a New

were, along with Dr. Kelly and Padraic and

York Supreme Court judge and

who claimed

Tammany

to speak for the Irish in

kingpin, and old-line politicians

America. For political direction they

looked instead to the military and political leaders

who emerged from

the

1916 Easter Rising.^^

During the summer

of 1920 the

American

Irish

community

split

on the

I

question of who, indeed," should provide political direction.

!

Eamon

de Valera,

who was in the United States seeking money and diplomatic recognition for the

'

Irish republic,

,

claimed the

aries' unofficial

I

right, as elected

head of Dail Eireann, the revolution-

parliament, to lead nationalist supporters in the United States

as well as in Ireland. Judge I

Cohalan and the old Fenian John Devoy, leader of newspaper the Gaelic American, disputed de

the Clan na Gael and editor of its Valera's right to

Freedom

;

(FOIF),

make

policy for the

American

Irish."'^

which numbered 275,000 members

The

Friends of Irish

in 1920, spUt

wide open over

Devoy and Cohalan received the official backing of the FOEF's executive committee (most of whose members they had handpicked). Most of the rank and file sided with de Valera. The FOEF quickly lost more than 1 80,000 members.^' With the American arm of the independence movement temporarily in the dispute.

'

'

!

!

:

'

',

i

shambles and of

its

male leadership almost wholly absorbed during the summer

1920 with political infighting,

it

was again the

Women

Pickets

who

seized

movement. Dr. Gertrude Kelly and IPL members Margaret Warner and Kathleen Sheehan worked with Father Flanagan from the Carmelite Priory on East 29th Street a hotbed of nationalist activity to organize a dramatic rally on July 3 1 at the White Star Lines docks on Manhattan's West Side."^" The occasion was a send-off for Daniel Mannix, the Irish-born archbishop of the iiutiative in the nationalist

—

—

Melbourne, Australia. Mannix was an outspoken

critic of

English rule in Ireland

and the leader of two successful wartime anticonscription campaigns in Australia.

In 1920

Mannix journeyed from

Australia to San Francisco and then by

Ireland on the

New

York Docks

New York to catch a ship to Ireland. During the months of June and July

364

train to

The Early

hundreds of thousands of Americans turned out to hear Mannix speak

Twentieth Century

massive In

rallies staged

New

York,

along his route

Mannix was the

Square Garden. Mayor John

was held

a testimonial dinner

featured speaker at a gathering at

Hylan granted him the freedom

F.

at

east.*^

in Mannix's

honor

at the

Madison

of the city,

and

Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Lloyd George had publicly stated he would not allow Mannix passage to Ireland.

A reported

15,000

New

Yorkers turned out at Pier 60 at the foot of West 20th

on July 31 to see that he did.'*^ Mannix's "bon voyage" party, as events

Street

transpired, directly set the stage for

the great ship strike a

month

[bearing the survivors

from the Titanic] has there been such

hairtrigger

later.

"Not since the

crowd assembled about the Chelsea crowd awaiting Mannix's

arrival of the

piers," a

Carpathia

a tense

New

and

Yoik Times

The Mannix boarded. The Baltic's engine room gang were equally adamant: unless Mannix boarded, the ship would not sail. Between 40 and 100 Women Pickets (the newspaper accounts vary) decided to go on the offensive. They were dressed in white, with green capes, and they carried the neatly lettered signs with grandiloquent slogans that were their trademark: "There Can Be No Peace While British Militarism Rules the World," "Armenians Massacred: Intervention Irishmen Massacred: Silence," "Mannix: The World Looks to You to Save Democracy," "Freedom America 1776, Ireland 1916." One placard showed a map of Ireland in green surrounded by an expanse of blue sea, with the legend: "God Has Defined the Boundaries of Ireland."''* A phalanx of Women Pickets led the crowd up to a solid row of policemen reporter said of the

arrival outside Pier 60.*''

stewards' department of Mannix's ship, the Baltic, refused to

sail if

—

—

barring the entrance to Pier 60. Feinting

and rushed the police

lines.

first at

an end run, the

women wheeled

The huge crowd followed the pickets past the police

and onto the dock. According to the

New

York daily newspapers, the events that followed on

the dock assumed mythic proportions:

Mannix was serenaded by

the Fighting

69th regimental band, which the White Star Line had banned from the docks.

Longshoremen repeatedly halted Archbishop Mannix's progress toward the gangway by insisting on kissing his ring. An English coal merchant sailing aboard the Baltic reportedly booed Mannix (he told interviewers afterward he was booing the Irish protesters, not Mannix) and was mauled by longshoremen in a fracas that sent one police detective to the hospital and whipped the mob of Irish enthusiasts

Eamon

de Valera,

had broken out

on the docks into

a near frenzy.

whom English authorities considered an escaped prisoner (he

of a British

jail),

materialized on the upper deck of the Baltic beside

Mannix and made a brief, characteristically arch speech. Mannix, also characteristically, made a speech of haunting eloquence. A half dozen longshoremen carried de Valera triumphantly

back to the dock and Mannix's ship

sailed.

En route

two

to Ireland, however,

and arrested Archbishop Mannix.

British destroyers stopped the Baltic at sea

He was

355

released in Penzance, Cornwall, and

handed orders refusing him permission to travel to Ireland, Liverpool, Manches-

Stnkmgjor Ireland on the

New

Mannix's arrest at sea backfired spectacularly. The naval action drew

New

national criticism. In

York a Madison Square Garden

rally

scheduled for

August 15 was reorganized to make Mannix's abduction the central Several of

New

York's

Women

with the Pirates of Penzance" and "Yo Kelly of the Fighting 69th quipped:

during the

A

quiet

war dared

"Up Mannix

Pickets paraded placards:

inter-

issue.

—Down

Ho Ho for a Pirate's Life." Major Michael

"The

great British

Navy that was bottled up

to venture out into the high seas.""*^

announcement

at the

meeting went almost unnoticed: Terence

MacSwiney, lord mayor of Cork City and a republican military commander, had

He vowed

been arrested August 12 by British troops.

to stay

on

a

hunger strike

he was released.

until

To protest MacSwiney's imprisonment, the another picket

line.

On

Monday, August

23,

on Whitehall

outside the British consulate

their usual gift for sloganeering,

they

made

Women Pickets decided to form seven of their number marched

Street at the tip of

the front page of

Manhattan. With

New York's major

newspapers the next day.

daily

There were few enough pickets

at the

Whitehall protest that reporters had a

chance to interview them individually. Dr. Gertrude Kelly and Helen Golden

were among the pickets interviewed. Golden was acting secretary of the Irish Progressive League. Three of the pickets

company, the Celtic Players, which had

were members of an

ties to the

Irish repertory

IPL and was committed to

popularizing in America the works of Ireland's Gaelic Renaissance: John Millington Synge, Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, Padraic Pearse, and others.''^ Eileen Curran,

much

quoted during the Whitehall Street protests, headed the

company. She was about to play the greatest role

of her life.

The second day of their picketing, an employee of the U.S. Navy office located directly above the British Consulate dumped a bucket of water on the women picketing below. Reporters treated the incident as symbolic of the hopelessness of the

women's

On August

effort to free

Terence MacSwiney with a

27, however, approximately

30

Women

New York picket line. Pickets

moved from

Whitehall Street to the West Side pier where Mannix's late ship, the Baltic, was returning to port that morning. ;

,

I

I

They carried a new banner, with the watchThe women talked to longshoremen during

words: "British Body Snatchers." their

noontime lunch break and passed out three-by-five-inch handbills

for a

boycott against British shipping.

A

calling

group of longshoremen accompanied

women to Pier 59, where the Baltic lay anchored. Looming above them, on the deck of the Baltic, members

the

crew were milling around on their lunch break. The 1920) reported that

one of the

of the engine

New York

room

Times (Aug.

28,

Women Pickets climbed on top of a parked truck

York Docks

shouted up to them "a violent speech." The British seamen appeared to

366

^rid

The Early

listen to the picket's

Twentieth Century

After a

number

of

harangue and then disappeared from the deck of

minutes passed, a reported 50

of the Baltic agreed to quit

work

in

sympathy with MacSwiney and Mannix.

These were the same engine room hands who had threatened Baltic

on

July 3 1

if

White Star Line management refused passage

Mannix. Outraged by Mannix's

port,

attempted

harbor.'*^ (In

movement

at the last

to strike the

to Archbishop

down

arrest at sea, they threatened to shut

engines the morning of August 27

when

minute

Baltic.

from the crew

to 150 stokers

the

their skipper, fearing a disturbance in

to divert the Baltic

New

away from

York

preceding weeks there had been pledges by the British labor

to boycott

arms shipments

to the British

army

in Ireland.)

With the Baltic's striking coal stokers and longshoremen in tow, the Women Pickets marched to Pier 60 where the Olympic was berthed. The Olympic's longshoremen were implored to strike to free MacSwiney and compel Archbishop Mannix's passage to Ireland. Although

men were

many

first-and second-generation Irishmen,

of the

was

it

Chelsea longshore-

a large request to ask

them to strike. Missing a day's pay was a difficult sacrifice, given the hit-or-miss nature of their employment the men shaped up daily for work. The Chelsea

—

longshoremen had already borne the brunt year before

when

of their

union

officials'

wrath the

they had led a month-long wildcat strike for better wages.'*'

Throwing caution to the winds, the longshoremen working the Olympic hung up their cargo hooks and joined the strike. Why they did so is cause for speculation: 92-year-old Teddy Gleason, who went to work on the West Side docks in 1917 (and served as president of the International Longshoremen's Association from 1963 to 1987) recalled the West Side longshoremen were

attuned to the struggles of Ireland, and endless collections were taken up on the waterfront for successive Irish relief funds. In addition, longshore

tended to be made up exclusively of their nationalist sentiments.

men from

the

same coimty,

work gangs reinforcing

^°

Long-time president of Chelsea Longshore Local 791 Joe Ryan refused support the walkout. Although Ryan had been

to

named to a council of New York

labor leaders seeking united labor action on Ireland's behalf, he declared the

walkout would impede pending contract negotiations. "All the men will be back to

work

Ireland,"

this

morning, a good night's sleep will cause them to forget

an unnamed

officer of the

Without authorization from

ILA told

all

their union, the

longshoremen working the

Acquitania, Pannonia, and Celtic on August 27 quit work at the Pickets' call.

The growing army

of strikers paraded

the longshoremen at each dock to

down

about

reporters.^'

their tools

from pier to and

Women

pier, calling

on

join the strike.

seemed to hang in the balance Red Star Line's Finland, which was being worked by gangs of African American longshoremen. Irish and African Ameri-

Newspaper accounts

when the mob

report that the strike

of strikers reached the

can longshoremen in

New

York City had been

at

each other's throats since

at

least the

1

850s.

Among the first African Americans lynched in the 1 863 Draft who had been competing for jobs with the Irish on

357

Riots were longshoremen the

West Side docks.

Irish

Ireland on the

longshoremen had been excluding African Americans from employ-

ment on the docks ever

since. African

American longshoremen fought hack

I

when they

could.

A

milestone strike in

New

York harbor in 1887 involving

I

50,000 waterfront workers affiliated with the Knights of Labor was broken, in

j

part,

1

by the importation of African American longshoremen. The National

Company used the same tactics to break

j

Steamship Line and Atlantic Transport

\

subsequent strikes, as did the Ward Line in

1

which hired African American

895,

longshoremen exclusively from that time forward. Although the successive longshore unions that succeeded the Knights

I

—the American Longshoremen's

Union, the reconstituted Longshoremen's Union Protective Association, and i

—

i

the International Longshoremen's Association

;

crimination, segregated locals emerged.^'^ In short, a great deal of history soured the deliberations of 300 African

j

The Finland's work crew their

,

formally banned racial dis-

Italian

longshoremen over

for Irish freedom.

of African

American longshoremen broke out

caucus and joined their fellow workers on

of the line of

all

American and

whether to join the August 17 strike

.

strike.

of

They swung into the rear

march, reportedly to the cheers of the longshoremen awaiting

I

them. The

!

Women

Pickets next led the African American longshore gangs

Norman Monarch

;

out on strike. The decision of African American longshoremen to join the strike appears to have been influenced by Marcus Garvey, an outspoken champion of Irish freedom. In two separate addresses during the International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World (which was taking place at the same time as the shipping strike, and which self-consciously was organized in imitation of the

1

Irish

working the

i

1

i

',

Race Conventions of 1916, 1918, and 1919), Garvey declared his solidarity

with the Irish independence struggle.^^

'

When a strike call was inadvertently made at the French Lines dock, out came longshoremen and a number of French seamen. By 4:30 p.m. every British ship on the West Side was tied up. James Lynch, organizer

,

for the

Marine, Firemen,

Oilers and Watertenders Union, called for a boycott against British shipping

I

"from Galveston, Texas to Portland, Maine.

I

"Well,

we

did

it," strike

"^^'

leader Eileen Curran told reporters: "We're trying

American women

can keep them MacSwiney and then we'll begin a new effort to compel them to let Archbishop Mannix into Ireland. The men are with us. I knew they would be."^'' The Women Pickets sent a telegram that afternoon to Lloyd George: "The sound of death in the throat of Terence MacSwiney is the death knell of your adventure in Ireland. We hear the bells tolling. The people are gathering. Oil your tanks. Polish up to

I

show the English

that

of Irish birth

busier than they've ever been in their lives. Let

j

i

',

I

!

your guns."

Strikingfor

them

release

New

York Docks

368 The Early Twentieth Century

The

success of the

Women Pickets in closing down the West

Side docks

was

capped that evening with a master stroke of pubhc relations. The Lexington

Through the combined organizaP. Walsh's American Independence, Helen Golden and Margaret Hickey's Irish

Opera House was rented

for a victory rally.

tional abilities of Eileen Curran's Celtic Players, Frank

Commission on Irish

Cumann

Progressive League, and Dr. Gertrude Kelly's attracted to the Lexington Opera

House

na mBan, the audience

that evening

was twice

its

seating

capacity.

At 8:30

August

p.m.,

27, as the

New

York American prepared

a banner

headline for the next day's paper: "Great Ship Strike Here as M'Swiney Slumps,"

Frank

P.

Walsh gaveled

to order

some 3,500 people

inside the Lexington Opera

House.^^ Simultaneously, Reverend John Dooley of Corpus Christi Church

number

called to order an equal

of people outside the hall,

on the steps

of the

auditorium. (Speakers repeated their talks, for the benefit of the spillover meeting.) Meanwhile, a third meeting, of striking longshoremen and nationalist

sympathizers, sponsored by the Friends of Irish Freedom, was taking place

As

the Twenty-third Street Opera House (formerly the Pike Opera House).

at all

three meetings got under way, the heroes of the hour, the coal stokers from the

were transported up

Baltic,

chartered Fifth

Avenue

to the 5 1st Street Lexington

!

of the

Lexington Opera House meeting describe an

audience carried away with emotion.

marched

new

era.

These

When

50 British coal stokers from the

into hall, the standing-room-only

Walsh saluted the

i

in

buses.

Newspaper accounts Baltic

Opera House

British

seamen: "Perhaps

men who

we

crowd "howled" with

joy.

dawn

of a

are standing at the

'

have marched onto the stage today symbolize the

resistless force of labor in the

world today." For

many

in the hall that night

;

it

i

seemed a fact that Britain's mastery of the ocean, the linchpin of its empire, had been challenged that day in

I

New York harbor.^^

\

For three and half hours the crowd cheered speeches by Major Kelly of the

|

Fighting 69th Infantry, Judge Goff, Patrick McCartan, Harry Boland, and Liam

Mellows

—the

j

movement (or more with Eamon de Valera

leading lights of the Irish independence

I

movement that had sided Devoy and Cohalan). Each speaker expressed in passionate, often eloquent, rhetoric the same sentiment: the old Fenian dream of striking the blow from America that would free Ireland had been realized that day on the Chelsea precisely, that part of the

i

against

i

'

;

docks.

De

i

Valera gave a speech the Irish World (Sept.

4,

1920,

I)

called "the

impassioned address he ever delivered." MacSwiney was a personal

most

friend,

and

de Valera saw in the sympathy strike a fleeting chance to save his friend's

life,

:

i

j

He invoked

the image of MacSwiney's

blasted the

New

Swiney "a

young

wife,

with her babe in arms, and

'

York Times, which that day in an editorial had called Mac-

'

from a woman's voice in the

i

suicide." (Immediately there

audience of "Let us picket the

were

New York

cries

Timesl" and "Picket the Times

When

1

i

is Over!") de Valera invoked, too, the image of the key to the which he had viewed at Mount Vernon. Lafayette had entrusted it to Paine to give to George Washington after the fall of the Bastille. "Another

the Meeting

359

Bastille,

Tom

has to

Bastille

fall!"

de Valera declaimed, and the audience roared

its

approval.

Dudley Field Malone, a candidate for govemor of New York on the Farmer-Labor Party ticket,

made

the practical suggestion that a fund be established to help the

longshoremen meet expenses while they stayed out on to start

it

silver coins

strike.

He contributed $50

The crowd responded by heaping the various collection baskets with

out.

and

larger bills to support the

longshoremen.

women who had led the women today brought their

Walsh closed the meeting by bringing on stage the

"When a

waterfront strike:

handful of brave young

banners to the ships, they singlehandedly set in motion events which shall cause the downfall of that empire

which has

built

up

its

great

power upon crimes

Who were these "brave young women, " and what drew them into the fight? Only seven of the 30 women who picketed the ships on August 17 can be traced in the New York City committed against weaker nations all over the world. "

Directory and other sources. Dr. Kelly, Eileen Curran, and Helen Golden have already been mentioned. Joining them were

Mary

L. Sullivan, a

Parks;

Helen G.

teacher;

Kelly, a

a New York librarian; New York City Department of

Helen Crowe,

switchboard operator for the

Cumann na mBan member; Kathleen Sheehan, a school who with Sheehan had helped

and Margaret Warner, an IPL member

plan the bon voyage rally for Archbishop Mannix.^^

Helen Golden (and a working committee apparently composed of labor leaders

and ranking Irish republicans) appears to have orchestrated the

strike.^'^

I

Golden was an actress and suffragist from a Protestant Anglo-Saxon family with

i

ties to

the Daughters of the American Revolution. She had been

drawn

into the

I

nationalist

movement

in 1916

when

she

met her husband

Peter Golden, also

I

an

1

dramatic letter to Dr. Kelly written August 23, the

actor. In a

first

day of

picketing at the Whitehall Street British Consulate, Helen Golden apologized

I

confronting Dr. Kelly when the latter suggested the Women move their picket line that day to the docks. Golden instructed Dr. Kelly

for physically

I

Pickets

';

was being planned on the docks for Friday, August 27: "but must be 'shrouded in darkness' meantime I am trying to get every picket I can to line up for Fri. without letting them know what it's about. 100 pickets if possible. Between now and then mean to Pickett [sic] the Consulate for 2 or 3 that a major action

i

that

I

i

I

hrs.

'

every day

When two

the

of the strike,

girls at a time."'''*

Pickets reported for duty at 6:30 a.m. on August 28, day

they found their previous day's efforts had been severely

New

York City police kept the women on the far side of West away from the docks. The Cunard and White Star Lines put their ticket and administrative corps to work alongside their ships' stewards depart-

undermined.

'.

—just a few

Women

Street i

I

i

'

sales

ments, carrying passengers' luggage onto the ships scheduled to a frantic effort to

break the

strike.

An unknown

party

hung

sail that day, in

a sign

on the gate

Stnkingfor Ireland on the

New

York Dochs

Cunard Line docks

370

to the

The Early

Women Pickets

calling the

women "House

darted through police lines to remove

Two

Wreckers."

of the

it.^^

who usually worked the Chelsea docks away from their jobs.'''^ Cargo was not loaded. Many ships missed the The Celtic sailed without 600 trunks belonging to its steerage passengers.

Approximately 2,000 longshoremen

Twentieth Century

stayed tide.

The Mauietania had to detour up to Halifax to take on enough coal to get it across the Atlantic. The Call reported the Olympic left port without 20 of its firemen, "and other ships were similarly shorthanded." The Pannonia missed day completely because

its sailing

work. The

its Italian

American coal passers refused

rest of the transatlantic liners sailed,

however, and

setback for hopes that the strike could save MacSwiney's

Although the

British

seamen and

it

was

to

a grave

life.

longshoremen had struck principally

Irish

in response to the outrageous behavior accorded Archbishop

Mannix, the

hunger strike of Terence MacSwiney quickly became the central issue in the strike. Just

were

two weeks

into

"MacSweney

blaring:

MacSwiney's hunger

Dying

[sic]

newspaper headlines

strike,

in English Prison."^'' reporters kept a

death watch outside London's Brixton Prison, never imagining the mayor of Cork's death agony might stretch out to 74 days. Not only the

New

Yoik

American, which courted Irish readers, but the Times, Sun, Tribune, World, and other papers ran a front-page

column every

day, expecting

it

to be

MacSwiney's

'

last.^«

When August

African American longshoremen initially returned to work on

woman

28, a

World (Aug.

picket persuaded

29, 1920) reported they

Africa" and suggested

The Times claimed

some

the

of their

men

them

walked

to

come back out

The

again.

I

off their jobs, chanting: "Free

i

number were Marcus Garvey supporters. work after the noon hour, but a

'

returned to

!

subsequent message from Garvey and a deputation by Garvey's lieutenant,

men from working British between the Irish strikers and Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association were conducted by Dudley Field Malone. Malone took 14 Irish longshoremen and sympathizers up to Garvey's Liberty Hall in Reverend

J.

F.

Selkridge, apparently did keep the

I

ships. ^' Negotiations

Harlem, both to explain the strike and to

hammer out

a resolution of

I

.

'

'

mutual

assistance for the future. j

On in

some 250 African American longshoremen were brought work the White Star Line docks. They were fed and 60 for the duration of the walkout so they would not have to

September

from other

10,

housed on Pier walk through the picket men's Association

lines.

to bar the

''°

dues-paying

September

women

1 1

'

Strikers asked the International Longshore-

men

as strikebreakers. But association officials

refused to intervene, on the grounds that the strikebreaking longshoremen were all

i'

districts to

members and

the

Women

to stand at the

the union had not authorized a strike.

Pickets enlisted a

head

number

of African

of the pier to try to dissuade the

On

American

men

!

^

'

•

I

from j

working.^'

|

was an African

371

American, and the Garvey movement was strong among longshoremen, Helen

Strikingjor

Since the foreman of the 250 "strikebreakers" working Pier 60

Golden invited the

man

to

come

on 23rd

to strike headquarters

Street to

meet

with her and a representative from the United Negro Improvement Association. Past incidences of "apathetical treatment" by Irish longshoremen, however,

doomed

their

September 13 negotiations. The

UNIA

representative called for

African American longshoremen to boycott British ships on every pier except Pier 60, at the Irish

same time expressing the hope

that closer cooperation

and African American would be possible in the

The

strike

future.

between

^^

on the West Side docks achieved significant success in obstructing

the loading of cargo on British ships, but

it

failed to prevent the passenger liners

The Women Pickets fanned out in early September in a desperate effort to extend the strike. They persuaded 3,000 Brooklyn longshoremen to strike on September 2 and pledge not to work any English vessels "until England

from

sailing.''^

recognizes the Irish Republic."^''

Women

Pickets led protests in Charlestown

and East Boston, and their Boston longshore boycott was a notable success, spreading also to freight handlers and employees of grain elevators. Longshore-

men in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Newport News, Galveston, and other cities sent telegrams pledging they, too,

would

refuse to unload British ships.

Gertrude Corless and Kathleen O'Brennan went to Washington to join suffrage leaders

Emma Wold and Eleanor Taylor Marsh, as well as Irish women

representatives, in for Ireland

from

making a personal appeal to Secretary of State Colby for relief Hoboken started

British occupation. ^^ Jersey City struck.

boycotting British ships after speeches there by Leonora O'Reilly and Gertrude Corless. O'Reilly, Dr. Gertrude Kelly,

and Kathleen O'Brennan addressed a mass

meeting in Bayonne, as well.

A

sampling of Leonora O'Reilly's diary entries

1920 describes

League were committed to the waterfront

"Speak to longshoremen

strike forced her to

.

.

10: "Plainfield,

Mrs. C[orless] gets dizzy spells." To

make

.

Slept

N.J

While

.

...

.

3 a.m." 9/8:

"Home

about 100 people

.

things harder, a

New

.

.

.

York subway

walk to her Manhattan picketing and speaking engagements:

"Twice back and forth on shanks' mare to Brooklyn"

September

"Picket in NY"; 9/1:

strike: 8/31:

at St. V[eronica's] Hall

midnight dead tired," September

for

August and September

for

how totally the Women Pickets allied with the Irish Progressive

is

O'Reilly's diary entry

3.^^

this barrage of organizing activity

Women Pickets were

was going

on, a

number

of the

doing double duty, taking part in the street-corner meet-

ings of the Irish Progressive League, as well.

The IPL sponsored both a speakers'

bureau and a class for neophyte soapboxers, taught by esteemed orators like

Leonora O'Reilly and Jeremiah O'Leary.

On

September

4,

Margaret Gilmore, a

graduate of Jeremiah O'Leary's soapboxing school, persuaded 1,000

warehousemen

to stop handling cargo for British ships until

released and British troops left Ireland.^^

Manhattan

MacSwiney was

Ireland on the

New

York Docks

372

The Women Pickets kept the strike alive for three and a half weeks from their

The Early

23rd Street and 10th Avenue headquarters in the Adelphi Hotel. Their "Chelsea

Twentieth Century

Pier Picket"

campaign administered

acting as treasurer,

Funds were

strike.

money

week

first

to

longshoremen willing

for the striking

American estimated

of

longshoremen.

that

on

and

Cumann na mBan sponsored a successful

September in the Lexington Opera House to

A

raise

letter to the editor of the Gaelic

more than $10,000 was

distributed to longshoremen

through a separate fimd administered by the Friends of

The Women

to stay out

solicited through public meetings, street-comer rallies,

an open notice in the Irish World. The

meeting the

with Dr. Gertrude Kelly

a strike fund,

which gave stipends

Freedom.

Irish

Pickets received a powerful tribute on September 7 from Muriel

MacSwiney. Speaking for her husband, Mrs. MacSwiney thanked the Americans

who

took part in the shipping

strike.

She considered that action, and their

simultaneous boycott against British manufactures, genuine husband's

as opposed to the lip service

life,

efforts to save her

and empty resolutions she had

received from organizations in England and America.

On September 21 not save the

life

the longshore strike

Terence MacSwiney.

was called off. The Women Pickets did

He died October 25 on the seventy-fourth

day of his hunger strike. In a sense, the waterfront strike

for Terence

MacSwiney

mirrored the entire American campaign for Ireland's freedom: by herculean labors

it

managed

to achieve a great deal in

America, yet made

little

impact on

events in Ireland.

The

Women

memorial held

Pickets in widows' weeds were a dramatic presence at the

for

Terence MacSwiney on October 31,

Valera and

New

moth

Newspapers reported upward

rally.

at the

at the

of 35,000 people attended,

of thousands kept outside for lack of seats. ^^

The Women

De mam-

Polo Grounds.

York governor Al Smith were featured speakers

with tens

Pickets formed an

honor guard. One held a placard much photographed the day of the funeral: "One a Nation, As One Man Has Redeemed the World." The dramatic testimony of Muriel MacSwiney, Terence's widow, at December 1920 hearings of the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, and her subsequent American speaking tour, may have marked the apogee of women's influence on the nationalist movement in America. The woman's suffrage wave that the Women Pickets seem to have been riding (accounting for the volume of reporting on their activities) crested with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The Irish Progressive League, which in many ways was the engine vitalizing the Women Pickets, submerged its organizational work into de Valera's American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic (organized in November of that year). Factionalism on the part of

Man Can Save

Gertrude Corless

may have cost the Women Pickets

of the nationalist

movement.

Corless, like

their place in the histories

Mary MacSwiney and many

of the

women in the Dail Eireann, adamantly refused to accept partition and the treaty. For the next few years Corless occasionally mobilized the remaining

members

of the

Women

legal difficulties

Why to

and dropped out

were the

wield so

women

of the

Irish Free State. In

373 Strikmgjor

of sight.

1

92 1 ?

First,

they

Maud Gonne, Constance

Markievicz,

phant generation of suffragists

a

Ireland on the

American

Land League had

just as the Ladies

up

^^

Irish

independence movement able

much influence in the years between the

signing of the Treaty in

War I,

New

1925 Corless ran into

Pickets. In January 1923 they are reported breaking

York City meeting in support of the

filled a

1916 Easter Rising and the

power vacuum during World

in 1881. Second, the achievements of

Mary Colum

—provided

—and Alice Paul's trium-

strong role models for activist

women. Third, by 1916 the American Irish women in the nationalist movement represented two and a half decades of continuous organizing, of women by women. They were no longer content to be "auxiliaries." When Gertrude Kelly made her 1914 appeal to "societies of Irish women" to join the Cumann na mBan, she revealed the degree of organization American Irish

women

County Literary

had achieved since the mid- 1890s: "A.O.H. Auxiliaries, Ladies'

Societies, Gaelic Societies, Industrial Organizations, Benefit Societies,

and Dramatic

regard to class or creed

Societies, .

.

.

women

of

any and no

affiliation,

without

co-operate with us in securing Ireland's place in the

sun."

Through "separate spheres" and years

of patient organizing,

Gertrude Kelly,

Gertrude Corless,

Mary McWhorter, Helen Golden, and all the other American

women who

achieved such marvels between 1916 and 1921 were able to

Irish

draw from

large, resourceful

eager to fight with

and the

new

women's

nationalist organizations

tactics for Ireland's independence.

Irish Progressive

an activist core

The Women

Pickets

League represented the new generation of Irishmen

and Iiishwomen hailed in Padraic "asserting their right to national

Pearse's proclamation of the Irish Republic,

freedom" as equals.

New

York Docks

John F McClymer

CHAPTER

15

Of "Mornin' Glories" and "Fine Old Oaks" JOHN PURROY MITCHEL, AL SMITH, AND REFORM AS AN EXPRESSION OF IRISH-AMERICAN ASPIRATION

o

'N JULY

former "boy mayor" of

New York,

6,

1918, Major John Purroy Mitchel, the

died during a solo flight at Gerstner Field in j

Lake Charles, Louisiana. Mitchel, who was not quite 39 years old, had almost completed his training before leading his squadron into combat in France.

1

|

During the fatal flight he attempted a roll. His altitude was about 500 the plane turned upside down, and he fell out. He had not fastened

feet

when j

his safety j

belt.'

i

"A most engaging and promising personality disappeared from public life," commented Oswald Garrison Villard in an obituary notice in the Nation. "Two

,

years ago there

was no young man The beau ideal

prospects before him."

in the

,

United States with such bright j

of municipal reformers, Mitchel

"had

all

[

the charm of youth" plus "good looks, dignified and straightforward bearing, j

and in speaking an admirable address." Even the White House had seemed within his reach, at least to admirers like Villard. Another, Julian Street writing in Collier's Weekly, quoted "one of the shrewdest political prognosticators in

Mayor Mitchel is about their best 'white hope' for the presidency." The mayor reminded this unnamed observer of Theodore Roosevelt. "He may make mistakes, but they are the kind of mistakes Roosevelt used to make likable mistakes,- and the this country" that "so far as the

Democratic party

is

i

i^

ij

concerned.

j

1

—

[

i

mistakes of a strong fighter

—and he gets away with them, as Roosevelt always

could, through sheer honesty of purpose, energy,

and personality."^

Nor were these the only public suggestions that the youthful mayor, the son and grandson of Irish immigrants, and a Catholic, would candidate.'^ Yet, as Villard

November when

Irish-American

lamented, "the whirhgig of fate spins unceasingly," and

Aspiration

the

Democrat

fall of

1917, turned to ashes

candidate. Judge John Francis ("Red Mike")

Hylan, crushed his bid for reelection by 313,956 (48.9%) to 155,497 votes (24.2%).* Hylan's two-to-one margin of victory

was

was the

largest in

New York City history as

his 150,000 plus vote pluraUty. Mitchel, in fact, barely

candidate Morris Hillquit,

who

nosed out Sociahst

polled 145,332 votes (22.6%).

Rounding out the

was RepubHcan Wilham Bennett, who captured only 55,438 votes (8.6%) in the November election, but who had bested Mitchel by 224 votes in the RepubUcan

field

primary the previous September. of the

On the ticket with Hylan,

running

for president

Board of Aldermen, was another ambitious Irish Cathohc, Al Smith.

was suggesting in 191 7 or 1918 that he would someday make tial

candidate.

No one

a plausible presiden-

Tammany boss Charles F. Murphy, on the other hand, was thinking

about Smith as a likely governor.^ Mitchel's story, friend and foe agreed, had a simple moral. gence, dedication,

He had

intelli-

and many other fine qualities, but he just was not a politician.

He was a reformer, and "reformers,"

Tammany ward leader George Washing-

as

ton Plunkitt once scornfully remarked to reporter William L. Riordon, "were

mornin' glories

—looked lovely in the mornin' and withered up in a short time,

while the regular machines went on flourishin' forever, like fine old oaks." reformer, Plunkitt continued, "can

comes down

make

a

show

flair for

The

he always

metaphor, Plunkitt's point about the urban reformers of

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tics is as

for a while, but

like a rocket."^

Despite his

much

was

explicitly prosaic. "Poli-

a regular business as the grocery or the dry

business. You've got to be trained

up

to

it

goods or the drug

or you're sure to fail."

The

typical

"goo goo," as Plunkitt and his fellow Sachems dismissively referred to good

government crusaders

like Mitchel, "hasn't

business of politics and he

makes

a

mess

of

reform administration had ever succeeded

The temptation

to explain Mitchel's

been brought up in the it

every time." This was

difficult

why no

itself.

triumphs and defeats in terms of

Plunkitt's witty, but hard-nosed dicta has proved irresistible, perhaps because

no

political career in

as did

New York history so literally resembled a rocket in flight

John Purroy Mitchel's. Elected on a Fusion ticket in 1913, with the largest

plurality

any mayor had received since

1

897, he lost four years later

many

by an even

Tammany's power in New York was finally about to be overcome.' His defeat marked not only the rejuvenation of the Hall, which went on to sweep four consecutive mayoralty wider margin.* His victory had led

races,

Expression oj

a credible presidential

Mitchel's political prospects, so brilliant in the early that

make

375 Refoim as an

to predict that

but also the abrupt end of the "era of genteel reform" in

New York.'"

"

Mitchel had been "admittedly the ablest and best Mayor New York ever had,

376 The Early

according to Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of the Nation, a judgment advanced

Twentieth Centuty

time and again by advocates

of "scientific"

and "progressive" reform. Theodore

Roosevelt, in endorsing Mitchel's bid for reelection in 1917, claimed he had

New York City govemment New York became a big New Republic, which "sized

"given us as nearly an ideal administration of the as

I

have seen in

my lifetime, or as

I

William Hard, in a two-part

city."

have heard of since article in the

up" Mitchel's challengers in 1917 and found them wanting, noted that the Mitchel administration

among

"is regarded

by most municipal reformers as being

the very last words in municipal administrative technique."

He had

"against political influence, against commercial influence, against every influ-

ence

.

.

.

instincts

kept his departments sound and honest and

and habits of

scientific service."

He had

.

.

.

confirmed them

laid "sure

and deep

.

.

.

in

those

foundations of efficiency, those traditions of uninfluenced devotion to the public welfare" so necessary for good government.^'

Yet the same qualities that believed, in the

made him

made Mitchel

a hopelessly

bad

so superb a mayor, his admirers

politician.

Howard Lee McBain,

writing

National Municipal Review, the bible of "scientific" urban reform,

explained Mitchel's defeat as due to the fact that "he bothered more about

being mayor, more about doing a thoroughgoing and clean job in that difficult office,

than about making himself solid with party organizations, or building

machine

a political

of his

own, or doing the thing that would catch the

popular fancy." Further, "in doing this job as as

no one

whose

else

had ever done

it,

should have been done and

it

he trod upon the toes of group after group

way

class or factional interests stood in the

of the interests of the

general public."'^

Al Smith, whose election as president of the Board of Aldermen in 1917 provided a springboard for his successful gubernatorial campaign in 1918, offered a similar analysis. "Mitchel

following.

He was

a

man

of

had a

unquestioned

large

and powerful independent

ability.

He

many

brought about

desirable reforms in the administration of city business, but the loose cog in the

wheel happened

to be the fact that

he held a

political position

and was

a

thousand miles away from being a politician."'^

Not every exponent of what can be called the Plunkitt thesis was so generous. Robert Moses,

who

began his public career as

a

Mitchel

loyalist,

and

later

became one

of Smith's closest advisers, dismissed the Fusion administration as

an "honest

outfit

committed

(

making

\

pencil and similar efficiency devices, and to the impossible promise of vast physical

improvements without spending any money."

and Mitchel's staunchest defenders alike agreed on his lack

He was unable

"to

make

it

a

week

Critics like

Moses

of political savvy.

the plain people of the city feel that he

their supporter, their servant, their leader, their

Villard put

•

to saving rubber bands, using both ends of the

is

their friend,

Mayor," as Oswald Garrison

before the election in 1917.''*

>

I

Historians have by and large attention to Mitchel at

'^

all.

hewed

same

when

they have paid

377

In reducing his career to an illustration of Plunkitt's

Reform as an

to the

line,

witty aphorisms on "very practical politics," however, one runs the risk of

Expression of

cogently described by Alexis de Tocqueville, of seeking

Irish-American

falling into the trap, so

to

make

sense of history as though

it

were simply

politics. It is

understandable

that politicians, "living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are prone to

imagine that everything

is

attributable to particular incidents,

and that the

same that move the world." Historians should there was much more to Mitchel than Plunkitt's

wires which they pull are the

know

better.'^

And, in

fact,

"momin' glory" metaphor His career has

concomitant

rise

suggests.

much to teach of a new sort of

about the end of Progressivism, about the

"urban liberalism" that prefigured the

Deal and made Al Smith a national

figure,

New

about the origins of the Red Scare in

New York and of Tammany's surprising role as defender of civil liberties. Most much

important, Mitchel's career has

to teach about the

ways

Irish

Americans

sought city and national power in the opening decades of the twentieth century. In all of these respects, as a counterpoint to It is,

therefore,

different

and especially with regard to the

last,

Mitchel can serve

Al Smith.

time to take a fresh look

at Mitchel.

He

followed a radically

path toward political power than did Smith, but he courted, and for a

time very successfully, some of the same reform elements, as well as the same

independent voters that Smith would later seek to win over. Between them Mitchel and Smith explored

much

of the range of Irish

between the incorporation

aspiration

"Brown Derby" campaign

of 1928.

As

more sense when seen in the context

in

Mitchel's

aim was

American

life

the

to prove that

of Greater

New

political

a consequence, the career of each

makes

of the other's.

an

Irish

Catholic could have a central role

because he could be a more perfect WASP than the members of

Union League Club. This ambition permeated

his career as

informed his understanding of politics and of reform. It

American

York in 1897 and the

It

it

did his

life. It

defined his patriotism.

shaped his Catholicism. His message to the Yankee establishment was that

in every

way

that counted he

was one

of

them.

Smith's career exemplified an altogether different vision of

should

fit

into

American public

life.

how

the Irish

His message was that they, and all the other

ethnic groups, were indeed different and that the resulting diversity was healthy.

American culture ought to make room to distance

away his his

for all. Smith, as a result,

never sought

himself from his ethnic roots, never took off his derby hat, never put

stogie. Instead

he tried to prove to native-bom Protestants that he and

were better than they thought, were truer to the basic ideals of America than

their critics

were themselves.

In this, as in

much

else,

the

first

two

Irish

American Catholics

serious speculation about their fitness to run for president

to inspire

were polar opposites.

Aspiration

378

Mitchel, the son and grandson of Irish immigrants, grew up in a comfortably

The Early

affluent

Twentieth Century

St.

home

in the Bronx.

John's (later

He

studied with private tutors, then attended

Fordham) College Preparatory School, Columbia College, and

New York Law School. His family New England and on the continent.

employed servants and took vacations

ancestry was Spanish) were active in

New

York City

politics at the highest

maternal uncle, Henry Purroy, was the

levels. Mitchel's

in

Both the Mitchels and the Purroys (whose

first

Bronx member

the Board of Aldermen, in 1874, and became board president in 1876.

of

A

sometime ally of Tammany, he went on to become fire commissioner, a position from which he could advance the careers of both his brother, who was a battalion chief in the department, fire

marshall for the

and his brother-in-law, John's father James, who was

from family friend William appointed

him

own

start in city politics

came

B. Ellison, the city's corporation counsel,

who

John Purroy Mitchel's

city.

to investigate charges of inefficiency in the office of

borough president John

F.

Ahearn

Even more valuable than

in 1906.'^

his Purroy connections in the

the early twentieth century was the Mitchel name. Purroy's grandfather,

was

Manhattan

The

a celebrated Irish nationahst

Young Ireland movement of the 1 840s led

to his trial

New York politics of

first

John Mitchel, John

whose activism

and conviction

in the

for treason

against Great Britain in 1848. Sentenced to 14 years' transportation to

Van

Diemen's Land, Mitchel escaped to the United States in 1853. He no sooner arrived in

New York, to a hero's welcome from the city's Irish immigrants, than

he founded the Citizen, a newspaper dedicated

to the cause of Irish indepen-

He also developed a loyalty to the Democratic Party and quickly became a noted apologist for slavery. In 1856 he moved his family to Knoxville and started the Southern Citizen. In 1860 he moved again, this time to Paris, to dence.

better agitate for a free Ireland. In 1862 the Mitchels returned to the South and

John Mitchel became editor of the Richmond Enquirer. His three sons enlisted in the Confederate army. fighting,

and he

lost

Of the

three, only John Purroy's father survived the

an arm. In 1865 John Mitchel went back

to

New York, took

over as editor of the Daily News, and immediately got into trouble for his

pro-Southern editorials. After four months of confinement in Fort Monroe, he

went

to Paris to

Irish Citizen,

work

refused to permit

returning

in the Fenian cause,

came back

to

New York to edit

the

and in 1875 returned to Ireland to stand for Parliament. The Tories

him

him

to take his seat, but his Irish constituents insisted

upon

I

in the by-election. Before anything further could transpire,

Mitchel died on March 20, 1875."^ Smith, in contrast, grew up in poverty on Manhattan's Lower East Side. quit school at age

1

of jobs during his teens, including several years of at the

He

2 to help support his recently widowed mother, held a variety

working

12-

j

and 13-hour days

Fulton Fish Market, and found recreation in amateur theatricals and a

'

future in politics. Totally lacking in family connections, he set about becoming j

"a statesman" in exactly the fashion George Washington Plunkitt recom-

I

Tammany leader. As he proved more important responsibilities, moving up from the Office of the Commissioner of Jurors in 1895, his first

mended. He made himself useful to the local himself, he gradually earned

subpoena server in pohtical job, to

member of

the state assembly in 1903. All of his education, in

came

both politics and the art of governing,

New

ambition to be as "American" as

A

cultivate an aristocratic bearing. teristic

pose

Irish nationalism, Mitchel's

York's Yankee elite led

him

to

1917 portrait shows him in a charac-

—head held high, shoulders back. He made a practice of attendFour Hundred." He also made a point of

ing the balls

and dinners

refusing, as a

hero-worshipping Emanie N. Sachs reported, "to attend pass-

of "the

over balls and Labor day rallies. don't

I?

He

said:

my friends.'" which was

to right nor to left.

face

was

you go

I

if I

will.

want

I

work

right

It

hard,

dance with

to

office,

with old friends and new ones, mostly job-hunters."

The

thin

was

figure.

lips, lightly

aloof." His secretary

the outer office. if

damned

Sachs also described Mitchel striding through his outer

"filled

was "a triumphant, patrician young

The

be

'I'll

I'm human. I've got to have some recreation.

"'full of

.

.

He

.The blue eyes looked neither

sardonic, pointed in at the corners.

had urged the mayor not

to leave through

people waiting to see you. They won't like

through without talking to them.'" Mitchel had replied:

it

'"I

haven't time to talk to a lot of empty-headed yaps.'"

To

manner sprang from

his admirers Mitchel's patrician

for political

his genuine disdain

"show." Julian Street quoted the mayor's secretary about an

appearance where Mitchel found himself expected to kiss the "prize baby at a

baby show." "'He looked terrified at the idea. Plunkitt could readily have

on

style don't

pay in

want

politicians

who

fastidiousness. "Puttin'

;

for it."

I

They

did not

...

warned Mitchel

I

couldn't

make him do

of the political costs of

politics.

usual zest, even he had to be careful.

I

circulated a report that

1

suit."

;

He

gave themselves

treasury, for they're

i

The day before one

had ordered

minded much

if I

airs

and acted as it

election, his

with his

"enemies

I

could," but

still lost

had been accused

votes.

"The

of robbin' the city

used to slanders of that kind in campaigns, but the

automobile and the dress suit were too

:

such

$10,000 automobile and a $125 dress

a

"sent out contradictions as fast as

people wouldn't have

:

I

it.'"^'

The people won't stand

though they were better than their constituents. As Plunkitt put

i

much

for

them."

^

seem proof of Al Smith's judgment that the "boy mayor" was "a thousand miles away from being a pohtician." Certainly Smith never sought to high-hat his supporters. Instead, as Norman Hapgood and Henry Moskowitz wrote in their admiring biography, there was "nothing to put Smith apart from the men in the street, except his Mitchel's fondness for fancy dress balls can thus

.

:

j

]

I

j

brains

and his industry." In his

to listen to ordinary people.

"one of the majority.""

dress,

forms of recreation, constant willingness

Smith demonstrated that he thought

Expression of

Irish-American Aspiration

as on-the-job training.^'

name synonymous with

Despite inheriting a

379 Reform as an

of himself as

380

Yet there was more to Mitchel's refusal to dance the two-step on the Lower

mixed with was a determination to insist upon one social identity and to deny another. This was the charge of his detractors, especially William Randolph Hearst, whose morning American and Evening Journal portrayed the mayor as a social climber. Of his passion for dancing with the Four Hundred, the American wrote:

The Early

East Side or attend picnics in Brooklyn than political naivete

Twentieth Century

Stubbornness. There

Svelte as a fawn in a natural history, Limber and swift as a young kangaroo,

With

He

all of

the Russians' interpretive mystery.

shakes his emotional shoe.

Opinions

The

fussy

may differ about his ability. may look at his record askance.

But there can't be a doubt of his grace and John Purroy Mitchel knows

Warming

to the

five years ago, politician,

same theme, the Evening Journal wrote

Mr. John Purroy Mitchel was

vowing that some day he would

Newport." Success, the

far as

and one "great night"

a

get

in 1917 that "only

a sharp-faced little

somewhere, and,

article continued,

if

ambitious

possible, as

had finally crowned

his efforts

mayor "breathless" with excitement and "with a bright

pink spot on each cheek

.

.

.

burst through his front door and cried" out to his

wife "'My dear, Mr. Vanderbilt called [their]

agility;

how to dance!

me Jack.'"

Ordinary

folk, "satisfied

with

old friends" and "not tormented by a desire for 'social success,'" could

when a man like John own ears hears one of the Vanderbilt family say, 'Hello,

"hardly imagine how the heart beats and the pulse throbs

Purroy Mitchel with his Jack.'"^^

I

Mitchel, the Evening Journal charged, was in full flight from his Irish |

immigrant background. "His name heard

is

John

Purroy,-

and in his youth he often

the family call him 'Jawn.'" But the mayor had put him for "when you have struggled up, have got away from away from the old associations and have forgotten the old

i

old, plain friends of

those days behind

what you

despise,

,

j

f

people, the old friendships, the old ties, and have actually heard 'Hello, Jack'

from the

socially sanctified lips,

I

some happiness will always remain with you," ]

even

if

the voters should choose to punish you for playing "the Little Brother

to the Rich."^^

However

vicious the Hearst attacks, they

Mitchel's attempt to present himself as a perfect

smart

went

to the heart of

WASP at ease only among the

What made them so effective, and Osward Garrison Villard estimated minds of a good many people" against the mayor, they pointed to the fact that, in making his way into high society, John

set.

that they had "poisoned the

was

that

Purroy Mitchel had effectually repudiated his

This was true politically as well as

own

background.^^

socially, for in Mitchel's

j

i

\

Ij

i

i

hands municipal j

reform became exphcitly anti-Catholic and

anti-h-ish.

This began with Mitchel's

determination to surmount his ethnic background by having nothing whatever to

do with

Tammany. The mayor had

if

anything that smacked of the

George Washington Plunkitt and Al Smith practiced and

sort of politics

preached. Juhan Street asked a

a horror of

man may wish to be, he's in politics?

him

'"No matter how

in 1917:

doesn't he have to

compromise

Irish-Ameiican

now and then

Aspiration

Doesn't he have to balance one man, or one crowd, against

another? Doesn't he have to trim and be artful, sometimes?'" Mitchel's reply

was

prompt "No." "'A

a

men he doesn't the game,"

to such devices.

speak

has to associate sometimes with

like to associate with, but the idea of being "slick," of "playing

the old idea

is

man in public office

To

—the Tammany idea.

my mind there

is

I

don't believe a

man has to stoop

only one course to pursue: Be right and

out.'"'^^

His was an administration of experts, not of political "yaps."^^

most ties.

was John A. Kingsbury, the Fusion commissioner

visible

One

of the

of public chari-

Kingsbury had previously been the assistant secretary of the State Charities

Aid Association and then general secretary of the Association

ment

of the

Condition of the Poor.

charities, particularly of

public

money to

archdiocese. So

New

He was

for the

Improve-

a noted critic of publicly supported

York's Tammany-inspired system of funneling

sectarian orphanages.^"

Most

when Kingsbury undertook

institutions receiving city funds, the stage

not only between Fusion and

of these

were run by the Catholic

a special investigation of private

was

Tammany

set for a potential confrontation

but between the mayor and the

cardinal.

Kingsbury appointed a deputy,

Wilham

J.

Doherty, to conduct the investigation

and also named individuals associated with Cathohc, Jewish, and Protestant institutions to the panel.^^ signed.

The

Almost immediately the Catholic representative

investigation proceeded without

uimamed "Church

Mitchel accede to requests from influence the

would "be

Mayor

right

to

him being

replaced.

officials"

who

reportedly said to a friend. "I'm the

mayor

of

New York.

me

re-

Nor would

end the investigation." He would do no such

and speak out." "These people are trying to give

"tried to thing.

He

orders,"

he

I

don't take orders from

some

12 Catholic and 14

anyone, even from them."^^

Doherty's inquiry turned up irregularities in

non-Catholic orphanages. All had cooperated with the Doherty panel, accepted funds,

its

and

recommendations all

for

all

changes in order to continue receiving city

actually instituted the required changes. So, had the Fusion

administration simply wished to

make

sure the city's orphans were receiving

the best care available, the matter might have ended with Doherty's filing of his report.'^

In fact, the charities case

was

just beginning.

The reason was

that Kingsbury

and Mitchel had challenged the competence of the State Board of Charities in

was the body

initiating the inquiry in the first place, since

it

fitness of private institutions to receive city

money. And the

Expression oj

and clean

straight

a little bit

381 Rcfoim as an

that certified the state board

had

382

inspected and approved

The Early

deficient.

Twentieth Century

Seymour Whitman

So Mitchel,

to

26 of the orphanages Doherty subsequently found

all

Kingsbury's recommendation, urged Governor Charles

i

launch an investigation of the state board. Whitman

i

at

agreed and put attorney Charles H. Strong, a former president of the City Club, in charge. Strong, the governor promised, "will have an absolutely free hand."

For his part. Strong

made

it

clear

from the outset that he

sawf his role as

furthering the Fusion administration's agenda. His inquiry w^ould look toward

ij

"some

>j

simplified system of control of State charitable institutions" and into

"the question which Commissioner John A. Kingsbury of as to the quality of inspection

Fusion could only make

by detailing

all of

its

by the State Board

New York has raised

\

of Charities."^*

case against the state board in the Strong hearings

the deficiencies that Doherty had found

more than

a year

i

before and that even Kingsbury conceded had already been corrected. Catholic officials

were

irate.

Kingsbury's response was a model of incomprehension.

Certain people were trying "to create an impression that the Department of Charities

is

I

seeking to hamper and harass the institutions of a certain religious

•!

denomination," a charge he dismissed as "absurd." The Doherty investigation

had looked into "institutions

In fact, Kingsbury financed the printing of a

ij

of all denominations."''^

and the distribution of 7,000 copies

pamphlet that highlighted the most sensational findings

inquiry, including the entirely baseless charge that in

of the

ij

Doherty

one Catholic orphanage

"orphans and pigs were fed out of the same utensils." According to William H.

who had resigned from the Bureau of Municiwhen it decided to abandon public criticism of the Fusion adminiKingsbury knew this charge was without foundation but permitted its

Allen, a former Mitchel supporter pal Research stration,

circulation anyway.'^*'

Whether the commissioner knowingly engaged

\

ij

in calj

umny or not, he found himself in a pamphlet war. The Catholic champion was a Brooklyn priest. Father William B. Farrell,

up copies

of his

A

1916 on their way

and Catholic

laity

could soon pick

Public Scandal, Charity for Revenue, and Priest Baiting in

home from Sunday mass

since the archdiocese permitted

them to be distributed in all the Catholic churches in the city. William H. Allen

i

i

i

i

(

estimated that 700,000 of the pamphlets were circulated, each bearing the

message "After reading, pass on to your fair-minded neighbor" on Father Farrell gave as good as he got.

Summoned

its

cover.

to testify at the Strong

work for Mayor Mitchel,

hearings, he accused Strong of doing Kingsbury's and Mitchel's dirty

them. Strong was

convinced that

engaged in character assassination, he charged.

Farrell's

pamphlets were libelous and that the chancellor

archdiocese, Monsignor John city's

J.

Dunn,

commit

libel,

authorized the tapping of the two priests' telephone

conversations, as well as those of several other critics of the Doherty report. In

May

of 1916 the

Farrell

mayor submitted the wiretap evidence

and several

of the other objects of the taps

to a grand

jury,-

t

of the

in permitting their distribution in the

Catholic churches, had engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Father

Farrell to

|

Father

immediately demanded that

ii

The fat

383

was truly in the fire, especially when state senator George P. Thompson declared

Reform as an

the grand jury consider charges of illegal wiretapping against the mayor.

would hold an investigation

that he

of the

whole question

of the use of

wiretaps/^

Thompson committee himself, and what Some of his "co-religionists" had

Mitchel decided to testify before the

he had to say infuriated CathoUcs everywhere.

from the first days of his administration engaged in a "well-organized and purposeconspiracy" to "obstruct" the legitimate activities of his administration and to

ful

"interfere"

with "the proper and orderly conduct or control of the private charitable

institutions of the city."

It

amounted

to nothing less than "the attempted seizure

by the Church of the city government."^' CathoUcs had heard such charges before, but not from a fellow Catholic. Mitchel,

of course,

charities case to curry favor

to obtain a reputation for being fearless.

that

If

were his

goal,

decided,

was using the

"'^^

he certainly succeeded. Most of the

national, press hailed the mayor's "courage"

the archdiocese.

The Nation

Church,

for daring to

And

"if

and the

the Catholic authorities

hounding Mayor Mitchel,

a loyal

son of

be independent and humane-minded in the admini-

stration of the public charities, they will be

deadly hurt."

New York,

and "independence" in taking on

warned that

editorially

in this city are put in the attitude of their

many

with the WASP estabhshment. As state supreme court

Eugene A. Philbin put it, the mayor was attacking the church out of "a desire

justice

doing themselves and their cause

a year later, during the mayoralty campaign, editor

Garrison Villard rhapsodized that "in going counter to

many

Oswald

of his co-religionists

and the powerful Catholic Church" Mitchel "gave the greatest exhibition of moral courage ever seen in this city." Julian Street, writing in Collier's Weekly,

saw "the Charities

likewise

man who carmot .

.

.

battle" as a "clear demonstration that Mitchel

is

a

be frightened or otherwise dominated by any political or

religious influence."

matter

More than anything

else

he had done, "his action in this

has caught the popular fancy, and has caused

him

to be

spoken

of as

the Tighting Mayor.'""*' Street did

concede "the regrettable

fact that bigoted Protestants seized the

opportunity to represent Mitchel as a sort of anti-Catholic champion."

What he

and Mitchel's other WASP admirers could not see was that their own progressive understanding of the issue struck

many

Catholics as equally bigoted.

The

New

York Evening Post, for example, ran an editorial cartoon showing frightened orphans looking out a stalking

Tammany

window of a building labeled "Dept. of Charities" at a The caption read: "The Tiger's Prey" "They Used to Shall He Have Them Again?" The Survey magazine

tiger.

Be His Regular Diet reprinted the cartoon

—

on the cover

of its January 14, 1918, issue while inside

ran an article warning of the dangers the orphans faced

out of

now

that Mitchel

it

was

office."*^

Catholics, of course, did not see the waifs

Expression of

Insh-American

Tammany

tiger preying

upon innocent

when they looked at the charities controversy. They saw Sisters of Charity

Aspiration

women

who

384

^nd other

The Early

attack.

Twentieth Century

implication the cardinal, of conspiracy; they saw him placing taps on the phones

religious,

They saw one

of a priest

of their

selflessly

own

officials,

including by

and a monsignor, charging those clerics with criminal conspiracy, and

on reading the transcripts

insisting

devoted their lives to others, under

accusing church

of their private conversations into the record

Thompson committee hearings even as Senator Thompson tried to gavel him into silence. They did not see independence and courage,- they saw apostasy of the

and opportunism.*^ Mitchel irked fellow Catholics in

little

things as well as grand.

Not only did

he battle the hierarchy in terms that provided ammunition to Protestants they

imagined as

all

too eager to believe that "papists" lacked the independence of

conscience to be good Americans, he also developed a grand manner of practic-

seemed to belittle their own parochial loyalties. According Emanie N. Sachs, Mitchel had a private confessor, a Jesuit who taught at Brooklyn Preparatory School, "who had the right of way to the mayor's office ing his religion that to

past any one." Having what

amounted to a private chaplain, Mitchel never went

near the parish church in his ov^m neighborhood, a fact that became notorious

when, don't

at a Catholic gathering, a priest

came up

know me, Mr. Mayor." That was

advantage of me."

to the

mayor and

said,

"You

Mitchel agreed: "You have the

so,

am the pastor of your parish," the priest rejoined. Mitchel,

"I

according to Sachs, "threw back his head and laughed."*'' Again, the contrast with Smith

ography to extolling

is

palpable.

He devoted

pages of his autobi-

James's Catholic Church, his neighborhood parish, and

Monsignor John Kean. His unquestioning loyalty to the pastor is Hapgood's and Moskowitz's campaign biography. Up

its pastor,

recounted

at length in

from the City

was about

St.

1

8

Streets.

One

revealing anecdote concerned the time

and Father Kean sought

from patronizing the

local saloons

to prevent the

by getting the

St.

young people

when Smith of the parish

James's Union, the major

power to expel any member he wished for whatever reason he wished. Lots of the young men were ready to object, but not Smith. He told his fellows, "St. James's Union is part of the church. It belongs young men's

club, to give

to the church.

We

him

the

cooperate with the church and

Father wishes to have something to say about

it, I

it

cooperates with us.

If

the

think he has a right to control

the membership."** It

was

also at St. James's that

theatricals,

and he soon became a

Smith discovered

his taste for amateur

regular, indeed a leading, player in the

St. j

James's Dramatic Society. Smith loved to perform, but he wanted to play the

j

hero since the very demonstrative local audiences hissed his villains with a

I

much

He would

bit

more villains, he once proclaimed. But Father Kean had other ideas. He called Smith to the rectory, put his hand on his shoulder, and said, "'Alfred, we have over two hundred little orphan girls next door. It is getting harder every year to feed and clothe and care too

fervor for his taste.

for these girls."

The Dramatic

play no

Society put on two plays a year to help support

I

j

j

|

the orphanage.

What would Smith

do? "Al replied in four words: 'Give

me the

part.'"

Mitchel transformed social welfare reform into a battle with the church

If

385 Rejormasan

makeup

and therefore, given the ethnic

fellow Irish Americans, he turned several other

Expression of

with his

Irish-American

anti-Tammany measures, most

Aspiration

of the hierarchy, into a battle

importantly progressive education, into virtual wars with not just the Irish but

with

also

issue

all

the nationality groups in the

city.

Schools were bound to be a major

once his administration adopted a "pay-as-you-go" policy on

expenditures that were not themselves revenue producing.*^ This

Fusion would build only those school facilities revenue. In practice the

New

it

it

that

could finance out of current

proved willing to spend even

York Evening Post,

all capital

meant

less

a faithful support of the

than that. According to

Mitchel administration,

the Board of Estimate appropriated $ 1 7.05 million for new buildings, alterations, additions,

and new sites between 1914 and 1918, but Fusion spent less than $5.0

million.'*^

Given existing overcrowding

in the schools,

and the

fact that previous

administrations had been unable to keep up with the city's rapidly growing school-age population despite heavy borrowing to finance

pay-as-you-go policy promised to solution was to bring the

new

buildings, a

make a bad situation rapidly worse.

Mitchel's

;

|

'

Gary Plan to New York. Under it students would spend j

part of the school

museums learn

day outside their regular classroom learning about

or tools in

by doing,

machine shops

or

drama

in theaters.

all

art in

that

is,

, 31

Furthermore, learning,

•

be integrated into the school day. And, because

>)

just as progressive educators advocated.

working, and playing would

They would,

students did not need to be in the traditional classroom the entire day, several

same

This would obviate the need to build extra

>

schools while simultaneously improving the quality of education in the city

y *

students could use the

schools.'*'

The Gary

seat.

Plan, in short, promised "vast improvements," as Robert

Moses derisively remarked, without the If

city needing to

spend any extra money.

the plan were to work, the wholehearted cooperation of the city's teachers

would be required

—not least of

work day by 20 percent. But, "administration presented

its

all

because

as John

most brutal

Education requested $67,000 for

it

Dewey

summer

required a lengthening of their

remarked, "to the teachers" the

face." In 1915,

when

the Board of

school teachers' salaries. Fusion

comptroller William A. Prendergast retorted that teachers were already over-

None of the teachers' organizations ever "made an effort to produce a larger of labor" to justify their salaries. They were only interested in "getting increases of salary for themselves without increase of service." The teachers should volunteer to teach the summer classes for free. Earlier that Spring both

paid.

amount

Mitchel and Prendergast had testified in Albany on behalf of a

have allowed them to lower teachers' \

Given

tion,

salaries.

their conviction that teachers already received too

it is

bill

that

would

^°

much compensa-

not surprising that Mitchel and Prendergast believed that salaries

386

should not be increased for teachers in so-called Gary schools despite the

J

The Early

increased workload. In detail, the plan, as Fusion proposed

i

Twenaeth Century

a longer school

day (from

it

in 1915, called for

five to six hours), a longer school year (from

40 to

44 weeks), a reduction in the number of grammar school years (from eight

J

to j

no

seven),

salary increases, prohibition of regular teachers earning extra pay in |

night or

summer schools,

cut in the

The

a freeze

on new school construction, and

a 10 percent

i

was Thomas W. Churchill, loyalist. He was only too

j

number of teachers.^^

president of the Board of Education in 1915

a lawyer, former teacher,

and long-term

Tammany

.i

willing to rally the teachers and lead the opposition to the mayor's version of

the Gary Plan. For his part, Mitchel,

members a

of the board each year,

working majority, was determined

nity.

who

could appoint only a

and thus had to wait until

1

fifth of the

9 1 6 to

command

to oust Churchill at the earliest opportu-

The mayor charged Churchill with doing Tammany's

j

i

.j

j

bidding. Churchill j

retorted that Mitchel intended to

hand the

city's

schools over to the Rockefeller

was the "tendency of mayors" to "respect "^^ community and to forget the democratic.

interests. It 'it,

i

the

the aristocratic voice of

:l

ij

j

K ^"

Churchill's charge about "Rockefeller interests" running the schools a

major

issue, in part

became

ij

because Mitchel appointed Abraham Flexner, an assistant j

'n I

I

secretary of the Rockefeller-endowed General Education Board, and B. Fosdick,

tion.

an employee

Raymond

of the Rockefeller Foundation, to the Board of Educa-

Also contributing to

its plausibility

number

was the

fact that Fusion's version of

il

i

ij

55

the Gary Plan reduced the

of hours children in the affected schools

;

^r

devoted to traditional academic work. Since these schools were in immigrant

;

neighborhoods where the overcrowding problem was most severe, Churchill

and other Mitchel opponents could portray the mayor as consigning the children -

of the poor to a blue-collar future. Mitchel

Tammany's hands by

failing to

make any

and Prendergast also played

effort to explain their

into

i

|

•!

plan to the j

parents and pupils involved while the Hall held countless neighborhood meetj

ings to

drum up

1917 election,

As Theodore Roosevelt commented just before the the "so-called Gary school system has become a liability." opposition.

j

j

Parents had a "right to be consulted." "Instead, having agreed that the doctors

\

had fixed up the medicine that would be good

I

"decided to liked

it

the doctor jam

let

or not.

it

down

for the school patient," Fusion

the patient's throat, whether the patient

"^^

At the heart

of the

Tammany campaign against

the Gary Plan

was the claim was an

that the reduction in the hours devoted to traditional academic subjects effort, in

Theodore Roosevelt's paraphrase, "to keep" the children

"in the place of hewers of

wood and

of the poor

carriers of water." In early 1916, just as

Mitchel wrenched control of the Board of Education from Churchill and

Tammany, school superintendent William Henry Maxwell lent credibility to the charge when he released a report from the school system's chief statistician that purported to show that students in Gary Plan schools lagged behind

where the

children in comparable schools

was

traditional curriculum

still

followed.^'*

new plan were outraged. It was new system was still just being instituted,

Advocates of the

when

the

were not

the schools chosen

really comparable,-

not

progress

Expression of

they argued; furthermore,

Imh-American

fair to assess

and pupils

schools really did better than chief statistician Burdette R. ted.

in the Gary Plan Buckingham admit-

For their part, Mitchel appointees to the Board of Education were equally

willing to play politics with assessments of the plan.

The Rockefeller-endowed

General Education Board completed in 1916 an evaluation of the public schools of Gary, Indiana, to see

how

well they compared with schools in other

cities.

One of its coauthors, Abraham Flexner, was, as noted above, a Mitchel appointee to the Board of Education. The report was extremely critical of the Gary schools and its timely release would have damaged the mayor's position quite substantially.

But the General Education Board did not release

it

until 1918.^^

Even without the corroborating evidence garnered by Flexner, the Bucking-

ham

Report did enormous damage to the Fusion Plan, especially

intendent in the

Maxwell weighed in. Buckingham's

Gary schools "are

data,

he

He

did not claim "this test

service to the idea that the city should continue to

Plan on a strictly limited basis. substantially reduce the

need

On

for

calculated that teaching costs

is

conclusive" and gave

went up

with a cost that

is

just as likely to

fastest in plan schools,

be truant,

and concluded

practically prohibitive, will not justify "^^

Rockefeller Foundation, and to any other private interests"

He promised a Hylan

would

school building, claimed that pupils in

"Red Mike" Hylan picked up on the theme. His message

the "opportunity to

Super-

experiment with the Gary

revolutionizing the administration of another school.

schools."

when

showed that pupils

the other hand, he denied the plan

new

Gary schools were more likely to drop out and

that "poorer results,

said,

inferior in attainments to the pupils in the schools

having the regular course." lip

to Mitchel, "the

was "hands

off

our

administration would give "our boys and girls"

become doctors, lawyers, clergymen,"

or whatever else they

wanted to be "notwithstanding the views of the Rockefeller Board of Education." Socialist candidate Morris Hillquit was equally outspoken, and by Octo-

i

ber 1917 the city's schools were the scenes of daily rioting, by students and

I

parents alike, over Mitchel's attempt to

impose the Gary Plan. At one school

more than a thousand pupils went out on other children

who '

'

''

i

I

who

strike,

smashed windows, attacked

sought to enter the building, and hurled rocks at the police

line. Another 500 students at a second school which they carried banners reading "Down with the Gary System" and "Can the Gary System and Mitchel."''^ The story of the Gary Plan can serve as a paradigm for how Mitchel destroyed

tried to

staged a

'

387 Reform as an

break their picket

march

in

progressivism in

New

York.

He

turned "scientific" approaches to urban prob-

lems into class warfare; he personified the arrogance of expertise; and he brought the latent nativism

and antidemocratic ethos of much progressive reform

to the

Aspiration

A dismayed John Dewey wrote, shortly after Hylan's landslide victory, that

388

^ore.

The Early

"all of the better

Twentieth Century

have been aware

I

now defunct Gary system in New York

informed friends of the

\

mised

for

some time

that

way

not doomed by the autocratic

if

imposed from above." Fusion ought

to

was fundamentally comprowhich it was formulated and

success

its

in

have followed Thomas Churchill's

Once Mitchel "broke with him,

president of the Board of Education. situation

became

ble's club.

lead

him

in cultivating better relations with the teachers instead of ousting

largely that described

;

as

the

by Carlyle as anarchy plus the consta-

i.

"5* I

There would be reform

ism" built upon

after 1917,

a political alliance

but

it

would be

a

new "urban

between machine regulars

and Robert Wagner and social and settlement workers

like

like

Henry and

Moskowitz, along with professionally trained urban planners Moses. This new coalition would presage the

liberal-

Al Smith Belle

like Robert

New Deal. It would make Al New York, a national figure

Smith, Catholic, ethnic, product of the streets of

't '*

f I

I

!S *' I

i

new urban

i

dent.^^

The import

of

John Purroy Mitchel's career for this

liberalism, for the alliance of expert reformers and for the presidential aspirations of it

is

machine

politicians, and

'

Al Smith has proven easy to overlook. Yet

clear that Smith's later triumphs

would not have been

possible had

Mitchel not failed on so grand a scale. Prior to 1917 and Mitchel's over-

whelming

defeat, that

is,

a

Smith-reformer alliance was unthinkable

since

municipal progressives had defined themselves in terms of their opposition

Tammany. As the Literary Digest summarized "

.

and, by 1924, a serious candidate for the Democratic nomination for presi-

the situation in the

fall of

1917, almost

"every important newspaper in the country" endorsed Mitchel and called "the retention of what they considered the best administration in the

"The

history." for "in

nation's eyes"

Mitchel for the

American

cities

were "on

to

for

city's

New York," as the Nation editorialized,

moment are embodied the hopes of all who would redeem

permanently from the shame that has been

theirs."

Howard

Lee McBain, in the National Municipal Review, went even further. Democracy

was on trial in New York in 1 9 1 Not only was progressive opinion solidly behind the mayor, 7.^°

itself

of reformers such as the

'

large

numbers

Moskowitzs, and Moses, and virtually the entire

staff

of the Bureau of Municipal Research, held office in the Mitchel administration. |

Had Mitchel gained

reelection,

had he even managed to

lose less disastrously,

reformers would likely have continued to rally around the Fusion banner.^' But

Mitchel did lose disastrously, and not

just in

terms of vote

totals.

He

elected,

"Red Mike" Hylan stumped the

he would

"fill

government by Bureau

city

with the promise

the outgoing trains with 'experts.'"

of

that,

f

sol

antagonized the electorate that the Democrats ran on an openly anti-reform platform.

i

once

He denounced

Municipal Research personnel as an attack upon the

ideal of

democracy. "The ancient Greeks called

modern word aristocracy

is

'Government by Experts.'" In their Yorkers, aka regular voters faced. In

such

Democrats, a

who

way, Hylan would restore the city to "the conception of

Aspiration

Lincoln.

"^^

Hylan proved as good as his word. "We have had all the reform that

an organ of social and settlement workers and a strong backer of the Mitchel administration, described as

"unknown

none too favorably known

or

for their

acquaintance with progressive thought."*'^ Fusion was dead, and so

was the

style of

reform

it

had embodied. Progressives

Howard Lee McBain could blame the voters, could conclude that New Yorkers

had proven their unfitness for democracy. Other reformers, hke William H. Allen, could try to breathe

new life into the old Fusion coaHtion by arguing that the voters

turned against Mitchel only after he turned against "genuine" reform.^ But the

was

hard fact

that

Tammany won

in 19 1 7

on an expUcitly antireform platform,

was longing for a new Fusion movement to come along in 1921.^^ So if reformers were to have a future, they would need to develop a new poUtical strategy. In New York that meant working for—and and there was no sign the

with—some

of

city's electorate

Tammany's own, Al Smith and Robert Wagner, who,

as Oscar

Handlin pointed out, "had not been committed to the old progressivism and therefore did not bear the victories that led

burden of

defeats

its

or—what was even worse

more even than mark the end

thus clearing the

—of

only to disappointment."^^

John Purroy Mitchel's defeat did more than permit the return of to power,

way

for Smith's

of "genteel reform" in

new urban

Tammany

New York City,

liberalism. His decision to run in

1917 as the only true American in the field rather than as a municipal reformer subordinated the usual progressive themes of efficient and "scientific" manage-

ment

to

demagogic attacks on "Turk, Teuton, and

Hylan, and the

HohenzoUems." Mitchel

several of the city's

well as

velt's

Tammany" and on

major ethnic groups, particularly the

Irish

and the Jews,

as

meaning

of

"Americanism." In so doing he echoed Theodore Roose-

1916 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination and foreshad-

owed the

tactics of

sensational

Attorney General A. Mitchel Palmer,

roundup

of

ahen

radicals into the 1920

who tried to parley his

Democratic presidential

nomination, and those of New York state senator Clayton Riley Lusk, his

"Hearst,

directly challenged the patriotism of

German Americans, and transformed a municipal election into a contest

over the

Expression of

Irish-American

we want in this city for some time to come, " he announced shortly after taking office. He made short work of the Bureau of Municipal Research staffers Mitchel had appointed, and in their places he named party loyalists whom the Survey,

like

389 Rejonn as an

understood firsthand the problems the

govemment held by Abraham In victory

it aristokratia, from which our The present term for it in New York is place Hylan promised to appoint real New

derived.

who used own

chairmanship of a legislative investigating committee to stage his

"Pabner Raids" across the

state.^^

The 1917 mayoralty

election, therefore.

'' '

390

helped inaugurate an era in which issues of loyalty, patriotism, and free speech

The Early

dominated

Twentieth Centiiry

many's, careers as champions of

New

York (and national)

politics.

And

it

began Smith's, and Tam-i

civil liberties.

>

Mitchel declared the maintenance of "an aggressive pro-American government in the city of

New York"

the central issue of the campaign. City Hall, the Fusion

platform asserted, "must not be controlled or influenced by or by discontented elements nor

must

(it]

enemy sympathizers,

be administered by

.

.

hesitation and evasion leave doubt of complete devotion" to the

mayor must be ready and Federal

.

those whose

war

effort.

The

able to "maintain order within, to co-operate with the

Government against the menace from without, to detect intrigue, to The government of New York must be "above all intensely

suppress violence." loyal "is

and intensely American. " Fusion's record in this regard, the platform declared,

without

parallel in the

contemporaneous municipal history

of the country."*^

Not content with praising his own Americanism, Mitchel spent much of the campaign traducing that

of his opponents.

A Fusion "Political Primer," written

by Porter Emerson Browne and illustrated by Rea Irwin, for example, portrayed a "Soap Box Ag-i-tat-or" standing next to a street lamp haranguing a small dog.

Want To See the May-or De-feated? Why? Be-cause The May-or From Talk-ing Se-di-tion and Stir-ring Up The En-e-mies At Home to Aid and Com-fort the En-e-mies That Our Sol-diers Are Fight-ing A-broad." As Mitchel sympathizer Karl de Schweinitz commented in the Survey for November 17, 1917, "most of the 'soap-box agitators' were intensely patri"Does

Fie

Pre-vent-ed Flim

otic Irishmen. Their criticism of British misrule in Ireland led Fusion speakers to

denounce them

solidly against

as 'pro-German,'

with the result that the

Fusion billboards portrayed Mitchel, in uniform, keeping the at

Irish vote

went

Mayor Mitchel. "^^

Tammany tiger

bay with his bayonet. Others showed a soldier urging voters to support

Mitchel. In the background William Randolph Hearst and the Kaiser stood together.

defeat

The Fusion Flashlight quoted Elihu Root as saying that a Mitchel aid Germany: "Many of the young men whom we are sending

would

'

across the Atlantic will pay with their lives for that encouragement to our

enemy."''"

Hylan responded by reminding voters that patriotism was often the last' "would be ashamed to make

refuge of scoundrels. For his part, he said, he political capital of the noble sacrifices of

many cases their lives,

their

homes, and

hour

of need." Hillquit,

in

'

men who are giving up their positions, to

answer the

on the other hand, was eager

to

call in their country's

make an

issue of his

opposition to the American entry into the war and of his role in drafting the Sociahst Party's

St.

Louis platform that condemned

continue indefinitely," he told voters,

"if

it.

"If

you want war

'

i'

'

to

you want new millions of your fellows

\

slaughtered and butchered in the hard struggle, and the war in Europe to |

continue day after day, and this

bestial, brutal state of affairs to

then vote for the capitalist parties." Otherwise, "vote for me."

be prolonged,

Once the campaign was over, Mitchel's supporters conceded that his use of had cost him votes. The Women's Municipal League bulletin,

the patriot issue

391 Reform as an

example, calculated that "thousands" voted against Mitchel because of "his

Expression of

inexcusable bigotry in claiming during the campaign that his particular brand

Irish-American

was the only kind and all who opposed him were miscreants and The New Republic came to a similar post-mortem. "Most of the Hylan

Aspiration

for

of patriotism traitors."

and Hillquit support consisted of undiluted anti-Mitchel votes, cast by men who resented the attempt

made by one whom they took

to be a class candidate to "^^

himself up as the only pure and undefiled embodiment of patriotism.

set

New Republic,

This, for the

was indeed

hindsight. Before the election

it

ran

William Hard's pro-Mitchel analysis of the race in which he accused William

German

Bennett of appealing to the

Mike" Hylan against

of

vote in the Republican primary and "Red

doing the same in the general election by refusing to speak out

Germany. Hylan, Hard charged, could not remember the war "in any

effectively loyal manner."'''^

Not

all of

the criticism

came

after the fact.

Even before the votes were

some Mitchel backers warned that the Fusion attempt a

in,

to turn the election into

referendum on the war would backfire. Oswald Garrison Villard, writing in

the Nation, considered Mitchel's "introduction of the "greatest tactical

mistake" of the campaign. His use

Americanism issue" the of the

word

"tactical"

is

upon Hylan and his other opponents were Villard knew. He also knew that in making them Mitchel "deliberately

revealing here. Mitchel's attacks baseless,

violated a

fundamental theory of the good-government campaigns in this city

during the last three decades," namely, that "national issues should not be

brought into local campaigns."

Still,

was not working. Such an "appeal

some degree

effective in the last

too early to last.

the real problem

was

that the patriot issue

to national patriotism

few days

might have been in

of the campaign, but

it

was sprung

"^^

This narrow focus on tactics enabled Mitchel's supporters to dodge the question of whether his use of the fitness for office. ^^ of the

It

Americanism

issue called into question his

also allowed progressives to avoid public

damage the Fusion administration had done

Schweinitz, writing in the Survey, typified those "issue should

have been

Tammany

acknowledgment

to the reform cause. Karl de

who

believed that the real

versus good government" and

who faulted

Fusion for not having embarked from the beginning upon "a systematic visitation of the

neighborhoods of the city" in an

effort to explain "to the

people what

they were trying to accomplish." "Even the most casual acquaintance with the

men and women who were

appointed by Mayor Mitchel would have been an

education in reform." And, once "the people" had seen the "difference between the

Tammany office-holder and the municipal specialist, " they would have been who took service with the

"reconciled" to "the few out-of-town experts

administration."''^ In fact, of course, the real issue of the as

"Red Mike" Hylan was concerned,

Tammany

campaign was, as

versus good government.

far It

Tammany,

392

was an

The Early

had ignored the neighborhoods.

Twentieth Century

administration had succeeded in

issue that favored

and not simply because Fusion

for once,

was also Tammany's making reform a term

It

(

issue because the \

of

opprobrium

for

\

New York.

hundreds of thousands of ethnic voters in

j

Tactical critiques of the Mitchel

campaign

also obscured the fact that the j

mayor began promoting

his

own

conspicuous patriotism, and attacking that

when he marched

political opponents, as early as 1915,

of

;

off to Plattsburg in the |

middle of August

movement.

'^'^

For

for a

him

month

of military training as part of the Preparedness

the Americanism issue

was no mere

political tactic,

and

\

the suggestion of de Schweinitz (and Villard) that "Fusion campaign managers" ;

turned to

out of the "feeling that during the

it

canvassing an emotional issue was needed"

is

simply

Specifically,

it

of the

incorrect.''^

Leading the crusade for "100% Americanism" was

terms with his own ethnic background.

weeks

last three or four

how

Mitchel came to

enabled him to repudiate

his grandfather's Irish nationalism while claiming his "fighting spirit."

It

was

thus central to his quest to prove himself as American as any Yankee. This, least, is

one way

of

making sense

of British rule of their

had

at

i|

of Mitchel's ferocity in harassing Irish critics

homeland. Fusion police commissioner Arthur Woods

initially instructed his officers to

permit demonstrations, so long as the

.

proper permits had been secured. Mitchel, in Oswald Garrison Villard's words,

own commissioner "and

overruled his

so

we have had

i

the spectacle of police

cars being driven into crowds," "legitimate public meetings" being broken up, j

and "orators being arrested

for

speeches that were not seditious" but merely

The

hostile to English policy in Ireland.

outrage, particularly

among the

result

was "a widespread

'{

feeling of

||

this outrage, for

(

"^' Irish. j

Hylan did not have to do anything

in order to benefit

from

game" played directly into Tammany's hands, Avoidance of the issue would not work so well in 1918, however, when the Hall nominated Al Smith for governor. Smith would have to pull in some upstate votes Mitchel's version of the "patriot

where charges

that a failure to take a strong stand

on the war, indicating

i

a secret j

appeal to also

German American and other ethnic voters, might prove fatal. Tammany

had to consider the enormous Sociahst vote in the mayoralty

Sociahst vote in 19 1 8

would weaken Smith's chances,

to take as large a majority out of the city as he could

Whether to

make

for these or other reasons,

Repubhcan

is

if

A strong

only because he needed

he were to carry the

:

,

'

state.

Tammany Boss Charles F. Murphy decided whose "We want only Americans

the patriot issue his owti in 1918.

patriotism

if

race.

.

.

.

unquestioned" Murphy decreed, and the Democrats worked with

district leaders to find

Fusion candidates, such as Fiorello La Guardia, ,

to run against Socialists.*' This certainly

won first

to

reelection over Scott Nearing.

It

worked

also

in La Guardia's case as he easily

worked with Smith, who became

the

Tammany leader ever to win the govemorship.

Tammany's success with the patriotism issue in 1918 did not carry over even the next year, however: 1919 was a year of great turmoil nationally as unions

i

and corporations squared struggled to

come

epochal strikes, as political radicals

off in a series of

to terms with the success of the Bolshevik revolution,

393

and as

Reform as an

mihtant antiradicals organized in the American Legion and the National

Expression of

Defense League to consolidate their wartime gains.*^ Nowhere did feelings run

Irish-Ameiican

New

higher than in

York, where the Republican-controlled state legislature

Committee

established the Joint

to Investigate Seditious Activities, chaired

Clayton Riley Lusk from upstate Cortland.^^

first-term Senator

Within a few weeks of the

May Day bomb scare, in which a series of explosive

devices were mailed to prominent public officials, the Lusk

launched a series of spectacular

(nVW).*"*

The

centered on

raids,

and the headquarters of the Industrial Workers

justification for the raids, according to Senator Lusk,

reaching his committee that indicated there

New

up

Committee

New York City,

on a variety These included the Soviet Mission, the Rand School for

of left-wing targets.

Social Science,

by

of the World was evidence

was "a Bolshevist plan"

York City in some unexplained way

for

to "hold

an hour, as a spectacular

demonstration to the world that the 'Red' brotherhood had developed fighting strength.

"^^

Lusk reveled

such vague but menacing charges, and he quickly turned

in

himself into a major political figure.

pohce and the

He commandeered the services of the state

New York City police to carry out his raids; he successfully called

on Governor Smith to authorize an extra term for the state supreme court to

most

process the cases against those arrested,

of

whom

were immigrants,- he

held frequent and spectacular press conferences at

more elaborate conspiracies were about series of

New

which he announced ever be unmasked; and he introduced a

to

draconian measures, the "Lusk Laws," to end the Bolshevik threat to

York by censoring movies and regulating settlement house

At

first

classes.^^

both Governor Smith and Mayor Hylan went along with Lusk's

crusade. Smith, for example, told a

few days after the

commencement audience

at Cornell just a

would be left undone to prevent a spread of radical ideas." Hylan permitted the committee to hold its hearings in City Hall.^^ This sort of cooperation in a Republican-led Red Scare did not last, that "nothing

first raid

and Smith in particular moved aggressively to oppose the "Luskers" and to stake out a strong civil libertarian position.

One

reason, as

the antiradical

Smith made

clear in his annual

campaign had quickly turned

message

nativist.

for 1920,

was

between "the anarchist, the violent revolutionist, the underminer of our tutions,"

"have

and "the hundreds of thousands of our brothers of alien stock"

made America

self-respecting labor

committee old

directly,

know-nothing

wholesomeness

and

.

.

.

to build

insti-

who

up our great nation by

Smith did not mention Lusk or

citizenship."

his

but he did denounce "as sinister and as an expression of the

spirit

of radicalism." Just

home" and "helped

their

that

Smith protested any link

the attaching to

the opposite

was

all

true.

citizens of foreign birth the stigma

Smith insisted on "the fundamental

of citizens of foreign birth.

"^*

Aspiration

394

Immigrants and their children had long been Tammany's loyal constituents,

no surprise

The Early

and there

is

Twentieth Century

however,

v^^ent

of five Socialist

much

in Smith's speaking out

further.

He

members of the

on

their behalf.

The

governor,

also spoke out strongly against the expulsion

state assembly. It

was "inconceivable," he

said,

"that a minority party duly constituted and legally organized should be deprived of its right to expression so long as

it

has honestly, by lawful methods of

education and propaganda, succeeded in securing representation."

been

true, as

It

may have

he had said in his annual message, that during the war "every sane

to relinquish "some of his freedom." But peace meant "we should return to a normal state of mind, and keep our balance, and an even keel." "Our faith in American democracy," he wrote, "is confirmed not only by its results, but by its methods and organs of free expression."*' Smith's stand enabled him to claim to be a better, truer American than the

American" recognized the need

nativists. a state

Thus when he vetoed the "Lusk Laws," he said of the one that required

board to oversee private educational enterprises that "in fundamental

principle the bill

most cardinal

is

vicious.

.

.

.|I]t

strikes at the very foundation of

institutions of our nation

domain

to enjoy full liberty in the

one of the

—the fundamental right of the people and speech." The

of idea

bill also

mocked

"the profound sanity of the American people" whose patriotism did not require coercion.'"

It

was an

on which the governor

issue

felt

deeply. So

when Smith

narrowly lost the governship in 1920, even though he ran a million votes ahead of the national ticket,

issue in his 1922

The measure was

repeal.

James

and the Lusk measures became law, he made them an

campaign and, with

J.

his victory,

moved immediately for their Tammany's own Senator

introduced, fittingly, by

Walker.'^

John Purroy Mitchel and Al Smith both claimed to be

real

Americans. For

Mitchel this meant denying his ethnic patrimony and engaging in American Protective Association-style attacks on the Catholic hierarchy while insisting

upon

his

own Americanism.

embraced his church even

Smith, in contrast, openly avowed his origins,

as he insisted that his Catholicism

was

entirely

compatible with his devotion to the United States, and promoted an inclusive, tolerant definition of

what

it

meant

to be

an American. Both were reformers,

but Mitchel measured progress in terms of efficiency and Smith in terms of the

happiness of his constituents. Both believed in free speech, but Mitchel excluded

speech that attacked the government distinguish between the

itself

and then proved himself unable

government and his own administration. Smith

to

be-

lieved even in the speech of political radicals because he also believed in the ability of ordinary

Americans to listen intelligently. Both men achieved national WASP ideal and Smith

prominence, Mitchel as the unlikely embodiment of the

as the archetypical ethnic. Both reached great heights. Both better.

fell.

One

deserved

Marion

R.

Casey

CHAPTER

"From

16

the East Side

to the Seaside"

AMERICANS ON THE

IRISH

MOVE IN NEW YORK CITY

Xl. When New York Was Irish, Irish geography:

RECENT POPULAR

song by Terence Winch,

offers a succinct lesson in twentietfi-century

"You could

travel

from Kingsbridge

to

Queens

or

New York

Midtown, from

Highbridge to Bay Ridge, from uptown to down, from the East Side to the seaside,

sweet

summer scenes, we made New York City our island of dreams."

Aside from

some related questions: When did the hish begin to move out of Manhattan? Where were they going? What prompted the move and how was it managed? What were the implications for social mobility? nostalgic value, these lyrics raise

From the turn reflect a

of the century, the ethnic

map

of

New

York City began to

changing geographic dispersion of the Irish population. In 1910,

approximately 88 percent of the

million— resided than half of

all

in

city's Irish

immigrants

Manhattan and Brooklyn

—more than a quarter

(see table 16.1).

By 1960 more

the Irish (immigrant and foreign stock combined) resided in the

Bronx and Queens.' In addition to

this dramatic shift, the

number of Irish-born

by more than 100,000 between 1910 and 1 960, with a corresponding loss for second generation Irish Americans (see table 16.2).^ Discounting death and declining emigration from Ireland, this five boroughs) declined

in the entire city

(all

loss indicated the

beginning of an Irish trend to

move beyond the city's borders

into neighboring Nassau, Westchester, Rockland,

I960 this trend was even more pronounced.^

and Bergen counties. After

TABLE

396 Early titieth

Century

16.1.

Number of Irish-born by New York

City Borough, 1910-50

both comfortable and respectable, yet not dependent upon occupational ad-

vancement or even better wages. Likewise,

new

a

more

indicate a rise in social status. But perhaps

address did not always significantly,

borhoods

enabled

it

blue-collar workers to enjoy middle-class amenities in their housing

and neigh-

—a style of living that, in the more traditional definition of mobility,

should have taken a generation or two longer.

This reality

somewhat

is

odds with the general twentieth-century

at

perception of the Irish as monolithically white-collar middle-class suburban

The

other words, as a thoroughly assimilated ethnic group.

dwellers

or, in

Irish, as

one of the oldest groups in the

city, are

commonly

believed to

epitomize the delicate balance between social mobility and "ethnic succession,"

wherein succession implies success: as their economic situation moved on to better housing, replaced by newer immigrants

improved, they

who

filled their old jobs

and lived in their old neighborhoods. But in

York City ethnic succession ceased part of this century as a building

to be relevant for a

boom put a glut of apartments on the market

that were both accessible by public transportation ties for the

same

or less

How much did rather than

these

new

middle-class living standards reflect appearances reality for the Irish?

migratory experience in

Irish

and offered more ameni-

money.

economic or social

behind the

New

time during the early

New

Understanding the

York helps

proverbial "ethnic success" story and its implications for assimilation.

played diverse roles in the urban ecology of

logistics

to assess their

The Irish

New York, as renters, homeowners,

superintendents, landlords, agents, salesmen, builders, and developers. In this

they differed

little

from other ethnic groups in

Jewish and Italian migration put on the

city's

typically the

New

York City. But, whereas

characterized by the unique ethnic stamp they

was much more

landscape, the Irish experience

New York one. First,

their reasons for

movement

modern

is

the Irish were less dependent on ethnicity in

moving, and second, they did not always perceive physical

in terms of

upward mobility. Intraurban migration took place

very practical (subjective) reasons and was

made possible by a

for

range of options.

Their choices were more often affected by citywide developments in housing

and transportation than by the need

The geography

of

New

to live in

an "ethnic" neighborhood.''

York City dictated where and when

real estate

developers operated and, by extension, the direction of intraurban migrations.

The

city's center

was, and continues to be, an island—Manhattan—and expan-

sion from that center has been to

two other

islands

and a portion

of the

mainland. Before the turn of the century, technological innovations in transportation, especially the streetcar

and elevated

railroad,

enabled

New

York

to

urbanize the northern reaches of Manhattan and parts of the Bronx. Such growth

had intense

political ramifications. Lucrative

companies and City Hall brought contracts

connections between private

for

municipal improvements in

new

398

these

The Early

excavations, land

Twentieth Century

The

such as water and gas pipes, street openings and

areas,

fill,

appear on

Irish

all

levels of the construction

New York during this period. By default, Many

physical expansion.

on

local

chambers

to their areas,

of

and a

lighting,

bridge and tunnel work, and, of course, transit facilities.

of the

and

most successful

insider

city's

Irish contractors also served

commerce, which were anxious

little

real estate industries in

they were in the vanguard of the

to attract

improvements

knowledge went a long way in speculative

real

estate transactions.^

From about

1880,

when

the Ninth

Avenue elevated

through Manhattan's Upper West Side, the

railroad

estate in the area as well as finance the construction of houses.

Construction landfill

real

The Crimmins

Company was responsible for much of the new infrastructure and

undertaken in the city at this time.^ John D. Crimmins 1844-191 7) was (

one of the

West

was extended

began to actively purchase

Irish

earliest "sagacious operators"

Side.'^

making

lot transactions

Crimmins had done some speculating with

but as that area's topography lent

itself to

lots

on the Upper

on the East

Side,

quicker development than the rocky

heights of the West Side, real estate opportunities there (aheady as far north as Yorkville and Harlem) were "beyond the reach of the speculative builder" by

the 1880s. This probably accounts for the Irish preference for West Side real estate at the turn of the century.*

Crimmins was

also involved in local

improvement companies, such

as the

Property Owners' Association and the West End Association: "In the Riverside

Park district of the city particularly, as well as in the district just north of Central

many important investments

Park, his

for

improvement were not only

profit-

able for himself but rendered a great public service in developing these fine

sections of the city in proper and adequate ways."' After the turn of the century,

Crimmins was especially building in the

area of

begun generating when,

at the

sale price

a

came from 22

worth and

1

1th

(St.

was not the The area had

71st Street but he real estate.

"pronounced speculative movement" as early as

Morgenthau Sale

lots in the area of

May

1891

of 411 vacant lots, nearly a quarter of the total

Irish speculators

who

spent $346,150 on unimproved

178th to 182nd Streets, along Amsterdam, Audubon, WadsNicholas) avenues. Five

men were responsible for 69 percent

of the total value of Irish purchases in this sale: B. ($64,375), B. L. Kennelly ($30,850),

Fox

1

Irishman to be interested in Washington Heights

first

Michael

J.

F.

Reams ($86,400), John Reilly

Mulqueen

($27,350)

and Patrick

($26,400).'°

Irish real estate interests

parts of the Bronx

were already beginning to focus on undeveloped

and Long Island

at the turn of the

century." John

P.

Dunn

whose father invested the family fortune in improvements in the Fordham area, was president of the Fordham Property Owners' Association and, (1860-1922),

after

appointment

as the first

head of the Bureau of Street Openings, actively

acquired property in the Bronx for city parks as well as streets.'"

Michael

J.

Degnon (1856-1925)

built the

The contractor

Williamsburg Bridge in 1903, the

Pennsylvania railroad terminal

at

Long Island City

He was

River subway tunnel in 1913.

in 1910,

and the

BMT East

Chamber of Commerce Degnon Realty and Terminal

a director of the

Queens and, by coincidence, president of the Improvement Company, which owned "about 400 acres in Long Island City and Flushing" that were "improved for city homes. "^^ As early as 1910 (the year the rail line between Manhattan and Long Island was electrified), the Iiish Advocate of

ran advertisements that offered building lots and Floral Park,

and "the most exclusive

Crimmins was developing

in Astoria, Queens,

as well as touring properties in ville

New

and

homes

sections."'"^

for sale in Jamaica,

That same

year,

John D.

and Hunt's Point in the Bronx,

Elmhurst and Flushing in Queens, and Browns-

Lots in Brooklyn.'''

The Kennelly Corporation, which had been at the turn of the century, by 1 926 was

buying property in Washington Heights

advertising lots for auction in Amityville,

Neck

Garden

City, Sands Point,

Nassau County; Jamaica, Elmhurst, and Forest

in

and Great and

Hills in Queens,-

Gravesend and Bay Ridge in Brooklyn.'^ There

no evidence that such

is

real estate activity

by the

New York Irish was

consciously ethnic in its orientation, even though many of the areas they opened

up were

identified as "Irish" within 20 years or

building in the boroughs contractors

who

so.'''

Qn the

was influenced by wealthy

other hand, parish

and

Irish speculators

often had close relationships with the Catholic Church.'^

"Brick and mortar" Catholicism allowed upper- and lower-class Irish interests to

work

new

in tandem, because

it

involved everything from property acquisition in

areas of the city to regular

employment

nance of buildings. The advice of

in the construction

and mainte-

Irish real estate interests in site selection,

property transactions, and construction contracts had a particularly strong influence

if

they were parishioners themselves or had other connections.

Catholic construction projects provided employment for hundreds of Irish

and electricians. The direction movement within New York City after 1900 can be plotted by the creation of Catholic parishes and Knights of Columbus councils, both especially

builders, subcontractors, carpenters, plumbers, of Irish

numerous

in areas

becoming

Although there had been

Manhattan was the initially lived in the

east

with the

Irish stronghold until the

twentieth century.

of

The

Irish

Manhattan. Their economic situations began to

about the time ethnic succession became a

city's available

critical factor for the

housing stock.^° In general, their progression northward on the

island (on both the east

and Manhattan

and west sides) followed the development of transit lines

real estate, especially

early as 1910, the Irish

still

living in

lower-and middle-income housing. As

Greenwich

Chelsea were considered to be remnants of a Irish

Irish.''

boroughs since colonial days,

immigrant sections bordering the docks on both the lower

and lower west sides

stabilize at

identified

Irish in the outer

population that had long since

Within the decade East Side

Village, Hell's Kitchen,

much

moved on

districts, especially

larger,

and

nineteenth-century

to "better surroundings."^'

around the Gashouse, Kip's Bay

400

^nd Yorkville, and the blocks west

The Early

secondary areas of

Irish settlement.

Twentieth Century

home by new

immigrants or newly married

Irish

of Central Park

That

is,

became both primary and

they were the Irish

places called

first

American couples, and

they were often the second stop in an Irish family's intraurban migration. Irish

had been settling in the Bronx from the 1830s when construction

projects like the

Croton Water Aqueduct, several railroad systems, and then the

"El" linked the mainland with Manhattan.

The most

significant boost to Irish

population growth in the Bronx was the arrival of the subway in

1

904 and

its

subsequent extensions, which spurred the construction of lower-income housing in the borough.

By I9I4 the South Bronx (Mott Haven, Melrose, Morrisania),

Highbridge, Fordham, and Kingsbridge were in the Bronx spilled over into northern

known as Irish areas. Development

Manhattan

via the

High Bridge and

Harlem Bridge connections.

Movement

east of Manhattan on Long which challenged ferry, bridge, and railway connections. The Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges were not built until 1903 and 1909. The subway, the real key to large-scale working-class mobility, did not reach Brooklyn until 1908 and Queens until 191 7; full extension in both boroughs was not completed until the 1950s and 1960s, respectively. In Brooklyn, pre-World War I Irish communities still clustered Island,

was

into Brooklyn

and Queens, lying

hampered by the East

initially

close to the river near the

Navy Yard,

River,

in Greenpoint

east in the area just north of Prospect Park

(St.

and Williamsburg, further

Teresa of Avila parish) and to the

south in Flatbush, with nascent sections in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge. In

Queens, the

Irish

were already settled in Long Island

City, Astoria, Woodside,

and Sunnyside by 1914, spurred especially by the opening Bridge in 1909. In addition, Irish

summer

After the

resort

first

of the

Rockaway Beach was beginning

Queensboro

to develop as an

community.

world war, several factors converged to make

affordable housing available to the average

better,

more

New Yorker, and it is no coincidence

that the decade 1920-30 witnessed the greatest shifts in Irish settlement in the

As the subway made new

city.^^

New Law

areas accessible, cheap land and

requirements for light and ventilation produced experimentation in tenement,

apartment house, and opers

tract design.

who emphasized

encouraged by several

on the construction

By 1920

profits could be realized

quality rather than quantity.

A

building

by devel-

boom

ensued,

New York State laws granting real estate tax exemptions

of buildings

between 1920 and 1926, and

a

law allowing

insurance companies to invest profits in housing for limited dividends. Such

changes not only affected private housing construction also philanthropic efforts to build

Moore

for the middle-class but

low-income housing.^^

In 1927

William

J.

American Bond and Mortgage Company commented: "There is a better at work which has gained surprising velocity since the war

of the

great force

standards of living.

—

The

greatest accelerator of this is advertising

want better bathrooms, kitchens, heating plants,

—

it

makes us

furniture, radios, pianos, foods.

... In the matter

housing there

of

is

definite

demand

for

moderate priced

apartments in certain sections.

Of

all

the boroughs,

Manhattan was

least able to take

advantage of the

changes in multiple-dwelling construction save for a few areas in Washing-

The typical Manhattan apartment of the period was which "space was necessarily at a premium, and such space-saving furniture as folding cots, and drop-leaf tables were popu"^^ lar. Dissatisfaction with such outmoded accommodation in the older sections of Manhattan created an incentive for mobility, encouraging famiton Heights and Inwood.

three or four

rooms

in

.

lies

with children

.

.

to explore the greater "spatial

amenities" of the outer

boroughs. In general, accommodations improved the farther north and east of

Manhattan that one

to be

lived, as

newer housing and falling prices were usually

found in sections recently opened up. People moved simply because

they wanted, and could

now

get,

cheaper rents, larger apartments with

own homes.

modern conveniences, and sometimes

their

ployment opportunities,

with dissatisfaction, also stimulated

people to look in

new

in conjunction

areas.

Marriage and em-

Municipal developments, particularly a general

increase in rents, transit expansion, the nickel

subway fare, and the construc-

boom of the 1920s helped spur the movement out from Manhattan after World War I. Between 1910 and 1930 the number of all New Yorkers living tion

in Manhattan dropped from 49 to 27 more than doubled their percentages. Irish

percent, while the Bronx and

Queens

Americans were part of that movement.^'^ The basic pattern

of their

migration, using Washington Heights as an example,

opment by the

1890-1910 (including

Irish circa

would show some

construction, and parish building), followed by large-scale into the area.

Between 1920 and 1940 the

Irish

devel-

apartment house

lot sales,

movement

of Irish

population in Washington

Heights almost quadrupled.^'' In

fact, after 1910 the Irish from all parts of Manhattan gravitated toward the West Side districts north of Central Park.^* These Irish were new immigrants for whom Washington Heights was their

primary stop in friends lived;

lower

New

York City simply because that was where

and both

first-

down in Manhattan to

and second-generation

is

complicated by

Irish

community was

who were moving

and

ever static, the

out of Washington Heights

and into new parts of the Bronx or Queens during these same of the pattern.

relatives

migrating north from

take advantage of improved housing conditions in

the area. Since neither the city nor the Irish scenario

Irish

years, in a repeat

The first and second generation overlapped in neighborhoods like

Washington Heights even as the next stage

of migration to

Inwood, Fordham,

was taking place for both Irish and Irish Americans. Eventually such outmigration left a remnant population behind in its wake, explaining why there were still some Irish in tenements on the middle East Side during the 1930s and on the Upper West Side in the 1950s who could be displaced by municipal improvements like the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and Kingsbridge, Flatbush, and Woodside

402

Lincoln Center. In Irish

The Early

always

Twentieth Century

It is

in

important to point out, however, that the percentage of Irish-bom living

Manhattan

in 1930

remained higher than

still

Manhattan was home

But this this

New York, the center— if there ever really was one — was

shifting.

is

almost a

for the city's entire population,-

to 44 percent of Irish

false statistic

immigrants

because the major Irish areas in Manhattan

time were Washington Heights and Inwood, which bear the same

dinal relationship to the city's geography as the

moving

to northern

Irish as

moving

Like most

to

New

at

latitu-

In other words, factors for the

of the outer boroughs.^'

Yorkers at this time, the Irish were scattering out from

Manhattan neighborhoods

their old

West Bronx.

Manhattan involved the same psychological

one

thus

(see table 16.3).

realities of their daily relationship

for reasons that

with the

city.^°

The

simply reflected the parish of

St.

Gregory

the Great on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (West 86th to West 92nd

Park West to Riverside Drive) provides

Streets, Central

was created

in 1909

from the larger

Irish parish of

Holy

a

good example.

Name

probably in response to an increase in population in the area.^'

It

to the north, St.

Gregory's

was considered to be a "middle-class" parish, peopled predominantly by Irish and Irish Americans who were employed in a variety of occupations, including "lawyers, doctors, brokers and

men prominent

in public life," as well as

"teachers (in public schools), nurses, stenographers, typists, telephone operators,

post office clerks, letter carriers, clerks in stores and offices (male and

motormen and conductors on the elevated, subway and mason builders, carpenters, machinists, plumbers, laborers,

female), chauffeurs,

surface lines,

domestics, etc." either three

A 1920 survey of the parish found most people living in flats,

rooms on Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues

or in "better-class

houses" on side streets like 88th, 90th, and 91st. Rents in the parish had

jumped since the war, with two weeks' wages required to be set aside for the landlord where previously one week sufficed; whereas $18 a month paid the

TABLE

16.3.

Comparison of City Population by Borough with Irish-born Population, 1910 and 1930 Total

New

York

1910

Manhattan

City,

Total

New

York

1930

City,

rent for three rooms on Columbus

Avenue before the war, by 1920 it had risen commented: "1 think it can be safely said that generally in this parish rents have gone up at least 100% and the writer knows of some cases wherein the rents of working people have advanced to 150%, thus putting a tremendous strain upon the family budget. It is not a rare thing to meet a parishioner, a wage earner, who, with nearly tears in his to $28.

The

survey's author

eyes, tells of the

advance in rent made during the past week and threatened

week."^^ Although the Armistice did increase wages in the

for the next

parish, the author

mcrease.

concluded that "the maintenance of the home, according

accustomed standard

to our people's

of living, eats

Sometimes the

city forced

moves

for

moved

to

Tremont

for

example, Marie Walsh's

in the Bronx from a brownstone apartment

Manhattan's East Side. Three years later they purchased

house

at

all of this

municipal improvement schemes or

with incentives like tax abatements. In 1921, parents

up nearly

//33

3702 Secor Avenue

family's reason for

in

on

a single-family

Edenwald, on the Bronx- Yonkers border. The

moving again "was the

City's offer of a ten-year real estate

tax exemption for the period 192I-I930. That

was very welcome, but

unfortunately offset by assessments for local improvements such as street grading, sewer installations, etc., largely lacking in the

neighborhood."^'' In the mid- 1930s,

when

Street apartment (including St. Gabriel's

newly developed

the area around their East 36th

Church) began to be cleared

for the

approach road of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, Charlie Mooney's father second-generation Irish American) was forced to

move

his family further

(a

up

the East Side to 66th Street.''^

Employment

opportunities also served to spread the Irish widely in

New

York, particularly through ethnic niches like the transit system (subway, elevated and surface lines), grocery chains, and live-in domestic service. During

the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of the workers for the Third

Avenue Railway,

Avenue Coach Company, and the transportation departments of the IRT and BMT subway lines were Irish."'^ Most transit workers opted to live near the Fifth

the end of their day's work, that

close to car barns, train yards, trolley depots,

is,

or bus garages in the inner suburbs and northern Manhattan. In Highbridge there

was even

a

complex

of

connected houses on University Avenue nicknamed

"Interborough Row," which was "all

Irish.

"^^ Likewise, the Astoria Light,

Heat

and Power Company, the Railway Express Company, Guinness and other industries in

Queens brought the

and Sunny side.

Irish to Astoria,

Long Island

City, Woodside,

'^

Many new Irish immigrants got

their starts in

New York working for either

Daniel Reeves' or James Butler's extensive grocery operations, and later on the

A&P (Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company).^' Since grocery stores were neighborhood based,

it

was often easy

to live near one's work.

James Butler (1855-1934)

County Kilkenny who was doing $15 million

404

was

The Early

business in 200 stores by 1909; eventually he

Twentieih Century

million warehouse in Long Island City.*° County Clare native James Reeves

a native of

owned

dollars

worth

of

1,100 stores and a $2

(1871-1957) got his start working for Butler's, and after 13 years invested $6,000 savings into opening his ov\ti grocery store. By 1911 he and his brother Daniel to 35 locations; in 1941, when the company merged with Safeway, number was 750."*' With such a network of stores, employment with Butler's

had spread the

and Reeves' helped Irish

Child's, Schrafft's,

their

scatter the Irish throughout the city.

women who

were employed

and

as waitresses in restaurant chains like

Stouffer's could easily

numerous midtown

commute by subway

locations from the East or

West

sides of

and even from the Bronx. While the Upper East Side homes

of

or bus to

Manhattan,

wealthy

New

community of Yorkville, in general live-in women spread them widely over the metropolis. But it

Yorkers were convenient to the Irish

domestic work

was

St.

for Irish

a temporary dispersal. In

Simon Stock was

most

a big Insh parish in the

cases, marriage

Fordham

immediately changed

section of the Bronx

a

when Denis MuUins

played outfield for the high school baseball team in 1939. His father was an IRT coach inspector

from County Cork

rumored

to

who

emigrated with his children in 1922. Although

have been English, the parish was founded by the

(Manhattan) and their

Irish

St.

Simon Stock was

Irish Carmelites of

nationalism was above reproach: they harbored

28th Street

Eamon de

during his American sojourn in 1919. (From the collection of Denis J. Mullins.)

Valera

woman's relationship to the

city's

making her more dependent upon

geography,

the nature of her husband's employment, the family's total income, or the availability of affordable housing.

A

variety of subjective reasons (from cross-ventilation in an apartment to

women

relatives in the neighborhood) enabled Irish

options regarding where the family lived in

in particular to exercise

New York. They were conscious of who

their neighborhoods (particularly

mothers

dren) and proved to be patient

and resourceful

stayed at

A

apartments. In this they were not unusual.

home with

the chil-

in their selection of

new

contemporary report by the

Harmon National Real Estate Corporation claimed women appraised real estate differently

from men; "Provided the purchase price

means, she will judge

it

of the parcel is within her

almost entirely by what might be called subjective

rather than objective standards." In order of importance,

view or outlook,

(2)

neighbors, and

nearby school and church

In

1

(5)

proximity to stores,

(3)

(4)

(1)

a

nice

facilities.'^^

937 Delia Brerman Hayden, from County

on West 80th Street in a five-room railroad

women wanted

play space for children,

Sligo,

was living with her family

She "wanted to move to

flat.

a nicer

apartment" and found one on the corner of 8 1st Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

was a five-story building, with a corner apartment that had tall ceilings and windows in nearly every room. Dorothy Hayden recalled, "My mother kept an eye on that house, ... it was a good house" until word came through her network of friends in Holy Trinity parish that there was a vacancy in the building. The rent ($67.50 a month) was not a factor in her decision to move, even though "other people were paying $30^5" in the neighborhood.''^ In the South Bronx, Mary Gilrane Flynn and two of her friends regularly made It

a habit of looking at apartments in St. Luke's parish, as a

and

satisfy their curiosity.'*^

scouting for an

new apartment

in the Yorkville area,

mailboxes to see what names were there, and didn't go in."

way

to pass the time

Catherine Kennedy recalled that

if

you

if you were you "would look at the

names, you

didn't like the

Although she moved with her new husband

to

Fordham

in 1924,

Kennedy hated the Bronx because she missed all her friends in Manhattan. Within a short period of time, she made a permanent move back to Yorkville.*^ In I92I Agnes Campbell Sinclair's parents moved from Crown Street (south of Eastern Parkway) in Brooklyn to be nearer to

"my mother's friends

[who] were

all

up [around] Rogers Avenue and

to

Greenpoint in 1928 to be closer to Mr. Campbell's work at the Socony

refinery in

week

St.

Teresa's parish."

Long Island City, Mrs. Campbell used

to visit because "she

was

just

could be reinforced by language, too. to its south attracted large

in the northern sector of [Prospect] park, for picnics

and

St.

they

moved oil

Teresa's every

Teresa's parish and sections of Flatbush

of Irish speakers

during the 1930s through the 1950s: '"Donegal

on weekends

back to

after

comfortable there. "''^ Ties of friendship

St.

numbers

to go

Even

Hill,' a

from County Donegal

name applied to a height

became the focal point for Irish families Old friends looked forward to the

ball playing.

it was a place that always seemed to attract a fresh face some of whom had only recently arrived from the old country."*^ What conclusion can be drawn about this movement? Moving was common,

406

weekly meetings, and

The Early

or two,

Twentieth Centuty

sometimes within

parishes,

sometimes between neighborhoods, and some-

times between boroughs. The reasons behind this migration were varied. of

could have been possible without access to

it

development

new

which many Irish had been involved. But how much upward social mobihty for the Irish?

of

None

areas in the city, in the of this

activity indicates

The practical logistics behind this movement included a variety of strategies, including step-migration while saving, multiple mortgages, multifamily and

summer

and

rentals,

self-built houses.

Many

families took in lodgers to

make

ends meet. During the Depression, Maureen Griffin Mooney's parents doubled

up when they moved point I

Bronx

to the

in the early years of their marriage:

"At one

my mother and father shared an apartment with another married couple;

mean, they actually could not

County

worked

afford their

own

place.

"'*^

Her

father, a native

it was was hardly a transit worker whose family could afford an apartment all for itself. Almost every one of them had one room in which he """^ Eileen O'Rourke Simpson's family kept other transit workers as roomers.

of

Kerry,

for the Transit Authority. In the days before

organized, "there

also took in Irish boarders in their

think they paid

much

South Bronx

during the Depression. "^°

Rooms, Kitchen

advertise "Furnished

bedroom

.

.

.

a

making week during the 1930s for "the

with the garage thrown

in."^'

Another option was custodial work. The attitude (or "janitor,"

1930s: "I don't

Privileges" in order to keep

mortgage payments on their homes; she got $5 big, front

home during the

most of them were on home relief because it was Widows, like Nora Higgins, were often forced to

since

to being a superintendent

depending on the era and type of building) could vary from disdain

to practical acceptance.

heavy, dirty job

made

tion for Irish families

A

rent-free

apartment as compensation

superintendent's

moving

women

down

regular jobs.

an often

It

was, however,

and children, because the

Agnes Campbell

janitors in a six-family, cold-water building

for

financial considera-

to or within the outer boroughs.

heavily dependent on the labor of

continued to hold

work an important

Sinclair's parents

on Eckfort

men were

Street in Greenpoint:

my mother was a janitor, and my father, they would take the heavy ashes up [from the cellar to street level]. ... used to help my mother "All through the years

I

on a Saturday, and we had the carpets [hall runners], you'd roll them up and take them out on the sidewalk and sweep them, then roll them up and put them back."''^ In addition,

Mr. Campbell earned about $25 a week with Socony in

Long Island City and Mrs. Campbell took the

work

trolley to Flatbush every

day to

They had only one child. Hugh O'Rourke emigrated from County Tyrone in 191 1. He had steady work as a domestic for a Jewish family.

as a stationary engineer for the city through the 1920s

him

to purchase a three-storey brick

and 1930s that enabled

row house on Concord Avenue

(St.

Luke's

Ten years

parish in the South Bronx) in 1934.

"downwardly mobile

the family had to take a

later,

O'Rourke Simpson

step," as Eileen

recalled:

My father worked for the City of New York all through the Depression making pay check and while his salary was enough during the Depression,

a steady

I

it was enough for the war years. Maybe there was some inflation. was a young teenager then and didn't know. We had to give up the house to the bank or whatever and then moved to a not bad duplex apartment in a two family house at Oak Terrace. After about a year or so, we moved again. I think my father wanted to save money to buy a house, so he took a job as a

don't believe

I

.

.

.

superintendent of a small apartment house at 183rd Street in the Bronx.

we moved

After a year at that, famiUes],

working

where

my father was also the

at his city job

Her brother remembered mother and

sister

to a

much

onus

.

.

superintendent, although he also kept

with the Department

that the

.

apartment house [25-50

larger

of Corrections.^"^

of the superintendent's

work

fell

on his

because his father had other employment. By 1945 they had

saved up enough to purchase a semidetached brick house in Holy Family parish (East Bronx) for $4,500.^*

By

contrast,

Maureen

Mooney's mother would

Griffin

not consent to being a super: "She would be ashamed ...

I

know

it

was

considered a few times because of the fact that the rent was free, especially when she wanted to send us to Catholic schools and tuitions

about

it

but I always remember her telling her friends

'I

came

along. She talked

wouldn't consider being

a super.'"^^

Another family

strategy,

summer

rentals, eventually

settlement out of Rockaway's "Irish Riviera." site of real estate speculation,

which

From

1914,

made a permanent Rockaway was the

intensified in response to the opening of

summer

Cross Bay Boulevard in 1925. With the accompanying construction of

bungalows and year-round residences, the peninsula began to families from Manhattan.

The

popularity of a

Railroad,

which permitted

in

Irish

evenings or at the weekends with for Irish

attract Irish

^^'

summer

Rockaway was enhanced by the Long Island workingmen to join their families in the little

inconvenience.^^

It

was not uncommon

famiUes in Manhattan to give up their apartments

entirely,

put their

household furnishings in storage, and take a room and kitchenette or a small

bungalow

for the

summer. The

living

was cheap when most

of the

time was

spent outdoors on the beach or boardwalk, and the surplus of apartments in the

meant that incentives, such as a month's free rent and new paint, made a summer in Rockaway a decided advantage. As one woman recalled: "They gave you the first month free,- you were supposed to stay three or four years [in the apartment) but these women didn't. The next year, come June, off they'd go again to the beach because it was the only way they could swing the money. city

They were

frugal."^^

This strategy was actually reciprocal because

by

Irish

women; housewives during the

many

407 /rish

of the rentals

were run

year in Manhattan, they were business

Americans

""

^^^

'" ^'"^''

'-'^

408

women

The Early

eight children

Twentieth Century

Rockaway locations, all under the name "The Sligo House. " Around 1 945, Delia Hayden borrowed $3,000 from her aunt, added $7,000 from her husband's death

for

Rockaway summers. Delia Hayden's Aunt Anne, who was on the Upper West

and purchased

benefits,

Side, did rentals

rambling house" on 85th

a "big, old-fashioned

raising

from about 1937 in several

Street.

The "Rose Cottage" had six rooms for rent, including the "living room, dining room and kitchen. Those were the rooms you rented out. The living room would have two double beds in it. You rented what you could rent and what you About $300 for the summer, big airy rooms" in could get the money for. .

.

.

.

.

.

which the closets were converted into kitchenettes.^^ The main Irish areas of settlement in Rockaway were Seaside and Hammels. By the 1940s deteriorating summer homes in Seaside (that were increasingly being lived in

all year)

"Irishtown" to

move

were condemned by the

the city built a

Hammel Houses,

Irish families of

"moderate income.

Part of the appeal of inner suburbs like the Bronx, Queens,

the chance

own was

it

families from

14 six-storey buildings with 712 apartments, were completed

and occupied by

in 1954

city, forcing

Hammels. To address permanent needs in the area, public housing project north of Rockaway Beach Boulevard. into

offered to live under one's

"^°

and Brooklyn was

own roof. For many Irish a home of their

the ultimate goal.^' In a classic example of upward mobility, William

O'Dwyer,

mayor

later

of

New York,

recounted his decision to change jobs and

place of residence:

As

a cop

I

had Lived in a lower-middle-class neighborhood, on the second

of a three-family

house

some post-war good

[in

times, and right from the beginning the decision to leave

the police and pursue a law career seemed justified. relative affluence, Kitty

and

I

decided to

move on

Now, with our

at

449 79th

Street, a

position of

to the recently-developed

upper-middle-class Irish-American colony in Bay Ridge. In time,

house

floor

Sunset Park]. Nineteen twenty-five and 1926 saw

we bought

a

semi-detached one-family dwelling which was to

remain our home until 1946, when

I

moved

to Gracie Mansion.

O'Dwyer is an exception. An upgrade in employment was not a prerequisite for

home ownership

for the Irish in

New York. Between the wars,

Irish

wages were

often sufficient to enable a family to raise their standard of living simply by

moving. For example, Frank Vardy's father

(a

third-generation Irish

American who

married a 1920s immigrant from County Cavan) was employed as a truck driver for the

American Can Company

lived in a In 1940,

in Brooklyn.

From 1934

to

1

94 1 the Vardys

one-bedroom apartment in Bay Ridge, where the rent was $43 a month.

on

Avenue

in

Queens

houses. Although they liked what they saw,

it

was not

a trip to the World's Fair, they drove along Eliot

and saw a sign

for

new

until the following year that they purchased a

house on 79th Street in Elmhurst.

Frank Vardy was told that the reason the family moved was "so the kids would

have a big backyard to play

in,"

but the more immediate factors were a $2 rent

imminent

family had

409

row

jnsh Americans

house that had three bedrooms, bath, kitchen, living room, basement, and

oniheMovein

The mortgage was $57 a month, and Mr. Vardy earned $60 a week. He commuted back to Brooklyn to the same job, yet his wages were sufficient to enable him to raise his family's standard of living by moving.^ At the other end of the Irish social spectrum, Frank Murphy accomplished the same form of horizontal mobiUty when he moved his family into an exclusive

New

increase and, with the

arrival of a

second

child, the

outgrown a one-bedroom apartment. The Vardys paid $6,590

for a brick

garage.

WASP development in the Bronx. His father, an immigrant from County Wexford, started

Murphy

Brothers construction

reputation with public buildings in the to build a showrplace for entertaining.

He

100 X 128 X 68 feet from Fieldston,

(three-and-a-half baths)

measuring 130 x

lot

development company in of a

twelve-room

house between 1926 and 1928. Geraldine Murphy Walsh

development gave her father some trouble approving his plans

was not using

the house because he

form

purchased a comer

Inc., a private

and spent $31,968 on the construction

Riverdale, for $11,875

recalled that the

company in 1882 and the firm made its was always Frank Murphy's dream

city. It

their designer; she believes this

of discrimination because the neighbors

was

for

a subtle

were not too happy that Cathohcs

were moving in.*^ The only obstacle to Murphy's mobility was his rehgion, not his occupation or pocketbook.^^ Financial strategies were just as vital to successful Irish

homeownership

New York's inner suburbs. John Cudahy's parents lived at West Amsterdam Avenue until

1923,

when

they

in

106th Street and

moved to West 163rd Street near the

Polo Grounds. His father was employed by the Fifth Avenue Coach Company, yet in 1926 the

Cudahys moved

again, this

time from Manhattan to the South

Avenue in St. Jerome's parish. They were able to swing this move not only because it instantly brought them two tenants but also because Mrs. Cudahy's nephews were Bronx, buying a three-family house near Willis

veterans of the

world war and they had money

first

houses on foreclosure

— What

.

.

.

him, he had this one and he took the mortgage back from that's

how

it

was done

three mortgages and

all

and they were buying

they did, one fellow Paddy, the Mack they called

to get in.

.

.

.

my mother and father,

When my folks bought

you did was pay the

interest

the house they had

on the mortgages. I remember

my sister, we used to go down with my mother to this Mr. Donahue, he was down on 57th Street and Tenth Avenue, it was Uke $125 every six months was the

with

interest or

pay him

something on his mortgage, until eventually you got enough saved to

They weren't bank mortgages, you usually had [them] with some somebody Uke that.

off.

relatives or

.

.

.

George Ward from County Galway, a carpenter by

own house for his

in the Castle Hill section of the

marriage in 1928. With a neighbor, Mr. Kelly,

bought architectural plans

for

trade, decided to build his

Bronx (Holy Family parish) in time

who was a plumber. Ward

about $100 and together they built Nos. 2242 and

2244 Lafayette Avenue, where they had been able

to acquire the land cheaply

York City

took them 20 months to build the

410

because the subway was 20 blocks away.

The Early

houses, which were two-family dwellings each containing

Twentieth Century

apartments, plus basement and detached garage.

It

They were

two seven-room able to do

all

the

construction work themselves except for the excavation of the basements.

George Ward had a $6,000 mortgage on his house and paid

it

off in full

by 1946;

he always rented the upstairs apartment and was getting $48 a month

for

it

between 1945 and 1952.^^ If,

as is

sometimes argued, the purchase

maximum

house

of a

testified to "a search for

New

security rather than for mobility out of" a particular class, in

same sense of security as long as there and affordable housing.^^ Maureen Mooney, the daughter

York City even renters could achieve

was a glut of available

this

mother saying

of a transit worker, recalled her

that, in the Bronx,

during the Depression, a lot of people had to leave their apartments, or were

empty apartments around, and on you didn't have too much to do, you went around and looked at all these empty apartments. If you saw one that you liked better, then you moved. They moved several times and I'm not sure it was really for a cheaper apartment; sometimes it was an upgrade or a better bargain or whatever, Very often that was something that they did [look at to get more room. evicted or whatever. There were a lot of

Sunday afternoon,

if

.

.

.

apartments on Simdays].^^

A home—which in New York's particular parlance often embraced large, airy apartments as well as single and multifamily houses

famiUes an important symbol. ^° The

their buyers that "a

and Colleran assured a NECESSITY, for

to

many

home

of

your

Irish

Cryan

own is not a luxury but

bulwark against adversity and a solace in old age."

a

it is

—was

Irish real estate developers Brady,

To

Nora Durkin Higgins, the wife of a pub owner, "Buckingham Palace, the Taj Mahal and Shangrila were all wrapped up in that six-room, brick, semi-detached dwelling in the Bronx.

"^^

dream to the Irish also provided an opportunity for personal social mobiUty. County Tipperary native Daniel Gleeson, for example, was a real estate agent with the Schwencke Land and Improvement Company. Through Selling this

advertisements in the Insh Advocate, Gleeson offered $25 to $50 a week for "clean-cut,

wideawake Irishmen

"men now employed and with

to

work

as salesmen"

and particularly sought

a large circle of acquaintances."

interview, Gleeson told the Irish Advocate: "I have

made

In a I9I6

considerable

money

no reason why hundreds of young Irish boys don't take advantage of the present wave of prosperity and join the selling forces through real estate and there

of live, rock

bottom

workers. Imagine the

hours on street

cars,

is

real estate

number

and we

all

concerns that give big salaries to ambitious

of intelligent Irish boys that

know

have to work long

that the pay they receive

is

not enough at

the present cost of living."^'*

Daniel Gleeson developed a weekly savings plan for the Schwencke

pany by which

Irish

working people could purchase

Com-

a quarter acre of land in

Nassau County,

New

six miles east of the

three years, at 2-3 percent interest/^

personal needs,

York City

Such small

was typical of the New York Irish

a second-generation Irish American,

.

line, for $1 a

week over

real estate investment, for

In the late

1

940s John Cudahy,

opened an insurance and

real estate busi-

ness in a "small room next to the Irish counties" meeting space in the Henry Hudson Hotel in Manhattan. In 1953 he moved the business to Jackson Heights

and his family

to

What we

Middle Village in Queens:

got at the time then

was

a lot of our peers, our Irish,

coming out

of

we knew them and we sold [them]. They are still in some of like ourselves. One family homes, that's what they wanted.

Manhattan. And the houses just

They were in the bar business, or motormen on the subways, maybe the wife was a nurse, and they'd saved up. We started to get people like that who had some cash and then you had the first wave of Irish [immigrants] who came over [after World War II]. They became Korean veterans. Then you could get the G.I. Bill of Rights, and for them to move from Manhattan to here, that was a move. Like people who were living here, they were moving further out big the the island, but these [Irish] were moving to this area.'^^ .

.

.

.

.

.

One of John Cudahy's salesmen, Jimmy Lavin from County Mayo, branched out into contracting, buying

handy-man

specials in Jackson Heights,

Elmhurst, Maspeth, and Middle Village. to install

new

kitchens and orchid

tile

Rego Park,

He brought in carpenters and plumbers

in the bathrooms,

and attracted mainly

move into the renovated houses. According to John Cudahy, Lavin "saw that we had the contacts with the people he was interested in selling "^^ to, and they were his own kind of people, Irish, they could converse. Irish

As

people to

early as 1914 the Irish

real estate

men and

Advocate had cautioned working

their investment schemes.^*

Using

Irish

women against

salesmen to

sell

was neither a new nor a very widely used method, but it was one the community had seen abused in the past. The technique was developed to a fine art by the firm of Brady, Cryan and Colleran, owners and developers of Massapequa Park. In 1927 they ran full-page ads in the city newspapers announcing the opening of this new community on the south shore of Long Island. Although it was difficult to reach the area, "this did not dampen real estate to Irish people

or discourage the ambitions

and imaginations

of three

young Irishmen who

could foresee a great future for this so-called wilderness." In Brady, Frank Cryan, and Peter

ment

of

as police justices

a green paper

fact,

Michael

J.

Colleran had a vested interest in the develop-

Massapequa Park, an incorporated

Cryan served

With

F.

village where, in time,

and Colleran as the

first

Brady and

mayor.'''

and green ink brochure, Brady, Cryan and Colleran

encouraged people to "Stop Paying Rent to the Landlord" and invest their savings instead in homesites or brick houses selling in (

and $9,000 Avenue."

dollars) along

1

928

for

between $8,000

"Tyrconnell Street," "Glengarriff Street," and "Avoca

On Sunday afternoons over the next several years, they hired special Perm Station, New York and Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, to

trains to depart

411 Irish

Amencans

on the

New

Move

in

York City

412 The Early Twentieth Century

"Many times two

bring out prospective buyers:

upon one occasion in May, 1 929, 5,62 1 people special trains. ... So great was the real which began with

organization,

was employing 650

forty

men

full-time salesmen

were needed, and,

trains a day

visited

Massapequa Park on four

estate business that the sales

in October, 1927, within

two years

and over 1,000 part-timers to meet the

needs of the steady influx of 'pioneers' to Massapequa Park."^° The firm even recruited "the popular Irish pilot" Captain James

J.

Fitzmaurice (1898-1965) as

a salesman, built an airfield they christened Fitzmaurice Flying Field, and began to fly buyers to

Massapequa Park in

They shamelessly exploited the Irish

1929.*'

connection: Advertisements offering the

Irish

newspapers, to

who were the chief buyers

Beer parties

lots for sale

attract domestics of Irish extraction

were printed in

featured the sales rallies and free transportation to and from Massapequa Park

were offered as further inducements.

.

a rich Irish brogue in their sales talks

.

.

Salesmen

and

for the developers featured

Irish songs

and dances featured

the rallies that were held frequently on the property. ...

It

[in]

was customary

for

they could learn from what county in Ireland a prospective customer came, to put a salesman from that county to work on him.

Colleran and Brady,

if

this kind of sales strategy could backfire, however, as in 1936

Sometimes

when Michael

Fitzpatrick, of

510 East 156th Street in the Melrose section of

the Bronx, filed suit against Brady, Cryan and Colleran for real estate fraud. Fitzpatrick,

that the lots

property office

70 years old and an IRT employee, had purchased two lots

who was

on the installment

plan, finished paying

were not

was under

free

$495

for

from incumbrances. In

foreclosure,

them in fact,

the

1934, then discovered

mortgage on the

first

and the Nassau County District Attorney's

brought an indictment based on "thirty-five complaints about similar

transactions.

"*''

But large-scale real estate investment that both appealed to ethnic

ties

and

went beyond immediate personal needs was the domain of relatively few in the New York Irish community. Most Irish developers were motivated more by opportunities for business or personal gain than for any altruistic reasons such as improving the lot of their

the Bronx

Noonan,

is

a

good example.

own. Noonan Plaza in the Highbridge section It

was

built

by the Nelden Corporation, Bernard

president, in 1931 at an estimated cost of $2 million.

apartments (some of which had two baths), Noonan Plaza

J.

With almost 300

often cited as

New

Noonan 1 876-1 943) was a native of County Longford and although he put his own name

York's supreme example of Art (

is

of

Deco apartment house

design.

on a complex that dominated a corner opposite Sacred Heart Church, in an overwhelmingly Irish neighborhood, Noonan Plaza was built "to provide luxury housing for the upper middle-class" and its first tenants were Jewish.*'' Its 15,000-square-foot garden courtyard

was "bedecked with shrubbery, fountains, in the center that was stocked with

and mosaic walkways, surrounding a pool swans, goldfish and water

lilies.

... a picturesque waterfall

.

.

.

[and] Japanese

style bridges."

American children from the parish

Irish

'

pleasure of this private Eden

recall that their

was contingent upon the permission

of the

complex's Irish doorman, and they were never permitted access unless accompanied by an adult. the late 1950s that

By

was not until Irish Americans It

its

Jewish occupants began to

started to live in

Noonan

out in

Plaza.^^

contrast, John Stratton O'Leary's Glengariff Construction

series of four-story

move

Company built

a

apartment houses in the East Bronx, south of White Plains Road,

Each apartment building housed 127

in the early 1930s.

families.

From

the

beginning "O'Leary's Flats," as they were colloquially known, drew Irish families of

County Kerry extraction from the South Bronx.^^ Margaret Sullivan married

in

1934 and moved from 1 24th Street in Harlem (All Saints parish) to Cypress Avenue

and 138th Street in the Bronx

(St.

Luke's parish).

The

following year, she

moved

with her husband and infant daughter to 1436 Beach Avenue: These apartments were newly

built,

modem

more

in layout than the old

railroad-type flats in the South Bronx. Residents enjoyed

rooms were laid out in older tenements

off of foyers rather

more privacy because

than having to walk through rooms like

(During the Depression] wages were low and rents were

Many of my husband's family moved into the O'Leary's Flats within time and we all helped each other financially and emotionally. John Stratton O'Leary was a good landlord who did not pressure those who were low, too.

a short period of

in financial straits.

County Kerry, and a former policeman, was community and word of his new apartments

O'Leary, a native of Kenmare,

well

known

in the

spread quickly

Bronx

among

Irish

neighbors in the South Bronx. Even 20 years

later,

O'Leary's Flats were attracting South Bronx Irish, the superintendents were Irish-born,

and the rental agent was the Ardree Company

O'Leary family). to Thieriot

When Vincent Flynn and his wife moved from St.

Avenue

buildings on the

(still

owned by

all

the

Luke's Parish

in 1957, seven of their relatives were neighbors in O'Leary

same

street.*'

Perhaps the only clear example of a successful and organic ethnic interplay

between land ownership, development, and residential occupancy by the New York Irish is Celtic

Park Apartments in Woodside, Queens.'° In this instance, a non-Irish

corporation built housing in an area, and on specific land, that had had Irish affiUations for years. Because that housing

proved a natural draw for

1897 the

Irish- American

Irish

it

Athletic Club had raised subscriptions for the purchase

of nine acres at the far eastern

from the 34th Street

was also both modem and affordable,

people already familiar with the neighborhood. In

ferry.

end

of

Long Island

Celtic Park

was

City, just 10

minutes by

ideally situated. Irish

trolley

Americans were

already well acquainted with the travel route necessary to get there since the athletic

to

some

ground was built adjacent to Calvary Cemetery. Celtic Park drew crowds spectacular sporting events up to 1914. After the war, for a

reasons, the club

was dissolved and the property

Homes Company

for

approximately half a million

sold to the City dollars.*^'

number

of

and Suburban

4 13 Insh Americans

on the

New

Move

in

York City

414

The City and Suburban Homes Company was "one

The Early

dividend housing corporations in existence" at the time.

Twentieth Centuiy

projects to be developed in locations that

of the oldest limited

consistently selected

It

had employment and transportation

advantages, but also in areas of dense population where a

demand

for

housing

was high.^^ The City and Suburban Homes Company built Celtic Park Apartments in 1931, and despite vacancies and arrears in their Manhattan properties due to the Depression, the first section of Celtic Park was almost fully occupied by 1932.^^

The apartments rented for $15

a

room and were equipped with "refrigerators,

radio outlets, incinerators, latest type gas ranges

bathrooms and foyer lawn."'"*

Park,

There were

and the newly

halls.

.

.

and kitchen accessories,

[with] a spacious court(yard),

.

tiled

with shrubs and

now five transportation lines within three blocks of Celtic built St. Teresa's Catholic

Church

(1928)

was around the

corner on 44th Street. Celtic Park was built in a section of Woodside that since the arrival of the subway in to live in

1

9 1 7 had attracted mainly Irish and

German settlers

one and two family houses and apartment buildings. The

said to have migrated there

Park Apartments opened, Woodside was estimated to be 80 percent

The paths

Irish

were

from Manhattan's West Side and by the time Celtic

of Irish dispersion in

New

Irish.^^

York were established within the

three decades of this century and, on the available evidence,

some

clear for the Irish experience. First, speculative real estate interest

first

things are

by the

Irish

suburbs— such as Washington Heights, the Bronx, and Long Island (Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau)—predates the movement of Irish residents into these areas by about 20 years. While lot transactions and municiin the city's early inner

pal

improvement contracts permitted

city's

Irish

involvement in the vanguard of the

expansion, pure Irish geographic mobility had to await the construction

of housing in these areas.

The

Irish followed the general

expansion pattern of

wake of the first transportation developments, and adapting to available (and more diverse) housing stock rather the

city,

arriving in the boroughs in the

than imprinting a particular style on an area.^^ In the resulting transformation of inner suburb to

urban borough, the

estate hierarchy in

Irish

were involved

at all levels of the real

New York.

Second, migration opportunities were spread primarily by word of

mouth

within the community, and often involved step-migration (one to three smaller

moves

prior to a

major change). The biggest factor affecting the degree

of Irish

migration activity between 1900 and 1960 was the availability of modern housing, because the city's stock fluctuated dramatically during the Depression

and the second world war. Direct marketing techniques and other ethnic appeals, although they certainly existed,

had a limited impact.

Irish

connections

operated on an informal and almost unacknowledged basis in the process. Celtic Park, O'Leary's Flats, and even

York experience; most

Irish did

Noonan

Plaza were the exceptions in the

not rent or buy from other

New

Irish. Yet, for Irish

builders, investors, landlords,

real estate as a means of personal By exploiting the migration potential

and agents,

social mobility cannot be underestimated.

of inner suburbs through the construction of infrastructure, transit, ing,

they gained, at the very

Irish

least, civic

and hous-

and social recognition within the

city's

and Catholic communities.

Third,

it

appears to have been

new

their families to

women who

areas. In this

looked for housing and

moved

they were conscious of both improved

domestic amenities and the financial strategies needed to realize the move. For the average Irish family, the result

was often

a horizontal mobility that raised

an additional drain on the

their standard of living without necessarily requiring

household budget. In the process, the

New York.

the break from tenement living in a change in

employment

for the

Irish got their first real

Although

main breadwinner, women,

did bring additional responsibilities to Irish

becoming

it

change in residence often

a

especially

a building custodian or taking in boarders.

chance to make

might not mandate

when it involved

But by and large

life

in the

meant new-style (modern) apartments and single or multifamily houses, in areas wearing a new aura of respectability. As Bernard Clare described his Queens sales turf in 1927, "the scene was one of bristling prosperity, of zooming lower-middle-class prosperity small town, country, Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn

.

suburbia,

all

rolled into one,

the pictures of happy, happy

some life

of

it

some

old,

of

.

.

beginning to shine like

it

in the 'SEP' [Saturday Evening Post]."'^ This,

rather than any direct marketing techniques and other ethnic appeals, drove

intraurban migration.

As

for the implications of this intraurban

migration for Irish social mobility,

while job advancement, suburban dispersal, and home-ownership rates are usually cited as indicators of social mobility, in early-twentieth-century

York the

city's

intense development of the outer boroughs offered a

New

means

of

horizontal mobility that satisfied aspirations usually associated with occupation or class.

Economic and

social forces that

were conquering urban geography

combined to offer the Irish better, more comfortable a variety of domestic of

it.

A

and financial

good address could

the Irish that

reflect

was not rooted

circumstances in

in

lifestyles.

strategies enabled

them

At the same time

to take advantage

an important social perception of status

economics or power. Thus, a unique

for

set of

New York enabled the Irish to attain standards of living that,

under other conditions, might have required extraordinary economic advancement.'^

comfort" that was

The

climbing the "ladder.

another generation or

was "modern suburban if not more so, than the tradition-

just as socially acceptable, "''

ally ascribed route of

at least

result

4]^

5

Msh Americans on the Move

New

in

York City

1945

to

1992

PARTY

THE MODERN ERA

Playing football at Gaelic Park, West 240th Street and

Broadway

in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, c. 1980. Gaelic

sports, especially football

and huriing, have been played

in

New

York since the turn of the century. Gaelic Park (once known as Innisfail

Park) has been a popular gathering place since

in 1928. In addition to playing fields, stands,

Gaelic Park

had

O'Donnell once

anywhere

else.

a

dance

said,

hall.

it

opened

and locker rooms,

Long-time proprietor John "Kerry"

"More people went

You would be surprised

marriages." (Courtesy of the Irish Echo.)

astray here than

at the

number of

David M. Reimers

OVERVIEW

An End and

a Beginning

C

COMMENTING ABOUT New

1963, Daniel Patrick

Moynihan wrote, "New York used

York's Irish in

to be an Irish city.

Or

when the Irish were everywhere."' That was the case right up until after World War II. New York's mayor from 1946 to 1950 was Irish-born William O'Dwyer, who had risen from the so

it

seemed. There were sixty or seventy years

police department through politics to be elected

mayor

bosses were shaken during the La Guardia years, but

in 1945. Irish political

men

like the Bronx's

Edward Flynn remained politically important in the city. And when Flynn died, he was followed by Charles Buckley, a powerful boss in his borough for many years.

The

police

and

fire

department were heavily

headed the top spots in those departments.

Irish,

and Irishmen invariably

When replacing Police Commissioner

Arthur Wallander, a holdover from La Guardia's administration, O'Dwyer chose

WilUam

O'Brien, and he

was succeeded by Thomas Murphy. Although most new

school teachers were Jewish after 1940, so were

many of the older teachers were Irish. And

many other city workers.

Most religious New Yorkers were Roman Catholic, and the church hierarchy was overwhelmingly Irish, headed by Francis Cardinal Spellman, who was just reaching the peak of his secular and spiritual influence after 1945.

Spellman spoke, people and politicians

listened.

The

St.

Patrick's

Day

When

parades

The

Modem

New

were

420 Era

York's largest ethnic display, and the

number

marchers and

of

onlookers increased after 1945. The 1947 parade drew more than 80,000 marchers,

watched by more than

a million spectators.

And that March

1

was

7

a chilly

American cultural life missing. The United Irish Counties Association's annual festival grew in size after its founding in the 1930s; in 1947 it drew a crowd of 30,000 to watch 3,000 participants show their style in music, day.

Nor was

Irish

poetry, hurling,

and dozens

of games.

Moynihan continued his observation about New York being an Irish city by concluding that the Irish "felt it was their town. It is no longer, and they know it." By 1963 he could clearly see the waning Irish significance in New York City. Most noticeable was the decline in the Irish population. With it came a loss of political and religious power and influence in running the affairs of the city. The Irish

population began to drop before 1945. Immigration

the century, although

it

fell after

the turn of

picked up again briefly in the 1920s, after Ireland had

achieved independence from Great Britain. But during the Great Depression,

few Europeans,

War II,

Irish

Irish or otherwise,

emigrated to the United States. After World

immigration began again, but in lesser numbers than in the heyday

of the nineteenth century.

Nearly 50,000 arrived during the 1950s and another

32,000 during the 1960s; traditionally, about one-quarter of all Irish immigrants settled in

New York City."*

In 1965 Congress passed a

new immigration law

origins provisions favoring the nations of

though Ireland actually saw

now had

nation

this

same

its

that scrapped the national

Northern and Western Europe. Al-

quota increase from 17,000 to 20,000 (every

figure),

the rules for getting in changed, with

preference given to potential immigrants with close family ties to U.S. citizens

and with skills needed in the United States. Equally important was the situation in Ireland during the 1960s and 1970s. Economic expansion and participation in the

grow

Common

European

Market

at a relatively brisk pace,

women

chose to emigrate.^ City

settled in

New York city between

city averaged less than

economy

in those years caused the Irish

with the result that few young officials

Irish

to

men and

found that fewer than 7,500

Irish

1965 and 1980, and Irish immigration to the

200 annually between 1982 and

When the Irish economy turned sour in the

1985.^'

1980s and unemployment soared,

the Irish found that they lacked the necessary family connections required for

immigration to the United

States.

They came anyway, usually

as tourists,

stayed on when their visas expired, living and working illegally. Perhaps as as 20,000 of these "visitors" remained in In chapter 18

undocumented,

economic

Mary Corcoran

Irish

and

many

New York City.

takes a detailed look at these new, often

men and women

arriving in the 1980s. Driven largely by

forces to seek better opportunities in the

United

States, they

conditions in

New

men worked

mostly in construction and the women, making

York City worth risking living without

wages, in child care. Corcoran notes that

many of these

found

a green card.

much

latest Irish

The

lower

immigrants

Of course,

421

immigration laws passed in 1 986 and 1 990 enabled

An End and

were highly educated but found Httle use not

were

all

illegal as special

for their skills in Ireland.

Ireland to send more immigrants to America.

One

section of the Immigration

"New

several thousand of these cards.

a Beginning

Reform and Control Act they

Irish," as

call

of 1986 enabled

themselves, to get green

Moreover, the Immigration Act of 1990 guaranteed Ireland 48,000 "Mor-

more after Thus Irish immigration, which officially numbered less than 1,000 a year for most of the 1980s, was on the upswing again, and Corcoran believes that it rison" visas over a three-year period and the potential of thousands that.^

will continue in the 1990s.

The drop in New York City's Irish f irst-and second-generation population was substantial after

amounted

945. At one point in the nineteenth century, those generations

1

to one-quarter of the city's residents. In 1900 the first

and second

generation numbered 692,000 of the city's approximately 3 million residents,

and

still

312,000.

a significant half million in 1940. But

A

by I960 they numbered only

decade later they amounted to 220,000. In 1980 only 42,000

New

Yorkers were Irish born, with the vast majority of Irish Americans being third, fourth, or fifth generation.

Some 3 1 7,000

identified themselves as being of Irish

and intermarriage, a

ancestry. Reflecting trends in assimilation

slightly larger

number labeled themselves as having part Irish ancestry, thus bringing the total claiming some Irish ancestry to some 600,000.^ These figures are not precise, but they show a clear trend: by the 1980s Irish, and part Irish, accounted for less than 10 percent of the

city's

approximately 7 million people. Preliminary data

from the 1990 census indicate that only 535,00 persons identified themselves as being of Irish or part Irish ancestry.^

Dropping immigration alone does not account population. Irish

World War II

New

to live in the

Almost 95 percent

for the fall in the city's Irish

Yorkers, like other whites,

left

the city in droves after

mushrooming suburbs of New York and New Jersey.

of the city's 7.4 million residents in 1940

were white, but in

1990 they accounted for less than half of a similar-sized population. Improved transportation facilities connecting the city to the suburbs, the migration of jobs

out of the

city,

enhanced incomes, the housing boom, and the desire to escape

blacks and Hispanics and find better schools of

white

all

account for this mass movement

New Yorkers.

For the most part, white

New

Yorkers

who moved, and the Irish were no money to purchase homes in the

exception, were upwardly mobile with the rapidly growing housing tracts of

Long Island,

New Jersey,

1950 more than half of the metropolitan area's the

city,

and the proportion continued

to grow.

generations with higher incomes than the

Irish

New

Jersey's

lived outside

These tended to be third or later

first

two generations. The

nary 1990 census indicated that approximately twice as ancestry lived in

and Westchester. By

Americans

prelimi-

persons of Irish

New York's Rockland, New York City. The largest

Bergen County and

Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk counties than in

many

422

concentrations of Irish Americans were found in Nassau and Suffolk counties

The Modern Era

on Long

Island.

Changes

^°

who chose to stay in the city. The city's

also occurred for those Irish

had begun to move from Lower Manhattan around the turn of the century, especially as subways and bridges connected that borough to the city's four other

Irish

counties.

Upper Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens were the most

popular residential districts during the booming 1920s. After 1945 even neigh-

borhoods of second-or third-generation

more

Irish lost their appeal as the

prosperous Irish headed for the suburbs, or Queens. Inwood, in the upper West Side of Manhattan,

Fordham and Mott Haven

in the Bronx,

and the East Side

found their Hispanic and black population increasing. What was once Hell's Kitchen, a heavily Irish neighborhood on the West Side of midtown Manhattan, experienced gentrification after 1960. That neighborhood's infamous "Westies" Irish

mob was either in jail or dispersed by 1990. A holdover from Hell's Tammany days, James R. McManus, exercised political muscle in when he successfully won nomination for Jerrold Nadler to replace the

Kitchen's old

1992

recently deceased

in Congress. But such events

Ted Weiss

were unusual

in the

early 1990s."

Older

Irish

landmarks disappeared in these neighborhoods. In February 1991 Shamrock Imports closed its doors after 68 years on East

the Mattie Haskins

75th Street in Manhattan.

A Mexican restaurant replaced

noted of that neighborhood,

"It

used to be a heavily

it.

One commentator But now there's

Irish area.

basically nothing Irish that remains."'^

Of course, neighborhoods did not transform themselves overnight. Just how New Yorkers responded to their new Latino and black neighbors was a

Irish

complex tail

issue. In chapter 17

Rob Snyder

—the Inwood section of Manhattan.

repeated in other sections of the

discusses one neighborhood in de-

He

reveals several trends that

city. Irish residents felt

were

they were in control

when dealing with Jewish neighbors during the 1 940s. But after 1 945 Jews began to move out, and Latinos and blacks moved in. Inwood's Irish feared growing crime and their new, mainly Dominican, neighbors. Middle-class and young Irish left first, leaving largely elderly and working-class Irish behind. The mobile Irish

men and women

the river in

found

new homes

to the north in Westchester or across

New Jersey.

By the 1970s Queens contained the

largest

number

of Irish

Americans. The

1980 and the 1990 census revealed that about one-third of those claiming some Irish ancestry lived in

communities were now

Queens. Brooklyn was

second.'''

The

strongest Irish

in neighborhoods like Queens's Woodside, Brooklyn's

Bay Ridge, and the Bronx's Norwood.

The postwar periods of prosperity made their education

and find better jobs

of families like the Murrays, city's richest families.

it

possible for

in the city's

many Irish to continue

economy. The

elite,

composed

McDonnells, and the Cuddihys, were among the

The Fifth Avenue apartment of James Francis McDonnell

New York: its "dining room chandelier alone was

423

valued at $ 1 00,000. " ^'^ Although for most such a style was beyond their dreams,

An End and

was

at

one point the

the Irish in general

largest in

managed

to prosper in these years.

As the

a Be^nning

subway and bus lines expanded in the twentieth century, the Irish had played a dominant role, so much so that the Interboro Rapid Transit (IRT) was sometimes called the Irish Transit workers are a case in point.

Rapid Transit. Few were in the Irish

top,

city's

managerial positions, however. Also heavily

(90%) was the Third Avenue Railway, most of whose workers were

born. Although their

numbers varied from

line to line, Irish

Irish

workers had the

advantage of speaking English where contact with the public was concerned. The Transport Workers Union, too, was Irish dominated and led by the colorful Irishman Mike Quill. While working in transport was not especially desirable, it represented steady employment. After World War II, better employment beckoned. The transport business steadily took on black and Hispanic workers who saw these as solid working-class jobs with health and other fringe benefits.

By 1990 only a sprinkling

By then fewer

Irish

of Irish

New

workers remained there.

Yorkers could also be found as policemen, wait-

resses, domestics, or other traditional working-class jobs

growing number of postwar

Instead, a

management,

professions,

New

York

it

on August

I,

1986,

John

J.

Phelan

J.

Jr."

who was

a daughter

young

is

McGuire, but the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange

The paper reported

Irish

American leader Paul O'Dwyer,

brother of William O'Dwyer, as saying, "Twenty years ago,

the

and other

New York Times put "And if there are fewer policemen in New York who have As the

names, there are more stockbrokers that do. The police commissioner

no longer Robert is

found jobs in the

advertising, insurance, banking, selling,

middle-class and upper-middle-class occupations.

Irish

they had formerly held.

Irish

a stenographer he thought he

want

Irish- Americans

O'Dwyer added, "Some

of

was doing

an Irishman had

if

pretty good.

to get into the yuppie class."

The

Now,

79-year-old

my own grandchildren even!"

Studies of the social and economic status of Americans do

show

that Irish

Americans on the whole had done well by the 1980s and were more successful than other white Americans except Jews. This also seemed to be the case in

New

York.

The 1970 census

indicated that second-generation Irish

American

families there had higher incomes than comparable whites. Although published

1980 census data did not break Irish in

New

down by county

York State did about as well or

and that their educational levels were on

or city, they revealed that the

slightly better than other whites

higher.'^'

The 1990 census information

this point is not yet available.

Yet not

all Irish

New Yorkers were in the middle class. A mid-1970s study of

three Irish neighborhoods revealed a wide distribution of incomes residents.

Although only

a small proportion

ent Children, considerably insurance.

Among

among

used Aid to Families with Depend-

more had used food stamps and unemployment

the elderly, especially, incomes were frequently below the

national average and median. Whereas the

424 The

Modem

Era

of Irish living in

New

1

980 census revealed that

percent

1

York State over age 25 were college graduates,

much

a

smaller proportion of residents in these neighborhoods were college graduates.

^^

Rob Snyder also points out that working-class Irish still populated neighborhoods such as Inwood in the late 1980s, and the Irish remained prominent among construction workers in the 1990s. Jimmy Breslin's Table Money (1986), a fictional account of the "Sandhogs," those Irish American construction workers who helped build tunnels, bridges, and subways, was based on real people. The Irish, along with West Indians and Poles, still dominated this

One

occupation in the early 1990s.

"Maybe

its

"Sandhog" said about his occupation,

Irish

only the Irish and the West Indians thick enough to do

research, based

on the 1990 census and other data,

is

it."'*

More

needed to give an accurate

picture of the city's Irish working-class population in the 1990s.

Next

to changing neighborhoods,

was

it

in politics that the decline of Irish

presence was most noticeable. Building on neighborhood solidarity and the

power of Tammany Hall, during the

life

mayor

first

Irish poUticians

When Jimmy Walker was

in the late 1920s, the important Board of Estimate consisted of six Irish

Catholics—the mayor, borough presidents

controller, president of the

Board of Aldermen, and the

Queens, and Richmond

of Kings,

—and two

was Jewish while

president of the borough of Manhattan

Bronx.

dominated much of the city's political

decades of the twentieth century.

a

others. The German headed the

'^

Throughout the Great Depression the Democratic Party continued Irish

men for mayor and other key offices,

but the corruption of

to

run

Tammany Hall

New Yorkers on the old ways of doing public Those years belonged to the colorful Italian American Fiorello La Guardia, who ran on the American Labor Party or Republican lines or as a Fusion candidate. The "Little Flower," as he was sometimes called, rewarded Jewish

and the Walker years soured business.

and

Italian voters

who

supported

him with

a growing

number

of top-level

appointments. Moreover, during the La Guardia years an expanding number of

municipal jobs were placed under the the disadvantage of the its

brogue.

The I,

civil service, a

New York Irish:

trend that also worked to

"Under La Guardia the

civil service lost

"^°

Irish staged a resurgence of sorts

when La Guardia

on January

left office

1946, and William O'Dw^yer succeeded him. His reputation as Brooklyn's

district attorney, his

rights stood

him

as Irish voters.

wartime

well,

service,

and image

A popular leader, he won again in

image as a reformer and foe

of

Tammany

Hall,

numbered. Dissatisfaction among Jewish and

power and recognition, grew, Changes

as a friend of labor

and he ran successfully among Jews and

in his personal

life,

as did

rumors

and

civil

Italians as well

1949. In spite of his

sometime

O'Dwyer's days as mayor were

Italian voters,

who wanted more

of his ties to organized crime.

scandals in the police department, and Senator

Estes Kefauver's Senate Special Investigating

Committee on Organized Crime

revelations, although

him

vinced

to resign

produced nothing

it

from

new about O'Dwyer,

office to accept President

finally con-

Harry S Truman's

offer of

the ambassadorship to Mexico."^

a Beginning

Vincent Impellitteri replaced O'Dwyer in 1950. His years as mayor added reputation.

little lustre to his

what

"By early 1953 the average

knew

political professionals already

New

Yorker realized

in 1950: Vincent Impellitteri did not

know how to be mayor. More than anything else, he did nothing." Although he decided to run as an independent in the 1953 election, he lost to Democrat

Robert

F.

Wagner,

who

among

ran well

Irish, black,

many

Jewish, and even

Italian voters.^^

The new mayor was American mayor

and

half Irish;

New

of

York.

if

1

was the

that counts, he

Wagner had good things

New York City. Looking back in the

980s he

said, "I

last Irish

to say about Irish-run

think

it

hurts the city that

they haven't the brains of the Irish to meet some of these problems here today. ""'^ Yet this son of a famous U.S. senator was hardly in the past Irish

American

politicians.

Wagner did court Tammany Hall

we have mode of

for years,

but

he had attended Yale University and learned his politics from the top, from his father

A

and his

friends, not

who

popular mayor

Wagner was

a

on the

as the Bronx's Charles

streets of

got along with

pragmatic man. At

first

New York City. of New York's

most

he played ball with

polyglot voters,

political bosses,

Buckley and Tammany's Carmine

De

Sapio.

He

such also

encouraged labor unions to organize, reached out to black voters, and worked to

services. Yet he could shift allegiances too, as he did when the movement grew during the 1950s. During the O'Dwyer years, Jewish and Italian politicians tried to build on the

improve city

reform

gains of the 1930s and were increasingly nominated for office by the city's political parties.

lackluster

During the 1950s,

liberal reformers

Tammany Democratic

were

dissatisfied

with the

support of presidential candidate Adlai

Stevenson in the 1952 and 1956 elections and the workings of

Democratic machine. They took their campaigns

New

York's

to local neighborhoods.

The

reform clubs, especially in Manhattan, ousted the old guard Irish leaders in a

number

of elections.^"*

In 1949, within Italian

American

Tammany

to

Hall

itself.

Carmine De Sapio became the

head the organization. Clearly,

Irish

domination and

first

influ-

ence were both in sharp decline after 1950. Wagner sensed the changes. Realizing that

Tammany Hall was becoming a bad label in New York politics, he broke

with the Hall and threw his

term

as

lot in

with the reformers during his bid

mayor. Whereas he courted

Tammany

for a third

support in 1953, he repudiated

man Wagner had man [who] never attempted to interfere with the running of the city" became a liability. When he attacked the bosses and De Sapio, the latter noted: "We are faced with the spectacle of a candidate who it

in 1959

and joined the "dump De Sapio" movement. The

"always found

... to

425 An End and

be a good

seeks reelection on a platform of cleaning up the mess which he himself has

To the charge that Wagner was running against himself and his record, mayor reportedly said, "I could find no better opponent. "^^

426

created. "

The Modern Era

the

Following Wagner's retirement, governing the of the

New

affairs of

York

William

Buckley

F.

Jr.,

wealthy editor

National Review, ran for mayor on the Conservative line in 1965, but he

was not

a serious threat to the major parties, although he did attract

who were unhappy

disgruntled Irish voters

V. Lindsay. ^^ In

of

WASP

the 1980s Democratic leader and

liberal

was pushed

Irish,

men and women

Irish

decade only citywide

Irish

commissioner

At the

American Carol Bellamy, as

a Protestant,

council president in

mayor

of a city

in

1

(for

whose a

few

won

a election to a

98 1. By the time David Dinkins

1990, only one Irish

American served

as a

agency and he was replaced by an Hispanic.^''

Americans

federal level, Irish

won

still

elections after 1960. Senator

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was the most notable, but a number the House, and Robert

Farrell,

By the 1980s only

held key positions in the city's boroughs, and in that

office, as city

was inaugurated

as a black candidate.

Republican

assemblyman Herman

D. Farrell was suggested as a potential candidate for mayor,- but grandfather was

some

over their loss of power within the

Democratic Party and opposed to the liberalism John

continued their decline in

Irish politicians

City.

F.

Kennedy

won

election to

and James Buckley

(until his assassination)

one term) both served in the U.S. Senate. Neither of these rich men,

however, had worked their represented the split nature of

championed wing

of the

In the

many

a rising conservatism, while

Democratic

House

Bobby Kennedy spoke

for the liberal

Party.^*

Rooney won House members, such as

traditional Irish politicians like Brooklyn's John

elections, but

Brooklyn's

way up from the streets of New York. They many New York Irish Americans; James Buckley

some

of the

New

York

Irish

Hugh Carey and Manhattan's William

were

Fitz Ryan,

men

of

wealthy backgrounds, and Ryan had wide support from reformers in his campaign against "bossism."^^

Municipal Italians

and

Irish political leaders

in the 1980s

Flynn's and Charlie Buckley's

Bronx congressional seat

were being replaced

first

by Jews and

by rising African Americans. The days of Edward

power were

over,

in 1964, a position

neighborhoods reigned over

at

and Buckley even

he had held

for

lost his

30 years. The

one time by Flynn and Buckley were increas-

ingly black and Hispanic. Moreover,

many

Irish

New

Yorkers even deserted

the Democratic Party, in part because of their rising affluence and in part

over particular issues.

Some

Irish

had turned against Woodrow Wilson and

the Democratic Party in 1920 because the Treaty of Versailles did not grant Ireland

its

independence, but they generally returned to the Democratic fold

during the 1920s and 1930s, even though

many

disagreed with Franklin

Roosevelt's foreign policies.'"^

many Irish American New Yorkers switch to Some were attracted to Republican Joseph McCarthy

Yet the postwar changes saw the Republican Party.

The among many

and anticommunist,

427

New Yorkers. At a controversial breakfast of the pohce department's Holy Name Society in April 1953, Cardinal

An End and

during the Red Scare of the 1950s.

found

a ready

audience

senator, both Irish Irish

much

Spellman gave McCarthy his support,

to the delight of thousands of

cheering policemen."" In the 1950s a few worried about a divorced man. Democrat Adlai Stevenson, running against the popular Dwight David Eisen-

many rallied to the I960 presidential many Irish politicians also chafed at

hower, being elected president, but

candidacy of John

F.

Kennedy. As noted,

power within the

the growing Jewish liberalism and their loss of

Democratic Party

of the 1950s

student uprisings, urban

New

and 1960s. Others blamed the Democrats

York

for the

and the debacle in Vietnam during the 1960s.^^

riots,

By the early 1 960s many Irish New Yorkers were voting Republican, and in 1 964 an estimated 55 percent

of the city's Irish voters cast their ballots for Senator

Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election.^^

The next year Conservative

candidate for mayor, William Buckley, attracted 22 percent of the city's Irish

with the

voters,

Then

rest

evenly

split

between the Republicans and

moved

the civil rights issue

Democrats."''*

communities.

to northern

When Mayor

John Lindsay proposed a Civilian Review Board to examine charges of police brutality,

it

ran into solid opposition from white Catholic

predominately

Irish Patrolmen's

New

Yorkers.

Conservative Party and a variety of civic groups to force a referendum in

While old-line

liberal

cially in Italian it.

Irish

Irish

groups favored the board,

Americans were the

ment

many

Civilian

went down

1966.'^^

to defeat, espe-

by a 4 to

I

margin.

group in the

No wonder. At that time New York police depart-

persons in white neighborhoods had relatives in the depart-

and an attack on

The

it

largest ethnic

or close ties to the police.

safety

it

and Irish neighborhoods where voters overwhelmingly rejected

Americans voted against

ment, and

The

Benevolent Association (PBA) joined with the

They saw

their friends

and

the board proposal as a threat to their

relatives.''''

Review Board was not the only

civil rights issue to alienate

white voters from the Democratic Party. Affirmative action programs and "quotas" became increasingly polarizing issues after 1970. As

panded

its

public payroll after World

War

II,

New

York ex-

blacks were the major gainers,- by

the 1980s, after decades of underrepresentation, they were overrepresented as

New

York City employees. By the end

accounted jobs.

for

one in four

of the 1980s African

Americans,

who

New Yorkers, held more than 30 percent of municipal

These gains were achieved because

of pressure

by

civil rights

groups and

affirmative action programs, as well as law suits over alleged discrimination in city hiring practices.

and in the health and

The

The

city's Irish still

was 90 percent white

largest gains

human had

in the lower-level entry positions

which They also were well represented among

solid representation in the fire department,

in the early 1990s.

number of black officers were being hired in the More than 95 percent of lieutenants and captains were still white at that

the police, although a growing 1980s.

came

services departments.^^

a Be^nning

New Yorkers lost the top post

pohce commissioner when Ed

428

time, but Irish

The Modet-n Era

Koch appointed an African American, Benjamin Ward, as commissioner. His successor appointed another black to the top post. The top post returned to the Irish in 1992 when Mayor David Dinkins named Raymond Kelly, a long-time

member of the

of

police force, commissioner. Kelly acknowledged, however, that

recruitment of more blacks was the force's top

priority."'*

Breakthroughs for blacks sometimes caused resentment and court

New

1983 scores of mostly white

new

Police

overcome

Department examination

racial

and sexual bias was

promotion

for

to lieutenant designed to

unfair. Sergeant Peter

Mahon, president

J.

of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, insisted that revisions

As one

journalist, discussing Irish voter alienation

in 1984,

"Most

of the guys

I

fights. In

York City police sergeants charged that the

grew up with

tell

were required.'''^

from the Democrats, put

it

you the Democratic Party no

longer represents them. They're tired of the quota systems they run into on their civil service jobs

don't

.

.

.

remember any

were looking

Nor were

the ones

who made

it

down

Federal, affirmative-action

for their first jobs in this country. Irish

New

to Wall Street tell

"*°

Yorkers thrilled with the prospect of the election of

African American David Dinkins in 1989. Dinkins's problem was

on to

a solid black

you they

programs when their fathers

many

and Hispanic vote without losing too

how

to hold

whites to his

opponent. Republican Rudolph Giuliani. Although he easily defeated Mayor Ed

Koch

in the

Democratic primary, Dinkins watched as most whites deserted the

Democratic Party in the 1989 election; he barely about one in four

among

same among other white

won

election, polling only

should be noted that he did about the

Irish voters. It

voters. In the 1993 election, the verdict

was reversed

with Giuliani barely defeating Dinkins, in another contest in which

were

racial lines

drawn.**'

Owing

little

American

to Irish

voters,

Dinkins shunned

the most part and concentrated on groups loyal to him.

American

official in

Irish politicians for

The highest Irish was the

the early years of the Dinkins administration

who supported Dinkins in When O'Dwryer was city council president during the

veteran political leader, Paul O'Dwryer,

the 1989

mayoralty

1970s, he

race.

gave Dinkins a boost by helping appoint the favor and selected

O'Dwyer

him

city clerk.

Now Dinkins returned

as the city's representative to the

Nations. O'Dwyer, lasted only a short time, however,- he resigned in 1991, claiming the United Nations

was

failing to take a

more

United

December

aggressive role in

Ireland). He him enough leeway to be critical.**' The city's demography no doubt made the old Irish political machine demise

combating human abuses around the world (including Northern felt

that his position did not give

inevitable. Similar developments, along

with shifting Irish

political allegiances,

occurred elsewhere. Although "demographics finally did the Celtic bosses in," the process varied. In Albany, Pittsburgh, and Chicago the machine

longer than

it

did in

New

hung on

York. After Richard Daley's death in 1976, the

machine

lost to African

American Harold Washington

in 1983. But following

Washington's death, Chicago voters once again picked an

mayor, this time Jane Byrne and then the son of Richard In another Irish-dominated area of organization

Church, the

city's

demography and changing

Irish

American

as

Daley.'*'^

the

life,

a Beginning

Roman

Catholic

social attitudes led to both a

decline in the church's role in city affairs and a change in the relationship of Irish

New Yorkers to the

was

in politics,

church. But the shift in power was not as drastic as

and shifting

it

Catholic attitudes in the city are hard to

Irish

document.

Although 1945, they

had done were

Irish

New

Yorkers were not a majority of the

city's

Catholics in

dominated the clergy and top leadership within the church

for decades.

staffed

by

Irish

And

a

good

many

as they

of the church's welfare organizations

women. Archbishop John Hughes was

the most famous of

many Irish American clergy, at least until Francis Cardinal Spellman, who became head of New York's Roman Catholics in 1939. Spellman was bom the city's

to Irish parents, not in

New

York

City, but in

Whitman, Massachusetts.

Although Spellman did not particularly emphasize his

most

of the clergy

prominent Catholic public Irish

sums

middle and upper of

and

staff

were also

officials, Irish or

class.

money and expanded

Irish.

He

New

otherwise, and the city's growing

schools, charities,

and

raised considerable

parishes.'*'*

But SpeUman was interested in things other than parish buildings,

and he played a prominent

exercised

undue influence

role in

York's

cultivated his ties to

Under Spellman, the church its

he none-

Irish origins,

theless continued the long domination of the Irish at the head of

Catholics;

pubUc

life.

His

affairs

critics

in city politics, while his supporters

as proper exercises of concern for the spiritual

and church

charged that he

saw

his activities

and moral welfare

members. This concern touched on the Hves of non-Cathohcs as well,

of

as

church

Spellman

sought to censor movies and to gain pubhc funds for parochial schools. As noted,

he praised Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and the anticommunist crusades of the

1

940s and 1 950s. Not aU CathoHcs agreed with Spellman's poUtical positions,

such as his open endorsement of Senator McCarthy, nor were they in agreement

when the Cardinal criticized the reforms of Vatican n during the 1960s.'*'^ Yet many politicians leaders, such as Mayor John V. Lindsay, who disagreed with the cardinal nonetheless had to deal with his influence. At the cardinal's funeral in 1968, notable political leaders attended, including President

Lyndon

Johnson. Johnson had high regard for Cardinal Spellman because of his

support for Johnson's war in Vietnam. At the same time,

warm

some observers

believed that Spellman's power had peaked before the 1960s. Because of his controversial stands

on the Vietnam War, contacts with American intelligence on church matters and public aid to religious

agencies, conservative positions

schools, he overreached himself and brought a backlash against the church's role in politics, half."^^

with

many complaining

that his reign

429 An End and

"went on too long by

His diocese

430 The

Modem

Era

of

lost

some power

New York into two dioceses,

York.

When

in 1957

when

the Vatican divided the archdiocese

that of Brooklyn

and Long Island and that

of

New

Spellman died he was succeeded by the Right Reverend Terrence

Cooke, a more modest man.

J.

An Irish New Yorker who had served under Spellman,

dynamism

Cooke

clearly lacked the

for the

power and influence of his predecessor. That same year Pope Paul VI named

Frank Mugavero, an first

Italian,

head

of the Diocese of

Itahan American to hold such a post in

When

he apparently had no desire

of Spellman, but

Brooklyn and Long

Island, the

New York State.

Terrence Cardinal Cooke died in 1984, he was succeeded by Arch-

who like Spellman was Irish but not a some other ways O'Connor resembled Spellman. A forceful

bishop John O'Connor,

New

Yorker. In

leader,

he took

strong positions on public and moral issues. While the issue of public aid for religious institutions

was

Paul O'Dwyer, the County

Mayo-born founder of the

the guest of

honor at an

still

prominent, gay

Institute fund-raising

Congressman Charles Buckley

the

rights, abortion,

Iiish Institute,

dinner in

with Senator John F.Kennedy

New York in

Bronx County Democratic

1957. O'Dwyer recalled that

leader, introduced

night as "the next president of the United States [but] none of us believed his sponsor."

and

clear

Proceeds from dinners

and money

projects in Ireland

to use for

like this

gave the Institute

its

in the city

of the Irish Institute of

New

used by most

York, Inc.)

it

financial

that

Street building "free

suppon

Irish Institute

Irish organizations as their

Kennedy

except Charlie Buckley

West 48th

our other purposes," which included

and America. Between IQ52 and 1982, the

best-known address

feminism, AIDS,

for cultural

building was the

headquarters. (Courtesy

and homelessness dominated the debate. O'Connor even cultivated an unusual

43 1

Mayor Ed Koch, but there is no doubt that the church's

An End and

relationship with Jewish

role in the politics of the city

had declined considerably since the

Supreme Court decisions had halted prayers

1960s.'*''

in the city's public schools

and

municipal censorship of movies, and the church fought a losing battle over contracts with the city and the issue of discrimination against homosexuals.

Nor could O'Connor halt the New York City Board of Education's 1991 decision to distribute condoms to students in an effort to combat ADDS. After that battle, one church leader acknowledged, "The church's influence has shrunk over the Spellman there's no doubt that if an issue arose which the cardinal thought had potential impact on family life, he could pick up the phone and speak to leading political lights, and they would give careful thought to what he said." Another official noted that during the early days of years. In the days of Cardinal

Mayor Dinkins's administration phone

calls

from the church

office

were rarely

returned.'**

New Yorkers to their church? The was undergoing change. After 1945 it became less Italian and Irish and more Puerto Rican, with many members not sharing the views of their predominately Irish clergy. In an effort to reach the newcomers, Spellman had many priests learn Spanish. And a new wave of Catholic But what membership

of the relationship of Irish

of the

church

itself

immigrants from the Caribbean, South America, and even Asia entered 1965. Hispanic total

membership was estimated

more than one-third

by 1 98 1 and expected to reach 40 percent by the end of the 1 990s

the archdiocese formed

John

to be

Nam

its first

parish for the city's

.'*'^

after

of the

In

1

989

new Korean immigrants,

St.

which was serving 400 families one year later.^° in New York under Cardinal Spellman's leadership,

in the Bronx,

Nationally, and also

Catholicism came of age

just after

World War II in terms

of vigorous

growth and

an expanding institutional base, including parochial schools.^' But the upheavals of the

1960s combined with demographic changes, and financial woes beset

American Catholicism.

New York City's Roman Catholic Church closed many

of its schools in the face of rising costs

pupils

who had moved

nationally and in

New

and the

loss of its Irish

York City changed and dropped substantially between

I960 and 1990.^^ Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx

Opened

and other white

to the suburbs. Overall, Catholic school enrollment

in 1942 as an elite all-white high school,

it

is

a case in point.

changed as the Bronx

did.

By 1992 Cardinal Hayes High School's student body was 99 percent black and Hispanic and "far less Catholic." The recession in the early 1990s forced more cuts.

The Archdiocese

of

Brooklyn reported

retrenchment, while the Archdiocese of

New

"difficult

economic times" and

York imposed a salary freeze on

lay employees and priests.^^ With the more affluent Irish and other Catholics finding other social and economic opportunities after World War II, recruitment of young men and its

women to serve

the church as priests and

members

of religious orders

became

aBeginning

more

432 The

Modem

Era

difficult.

ordained 32 4.

Bishop Mugavero of Brooklyn reported that in 1960 his diocese

men

"The vocation While new

work

to

in the diocese but in 1984 the figure

us

crisis is hitting

full force,"

he

had dropped

and economic opportunities no doubt account

social

to

said.'''*

for service to

the church appearing less attractive to Irish Americans, other post- 1960 social

changes also played a

role.

Disputes erupted over abortion, divorce and remarriage,

birth control, the possible ordination of

reforms of Vatican U, prompting their religious practices

singles out Irish

many

women as priests,

homosexuality, and the

Catholics to leave the church or modify

and beliefs. Data gathered by polling experts, none of which

New Yorkers, reveal that a growing number of Cathohcs rejected

church teaching on these issues. For example, in 1 986 the Gallup survey found that 74 percent of Cathohcs beUeved

women

should be ordained, a figure up from 29

percent in 1974.^^

Did

Irish Catholics in

New

York follow these national trends?

published study exists of the relationship of the there

city's Irish to their

No

detailed

church, but

many Irish American New Yorkers were part of Humanae Vitae, the Pope's encyclical against birth

reason to believe that

is

the national trends. Before

control devices, about two-thirds of church

week, but

after the figure

members attended church every

dropped to 50 percent. ^^ In the mid-1970s about 45

percent of the Catholics in

New

York's Irish communities attended

weekly, a figure slight below the national one.^^ And about half of the

immigrants of the 1980s attended church

Data indicate that

Catholics

who have become more

city's Irish

were among the

it is

less regularly

the young and

Ireland.*^

mass

New Irish

than they did in

more educated and well-to-do

disenchanted with church teaching, and the

better-off Catholics.

Although many Catholics were disagreeing with church teachings, they nonetheless regarded themselves as devout and believed that one could be a

good Catholic even

if

divorced or using oral contraceptives.

A New

York

Times-CBS poll even found that a majority believed that a person engaging in homosexual relations can "still be a good Catholic" (Sept. 10, 1987). The Archdiocese of New York found in a mid-1980s survey that of the city's main The ethnic groups, the Irish were the "most comfortable" with the church. figure

is

not surprising in view of the Irish presence

Clearly a detailed study of Irish Catholics in

the post- World War

II

New

among

York City

religious leaders. is

needed before

changes can be fully understood. The Archdiocese of New

York conducted a survey

of Hispanics in 1981, but not of the Irish.

In individual cases Irish

New Yorkers found themselves in conflict with

church hierarchy. Bronx Assemblyman John Dearie,

for

the

example, was barred

from speaking at functions sponsored by his parish because he had voted in favor of

Medicaid funds to pay

for abortions.*^"

But no issue aroused so

much public controversy within the Irish community

as homosexuality

special

masses

for

and church teaching.

Jesuit priests

homosexual members

of Dignity, a

had been conducting

homosexual Roman

Catholic group at the Church of

St.

Manhattan under the

433

New

An Endand

A similar ban was ordered in the Diocese

a Beginning

Francis Xavier in

rectorship of the Reverend Michael E.

York ordered the masses discontinued.

Donahue. In 1987 the Diocese

of

of Brooklyn.^'

Then the

St.

the gay rights issue directly confronted the city's Irish Americans at

Patrick's

Day

the Irish Lesbian and

parade in 1991. The parade's committee refused to allow Gay Organization (ILGO) the right to march in the parade.

compromise an

In an effort to reach a

Irish group,

Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), invited

under Division 7

banner.

7's

to

Mayor Dinkins then chose

and the gay group, instead

the parade. During the

Division 7 of the Manhattan

ILGO

of the mayor's

march with them, but march with Division

to

customary position

march the mayor was booed and

at the

head of

shelled with beer cans.

Although refusing to take a public position, John Cardinal O'Connor's opposi-

was well known, and he

tion to homosexuality

Many believed that

clearly did not agree

with the

was not only a celebration of Irish heritage but also of Catholicism; hence they did not want ILGO to march.^^ mayor's

position.'^'^

Speaking for the 1 992

St. Patrick's

the parade

Day committee, Frank Beirne, chief organizer

"No group that has a position contrary "^"^ But many thought that ILGO should participate.*'^ As a

of the event for years, explained in 1992,

to the teachings of our Catholic faith has a place in our parade. Irish

Americans within the

result,

The

an internal issue

fight

was not

AOH

within divisions of

settled

AOH erupted.

by the compromise reached in

1

99 1. As planning

proceeded for the 1992 parade, the parade committee once again banned ILGO, 7. ILGO appeared to be in a uncompromising mood and men and women, the right to march under their own banner. background was the protest of the City's Human Rights

as well as Division

demanded, as Irish

Looming in the Commission and the

possibility that the parade

committee would

lose its

parade permit. Indeed, in January City Hall took away the permit to organize the

St.

Patrick's

Day parade from

more than a century. The state insisted on banning ILGO.^'^ As joint the

the

AOH division that had been running

division that a result,

assumed

ILGO

it

for

control, however, also

did not receive permission to

1992 parade. Moreover, a federal court, ruling on an appeal by the

Dinkins's administration and ILGO, upheld the denial of the ILGO's right to

march. But the court's decision was based on narrow grounds, leaving the issue unresolved. Following the decision to ban ILGO, of

prominent

protest

its

officials refused to

As

Irish

Mayor Dinkins and a number

ILGO

staged a demonstration to

omission from the parade. In 1994, with the

new mayor, Rudolph rose

march, and

Giuliani,

marched with the

immigration declined and

up the economic

ladder,

Irish

ILGO

still

banned, the

parade.*^^

Americans moved

to the suburbs,

and increasingly assimilated into the mainstream

American society, old causes and cultures declined, but by no means The renewed troubles in Northern Ireland in 1969 triggered the traditional anti-British sentiment among Irish Americans, and some focused

of

disappeared.

their attention once again

434 The

Modem

Era

fired

on and

on Northern

Ireland's troubles.

Roman CathoUc

killed 13

civil rights

When

British soldiers

demonstrators in Derry on

January 1972, Irish Americans expressed their shock and with others labeled the

event "Bloody Sunday."

The Irish Echo called it an

by British troops on unarmed civilians"

"incredible

(Feb. 5, 1972).

mad dog

.

.

.

attack

Some wore black armbands,

while others carried banners proclaiming "England Get Out of Ireland" during the 1

972 St. Patrick's Day parade.^^ Thereafter an annual testimonial dinner in memory

of

"Bloody Sunday" was sponsored by the pro-repubhcan

Committee

Irish

Northern Aid

(Noraid).^'

Located in the Bronx, Noraid was accused by the American,

Irish,

and British

governments of supplying armed assistance to the Irish Republican Army

The Irish People, the was also published in

Each of figures

the

New York's

from

first

Irish

their locale.

(IRA).

voice of the Irish republican cause in Northern Ireland, the

county

New York.

societies

Noraid came under governmental attack

have a richly decorated banner, often depicting heroic

County Antrim had

a

new banner made in 1981 that commemorated who died on hunger strike in Nonhem

three of ten Irish republican political prisoners

Ireland that year. These deaths galvanized

suppon

in

as this protest against the visit of the Prince of Wales,

Prince of Wales visited

Corcoran refused Peter Dolan.

New York in

1860, 121 years

to call out the Sixty-ninth

From

the collection of the

New

New York, and street demonstrations, such common during the 1980s. When the

were

earlier.

County Sligo-bom Colonel Michael

parade for his review. (Photograph by

Regiment

to

York

H1SI017 Roundtable.)

Irish

gun-running to Northern Ireland, but

New

York leaders were never

435

convicted. However, several Irish Americans with ties to Noraid were indicted,

An End and

for

tried,

and found guilty of

illegally

While outrage against the

its

smuggling weapons.

British

a Beginning

might have peaked in 1972, some

Irish

groups continued their support for unity for Ireland and those IRA prisoners who died during a hunger strike in circulation of the Irish People Irish Echo's nearly 50,000.

important

Irish

98 1. Yet Noraid had few members, and the

—only about 5,000, compared with the

Moreover, the IRA was criticized by a number of

Americans who deplored violence. In 1983, when the

Day parade committee veteran,

1

was small

selected Michael Flannery

and an outspoken supporter of the IRA

St. Patrick's

—a Noraid founder,

civil

war

— to be grand marshal. Governor

Hugh Carey, who had been grand marshal in 1976, said he would not march that Moynihan also refused to join the 1983 parade, and Terrence

year. Senator

Cardinal Cooke broke tradition by refusing to receive Flannery on the steps of St.

Patrick's Cathedral as the

marchers streamed by. After Flannery passed,

Cooke appeared and waved to the procession. Before mass, he talked to Flarmery

Michael Flannery, grand marshal of the controversial 1983 press in front of the Fifth the 1920s Irish

and was respected

community

St. Patrick's

Day parade, meets

the

Avenue reviewing stand. Flarmery emigrated from County Tipperary for

decades of service with various organizations in the

Nevertheless, Irish

and Catholic leaders boycotted the parade

Flannery had strong republican convictions.

He was

also

in

New York

that year because

one of the founders of

Irish

Northern

Aid (Noraid), which since 1969 had been the most high-profile American organization supporiing the republican

movement

m Nonhem

families of political prisoners lican

Army (Photograph by

Roundtable.)

Ireland.

For twenty years Noraid raised money

and repeatedly battled charges of gun-running Peter Dolan.

From

the collection of the

New

to the Irish

York

for the

Repub-

Irish History

inside the cathedral

436 The

Modem

Era

and expressed his disapproval

of violence

and terrorism.

From Dublin, Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald criticized those Irish Americans who gave money or encouragement to the IRA and regretted the selection of Flannery/'

Of course, many as democratic

Irish

Americans did not agree with Carey, Moynihan, and

The mainstream

other boycotters.

and reported

Irish

its letters

Echo supported the choice

were running 10

noted that Flannery was well respected in the his

many

activities.

"I personally like I

fourth,

Moynihan, but

IRA and Northern

and

I

don't think

of Flannery

in his favor/^

It

also

American community

for

it's time for him to cast stones. Some observers saw the division

Ireland as generational, one in

generations of Irish Americans

fifth

1

Speaking of Moynihan, one retired police officer declared,

think he and the others are talking English. "^^

over the

Irish

to

who had

which the

third,

assimilated into the

mainstream of American society demonstrated little interest in the controversy.

The more

militant supporters of Ireland's cause were found

second generations, while most ful stance"

about

affairs in

needed to ascertain

Irish

Irish

American

Northern

politicians

Ireland.'''*

American attitudes,

it is

among the first and maintained a "care-

Although further research

is

important to note that Noraid

^^

was founded by Irish immigrants like Flannery. One IRA and Northern Ireland cause that seemed to cross generational lines and even win support from many non-Irish was that of IRA member Joe Doherty, who became a folk hero of sorts. Doherty was convicted in 1981 on charges of killing a British army captain in an ambush. He escaped from a British jail and made his way to America, where he claimed political asylum when seized in 1983. In 1985 a federal judge agreed, but the Justice Department then tried to deport

him

for entering the

United States

illegally.

Doherty's friends

fought in the courts, and eventually his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. All the while Doherty remained in custody, in

New York and Pennsylvania jails.

In 1992 the court held against him, paving the February.

''*'

Irish

way

for his deportation in

Americans rallied to Doherty's defense, but so did many others.

The U.N. high commissioner for refugees filed a brief before the Supreme Court, as did more than 100 members of the U.S. Congress.^'' In New York David Dinkins and a number of politicians supported his cause during the 1989 mayoralty race. The next year the newly elected mayor, leading the 1990 St. Patrick's Day parade, wore a black shillelagh and a "Free Joe Doherty" button, and before he was deported the mayor visited Doherty to lend his support.''*' So popular was Doherty that in 1991 a storm of protest erupted when the Irish People dropped his column because he criticized an IRA decision to plant a bomb near a hospital. The Irish People then reversed itself and restored Doherty as a columnist.'''

Popular causes like Joe Doherty kept Irish traditions alive, but refusal to "talk English" was also reenforced by the great variety of social and cultural Irish organizations in

New York City. A glance at the Irish Echo over the years reveals

a vast

number

radio

shows and

present at the

St.

American organizations and

cultural events, including

437

The republican cause is nearly always Patrick's Day parade, which draws upward of 1 00,000 marchers

An End and

of Irish live

performances.

annually. During the controversial 1983 parade, for example the Fire Depart-

ment Emerald Society

A York

Irish

of the

New

York

Irish history

of Ireland."

culminated when the

New

History Roundtable was organized in 1984 and began publication

annual journal

of this

Get Out

carried their usual sign, "England,

growing interest in

volume

is

New York Irish History two years later. The publication

another example of the attempt to recapture the City's Irish

history.

The postwar years also witnessed the organization of Emerald Societies along occupational lines, with a Grand Council of United Emerald Societies being established in 1975.

The

Pipes and

Drums Band

Department Emerald Society celebrated

its

and the

cultural events have attracted thousands,

center and an Irish repertory theater.

When

United

know

little

States:

"There are few

much

as the it

American

on popular American and

New Irish

and dances being very popular, particularly Irish

was created

people in the United States. They

19 Rebecca Miller argues that the Irish

packed in

has an Irish arts

real Irish

it

go back to the beginning, to learn again what

rested mostly

now

city

Fire

New

to boost a declining Irish heritage

a victim of cultural disintegration, as

Irish

York City

the Irish Arts Center

about authentic Irish culture, and care

Chapters 19 and 20 focus on

New

was

by Brian Heron, an immigrant, he said in the

of the

thirtieth anniversary in 1992.

immigrants and some

at

Irish

The Irish American is Mayan Indian. We have to

less.

means identity

to be Irish."*'

and

culture. In chapter

York music scene in the 1950s

American music, with

big bands

Manhattan's City Center, which

Americans on Saturday

nights.

During the 1960s, she suggests, new immigrants helped stimulate a revival traditional Irish

music with many young Irish American

of

New Yorkers flocking

to learn the traditional steps.

In chapter 20 Charles Fanning surveys Irish in poetry, short stories,

American writing of recent years

and novels. He notes the

role of ethnicity in these

writings and sees a richness of themes in the various writers, attesting to a live Irish

American

Some

Irish

tradition.

Americans, such as a board

member

of the Irish Arts

the Bronx, dismissed the Irish ethnic revival as "faddish." "This is

horribly unauthentic, only shades

removed from green

new

Center in ethnicity

hats, green bagels

and

Not the stuff of nationhood." He concluded, "We've married Italian girls and moved to the suburbs." Yet an Irish troubadour who had performed in the city for 30 years said in 1986 that he was getting more reaction at his bar than he had ever before. "A wonderful number of people speak to me after green beer.

performances about Gaelic lessons and books to read by writers from Ireland

and music. "*^

Irish

Fanning note, but

it

American was

alive.

identity

might have changed, as Miller and

a Beginning

Irish

438 The

Modem Em

American ethnicity was no doubt most ahve among the first and second It was they who participated in and supported the city's Irish

generations.

American

cultural institutions, including such public displays as the St. Pat-

Day

rick's

Northern

parade.

New

But most Irish

Many

was mostly the

It

first

generation that rallied to the cause of

Ireland.

Yorkers are

members

have married non-Irish, no longer

of the third or greater generations.

live in

predominately

American

Irish

communities, and no longer partake of Irish American culture. With the decline of anti-CathoUcism and anti-Irish bigotry

new

after

World War

E, Irish

opportunities that their grandfathers never dreamed

with their

Irishness,

however vague, or could choose

of.

Americans found

They could

to ignore

it,

and

identify

many did.

The new wave of Irish immigrants arriving during the 1980s and the potential still greater numbers in the years ahead suggest the possibility of further reinforcement of Irish and Irish American culture. In chapter 1 8 Mary Corcoran finds that the New Irish reinforced old Irish American neighborhoods while at of

the

same time maintaining

In

1

their

own

and close connections

style

to Ireland.*''

988 their growing presence prompted the New York City Pohce Department

to estabUsh a

New Immigrants Unit to work with them and the Cathohc Church

make a special effort to assist them.*'' As Rebecca Miller notes, they already have made an impact on the New York music scene. In addition, they have contributed to a revival of Gaelic sports in the New York area.*^ The newcomers have also estabhshed their own newspaper, the Irish Voice, which carries extensive coverage to

of

immigration matters. In

the latest Irish

uncompromising

its first

issue (Dec.

5,

1987), the Voice said that

surveyed wanted to remain in America and that

it

in

working

it

to legalize their status.

Their numbers were too small to expect them to lead a revival of Irish

American

these

politics.

undocumented

ized by the

New

New York

But the Irish Voice was prophetic about the future of

aliens.

Irish,

most of

would be

won

The

Irish

Immigration Reform Movement, organ-

support, as Corcoran notes, from older Irish

New

Yorkers and succeeded in opening up a few visas for Ireland by means of a lottery included in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

was the inclusion

of the

More stunning

Mortison visas in the previously mentioned Immigra-

tion Act of 1990 that guaranteed Ireland 48,000 immigrant visas over a three-

year period and potentially

more after that.*^ While Ireland's economy remained

depressed in the early 1990s, conditions in to attract

emigrate to America.*^ But

immigration to social

New York City were not

new immigrants. Many Morrison

New

and economic

if

they did, the

York City and life.**

visas winners

a

renewed

to

new

Irish

American presence

in its

way was paved Irish

conducive

might not choose for

W Snyder

Robert

CHAPTER

17

The Neighborhood Changed THE

IRISH

OF WASHINGTON

HEIGHTS AND INWOOD SINCE 1945

LN .

1945, the accents heard

on the

streets of

Washing-

ton Heights and Inwood spoke more of Dublin than of Santo Domingo. doorbells were labeled Murphy than Morales. By the

Most

of the Irish

were gone, and the northern

1

990s,

tip of

all

that

More

had changed.

Manhattan had been

transformed into the largest Dominican neighborhood in the United States.

The

Irish

who

left

bear an enduring sense of loss for

all

they

left

behind. In

suburban living rooms, conversations about the old neighborhood swing from nostalgia for childhood to anger at

how

dangerous the old streets look today.

Parents lament that their suburban children will never have the street smarts

New York pavements. Then they thank God that they will never know the violence that engulfs the city today. The Irish who stayed find their turf seriously diminished. Some speak of the

acquired on

situation in military terms: a handful of old-timers are "dug in" east of

Broadway; a tavern remains as a "redoubt" on

Dyckman

metaphors are disturbing but not surprising. After

all,

Street.

The

military

social scientists analyze

when a new group when newcomers and old-timers clash. And the

changing neighborhoods in terms of the invasion phase appears and the conflict phase Irish of

northern Manhattan truly feel that their old world was invaded and

conquered by Latinos.'

But such comparisons cause more problems than they solve. They turn

440 The

Modem

Era

newcomers

into enemies, and

of places like the Heights

truth

make

was more complicated. The

neighborhood.

And

it

appear that Irish people were pushed out

and Inwood against Irish

their will, pure

and simple. The

were both pulled and pushed from the

they responded to both forces with their

own

interests

uppermost in mind, namely, the desire to provide good housing for their families and the desire to

live in a

community with

a distinctly Irish identity.

was the pull of suburbia, which caught so many city dwellers after World War II. The Irish of Washington Heights and Inwood were lured from the

The

city

pull

by suburban amenities: a lawn, a garage, quiet

streets,

and relaxation

at the

end of a day's work. Automobiles bought with good wages, highways built with

government money, and homes purchased with all

federally subsidized mortgages

enabled Irish of the financially secure working class and middle class to move

to tree-lined streets that their parents

had only imagined. The move

to the

suburbs would place these Irish in settings quite different from the city they

behind

—towns an hour or more's drive from the

city,

home, and not the neighborhood, would be the

in a single

left

where the nuclear family focal point of Irish

But the departure was consistent with what had led their ancestors to

identity.

work their way out of lower Manhattan, north to Vinegar Hill around Amsterdam Avenue and the west 130s, and finally to the Heights and Inwood: the drive for

good family living conditions.

The push was and 1970s made

the push of crime and disorder, life

in so

many

cities

whose

increase in the 1960s

dangerous and insecure. But the

Irish

response to crime was deeply influenced by something they valued long before

crime tore

at their

neighborhood: the desire to live in an identifiably Irish

community. In Washington Heights and Inwood, that meant or in an apartment building with

many

Irish families.

buildings might be populated by strangers

through concentration of their

ments

which the people they

in

just like

—

first

own numbers, dealt with

on

Jews,

living

on

a block

The adjacent streets or later Dominicans—but

the Irish established environa day-to-day basis

were mostly

them. Life in such enclaves seemed safe and secure. In their desire to

live in this

way, the Irish were no more insular than any other ethnic group.

Ironically, this relative isolation

would make them

feel less secure

when

crime and racial and ethnic diversity increased in their neighborhoods:

"Where boundaries between social groups are sharp and bridged by few social shared memberships in organizations, even a moderate crime rate will generate fear, which then further exacerbates the boundaries within the ties or

neighborhood." Contrary to the belief that close-knit neighborhoods people feel tial

ties to

residents

safe,

other ethnic communities in the neighborhood,

more

make

northern Manhattan's Irish communities, lacking substan-

fearful

blacks and Latinos.

The

made

their

because they reduced their residents' contact with isolated Irish could not distinguish benign neighbors

from threatening strangers.^

In a pattern repeated

between other ethnic groups

in other neighborhoods

threatened by crime, the lack of communication between Irish and Domini-

cans

—a

communication

failure of

responsible

for

which each group can be held

—heightened the fear that the Irish

In a tragic but familiar pattern, fear of crime

felt in their

partly

Washington Heights

and Inwood since

The more productive response, which would have been to unite with the majority of the newcomers in opposition to the violence and disorder that threatened them both, was never realized in a significant way. The story of this process is more than a piece of Irish history. It is an American in

many

neighborhoods and

many ethnic groups about how crime

cities since the 1940s. It is

and how that transformed the shape how the United States went from being an urban nation to a suburban nation. It is about how white people combined fear of crime and fear of people of color. And it is the ironic story of how a deep destroyed street

and texture

desire for

life

in

American

of ethnic culture.

It is

cities,

about

good housing and identifiably

neighborhood way of

life

that

The Heights and Inwood,

many

Irish

Irish

essentially

communities helped

to destroy a

Americans loved.

Manhattan north

a hilly farming area in the seventeenth century

and

of

1

55th

Street,

were

a battleground in the

American Revolution. During the nineteenth century, the old farms were bought up by wealthy New Yorkers and consolidated into suburban estates. The area looked and felt far from the bustle of midtown."'

Great changes began with the arrival of mass

transit.

The Broadway subway

opened service to 157 Street in 1904, and then on north through Inwood

to

Kingsbridge in the Bronx in 1906. Contrary to neighborhood boosters' wishes, it

did not stimulate the construction of "high class residence property." Instead,

modified old-law tenements were built, mostly east of Broadway.

It

was housing

that one Heights resident, Leo Shanley, called "grim, but comfortable." Into

moved

large

numbers

of Irish

Americans and

a smaller

number

of Jews.

it

"You

kept improving yourself," says Sister Veronica of Good Shepherd parish of the many Inwood Irish who moved up from parishes in Harlem." Another housing boom in the 1920s and the completion of the END subway line in 1932 gave the Heights and Inwood much of its present face: simpler housing to the east of Broadway, a boundary

marker

more

elaborate housing to the west.

for differences of class

and

Broadway

ethnicity.

also

became

Mostly middle

class,

Jewish streets lay to the west, more mixed Jewish and Irish working-class streets lay to the east.

Dyckman

the south from

Inwood to the

1

Street cut across

Broadway and separated the Heights

to

The George Washington Bridge, completed in the rest of the nation across the Hudson River.

north.

93 1, provided a motor route to

Great green parks— Highbridge, Fort Tryon, Isham, and Inwood Hill— softened the concrete and

The

made

Irish of the

the

new neighborhood a

desirable place to hve.^

neighborhood in these years were working-class people of

modest means. The area had

a reputation for being the

Irish of

own neighborhood.

made whites fear all people of color.

story with an Irish inflection, one that has been repeated for

441 The

home

of

many

transit

^

945

442

workers. Geographically there was not one Irish

The Modern Era

Inwood, but

many communities

community in the Heights and

that collectively formed an Irish archipelago.

In 1940, the Irish in the Heights and

Inwood numbered 23,900,

or about 11.7

percent of the neighborhood's population. (Jews, the largest other group in the

neighborhood, numbered approximately 73,100, or 35.8 percent of the population.)

Of the

Irish-born,

The broadest string of

many were immigrants from

Kerry and Mayo.^

community were established through a from Saint Rose of Lima at the southern end

outlines of the Irish

Roman Catholic parishes,

of the Heights to

Good Shepherd

to the north in Inwood. (To this day, former

residents do not say, "I lived in the south-central part of Washington Heights,"

but

"I lived in Incarnation parish.")

Within parishes, people typically identified

most with an area of a few blocks, defined by the homes of family and friends. "Your whole life was your neighborhood, your home, your parish, your block," recalls Buddy McGee. McGee grew up in Inwood after moving there in the 1940s from Vinegar Hill, which Irish residents fled after the riots in nearby Harlem in 1943. Mrs.

Norene Walck, nee Lane, who grew up

1930s and 1940s, recalled: "Your social comforting, you belonged."

life

in the Heights during the

stayed in the neighborhood.

A change of five blocks,

she said, could

It

was

make you

a stranger.^

Older

Irish

Americans

in the neighborhood

remember the 1930s and 1940s

as a benign period. For married adults, social life consisted of church events,

family gatherings with "kitchen music" on accordion or fiddle, Saturday night social visits to taverns

with neatly dressed children in tow, and the activities of

Ancient Order of Hibernians Division 1936. Young, single adults

went

3,

founded in northern Manhattan in

to bars, Irish dances at places like the Innisfail

Hall or Leitrim House, and Irish football matches at Gaelic Park just to the north in the Bronx. Children

swarmed through the

halls of

apartment buildings,

playing in and out of apartments whose doors were never locked, then surged outside for street games: box there

was the

"ritual," as

ball,

curb

ball,

McGee put it,

and

stickball.

At

least

of trips to the movies.

once a week,

The Indian rock

Inwood Hill Park offered plenty of opportunities for adventures, and Hudson and Harlem rivers beckoned to swimmers.^ Order was kept by a combination of beat cops and a network of watchful mothers who amounted to a neighborhood surveillance system. "You knew everybody, everybody knew you," recalled McGee. "You couldn't do nothing wrong, because Mrs. Murphy would see you and say, 'Mrs. McGee, 1 seen your son smoking a cigarette.' And that was it."* Asked in 1991 about those years, older people who lived in the neighborhood emphasize how everyone got along and no one feared crime. Yet during the Depression and World War II, Washington Heights and Inwood were hardly islands of peace. Irish-Jewish relations in the 1920s were distant. The Irish and Jews who moved into the neighborhood tended to cluster among their own kind shelters of

the

in particular buildings or

on particular

streets.

If

either group increased in

significant

numbers, the other often moved out. The situation deteriorated in

the 1930s for

many

tion for housing as

reasons.

Beyond simple anti-Semitism, there was competi-

more Jews

—including German refugees—moved into the

neighborhood. Working-class Irish resented the relative affluence of those Jews

who lived on the west side of Broadway. political insecurity over the decline of

Civil

Residents were also influenced by Irish

Tammany,

disputes over the Spanish

War in which many Jews supported the Loyalists and many Irish Catholics

supported Franco, and Irish-Jewish differences over Great Britain. To the Jews,

German

Jews, Britain was an opponent of Hitler to be ^° was an oppressor to be shunned. The pressure of these political and economic developments transformed Irish-Jewish relations from chilly to actively hostile. From the late 1930s through World War II, the neighborhood was scarred by violent acts of anti-Semitism. The main perpetrators were Irish youth gangs, particularly the Amsterdams and the Shamrocks, and the Christian Front and Christian Mobilizers, two ultra-right-wing groups influenced by the ideas of the radio priest Father especially the refugee

supported.

To the

Charles

Coughlin. Coughlin, a right-wing populist from Michigan, laced his

E.

Irish, Britain

writings and broadcasts with anti-Semitism.

The Front and Mobilizers appeared in the Heights and Inwood in 1939. From at Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's rout of Irish Tammany, from unemployment to international communism, the Front and the Mobilizers had a solution: blame the Jews. During the war years. Front competition for apartments to resentment

and Mobilizer blaming Jews

rallies

were succeeded by vandalism

for the war,

and

Irish

be wrong to conclude from such actions that liberal attorney

of synagogues, insults

gang attacks on Jewish youths." all Irish

It

would

were bigots. The staunchly

Paul O'Dwryer, for example, was a vigorous opponent of both

And some Irish residents of Washington Heights, young Mrs. Walck, had Jewish friends. Nevertheless, the antipathy toward Jews was shared by more than a small minority of the neighborhood's right-wingers and anti-Semites. like the

Irish.'^

Public pressure brought a solution of sorts in 1944, through a combination of aggressive policing, organization of Jewish defense units

and a condemnation leaders.

The end

of

World War

II

escorts,

further eased tensions, along with postwar

prosperity, civic groups organized to counter bigotry, political

and school

by Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish religious

of prejudice

and the emergence

consensus against anti-Semitism that made any association with

of a it

a

liabiUty.'^

Bitterness remained, however.

Council

of the

City of

New

A

report issued in 1954 by the Protestant

York called Catholic-Jewish relations in the

neighborhood "tenuous" and noted the prevalence of anti-Semitic Eastertime and Halloween.'''

Down into the

1990s, individual Irish

graffiti at

and Jews

in

the Heights and Inwood could be heard speaking of each other in unpleasant

443 The

Irish of

Washington Heights

and Inwood

since 1

945

reference point of

444 The

Modem

Era

life

and politics in northern Manhattan. Instead, both the Irish

and the Jews were defining their place largely by their relationship

to blacks

and

Latinos.

years brought better economic times for the transit workers,

The postwar

construction workers, firefighters, and police officers

who

gave the neighbor-

community so much of its flavor. The old sociability of the prewar resumed—with the addition, thanks to the baby boom, of many new Irish

hood's Irish years

American children. By 1950 the area's

Irish

population was up to at least 27,000, concentrated in

Incarnation parish in south-central Washington Heights and

Inwood. Modest numbers of eastern Heights and

where the

Irish

Inwood

Irish

Good Shepherd

were also scattered through the

that connected the

two

parishes.

were most concentrated, they numbered

of the population. But through their

networks

little

in

streets of the

Even in sections more than a fifth

pubs and parishes, and their

of

presence on the streets, they felt that their neighborhoods were very

much their

own.^^ Charles Walck,

who

lived in the Heights

between voyages as a merchant

how he and his friends enjoyed the freedom of the streets in their nighttime revels. "We used to start at 165th Street at Broadway— Kent House it used to be named—and work our way up to the Homestead. ... I mean, we had a regular routine on Saturday night. We'd jump seaman

in 1948

and 1949,

recalls

the Anchor Inn up on Broadway because they had a live band

Dyckman Street, usually end up around the Homestead

.

.

.

.

.

.

toodle up to

usually wander down

and end up in a place called Bradley's between 165th and 166th on the west

side

—

Amsterdam Avenue, an old Irish bar white-tiled floors, spittoons, sawdust sit in the back room and sing all night."'* As before the war, the neighborhood was still patrolled by beat cops who "knew everybody," one of whom was notorious for slapping any teenagers he caught smoking. The gravity of the offense and the acceptance of the penalty of

—

testify to a

low

"You

authority.

level of lawbreaking

didn't argue

he thought nothing

of walloping

him any

you

lip,

or give

Audubon

settled into

of the policeman's

He

didn't brutalize, but

you across the

ass

with a nightstick

if

you gave

And you didn't go home and tell your former Norene Lane, who married Mr.

a slap in the face.

parents, 'A cop slapped me!'" For the

Walck and

and the strength

with the cop on the beat.

an apartment on 169 Street between Amsterdam and

in 1955, the neighborhood

buzzed with mothers and children in the

middle of the baby boom.'** Further north, in Inwood,

much

as

it

life

had before World War

in the late 1940s II.

Out

of the

and early 1950s continued

crowded

little

linoleum-floored

apartments spilled waves of children. For the boys, there was the neighborhood's well-developed world of sports and street gangs.

McGee

recalls,

"Each block or

couple of blocks had a gang like the Alley Cats, the Rams, the Eagles. They were called gangs, but actually they

were

just

teams.

I

hung out with the guys on

Dyckman had a

who had

Street

different helmet.

job."^^

Some

guys

who

team down there

called the Alley Cats. Each

a pair of cleats, your father

were fighting gangs,

of the gangs

of "hard case"

a

you had

If

like the Eagles

fought for prestige or

girls.

guy

had a full-time

from Inwood,

"But that was with a

full

fist,"

McGee. "You very seldom saw anybody use a bat or a chain or anything. If you had a black eye or a cut on your face, you were a big man. 'Hey, I was

says .

.

.

in the rumble."'^°

The gangs had bravado, but stickball, football and basketball games settled more rivalries than rumbles. When rumbles did break out, they were often choreographed for maximum display and minimum damage "more bark than bite," says Kathleen O'Halloran, who grew up in Inwood and briefly belonged

—

to a

gang

—much to her father's displeasure. She recalls the typical encounter

as a case of "bluff, posture, girls

were expected

early as

throw the odd punch. "^' O'Halloran

to provide "support staff" for the boys

humanly possible." But

for her, the

overwhelming

recalls that the

and then marry "as characteristic of her

—204th Street and Tenth Avenue from 1945 to 1955, then Seaman Avenue and 218th Street until 1965 — was their Hibernian homochildhood neighborhoods

geneity.

They seemed

isolated

from the

rest of the city.

It

was not

that the Irish

were the only people in her vicinity. Around 204th Street and Tenth Avenue in 1950, the Irish were about a fifth of the population; around 2 1 8th Street and

Seaman Avenue The Irishness

in I960, they

by organizing her

At school,

cans.

were about 17 percent

of the neighborhood.^^

which was typical, was established contacts were with other Irish Ameri-

of O'Halloran's childhood, life

in

Ireland's national

so that her closest

Good Shepherd

anthem, "The

parish, her

day opened with the singing

Soldier's Song."

her in a decidedly republican version of Irish history. adolescent, she

went

where rock and

roll

neighborhood was

to Catholic

turous enough to find friends

neighborhood.

go

downtown

"I

life

first,

as an

parish

when

the

me a long time to figure out that there were Irish people." When she did, she was adven-

among Orthodox

and recreation were

Jews, blacks and Latinos.

satisfied

almost entirely in the

downtown until I was a teenager," she recalls. "To Times Square when I was 15 (in 1957) was an absolute

never went

to

—we were as green as grass.

mindblower

St. Jude's

took

other people in the world besides

O'Halloran's social

Out on the town

Youth Organization dances in

alternated with Irish folk dancing. "At

all Irish, it

of

At home, her family tutored

"^"^

But in southeastern Washington Heights, there were stirrings of change. Black real estate dealers bought up some of the small private homes in the area,

and operated them as overcrowded rooming houses catering to black and Puerto Rican tenants. Black and Puerto Rican superintendents began to appear in some

rooming houses that catered to white tenants. Puerto Rican families from Harlem and the east twenties in Manhattan began to move into the

of the

East

neighborhood.^'' Like the Irish and the Jews before them, blacks and Puerto

Ricans saw the Heights as a desirable neighborhood.

A move

there

was

a step

445 The

/rish 0/

Washington Heights

and Inwood

since

i945

One Reverend Perez, a Puerto Rican minister in a Presbyterian Church, many requests for information on Heights apartments. "This is one of

446

up.

The Moda-n Era

received

the few nice places where relatively poor people can live," he concluded.^''

By 1950, the population

of southern

third non-white. In the flux of arrivals

Washington Heights was almost one-

and departures, some

mothers' networks that kept order dissolved; the racial old-timers and black and Latino

newcomers meant

rifts

of the old informal

between the white

that they

would not be

study noted that delinquency rates in the southern and

rebuilt. In 1954, a city

most

eastern portions of the Heights were exceeded only by those of the city's

dangerous neighborhoods. In June 1955 the

city's

Youth Board, created

in 1948

to fight juvenile delinquency, extended its activities into the Heights all the to

Dyckman

way

Street.^^

For Irish residents, the arrival of blacks and Puerto Ricans, coupled with a rise in

gang activity and crime, made the streets seem threatening. As a

Mrs. Walck would go out to the candy store of the

at 9:45

child,

p.m. to buy the early edition

Daily News. By 1953, with gangs and robberies increasing, the routine

"It had gotten to the point that if I went out, when I would ring the bell downstairs and may father would walk out and talk to me as I was walking up the stairs, because things had happened on Now this was the place you ran up a million times when you the staircases. ^ were a kid. And all of a sudden you had to have this whole routine." No one set out a welcome mat for the newcomers. A report on Washington

began to

feel

came home,

dangerous.

I

.

.

.

Heights written for the Protestant Council of the City of

New

York in 1954

noted: "With the population mobility and the inroads of Puerto Ricans and

Negroes,

human

relations

problems have mounted. Several incidents were

reported, such as the throwing of an incendiary

bomb

into an apartment house

occupied by Puerto Ricans at 182nd Street and Audubon Avenue. Although the offenders were never apprehended,

community sentiment

attributes this inci-

dent as arising from the tensions between the Irish and Puerto Rican groups in the community.""^ In such an atmosphere, both the

newcomers and the

Irish

began to see themselves as aggrieved victims. To blacks and Puerto Ricans, the Irish

were an entrenched force that denied them their

neighborhood. To the

would transform

Irish,

right to live in a

good

the blacks and Puerto Ricans were invaders

who

their neighborhood.

poisonous state of the

Both claims were one-sided, but with the

streets, partisans of

any faction could find enough

to

substantiate their claims.

many Irish, a July night in 1957 marked a turning point for the neighborTwo Heights teenagers, Michael Farmer and Roger McShane, entered Highbridge Park to sneak an after-hours swim in the pool. The park, located on Amsterdam Avenue between 155th Street and Dyckman Street, with a pool at For

hood.

1

73rd Street, had been a flashpoint in the days of hostility between Irish and Jewish

youths. Lately

it

had become the focal point of

fights

between blacks, whites,

and Puerto Ricans. Inside the park they met the Egyptian Dragons, a gang

of

and a smattering of whites whose

south of the Heights.

447

McShane tried to escape but was

Washington Heights

assaulted. He staggered out of the park bleeding from stab When a taxi driver picked him up, he pleaded, "Find my friend." Pohce found Farmer mortally wounded, lying in a clump of bushes. He died in Mother

and Inwood since

blacks, Latinos,

The Dragons attacked.^^ Farmer was stabbed and beaten on the

turf lay

The Insh of

spot.

down and

chased

wounds.

Cabrini Memorial Hospital minutes after midnight. McShane, initially in critical condition, survived.'^°

The

between the Egyptian Dragons

police traced the incident to a dispute

and the

Jesters, a

mostly

Irish

group with a few black members that was more

a ball club than a gang. According to the

played a

game

The Dragons

of stickball

lost

with

but refused to pay up.

the Dragons retaliated: 40 Dragons

over the Harlem

chain and a padlock. The report that a

When

jumped 5

one 15-year-old

River,-

wound

Dragon stabbed

New

York Post, the two gangs had

50e per player riding on the outcome.

a bet of

the Jesters attempted to collect,

Jesters near the

Jester

Washington Bridge

was struck on the head with

a

required 15 stitches. Police also received a

Noting that there

a Jester in a separate incident.

were whites in the Dragons and blacks in the

Jesters, the police

argued that

Farmer's murder was not racially motivated. Neighborhood residents and gang

members, however, blamed the attack on ing in the neighborhood.

An anonymous

that the local police precinct

racial tensions that

had been increas-

source from the Youth Board charged

on Wadsworth Avenue was crude and inept

in its

responses to longstanding racial disturbances.^' It

would be wrong

killing over turf, as

gang conflict

at a

to describe the killing as either a racial slaying or a gang

if

the

two were

unrelated.

The

killing

was the product

time when gang identity was powerfully shaped by the

of a

racial

turf. It was no accident that most drawn from the Heights, were white, and that most of the Dragons,

and ethnic groups that dominated particular of the Jesters,

drawn more from the

streets bordering

As whites moved out

Latino.

Harlem

to the south,

of the southern Heights,

were black and

white youths

who

remained in the neighborhood joined predominantly black and Latino gangs to ally

themselves with the rising ethnic factions in their neighborhood. Black and

Latino youths

who moved into

largely white neighborhoods

would seek mem-

bership in mostly white gangs for similar reasons. In neighborhoods demarcated

by

racially defined turf,

such minimal integration did not undo the

racial

and

ethnic animosities held by gang members.

White residents observed that the majority

were would

of those accused in court

blacks and Latinos. Lacking friendly ties with blacks and Latinos that

have helped them distinguish between dangerous delinquents and oidinary teenagers,

many jumped to the conclusion that all black and Latino youths were

a threat.

The

killing of

Farmer and

its

direct relationship to

gangs and delinquency drew attention to the

trial.

mounting concern over

Eleven juveniles were sent

i

945

Seven other members of the Egyptian Dragons were

448

to reformatories.

The Modern Era

murder: Luis Alvarez and George Melendez, both

DeLeon from

bom

Dominican Repubhc, Charles Horton and Leroy

the

tried for

in Puerto Rico, Leonci Birch, both

African Americans, and Richard Hills and John McCarthy, both white. After a sensational

trial,

Alvarez and Horton were convicted of second-degree murder,

while Birch and DeLeon were convicted of second-degree manslaughter. Their sentences ranged from five years to

found not

all

Hills,

life.

McCarthy, and Melendez were

'^^

guilty.

A team of researchers sent into the southeast Heights by the New York City Community Mental Health Board tions to the incident.

interviewed 125 residents about their reac-

They found widespread

attitudes of "hopelessness, help-

lessness and fear," with little expectation that the underlying problem of crime

and gang violence would change. Many to solve the gang problem.

among the

ethnic lines:

The

criticized the police for their inability

reactions did not automatically follow racial or

children they interviewed were black and Puerto Rican

youngsters consumed with

fear,

and a young Puerto Rican who claimed

to

have

been friendly with Farmer. The researchers noted that many parents were beginning to keep their children indoors under supervision.

As

a result of the tension in the neighborhood there has been an increasing

restriction

upon the

activities of children.

This restriction has been growing

over the past three years, but was tightened up markedly by parents during the past

two weeks.

A

home both during to be in the home

considerable portion of parents

now keep

before dusk.

An

added restriction in the choice

occurring. Others are directing their children to run

and not to use the High

Some

their children at

the day and after dark. Others are compelling their children of friends is

away from groups

children interviewed stated that they refused to go out of their

and were

afraid to stay

of

boys

Bridge pool.

home

alone.

Some

children

now

carrying knives for safety. Both children and parents in

for the first

many

homes

time are

instances ex-

pressed hostihty to parents for being restricted and shut up.

The freedom

of the streets that

had once been so

attractive to a generation that

grew up in the Heights was coming to an end, as it eventually would for so many

New Yorkers.'''' For Mr. and Mrs. Walck and their young son, the murder had a decisive

"Two weeks

impact. "It

was

over.

son] and

It

later

was the

we had

out of the Heights," Mrs. Walck recalls.

we moved

end. ...

I

still

loved

it,

but

The Walcks

to get out of there."

would lead them to was not easy for her

in a process that

settle in the

New

to depart:

Jersey. It

apartment in Washington Heights,

I

cried."

I

knew we had Jimmy

left for

Queens, the

first

[her

step

suburban town of Dumont,

"When we were

leaving that

^

As the 1950s ended, there was no mistaking

that

Washington Heights was

a changing neighborhood. In a report on the area written for the Columbia-

Washington Heights Community Mental Health

Project,

Lee A. Lendt ob-

served that the arrival of Latinos of the

Heights was causing

—and above

many white

—in the southern part

449

residents to reevaluate the imaginary

The Insh oj

all

blacks

own community and

boundary line they drew between their

black Harlem to

In the 1950s

it

was common

Harlem begins." But

to say that

"Washington Heights stops where

as blacks struggling into the

working and middle classes

began moving further north into the Heights, the boundary line between Harlem

and the Heights grew vague.

A black family living at

dam Avenue would

feel

Lendt discovered, a

common

lucky to have

was no longer

identity

moved

into

156th Street and Amster-

Washington Heights. But as

white reaction would be to revise the southern

border of Washington Heights. it

If

blacks lived on

in the Heights.

And

1

56th Street, whites thought

so they preserved the Heights' white

—at least in their minds.

Lendt also noticed a gulf between the newest arrivals and community leaders

was "most astonishing," he wrote, yet "only a few of the seemed to display any knowledge of the Negro community. It was generally admitted with regret that a large part of the area was inhabited by Negroes. Little, if any, contact had been made with these people in the Heights.

It

leaders interviewed

—

by either

—

political or non-political leaders." (93). Evaluating the situation in the

Heights, Lendt concluded that the great distance between blacks and whites

had tion

to be bridged. "It

must take

seems obvious that some understanding and communica-

place between the residents of Washington Heights and their

southern neighbors,

if

the transition to integration of Negroes into

a predominantly white

what

is

now

community is to take place with a minimum of conflict.

There will be some confHct, no doubt, no matter what the preparation, but the present fear-induced isolation expressed by the leadership group in Washington

Heights will certainly have to change" costs of "fear- induced isolation," but

(99). Lendt was right about the long-term wrong about the certainty that it would

be overcome.

The I960

census, counting as Irish anyone Irish-bom or American-born of

one or both Irish parents,

listed

1

8,971 Irish in the Heights and Inwood, a decline

from 1950. Incarnation and Good Shepherd were

still

the southern and northern

anchors of the community. But the southern end of the Heights was losing Irish inhabitants, as the Irish

moved north

to escape the changes in their old

neighborhood.'^^

Inwood remained

relatively

untouched by the changes in the Heights. True,

in the early 1950s the opening of the

Dyckman Houses public housing in among some of the Irish that

northeastern Inwood had prompted muttering "they," the blacks, were

coming to

drive

them from Inwood.'^^ But

middle 1960s in Inwood, the continuities with Terrace

was

Jim Carroll

Washington Heights

and Inwood

the south.

still

ritzy

and Inwood Hill Park

earlier

still

as late as the

decades were strong. Park

offered

woodland adventures.

—hustler, hipster, basketball player and future writer—moved in at

the age of 13 in 1963. In his book. The Basketball Diaries, he noted, "hallways

since

^945

i"

450 The

Modem

Era

my

building and each park bench filled with chattering old Irish ladies

either gossiping or saying the rosary, or

men

long time here or younger ones

right off the boat huddling in floppy overcoats in front of drug stores

Commie

discussing their operations, ball scores or the

threat.

Guys

my

age

All-American, though most of the various crowds do the beer-

strictly

drinking scene on weekends."^'

The 1970 census recorded

a drop in the Irish

American population

of the

Heights and Inwood, both native and foreign-born: from 18,971 in I960to 12,919 in 1970 as

more people moved

had

to the suburbs. In earlier decades, the Irish

established their enclaves within the neighborhood; now, with suburban housing available, they headed west across the

north to Rockland County,

Jersey, or

Hudson

New York.

communal environment of the city they left behind,

the intensely

New

to Bergen County,

Although such suburbs lacked they fulfilled

the long-standing desire for good family living conditions. Moreover, they were

removed from the heterogeneity of the city and its increasing crime. Those in Manhattan continued moving north. Incarnation parish now contained a low percentage of the area's Irish, who were relocating in the upper end of the Heights, north of 1 87 Street for the most part east of Broadway and

far

who remained

—

—

in Inwood.'^°

By the

early 1970s,

Inwood

Irish

were more and more disturbed by the

increases in crime, disorder, and racial conflict that swept

American

cities.

Inwood until the 1 980s remained relatively safe compared with the truly violent areas of New York, for its crime rates well below those for the city as a whole. In 1970, the 34th Precinct had 11 murders per 100,000 people, while the city

had But It

15; it

the 34th had 616 robberies per 100,000 people, while the city had 938.

was

did

increasingly perceived as a dangerous place."*'

little

good to

streets of the 1930s

tell

the Irish

who remembered

the relatively peaceful

and 1940s that the northern Heights and Inwood were

than most crime-ravaged city neighborhoods. They

knew without

that they lived in a state of danger greater than they had ever

did not like

safer

being told

known, and they

it.

The old tensions with the Jews, and the gang fights of the by comparison. Those

Irish

who were

1950s, looked

tame

involved in the conflict with the Jews

were mostly dishing it out. The gang fights of the 1950s with blacks and Latinos were most

likely to involve adolescents. In contrast, robberies, muggings,

and

much wider range of people, especially the elderly. And burglaries feel vulnerable even in their own homes.

rapes struck a

made people It

was not

and the raw every

home

just the reality of

crime that hurt.

fear that seeped into every

It

comer of

was daily

life.

News of crime

entered

—in family conversation, in newspapers, and on television. Almost

every decision about the world outside involved riding the

also the perception of crime

subway

to going out to

buy

a block in northern Manhattan once

a

newspaper

some

calculation of risk, from

late at night.

At

its best, life

on

made many Irish feel like part of one big happy

family.

Now

fearful of the

they

felt

sound

more

like vulnerable individuals

of footsteps

behind them on a dark

—alone,

and

isolated,

street.

Fear of crime combined with a rush of changes that signaled the end of

life

Inwood Irish had recently known it: graffiti, loud street noise, the turmoil of the Vietnam War (which took a large number of Inwood men), and the challenge of living with an increasing number of Latino neighbors. Political conflicts raged between old-timers and newcomers."*^ as the

Old sources of crime.

of stability like the police

Of course, crime was

a

problem

seemed inadequate against the

from one precinct could not be expected to bring tranquility

Manhattan

all

threat

and nation. Officers

for the entire city

to northern

by themselves. Nevertheless, as crime increased, some Washing-

ton Heights and Inwood residents looked at the police with a mixture of desperation, disappointment, and skepticism. In

Inwood and many other places,

frustration with police failure to prevent crime contributed to a skepticism

toward government institutions that mushroomed into the antigovernment

mood

of the 1980s

and 1990s.

From the Irish perspective, As

in so

lost in the

Inwood

the neighborhood became smaller and less secure.

many other city neighborhoods,

the gregarious

ways

of the 1940s

Great Fear of the 1960s and 1970s. The newcomers

significant ties to the Irish level of anxiety

were

who made many

threatened were largely Dominicans. Arriving in the neigh-

Irish feel

borhood when crime was already a painful

community,

fact of life

their presence

among the Irish. Unfortunately,

the Dominicans and the Irish to

The Dominicans,

all

that they

and

to raise the

alarm blinded both

had in common.

natives of an impoverished island nation,

United States in increasing numbers

without

living

was bound

this sense of

after the

came

to the

mid-1960s. Like the Irish

who

defined themselves through their struggle with imperial Britain, the Domini-

cans were deeply influenced by life under the imperial domination of the United States

—expressed

Roman

Catholic

as recently as the 1965 "intervention." Both shared the

faith,

although significant numbers of Dominicans were also

Pentecostals. Like the Irish before them, the

work

their

way

returning to the

Dominicans came

to

New York to

out of oppressive poverty (although often with an eye to

Dominican Republic once they had acquired

Washington Heights and Inwood, they found many

a stake.) In

of the amenities that

had

lured the Irish decades before: available housing, large parks, and convenient

mass

transit.

Many Dominicans found low-wage work in service industries and

manufacturing, the late-twentieth-century's version of the ditch digging and

domestic service jobs that had occupied so

Monsignor Thomas Leonard, who grew up later

many

Irish

150 years

in an Irish parish in

New

earlier.

York and

ministered to the Irish and Dominicans in Incarnation, found the Irish and

Dominicans "so

alike, it's

uncanny."*^

But few had the knowledge of both

Monsignor Leonard

Irish

and Dominicans that enabled

to recognize their shared traits.

45 The

The Dominicans who

Irish of

Washington Heights

and Inwood

since

'9'?5

452

moved

The Modern Era

wrenching adjustment from the Caribbean to the United States

to the Heights

first-generation Irish

and Inwood were first-generation immigrants making a

—much as the

immigrants in the Five Points had made their own difficuh

adaptation to American life a century earher. In a sense, when the HeightsInwood Irish looked at the Dominicans, they glimpsed the shadow of their own ancestors. If they did not like what they saw, it was partly a testament to the

enormous

difference

between the Irish Americans

of the twentieth century

and

those of the nineteenth.

To complicate matters, the Irish and the Dominicans lacked a common A weekly newspaper edited by Barry Dunleavey, Heights-Inwood, experimented with bilingual editions. They had little success.'*'' language.

The also a

and cultural distance between the

social

Irish

and the Dominicans was

measure of the failure of civic institutions to bring the two groups together

to nurture a sense of

Democratic

common

ground. In the Heights and Inwood the old

political organizations failed to integrate people of color into

political life as they

had previous generations of white immigrants. The political

clubs were not really interested in the task; moreover, they were no longer a significant source of

power that provided openings

The urban community

black and Latino

for

politi-

Mayor John V. Lindsay deliberately sought to by-pass the old Democratic machines and create alternative sources of power and social services in city neighborcians.

new

hoods. These

action programs of the Great Society and

institutions

—often

rooted in ethnic or activist politics

motivated by individual groups or issues

—were not well suited to the task of

bringing different peoples together to form a

common

agenda out of disparate

concerns.''^

much more

Religious institutions were not Irish

effective at bringing together the

and the newcomers. Although some black and Latino youths attended the

parochial school system,

most attended public schools

acquaintance with young Irish people

who were

—and were thus beyond

concentrated in the parochial

system. Efforts by local churches and political leaders were ultimately inadequate, in part because of Irish

and Dominican indifference and

in part because

many

Dominicans, hopeful of moving back to the Dominican Republic, lagged in

committing themselves

to

permanent residence

in

New York."^

from increases

Inwood

Irish

in

who

suffered

most

crime were the black and Latino poor. But by the 1970s,

when

In northern Manhattan, as elsewhere in the city, those

walked through Incarnation parish

to the south heard Spanish

accents on the streets and saw bodegas on the comers, they sensed trouble.

Inwood, especially the streets east of Broadway, seemed next in line for great changes.

Tom

Mullany,

who moved

into

Inwood

after

marrying

at

Good Shepherd

in

1963, recalls that by 1970 reports of crimes and store robberies began to be the fearful stuff of

everyday conversation.

toward parishes to the south and

When

he looked from Good Shepherd

east, the future

looked ominous. "In Queen

he

of Martyrs,"

"we were aware of changes there. And in St. Jude's." was a sense that the circle was starting to

recalls,

Again, the miliary metaphor: "There

form and encircle the

One

area."**^

safe to stroll

home

sends people

—

was the old Inwood bar scene it no longer to tavern late at night. "The fear of violence noted the weekly newspaper Heights-Inwood in

from tavern early,"

1974, "and

more bartenders

midnight."

One

know after Two of them

are locking out persons they don't

short article listed four holdups and shootings.

took place in the

month

Cannon's Pub on

Dyckman Street and a bartender and suspect shot in a holdup

at the

of July 1974:

an off-duty policeman shot in a holdup

at

Vinegar Hill Bar at Tenth Avenue and West 215th Street. The article also

recalled a shootout that thwarted a holdup at the Park

Gate Bar

and Arden Street in February 1973, and an apparent holdup

at the

at

Broadway

Inn Between

Sherman Avenue in October 1972. There, owner James Rayill and wounded his brother and

Bar and Grill on 207th Street and

gunmen

shot and killed bar

co-owner

Brian.'**'

Bartenders became reluctant to

work the night shift, and bar owners installed life was transformed as peak business

locks and buzzers on their doors. Social

hours shifted from nighttime to 4—6 p.m. "Everybody who's at a bar at night

customer Heights-Inwood interviewed

afraid," said a

at

is

O'Donnell's on West

Street. "Whenever the door opens, everyone looks around.""*^ As O'Halloran recalls it, "The changes seemed to come awfully fast once it started, it was not gradual one day it was all of us, then the next day it was the Dyckman Houses, then after that, all of a sudden you wouldn't go to Dyckman Street for two weeks, and you'd go down there and there'd be a Spanish sign up there where an Irish deli used to be." Among some of the Irish

207th

—

.

.

.

—

there

a hint of bitterness towards those

is

diminished the

The sense conflict

Irish

community and

of siege in the

who

left,

as

if

as native

The

New

Irish

their departures

its security.^°

neighborhood was heightened by the cultural

between the old-timers and Latino newcomers. The

battleground.

blamed the Dominicans

for

streets

making them

became

filthy,

a

much

Yorkers had blamed the immigrant Irish for fouling the streets

in the nineteenth century. But the loudest complaints

Dominicans blasted

were about noise.

When

where you could virtually feel the sound waves, older residents were infuriated. Whatever the motive for such sonic display

their

music

at levels

—a territorial assertion, delight in a high-tech music system that

symbolized achievement of the good

pubhc order It

—

it

life

in

America, or alternative concepts of

bred hostility between the Irish and the Dominicans.

also put the police in the almost impossible situation of being asked to

mediate a culture war. "This clash," the police reported to a municipal task force

Irish

0/

Washington Heights

of the first things to go

seemed

453 The

on the Heights and Inwood

in 1978, "at the risk of over-simplification, is

the gap between the older, established but smaller

community

that remains,

with their intransigently traditional and vocal views, unable to comprehend the

andlnwood

since

J945

norms, traditions and customs of the more recent

454 The

Modem

Era

dominant (population)

is

This

arrivals.

and

later

not compelled to assimilate as others have in the past

due to their great numbers.

.

.

.

The

police are looked to as a buffer in settling

the societal differences, often occupying enormous police time and resources,

sometimes defying categorization and

definition."^'

The

police report grasped

the difficulty of mediating cultural disputes between different ethnic groups,

but as a history lesson

it v^^as

The belief that new immigrants were

incomplete.

"not compelled to assimilate as others have in the past" overestimated the assimilation of the older generations in the neighborhood.

It

also

showed no

sense of the wrenching conflicts that accompanied earlier immigrants' adjust-

ments

to

American

life,

particularly those that involved the Irish: fights over

public education, the Draft Riots and Civil

War

hostility to Britain in

two world

wars, and conflicts with the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s.

The

of Washington Heights and Inwood — along with their police —were living through a classic American dispute between natives and Irish

officers

immigrants. Although such episodes have never been pleasant, the participants

and Inwood might have taken some comfort in the knowledge

in the Heights

that they are not unprecedented and eventually resolved. But the shortness of their

own memories and

a tendency to romanticize earlier days in the city

saw

increased Irish residents' sensitivity to the problems and dislocations they

around them.

Cathy Finnerty, born

in

1

964 to a Jewish mother and an

proud to spend her childhood in the integrated of

Dyckman

Irish

Catholic father,

houses,

felt

the pace

change in the neighborhood quicken in the middle 1970s. Finnerty and her

sister devised routes to their dirt of

Dyckman

Street

1976, she felt shame. "I

home

that enabled visitors to avoid the noise

and Nagle Avenue.

remember being

When

so incredibly embarrassed about the

we lived. These were my

neighborhood, feeling so ashamed that this was where

suburban

relatives,

and there were

all

and

her relatives visited in July

these kids out on the street blasting their

It just seemed like a ghetto, it felt like we lived And I could tell that my cousins were really uncomfortable, that we were really poor, and just feeling so ashamed. "^^

music, and firecrackers going off. in the ghetto.

they thought

For many, the pressures of neighborhood that rocked Inwood in the 1970s

were too much. They left for the suburbs. "The neighborhood started changing,"

McGee

recalls,

"and a

lot of

guys were finally able

— they had

jobs as cops,

firemen, construction workers, in other words they had fairly decent wages

they said

let's

—so

get the hell out of the city and go rear our kids in the country,

away from the changing neighborhood. And a lot of them went to Jersey, up to Bergen County, a lot more went to Long Island. Wherever the housing was reasonable.

A

"^^

year of moonlighting for Fordham

Cab brought

in

enough money

downpayment. Husbands and wives quarreled over whether whether

to

for a

move, and

to wait until the children finished school before leaving. Visits to

who had already moved out brought no end to the discussion. "You'd go MuUany recalls, "the first question w^hen you were walking

friends

out visiting,"

through the door

—even before you had your coat —was 'When are you going off

Why subject the

to get out of there?

Ethnic diversity alone

an

earlier generation.

"And

who

the Dominicans. "^^

What many of

it

with the Jews in

"We were

just as

the Irish found unbearable

of crime, ethnic diversity,

unpopular as

was the

fear that

and the absence

of

between themselves and the Dominicans. The gulf between the

and the Dominicans,

strangers

learned to share

settled in the Heights.

emerged from the combination Irish

all,

don't kid yourself," recalls Michael Cohn, a Ger-

man-Jewish refugee

significant ties

after

seem both

alien

for

which both groups

are partly to blame,

made

and physically threatening.

number of the Irish had disliked their Jewish them as economic and political competitors, not as street toughs, and with some reason. The Jews of Washington Heights posed no challenge to the Irish domination of the streets. The new Latino neighbors were different. Young and growing in number, with their share of Decades

earlier, a significant

neighbors. But they stereotyped

tough young men, their presence challenged the neighborhood. For some of the

Irish residents' rule of the

was enough to push them to the suburbs. And even for those whose departures were more a case of being pulled from the neighborhood by the lure of lawns and neat little houses, it was enough to make Irish, it

the departure feel like a hasty retreat.

Nevertheless, the Irish departure from the Heights and Inwood was also a tribute to the jobs

modest but

gratifying prosperity of Irish Americans.

to the suburbs. Fortified

labor,

city,

with

of their its

unions and their professions

neighborhood networks of

life

and

without suffering any economic disadvantage. The prosperity they en-

joyed in the decades after World

New

and

gave Irish city-dwellers the option of moving

by the security

they could afford to leave the

of

Unionized

with solid and steady paychecks, combined with the growing ascent of the

Irish into professional occupations,

its

York

City, but that

War

same

II

may have been

rooted in the

economy

prosperity enabled the Irish to leave the city

heterogeneity altogether.

Rockland County

in

New York,

easy access to the city by highway, for police officers

Quirm,

and

who remained

Nanuet

in

firefighters

in

with

its

became

relatively inexpensive housing

and

a popular destination, particularly

compelled by law to

Inwood, has noted the result

Rockland County: "Walking out

of

mass up

live in-state. Eileen

when there

visiting friends in is like

being back

in the neighborhood."^''

By 1980, the Irish and Jewish presence that had once defined the Heights and Inwood was fading before the new Latino ascendancy. Even the German Jews of

Washington Heights, who clung to their neighborhood, declined by 56

percent,

from 24,226 in 1960

Irish 0}

Washington Heights

and Inwood

kids?'"^'*

—in the person of Dominicans—did not drive the Irish

from the neighborhood. They had,

455 The

to 10,507 in 1980.

Those who remained clustered

since J

945

the northwest section of the Heights along Fort Washington Avenue,

much

456

iri

The Modern Era

as the Irish clustered in Inwood, leaving the southern part of the neighborhood

Dominicans and other

to

diminished to

1

less rapidly,

1,718 in 1980.

Latinos.^''

by 38 percent

The numbers of the Irish as a whole in the same years, from 18,971 in 1960

The Irish, concentrated in the working class, were less likely money to move to the suburbs. Those

than their Jewish neighbors to have the Irish

who stayed in the neighborhood often stayed because they could not afford Those who remained moved within the Heights and Inwood to areas

to leave.

with the most

and the fewest Latinos.^* Since the early years of the century,

Irish

the Irish had been the inhabitants of the simple apartments east of Broadway.

Now,

flight

from neighborhood change, coupled with some measure

security, led

Broadway, like

to the

Inwood was reduced

to

one tiny

Ironically, the contraction

community years, when

of financial

more polished streets north of Dyckman and west of Park Terrace. The Hibernian archipelago of the Heights and

them

island.'^'

and consolidation

of the

Heights-Inwood

Irish

more densely Irish than those of earlier were spread more widely across northern Manhattan. In

created neighborhoods

the Irish

1950, the Irish had averaged about 20 percent of the population in the census tracts

around Incarnation and Good Shepherd. In 1980, with only a small

number

of Irish left

around Incarnation and most of the remainder squeezed

into the census tracts west of

Broadway around Good Shepherd, they averaged

thirty percent of the population.^'° Yet Irish, it

was hardly

exclusive.

Some 27

American-born individuals, children

of

if

Inwood was becoming more densely

percent of the "Irish" inhabitants were

one

Irish parent plus

another national-

Good Shepherd school yearbook, where "Hispanic" names appeared under "Irish" faces and "Irish" names appeared

ity.

Signs of intermarriage crept into the

under "Hispanic"

faces.*^"'

York

—often seen as a barometer of —reeled under a new threat: the trade in

The Heights became

a center for the sale of the drug, partly

In the mid-1980s the Heights

working and middle-class crack cocaine.

New

and Inwood

because the George Washington Bridge gave buyers easy access to the neighborhood. Dominicans were prominent in the trade, usually with other Latinos and African Americans as business partners and suburban whites as customers.^^

Of course, drugs were always present in the Heights and Inwood if you consider alcohol a drug. Alcoholism had long been a problem in Inwood, where some residents bragged that there were

1

10 bars in 10 square blocks.^"* But the violence

that surrounded the crack trade brought neighborhood crime to unprecedented levels.

Armed

robberies increased, and even

if

they remained below citywide

they brought the level of fear in the neighborhood to the area's murder rate began to climb. In the late Precinct

became one

were 103 murders

of the

most murderous

in the 34th

1

new

levels.

Worst

rates,

of

all,

980s and early 1 990s, the 34th

in the city. In 1990 alone, there

—a murder rate of 52 per 100,000 inhabitants at

when

a time

the citywide rate hovered around 30. Lurid reports of crack and

became

violence in the Heights

a journahstic staple.

Most murders and

the

worst ravages of crime and the drug trade were concentrated in the southeastern portion of the precinct, around 162d Street, from which the Irish had long departed. Dominicans, living at the epicenter of the drug wars, suffered

from the violence. But reports

shadow over the

rest of

of gunfights

most

and robberies cast a frightening

northern Manhattan, including the remaining Irish

'^'^

areas.

The changes that afflicted New York in the decades after World War II struck with cruel force in Washington Heights. To paraphrase a

comment about

some ways it seemed that wherever New York was going, Washington Heights and Inwood got there first. True, the neighborhood did not decline into the empty lots of the South Bronx. But the pain of Washington Heights and Inwood seemed to indicate that in the future, the average level of prosperity, security, and justice in the city would be lower than it had been in another

city, in

the past.

Poverty spread through streets that were once the epitome of working-class and middle-class

Avenue

New

York.

in the Heights

The soHd comfort

of areas like

upper Fort Washington

and Park Terrace in Inwood obscured the growing misery

in the rest of the neighborhood. In 1989, a study

commissioned by the Northem

Manhattan Improvement Corporation revealed greater-than-imagrned the Heights and Inwood: high levels of poverty elderly, a

among

distress in

single-parent families

and

high birth rate, a large foreign-bom population making the always difficult

adjustment to

New York City,

overcrowded schools, and sweatshops.''^

The response in the Inwood of the late 1980s, as in the Heights of the late 1950s, was to draw a boundary that excluded the people and the trouble to the south. As Sergeant Robert Parente of the 34th Precinct noted, "If you're from Washington Heights, you probably think of Inwood as just a section of the neighborhood. But if you're from Inwood you're more likely to think of it as separate. That's mainly because people don't want to be associated with Washington Heights' reputation as the crack capital of the world."'^'' Former residents

looked on with a mixture of sorrow, confusion and anger. From her office in

New

Jersey,

Mrs. Walck can look across the Hudson to the Heights. Even at a

distance, she recognizes familiar buildings.

and

is

disturbed by

what she

have

sees. "I

On occasion she returns a

for a visit

problem that the neighborhood

when I go

changed so much," she

says. "I really do.

and see

always wanted to go back there and say stop

was

it

now.

beautiful,

.

it

.

.

I've

I

have a problem

could have been beautiful for you,

too."^'^

But the Heights and Inwood could not be the same neighborhood Irish

and the Dominicans because the

in there

this, this

city of the 1990s

for

was not the

both the

city of the

1940s. Over the course of those fifty years. New York had changed enormously. The manufacturing base that sustained its working class declined. Its lower

middle class

felt

increasingly insecure.

Its

middle class fled to the suburbs.

Its

457 The

Irish oj

Washington Heights

andlnwood

since JS'fS

458 The

Modem Em

manufacturing base declined.

Its

poor increased in number.

Its social

and education system were stretched to the breaking point. increased to catastrophic levels.

themselves.

Its

services

crime rate

Its

increasingly diverse people fought amongst

When New Yorkers looked around in the

1990s, they

saw pervasive

evidence of social decay, from the homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks to the bars bolted across

The

difference

when

apparent

apartment windows to keep out

between the

city

and neighborhood

burglars.^'*

and today

of yesterday

is

departed Inwood Irish meet with today's remaining residents.

O'Halloran recalls a neighborhood reunion in 1984. The talk flew conversation was about the past

fast,

but the

—the present held no common bonds. "You'd

say 'What are you doing now?'" recalls O'Halloran, "and that takes up two lines.

And then it's 'You remember when?' with nostalgia weighing the whole thing." Good Shepherd parish held in 1987.^^ As younger people leave for the suburbs, Inwood's Irish community is defined more and more by older people. "The kids in Rockland and New Jersey," says Sister Elizabeth Tiemey of Good Shepherd, "spend their time worrying about Mom back here. Then they take her out to the suburbs for the weekend, but she Similar scenes occurred at a reunion for

can't wait to get

back to her place." For so many, she

says, the lure of "the

church, the neighbors" and "familiar surroundings" keep

neighborhood. As Eileen Quinn, a

"Taking

woman

"This

is

our neighborhood, this

Rockland County or a place

is

it,

our parish," says McGee. "And most of us

so

many

people,

in Jersey,

I

You could

wouldn't take

me

give it.

.

.

It's

.

house out in

a

homelike, you

you grew up in the neighborhood. There

friendships here, friendships that last years and years. family.

in the

me out of Inwood would be like taking the Pope out of the Vatican."^°

that are here, like myself, wouldn't leave.

know

them rooted

long active in local politics puts

It's

like

are great

an extended

"^^

As the 1990s began, people like McGee were a decreasing portion of Inwood's population. The 1990 census counted almost 200,000 people in Washington Heights and Inwood; 67 percent were of Hispanic origin,

1 1

percent African

Americans. The 18.7 percent "white non-Hispanics" in the neighborhood included both the Irish and the Jews.

ventured that

all

with more in common. "They're

As the

One

older Irishwoman,

the changes in the neighborhood just like

Nora Goodwin,

the Jews and the Irish

us now," she says, "nearly extinct."^"

history of Irish-Jewish relations in the neighborhood shows, ethnic

conflicts in

New York are not fixed and unchanging.

councilman, Stanley

E.

meetings

of the

In the 1990s, a Jewish city

Michels, was representing the Irish of Inwood. In stark

contrast to the dark days of bigotry in World at

left

War

II,

he was warmly welcomed

Ancient Order of Hibernians and Good Shepherd

ceilis.

Relations between the Irish and Latinos are a different story. At their worst,

they resemble the dynamic of siege within siege that the Irish poet Seamus

Heaney observed

in northern Ireland. There, a Catholic

minority

is

besieged by

by the

a Protestant majority that is besieged

larger

Cathohc population

of

Inwood had its own version: a small Irish American community felt besieged by a larger Dominican community that felt itself despised by the rest Ireland.

of the

United

States. In

such situations, where

all feel

threatened, there

is little

459 The

Irish of

Washington Heights

and Inwood

since

^^

room for communication and less for empathy. The full weight of this tragedy fell on one Irish family in October 1991. A mother and father, long-time residents of Inwood who met in Hughie's Bar on 207th Street, went out to celebrate their nineteenth wedding anniversary. They left behind in their apartment on Isham Street two daughters, ages 13 an 17. When the daughters' 14-year-old friend arrived with two little children in tow, two Spanish-speaking men armed with a knife and a gun forced their way into the apartment behind them. They ransacked the apartment and raped the three ^*

teenage

girls.

In the days that followed,

much was

The

A

revealed.

"shocked and upset" that even though he was

at

Dominican neighbor was next door, he heard no

home

blame at her parents, for Her mother now vowed to leave. In court, one of the accused men confessed that he had already robbed and raped in as many as 10 households of Dominican immigrants. And the girls' father asked a question that goes to the heart of crime's blight on Washington Heights, Inwood, and all noise.

oldest daughter leveled a small part of the

not moving out

city

life.

earlier.

"Do we have

to isolate

one another?" he asked. "Do

we have

to

continue to run?"^'^ Ironically, the Irish

who remain

in

Inwood probably have

a better-developed

sense of dealing with ethnic and racial diversity than their cousins in the suburbs,

who live in more homogeneous environments. Occasionally, such Irish

Inwoodites and the newcomers achieved an inclusive sense of community:

Frank Hoare, an

memorial service store;

Irish

American Democratic

for Israel Ortiz, a

district leader

Carlos Estevez and Joseph Atif, an African American, coming to the rescue

of Charlotte

O'Brian in a mugging; elderly Irish invited to Dominican weddings

in Incarnation parish; the congenial integration of Coogan's bar at

speaking at a

Puerto Rican grocer murdered in his Inwood

and restaurant

169th Street and Broadway. Such scenes testified to the best that was possible

and

their neighbors in

there were not

enough episodes

for the Irish

Washington Heights and Inwood. like

them

Tragically,

to reverse currents of fear

and

separation.^''

The

solution to this impasse, in

Inwood and elsewhere,

decrease levels of crime, although that institutions, lines of

would

help.

communication and shared

It is

is

not to simply

also to create civic

political interests

between

communities like those of the Irish and Dominicans that reduce the uncertainty and

hostility that poison

In 1992, there are

still

meetings between strangers in a time of crime. signs of the Irish in

^''

Washington Heights and Inwood

that certify their share in the neighborhood's history.

They

are thickest around

the intersection of Broadway and 207th Street: the accents of the elderly people.

J

945

The

Modem

Shop and the

signs for the Tara Irish Gift

460 Era

Piper's Kilt tavern,

an advertisement

in a butcher's v^indow for Irish sausages.

The

Irish w^ho left

such scenes

for the

suburbs will be participants in a

new

chapter in American history: the challenge of maintaining an ethnic identity in

suburban towns streetlife

far

removed from

once did so

Irish in the

much

city neighborhoods,

whose intensely shared many Irish. The

to shape the consciousness of so

suburbs will have two major factors in their favor. One, to be Irish

in the late twentieth century, unlike in previous eras, is not to be part of the bitter controversies over education, politics,

complicated

life for

and American

ties to Britain that

previous generations of Irish Americans. Two, since they

are white Americans, their ethnic identity does not readily subject

bigotry and stereotyping that

still afflict

Asians, the question of affiliation

ethnic affiliation will

is

decided by appearance. For Irish Americans,

become more and more

a

matter of choice

—a choice that

In suburbia, the content and continuity of Irish identity can It

to

few negative consequences.^^

carries relatively

assumed.

them

people of color. For blacks. Latinos, and

will have to be constantly re-created

if it is

no longer be

to endure. Expressions

of Irishness will

assume new configurations, with no one

Sometimes they

will be public

of

them paramount.

—attendance at the Saint Patrick's Day parade,

participation in an Irish republican demonstration.

More

often, they will be

private: fondness for Irish music, step-dancing lessons for the kids, a vacation

in Ireland. In the

towns

Jersey, the Irish will

less in

of

Rockland County, Long

be challenged to develop a

is

and northern

New

neighborhood relationships and more in emotional attachment to an

identity that requires regular

The

Island,

new kind of ethnicity, one rooted

streets of

and deliberate reinforcement.^^

Washington Heights and Inwood represent

a

kind of place that

disappearing: a big-city Irish neighborhood. But through their sons and

daughters

who

nities, the

echo of their lessons will continue to shape what

in America.

left for

the suburbs, there to create

new

kinds of Irish it

commu-

means to be Irish

Mary P Corcoran

CHAPTER

18

Emigrants, Eirepreneurs,

and Opportunists A SOCIAL PROFILE OF RECENT IMMIGRATION IN

n

IRISH

NEW YORK CITY

'URING THE

1980s

many thousands

of Irish

people entered the United States seeking work. This exodus was precipitated

economic fortunes. The relative prosperity that economy in the 1960s and early 1970s was short-

by a deterioration in Ireland's

had characterized the Irish lived. Worldwide recession in the wake of the oil crisis of 1973 effectively destroyed the dream of Irish prosperity. Instead, the reality was a prolonged period of economic stagnation, from which Ireland has been the slowest of all the Organisation for

Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) mem-

ber countries to recover.^ Despite a modest growth rate and low inflation, the

economy has been beset by unemployment (currently upward of 20% and up until recent years, high net emigration. The fate of these new immigrants in the Irish American community, especially those known as "illegals," is the Irish

)

subject of this chapter.^

The

Irish, in

common with other peripheral nation-states (particularly those

located in the developing world) are acutely implicated in the "international

nomadism

of

modern life.""' Between 1980 and 1990, net outward migration which is equivalent to 6 percent or more of the population,

totaled 216,000,

with the bulk of emigrants leaving

after

1985 (table

18.1).

The annual average

migratory outflow rose to nearly 34,000 between 1986 and 1990. This coupled

with the decline in natural increase resulted in an overall population decrease.*

Following the general upward trend in

462 The Modern Era

Irish

emigration in the 1980s, legal

immigration to the United States rose steadily during the decade Prospective Irish emigrants were the to increase the flow of

affected

main beneficiaries

(table 18.2).

of a short-term

scheme

immigration from countries that had been adversely

by the provisions of the 1965 Immigration Act. The NP-5 visa program,

which was enacted

as a provision of the Immigration

(1986), offered 40,000 special visas over the period

Reform and Control Act

1987-90 to the 36 countries

that had been traditional sources of emigration to the United States.

popularly

known as Donnelly visas

after the

the scheme, were offered to applicants registration

list.

The visas,

member of Congress who initiated

who were randomly selected from a mail

Unlike normal visas based on the family reunification or

preference system, these special

NP-5

visas did not require applicants to have

special skills that are in short supply in the

United States or to have a job

offer

from a U.S. employer. In all, 1 6,329 visas were issued to Irish applicants between 1

987 and 1 990. The Immigration Act of 1 990 established a second lottery system

that

would

distribute 120,000 visas to

34 countries over a period

of three years,

beginning in October 1991 and ending in October 1993. Under the terms of this

was Representative Bruce Morrison), was guaranteed 16,000 visas a year for three years a total of 48,000 in all. These lotteries greatly augmented the standard allocation of immigrant visas, which averaged 1,000 per year in the early 1980s. act (whose chief congressional architect

—

Ireland

These

official statistics fail to reflect,

however, the high level of

illegal Irish

immigration to the United States throughout the 1980s. During those years, tens of thousands of Irish people entered the United States legally on temporary visitors' visas.

When

the visas expired, they simply failed to return home.

TABLE

18.1.

Net

Irish Emigration,

1980-90 Year,

ending April

jeopardizing their legal status by seeking tion.

work without the proper documenta-

Hence, they became undocumented workers in the American economy,

held in check by a metaphorical border that separates the legal citizenry from the twilight world of the illegal alien. settled in the cities of

vibrant

"new

Irish"

New

Most

of these

new immigrants have

York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, where

communities have emerged

in recent years.

Typology of Recent Irish Immigrants

The

specific character of

any particular wave

of emigration will vary according

The anatomy of recent Irish immigration to the United States, therefore, must be examined in terms of the relevant push and pull factors, as well as the structural and social contexts in which these to the prevailing circumstances.

migratory flows take place. Recent Irish immigration to the United States has

proceeded in the form of two population flows, one occurring through normal legal

channels and the other occurring clandestinely. Five types of immigrant

can be identified within these population flows: grants,

(2)

disaffected adventurers,

population,

(4)

eirepieneurs, and

(3)

(5)

(I)

bread-and-butter immi-

who make up the illegal emigrants who are legally

holiday-takers

opportunistic

resident in the United States.

Bread-and-Butter Immigrants

Approximately one-third of the

illegal

immigrants interviewed

for this

study

saw themselves primarily as economic refugees. They cited underemployment.

TABLE

18.2.

Immigrants Admitted to

the United States from Ireland, Fiscal

year

1980-90

453 a

Social Profile

of Recent /nsh

Immigration

Nnv

in

York CUy

seasonal unemployment, and business failure as factors precipitating the deci-

464 The

Modem

Era

sion to leave. Unable to find

work

in their locale, they

themselves and emigrate. The decision to go to

were willing to uproot

New York City was often made

in the context of a familial or personal history of emigration. to

work and the

lure of a regular

outweighed concerns about Ireland

last job

in cities like

illegal status. Frank,

The opportunity

New

York generally

from County Cavan,

first left

A welder by trade, he could see no future "I did try to get work in Ireland but could only get menial jobs. My

when he was

in Ireland:

income

1

7 years old.

for a

small firm.

just

I

was working

We

did welding jobs around the country

mainly for co-operatives, but as agriculture declined we got less work, and things got progressively slower. In 1979 I

headed on to

Sean, a native of brothers,

moved to Germany, and then within the year

Mayo, spent summers working in England alongside

from the age of 15

to England to

1

New York."^

work

years. After

in construction

an abortive year in

college,

his

he moved

and then on to the Netherlands:

bottom fell out of the construction industry in Holland. I found myself with my back against the wall. I didn't want to go back to England, I didn't want to go back into construction because I had worked harder than anyone in that line. My idea was to set up my own business in Ireland. I wanted to set up a restaurant and wine business but I got no help from the IDA (Industrial Development Authority). Within months my savings were squandered. I tried England again but I couldn't take the anti-Irish jokes and the way the Irish were looked down upon. For me, it was preferable to be illegal here In the early 1980s the

than to be prejudiced against over there.

Of

all

recent Irish immigrants, this group has had the least choice in terms

making the decision to emigrate. Hence, they are the most likely to make a permanent commitment to the host country, given the opportunity to do so. The bread-and-butter immigrants therefore most closely approximate the setof

tler

immigration pattern that has characterized

Irish

emigration to the United

States in the past.

Disaffected Adventurers

It is

not unemployment as such but the absence of an adequate opportunity

structure that induces immigrants in this category to leave.

The scarcity of jobs

with good career prospects in Ireland has produced a generation feel

trapped and frustrated.

advancement, or

skills

They

of

workers

who

see little prospect for promotion, career

development.

Johnny had a good job with

a

Supermarket chain store in

a rural

town:

"I just

—

The money was lousy and I worked like a slave often working crazy hours. You were paid for a 40-hour week even if you put in an 80-hour week. There was no overtime, no thanks. Promotion might have brought more money, but the tax would kill you."^ got fed up with the job.

New York City exerts a pull because it holds out the prospect of starting over in an exciting, fast-paced, urban environment.

survive in a less sheltered but ultimately in

monetary terms. Timmy,

a native of

Immigrants are challenged to

more rewarding environment, at least the West of Ireland, is typical of this

group.

He had

a job

with a state-sponsored company before emigrating to the

United

States.

As he

said,

"he had

it

made" because

the job

was permanent and

pensionable: But

it

was

a

dead-end

job.

I

was

a semiskilled laborer

my way up. The work was boring and

I

and I couldn't

really

work

never liked the boss's attitude. Overall

would say that the conditions under which I worked were not favorable. The money was good but the tax took a huge slice out. I was 25 years old and couldn't see a future for myseU in that situation unless I were to get married, get a mortgage and then just wait for a family to arrive, and hang on in there to get the pension. That scenario held no attraction for I

me.«

Timmy's decision to leave was more a question of choice than one a choice made in the context of very limited options.

Many

of the disaffected use their

money. They a

time in

New

York to work hard and save

are future-oriented in the sense that they

view to making good investments

accumulate capital with

in the years to come.'^ Disaffected

absence of opportunity in Ireland, they are excluded by their pursuing opportunities in

New

of force, but

York.

Most express the

by the

illegal status

from

desire to invest their

savings in property or in business in Ireland, but in a stagnant or uncertain

economic climate those options

are limited. In general, the disaffected aspire

toward a transnational existence,

a lifestyle that

would allow them to enjoy the

home and host countries. Thus, they speak of developing work or business interests that would allow them to commute on a regular basis between Ireland and New York City. They would therefore not have to make a firm commitment to either place. Such aspirations are idealistic. In the first advantages of both the

place, these

immigrants would have to regularize their status before such

options could be considered. Second,

if

they begin to marry,

families, career options that require mobility will

become

settle,

and

start

increasingly unreal-

istic.

Such expressions

istic,

indicate that for this group of illegals their status as immigrants remains

of a desire for a transnational existence,

however

ideal-

unresolved.

Holiday -takers

The third category may be described as extended holiday-takers—people who come from relatively well-off middle-class famihes, who stand to inherit a farm or a small business as an extended

when

they return home. They see their time in

working holiday, before setthng down

attendant responsibilities.

One such

visitor

"saw

it

New

to adulthood

as an adventure, a

York

and

way

its

to

455 a

Social Profile

of Recent Irish

Immigration

in

^^ York City

make money.

466 The

Modem

Era

money. As

was

But

I

So

sold

I

I

had a small business

a matter of fact,

getting a bit fed

it

at the

I

at

home which was

viable and

was probably making more then than

up with

beginning of the

it,

especially because

it

Summer and came out

took so

I

making now!

am

much

work.

Another

here."

felt

the need to explore his potential abroad: "I'm from a prosperous family in the Southeast.

the other

Two

is

of

my brothers

are well set

a professional out here.

which is actually in more potential than

my

up

at

My parents

name. Even though

I

home, one

is

in

England and

run the family business, a

had

a great lifestyle,

I

felt

I

bar,

had

was using at home. So I came to the States. I have had great times here and managed to save a few dollars too!"'^ The trip to the United States involves no risk (even if they are unlucky enough to be apprehended) because they have every intention of returning. More important, they generally have a livelihood to which to return. They are neither settlers

I

nor conventional sojourners, but temporary visitors for

as an illegal alien in the United States

otherwise conventional

life

whom a period

more than an aberration

is little

in an

structure.

The Eirepreneurs

Given the primary position

of the

United States in the global economy, migra-

tory flows of necessity extend beyond the national boundaries to include foreigners

who

are either highly skilled or

educated middle-class flow.

Dubbed

have impressive credentials. The

Irish elite increasingly

form part

of this transnational

eirepreneurs by one Irish print journalist, these emigrants are

cashing in on the social capital they accumulated in Ireland, to the benefit of

own peripheral one.'^ now considerable evidence that a high level of emigration is occurring among Ireland's technical and professional graduates, which amounts Thirty-six percent of those who qualified with a primary to a brain drain. metropolitan economies, and at the expense of our

There

is

''^

degree in 1988 emigrated from Ireland.

A breakdown of that figure reveals even

higher rates of emigration within certain disciplines. For example, 48 percent of engineering graduates, 43 percent of arts

and

social science graduates,

and 42

percent of architecture graduates emigrated in 1988. In terms of pattern and destination, Irish graduates follow the general emigration trend, with the

majority going to Britain, the United States, and the European Union, in that order.

'"*

Not

surprisingly,

with few opportunities available

attracted to the core cities of the world economy.

These

at

home, they

cities offer

market characterized by excellent benefits and remuneration.''' In City, Ireland's educated elite,

armed with the necessary

visas,

an

are

elite job

New

York

have begun

to

carve out careers for themselves in a range of professions including international finance and banking, insurance, the law, public relations, media, and advertising.

According to young professionals working in

standard of training

is

New

York City, the

Irish

well recognized in America as being very high."' In

addition, hard

work

is

rewarded through salary bonuses and opportunities

for

advancement. Since legal immigrants face no restrictions on travel in and out of the country, frequent trips

home are possible.

immigrants are tied

In addition, because these

much less ethnically bounded in terms of their social interaction. They are therefore much into professional networks rather than immigrant networks, they are

more fits,

likely (than the

undocumented)

to assimilate. Since remuneration, bene-

and opportunity structures are significantly better in

is little

incentive (or desire)

the short term.

A

New York City,

among the educated elite to return home

there

at least in

recent study on Irish accountants in the international labor

The

eirepreneurs in that case made a rational choice when choosing to go abroad. London and New York were the destinations of those who were serious about developing their careers. The Cayman Islands was the destination of those seeking fun.

market bears

this out.'^

about career development

As is the case in the undocumented sector, immigrant jobs ultimately depend on the

vitality of the U.S.

economy. Graduate recruitment through

channels, like clandestine immigration, will ebb and flow in

legal

tandem with the

trends in the global economic cycles.

Opportunistic Emigrants Lottery winners (that in Ireland at the

are

is,

Donnelly and Morrison visa holders,

time of their application) require separate

a passive rather

They

than an active one. The decision to leave was made for them

of their selection for a visa

through the lottery system.

These are not emigrants in the traditional sense travel to the States not so

lottery visa,

are

who were resident

classification.

unique among the immigrant groups in that their decision to emigrate was

by virtue

it is

much by

of the

choice but by chance.

unlikely that they would ever have

one of the groups

New

term because they

Had they

left Ireland.

As

not

won

a

such, they

least prepared for emigration. Indeed, service providers in

York found that Donnelly visa holders were

problems of adjustment than

illegals,

States without appropriate contacts

far

more likely to suffer came to the United

often because they

and networks.

Impressionistic evidence (further research

is

^^

needed in this area) suggests that

many were pushed into going by famihes who saw a legal passage to the United States as a solution to the family member who "was at a loose end" or "had not yet settled down." Support for such decisions

is

implicitly underpinned by a

culture of emigration that exists in Irish society. '^

Many

of the opportunistic

immigrants are fundamentally unsuited to emigration, but the visas were held

up as

457 A

glittering prizes that could not be passed up.

gauntlet after "winning" a lottery visa

would

The

failure to take

up the

invite acute social embarrass-

ment. So these young people became emigrants by default rather than by design.

Social Profile

0/ Recent Irish

immigration

^^ ^"''^

in

'^''3'

According to American embassy sources in Dublin, about one-third of the

468 The

Modem

Era

Donnelly visas issued went to undocumented immigrants resident in the United

States.^°

awarded to

The remainder (approximately

Irish residents, the

jobs in Ireland in order to take

Not

States.

surprisingly,

have since returned to

The

10,000 over four years) were

overwhelming majority

If

whom ostensibly left

many

of those

who

took up the

initial offer of a visa

Ireland, or never seriously left Ireland in the first place.

might be cashed

visas constitute an "insurance policy" that

future point in time.

of

up the opportunity of legal residence in the United

in at

some

these visas could be bequeathed to other family members,

would no doubt do so. To maintain the visa, they simply enter the United States at least once a year for a specified period, after which residency is no longer a requirement. Ironitheir holders

while these visas are

cally,

undocumented United

drawers

literally rotting in

over Ireland,

all

illegality in the

States.

There

is

an element

The

above.

now

workers continue to face the rigors of

Irish

of class stratification implicit in the typology outlined

bread-and-butter immigrants, drawn primarily from the lower

middle class and working that they feel forced by

predecessors, they are the in the United States,

if

class, are closest to the

economic necessity

most

tied classes.

likely (of all the

immigrant categories) to

given the chance to do

holiday-takers, in contrast, are

They have made

drawn from

economic refugee model,

in

to leave. Like the majority of their

The

so.

Ireland's best-educated

a choice to live

settle

eirepreneurs and the

and proper-

and work abroad and reserve the

option of returning home. In between are the disaffected adventurers and at least

some

of the lottery

winners or opportunists,

who

an

are representative of

increasingly disillusioned Irish middle and lower-middle classes.

They

see

themselves as having made a circumscribed choice, exchanging the exigencies of life in Ireland for the uncertainties of life in

will settle or return for legalization

home depends on

New

York

City.

Whether they

several factors, including the prospects

and economic trends in both the United States and

Ireland.

Working Lives

As should be

clear

by now, the nature

of

contemporary

Irish

emigration

is

complex and multidimensional. The greatest gulf in terms of life chances and experience of migration, is that between the groups of immigrants at the two ends of the migratory continuum, that eirepreneurs.

worthy

A

The experience

is,

between the

illegal aliens

and the elite

of the illegals is particularly interesting

and

of further exploration.

work

destinations of Irish

New York City is that between "invisible"

immigrants and "gap

useful distinction to

immigrants in fillers."^'

employ

in exploring the

Legal Irish immigrants with appropriate skills and qualifications form

part of the transnational professional elite found in the core metropolises of the

As members

world.

of this

mobile

or eirepreneurs, are

elite, Irish professionals,

not necessarily perceived (nor do they perceive themselves) as immigrants or

459 a

Social Profile

foreign workers. Rather, they are often so well integrated that distinctions

0/ Recent Irish

—at least in the workplace—are

immigration in

between them and

American colleagues

their

practically invisible.

As one

of

them has remarked, "Given

practices were consistent with American practices and that

that Irish business

we spoke a common

language, co-workers tended not to be conscious of our Irishness. Ethnicity a nonissue, sometimes, to the point of frustration as

you

tunity to play the 'green card' in dealings with clients.

was

didn't get the oppor-

"^^

The majority of Irish immigrants in New York City in the 1980s, however, were not legally resident high-flyers but undocumented workers destined to become gap fillers in the city's economy. Conservative estimates put the number of illegals in the United States during the decade at about 40,000, while immigrant activists

have suggested that the

real

number was

closer to 200,000."

The

true figure

is

probably closer to the lower estimate, and has probably declined further in the wake of the various visa programs.

As has been the pattern United

in Europe, metropolitan centers

States, in particular.

New

throughout the

York City and Los Angeles, have experi-

enced sectoral and occupational shortages that are generally dealt with by

employing

foreigners, either lawfully or unlawfully.^*

ployment sectors

in

which

work

Irish illegals

in

The

New

three

main em-

York City are the

construction industry, the restaurant and bar trades, and child care and help in private homes.

A

tendency to operate

(albeit to

home

varying degrees) in

the informal economy is a characteristic of all three employment sectors. The term "informal economy" is generally reserved for the production and sale of

goods and services that are in themselves

and sold outside

minimum wage

of the regulatory apparatus

laws, and other standards.

The construction

industry in

New

Labor statistics.

firms in 1988.

percent of

all

New York City had more than

The average number

of

but that are produced tax,

York, for example, has seen a steady

expansion in the past few decades. According to of

legal,

governing health, safety,

^^

New

York State Department

10,000 registered construction

workers in these firms

firms employing fewer than 10 workers.

sector (as in many other industrial sectors)

is

A

is 11,

with 80

major trend in this

a decline in unionized

employment

and a parallel expansion in informal, "off-the-books" job opportunities that are increasingly being taken

up by new immigrants.

Construction work in the city

is

organized on a two-tiered system, with one

sector of the industry operating in the formal

economy and

the other in the

informal economy. Construction outfits working on commercial buildings in

downtown Manhattan and on the for

subway system, tend

public contract projects, such as maintenance of

example, construction union

for control of

new

and highly regulated. In Manhattan, which are ethnically controlled, jostle By prior arrangement, Irish-run locals

to be unionized locals,

construction jobs.

New

York City

operate on the west side of the

470 The

Modem

Era

city,

commercial and

side. In contrast,

while ItaUan-run locals operate on the east residential alterations

and renovations are

almost the exclusive preserve of independent contractors or subcontractors who rely to a great extent

on nonunion labor. Many of these firms

are

unhcensed and

work without the necessary permits. Since they already work outside the regulatory apparatus, they are more likely than the larger licensed operators to hire undocumented aliens. It is the savings from tax and carry out construction

companies their edge and that has

social security obligations that gives these

contributed to their proliferation.

The majority

of Irish

men who came

to

work

illegally in the

mid-1980s found work in the booming construction

in the

ended up in the informal

sector,

however. Those with

and with good union contacts gained access

United States

Not

sector.

all

supply

skills in short

to the unionized jobs in the

formal sector. At the other extreme, those with limited contacts and limited skills (the

"JFK carpenters" whose credentials materialize rather dubiously

at the point of arrival) generally

work

small contractors or set up on their

for

own. These workers are confined within the informal economy. Crucial

for

both groups of workers are their ethnic contacts, which allow them to gain entry into the labor market.

Most independent

union agents, and proprietors

contractors, construction

and restaurants in the ethnic

of bars

who came

enclave are first-generation immigrants

to the

Irish

United States in

the 1950s and early 1960s. Lacking formal education and skills, they went into the construction industry or the bar trade. There the successful ones

worked

their

way up

in the

union hierarchy or

or bar or restaurant businesses.

They

set

up their own contracting

are therefore, the "gatekeepers"

who

control access to jobs in the key sectors of the construction industry and the

bar or restaurant trade, and on

whom

second- and third-generation Irish are

the illegals are most dependent.

The

much less likely to be involved in these

areas of work, having had the opportunity to acquire the college education

denied their parents or grandparents. Because of their

ment It

illegal status,

new

Irish

workers in these sectors

are all subject to excessive siu-veillance, exploitation,

has been the practice for unionized companies to hire Irish

basis of a

recommendation from

employee

will be asked to produce

a

of

illegals

false) is

some documentation such

not questioned. There

acknowledgment

on the

union agent or broker. The prospective as a social

security card, but the authenticity of the documentation (which

always

employ-

and control.

is

is

almost

an implicit rather than explicit

of the illegal status of the

employee. This

is

important

because unionized companies are highly regulated and must conform to the letter of the law.

An

industrious broker can use his position to displace other immigrant

workers with hand-picked workers from his ary explains:

own ethnic group,

as one benefici-

Peter had been a construction worker in both Ireland and England before

coming

He got work with a subsidiary of a major construction company which

to the States.

has a big contract with the Transport Authority. Peter was initially the only

Irishman on the construction crews, which were made up of immigrants from Antigua, Trinidad, Jamaica, Spain,

Italy,

and Portugal. A vacancy came up and Peter

More workers were Peter could recommend.

got Michael, a mutual friend, onto his construction crew.

needed and the foreman asked

He phoned some The amount

of

if

there

lads in Philadelphia,

work increased and

was anyone

else

and they came up and joined another crew.

was

extra help

hired.

Another

Irish

guy and

myself were taken on. Within 10 months, nearly 20 of the 80 men on the crews

worked with were

Once ensconced Irish

most having got

Irish,

in a job

on

a construction site |or in a bar or restaurant), the

immigrants becomes part of an occupational matrix that

woven

into the larger Irish ethnic

largely through v^ord of

his or her

network

we

their jobs through Peter."^'

community

mouth, so

it is

in the city.

is itself

incumbent on the immigrant

of contacts. Ethnic contacts

and

ties

tightly

New^s of jobs travels

must be

to extend

cultivated

because of the exigencies of survival and the structure of job opportunity in the illegal

immigrant market. As one disillusioned immigrant from an east coast

county explained: I

came out

here.

"I didn't

the West of Ireland of

understand the meaning of the word 'clannish' until

could have starved on the street here before someone from

I

would come

my aid.

to

I

have been unemployed

about six months during a period of three years here.

no work going,

it

was

just that

I

didn't

It

for a total

wasn't that there was

have good enough contacts to get from

one job straight onto the next.""^

As

is

the case with

all

immigrant groups, the

make maximum move beyond the and friends — to make use employment sectors, who

Irish illegals

use of the ethnic network to improve their position. They

obvious first-order contacts of second-order contacts:

are ultimately are

more

—such as close relatives

key brokers in the different

influential in the

community

at large.

The

fact that they

without documentation, however, limits their advancement and confines

them

to

work

in the ethnic enclave.

Illegality intensifies

lished Irish

dependence on patrons and power brokers in the estab-

community. As undocumented workers, the

Irish are

dependent on

employers who won't ask awkward questions. Hence they gravitate toward Irish contractors and the Irish-owned bars and restaurants. Conditions of employ-

ment

are dictated

by the employer, and the employees find they have

option but to comply. For example,

demanding

is

little

work on construction sites that is physically

often tightly controlled:

The foreman would stand over us, and it really got on my nerves. The work was when the whistle comphcated but I really resented the constant supervision blows you start working. When the coffee break comes you don't sit down because you are on company time. The foreman stands over you and shouts. ... I .

think for most of the guys leave in the morning.'^'*

its

a case of leaving

your brain

.

.

at

home when you

^j-^

A Social

Profile

of Recent Irish

Immigration

New

in

York City

show up on

In Ireland the lads

the construction site 5 minutes

workers are there half an hour before they are supposed to

start.

late;

here the

Coffee breaks

are taken standing up.

Other workers are denied any sense of security or continuity in the

job:

Membership of a [construction] union does not confer a right to work. ... always up to the company to decide whether or not you will work. They on a day-to-day basis.

My boss [in the bar] has with him

for

That's the

way

everything [figured out to his advantage].

seven or eight months. Everyday the boss likes

The

call

You call up and you same again.

it.

that day, and the next day the

the job.

I

up

to see

are told

if

I

if I

It is

hire

have been

am

due

in.

you are working

employment often entails greater risk-taking on Not only are construction jobs dangerous, but the Irish are more willing

desire to be retained in

than others to volunteer Irish

for the

dangerous tasks:

guys work hard, they take a

of losing their jobs.

They

that they don't get laid

off.

lot of

chances

I

think because they are afraid

push harder to make a name for themselves so But sometimes they push so hard they end up getting

will

work for weeks at a time. They'll take the chance on dangerous work, not because they are crazy but because they want to be kept on. The Irish guy goes home each evening and worries if he is going to be back at work tomorrow. injured and having to stay off

The work

ethic

is

thus positively and negatively reinforced: people work hard

because of the monetary rewards but also out of fear of losing their

Undocumented construction workers may be paid at unionized and nonunionized workers in the

same fare

tasks.

It

city,

jobs.

a lower rate than other

although they are

all

doing the

should be pointed out, however, that Irish immigrants generally

much better than all other illegal immigrants. For example, undocumented

Dominican workers working

in construction in

concentrated in small firms, in nonunion

jobs.

New

York City tend

to be

Their earnings are 40 percent

than those of documented Dominican workers. Men averaged $150 per week in 1988.^^ In contrast, even the lowest-paid Irish construction worker (in the same year) earned twice that amount per week. Those who did not pay taxes less

could take

home even

more. Indeed,

when compared with

non-English speaking ethnic groups, the Irish

still

do

other white but

better,

because of the

extent of the ethnic contacts they can draw on in the Irish enclaves and their superior ability to bargain for a higher rate of pay.

Immigrants in the informal sector do not constitute

They

are stratified according to race, ethnicity, skills,

as legal status,

and that

stratification

market experience. This explains high level of

workplace

skill,

— tend

to

and close

homogeneous group.

determines to a great extent their labor

why Irish immigrants—with good

English, a

American power brokers in the the migrant labor market than both their

ties to Irish

do better in

a

and experience, as well

European and Central American counterparts, both

much

of

smaller pool of affluent employers. Interestingly,

whom it

have access to a

has recently emerged

that London-based Irish subcontractors in the construction sector are increas-

473 a

Social Profile

of Recent Irish

ingly turning toward Bosnian refugees in a bid to cut their labor costs by half.

Immigration

Polish and Bulgarian immigrants are also being hired at lower rates of pay than,

N*^

and in preference

to, Irish laborers.^'*

level of ethnic solidarity operating

counterparts in

New

This suggests that overall there

among the

York, a fact attested to by

many

is

a lower

that

among their

of the

immigrants

London

Irish in

interviewed in this study.

Most of the Irish women who came employment in private homes looking

to

New York City

after children

in the 1980s took

and the

elderly.

home

incidence of dual-career families and the increased emphasis on

up

The high rather

than institutionalized health care in the United States, has created a demand for labor in this sector.''^

Nannies and home companions work long hours

for

poor remuneration and are often subject to tight control and surveillance at

work. it was a very was supposed to work from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m., taking care of three children. There were two of everything in the kitchen kosher and nonkosher. It was a real culture shock for me to see all these different cups and saucers, meat, cloths and dairy cloths. I was living off the kitchen in a tiny room and in addition to minding the children, I was expected to scrub floors and clean

took a job with an Orthodox Jewish family in Manhattan, but

I

bad experience.

I

—

the cooker,

Since for

all for

$140 per week.^^

home and work are often located in the same place,

maintaining an independent existence.

home

frequently loses her

blew up.

I

told

them

If

a

woman

there

is little

scope

loses her job, she

"Eventually things just

too, often at short notice.

was best if I left for my sake and the sake of the friend and cool off for a while. When I got back it

kids.

I

my to the apartment at 1:30 pm found my suitcases packed and in the hall. They hadn't even paid me my weeks wages and they obviously didn't care what happened to me." Women's work contrasts quite starkly with men's work. A construcwent up

to see 1

I

^

tion worker has his day's

weekends

free.

He

work

finished by late afternoon and generally has his

earns up to twice what a

woman

worker earns in half the

Thus he has more money to spend and more leisure time in which to spend it. Irish women must take on at least two jobs (thus eroding their free time) to earn an income comparable with that of men. This indicates a grave time.

inequality in the position of

men

and

women

in the illegal

immigrant work

force.

New For the

Irish

and First-Generation

new Irish who occupy gap filler jobs

Irish

Immigrants

in the informal

ships with older first-generation Irish immigrants (that

is,

economy,

those

relation-

who emigrated

in

York City

in the

474 The

Modem

Era

1

950s and 1 960s and whose work or homes are based in traditional ethnic

neighborhoods) tend to be highly pragmatic, rooted as they are in the "cut and thrust" of the immigrant labor market. Living and working in close proximity to each other

makes

for

an often uneasy coexistence. Given that the supply of

labor frequently exceeds demand, and that the majority of those seeking in the ethnic enclaves of

New

York City are

illegal, it is

employer-employee relations are characterized by patterns

work

not surprising that of paternalism

and

Employment conditions are variable and often exploitative, a fact that strains ethnic loyalty among these two groups. Among the new Irish, the illegals have tended to settle in the traditional clientelism.

immigrant neighborhoods

of the

Bronx and Queens, while the

have settled in neighborhoods that are grants rely to a great extent relatively quickly. offer

work and

The

less ethnically

on ethnic networks

established ethnic

leisure opportunities,

into

legally

homogeneous.

immi-

which they can be absorbed

communities

in these neighborhoods

and in addition, the psychological assurance

numbers. Legal immigrants, in contrast, are not

of safety in

documented Illegal

reliant

on such

networks because of their ease of access to occupational and other institutional affihations.

Hence, they hve in neighborhoods that are not identifiably

Irish,

and

they mix socially with people from a wide range of backgrounds.

The Irish population in the traditional ethnic neighborhoods of the Bronx and Queens has been severely depleted

County Kerry Schraffts,

native Joan

in recent years

by the

flight to the outer

Dineen and other 1950s immigrants found work

both restaurant chains with a reputation for hiring

Irish

women.

in StoufTer's

and

This photograph was

taken in Stouffers, Pershing Square (42nd Street), in 1958, but such service sector employment

was so easy

to find in

undocumented

Irish.

New

York that waitress work was an ethnic niche even

(Photograph

© Charles Harbutt, Actuality Inc.)

for the

1980s

suburbs. Those

who were

not upwardly mobile or

who were

too old to leave

remained behind to weather the problems of inner-city decline. The inflow of

new

Irish in the

which

1980s heralded a virtual renaissance for these neighborhoods,

offered the

and proximity

new arrivals an ethnic Irish ambience, reasonable rental rates,

to the city

where most of them work. A variety of Irish businesses

more

ranging from bars and diners to bakeries, import stores, and Irish delis once flourish in these neighborhoods. Irish accents are heard

on the

street,

and

children attend the local schools. Gaelic sports have been revived, while Irish

American County

reestablished.

events.

associations,

which were

There has also been a resurgence of

Once more

all

Irish

many

but defunct, have been

Irish festivals

and cultural

these neighborhoods have taken on the characteristics of

"urban villages," which include concentrated networks and organizations among residents of similar ethnicity, strong kinship local institutions

The

and personal connections

ties,

and

a

primary dependence on

to obtain jobs.^*

attitude of older first generation immigrants toward the

new

arrivals is

On the one hand, they dissociate themselves from the new frequently labeled "rude and arrogant." On the other hand, they

one of ambivalence. Irish

who

are

acknowledge that the revitalize

arrival of a

and regenerate

New

emerges in these neighborhoods groups.

The

new generation of Irish immigrants has helped Irish ethnic neighborhoods. What

York City's is

a symbiotic relationship

between the two

older immigrants provide jobs that the illegals need and that they

probably could not get elsewhere without documentation. In turn, the new Irish strengthen the white constituency in neighborhoods that are increasingly

populated by black, Hispanic, and Asian immigrants. Their mutual relationship

then

is

primarily based on instrumentalism.

As one immigrant summed

up,

"We're using them, and they're using us." Sharing the same workplaces and neighborhoods brings the intraethnic

One local priest working in mix easily outside of their own social group. The older Irish tend to be more family oriented, better established and more upwardly mobile. The younger, single people are into a and value differences into sharp

cultural

the Bronx puts

it

relief.

succinctly: "People don't

totally different lifestyle. Bars are their cultural center, in

on themselves. "''' This cultural and

and they tend to close

social distance

is

an indicator of a

fragmentation of Irish ethnic culture, along age and social status the

new

Irish

lines.

labor market and in the political sphere, culturally, there has been

coalescence. after

all,

While

immigrants and their predecessors have forged alliances in the

The new

Irish

immigrant's sense of ethnic identity

much less is

framed,

within a dialectic that involves the contradictory influences of Irish

American ethnicity, American culture and contemporary Irish culture. As one commentator notes: "Increasingly, we [the Irish] are no longer the product of the cultural tradition of any one nation in the way that generations who went before us were. More and more of us have lived our lives in more than one

place.""*

475 A

Social Profile

of Recent Irish

Immigration

New

in

York City

New York City see themselves primarily as transients and

Irish illegals in

more oriented toward

are

or the host society. all

community

Ireland than toward either the ethnic

At the same time,

their lifestyles reflect the influence of

home

three social contexts. Identification with the

culture

maintained

is

through their high levels of media consumption. National and local papers are imported

and sold widely

in the

new

Irish

community. Tapes

of sports

events and Irish current affairs programs are regularly screened in the bars,

and for special events

live transmissions

by

satellite are arranged.

charges are relatively cheap, and most immigrants phone basis.

Telephones

home on

a regular

This elaborate communications network enables the immigrant com-

munity

to continue to identify instantaneously

tional events

and issues from

a distance.

with national and interna-

They can experience

sports events

They can view tapes of current affairs programs dealing with contentious issues. They can read analysis of current events in the national Irish,

live.

local Irish,

from home

New York press. In short, the psychological distance minimized by the range of mass media available to them

and local is

through the neighborhood bars.

At the heart

of these transnational

On the one hand, (for

communication systems

lies a

paradox.

they tend to disrupt existing forms of national identification

example, through the Americanization or Anglicization of Irish culture).

new forms

the other hand, they also offer opportunities for

of

On

bonding and

and new ways of forging cultural communities. It has been found among South Asian families in West London, for example, that the circulation solidarity

and consumption of ethnically specific information and entertainment on video serves to construct and maintain cross-national "electronic communities" of geographically dispersed people tradition

and

its

who would

active perpetuation."^^

otherwise lose their

ties

with

seems that the modern communica-

It

tions revolution has profoundly affected the subjective experience of migration:

"The Moroccan construction worker

in

Amsterdam can every

night listen to

Rabat's broadcasting services and has no difficulty in buying pirated cassettes of his country's favorite singers.

The

illegal alien

.

.

.

Thai bartender in a Tokyo

suburb shows his Thai comrades karaoke video tapes just made in Bangkok. The Filpina

maid

in

Hong Kong phones her

electronically to her

mother

sister in

Manila and sends money

in Cebu.""*^

Legal documentation such as passports, immigrant visas, green cards, and false social security cards are less a

testament of any given individual's

allegiance to a particular nation-state and

more

a claim for participation in

immigrants living in New York, and especially those living in the twilight zone imposed by illegality. New York may be the workplace but home is still home. Despite the geographical distance from a labor market. For Irish

home, the psychological identification with Ireland and the international Irish

community

is

maintained through the ready availability

tional cultural goods.

of transna-

This

is

not to say that Irish immigrants do not engage with their immediate

environments in New York. In constructing their own cultural

identity, the

immigrants also draw on the experience of living and working in City.

York

While they may attend Gaelic hurling and football matches and occasional

county dances City

New

new

—organized

by the

—the kind of music they will listen to

than traditional.

New

New

Irish ethnic organizations in is

distinctly

contemporary rather

York City has witnessed the proliferation

popular Irish bands that play rock and

or rock variations

roll,

York

on

of a range of

traditional or

music and American rock As Susan McKeown, a singer with The Chanting House, recently told journalist: "It's music that the older generation of traditional people

Celtic themes, a hybrid derived from traditional Irish

and

roll.

an Irish

don't like because it.

it

We

it

ignores classic rules. But

it's

not like we're trying to

kill

want to carry it on, open it up to a wider audience and bring into the world music sphere."''^ More and more Irish bars are catering to the tastes of the younger clienteles, .

.

.

just

by providing rock bands in their bars at night. Soccer and skiing are both popular leisure-time pursuits

among

urban sport in Ireland,

among

the

new

the

Britain,

New

Irish in

new

immigrants. Soccer

Irish

and Continental Europe, and

is

primarily an

its

popularity

York represents the penetration of urban values

The unprecedented numbers who supported team in their 1 994 World Cup games in New York/New

into contemporary Irish culture.

the Irish national soccer

fersey and Orlando, testifies to the intense loyalty of the Irish ethnic

The

celebration of ethnicity in the

a celebration of youth,

and

1960s. Indeed, one Irish

new Irish community is conflated with

this distinguishes this recent

generation of Irish immigrants

community

who came

to

group from the

New York City in the

commentator has argued

that for

1950s and

many young

Irish

people today, America (rather than Ireland or the ethnic Irish community) their cultural

identity the

and

new

contemporary

Irish

draw on several sources

cultural

—Irish

American

culture,

and international youth culture (which

Irish culture,

As such, the new

nates largely in the United States).

is

own

spiritual homeland.'*'* In generating their

Irish

origi-

community

is

potentially subversive of the ethnic culture, in that ethnic traditions (such as Irish dancing, the Irish language,

form part

the cultural crossover that

communication the

and even Gaelic games) may no longer

of every Irish immigrant's cultural repertoire. is

taking place creates

of Irish culture to a wider,

new Irish rock groups

that have

new

At the same time,

opportunities for the

nonethnic audience. For example,

emerged

in recent years play not only at

venues in the ethnic neighborhoods but also to

a

wider nonethnic audience

Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. In addition, a range of artistic initiatives ranging from Irish film festivals to theatrical ventures have brought Irish arts to a wider audience beyond the confines of the ethnic Irish community.*^ In practice, Irish American culture in the trendy bars

and cafes

of

477 a

Social Profile

0/ Recent Irish

Immigration

New

in

York City

478 The

Modem

is

Era

going off in many different directions

—some traditional and some innovative.

This serves to highlight the plurality rather than homogeneity of the

Irish

ethnic group, broadly defined.

Irish

Americans and the Issue of Legalization

Apart from their close economic ties with first-generation Irish immigrants, the

new Irish also formed links with Irish Americans to launch a political challenge to U.S. immigration law. Irish Americans have been crucial to the new Irish, and the

illegals in particular, in

terms of

The

political mobilization.'*^

Irish

Immigration Reform Movement (IIRM) founded in 1987 to lobby on behalf of the

illegals,

sought the help of this powerful political constituency, whose

extensive resources offered the possibility of a successful campaign for legalization. In the early

by ethnic

days of operation the IIRM relied heavily on

Irish organizations in

New

Association (the umbrella group for

York all

donated an office and telephone line in the

Irish

county associations in

summer of

1987.

provided

facilities

The United

City.

Counties

New

York)

Venues for holding

meetings (and fund-raisers) were donated by prominent members of the

American community. Many

Irish

Americans became actively involved

Irish

in the

movement, often acting in an advisory capacity and using their contacts in a variety of American institutions, including the media, to highlight the plight of the illegal Irish.

Prominent clergymen, county association presidents, and businessmen,

among others, were asked to join a panel of advisers to the nascent organization. They served to lend legitimacy to the organization, and to present it as a broad coalition of Irish interests. The IIRM quickly developed linkages with influential

groups like the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), the Irish American

Labor Coalition (lALC), and the Brehon front

Law

Society.

The

creation of a united

on immigration reform was achieved with the establishment

Immigration Working Committee (IIWC) under the auspices of the sulate in

New

York

City. This

committee gave formal status

linkages already in place between the IIRM, the Charities of the Archdiocese of efforts of the Irish

AOH,

of the Irish Irish

Con-

to the informal

the lALC, and Catholic

New York. The IIWC coordinated the lobbying

community for a

series of

immigration reform

bills that

were

introduced into the House of Representatives and the Senate between 1987 and 1990. Every time there

was

a hearing

on the

bill a

deputation from the

IIWC

would go to Washington, D.C., to lobby politicians to vote in favor of the bill. The various Irish organizations backed up the lobbying efforts with mailouts to Irish American voters urging them to lobby their congressional representatives to vote for legislative reform. Effectively, the

IIRM was

American organizations and

able to

draw on

a preexisting

network

of Irish

that offered financial resources, organizational skills,

local political contacts, all crucial to the

emergent organization. The

Irish

American community was appealed tively affluent, middle-class people

to as a 'conscience constituency' of rela-

who

could provide necessary resources but

did not themselves stand to gain directly from success in the accomplishment of the

movement's

Why

American community

rally

around the IIRM? Recent research suggests that the attenuation of ethnic

among whites

in the

United States has seriously weakened

tional Irish ethnicity both in terms of social allocation

and social

tradi-

solidarity.

—a person's subjective orientation toward his or her —remains a salient feature in American society. The realization among

However, ethnic identity origins Irish

Americans that

a

new

generation of Irish immigrants was arriving in the

United States to work without documentation, activated their ethnic

identity.

For a significant number, this reactivation served as a catalyst for ethnic solidarity.

Following the classic ethnic solidarity model, Irish Americans in conjunction with the

new

Irish activists,

mobilized themselves to bring about a

partial resolution to the Irish illegal problem.

This problem

is

a

much

less

contentious one than the issue of northern Ireland. (The latter tends to be politically divisive, resulting in a fragmentation rather than a coalescence of Irish

The

American opinion.) In reopening Irish immigration to the United States, Irish American community stood to strengthen itself numerically,

culturally,

and

politically. In the late

1980s Irish American activists found

themselves with a cause that could unite their constituent bodies and create the potential for the revitalization of the Irish lobby as a force

among

other

powerful ethnic groups.*^

Since the mid-1980s, a two-tiered flow of emigration from Ireland to the

United States has emerged and

is

likely to persist into the next century,

ebbing and flowing in line with trends in both economies. Given the high level of interest generated

by the lottery visa programs,

it

can be assumed

many successful applicants will be drawn from the ranks of the highly skilled who possess good educational credentials. ^° (These are the applicants that

most a

likely to secure the job offers that

Morrison

demand

visa). In

must accompany the application

the meantime, there will be a continuing

for unskilled

(if

for

declining)

workers in the informal labor market, where

many

of

The informal undocumented

the jobs are off the books and therefore officially nonexistent. sector will continue to recruit from a cheap, pliable pool of labor.

Many of the new Irish who came to New York in the

1980s and became part undocumented labor force have revitalized the ethnic enclaves of American community. They have breathed new life into these aging

of the city's

the Irish

Social Profile

oj Recent Irish

Immigration in

goals."*^

did the various organizations in the Irish

differences

479 a

neighborhoods through their provision and consumption of a variety of ethnic goods and services. Thus they have performed an important economic function.

N^nv York City

480 The

Modem

Era

They have also performed a significant pohtical function in the Irish American community w^ith a cause around v^hich erable resources. Culturally, the

that

new

Irish are different

went before them. While they have much

in

that they provided to rally its consid-

from the generations

common with

contemporary

generations of Irish Americans, they also remain different from them. Irish constitute a

makes up

new dimension

The new

in the multidimensional patterning that

the Irish American mosaic.

mosaic will yield remains to be seen.

What new and

distinctive patterns that

Rebecca

S.

Miller

CHAPTER Irish Traditional

Music in

19

and Popular

New York City

IDENTITY AND SOCIAL CHANGE, 1930-1975

J. HE ROLE

of traditional music, dance,

the lives of Irish immigrants in America and particularly in

viewed

as

and song in

New York

an indicator of ever-changing ethnic pride and community

mass immigration

to

—

ranging from religious persecuAmerica and elsewhere these vital

Surviving years of social change and upheaval tion in Ireland to

—

expressions of an ancient folk culture have maintained a foothold in nities

can be

identity.

commu-

throughout Ireland and America.

The popularity of traditional Irish performing arts in New York City has waxed and waned over the course of the last century. Ranging from the early

when

1900s, title of

Irish traditional

musicians were routinely bestowed the honorary

"professor," to the 1950s

to its "revival" in the early

1

when the music was,

for the

most part,

in general can be directly correlated to prevailing social, political, forces within

New

sentiment toward

and economic

York's Irish community. Further, the mercurial public

Irish traditional culture is indicative of

and

of ethnic pride

ignored,

970s, the changing attitude toward Irish folk culture

self-identity

among New York

evolving perceptions

City's Irish

immigrant

community.

As immigrants

establish themselves in a

appears to be replaced by "a life

in

America

.

.

.

new

new

country, their old culture

one, shaped by the distinctive experiences of

and a new identity created. " Completely discarding ethnicity.

482 The

Modem

is,

Era

however,

identity."

difficult

To some

because of the

"unavailabihty of a simple 'American'

extent, "ethnic identities have taken over

in self-definition."^

Such

is

the case of the immigrant

Irish.

some

of the task

Despite the varying

degrees of assimilation of different generations of immigrants to tv/entieth-

century America, an inherent sense of "Irishness" has steadfastly been maintained. This self-identification has varied in orientation years,

depending on the certain

class affiliation

mainstream,

and an eye toward upward mobility, and the changing image

community

the Irish

and intensity over the

realities of assimilation into the

as projected to both itself

and

to the general public.

of

The

tension between maintaining a core identity of ethnicity while simultaneously

adapting to the dominant culture can be measured and evaluated, in part,

through the examination of social and practice Irish

and popularity

and

Irish

artistic activities

of traditional Irish

—in

this case, the

music versus the more commercial

American musics by successive waves

of Irish

immigrants

between 1930 and 1975.

The Music

The traditional instrumental music of Ireland originated centuries ago primarily as accompaniment for dancing. Today, the music is played more often in concert settings

and in informal seisms

(sessions) as well as for ceilis (group folk

community and famihal contexts. Like most folk arts, the music has been passed down from the elder to the younger generation as an oral dancing) in both

and repertoire are learned through listening and imita-

tradition. Playing style tion,

tunes are composed more or less anonymously, and the music

on the

is,

communal process. Among the most commonly found instruments in the tradition are the tin whistle, wooden flute, fiddle, and uilleann pipes (small, elbow-driven bagpipes), whole, crafted through a

as well as the concertina, button accordion, mandolin,

mic accompaniment

is

and tenor banjo. Rhyth-

most commonly provided by piano, bodhran

(a

hand-

held frame drum) or guitar, and more recently, by the bouzouki or cittern. Traditional music

is

primarily melodic with a subtle but propelling rhythmic

pulse. Because of this reliance

accompaniment

is

a relatively

on an often

intricate

new development

melody

line,

harmonic

in the course of the centuries-

old history of traditional Irish music. Countermelodies and harmonies are

uncommon. Dance

tunes span a range of rhythmic meters and tempi

sprightly reels, polkas, and jigs to slower, syncopated hornpipes slipjigs

and

slides, to stately

marches and evocative slow

Traditionally, playing styles in Ireland

airs or

—from

and propulsive laments."

have varied from region to region, as have

tune repertoires. Before the advent of modern technology, style was generally transmitted from player to player; in recent decades, however, tape recorders and

modem

music have dramatically

altered this process of dissemination.

By comparison, popular

and

American music

are

Irish

somewhat

less

483

In general,

/rish Traditional

and Irish American popular musics in the twentieth century have included

and Popular Music

Irish

Irish

clearly definable, given the vast array of styles over different

eras.'^

such instruments as big band horn and reed sections, amplified guitar and bass,

and piano or (more recently) synthesizer keyboards, instruments Irish

as well as

drums and other

commonly found in mainstream popular music. Unlike traditional

music, performances of Irish and Irish American musics are largely

oriented to songs, rather than instrumental dance tunes without words. Har-

monic and rhythmic accompaniment play a prominent role in popular music, and melody lines are, on the whole, simpler than traditional instrumental dance tunes.

The

difference

between

difficult to discern,

and popular music

Irish traditional

and the

between the two often

lines

technology and media affect expressive culture on

sometimes

is

blur, particularly as

all levels.

Traditional musi-

cians have been recorded by large and small labels since the early years of the

recording industry, and today, traditional music

is

disseminated in large part by

the media. Popular Irish musicians, particularly Irish

American showbands,

excel at a variety of contemporary songs, including country and western songs,

but they also play traditional set and

ceili

dance music on instruments such as

the fiddle, accordion, guitar, and drums.

The tension between the development

of

newer

preservation of the older traditional

styles of Irish cultural expression has

ways and the

been particularly

evident throughout the second half of the twentieth century as various waves of Irish

immigrants established new

lives in the

United

States.

As

a result of

increased mobility and technology over the years, popular American culture has

permeated

both in Ireland and in the United

Irish ethnic identity

States,

resulting in hybridized genres of music and dance. Paralleling American popular

trends and often short lived, these performative genres have been and continue to be, indicative of Irish

an evolving

immigrant culture

in

Irish social identity, particularly

Irish Traditional

The mid- 1 800s saw America

with regard to

America.

Music

in

America

the arrival of massive

to

numbers

1935 of Irish

who came

to

to escape the devastating effects of the Irish potato blight. Unlike the

earlier Scots-Irish

coast, the

immigrants

who

newly arrived famine

Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and

and other aspects

settled in rural areas throughout the east

Irish

moved

to America's cities:

New Orleans.

New

York,

In general, the Irish language

of traditional Irish culture did not survive the transition

a rural, agrarian-based life to an urban

American

from

lifestyle. Irish traditional

music, however, proved surprisingly resilient, and master fiddlers, pipers, accordionists, flutists, halls, pubs,

and others found work

in the vaudeville circuits,

and other venues. Moreover, unlike those

dance

who remained in Ireland,

i"

New

York City

.

traditional musicians during these years

484 The

Modem

Era

were greeted in America with great

respect throughout the immigrant community.'' Support for Irish

music and

dance was so strong that in 1892 the "Golden Age of Irish Music" was formally ushered in with the completion of for Irish

music and dance located

New York City's Celtic Hall,

at

with funds raised from the immigrant Celtic Hall served as "the

gatherings for

By the

when

a

major venue

446 West 54th Street in Manhattan/' Built

Mecca

and

Irish

Irish

American community, and

for the best class of Irish sociables

many years."''

New York City had become a focal point for Irish music

early 1900s,

record companies reacted to the market potential of the "Golden Age"

and began producing hundreds

of 78

rpm

recordings.

Between 1900 and 1940,

many outstanding Irish traditional musicians, most of whom lived or had passed through

and

New York City,

were recorded by such major companies as Columbia

by smaller, ethnic music

Victor, as well as

widely listened to by the

Irish

labels.

These recordings were

both in America and in Ireland and today provide

invaluable documentation of the playing of such legendary musicians as fiddlers

Michael Coleman, Paddy Killoran, and James Morrison; button accordionist John Kimmel; uilleann piper Patsy Touhey; and others.^

During the Irish

Music"

first

three decades of the twentieth century, the "Golden

Age

of

New York was fueled by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of

in

immigrants. Most of these newcomers hailed from the northern and western regions of Ireland, where traditional music and dance were often part of everyday life

and among the only forms

emigrated from

Killavil,

of

County

"Lad" O'Beime, also from

entertainment available. Mary O'Beime, Sligo, in 1930,

Killavil.

Like

who

married the late fiddler James

many immigrants

during this

era,

the

O'Beirnes brought a social aesthetic that revolved largely around traditional

music and dance: "We danced a lot in Ireland. There was always house parties On a Sunday evening, everybody and we'd get up and do the four-hand reel. .

knew

that there

was always music

at the

.

.

Coleman's Crossroads. So people

would come from Gorteen, Bunninadden, Tubbercurry, boys and

girls

would

ride the bicycles

you'd know, there'd be music right

With

a growing

and

all

just stop there

the townlands.

And

and the next thing

at the Crossroads."'

immigrant audience,

Irish

American

societies flourished in

New York. These organizations catered to their audiences by sponsoring regular ceili

dances and other

featuring

some

of the

activities.

The

larger societies presented gala concerts

master musicians in the United States

at the time.

Those

musicians selected to record early 78s benefited from this enthusiasm and traveled from city to city to play in variety shows and in concert. Fiddler Michael

Coleman occasionally took Mary Coleman Hannon:

My

father

together.

I

was

his family with him, as recalled by his daughter,

a beautiful dancer. Besides playing violin, he danced

and played

have a picture of him dancing and playing in Chicago on the

And, he traveled a

lot.

Maybe

1928, 1929,

stage.

.

.

we went to Philadelphia, my mother and

my father and myself. was about ten years old, I guess, and they had a beautiful, We went on the train and [when] we got off the they had all kinds of banners. Oh, was so proud of my father! "Welcome

aoc

I

beautiful big concert for him. train,

;

t

W

ew

or

i,

I

Michael Coleman to Philadelphia!" And

I thought, "Oh, isn't this great!" And and the stage was gorgeous. But everybody was tearing themselves apart looking at him. And I'm saying "That's my father! "'°

we went

in

The Golden Age

.

of Irish

an ingroup affirmation of

Music

in

New York during the

gatherings of the finest

1920s served as both

Irish traditional culture as well as a positive display

of Irish self-identity to the general public. For

regular house seisuns,

.

.

some

immigrant musicians, there were

which would, years later, become legendary players at the time. Mary Coleman Harmon remembers of

always seeing a violin in her father's hand:

"I just

took

for granted

it

I

figured

everybody kind of did the same thing. There was music in everybody's house;

and

my home was

like that

when I grew

up, there

were always musicians. Lad

O'Beirne and James Morrison and Paddy Killoran. beautiful.

I

remember

— 'Did you hear talk

all

I'd

that

you know, because they'd

Membership

.

.

.

But

it

go out in the morning and hear

music

all

last night?'

the neighbors

And I'd be kind of embarrassed,

be playing until 3:00

in such Irish

was absolutely

all

am

[in]

their sessions."'^

immigrant societies "enabled the individual to

express feelings and kinship that helped to offset the isolation so often induced

by immigration into the impersonal settings

network

of fraternal

nity, so did the

many informal

at the regular seisuns

of

urban

districts."'^ Just as the

and religious institutions served the immigrant commu-

and

York's immigrant Irish

associations

ceilis.

These

made among

traditional musicians

activities united certain sectors of

community during

the prewar years, offering

New

them

the

opportunity to play music as part of a larger group as well as providing secure

venues where they could meet, exchange information about housing and

and

jobs,

socialize.

The Golden Age of Irish Music in New York peaked in the

1

920s.

By the early

1930s, a dramatic decrease in Irish immigration occurred as a result of the

Depression and

later.

World War

II.'''

These considerations, along with a

wartime shellac ban, curtailed the recording industry's in general. lists.'*

By 1945 the

Lacking a fresh infusion of immigrants to maintain

music

larity of Irish traditional

A

interest in ethnic

"Irish" series disappeared altogether

in

America began

similar rejection of Irish traditional

music

from active catalog interest, the

popu-

a steady decline.

music had already been taking place music from England and America

in Ireland in the 1930s. In its stead, popular

appealed to growing numbers, particularly those in urban areas, as well as

elsewhere in the country. during these years was

its

Jack Coen, a flute player

One of the reasons for Irish traditional music's demise growing association with rural poverty. According to

who was born in

dance halls began catering

1925 near Woodford, County Galway,

less to traditional ceili

dances and more often to the

^n

\y

popular dance standards

486 The

Modem

Era

—foxtrots, quicksteps, and the like—from outside of

Ireland: "Irish traditional

music was something that they figured

associated with the poor, the poor people. for that reason. be,

all

With

.

.

was

Everybody wanted to associate with the rich and they want to

do what they

they

.

And they didn't want to be associated

wanted

dance

did, in the big

to be associated

this confUct

between basic commimity

came

class consciousness

and then the brass band section,

halls,-

with that."'^

a

traditional

the popular ballroom dance music of America and Europe. creative, essentially

communal

social activities of

now becoming commodified and the point that in the smaller

little

[traditional

town

music and dance

to

What had once been

music making and dance were

in the process, exclusionary

were changing as I was growing up and

and an evolving

social traditions

movement away from

by nature. "Things

music] 'twas going out. Even to

halls right

around through the country,

they used to up the price so high that the poor people couldn't afford to go to the dance. So they retreated back to traditional Irish

some

farmer's house and they played their

music and they danced the old

Fueling this interest in

modem

radio in Ireland. Although the

traditional sets."^^

music and dance was the growing influence

of

government-owned Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE) was

did not broadcast traditional Irish music until 1933,

founded in 1929,

it

Ballinakill Ceili

Band was presented. Daniel

Collins, a fiddler

when

the

and president

of

Shanachie Records, believes that such neglect was intentional: "The government, not understanding the music themselves,

felt

that this kind of

always

felt

ashamed

music was a

that people, that the elite people in Ireland sort of always

of the regular ordinary

—

that's

my

—of

opinion

.

.

.

The government has

manifestation of being a very primitive, backward people

had been

the regular, ordinary

people."''^

Although traditional

Irish

music did not

die out altogether,

it

increasingly

took a back seat to popular ballroom dance music. Local bands that had once played

ceili

music now heard the sounds

of early big

adapted their instrumentation to approximate the traditional musicians

band music and many

new sound.

Forward-looking

expanded their marketability by learning "modern"

in-

struments such as the saxophone and piano accordion. Martin Mulhaire, a button accordionist

who now lives in Flushing, Queens, recalls his father's band

from Eyrecourt, County Galway during the 1930s: "He had a band

at that time,

which was unusual, I guess, out in the middle of the country. He had a ceili band, and he had, what he called, a modern band which did waltzes and what was popular music in them days. The songs I remember from back then were like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby. They would do whatever was popular anyway in them days in the band. In them days, it was just drums, if there was a piano in the place, they would use piano. Fiddles and flutes were the dominant .

.

.

instruments. Later on, they got a saxophone player."'* Traditional flutist Jack

Coen lived in the same part of Galway and remembers saw [Martin Mulhaire] in Ireland, singing in his

the Mulhaires' band well: "I

father's

well,

band when he was about eight years

amusement. the other

...

stuff,

If

they needed

ceili

His father had a dance band,

old.

he played everything that was needed

music, they played that. Or

if

you needed

they played that."''

modem,

trend toward the

and popular music, the

spawned a number

non-Irish musical styles in Ireland

American-style dance bands that during the 1940s traveled and performed

outside of their towns but primarily within their

dance halls

for

home

county. Performing in

weddings, dinners, and other social functions, these bands were

often quite formal: the players wore tuxedos and sat while they played, reading

music

off charts

mounted on music stands

music that was learned by ear and played

—a

in a

relaxed,

communal

and a variety.of wind instruments (trumpet, saxophone,

dion, violin,

Musical repertoire included a mix of popular instrumental music for

ceili

style.

Irish songs,

clarinet).

traditional

and, in the late 1940s, via the

Network broadcast from Germany. Demand

Forces

some

dancing, and big band selections learned via the

BBC from England

radio waves: the

Armed

cry from Irish traditional

far

more

band instrumentation typically included piano, drums, piano accor-

Irish big

American

for these semilocal

bands was high and jobs were plentiful.

Many

Mick Delahunty different

after the more prominent big bands The most popular of these ensembles was the

dance bands modeled themselves

that traveled throughout Ireland.

Orchestra, a 12-piece group that formed in 1943 and played a

venue every night

of the

week, often seven nights in a row. Brendan

Ward, a native of Foxford, County Mayo,

Mick Delahunty Orchestra

joined the

who

danced up a storm during these years: "In

Some

parts of the country ...

fact,

we

immigrated

later

in 1952.

years were, generally from nine until three or three.

to

He remembers

New

York,

that Ireland

the dances in Ireland in those

two

in the morning, ten until

played from ten until

six.

And

in

summertime, the sun would be brilliantly shining in the window in the morning and we were

still

playing.

"^°

Brendan Ward's contributions to the Mick Delahunty Orchestra as music arranger and instrumentalist were considerable for it

ments

was ultimately his arrange-

that gave Delahunty's orchestra its trademark sound.

been playing "stock music"

sound and adapted

it

The

orchestra had

—standards from the big band era such as "In The

Mood" and "American Patrol." But

it

was Ward who captured the Glenn Miller

to Irish popular songs.

Nobody [in Ireland) seemed to know how to write, to get that sound that Miller And the moment I heard it, I knew exactly how he was getting it. He was using a lead clarinet on top playing the melody and a tenor saxophone one octave below, playing the same melody. In between there were three got.

.

.

.

.

.

.

instruments playing very close harmony.

And

I

started to write for Mick, not Miller stuff now, but Irish

That's one thing that

487 insh Traditional

and Popular Music i"

In addition to the local bands that played both ceili

of

entertainment or

for people's

Mick became very famous

for

even alter

I

music ...

left

him.

He

New

York City

was The

Modem

able to play Moore's melodies, "Love's Roses," "Believe

Endearing Young Charms,"

Era

etc.

.

.

.

It's

Me

If

All Those

very easy to understand, even a person

who is not a musician can clearly hear the melody

there.

One problem,

I

think,

American music was that you didn't hear a melody, and the average man on the street has to hear a melody, particularly an Irish that there

was with

the

.

Ward's arrangements proved to be on York's Irish Echo about an early

.

target, as

noted in a 1 959 article in

Mick Delahunty performance: "With

with emphasis on the melody. The kind

lyrics [the audience)

New

a stroke

opened up with a simple, old-time waltz, beauti-

of sheer genius, his orchestra fully played,

.

could sing as they danced.

of famihar, well-loved

"^^

What Ward and Mick Delahunty's orchestra succeeded in doing was to create and popularize a hybrid genre

of music. Familiar Irish songs (popular, not

necessarily traditional) were recontextualized in the contemporary style of

American

big

band music. As

local

dance bands catered to the developing dual

interests of their audience for ceih dances as well as the popular dance standards,

Delahunty's music went one step further and offered a similar parallel using

popular

Irish (as

opposed to traditional) and contemporary American music. In

this regard, Delahunty's orchestra offered a cultural bridge

and the new, a statement

modem

of

between the familiar

Irishness within the larger context of

developing popular culture.

unemployment marked the years in War 11.^^ Small farms and large famihes forced the young

Shortages of consumer goods and rising Ireland just after World Irish to

leaving

seek work elsewhere, but with

many with

little

little

industry in Ireland, jobs were scarce,

choice but to emigrate.

The

increase in immigration

during the latter half of the 1940s was notable: between 1941 and 1945, only 1,059 Irish

came

to the

United States whereas 26,444 arrived between 1946 and

1950.^^*

Immigration to the United States further increased when Congress passed the Immigration and Nationahty Act of 1952 (McCarran- Walter Act) allowing,

among

other things, unrestricted immigration from the Western Hemisphere

and a stated preference

Thus

new

for those

with relatives

who were American

citizens.

favoring Irish immigrants, this bill opened the doors wide to a surge of

arrivals,

and 48,362

Irish arrived in the

United States between 1951 and

1960.

A number of traditional musicians arrived in New York City during the early years of this renewed immigration in the late 1940s. Indeed, an advertisement

placed in the Irish Echo on

"Emerald Musical Society, Society, Inc. is

professionally

composed

all

November

Inc.

of Irish

their lives.

12,

1949, invites

membership

in the

(A Benevolent Society)": "The Emerald Musical

The

providing needy assistance to our

Musicians Society

who have

played Irish Music

was formed with the intention

members when emergencys

of

[sic] exist. ... It

is

these men,

We

whom we

credit

with keeping the traditional

Irish

have in the past year admitted to membership a number of

Music aUve.

.

.

We hope the arrivals wUl continue to join our group

recently arrived from Ireland.

and welcome them to work side by side with us."^^ Like

many immigrant groups,

join estabhshed

immigrant

institutions; in the case of traditional musicians,

societies, the Gaelic League,

Music

Society,

many Irish American county

and several traditional music clubs that sponsored

Through these organizations, some

seistins.

of the

newly arrived

traditional

musicians found opportunities to sociaUze and meet others with similar ests.

Once connected,

inter-

there were private house parties and seisiins that took

place on a regular basis. In the late 1940s

New

in

York.

was possible to find employment as a traditional musician was obtained, however, it often offered a less than

it

Once

a job

satisfactory lifestyle.

Tom

Doherty, for example, emigrated from his native

He

Mountcharles, County Donegal, in 1948. sequently turning

down

recalls being

away

Avenue

the saloon at 4:00

.

.

.

in Brooklyn: "I

and Sunday

to play for Friday night, Saturday night,

brother-in-law says 'No, you've got to get a job.

He

offered— and sub-

—a job playing traditional music on his melodeon

single-row button accordion) in a pub on Closson hired right

(a

was

My

night.

Because you're finished in

am and [then] you'd go home and you're up again at

1 1

:00 am.'

'Where you gonna go when you get up again except [back] to the saloon

says,

and then to play there that night advice and I'm not sorry that

Paddy Reynolds, a

New

grated to

fiddler

I

again.'

He

says

no

'It's

good.' So

I

took his

did!"^^

from Ballinamuck, County Longford, also immi-

York in 1948. Like Doherty, he was offered a job playing

traditional music.

My first job

I

walking by,

I

ever had in this country playing music was in the cabaret. ... I was was only a greenhorn, when I heard Irish music. I walked in, stood at was homesick as hell, and I was almost in tears. And there was the She came down and I fiddler I'd ever heard in my life on the stage.

the bar, and lousiest

I

.

name

is

.

.

.

.

.

You play nice music. My Paddy Reynolds." "Oh, Paddy Reynolds. Where are you from?" She had a

turned around and

I

complimented,

I

says "Nice music.

husky voice; she Uked her whiskey. And I said, "I'm from Co. Longford." "I'm from Tipperary meself." And we got talking and well, she says to me, "Do you play music?" And

I

said,

and "A httle bit, on the fiddle." "Do you have it with you?" And that night .

I

got out the fiddle and I went up on the stage and I played that night.

I

was employed

for Friday, Saturday,

Cabaret. Incidentally, that's where

Venues featuring both

New

I

and Sunday

met

Irish traditional

halls that

New

.

night, in Brooklyn, in Plunket's

and popular music were plentiful in

York's Irish immigrant

were routinely rented by

.

my darling.

York City during these years. They included

been catering to

Msh

large

dance halls that had

community

Irish societies for

since the 1920s and

dinner dances and other

Traditional

and Popular Music '"

the newly arrived Irish of this era were able to

there were, aside from the Emerald

489

.

Musicians

Irish

New

York City

The

Modem

A glance through issues of New York's Irish Echo during these years

occasions.

490 Era

lists

dozens of dance halls where

Irish

American dances took place throughout

the week. Irish American dances, in general, were sponsored by an array of Irish American societies and county associations. Most of the dances warranted some mention in the Irish weekly newspapers, and larger dances might gamer a preview write-up complete with lists of committee members and organizers. If

newsworthy

made so if the reporter happened to attend the event), the would be written up in the following week's paper, along with who (often

larger dances

attended, the inevitable success of the event, and, of course,

who provided

the

music.

The dance music at these events reflected a split allegiance to both Irish and American cultures. The late Louis Quirm, a native of County Armagh who came to New York in 1936, led "The Shamrock Minstrels," an ensemble specializing in both traditional Irish music and the popular foxtrots, quicksteps, and other American standards of the day. His band often featured three saxophonists, a banjo player, two fiddlers, a button accordionist, two trumpeters, a trombonist, a pianist, and a drummer. The traditional instrumentalists in "The Shamrock Minstrels" often learned the modern music, but not necessarily vice versa: "Well, the American music

why I got

so

many

was

in

demand and

jobs at that time. ...

and these guys with

all

the

I

so

was the

Irish

music. That's

leaned a bit towards the Irish dancing

modern numbers, they wouldn't

get

two

with

jobs

crowd because they didn't know enough of the traditional music, you know. So they'd come to me to get the jobs. And when I got called, I definitely would

that

have to play the popular music and in here because they

that's

why I got some

Pickup bands were also put together specifically

Reynolds

being hired for jobs in

recalls

traditional

of these other fellows

were very good."^^

component

of

New

for a job. Fiddler

Paddy

York's dance halls as part of the

an otherwise popular ensemble. "You'd get jobs

.

.

.

usually two-, three-, and four-piece band jobs and one half of that band would

be able to play American and the other half would play accompanist

—and that was

all

pianos in those days

Irish.

Now,

the

—was always a professional

who knew how to back up Irish music in all its forms as well as American music. So they used to dance set dancing. They used to dance the Stack of Barley, Varsovienna, old-time waltzes. of the people that

By the 1950s,

would be

.

.

.

there.

You always

got the music to suit the blend

"^'

a distinctive popular musical aesthetic

had

solidified in

New

York's Irish community. Borrowing from a similar hybridized musical style

developed simultaneously in Ireland and in the United States in the years before

World War II, style

this

new form took into account both

repertoire as well as playing

and placed new demands on musicians. While always maintaining a

definitive sense of "Irishness," the preferred dance

from the inclusion

of traditional

music was moving away

instruments and more toward a bona fide big

band sound with increasing emphasis on brass and reed instruments. Irish musicians in New York attempted to adapt, often with mixed results. Paddy

Noonan,

commercial

a

critical of the

dance halls

American musician and owner of Rego Records,

Irish

semiprofessional Irish musicians

is

who played in New York City's

at that time:

was way ahead

what was happening here. You must realize that who were bus drivers, On the weekend, they were trying to play music they were subway trainmen And when the big immigration [started], people had been used to listening to big bands in Ireland aU through the war years Glen Miller, huge stuff. In fact, some of the big American bands used to tour Ireland. And a lot of [the immigrants], when they came over here, were surprised to hear such a different

The standard

of

music

in Ireland

of

All the ballrooms throughout Ireland featured big bands.

the [musicians at these

.

.

New

York] dances were people

.

—

standard of music.

Instrumentation and repertoire were undergoing similar changes. Whereas Irish

American bands

traditional Irish

in the 1930s and 1940s

moved with ease between now they played

dance tunes and popular American standards,

a larger percentage of

modem music, often on traditional instruments. Brendan

Ward, the former arranger and instrumentalist with Mick Delahunty's Orchestra,

immigrated to

New

York in 1955. He

American music played on

recalls his reaction to hearing

traditional instruments

and vice

versa.

play a 'Darktown Strutter's Ball' on a button-keyed accordion.

sound

right.

.

.

.

And, by the same token, you cannot play

Stack of Barley' on the tenor saxophone. ... look for with the tenor saxophone.

It is

"You

don't

just doesn't

It

[the ceili dance]

'The

not the sound that one would

And a lot of recordings had been made around

those years with the Irish music with the tenor saxophone with a very bad, bad vibrato, a very

wide

vibrato,

and

it

just doesn't

sound

right."

American band style was emerging with an emphasis on texture and arrangement. Dorothy Hayden, a longtime Irish radio Finally, a distinctive Irish

New

host in

Hayden.

On

York

City, inherited her radio position

his program,

from her

he played largely traditional

to popular Irish songs during his 13-year tenure

Irish

on ward.

father,

music

When

James A.

in addition

his daughter

took over as radio host after his death in 1943, she played less traditional music

and catered instead

to her audience's

changing

tastes.

"Because you got the best

songs coming out and the best singers and the best voices and everybody was in tune it

was

and they kept together, you know?

great songs. [Popular singer]

with the songs

we were

[traditional musicians]

stand? There

all

Thus

.

used to

start together

was no variation and no color to crazy.

as socializing patterns States, so did the

And the music was arranged and

.

singing. Real Irish songs,

two hours drives some people United

.

Carmel Quinn, she came

in about '54

we would

say

.

.

.

.

.

.

the

and finish together, you under-

it.

Music played continuously for

"^^

changed among the

rhythms and melodies

to

Irish

immigrants in the

which they danced. This

49 Msh

Traditional

and Popular Music i"

New

York City

compromise

492 The

Modem

Era

—American arrangements, textures, and rhythms combined with —was thus both a creative response to the pressures of

a popular Irish repertoire

cultural adaptation and an important beacon of ethnic identity for the Irish as

they adjusted to

new

life

in the

All

Roads Lead

Amidst the dozens

of Irish

country.

to the

City Center Ballroom

dance halls in

New

City Center in Manhattan stood out. Opening

its

York City during the

doors on September

City Center would become the premier Irish dance hall in arguably, in the United States.

Under the shrewd

native Bill Fuller, City Center developed tion of big

band music by Brendan Ward and

950s,

New York City and,

direction of

reputation by

its

1

15, 1956,

its

County Kerry

unique combina-

his 12-piece "All Star" Orchestra,-

shorter sets of Irish ceili dance music and old-time waltzes by piano accordionist

Paddy Noonau; and guest appearances by

em bands,

and

later, in

Irish entertainers,

country and west-

the early 1960s, Irish showbands. Local talent

was

also

spotlighted in talent and dance competitions.

up

In its heyday,

to 2,000 people reportedly

would pack City Center on

a

Saturday night. In general, the audiences were the newly arrived Irish immigrants and, to a lesser extent, Irish Americans.

and had danced to big band music in City Center's

Bill Fuller.

Most hailed from

of

time and place, others strategically developed

Aside from attracting an instant

—and growing—audience. City was

centrally

lines connecting

Queens,

Center, at West 55th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues,

and

rural Ireland

dance halls before immigration.

immense success was due to a number of factors, some of which

were fortuitous coincidences by

Ireland's

ideally located at the

hub

subway

of several

Brooklyn, and the Bronx to Manhattan. Thus, City Center was an easy and safe trip for

immigrants

who

tended to live in

Irish enclaves in these boroughs. In

addition, City Center's location in fashionable of sophistication cally

and more importantly,

essential

city.

—

lent an air

at least physi-

—with mainstream New York City nightlife and culture.

Moreover, City Center, like other

was

midtown Manhattan

a sense of integration

to

New

York

Irish

dance

halls, offered

hub for socializing, dancing, and finding romance and spouses.

In

an

what

many new immigrants from rural Ireland an often harsh and impersonal Noonan recalled,

City Center offered a sort of haven. Accordionist Paddy

"We're a people that like to stick together. City Center, you'd go there on a

meet seven or eight people that you knew from home, that came out that week. City Center, if you lived in Cleveland, on a long weekend, you'd pile into a car and drive to New York. People from Boston would Friday night, you'd probably

come down. Because was

a

meeting place

Mulhaire,

knew in Ireland. ... It home any place else.'"'^ Martin

they'd meet 100 people that they .

.

.

You wouldn't

who was hired by

feel at

Bill Fuller in

1958 to play the

Irish ceili

dance sets

on the button accordion at City Center, remembers the dance hall scene vividly:

"They came mostly

meet people

was

typical to dancing in Ireland

493

where there was not very much emphasis on drinking, even though you could

insh Jradiiwnal

came and stood around the

and Popular Music

to

.

.

.

[It]

get a drink at the bar, a sandwich, but people just floor, girls all

and boys together, and the dances were called out and they just danced

night long.

They danced 'The Stack

They would dance

to all the

new

of Barley,' old-time waltzes, all that.

songs as well: foxtrots, quicksteps, slow

waltzes, slow foxtrots, words that have gone by the wayside.'"^"*

And dance they did. On a typical weekend evening, Brendan Ward's orchestra played the popular American dance standards and Ward's unique Americanized Irish

songs polished during his tenure with

Mick Delahunty's orchestra. With Ward led his I2-piece orchestra

continental and Latin music also in demand.

through Strauss waltzes, rumbas, cha-chas, and tangos. After a 40-minute the big band

would take

would take the

a break,

and an accordionist,

pianist,

set,

and drummer

stage and play a 20-minute set of old-time Irish waltzes, an

occasional continental waltz such as "The Blue Danube," and popular Irish songs. After Brendan Ward's orchestra returned for another 40-minute set, the

would follow with 20 more minutes of ceili dance music jigs, and reels, depending on the dance. Brendan Ward recalls the popularity of these Irish traditional sets, most often played by Paddy Noonan on the piano accordion: "It was an Irish ballroom and [Bill Fuller] was catering to Irish people, 100% Irish people, who wanted the Irish music. A certain percentage of them did. I must say that whatever Paddy played, they did enjoy. He could play 'The Siege of Ennis,' maybe one in the night. I think he couldn't have done two in one night, they might get tired of it, but they would do one dance in one night, which would take about 15 minutes."^'' Irish accordionist

traditional set pieces,

.

Paddy Noonan's

sets did

music and dance.

and regionally based

.

indeed offer his audiences a chance to dance

group figure dances. Yet these sets were, in traditional

.

effect, a

Ceili dance itself succeeded the

set dancing.

ceili or

watered-down version

With few exceptions,

more

of

traditional

dancing did not

set

survive the transition to America, in part because of the rapid popularization of

the less localized and more uniform style of ceili dancing, as In general, ceili dances

it

came to be called.

were standardized and notated around the turn

century, thus are less reflective of a specific

Paddy Noonan played

jigs, reels,

and

community

set pieces for his

of the

or regional style.

20-minute

ceili sets at

City Center. These tunes were played in a different style from that of traditional Irish

music

—largely unadorned

(as

opposed to highly ornamented) and propul-

sively rhythmic, as opposed to maintaining a subtle inner pulse addition,

Noonan played

the button accordion tional music; rather,

resultant Irish dance

and semitraditional

the piano accordion

and

swing.''^ In

—a more contemporary cousin to

—and an instrument not commonly found in Irish it

is

most often used

in

commercial

Irish

tradi-

music. The

and music offered by City Center followed a standardized style, a

compromise gesture toward

and the more palatable, commercial culture preferred by

Ireland's folk culture Irish

America.

in

New

York City

Another reason behind City Center's alternating sets

494 The

Modem

Era

Irish ceili

40 minutes, followed by a

was thus

of

American music and

music was the union requirement that bands play strictly enforced

20-minute

ideal for keeping the audience in the

music throughout the evening. By

all

no more than

for

break.^''

A smaller band

dance hall by offering nonstop

accounts, City Center's audiences were

pleased with this dual offering of music and the dance hall was packed virtually

every weekend.

New

City Center—and other offered

more

York City

Irish

dance halls in the 1950s—

dance music than did the dance halls in Ireland. Aside from

ceili

the nostalgia and homesickness inherent in the immigrant experience, the dual offerings of

New

York's Irish dance halls served the all-important purpose of

providing a bridge between the traditional culture the Irish immigrants had

behind and the new American can culture was attractive in

lifestyle

its

sophistication and associations with

cialized glamour. Nevertheless, the Irish ethnic affiliation was strong

rooted. In effect. City Center borrowed

left

they encountered. Mainstream Ameri-

commer-

and deeply

from both Irish and American social and

musical aesthetics and created a comfortable compromise.

The Irish dance Irish

hall

Echo and the

and big band era was also the big

Irish

American dancing"

Advocate in the

at the larger

late

dollar era. Issues of the

1950s contain ads for "Irish and

dance halls and detail the group featured that

week. In contrast, a typical issue included only occasional (and advertisements for a traditional

by an

Irish

American

society.

ceili

much

smaller)

dance sponsored by the Gaelic League or

Matty Connolly, who immigrated

to the

United

County Monaghan in 1960, is an All-Ireland uilleann pipe champion and an electric bass player. He was frequently hired to play popular music and rarely, if ever, traditional music. "The dollar sign. There was more money to be made playing the other type of music than there was playing traditional music. States from

And for that reason, I was playing mainly showband music those years. And any piping I done was just a tune with my mom and myself, just for our own enjoyment."^*

New visible

was abandoning whatever members had known prior to immigration. The most

York's Irish immigrant community, thus,

vestiges of folk culture

its

and public displays

of traditional culture

—music

relegated to private house seisiins and the occasional general,

removed from the

extend into the

late

was replaced by

a

Irish

ceili,

and dance

—were

events that were, in

immigrant mainstream. This aesthetic would

1950s and early 1960s as one style of popular Irish music

new

one.

Showband Music The

late

1950s in Ireland saw the meteoric

rise in popularity of a

new wave

of

popular music, loosely termed "showband music." With television not arriving in Ireland until the

end of 1961, radio was the

sole source for the

new sounds of

popular music: rock 'n

roll, "skiffle,"

emanated from England and America

and country and western,

via the

which

495

BBC, Radio Luxembourg, and the

jnsh Traditional

all of

American Armed Forces Network broadcast from Germany. Showbands performed covers of these popular styles plus standard ceili dance tunes and popular Irish songs. In

doing

so, traveling

showbands served

to personify the faceless

performers heard on the radio. Simultaneously, a revived Irish

money into

economy put them out in

the pockets of teenagers, and a renewed optimism sent

droves to the dance halls.

And ceili dancing

it

was

not.

Rock

'n roll

spread throughout Ireland, largely

replacing big band music as the popular music genre of the day.

rhythm sections and an emphasis on stylized (and provocative)

and

guitars

brass,

With strong

showbands

offered

showmanship, matching stage costumes (mohair

were especially popular), a versatile repertoire, and an occasional comedy By the early 1960s the showband era was in full swing, and Ireland's roads were crisscrossed by scores of groups in their buses heading to gigs. Their suits

act.

destinations were the newly built ballrooms that dotted the countryside and cities.^'

Of the many showbands that got their start between 1958 and

1965, the Royal

Showband, with lead singer Brendan Bowyer of County Waterford, was the most famous. Bovver's stage presence was modeled after Elvis Presley and he became to Ireland, in fact,

caused

what Presley was to the rest of the Western world. Bowyer and the Royal Showband quickly spawned dozens of

girls to faint

imitators. Bovsyer recalls that, in

no time, showbands became big business with

the larger groups earning unheard of

building balhooms. parts of County of

1

It

Mayo,

amounts

of

could happen on a crossroads! for

It

money: "People started was amazing. There were

example, small towns that wouldn't have a population

500 or 2000 and there'd be 3000 at the dance, you know, because they'd drive

for miles."^°

The showband scene coincided with rock bands, notably the Beatles, at the Liverpool

who

the rise in popularity of early British

in 1962

opened

for the

Royal Showband

Empire Theatre. But showbands were essentially copycat bands.

This, explains Bowyer,

was

in part the reason

why

the Royal

Showband

remained the most famous band in Ireland while the Beatles become the most famous in the world: "The lesson we should have learned from the Beatles was that we should have gotten away and started making so much money doing everybody else's

with our success that

we

do our

first

own

stuff.

We

were

and were so overwhelmed

neglected to look farther [than]

Brendan Boviryer and the Royal Showband 1

to

stuff

that.""*'

toured the United States in

960 during the Lenten season. In New York City, they performed at City Center

in

dance halls packed with recent

Irish emigrants.

Their

style,

sound, and

success inspired the formation of several local showbands and the craze quickly

took

off in

New York. Martin Mulhaire and Matty Connolly,

traditional Irish musicians, pooled their talents

for

example, both

and formed the six-piece Ma-

and Popular Musk

m New York

City

The

Modem

Showband

jestic

496 Era

in

December, 1963. The instrumentation included drums,

tenor saxophone/clarinet, rhythm and lead guitars, bass guitar, and vocalists.

Hired in 1963 by the newly opened Red Mill on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, the Majestic for the

Showband played

from their variety and approach a

week from

three nights a

9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.

next 10 years. According to Matty Connolly, their popularity

little bit of

to the music.

everybody's music

little bit of Irish traditional,

.

.

"A showband is

light rock,

.

a

country music, Irish music, a

they dip into everbody's pot and this

to go at that particular time.

.

.

.

The term showband

give a good presence like you're

on

stage.

stemmed

band that does

That you're

is

what seemed

means,

really

I

guess, to

not up there just

just

playing an instrument, but in addition to doing that you're having a reasonably

good time. And you're supposed to act and look the Like the groups of the big band traditional Irish

era, Irish

part."''^

showbands

also incorporated a

element into their performances. In the Majestic Showband,

Martin Mulhaire played mostly electric guitar and a little bit of button accordion for the old-time waltzes, largely "out of necessity

because

.

.

.

have an accordion in a band, or you got no work." Mulhaire than

that, the differences

notable:

"Showbands

.

.

between the big bands and the showbands were

stood up and they wore uniforms and they were more bands. [Big bands] sat

down

music stands and they read sheet music and they never looked

at the

alive looking

in front of

.

everybody had to recalls that other

on a stage than the old fashioned

[big]

showband scene, you stood up and played from memory and it "'^^ more fun thing to watch than to participate in. Like the big bands, Irish showbands offered their audiences a popular and contemporary sound, yet uniquely Irish. Again, the showband era satisfied New York's Irish community with a musical expression that was quintessentially

people. But the

was

a

theirs,

while also sounding and appearing closer to the music of the mainstream.

In 1965 Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality

which

in effect cut off the steady stream of Irish

no new audiences

of young, unattached

Act amendment,

immigrants to America. With

immigrants in search of

a night

dance halls closed, one by one, and the showband era ended. As in

life,

dance halls gave way to bars and discos, and with television beaming pop directly into living rooms, the

the

Ireland, the stars

showband's role as copycat was no longer fresh

and became redundant.

A

myriad

culture in rationales

towns

of reasons explains the general

New is

abandonment of Irish traditional of the most commonly stated

York during the 1950s. One

many Irish immigrants —particularly those from the larger —were simply not exposed much to traditional music before

that

in Ireland

immigration. As discussed

earlier,

the

main

socializing forces

were found in the

dance hall scene where contemporary European and American music had

become

the rage. This trend

was further enhanced by the growing influence of American film. As traditional music fell into

radio and, into the 1940s, by

many Irish had were

disuse, the only association that

Depending on the region

of Ireland

grants were thus aware only of

its

negative stereotypes.

from which they came, many

what they perceived

to be

Irish Traditional

shameful and loaded

and Popular Music

images and were ignorant of the positive role that traditional music had and

community

could play in

self-identity

and expression. For example, Daniel

Collins traveled to Ireland at age 12 in 1950 to compete in the Fleadh Ceoil na

Eireann (the annual Irish traditional music competitions).

He recalls

were few outstanding Irish-born traditional players but plenty

that there

of overt hostility

toward the music in general. I'm in this

little

my mother's

town, Abbeyfeale, Mountcollins, County Limerick,

who were relatives of mine also And we were going to play a few tunes, you know An uproar broke out, a bloody goddamn uproar broke out. And they opened the doors up, the double village

.

.

and there were

.

.

doors,

.

bunch

a

dance

.

and they threw them

out, bing!

relatives weren't there [because]

The

of people at this

We

would have been thrown out

if

my

we were playing Irish music.

was about, needless to say, we're going to stop Teresa Brewer playing "Put Another Nickel in the Nickelodeon," we've got some Americans here that are going to perform some Irish music. The place went into an uproar. You'd think that we had gone into a church and peed, like, on the main aisle. Something as bad as that. It was worse. That we had desecrated, you know, we fight

had, like, insulted the mass.

A more

came to the United States with the Coen worked for several years as a bartender at City Center and every weekend observed his fellow immigrants dancing to modern music to the neglect of traditional. According to Coen, the traditional music scene in New York had so deteriorated that he was forced to put his flute away for several years after he immigrated in 1949. subtle form of this antagonism

surge of immigrants in the 1950s. Flutist Jack

They used It's

to call

poisonous.

it

It's

the "diddely-diddely music." That's

a slur

on

Irish traditional

progressive Irish people, or people

those days, this

A

is

what they

who

called

why I hate

music, because this

that word.

is

what the

thought they were progressive back in

it.''^

people didn't even want to be associated with us Irish people!

They was degrading, or I don't know what you'd call it. They thought it was Rocky Mountain music that should be left where we got it and not be brought from there at all. That's strange, isn't it? But that was the way it was lot of

thought

it

in those days.*

Similarly, Irish folk

Tommy Makem,

who, along with the Clancy Brothers, brought

song to international prominence, remembers his audience's attitude

in the late 1950s

toward singing traditional, as opposed to popular,

Irish songs:

"When we started out, we refused to sing for Irish audiences because they would all

be into Bing Crosby, 'Danny Boy,' things like that. That's what they were

being fed by the radio programs at the time.

was

to

it.

They had

left

.

.

.

They

Ireland and sort of looked

497

immi-

Irish

figured this

down on

was

Irish

all

there

music. You

in

New

York City

were a peasant

498 The

Modem

Era

if

you sang that kind

of thing.

These people were trying to drag

themselves up by their boot straps and you know, be ultra-respectable.

It

wasn't

"''^

what we were about. Commercial musicians, promoters, and others active in the Irish popular music scene had a somewhat different bias. Piano accordionist Paddy Noonan remembers some of the traditional music in New York during the 1950s was "rough": "They were what they called 'tenement house disturbers.' You had people playing violins that were out of tune. You had pianos that were always out of tune.

.

.

.

You had bad music, you had terrible music.

that they're passing as Irish

.

.

.

Some of the stuff

music and playing is a bit primitive

of the recording, the quality of playing, quality of

in the quality

accompaniment.

.

.

they're

.

an embarrassment.""^* Dorothy Hayden

on the

part of

worked to the

an alleged lack of professionahsm owing to alcoholism

cites

—a

some

traditional Irish musicians

and professional behavior Irish

for

stereotype that ultimately

traditional musicians' disadvantage. In contrast, the drinking habits of

American music were

ensembles and individuals specializing in hybridized

less harshly

judged and thus seen as more appropriate

venues such as City Center and as guests on Hayden's long-running radio

program: the traditional musicians "kind of kept to themselves a

little.

.

.

.

You

wouldn't even hire [them]. You know what I mean, because you didn't know if [they

know why was I making a it. You knew [when] his band came in and the band was clean and dressed and presentable and you know what I mean. And they were sober and industrious."'*' More important, the association of traditional Irish music with poverty or the lower class came into conflict with the "American dream" harbored by many immigrants during these years. The 1950s and 1960s were eras of strong were] going to be sober or whatever. People wanted to fuss over this

Paddy Noonan.

.

.

.

because he was dedicated to

unions and relatively high salaries and offered the opportunity mobility on the part of the working and middle activity thus

had to

the prevailing

fit

American

class.

ideal,

for

The choice

upward

of social

and ballroom music and

dance were appropriate public displays. This trend, recalls Dorothy Hayden, was also manifested in the quest for material gain.

in the 50s

.

.

.

they'd stay

than their mothers'. there's wall-to-wall.

American culture.

.

.

It

"Any of the girls

that

.

political issues of the

day were also

at

odds with ethnic traditional

hearings in the early 1950s gave rise to a strongly

pro-American sentiment, especially toward immigrant groups in the

sity

—an

[here]

You see, they have, there's two cars in every garage, was important to get all you can get."^^° The prevailing

The McCarthy

implicit corollary

were

home and their homes would be much more beautiful

unspoken but extant condemnation

States.

The

of ethnic diver-

—pervaded American society.

In the Irish

community,

this sense of outsider status

was reinforced through-

out the 1950s and into the 1960s by the media in both subtle and overt ways.

The

Irish

Advocate,

for

example, ran an advertisement on October

8,

1960,

issued by

Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in

499

One

/nsh Traditional

J.

which readers were urged

COMMUNISM and

to "Fight

Preserve AMERICA."

—

ways this could be done was to "Inform yourself. Know your country its and heritage. "^^ By implication, the celebration of one's native history, tradition, and heritage might thus have been construed as of the

history, tradition,

anti- American.

Put another way,

it is

possible that

it

may have been simpler for

the majority of Irish immigrants to celebrate aspects of

American

by necessity, ignore elements of their native culture in an

lifestyle and,

effort to quietly

assimilate.

For some, the mainstream

was

traditional Irish culture

movement away from

overt celebrations of

also an unconscious response to a legacy of

longtime political and social forces in Ireland. Martin Mulhaire, the son and

grandson of traditional instrumentalists in Eyrecourt, County Galway, came to

when he was on

the United States in 1958

opted to remain in

tour with the Tulla Ceili Band.

He

New York and for a time, filled in as the accordionist in Bill

Fuller's City Center. After several years,

however, Mulhaire put aside the button

accordion in favor of the electric guitar and played popular showband music

almost exclusively. In Mulhaire's opinion, the lack of public interest in traditional

music was

Irish

a result, in part, of years of British political oppression:

That goes back deep into our heritage of British occupation.

When

the British

was Irish and what they ashamed of. They abolished the couldn't destroy, they tried to make you language, you weren't allowed to fly green flags, you weren't allowed to play music. The music was played, but it was played sort of underground. And that feeling has persisted I'd say, even to this day, to a point where most Irish musicians are reaUy ashamed of their music because they were made to feel Along with that came a kind of reserve that way. It wasn't mainstream. where they kept it to themselves and they didn't play for other people or they felt ashamed to play for other people. Having come from this suppression of Irish music, then come to another country, I guess they felt that it was time to put that behind them or put it away. They kept it in the back of the minds and all that, but they didn't come over to demonstrate their Irishness. They came over to blend in, to become part of American society, which they did. They adapted to American ways, to American music, to American customs. They still had a love for Irish music, but it

came

to Ireland, they tried to destroy everything that feel

.

.

.

wasn't in the forefront.

And

some musicians, immigrawhich was soothed by playing traditional music; for

there were the personal considerations. For

tion caused homesickness, others, such as Mulhaire,

it

only served to exacerbate:

There were strong ties, and the sound of the accordion, it made me melancholy. I was looking for something else to put my time into, so I more or less left the accordion to one side and started playing the guitar more. Because I found it brought

me more

minded me

of

happiness than the accordion did. The accordion just

what

I

had

left.

I

was

trying to

make

a

new

life.

re-

and Popular Music

m New

York City

Traditional music seemed to fit in better over there than it did here. ... It was transported here and it sounded more foreign here. It didn't sound foreign

500 The

Modem

Era

in Ireland.^^

In a discussion of performance contexts for

Mick Moloney writes

or hybrid musics,

Irisfi

that "the

traditional

and commercial

more public the

context, the

more commercial, theatrical and/or hybridized the genres of Irish music that would characteristically be performed. The more private or controlled environment, the more conducive it is to the performance of the older, more traditional forms of music. "^"^ With the mainstream Irish opting for American and Irish American hybrid music genres, the traditional instrumental music scene throughout the 1950s was quiet and restricted largely to private or semipublic venues in Fiddler

Irish

neighborhoods, as well as

Andy McGann was born

1950s wore on.

on

He

played "mostly at these

and various house

recalls that as the

parties, or

music

Gaelic League

ceilis,

sessions.

ceilis,

the

There was a music club going

once a month. These were about the only occasions where

at the time,

traditional

West Harlem. He

New York City public venues for traditional Irish music became

increasingly rare. Feis

dances organized by Irish groups.

ceili

in 1928 in

music was played.

It

was mostly

House sessions were the most

private

sessions, session music.

venue

for traditional

"^^

music during

these years. Unlike ceili dances and the dance hall scene, house sessions focused

primarily on strictly traditional instrumental music and less on dance. these sessions have

become

Some of

legendary:

O'Beime and Andy McGaiui, and I, and on Felix Dolan, we used to get together in the homes for session in the Bronx, that's were I used to live I38th Street and Cypress Avenue which was 100% Irish there in those days. There was plenty of music and the neighbors loved it. In the summertime, they'd all be sitting with the windows opened and listening to us. In those days, there was no air conditioning; there was only fans in the windows. And the fans used to blow out exhaust and they'd blow out everything, including the music. Fiddler Paddy Reynolds: [James] "Lad"

Gerry Wallace and

later

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

James O'Beime Jr.: The sessions of music in our home in the South Bronx, in our apartment, were impromptu and they were generally on Saturday night. There might be 10 or 12 or 15 musicians there. And there were occasions .

.

.

.

.

.

where they went on all night actually til dawn. I remember on a number of occasions, my mother would shove all the musicians off to church in the morning and she would make a big breakfast and they would all come back, have a good breakfast, and play again.'' .

.

.

Fiddler/pianist

cause

we used

Maureen Glynn Connolly: The music was to go to a lot of

all

around

house parties back then even when

I

me

be-

was very

small and there was always Irish music and stepdancers. I started dancing before I

actually started taking lessons because

I

saw

it

in front of

me. The music was

constantly going.^*

Semipublic sessions also were held on a regular basis in a number of halls

and clubs in

New

York's Irish neighborhoods. In the years just after World

War

II,

example, fiddler James "Lad" O'Beime organized "The Irish Music and

for

New

501

Vasa Temple in the South Bronx.

insh Traditional

Attracting upward of 70 traditional musicians, these monthly sessions proved

and Popular Music

Social

Club of Greater

immensely popular

for

York"

at the

young and old musician

alike. Similarly, in

1956 the

was established by musicians Louis E. Quinn of New York, Frank Thornton of Chicago, and Ed Reavy of Philadelphia "to promote and preserve our heritage."''^ Branches of the association were located throughout the New York metropolitan area, each named after a famous Irish

Musicians Association,

traditional

Inc.,

musician (the Patsy Touhey Branch in Brooklyn, the Paddy Killoran E. Quinn Branch in Long Island, and so on).^'° music associations and clubs and the sessions they sponsored

Branch in Manhattan, the Louis In

all,

Irish

served several important functions.

traditional arts

went

they offered opportunities for

First,

with others during an era in which the

traditional musicians to connect

by the majority

largely publicly uncelebrated

of Irish.

— and —infrastructure, put a legitimizing modern twist on

Second, the music associations and clubs, with their often formal

indeed "incorporated"

what had been for centuries familial and community traditions, one that had eschewed organization and relied on spontaneity. By erecting a formal structure around the essentially informal practice of traditional music, these

associations created an aura of modernity by pointing to membership, goals, hierarchy, and financial support. Sessions thus offered a

context for what was perceived as a dying tradition.^'

and preserved

a folk-rooted identity

most important, they offered

also encouraged

the older musicians and, perhaps

and traditionally based

a sense of continuity

Irish identity for children of the

Other venues

among

new community

They

musicians.

for Irish traditional

music were the weekly Gaelic League

dances that took place in each borough of

New

ceili

York City beginning in 1940.

Estabhshed in Ireland in 1893 with the aim of "keeping alive the traditions of Ireland," the Gaelic League focused primarily

on the teaching and practice

of

the Irish language and dance as well as Irish history and, secondarily, the music.

Accused from time to time of elitism in their approach to Irish culture, members of the Gaelic League in New York City eagerly advertised their regular ceilis and encouraged participation by League

did,

all

members

of the

community. The Gaelic

however, place a certain amount of emphasis on the importance of

associating Irish traditional culture with respectful appearance and behavior. Dr. Frank Holt, the former president of the

New Jersey Gaelic League, attended

Gaelic League ceilis since the 1940s: "You went well dressed. You'd dress in a tie

and a

shirt

and a

suit

and the

girls

would

dress in a dress.

from well-to-do families, but we dressed properly

.

.

.

We

We

did not

come

had a couple in the

who were assigned the job of when a stranger would come pay particular attention to them to make them feel we'd break up a couple who enjoy dancing welcomed. And very frequently

Bronx Gaelic League

in to the hall, you'd

.

.

.

m New

York City

The Gaelic League had

502 The

Modem

Era

musicians to play

New

their pick of the finest of

at ceilis

and the standard

music

of

York's traditional

by

at these events,

accounts, was very high. According to Dr. Frank Holt, musicians received if

any payment for their services, but "they had a

to put

a knowledge,

skill,

all

little

and wanted

to use."^''

it

Like the Gaelic League, the United Irish Counties Association also offered a

venue

New York via the annual Feis (festival).

for Irish folk arts in

1932, the Feis

was

a

day of competitions in traditional

Irish

Beginning in

music, song, dance,

language, and a variety of other cultural expressions such as Irish costumes, elocution, and recitation. During

American children competed

heyday, thousands of Irish and Irish

its

and the winners proudly walked

in the Feis

off

with gleaming medals.

The

New York's

Feis served as an opportunity for

and socialize in the name College,

Fordham University,

Irish

Hunter College, the Feis

or

community

to

Held outdoors on the grounds

of Irish culture.

meet

of lona

also sought to encour-

age Irish American children to learn various aspects of "the culture of the Gael." In doing so, promoters of the Feis

saw the event as a "great force in the promotion

The Feis'

objectives also expanded as needed to incorpo-

of juvenile decency."^

rate issues of timely political concern:

"Time and distance has [sic\ not lessened

the love and interest of the United Irish Counties Association for the motherland.

We

have a permanent Anti-Partition Committee which has campaigned

and will continue to campaign by every means

Army

departure of England's

of

at its disposal, to

Occupation from the Counties

hasten the of

Antrim,

Armagh, Down, Derry, Fermanagh, and Tyrone and for the establishment of a "^^ thirty- two county Irish Republic for the Irish Nation. And lest the American public interpret such a display of proud Irish culture as overly nationahstic in tenor (and thus anti-American), the program booklet

hastens to add that "love of Ireland has not diminished the loyalty of the people

and descent in the United

of Irish birth

with

all

freedom call.

loyal

Americans

in

—our religion—our homes. The

They

By 1955,

in America. era:

it

expanded

its

Irish

gift

The

Feis served as a significant

goals to also include the fostering of pluralism

outlines this in rhetoric characteristic of the

America see the

sociologists in

as a great unifying force in the U.S.

and valuable

seek to destroy our

have always answered America's

New York's Irish community and to the general

The program booklet

"Many contemporary

They stand shoulder to shoulder

evil forces that

will always respond promptly. "^^

display of Irish ethnicity both to public.

States.

combating the

They

New York Irish Feis

from Ireland to America.

.

.

.

of

good will not only in

New York but

918

B.C.

of the

United

and portrays

it

Counties

a rare

is

an instrument

across the U.S."^''

Writing in the 1955 Feis program booklet. Judge James

chairman

is

Being intended for all Americans,

irrespective of their national origin, color, or creed, the Feis

which sows seeds

program

feel that its cultural

J.

Comerford, the

Feis, dates

the begiiming of the event to

as "a direct descendant in

modem times of the Ancient

Irish

Feis of Tara": "It

is

a historical fact, long established, that the early Irish over

503

the centuries

had often been in contact with the Ancient East and that on

Irish Traditional

B.C.

the civilization and cultural levels of the period, Ireland w^as highly developed

and advanced. The Feis

of Tara, therefore, is not to be looked

upon

as a figment

of the imagination."^^

The

association of the

New York Irish Feis with events held centuries earlier

can be viewed in terms of Eric Hobsbawm's theory of "invented traditions,"

whereby events and

rituals are created

with reference to a largely

mythological past. From this historical precedent, are created "not because old

In a City Hall ceremony,

ways

are

no longer

fictitious or

Hobsbawm writes, traditions

available or viable, but because

Mayor William O'Dwyer accepts

the

subway poster announcing

the

seventeenth annual Feis of the United Irish Counties Association, to be held on the grounds of

Fordham

University in June 1949.

spectators for

975 amateurs

The

Feis

was

a one-day affair that,

by the 1940s, drew 15,000

in seventy-five competitive events, including voice, choir, solo

insuiiments, bands, step and figure dancing, Irish language, storytelling, recitation, essay, design,

and

athletics.

Next

Irish event in

New

to the St. Patricks

York City for

Day parade,

fifty

the

UICA Feis was the biggest and most visible

years. Left to right:

Mayor William O'Dwyer, Consul General of

Joseph F.McLoughlin,

Ireland Garth Healy

(McLoughlin, from County Galway was cochairman of the president of the of the Rita

UICA; O'Dwyer was

St. Patrick's

McLoughlin

a native of

Feis;

and James

Ayres, from

Ayres,

Comerford.

County

County Mayo; and Comerford.

Day Parade Committee, was from County Kilkenny) (From

FitzPatrick.)

Tommy J.

Clare,

later

was

chairman

the collection of

ar\d in

Popular Music

New

York City

they are deliberately not used or adapted. "^^ Such

504 The

Modem

Era

Irish

community

in the

1

950s.

is

the case with

The Feis was foremost

New York's

a display of Irishness

and

ethnic pride as well as an attempt to re-create a tradition that sought to publicly

acknowledge and validate as

it

was

Yet the Feis undermined these goals

Irish folk arts.

a one-day celebration based

on

a claimed historical construct, rather

than a celebration of the reality of everyday practice of folk arts in

New York's

community.

Irish

Moreover, the Feis sought to equate folk

arts

with high

instances, the required pieces for the instrumental competitions

some

arts.

In

were

classical

Maureen Glynn remembers learning

selections in addition to classical arrangements of Irish tunes.

Connolly, a fiddler and pianist

bom

in Brooklyn in

1

950,

pieces by Bach as well as arranged Irish tunes to compete at the Feis in the late

1950s and early 1960s. There were also Western classical categories for the violin, harp,

and voice. ^° Finally, infrequent recognition,

master practitioners of

them

Irish

music

in the

if

any,

was afforded the

community, even though many

of

labored for hours on the day of the Feis, playing music for the dance

Conway noted: "It just didn't seem to be imporwho were running the Feises who it was that was playing for and it was a shame. And obviously the attitude of the people who As

competitions.

fiddler Brian

tant to the people

the dancers

were making the decisions with respect to the dancing was that you really didn't

much more

And it's

shame that it came to "^^ become important. Other criticism focused on the Feis as reveling in symbolism rather than in reality, thereby neglecting traditional musicians. Fiddler/pianist Maureen Glynn Connolly said that "trophies, the competitiveness itself, is what has become so horrendous. The trophies are as tall as the ceiling here and they cost a fortune. And unfortunately, the [Feis organizers] had to blame the musician for what's happened. You know, they did the same thing to Mozart. They worked him to death and gave him a few shillings and the man came up with all this beautiful music. The same thing, blame the artist all the need

than a machine to do

it.

a real

that because there, in later years, the musicians didn't

time."^^

By focusing one day a year on the antiquity and grandeur of Irish arts, history, culture, the Feis sought to re-create Irish folk arts in a manner more palatable to the prevailing aesthetics of the Irish community. To this end, the and

Feis attempted to legitimize the practice of Irish traditional culture in a modern,

urban context.

And while the Feis did indeed encourage children to learn to play

instruments, speak the Irish language, and dance Irish steps,

its

competitive

format laid more emphasis on individual accomplishment, rather than on the

communal component The on the

Feis, then,

part of

of traditional music.

can be seen as another manifestation of conflicted self-identity

New York's Irish community during the

to paint a picture of continuity

with a proud cultural

reinforced a strong sense of ethnicity

among

1950s.

While attempting

past, the Feis successfully

the immigrant Irish and Irish

New York.

Americans in

However, the

was

mixed message

that in the

505

end did httle to allay the Irish community's ambivalence toward its folk culture.

Irish Traditional

result

a

and Popular Music

_,_,,,,

in

The Revival and Beyond

A resurgence of interest in Irish traditional music had its beginnings in the late 1960s as a result of the confluence of a

ments both

in the

number

of cultural

and

social develop-

United States and in Ireland. Most influential was the

music by the Clancy Brothers and

international attention brought to Irish

Tommy Makem with their gutsy renditions of Irish folk songs. Accompanying themselves on guitar and banjo, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem sang traditional ballads in a

manner that invited audience participation and was thus communal spirit of the 1 960s. Their success worldwide

well in keeping with the

served as an affirmation of the cultural significance of traditional Irish song to

both

Irish

In

by the

Irish

Americans.

Irish

music was furthered

this revival of interest in Irish traditional

immigrant community, which

Americans who had been introduced

Irish

and

immigrants and to

New York,

from

in turn, directly benefited

to Irish

it.

song by the Clancy Brothers

Tommy Makem now turned their attention to the older masters of instruseistins began anew in New York City pubs

mental music. In addition, music

and concerts

of traditional

bands from Ireland

Boys of the Lough, and the Chieftains,

for

— Planxty, the Bothy Band, the —were presented in both

example

mainstream and Irish venues. Eventually, many of these venues began featuring the older traditional instrumentalists in

The 1960s

also

throughout the boroughs of

neighborhoods changed,

Long and

Americans

in

New

of

many

neighborhoods

moved

of these

to the suburbs in

number

of Irish

York during the 1960s and 1970s, the

loss of

and other metropolitan

New

Irish

York City. As the demographics

Irish families increasingly

Island, Westchester,

Irish

New York.

saw the physical dissolution

areas. For a

immediate physical community, combined with the outside recognition of Irish traditional culture, encouraged a reevaluation of heritage

and community.

Furthermore, unlike earlier generations of Irish immigrants, those to the

who came

United States in the 1940s and 1950s were able to retain closer

Ireland via affordable transatlantic flights.

As

ties

with

a consequence, Irish-born parents

could renew an interest in their heritage and inspire the same in their children. The sense of importance of ethnicity thus rekindled, the late 1960s and early 1970s saw an unprecedented number of Irish American youngsters flocking to

one

New York schools most popular schools

of several

New

York's

his death in

1

97 1 by his daughter Maureen) and the

Martin Mulvihill's in the Bronx

music on

for Irish traditional step

—

literally

some

late

County Limerick fiddler

thousands of students learned to play

a variety of instruments. Traditional

to the States

dance or music. In

— John Glynn's in Brooklyn (taken over after musicians

who had come

over

years earlier also sent their children to study at a school or

New

York City

with another master player in the community in addition to informally teaching

506 rfit'

Modem

Era

home

the music at

sessions.

Maureen Doherty,

music lessons by her melodeon-playing father,

for

example, was prodded into

Tom Doherty: "My dad came to

me one day and asked me if I wanted to play the accordion. And I said, 'No way, Dad I don't want to do that!' He says, 'Come on, please?' He says there's a girl down the street named Maureen Glynn who is just taking over teaching a music school. Irish traditional music school. So he said, 'Why don't you take up the something? Just try

tin whistle or

says 'The kids

An

down

it

for awhile?'

the street are doing

it.

So

I

said,

'I

Why don't you

additional factor in the revival of Irish music in

don't know.' So he

do

it?'"^^

New

increasing and positive attention paid by mainstream media. 1960s, Irish traditional musicians

York was the

Through the

and dancers were featured from time

Ed Sullivan Show: the McNiff School

to

time

on the nationally

televised

Stepdancers, Louis

Quinn &. The Quinnettes, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy By the early to mid-1970s, Irish traditional bands from

Makem, and

of Irish

others.

Ireland toured the United States and attracted press attention as well as a

growing general audiences of folk music aficionados. In 1976 the enormous popularity of the television series Roots offered mainstream respect for ethnic culture and history in general. These positive portrayals of ethnicity from

community served

outside the culture,

and

to affirm the importance of heritage

for the Irish, this outside approval legitimized the

and folk

performance of

traditional music.

Since the early years of this century, both popular and traditional musics have existed side by side in

New York's Irish and Irish American commimities, with

popular music typically attracting larger audiences. As with other immigrant

groups in the United States, the presence of both musical styles over many years indicates a duality of cultural orientation tion.

The popular musical

musics

styles

among

the Irish immigrant popula-

—notably Irish big band and Irish showband

—have retained an inherent and uniquely "Irish" sensibility and flavor.

In this regard also, the hybridization of Irish social its

music can be attributed

to

audience's developing bicultural identity.

The evolution

of Irish cultural identity in the

dependent on circumstances of the

World War

II

no doubt,

Immigrants

United States

who came

clearly

is

over prior to

—and specifically to —than those who arrived after the war. Part of this was

exhibited stronger ties to Irish folk culture

Irish traditional

due,

era.

music

to the increasing

postwar influence of the mainstream music and

recording industries, as well as to the stronger, popular music, both

mass media. As these

mainstream American and

can, benefited from widespread dissemination

In general, since Irish and Irish

industries

Irish

and marketing

became

and Irish Ameripractices.

American popular musics

are

aimed

at

audience approval, they have had, by and large a performance and commercial orientation.

Thus perceived by Irish immigrant audiences as a commodity, they

have historically resonated with an aura of progressive, modern

lifestyles.

To

varying degrees, these musics rely on "star" or "entertainer" imagery, while

audiences play an essentially passive role in the creation of the music

itself,

On the other hand, Irish traditional

although an active role in its consumption.

music, has until recently been an essentially creative process open to

members

of the

community and not

all

limited by a need for a passive audience.

Created through active and communal participation, traditional Irish music has

remained more of a localized entity in comparison with Irish and Irish American popular musics. ^^ That traditional and modern Irish musics have waxed and

waned

in popularity in direct proportion to each other over the years suggests

changing immigrant attitudes toward self-expression and group identity. As button accordionist Martin Mulhaire worlds:

reflects, all

immigrants

live

between two

"Once you leave your native country and go someplace else, you're

between both countries I think for the in both directions.

.

.

.

Because you

with you. But you've also made a

left

rest of

your

life.

split

There's always a loyalty

your family and traditions and that stays

life of

your own and so

that's a big part of

your

life too."^"^

Over the

years, Irish popular musical genres

have come and gone in

New

York's immigrant community, one pop style easily replacing another. ^^ That traditional Irish

music has survived

periods of unpopularity points to

an important symbolic component

in

New

York's Irish communities despite

inherent vitality as both an art form and as

its

of Irish

immigrant culture. In general,

Irish

—both popular or traditional—continues to serve as an extremely visible

music

vehicle for changing group identity. This social cohesion has evolved with each

subsequent wave of most, what

is

Irish

retained

is

immigrants throughout the twentieth century;

a core sense of Irishness.

sense of ethnicity that underscores

how

It is

for

precisely this enduring

Irish expressive culture, particularly

the music, serves both as an indicator of social change and as a strategy of cultural adaptation

and negotiation.

507 msh

Traditional

and Popular Music

m New York

City

Charles Fanning

CHAPTER 20

The

Heart's

Longer

Speech

No

Stifled

NEW YORK IRISH WRITING SINCE THE 1960s

Yet

a word ancient mother.

You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead between your knees,

Oyou need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel 'd. For know you It

was an

The Lord

the

one you mourn

illusion, the is

is

not in that grave.

son you love was not really dead.

not dead, he

is

risen again

young and strong

in

another country.

Even while you wept

there by your fallen

What you wept for was The winds favor'd and

And now

with rosy

Moves to-day

in

harp by the grave,

translated, pass'dfrom the grave.

the sea sail'd

and new

it.

blood.

a new country.

—Walt Whitman,

"Old Ireland" (1861)

I

N HIS memoir The Village of Longing, Irish writer what the emigrant County Waterford villagers back on holiday from England meant to his "seven going on twelve "-year-old self: "And ,

George O'Brien

recalls

as for those gin-swilling, vowel-devouring peacocks in their British chain-store

plumage, they became

my

archetypes of doubleness, embodiments of home's

foreignness and the allure of the far away, specialists in longing and in longing mollified. felt

Welcome

my own

life

aliens. Metropolitans. Brothers to

whom

in doubleness

I

obscurely but enlargingly twinned."' This view of ethnic

otherness not as destructive alienation but as creative expansion of possibility

—ethnicity not as crippling, but as liberating doubleness—has been much in

evidence in Irish American writing since the 1960s.

This liberating doubleness can be

stylistic as

well as thematic.

It

can be a

freedom to use language experimentally, creatively, in flights and gripes

As the ghost

de force.

language belongs to us.

element

.

.

.

it's

probes, allurements."

tells

time to

with signatures on your

/

Seamus Heaney: "The English swim / out on your own and fill the

James Joyce

of

own

frequency,

when he

medium both

for realistic rendering of the

Now,

echo soundings, searches,

/

A good figure for this is Finley Peter Dunne's unabashed

appropriation,

Americans and

of tours

invented "Mr. Dooley" in the 1890s, of the brogue as a

common

of working-class Irish

life

for inspired riffs of linguistic fancy.^

in the overall history of ethnic

American

literature, including Irish,

such confident, positive voices have not dominated the discourse. There has always been a type of ethnic writing that appears to have been spurred by anger

and bitterness

at the perceived oppressions, distortions,

author's

own ethnic

feel the

need to exorcise aspects of their

culture. Often these are first novels

own

and injustices

of the

by young writers who

upbringing and family

life

that

they find disturbing or embarrassing. Sometimes these books are furmy, some-

times not so funny, but, because of the skewed perspective they embody, they

almost never

last.

This

thinks about writing trilogy

the kind of novel that the

of

it

immature Danny O'Neill

in the middle of James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan

he vows that "some day he would drive

memories I

is

when

this

neighborhood and

out of his consciousness with a book.'"' This

is

all his

a kind of book,

hasten to add, that Farrell himself never wrote.

One New York example, though, is Mary Gordon's first novel. Final Pay(1978). Here the movement is from a caricatured constriction to an

ments

exaggerated escape into the open

widowed

air.

The

protagonist

college professor, rendered an invalid

to nurse her father at

house in Queens

for

home,

1 1

Isabel

by a

is

the daughter of a

series of strokes. Electing

Moore has been a virtual prisoner in her own The situation

years, until her father's death releases her.

made even more extreme by the further dimension of sexual guilt. Professor first stroke came just after he discovered 19-year-old Isabel in bed with his prize student. The governing perception of all the main characters is is

Moore's

similarly slanted. Isabel is

is

surrounded by a collection of stereotypes. Her father

an intolerant Catholic conservative

like

Dorothy Day: "In

history, his

who makes William

F.

French Revolution, the South in the Civil War, the Russian fascists. "

spinster friend

Buckley

czar, the

Spanish

who uses her self-indulgent piousness as a club. Professor Moore's best a mawkish, alcoholic priest who retards Isabel's growth with his

is

neighborhood as thing, probably

thetic

look

The Moores' former housekeeper Margaret Casey is a hateful, whining

childish appeals that she return to "normal." Isabel describes her

which

Jr.

sympathies were with the Royalists in the

is

why

full of

"working-class Irish

something indefensible

their parties

who

—the

Queens

are always defending

some-

virginity of Mary, the C.I.A.

always end in fights."* There

is

no scrap

of

sympa-

community here, only embarrassing nets to be escaped. And escape Isabel

509 New

York

Irish

Writmgsince the

J

960s

does

510 The

Modem

Era

—to a rash sexual encounter,

Final Payments

is

a reactionary self-immolation as

movement up and out

Casey's servant, and a final

tov^ard a

Margaret

new and stable

life.

and the largely enthusiastic

a collection of clever stereotypes,

many New York critics illustrates the truth of a remark Calvin New Yorker piece about the St. Patrick's Day parade: "A lot of New Yorkers who think of themselves as people of unshakeable tolerance take "^ a sort of easement when it comes to the Irish. One could have hoped that maturity would bring wisdom, but when Mary early response of

Trillin

made

in a

Gordon returned again to the Irish in her 1989 novel The Other Side, her distorted perspective was even more pronounced. This unremittingly bleak story of the MacNamara family's cheerless odyssey in Ireland and America uses the familiar convention of the matriarch's death to bring four generations together in one house.

Once

again, the

book features stereotyping negative

generalities about working-class Irish Catholics. For example, the narrator

when students were polite, the students of who worshipped teachers as the incarnation of the intellectual life they despised and feared." But now Catholicism, and especially describes the late 1950s as "the age

working-class parents

the charismatic

movement,

even more contemptuously bashed: Ellen and

is

John MacNamara's daughter Theresa churches where there are people just

who

"feel

moved

still

one

"is

of those people

who

stand in

highly colored leftover statues of the Virgin,"

to stand

been given the good news

and cry

out, 'Praise the Lord' as

if

they had

from a wild-eyed preacher

of their salvation

holding in his hands his oversized and rusty hat. They stand together in these

churches built with bingo

money or with dollars

that parishioners thrust in the

numbered envelopes recorded by the pastor for his They stand together in these churches crying 'Praise the

basket, dollars sealed in

records and the IRS. Lord,' 'Amen,'

'I

hear

it,

brother.'

If

they are teenagers they sing and play the

tambourine." Moreover, Gordon's antipathy

now

also extends to the Irish

After visiting his grandparents' homeland, ing, dismissive

back in

Ireland.

Dan MacNamara delivers an appall-

judgment: "But for him, the country was a

be happy, any of them, coming from people like the

Irish.

sign:

they could never

Unhappiness was bred

The sickle-cell anemia You saw it everywhere in Irish prosper. They didn't believe in

into the bone, a message in the blood, a code of weakness. of the Irish: they

had to thwart joy in

their lives.

history; they wouldn't allow themselves to

prosperity."^ Sadly, nothing in this mean-spirited book, nor in Gordon's inter-

views since

its

publication, suggests that

we

are

indictment of a people as anything other than a

meant

to see her blanket

realistic

assessment. She

perceives Irishness as a genetic defect and a cultural curse, an unqualified burden to be escaped

and overcome.''

Fortunately, Gordon's

is

now an

atypical voice, as Irish

American writing

marked by eager condemnation of the ethnic dimension of experience has given way to writing that features a fuller, more balanced rendering of ethnicity. In

decade of the

this transformation, the

culture in general,

was

1

960s, so great a watershed for

crucial here as well. Shaping events for Irish

American

America

in

those turbulent times included the Second Vatican Council, the civil rights and sexual revolutions, the ascendancy and tragedies of the Kennedy clan, the

breakup of social

Irish ethnic ghettoes

and economic mobility, and the related move

and energy are reflected terizes

A

and the old Catholic

much Irish American

new

more

and

or less, for almost a century

Irish at least entered a firmly

an already elaborated class structure and an established

economy," and "they were doomed to slotting into the bottom layer, of the hierarchy of occupations."^

Moreover, in

the sense of ethnicity as liberating doubleness

layers, or

consistently observable

all

the beginnings of Australian literature in the 1890s

(to

is

way— from

which the

Irish contributed a great deal), to the earliest fictional

Joseph Furphy's Such

even

Irish Australian writing

along the

Is Life (1903)

masterworks,

and Henry Handel Richardson's The Fortunes

Mahony (1917-29), to the Thomas Keneally.'

of Richard

Irish

were a founding people in Australia and

society,

whereas in America, "the Catholic

stratified society,

by the Australian

knowledgeable view of Oliver MacDonagh, the key

maintained their position in the half,"

This change

literature since the 1960s.

historical difference "is that the Irish

and a

to the suburbs.

upward

in the perspective of liberating doubleness that charac-

clarifying contrast in this context is provided

their literature. In the

fortress identity,

richness and assurance of contemporary

writers such as

By the 1 990s, of course, the American Irish as a group have been out of the bottom social layers for several generations,

and in no place have they been more successful

New York. As poet Terence Winch puts it in one of his songs: "We worked on the subways, we ran the saloons, / We built all the bridges, we played all the tunes, / We put out the fires and controlled city hall, / We started with nothing and wound than

up with it all."'° Thus,

it

makes sense that among the strongest of the positive new

Irish ethnic voices are those of several

New Yorkers.

This chapter considers self-images of ethnicity in since the 1960s.

It

New York Irish writing

begins with a brief look at poetry and autobiography,

followed by a survey of the wealth of recent fiction by,

among

others,

Maureen Howard, Jimmy Breslin, Jack Dunphy, J. P. Donleavy, Thomas McGonigle, Alice McDermott, Tom Grimes, Anna Quindlen, Thomas E. Kennedy, and Elizabeth Cullinan.

Poems

that engage and clarify issues of ethnicity have been written by

many

New Yorkers of Irish background over the years, from Shaemus O'Sheel ("They Went Forth

to Battle but

Ireland") to

Alan Dugan, Robert

They Always Kelly,

tions stand out, however, as books of

Fell")

and Marianne Moore ("Spenser's

and Joan Murray."

poems

in

which

Two

recent collec-

Irish ethnicity is a large

concern throughout. John Montague, a major voice in contemporary poetry, was

bom in New York and raised in Ireland, and has carried on a literary relationship with both countries. His American strain has been organized into

a collection

511 New

York Irish

Writing since the

1960s

The

Modem

and verse, Born in Brooklyn (1991), and it contains some of the finest poems anyone has written on ethnic themes. Among these are "A Graveyard in Queens," "flowfer encumbered / avenues of the dead; / Greek, Puerto-Riof prose

512 Era

can,

Italian Irish

/

from

/

—

/

(our true Catholic

world, a graveyard)," where "far

/

our supposed home," at his uncle's grave, he hears "the creak

ghostly fiddle

/ filter

through

/

American earth

/

the slow pride

/

/

of a

of a la-

ment."; "The Cage," a sad lyric about Montague's father, "the least happy

man

have known," a toll-taker

I

"face

/

retained the pallor

who work

of those

underground," "And yet

most mornings, / to march down the street / extending smile"; and "A Muddy Cup," "my mother's memories / of America; / a

picked himself his

/

/

Clark Street subway station, whose

in the

muddy cup venir of".

/

/

up,

she refused to drink", "but kept

/

wrinkling her nose

/

in sou-

'^

The second

collection

Terence Winch, the

Musicians/American Friends

is Irish

(1985),

by

New York son of Irish immigrant parents. Winch's poems

are deceptively spare

and conversational, with

spring from unlikely places inside the

poems

deft line breaks

and

to focus attention

titles that

and create

resonance. They capture memorably the two worlds of his title: that of Irish American music in the 1950s and 1960s to which he was introduced by his father, a

who

musician

played dances and weddings

all

over

New

York, and

where the Winch family grew

that of the Irish neighborhood in the Bronx

up.

From "Rockaway for the Day" to "The Catskills" to "Home in the Bronx," these poems are invested with the spirit of place ("six families of Puerto Ricans had moved / into nineteen fifteen Daly Avenue the Mitchells' / building") and the power of naming ("Frank Pearson Bob Hines / and Mona Geelan's nephew Richard) / (whose going away party me and my brother / and

P.

and

J.

my father played for)

/

were

all killed

in Vietnam").'^

There are memorable portraits from both worlds: Winch's

and musician partner "The Great P.

would seduce girls with villainous

/

J."

Conway;

relish

music fisted

/

and with memories of events

Conlons who would only give

and no hot water."

was "a

/

"fills

your head

I

that never happened"; and the tight-

got reclassified I

One

A

should do after enumerating

my options one night when we were eating supper back in sixty eight

I

he thought about

it

painfully

about ten minutes during which time

didn't say a

word

and then he said "go to for

him

down / and say with dreams of

/

A fine example is Winch's quiet tribute to "My Father," who

and asked him what

for

/

their tenants "fifty degrees in the winter

natural pacifist,"

and when

father's best friend

Garvey the hypocrite, "who

then afterwards kneel

who

the rosary"; fiddler Brendan Mulvihill,

Joe

to say (17)

jail"

which was

a very hard thing

And there are also "these two old guys I used to see / when was a kid and spent my siunmers / in Rockaway, which was known as The Irish Riviera":

5 13

I

one of them played the

and

the accordion

I

I still

Two poems

bums

they were like

playing for drinks

but

the

think one of them wore

they just wandered in and out of bars

a top hat

remember how

further along,

sounded

fine they

(36)

"my brother Jesse whose name

names were "Mike and Ike Irish street singers." Winch and

the speaker that their great tradition of

that tradition as well, in their Irish

/

really

is

James"

tells

and that they were in the

on

his brother have carried

band "Celtic Thunder, " and in songs of New

York and family history that Winch writes and the band performs, such

"When New York Was

Irish"

and "The Best Years

of

Our

as

Lives."

New York Irish writing has also been rich in autobiography. There is no lovelier memoir of any time and place than WilUam Gibson's A Mass for the Dead [1968], the lyrical, vivid rendering of growing up in Highbridge in the 1920s, the son of

"my cheerful demon and mother, " named "Florence Agnes, for bloom and piuity, herself

bom

"late in the eighties, in a

the 19 children of

marry

"Mary Kane, who

a song-and-dance

house on Broadway and 35th

at 15

had

man named Dennis

the thick of Negro life" in a

Street,"

one

of

mn away from a convent school to who ended her

days "in

comer tenement at Eighth Avenue and 139th

Street in

Dore," and

my childhood" for her grandson.^"* 1970s, worthwhile Irish American memoirs with New York

a flat that was "the ancestral rock" in "the flow of In the late 1960s

and

American Rain-

materials included Frank Conroy's Stop-Time, Francis Hackett's

bow, Horace Gregory's The House on Jefferson

Street,

and Dennis Smith's Report

from Engine Co. 82.^^ In this category,

document

in Irish

Maureen Howard's Facts

American

of Life (1978)

literary self-definition, not least

is a

landmark

because of the

balance between her sense of her parents' cultural shortcomings and her clearly articulated love and admiration for them. Equally

memorable

are the evocative

images through which she presents the world of her upbringing and education.

One such

recurrent image

is a

a figure for life as all promise.

description of stepping off a

Howard's

Manhattan curb

final expression of this figure

as

ends the

book: I

am

walking up lower Madison Avenue in an old straw

always the heightening. The rose marble of the to marry,

I

am

Morgan

last

hat, circa 1918. Yes,

golden hour of the day. Everything

Library,

mahogany bushes, tuhps on the

twenty-three years old in a blue

suit, size eight.

hardly touch ground the last blocks to Grand Central, but to rest alone life is

That

on Forty-second Street, on the edge

is

of evening.

is clear:

verge.

the

Soon

Natural time.

I

come triumphantly I

am beginning. My

beginning which cannot be true.

last qualifying clause

image

powerful and

marks Facts of Life as and the book makes

telling,

York

realistic. it

Irish

^"""« ''''"

the other played

fiddle

New

Nevertheless, the

clear that her life has

had

1960s

514

this quality of promise.

The Modern Era

to

Though she now

want things I cannot have," there

is

declares that "I've finally learned not

nothing of cynicism or bitterness in her

tone."'

In fact,

Howard's

later fiction

opens out adventurously in

style,

and her

comic vision expands along with it. There is a significant difference between the painful break into a measure of freedom of the lateblooming Mary Agnes Keely in Bridgeport Bus (1965) and the sharp, satiric eye tolerant, forgiving,

and forthright confidence, even in the face of dangerous heart disease,

of novelist

Margaret Flood in Expensive Habits (1986).'^ Indeed, a similar progression

is

many New York Irish writers 1970s. I would argue that in many cases their

observable between the early and later fiction of

who began in the later

1960s and earlier

work contains

a

more

positive evocation of the spirit of place, a deepening

who move toward the light

sense of the value of ethnic doubleness, and a presentation of characters find their voices, articulate their troubles and needs, and of resolution

and change

for the better.

Jimmy Breslin's World without End, Amen

(1973) presents

Dermot Davey,

a

young cop from Queens whose sensitivity and promise as a child have been thwarted by a broken home, a repressive parochial school experience, and a marriage without communication, and whose inarticulate tortured, alcoholic

rage and frustration drive

Table

Money

him helplessly toward disaster. '^ By contrast,

(1986), also set in

Queens

struggle with alcoholism and deadening

Owney

tunnel-digging "sandhog," available,

Breslin's

in the early 1970s, depicts a similar

macho

values of Vietnam veteran and

Morrison. But now, there are resources

most importantly Owney's wife Dolores, presented as a figure of who breaks through the barriers to communicate and help

courage and strength

her husband change.'' Joe Flaherty's Fogarty &> Co. (1973) is a rollicking, satiric depiction of the

three-day pilgrimage through his native Flatbush of

Shamus

a jaundiced eye at both his ethnic upbringing and his

He hasn't and humor help artist.

a

good word to say about

bring

him

either,

Fogarty,

through. Along the way, the hilarious scene of his is

a classic in the

genre of recherche du Catholic upbringing perdu.~° But there

more balanced understanding

sensitive novel about the

New

job.

Sissy Sullivan meet, marry,

is

much

less

in Flaherty's Tin Wife of 1983, a

York police and the Brooklyn

thoughtful cop's transformation from idealist to bigot rooted in his dangerous

as an

but responsibility for his son

attempted reconciliation with the church in his old parish laughter and

who casts

Manhattan success

is

Irish in

which

a

presented as plausibly

Moreover, the Brooklyn scenes where Eddie and

and

raise their children are

much warmer and

evocative of a welcoming spirit of place than the Brooklyn of the earlier novel, and, as in the Breslin book, the wife here

is

a strong, resourceful character,

who

speaks her mind and fights effectively for her family after her husband's death.

One can

saloon brawl) in

^'

minimal resolving communication (in a shared Pete Hamill's The Gift (1973) and the broad-brush, sensation-

also contrast the

alized sexual situation in Flesh realistic initiations into a larger

(1989).^^

Or the

and Blood

(1977) with the

more

greater depth of understanding of

human

troubling adult mysteries

(a

which

Dennis

Or

Ellen

women

young

detail the initiation of

into

"On the Mountain "O Lovely Appearance of Death"),

disturbingly eccentric teacher in

Stands a Lady" and a neighborhood suicide in

and the frank,

Women

relations in

Smith's Steely Blue (1984) as compared with The Final Fiie (1975).^ Currie's early short stories,

tangible,

world of the Brooklyn boy in Loving

ebullient, offbeat

independence of fashion

stylist Kitty

O'Carolan

in her novel Available Light (1986).^'* Finally,

a solid

from the older generation. Jack Dunphy's novels

of the 1980s provide

example of Irish American fiction opening out into an accepting, positive,

first

—given the bleakness of —have been the warmth and vitality

Unexpected

liberating vision of ethnic doubleness.

vision in John Fury, his

novel (1946)

of First Wine (1982) and The Murderous McLaughlins (1988), the two books in which Dunphy returns to his childhood for a second, more tolerant and appreciative look.^^ (Though set in Philadelphia, these novels are a part of the

contemporary New York literary corpus, would argue, as Dunphy has been a New Yorker for decades.) One of the best ethnic novels of the past decade. The I

Murderous McLaughlins

illustrates well the

immigrant/ethnic experience seen

not as exile and alienation but as challenge and transformation into a confident

assumption of eight-year-old

The

identity.

story of the developing relationship

boy and his grandmother from Galway,

this

between an

book ends with

a

summation of this perspective. When the boy hears that his grandmother has died, he slips out of bed before dawn and goes over to the neighborhood lyrical

swimming pool, "where I waited until the sun rose. When the swimmies opened I

swam

me

in the blue water as

many

to love

country, as In a

it is

much

if it

was the

waters, and to feel at

sea, or

home

Galway

Bay. For she

had taught

everywhere, the world being her

mine."^^

darker thematic area.

New

York

Irish writers

have rung some of

the most affecting recent changes on the powerful, often related subjects of

madness and

drink.

These

vestigial

elements from the nineteenth-century

legacy of the Irish American urban underclass received pioneering treatment in the "black

humor"

of

J.

P.

Donleavy's The Ginger Man (1955).^^ In the character

World War II veteran on the G. I. Bill in Dublin, mask boozy, manipulative cruelty and a frightening amoral-

of Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield, a

blarney and charm ity.

There has been

brilliant short fiction written in this genre,

the emotional intensity of this material early

example

is

is

perhaps because

better suited to the short form.

the mordant, chilling deadpan of Donleavy's

"A

An

Fairy Tale of

New York" (1961), which updates and parodies the nineteenth-century crossing New York City

narrative in its rendering of the return of Cornelius Christian to

with the body

of his Irish wife,

who

has died on board ship. Like the famine

immigrants. Christian runs a gauntlet of

crass,

sharpers, including the oily undertaker, Mr. Vine,

money-grubbing American

who misinterprets Christian's

5 15

New

York

Irish

Writingsince the

1960s

shocked, stalled emotions as rational calm, and offers

516 The

Modem

Era

profession": "There's a place for

you

here,

remember

him

a job in "this

that.""'^

Literary evocations of alcoholic degeneration sometimes mine the Irish American vein of wild linguistic exuberance to dark, entropic extremes. Notable here are John F. Murray's two New Yorker stories from the late 1970s,

"O'Phelan's Daemonium" and "O'Phelan Drinking," which trace the movements of narrator John O'Phelan, "both a psycho and a drunk, """^ from a botched suicide attempt

on eastern Long Island

Justin's" Alcoholic Rehabilitation for drinking

to a private hospital near Boston, to "St.

Unit in Manhattan, from which he

once again. Both stories begin with

"My

is

ejected

brother, hateful Martin

O'Phelan," hateful because of his persistent, fruitless attempts to stop John's helpless 16-year degenerative plunge:

"And what do you [Martin] know of losing

a family, of divorce, of losing a second wife (died), losing a third wife (we losing jobs, going broke,

days at work horizontal in bed at home with the electric blanket

tumbler on the night table beside the bed vodka. "^° The

memory of two

Nantucket in the midst

split),

owing the banks, drinking and losing weekends, losing full of

.

.

.

and a plastic

good old Gordon's eighty -proof

shakily happy weeks with his three children on

of O'Phelan's sorrowful progress punctuates this heart-

breaking narrative, which

is

as searing a self-scrutiny of a life tangled in

manic

depression and alcoholism as Robert Lowell's Life Studies. T. Coraghessan Boyle has two 1989 stories somewhat in the same vein. In "The Miracle at Ballinspittle," New Yorker Davey McGahee, on an impulsive, drunken holiday in Ireland, finds himself the lightning rod for a miraculous

visitation of his sins of drunkenness, gluttony,

raining

down on him

in the Irish village

and debauchery, which come

where crowds

are already gathering in

hopes of observing reported movements by a statue of the Virgin Mary. The sky rains ordinary sins

—barrels of beer, sides of beef, and representations of every

whom Davey has ever lusted— and Irish Catholic guilt is transformed into his apotheosis as "the Saint of the Common Sinner," "for who hasn't lusted after women or man or drunk his booze and laid to rest whole herds to feed his

girl after

greedy gullet?"^'

"The Miracle" is a lighthearted satiric exorcism, but wholly serious and moving is the portrait of a lost alcoholic seen through his own and his son's eyes in "If the River Was Whiskey." This wrenching short narrative is told alternately by a boy and his father in the context of a lakeside vacation gone sour, in is

which the

father's far-gone

a progression of ever

father's

more

alcoholism finally dawns on both. The story

painful images: from the boy's

drunken guitar rendition

Whiskey," to the mother's he's a drunk,

your

last-ditch, hopeless

father's a

really sees his wheezing,

of his

father:

with the crumpled suffering look on his

"With

face,

Was

pronouncement: "Get used to

drunk," to the fishing

hungover

memory

of the old folk tune, "If the River

trip

it,

during which the boy

his beard

and long hair and

he was the picture of the crucified

Christ Tiller had contemplated a hundred times at church."

And the

last

image

is

the most haunting. "Beyond drunk" and fallen into a despairing, fitful sleep,

which

the father has a dream in

"all of a

sudden they were going down, the boat

sucked out from under them, the water icy and black, beating in on them as it

were

alive. Tiller called

He saw

out to him.

his son's face,

if

saw him going

down, and there was nothing he could do."^^ There

no more powerful evocation in contemporary short

is

madness and

its

fiction of

family legacy than Frank Conroy's 1984 story, "Midair," in

which middle-aged Sean Kennedy traces his adult instability back to a terrifying childhood afternoon, since blocked from his memory,

him suspended out

held

lives as

a fifth-floor

he did not have a

if

which he

not aware.

is

He

and so there

past, is

moments of near enlightenment, remarriage. a

mystery

He

is

a great deal about himself of

a

Sean's

life is

a kind of sleepwalk through early

children, first writing projects, jobs, divorce,

is

which he cannot penetrate. One day Sean, now in his stuck in an elevator between the sixty-third and sixty-fourth floors but Sean

is terrified,

speaking calmly:

The

are safe."

and

sees through a glass darkly, only dimly perceiving that there

young stranger who resembles his son. When the elevator falls

the boy

and

Though punctuated with

at his core into

late 40s, gets

with

two

his insane father

entirely ignorant of his lack of awareness,

believes himself to be in full control of his existence."

marriage, the births of his

when

window. Since that buried trauma, "He

"I

is

know we

able to

are safe,

a

few feet,

calm him by holding his head gently and and

if

elevator starts up again, and

you focus on me you

all is

well.

will

know we

That night, "as he

lies in

remembers "the day in 1942 when his father showed up unexpectedly, took him home from school, washed the windows, and carried him out on the windowsill. He remembers looking down at the

bed waiting for sleep," Sean

finally

cracks in the sidewalk. Here, in the darkness, he can see the cracks in the

sidewalk from more than 40 years ago.

He

feels

no fear—only a sense of

astonishment."^^

Conroy writes with

a clarity

and perfect pitch that amoimt to a kind

of

super-realism, to use the analogy from painting, and the intensity generated in

"Midair"

is

breathtaking.

The buried emotional

of Irish

life

"inarticulate speech of the heart" in musician/lyricist

Americans, their

Van Morrison's phrase,^"*

has been a major theme in this ethnic literature back through James T. Farrell to the nineteenth century.^^ Moreover,

work

in the early 1980s

on

Irish

Ameri-

cans in therapy by Monica McGoldrick and others describes the persistence of "Irish indirectness yet,

and difficulty in dealing with feelings at the moment.

Conroy's fine story embodies the progression that

New

American

fiction

emotional

stasis to release into

from

Another unique document

Going

to

Patchogue

I

in this liberating

(1992), the

And

see in recent Irish

York and elsewhere— a movement from

communication and

"^^

stifling

understanding.^'^

movement is Thomas McGonigle's

extended stream-of-consciousness narration of

"Tom McGonigle's"

journey from his Lower East Side apartment to his home-

town

Long

of Patchogue,

Island,

and back. This one-day pilgrimage frames

a

5 17

New

York

Irish

Writing smce the

1960s

richly layered meditation, encrusted with

518 The

Modem

Era

scope of which

the narrator's

is

memories and might-have-beens, the

to date

life

and his wanderings through the

world, including experiences in Dublin, Sofia, Istanbul, Helsinki, and Venice.

An example

of Ignatian

"composition of place" with a vengeance, the novel

is

County folk tales, newspaper clippings, town-meeting minutes, photographs. Long Island Railroad timetables, handwritten notes. The challenge throughout is "how to hold all of these a collage of conversations, recollections, Suffolk

items in

my hands," and the aim is description, definition, understanding, both

personal and cultural.^^ Wearing age 40 and considering suicide, the narrator

seeks directing self-knowledge. Child of a family that

made

the typical

move of

the late 1940s and 1950s from Brooklyn out to "the Island," he also aims to

diagnose suburbia as a failed Promised Land. That diagnosis in the voices of customers in the Patchogue bars anti-intellectual,

and anti-African American

is

vividly

who spew

vitriol that reveals

embodied

anti-Semitic,

white

a prime motive for their migration out of the city. McGonigle's

flight as

the most

is

forthright rendering of such voices since James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan in

1935, and he provides an important though disturbing piece of the postwar-

suburban

story.

The harshness of the narrator's confrontation with his communal and personal demons is redeemed by two elements: the Rabelaisian comic vision informing the novel, and the boldness and intelligence of the voice that drives the narrative. This flawed pilgrim soul a straw character like one of

"Tom McGonigle"

Irishness.

is

neither

Mary Gordon's,

mad nor alcoholic. Nor

is

he

created to ridicule or apologize for

has a relentlessly questioning consciousness,

courageously persistent in the hard work of psychological and cultural critique.

Throughout his

difficult journey, the narrator scrutinizes

with admirable

directness the ghosts that continue to haunt him: his mother, his father, his love, high school friends is

and fellow townspeople, and most

of

all,

first

himself.

He

the novelist uncomfortably aware of his lack of adherence to conventions:

"Here

we

are pages later

and not

locomotive of

He

is

plot,

no sex

made

the scene,- there

no motor

installed in the

a single character has

has been no conflict laid into the

story, there is

to grease the

wheels of the pages.

Still sitting" (30).

the failed, bewildered lover of his high school sweetheart Melinda: "Each

person

is

given one love story. Usually

story" 194). (

He

is

Patchogue to the world and back, travel to

to keep

Patchogue to be there.

on

living, despite

his findings so

far: "I

am

I

novel's ending

is

who comes

to realize that "I don't

have to

am always in Patchogue" (42), and who decides

—or perhaps because of—the inconclusive nature of I

plausibly anticlimactic: "It

this journey, not

have places to

go.

I

must

(57).

gone away and not stayed. To have

back from

doesn't coincide with another love

not ready, please, just yet.

be getting myself to Patchogue"

The

it

the restless but reluctant traveler in search of meanings from

failed,

even the ash

is all

so painful.

To have

again ... to have brought nothing

of

some

exotic adventure."

And

yet.

"Tom" has come through in the City.

I

back from Patchogue"

I

suburban subcultures,-

come

have been in Patchogue.

back.

(212).

example, in a

as, for

own and

is

of tourists,

Venice for a final appearance before heading back to their empty

already

underway on the

what about the World figure for is

am

the world's

image

late, arresting

northern hovels, their American suburbs, hurrying in fact because the season

I

have come

I

Moreover, he has delivered salutary indictments

xenophobia and complacency of his

of the persistent

"drift[ing] to

psychologically intact: "Myself has

have gone to Patchogue.

American

television,

Series?" (209).

as well as Irish

brunch

is

Going to Patchogue provides

American migratory

a compelling

rootlessness, one that

grounded by a voice of honesty and moral outrage. At the

of this often surreal narrative,

new

being missed and hey,

realistic

conclusion

two mysteries remain intact: the imaginative and

meditative variousness of an individual consciousness and the dark swervings of

communal thought

into prejudice and hatred.^'

Much of the fiction so far discussed has been concerned with family matters, and

it is

certainly true that domestic fiction

American writing field's

Irish

New

is

in our time. Willa Gather's

a significant strength of Irish

placement of Katherine Mans-

Zealand stories in 1936 also describes the achievement of

many

Americans: I

doubt whether any contemporary writer has made one

more keenly the

feel

many kinds of personal relations which exist in an everyday "happy family" who are merely going on living their daily lives, with no crises or shocks or bewildering complications to try them. Yet every individual in that house-hold (even the children) losing

it

is

clinging passionately to his individual soul,

in the general family flavour.

As

have anything of one's own, to be one's

which keeps everybody almost

in

is

in terror of

most famihes, the mere

struggle to

self at all, creates

at the breaking-point.

Katherine Mansfield's pecuHar

gift lay in

.

.

an element of strain

.

her interpretation of these secret

accords and antipathies which he hidden under our everyday behaviour, and

which more than any outward events make our

lives

happy or unhappy.

Many younger New York Irish writers — first or second novelists whose books have appeared in the

later

thematic focus on everyday

1980s and early 1990s life

—also

in families. In addition,

carry on with the

much

of this fiction

published over the past few years illustrates both the persistence of ethnicity

and the phenomenon of ethnicity as liberating doubleness. These contemporary

New

York voices are newly authoritative. The younger writers have learned

from the previous generation the value of their sort of experience is

part of

it.

It

is

largely a middle-class

experience, often focused

on childhood

—and ethnicity

and lower-middle-class suburban

in the 1960s,

and

many of these writers

are themselves first-generation college graduates. Helping to bring this experi-

ence into American literature

is

one of the most valuable accomplishments of

New York Irish writers. There is an expansion of boundaries and an awakening here that

is

very

much worthy

of note.

519 New

York

Irish

Writingsince the

1960s

A

520 The

Modem

Era

sure evocation of lower-middle-class suburban

1960s

is

Long Island

in the early

Alice McDermott's That Night (1987), the story of Rick and Sheryl,

who are separated abruptly when Sheryl becomes The narrator is a young woman who recalls her childhood observation night" when the tenuous bonds of suburban community broke down

high school sweethearts pregnant. of "that

as

Rick and his "hood" friends enter Sheryl's house by force to

The neighborhood men

beat

them back

try to rescue her.

in a shocking eruption of violence.

(Sheryl has already been sent to an aunt in Ohio.) "That night" focuses for the

narrator the "vague and persistent notion, a premonition or

memory of possible

not impending doom," that she sees as just beneath the surface of those

if

"bedroom communities, incubators, where the neat patterns

of the streets, the

fenced and leveled yards, the stop signs and traffic lights and soothing repetition of similar

homes

all

helped to convey a sense of order and security and snug

predictability." Their fathers all

have "iron crosses and

nished medals marked with bright red guns" in their

silver swastikas, tar-

attics,

and most families

have grandparents "who remained in embattled city apartments or dilapidated houses buzzed by highways.""*' McDermott conveys loss of place and

commu-

nity with quiet authority.

To my mind, however, the book's strongest element is the narrator's sense of coming into knowledge of love and death. Sheryl's revelation is the product of her father's sudden death, her doomed romance with Rick, and other "sources," which the narrator lists as "the love songs of the Shirelles and Shangri-las, the auto accident/undying love poems printed in odd spaces in her Sheryl's

teen magazines, the old-fashioned, heaven-saturated Catholicism of her [Polish]

grandmother"

(78).

McDermott

presents the revelations that

come

to this

ordinary 16-year-old with uncondescending, respectful attention.

McDermott's next novel. At Weddings and Wakes explicitly ethnic in its focus.

It

(1992), is

much more

involves the four daughters of Irish immigrants

who met on the boat coming over: "He said he was from Kildare, she wrote, and I

said

Cork by way

of Mallow."*^

The

heart of these lives and the novel

is

the

down with family history, where three of the "Towne girls" still live with "Momma," their mother's sister, who married their father after their mother's death. The salient events in the present top-floor Brooklyn apartment, weighted

are the courtship

and marriage

of middle-aged

May Towne,

her sudden death four days after the wedding. But the past

consciousness of these people, and family happenings

Memory

immigration come up again and again. realm, and the narrative

is

a subtle

weave

is

all

a

former nun, and

never the

far

from the

way back

to

is

the coin of this six-room

of past

and present, seen mostly

through the eyes of the three children of Lucy Dailey, the third Towne daughter.

There

is

a

hushed timelessness about

impressions upon the Townes, for

paramount. Cather on Mansfield

is

this novel.

whom

Outside events

emotional

a perfect gloss for

virtually the only historical reference in

life

make few

within the family

is

McDermott's work, and

At Weddings and Wakes

is

to John

F.

Kennedy's assassination, reported on the cover of Life magazine. (Kennedy

wedding reception:

"Women were

the trouble with

The novel opens with an extended journey, "twice a

week

in every

week

of

summer," begins

in Brooklyn.

The

at the Daileys, front

— "the white, eight-panel door that served as backdrop for every Easter, First

—and

in the family

album"

ends in front of the bakery on the old Brooklyn street with the

dispensation of just -bought bread ("the kind of bread," declares Lucy to her children, "that Christ ate at the Last Supper,") after which, "her pace just that

much

to tell

them

that she

was home

allowed them to walk a few paces ahead of her

slowed

and as happy—she

after all

—as she'd ever be"

(14).

Marked

by scrupulous, loving detail and framed by Christian symbols, this odyssey by

way

of

two buses and two subway

and richness Indeed,

of city

lines is

an opening antiphon to the variety

life.

McDermott's book is full of set pieces in which close observation and

lyrical style

combine

to celebrate the

urban everyday. Here,

for

example,

is

her

rendering of the cinder-block schoolyard incinerator as microcosm:

Here was burned every botched

crumbled

effort of the day,

tom

bits of construction paper, cracked erasers,

planes, the rough caricatures

sheets of loose-leaf and

broken pens, paper

air-

and pierced, initialed hearts that had been ripped

from notebooks by quickeyed teachers pacing the

Here, too, the opened

aisles.

Sunday envelopes went, the junk mail, the dated parish bulletins, the scented notes from home that explained yesterday's absence or warned of tomorrow's, crumpled tissues (some stained with Upstick), pencil sharpenings

—

all

tumed

out of the round steel wastebaskets that the two janitors collected at the end of

each day. There were flowers, too, on some occasions, barely wUted flowers

from the

altar or flattened

muddied ones from the small cemetery behind the

And palm fronds, once a each new Palm Sunday. (117-18) church.

As

in That Night,

McDermott

year, blessed

and dried and made obsolete on

brings a discriminating, respectful eye to the

presentation of character and motive in ordinary this is

her husband, "The only thing believe the worst of,

life.

Momma's austere crankiness and the fatalism was over"

I

ever held against

(151).

These are traced

The

crucial

example

of

that prompts her to say of

him was to,

that he

made me

and understood in terms

her experience of arrival in this country just weeks before her sister died,

leaving a

newborn baby and three older girls under

six, for

shouldered immediate responsibility: "She had a sense

—that she'd been

her

life

her

window

fell

left off in

away from the

whom Momma had

—she would have

it all

these rooms as abruptly as the darkness at

light" (138). Moreover,

Momma's

ingrained

contrariness ("this need to disagree, to raise her voice in utter disagreement,

came on her

like hunger"), is explained as her

New

York

Irish

Writing since

).

description of the trip between the

Holy Communion, confirmation, and graduation photo (3)

them," 201

Long Island home and Lucy's old neighborhood

Daileys'

door

all of

521

is

linked to Ireland's Charles Stewart Pamell in a heated discussion at May's

husband came to understand

it:

the

1960s

"he had discovered

522 The

Modem

Era

it

too,

had discovered in himself her ov/n need

Stand Stubbornly against something.

to object, to

He had discovered in a life so easily shifted,

overwhelming need to be, in impersonal argument immovable" (144). McDermott is eloquent here. She gets just right the emotional fulcrum on w^hich this family moves. Another of the incisive battered, turned about, this if

nothing

else,

yet compassionate justifications of motive

product of her

and send him

life

man. There

a thoughtful, sensitive

embarrassed sense of himself

completes the picture of

(130)

The writing reminds me

realized characterizations. fiction about Irish

boy"

no caricatures

are

as the plausible

housekeeper to sustain them both

of unremitting labor as a

to Catholic schools. Fred's slightly

as "a bachelor son, an Irish mother's loyal

bond

the presentation of the

is

between "May's mailman" Fred and his widowed mother

American working-class

life,

here, but solid, fully of

James

T. Farrell's

in particular his five O'Neill-

O'Flaherty novels, and of a favorite Farrell epigraph from Spinoza: "Not to weep,

not to laugh, but to understand."''^

The

final chapter of

Daileys'

At Weddings and Wakes describes the beginning

summer vacation on the day after May and Fred's

of the

wedding. Poised just

news of May's death, which is about to be delivered as the novel ends, come to Lucy Dailey and her husband. Lucy realizes why her husband gets them a different cottage every summer: "The family had no history here, no memory of another time no walls marked off before the

are climactic revelations that

—

with the children's heights, no windowsills or countertops to remind her of how

much

they had grown."

Coming from

a

home where

family history

encompassing, Lucy suddenly appreciates her husband's

gift: "It

stopped time for them two weeks out of every year, cut them

when

the past and the future grew

for her.

This

man

still

enough

to let

you notice

as

he

new place, it. He did that .

comes was suited

she'd married." Similarly, Lucy's husband

appreciative judgment about the Townes. Realizing that "he

but

if

from both the

off

past and the future so that they had only this present in a brand

is all

was

.

.

to an to his

wore him thin," he thinks first, "perhaps it was the challenge to distract them from their mournfulness and anger," but he moves on to a further reflection that constitutes a major revelation of this novel: "But there was something they gave him, too, with all their ghosts, something wife's family, although they often

he couldn't deny: they provided his ordinary day, his daily routine of

office,

homework, baths, and twenty minutes of the evening news, with an undercurrent it was like the low music that now played on the kitchen radio that served as some constant acknowledgment of the lives of home,

cocktails, dinner,

—

—

the in

dead."'*'*

Mr. Dailey

Ironweed and James

is

in the tradition of

Joyce's Gabriel

William Kennedy's Francis Phelan

Conroy

to understand the presentness of the past,

in

"The Dead," men who come for mercy and

and whose capacity

compassion expands with that knowledge.

A

Stone of the Heart (1990)

York City

in 1954

and raised

in

is

the

first

novel by

Tom

Queens. The opening

Grimes,

line sets the

bom

in

New

time and the

"The day

my

crucial events, both familial

and

Roger Maris hit his

home run." The narrator is the

sixty-first

a disintegrating Irish is

a petty

and

cultural:

Italian family in

was

father

arrested,

14-year-old son of

Queens. Michael McManus's father

conman with alcoholic tendencies, stuck mostly through his own fault

in a dead-end clerical job. Like Joyce's Farrington in "Counterparts," he takes it all

out on his family. The situation

son Rudy seldom speaks and

may

is

made

bleaker by the fact that younger

be autistic. Grimes's

title is

from Yeats's

"Easter 1916," but the situation echoes Farrell's O'Neill-O'Flaherty novels,

with the tension between parents, the sensitive son's love of baseball, and even the father's job working for a freight-forwarding company.

Young Michael's weapons are humor, exile (to the movies and the television and baseball, which provides the metaphor and means for the accep-

screen),

tance that he achieves in the minimally hopeful conclusion. While at the

Yankees' for 4),

game preceding the one

in

which Maris breaks the record (Roger goes

Michael communicates with his brother and gently crazy grandfather

and experiences what "began to

feel like a

clamorous peace." "Please, don't

blame us," says Michael's mother, and the boy's real victory is in his not doing so. When his father is shamefully arrested on their doorstep and when Maris breaks Ruth's record, Michael rejects "the idea of constants," and sees clearly felt we could hope for in a world in which the illusion of order someone who is willing to assume responsibility for us, and a "'*^ Grimes's writing is spare, forgiveness beyond our largest hopes.

that "the best is

untenable

capacity for restrained.

I

is

The

affirmation here

is

threadbare materials the shaping

Another novel curved hopefully

namesake

is

in his having brought to these ordinary,

narrative

gift of

of a job-troubled Irish is

T.

even

art.

New Yorker with a resolution that is Hew of New York (1985).'^^ Here the

Glen Coughhn's The

a 21 -year police veteran

who

is

suspended from the force pending

investigation into his overzealous reaction to the storming of his Brooklyn

demanding

precinct by angry Hasidim

on lower-middle-class family

life

in

better protection.

Long Island

The

perspective here

that of the cop's son,

is

19-year-old Charlie Patterson, a community-college dropout with problems of his

own. Charlie fends bravely and with some success with his suddenly

house-bound and drinking 13-year-old sister.

them

father, his

devoutly Catholic mother, and his snotty

We come to care about this family because Coughlin presents

in brisk, lively prose

and with a sense

for the texture of

everyday

life.

Moreover, Charlie's dawning appreciation of his father's tough job and his recognition of

how much he

is like

the old

man make

for a plausibly positive

ending. Set one year later than

Tom

Grimes's novel and also keyed to a historical

event (Scott Carpenter's orbiting of the earth on Mallon's Aurora

7,

published in 1991. (The

Carpenter's mission.) Here the setting protagonist

is

11 -year-old

is

May

name

24, 1962) is

of the

novel

is

Thomas that of

middle-class Westchester, and the

Gregory Noonan, son

of a

World War

II

veteran and

523 New

York

Irish

Wnting

since

the

1

960s

midlevel advertising sales executive, and grandson of Noonans from Hell's

524 The

Modem

Era

Kitchen. Recently, inexplicably estranged from his puzzled father, Gregory

sleepwalks through the day of the Aurora mission, skipping school after lunch, taking a train to Grand Central, and narrowly missing being hit by a speeding Ultimately, he

taxi.

comes

Grand

face to face with his distraught father in the

Central crowd, in a scene of equally puzzling but convincing reconciliation.

The

progress through this day of large and small events and resolutions in

several other lives

the cab driver

taxi. is

These include Gregory's parents, his teacher,

nearly hits the boy, a young priest having doubts about

and a smug, egocentric novelist (seemingly modeled on Mary Mc-

celibacy,

Carthy)

also tracked.

is

who

who

steps off the curb to pull Gregory

from the path

of the speeding

The mixing of events and fates here is deftly accomplished. Mallon's voice

precise yet engaged, he

is lightly

ironic

and compassionate

at once,

and

novel achieves a genuine sense of mystery. The Noonans and others in

Gregory

their Catholicism seriously.

throughout

is

is

this

take

nearing confirmation and one theme

the disjunction between the Baltimore Catechism and lived

experience. This

is,

of course, familiar territory in Irish

Mallon's treatment

describes a pilgrimage.

and impressive in

fresh

is

its

American

this novel earns its concluding,

but

open-ended and

provocative meditation on free will and mercy and God's plan on

Anna Quindlen's

fiction,

thoughtfulness. Aurora 7

At the end, "whatever [Gregory had] had to do, he'd done,

and he'd come through," and

first

earth."*^

novel. Object Lessons (1991), also contributes detail

to the familiar pattern of recent it is

it

New York Irish fiction.

Set in the early 1960s,

an adolescent coming-of-age story that also explores the misalliance that

lurks just below the surface of suburban

home

owners,

many

of

one message involves the Scanlan

borhood

is

who

has

made

wafers to vestments, and

three

main

As

in

many

of these books,

community. John

a figure out of the old Irish

urban neigh-

millions in religious artifacts, from

communion

who now

children's lives. Perspective

returning G.I.s and first-time

class.

loss of the older urban/ethnic

an intimidating patriarch,

life

life for

them newly middle

on

concentrates on exerting control over his

this frightening figure

comes from the

narrative voices: John's only independent son.

novel's

Tommy, Tommy's

wife Connie, a double outsider because of her Italian background, and their 13-year-old daughter Maggie,

summer The

are the novel's

whose many awakenings over the course

of

one

major events.

"object lessons" of the

title are

the didactic points of emphasis that the

various people influencing Maggie, especially her grandfather, are trying to drive

home. Her own stubborn impositions battle for independence

of meaning (along with the more urgent waged by her parents) make for the novel's tensions and

revelations. This struggle centers

Tommy's fortress,

on John Scanlan's attempt to move

family into an imposing house three doors

down from

and the novel's emphasis on houses as defining social

his

his son

own

stone

status, ethnicity,

and power relationships puts Object Lessons squarely in the tradition

of Irish

American

classics

such as Brendan

Elizabeth CuUinan's a tiny house

and she and

House

of

on the grounds

Tommy now

Gill's

Gold

The Trouble of One House (1950) and Connie Mazza Scanlan grew up in

(1970).

cemetery tended by her immigrant

of the

modest home, too small

live in a

family and about to be encroached upon by a

(The start of this

tract houses.

new

for their

new development

of

father,

growing

semi slab

construction sets the theme of this "time of

changes" on the novel's opening page.)

Quindlen also introduces a suburban variation on the dominant ethnic theme of the passing of the old of

events for

ways with the death

concerned

all

is

of the patriarch,

and

a crucial set

the last illness, death, wake, and funeral of John

Scanlan. Throughout, the local colors of both Westchester and the Bronx are credibly painted.

and

this

The Scanlans learn and grow from their various object lessons,

book belongs

in the group of delineations of ethnicity as liberating

rather than crippling that marks so

much New York Irish writing in recent years.

and resonant in the context

Particularly heartening,

of

examining the emer-

new narrative voices, is the revelation that comes to Maggie on Recalling her walk down the aisle as her cousin's maid of honor

gence of strong, the last page.

the day before, Maggie realizes that "she had heard another voice, telling her to lift

her chin, to keep her shoulders square, to walk slowly.

come inside

time in her

"''^

life.

In its focus

(1990)

is

on house and home, the weight

communicating emotion, Thomas

difficulties of

is

And suddenly it had

was dancing with her father, the stars of darkness exploding her closed lids, that the voice she was hearing was her own, for the first

to her, as she

also squarely in the

mainstream

of Irish

a novel of breakthrough into enlightenment

Sugrue

is 40,

E.

American

and change

fiction,

is

coming

apart.

He

drinks too

and

it,

too,

for the better. Jack

working in a public relations job that he enjoys

stuck in a marriage that

and the

of family history,

Kennedy's Crossing Borders

less

and

much and

is

less,

and

prone to

romantic daydreaming about his mildly freewheeling youth in the 1960s. The novel

is

framed by the house in the suburbs that Sugrue

around him:

"On

is

allowing to

fall

down

the driveway and terrace, unswept drifts of cut grass decom-

posed and sprouted spontaneously as

new grass,

rooted in

its

own decay.

Inside,

leaking faucets wore green splotches into the scarred porcelain. Ash- white ate into the corners of

woodwork window

mold

frames. Lightbulbs burnt out and

went unchanged. The evenings grew dim." But when the novel ends, the house has become the homeground where Sugrue will make his stand for his family and his life: "He would just stay here. That's all. He would stay here, and he would be here when she returned. And she would have to deal with him. The children were his, too, his family. She could not just take them from him. .

She could not the

still

just leave.

.

She was his wife. She had made promises." Moreover,

decaying house has been transfigured as well: "He looked around the

once grand, decrepit living room,

webs

.

at the

knotty pine ceiling,

at the

gummy spider

in the corners of the moldings, the dust clumps, the blisters of peeling

525 New

York

Irish

Writing since the

1960s

"

paint,

526 The

Modem

Era

and as the snores rose up from the base

murmur.

Lord,

I

of his throat,

he heard himself

love the beauty of thy house, the place where thy glory

dwells."^^

This

is

a

New York commuting story of coming in from Bay side through "the

shabby landscape of north Queens' shops, garages, restaurants, burger stands, Dunkin' Doughnuts stands"

(39),

Manhattan and work and the promise

into

delis,

taco stands,

and over the 59th Street Bridge

of change. Nostalgic for "the

York of the fifties, the forties, " Sugrue recognizes "those years of calm, as "a false dream, a misinterpretation of the present" (39),

the city as "the only

where

his

home he knew," and

dreams took place"

(41).

The

protagonist crosses in this novel that

with an authentic present

and yet he also sees

"the place of his boyhood, the place

bridge

is

one

of

like Mallon's

is,

many

borders that the

Aurora

7,

To escape the decay and

spiritual dimension.

New

of grace,

a pilgrimage stasis of the

that his crumbling suburban house represents at the novel's outset,

life

Jack Sugrue

must break

several taboos.

He begins by grimly

drinking to excess

marked by sexual abandon and roughness approaching violence with a fellow worker, Cindy Beeman. Meanwhile, Sugrue's wife has become increasingly exasperated by his lack of connection with their family world. The pragmatic daughter of a financially successful German American father, she sees Sugrue's downward slide as related almost every night, and then starts an

to his ethnic history:

Typical

Irish.

affair

crummy little house they lived in. crummy little house that was falling apart.

"She had seen the

All those kids in a

They didn't even see the flaws, the dirt, the mismatched furniture. (Never marry and Irishman, Angela)" (46). On the other hand, Sugrue remembers his family with

a

mixture of compassion and gratitude. His father had revealed that "your

They told her another

mother and I haven't had relations in twenty-two years baby'd

kill her.

And that was the end of it"

(134).

That renunciation also echoes

in later years, in the "pale torture" of Sugrue's inability to share feelings with

—

widowed mother: "He could not cry. He could not he knew from experifling open his heart. It would only frighten her" (101). Sadly, only after his mother's death is he "able to begin to reform the connection with her. Only in death could he love her unconditionally again, only when she could no longer his

ence

—

be hurt by his love or he by hers, only

torment of their

And yet, tory

model

failure to

connect in

although his parents' for Sugrue,

when he no

longer had to suffer the

life" (109).

stifled

emotional

life is a

he also appreciates their great

frightening admoni-

gift of stability:

"All those

They had been loyal to their fate. And it had been important to him and to his brothers, he knew that. The glue of their rituals, their self-control. He knew them. They were there. Always. You always got a fair deal from them, and you knew they would always be there for you. ... A single, stable base from which to address the world" (135). In addition, Sugrue sees his father as a man whose "warmth and humor still lived in Sugrue's heart, still warmed him" (5). This was "a grown man who knelt years of thirst, drinking tap water for the passion.

beside his bed each night and

bowed

his face into his palms," and the son

cherishes his father's legacy of kindness and faith and love: "But beneath

he had the certainty in his eyes. The certainty of a

man who has God, a certainty

had warmed Sugrue's childhood, had blessed his

that

it all,

eyes,

each time they

looked into the eyes of his father" 199-200). Throughout the excesses of drink (

and his

affair

with Cindy, Sugrue keeps coming back to this legacy. He loves his

children as his father had loved him, and he finds himself "seeking prayers" in

an old grade school book. Significantly, the prayer he finds asks

me

"Teach

to

pronounce the judgements

mouth"

of thy

for a voice:

(144).

Ultimately, Jack Sugrue does break his silence in the novel's climactic scene.

Discovered in adultery, he to take the children

the

last,

away

is

faced at the breakfast table with his wife's decision

He breaks a final taboo,

to her parents' house.

crucial border, by standing

crosses

up and shouting: "He took a decision. They

They must know. That it was not for lack of love or of passion He slammed the flat of his hand down onto the table. The cups jumped in their saucers. And he bellowed out: 7 do not want this to happen to us!," Moreover, in finding his voice, Sugrue's mind "flashed with thoughts of his own father and mother, the stillness in which they had lived, survived, must

see this.

or for fear of pain.

the stand-off they had survived, dead now, gone, for air

and his heart banged against the wall

Kennedy's

is

all of

them, as his lungs heaved

of his chest" (190).

a strong, courageous voice, a liberating voice

standing of his culture's strengths and limits both. His sex, drink, love for one's family,

without contempt or ridicule listening to

him

and the struggle

is

an honest voice on

for articulation.

for his people's limitations,

We hear the heart's

speech no longer

He

speaks

and the reward

considered, deliberate insight into ethnic

is

Thomas

groimded in under-

life

in

New

of

York.

stifled.

The career to date of Elizabeth Cullinan, one of the finest contemporary Irish American

writers,

is

exemplary and paradigmatic, and thus provides an appro-

priate conclusion to this chapter. Cullinan

remarkable Irish

first

began with House of Gold

American matriarch and the

on respectability.

house that embodies her

fortress

fierce

hold

At the end of this benchmark critique of potentially destruc-

tive aspects of Irish

American domestic

life,

of the weight of family responsibility,

is only minimal hopeful whose failure has absolved two teen-aged granddaugh-

there

resolution, in the persons of the ne'er-do-well son,

him

(1970), a

novel containing a definitive portrait of a powerful, controlling

and the

whose skeptical perspective bodes well for their generation. However, in her more recent fiction, Cullinan has explored the lives of female protagonists ters,

from

Irish

backgrounds

who have landed sanely on

their feet in the

wider

New

York world. Indeed, the Cullinan narrative voice has

become that of one of those skeptical

granddaughters grown into a reasonably assured and independent adulthood. is

a voice of clarity

It

and perspective, balanced between then and now, the ethnic

and the worldly, and better able to judge

self

and others because

of the

527 New

York

Irish

Writing since

the] 960s

"

The

Modem

One example

doubleness.

528 Era

Louise Gallagher,

is

who emerges

the collection Yellow Roses 1977) as happy in her (

measure single

of equilibrium

in three stories in

work and having achieved

between her Bronx upbringing and her present

woman in Manhattan.^'

hundred and eight pounds

.

She describes herself as "five .

.

—of

Irish- American

New

time daunted by her lover's

Roman

as a

feet six inches,

one

Catholic." At one

England Scots background, Louise has

changed: "All that had given Louise a feeling of being beyond the pale that

took years to get over; pale,

and she got

when

Change

of Scene

New York,

{

of Irish

at Trinity College

A

typical

rubbing

"A Good

it

in."^^ Similarly,

and

Irish

Clarke, the

A

comparison of Dublin and

Americans, based on her experiences as a student

and a returning

CuUinan short

Ann

Loser" (1977) and Cullinan's second novel,

982), brings useful perspective to a

1

it

she did, she discovered she liked being beyond the

a kick out of

protagonist of the story

a

life

tourist ten years later.

^^

story follows this pattern: incisively observed

encounters and emotional consequences build in seemingly casual to climactic generalizations so appropriate

and valid as

to be

movement

immediately

recognizable as wisdom. In "Life After Death," a series of minor events punctuate in desultory fashion a day in the

life

of a

young New Yorker. These include

picking up a check at the Catholic college where she does part-time work in admissions, attending evening

one

of President

Kennedy's

Mass

sisters

at a city

Dominican church, and passing

on Lexington Avenue. This conjunction

somehow causes the narrator to reflect that "There's no such thing as the whole truth with respect to the living, which is why history appeals to me. I like the finality. The reasons I love Mass are somewhat the same. During those twenty or so minutes, I feel my own past to be not quite coherent but capable of eventually proving to be that. And if my life, like every other, contains .

elements

means

.

.

of the outrageous, that

of reckoning

ceremony

of death

and transfiguration

is a

with the outrageousness, as work and study are means of

reckoning with time."^'* In "The Perfect Crime," the memory of a little boy who has died of cancer and the physical resemblance between the natural gas delivery

man and Picasso lead Nora Barrett, to the

random," to "the signature

self-described as a

woman

"fatally attracted

of the master," a sense of life's underlying

mystery: "Resemblances, contrasts, contradictions, coincidence, anomaly,

—the

in-

moves the world has these wonderful resources with which to confound us. We live at the mercy of that spirit, and the spirit lets us live, by and large, in ignorance. "" In "The Sum and Substance, surgery prompts a young woman to understand the body's primacy,- hers is a revelation of thisness, like something out of Duns Scotus. She sees and feels that "The body took the blows. Nothing was lost on it. Blows to flesh and bone, to the senses, the faculties the body took them and felt them more deeply than mind or spirit possibly could. Cuts, bruises, infection, disease, shock, sorrow the body grasped them all at once and forever. The body had its own insight, its own learning."'''' And in "A Good Loser," an awkward reunion congruity, ambiguity

spirit that

—

—

—

—

in

Dublin between

Ann

ends with

New Yorker Ann Clarke and her former lover and his wife

playing the part of the "good loser." Her farewell pose, "a

pathetic picture, standing there alone in front of that awful house," her drab

and tacky summer and

"but

clarity:

I

prompts generalizing wisdom

rental, again

wasn't as pathetic as

looked.

I

Nor were

of swiftness

the Cronins, as

slammed and locked their car doors, so very safe. For with all the it has to command, happiness remains a shaky fortress. Sorrow is

they

resources

the stronghold."^''

A

good piece with which to end this train of thought and this chapter

Cullinan's story

Manhattan is

"Commuting,"

in

which the narrator

travels

from a

The

to a university job in her old neighborhood in the Bronx.

a paradigm of chosen migration

and a metaphor

for ethnic

life

is

in

result

consciousness in

our time. Released from her teaching stint in the music department of an

urmamed college (probably Fordham), the narrator "sailed back through the campus and out the main gate, into a daunting scene of urban decay though I remember those surroundings as comfortable, middle class New York." This first contrast sets others in motion. The "blue jeans and t-shirts" of the street crowd remind her that "when I was in school we wore real uniforms navy

—

—

serge jumpers castoffs,

waist."

pants

and boleros over tan

which came

to

me already worn

A "plainly dressed"

suit,

the

shirts,"

little girl in

mother and

and that hers were 'my

at the elbow,

child, "the

sisters,

were also too big

mother

at the

in a shapeless green

a white blouse with a gray skirt that

was too

long,"

remind the narrator of her own relationship with her mother: "like that mother and child we were each other's world, and our world was under a constant threat.

came to me then with a shock— she'd disguised the hard fact that now struck me as obvious —we were poor."

It

She runs an urban gauntlet

of propositions for sex

and stolen goods to the

express bus stop for Manhattan, and measures the past against the present

the way:

when

I

"My grandmother boasted of having grown up near the Boulevard,

was young

its

solid brick

fashionable respectability.

desperate lives."

One

Now

and Art Deco

the street

is

style

still

choked with

all

and

stood for a certain derelict buildings,

"point of stability," the Boulevard Grand Hotel, reminds

her of her sister's wedding reception there, the scene of a tenuous reconciliation

Once on the bus,

in her parents' troubled marriage.

the narrator experiences the

legendary commute, moving "over the Harlem River Bridge and onto upper Fifth

Avenue," and here the complex

spirit of place

again triggers comparison, this

time among three different groups of migrants in the same place

—nineteenth-cen-

tury burghers, turn of the century Irish immigrants, and contemporary African

Americans. After a few blocks, with night

falling,

"the streets began to throb

with the menace and exuberance that the very name Harlem brings to mind.

What was himself

Harlem,

it

like at the turn of the century

tells a I

tenement

found

it

idyll of

when my

father

was bom

there?

He

hardship and happiness that, passing through

easy to picture.

Some

of the

houses are as beautiful as any on

529 New

York

Irish

Writing since the

1960s

The

Modem

New

the east side of

530 Era

York, the proportions as noble, the facades as fuU of

ornamental masonry." She has a quick imaginative

flash: "I felt as

if I

might walk

some splendid, wrecked brownstone and find my father with his parents and his brothers and sisters, having their supper or sitting together by lampUght in some small into

room." Here the richness of context does not lead to nostalgia, but instead to a deeper

something was wrong even then. Only deep-seatedness would

realism: "Surely

explain the persistence of his need to ruin himself and us, his readiness to punish and

be punished over and over. 'Be careful!

what you do and say!

The bus comes down housing

'

I

wanted to warn that phantom family. 'Watch

My life is in your hands!'" Fifth

Avenue, "where

for several blocks,

shabby public

alternated with beautiful broken buildings,- then at Central Park

still

made its fresh start." Past Mt. Sinai Hospital and the Metropolitan Museum, "I began collecting my things; the next stop was mine." And the story the city

ends with

with

me:

valuable revelation: "Riding that last half-mile,

its

my heart sang—they do every week,

relief,

I've reenacted, in spirit, the

journey that has given

shape, color and brightness. I've escaped!

This

gem

of a story

head

swam

comes over

my life its substance and

"^^

embodies the central theme

"Commuting" has

doubleness.

my

as this realization

the particular

of ethnicity as liberating

New York connotation of move-

ment between the outer boroughs and Manhattan. Sometimes, to be sure, that movement is depicted as oscillation between the solid yet parochial ethnic neighborhood and the

liberating, promise-filled center of "the city,"

sense, this does describe

an aspect

of the

pattem

of

Europe to urban America, from outlying farm to inner

community

provincial this stark

to the

city,

from constricting

freedom of an individual's urban

life.

However,

dichotomy is unfairly slanted and simplistic when used by critics who

judge ethnic consciousness as necessarily narrow and unsophisticated. is

and in a

immigration from rural

And this

not what writers such as CuUinan, Kennedy, McDermott, and others treated

in this essay are saying. Their work tells us instead that the doubleness of ethnic

consciousness

is

enriching and clarifying, that the debate cannot really be

and that a

resolved,

refusal to decide

between the poles

The middle, with has res

straddling position, having something to

—therein

lies a

—that

still

place

—a different culture with

provides meaningful context.

been thrown out.

It's

where the symbolic power

children

sometimes

is

It's

still

The ethnic

world view and mo-

this place hasn't

been repudiIt's

of religious experience that so impresses

there for adults, only with

in connections established

literature, dance,

And

its

life.

compare everything

around a corner in the old neighborhood.

in church,

the mystery.

a rich, varied

valuable source of energy and understanding.

come from some

ated, hasn't

community

of ethnic

and cosmopolitan individuality can mark the beginning of

more meaning added

to

with the old country through music,

language study, travel back.

For this message of enriching, liberating doubleness, CuUinan's central

metaphor

is

appropriate.

Commuting means literally going back and forth daily

between two parts

New Yorkers, of

of a

life,

and

it is

urban American commuting in that her narrator travels from a

to a job in the old neighborhood, is still

—as the Irish

New

is

Yorker that she

the relief of

many

ney that has given

is

in the city

girl

commute

she sees twice,

from the Bronx that she was, and the

now. The story ends "I've escaped!" which expresses

someone who has moved

penultimate sentence

life

and yet the richness of comparative contexts

the point. Everything that she sees during the

and thus more clearly

is

of course central to the experience of

ethnic and otherwise. Cullinan's story reverses the usual rhythm

successfully to a larger world. But the

equally important: "I've reenacted, in

my life its substance and shape,

spirit,

the jour-

color and brightness." This

not a repudiation of the ethnic world, but an expression of the value of

belonging to two worlds.

"Commuting" between them

persistence and value of ethnicity in our time.

is

a figure for the

53 New

York

Irish

Wntmg since ihe

1960s

Conclusion

W.

RITING A

plicated task.

place in a

It

history of an ethnic group

new environment under

poHtics, culture, work,

setting for such a history. In a sense,

information, which, however,

is

And New

up. In the

you can say about

[Irish

it

York, with is

millions of

its

a particularly complicated

presents the historian with too

much

not easily secured or understood.

As the preceding chapters make

sum

com-

the pressures created by such factors as

and residence.

inhabitants and numerous racial and ethnic groups,

difficult to

is a

requires an understanding of the great adjustment that takes

words

clear, Irish life in

of the late

Americans]

both true or

is

New

York

particularly

is

Dennis Clark, "Almost anything false."

Simple conclusions

about the largest Irish community in the United States, living in the nation's biggest this

and most complex

book manages

city,

can only be even more tenuous. Nonetheless,

to provide considerable insight into

New

York's Irish and

ethnic history. Specifically focused on the Irish and covering the colonial period to the present,

York

it

offers a point of departure for

Irish to the experiences of Irish

what research has been and

is

research has reached in general,

comparing the history of the New

Americans

in other cities.

It

also reveals

being done on this group, what level ethnic

what methodologies can be used

write about ethnic history, and

what

to study

and

further avenues of inquiry might be

explored.

534 The

New

York

It is

in every sense a beginning

book that

will, its contributors

hope,

encourage scholars to pursue this line of study.

Irish

The

New

York Irish and Irish Americans in Other Cities

Although there are many possible points Irish

and their fellow

Irish in Boston,

of

comparison between the

New York

Chicago, and elsewhere, the scholarship

on the New York Irish summarized by Leo Hershkowitz, Hasia Diner, Lawrence McCaffrey, Christopher McNickle, and David Reimers, as well as studies of the Irish in other parts of

Irish

America, focus largely on four principal dimensions of

American experience: the struggle to earn a living, participation in politics,

fights for the

homeland, and roles in the Catholic Church.

Americans have long celebrated

their country's opportunities for rags to riches

success, but for the hundreds of thousands of Irish migrants fleeing persistent,

grinding rural poverty, collapsing trades and industries, or even famine, simple survival that.

seemed a

Most

lofty

enough aspiration. Most

refugees from the Great

Famine

of

them achieved httle more than

of the 1840s,

Hasia Diner points out,

barely eked out an existence toiling at the city's worst jobs and hving in

its

worst

The later immigrants left a very different postfamine Ireland better educated and more disciplined, but were only marginally more successful economically in America than their Famine predecessors. As late as 1890, Lav^Tence neighborhoods.

McCaffrey points out, nearly 30 percent of New York's Irish men were

most

of the twentieth century,

it

laborers. For

seems, Irish immigrants lagged

far

behind

native-bom Americans of native parents, and even some other immigrants, in occupational status and income. Even today, thousands of Irish immigrants suffer

from the constraints cluld-care jobs.

of illegal status

It is clear,

then, that

and are stuck in dead-end constmction or

many, perhaps most,

Irish

immigrants never

New York's economic hierarchy.' American-bom generations in New York have apparently been more success-

advanced

ful.

far

beyond the bottom

of

Christopher McNickle, citing Suzanne Model's studies, points out that the

second-generation Irish in

New York had pulled more or less even with the city's

whites of native parentage in terms of occupational status and income by 1940.

Model's data, he notes, reveals that the American-bom significant gains

that though pockets of Irish

incomes and status

how

with the

particularly

American poverty have persisted to the present, the men and women in New York all

other ancestry groups.

did the occupational achievements of the

Irish

made

of self-identified Irish

compare favorably with almost But

Irish

between 1910 and 1940. Furthermore, David Reimers suggests

elsewhere?

A

appeared to establish that the farther west Irish greater their chances for

New York Irish compare

generation of scholarship in the 1960s and 1970s

men and women moved

economic success. Based

largely

on

the

a contrast of Irish

mobility in Californian cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles with their painfully slow

upward mobility

in Boston, this geographic rule, a frontier thesis

opportunity available to the Irish in

535

America and obscures its critical causes. The Boston Irish suffered severely from

Conclusion

for Irishmen, oversimplifies the pattern of

the chronic weakness of that city's

economy and the

an entrenched Yankee Protestant profited

from

elite.

dynamic economy and the absence

a

hostile ruling class.

Whereas

nativist hostility, in

imposed by

social rigidity

California Irishmen, in contrast, of a well-established

became the

in Boston the Irish

and

principal focus of

San Francisco they helped deflect such anger onto Asian

immigrants and thus enjoyed the broader privileges of whiteness in a city acutely conscious of white supremacy.

map, then, west or

much as

east, so

was not where Irishmen landed on the mix of economic and social conditions

It

the

that structured the opportunities they found.^

Such conditions appeared favorable

New

York.

The

city's

for the Irish as well as for other

upward mobihty. Irishmen may have

also levered their progress

York as on the west coast by helping to the bottom.

It is

difficult to

examination of census

groups in

sustained growth and rapid tumover in ehtes encouraged

immigrants among them

upward in

New

the status of other non-white groups on

assemble accurate comparable data, but from an

statistics

occupational status of the

fix

from the 1850s, 1900, and 1980 it appears that the

New York Irish—especially given the larger number of

—compares favorably with the economic achievements

of the Irish in other cities

and

states over the past century

and a

half .^

Curiously, however, there seems a special sense of sadness and loss, a sense of

displacement

among

today's

powerful and visible and

and

women

all

now

New

York

are not.

across the country, but in

edge, a peculiar bitterness.

Irish, a feeling that

Such a sense

New York

they were once

of loss troubles Irish it

seems

men

to have a special

Both McNickle and Reimers note Daniel Patrick

Moynihan's quotation over 30 years ago in Beyond the Melting Pot: "They Irish] felt it

was

their town.

It is

no longer and they know

it.

That

is

one

(the

of the

A restaurant owner in the Norwood section of the more succinctly recently: "They say it's not our city anymore." While Irishmen elsewhere in America might also resent their displacement, nowhere else in America did the Irish seem to fall from positions of such great power and notoriety, and eventually so completely out of sight, as in New York."* things bothering them."

Bronx stated

it

As both McCaffrey and McNickle of

Tammany and the

best symbolized Irish

suggest, the

emergence

club's rise to the apogee of its

power

of the Irish as leaders

power under CharUe Murphy

at the turn of the century.

Murphy extended Tam-

many's power from City Hall to the State House in Albany and eventually into the national councils of the Democratic Party. Hidden

away

upstairs at Delmonico's,

issuing orders through a host of lieutenants to a seemingly vast organization, the respectable, but hard-nosed Irish

power

in

and taciturn "Mr. Murphy" seemed the very image

New York. As McNickle argues,

if

New York was Irish at

of

the turn

then it may have been because Mr. Murphy made it so.* Some might date the fall of Irish power to Murphy's death in 1924. Mayor Jimmy Walker understood well what Murphy's passing meant to the "organi-

of the century,

The Irish

New

"The brains

zation":

536 York

lamented

after

of

Tammany

Cemetery," he

hall are buried in Calvary

Murphy's death. McNickle points out that the heavy-handed,

clumsy corruption of Murphy's successors set Tammany and Irish Democratic power up for a fall to Fiorello La Guardia; La Guardia's victory w^as clearly another marker in the Irish political descent. In 1945 an Irishman, an Irish immigrant no less, William O'Dwyer, succeeded La Guardia, but, as David Reimers argues, there v^ould be no revival of Irish powder in Nev^^ York. By the 1960s the Irish had ceased to be a recognizable and pov^erful bloc in the

city's

politics.^

Whether the Irish rose higher and fell faster and lovyrer than Celts in any other would be hard to determine, but the course of Irish politics in New York

city

was unique. In Philadelphia, the Irish never really ruled, or at least not for very long. The old WASP-run GOP machine held on tenaciously until 195 1 when blue blood Democratic reformers not Irish regular Democrats toppled it and

—

reaped lines

many of the

—

rewards of power. San Francisco's

Irish,

divided along class

and between reform Democrats and an independent labor

party, lost

control of the city by the early twentieth century and never regained

it.

In

Boston, on the other hand, the Irish gained almost total control of the city's politics

by the early twentieth century and have only recently yielded the

mayoralty to another group. In Chicago the

Irish

were important players among

many competing groups until the 1 930s, when they finally achieved dominance in the city and held it for many decades thereafter. In Pittsburgh, where a WASP Republican machine had dominated until the 1920s, the city's Irish

Democrats from

New

Deal raised the

bit players to leaders in the city's politics for

many

years.

Perhaps the most important force shaping the singular course of Irish politics in

New York was the changing ethnic composition of the city and the resulting

shifting balance of

power among the

city's

many

different nationalities

and

Germans were numerous enough to have the Irish. The Germans, rich in useful skills and

races. In the nineteenth century the

been potent ethnic

rivals of

confident of the achievements of their culture, however, did not need politics to lever their

thus had

upward economic climb

little of

or earn

were also seriously divided by regional religion.

them respect as the Irish did; they The Germans

the Irish burning ambition for political power.

They were not

a

major

origin, political ideology, class,

and

threat, then, to Irish political ambitions. In the

twentieth century, however, millions of

new

migrants poured into

New

York

from all over the world and the rural South. Among the largest of the new groups, Christopher McNickle notes, were the Italians and Jews. By 1930 more than

one million lived in

first-

New

no other great

and second-generation

York and made up

Italians

and close

to

two million Jews

at least two-fifths of the city's population. In

were Italians and Jews as numerous or as large The Italians and Jews had very different cultures,

city in the nation

a proportion of the population.

were often suspicious

of

one another, and were both divided internally; they

New York. As early as

nonetheless posed a significant challenge to the Irish in

1929 the Irish World worried openly that "we see

around

all

us, the people of

other races forging ahead."''

not face this same

Irish politicians in other cities did

the

new

groups

ous as in

New

—the

Italians, the Jews,

mix of groups. In Boston

—would never be as numer-

York; the Irish could always control the city

united and often even

Yankees and

and others

Irish,

if

they did not.

they remained

if

The antagonism between

the Boston

kept alive by real Yankee disdain for the Celts and the needs

maintain group

of Irish politicians to

solidarity,

continued to shape Irish politics

into the middle of the twentieth century. In Chicago the Irish faced hosts of

newcomers

as well, but poverty (and the obstacles posed

by race prejudice

for

two largest new groups and severe mutual antagonism made their

African Americans) hindered the mobilization of the there, the Poles

and Southern blacks,

mutual alliance unlikely. their fellow Celts in

Still,

the Irish in Chicago were also luckier than the

New York. Anton Cermak, the Czech ethnic who built the

new multiethnic Chicago machine, was the hands of Pat

New

from

Nash and Ed

killed, delivering

Kelly, just in

Deal patronage. Some

time

Irish organizations in

Flynn's in the Bronx, reaped rewards from the

the organization into

for those Irish bosses to profit

New

New

York, such as Ed

Deal and the national

Tammany—out of power and suspected by FDR—did New York's Irish politicians also had the misfortune to confront in Fiorello

Democratic triumph, but not.

La Guardia an extremely talented and personable reform opponent extraordinarily popular

many

rivals, as

who proved

well as

among

other groups.*

The after

among their Jewish and Italian

final ouster of the Irish

World War

II.

Irish

from power in

Democrats

in

New York would not come until

many

cities after the

war confronted

challenges from increasing African American populations or ambitious second-

generation Italian or Polish ethnics. in

New York,

The mix of groups and evolution of politics

however, was, as David Reimers reveals, characteristically com-

plicated. In the 1950s reform

"amateur" Democrats, largely Jewish and WASP,

sought to wrest control of the Democratic party from the Irish and other

Democratic

regulars. In the 1960s a coalition of Jewish

with African Americans and other minorities,

rallied

and WASP

liberals, allied

behind John Lindsay and

took over City Hall. Conservative opposition to the Lindsay coalition formed

behind Jewish regular Democrats or

Italian

Republicans and Democrats. By the

time Beame and Koch ushered in the "Jewish era" in

New York politics in the

1970s and David Dinkins raised the possibility of an African American one in 1989, the Irish

had

finally disappeared as

an independent and powerful bloc in

the city's politics.'

The peculiar political history of the Irish in New York may not only have them a special sense of loss; it may have also made them more politically

given

and religiously conservative than cities.

In nineteenth-century

their Celtic counterparts in other

New

American

York, business leaders were always an

537 Conclusion

538 The Irish

New

York

Democratic

important part of the

city's

points out, after the

Tweed Ring

manufacturers, bankers, and lawyers control of the party and dominated Irish

Americans had

business and social

to fight their

elites,

with one faction or other they began to

rise to

McCaffrey suggests, the business

Kelly's reign as

it

McCaffrey

—the

"Swallowtail Democrats"

—took

some other cities power through Whig or Republican

for nearly 15 years. In

way

to

New York Irish were often political partners

of the city's

power

economic and

social establishment.

As

in the party in the late nineteenth century,

Irish leaders

community and

domination

party's

but the

coalition, and, indeed, as

scandals, a group of wealthy merchants,

were acutely conscious

of the

need to placate

build cross-class coalitions to maintain both the

and

of the city

their control of the party.

"Honest John"

Tammany chieftain illustrates this conservatism well. Eager for

business support, Kelly endorsed tax and budget cuts and mobiUzed the Hall's forces to crush

Henry George's

labor

campaign in 1 886. Later Tammany leaders,

such as Richard Croker and Charlie Murphy, tangled with a host of "reformers" or radicals from Seth Low and John Purroy Mitchel to William Randolph Hearst

and Morris If

power

Hillquit.'"

or access to

it

made

the

New

York

Irish especially conservative in

the nineteenth and early twentieth century, then their fighting retreat in the face of challenges

by new groups may have pushed them even further to the by Depression

right later. Irish fears for their declining power, exacerbated

anxieties,

McNickle

argues, appeared to

make them

especially receptive to

Father CoughUn's ethnocentric extremism and anti-Semitism in the 1930s.

Pushed by Jewish and wasp reform Democrats,

move

to

New York's Irish also appeared

out of the Democratic Party earlier than their fellow Celts in Boston

or Chicago. Kevin Phillips has traced steadily increasing votes for Republican

candidates

among Irish New Yorkers in the 1950s and

Republican totals in other J.

cities.

Two

1960s, far larger than Irish

Irish Catholics,

Daniel Mahoney, founded the Conservative Party in

some the

observers,

David Reimers

reports,

York

in 1961

and

have even claimed that a majority of

New York City Irish voted for Goldwater in

It is

Kieran O'Doherty and

New

1964.^'

important, however, not to overstress Irish conservatism in

New York or

anywhere else. Irishmen also were vitally involved in antebellum labor reform and in the fashioning of a working-class repubhcan radicahsm in New York and other cities.

After the Civil War, Irish

men and women were at the forefront of working-

class reform; indeed, they were critical to the upsurge of repubhcan labor radicahsm all

across the country in the 1880s. Irishmen in

New York and elsewhere probably

became more conservative after the 1890s. Nevertheless, New York City Irish Tammany men, and Irish Democrats in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and other cities, helped forge an urban liberalism in the 1 9 1 Os that would come to full fruition in the

Democratic Party

How

of the 1930s

and 1940s.'^

then to judge Irish political ideology? Radicals, conservatives, modest

liberals? It is

hard to say for sure. This

is,

in part, because there

were so

many

conflicting voices within the Irish

community.

and others have suggested, because the

Irish

Moynihan

539

have seemed the consummate

Conduswn

It is

also, perhaps, as

pragmatic politicians, convinced by experiences in Ireland and America that gaining and holding power, not determining

problem in Yet

it

how

to use

it,

is

the fundamental

politics.

may

also be because

it is

difficult to find appropriate standards of

radicalism, liberalism, or conservatism to

measure them

against. Despite

enduring desperate poverty and participating actively in hosts of labor struggles,

few Irishmen in

communism.

New

York or elsewhere embraced socialism or

Indeed, in twentieth-century

New

York and other American

they often emerged as virulent opponents of socialism

cities

New

exception in

York was Mike Quill

of the Transport

notable

(a

Workers Union).

Since American historians have long been preoccupied with the problem of socialism's failure in America, the Irish have appeared to be conservatives

despite their support for working-class republicanism or urban liberalism.

Yet socialism has been only a marginal force in American politics

more important then

how

spectrum

On many

in

useful a standard of

— albeit

New York than in other parts of the country. It is not clear

American

it is

for

measuring ideology along the narrow

political opinion.

the other hand, the narrowness of that spectrum

is

precisely the point

historians have argued. Working-class republicanism and urban liberal-

ism, such historians contend, were too limited, too conservative to effect substantial change; they were a diffusion of anger

been more profitably channeled into a

and energy that might have

real overhaul of the

and social systems. David Roediger has recently argued,

for

American

political

example, that racist

presuppositions and biases fundamentally flawed Irish American working-class republicanism.'"*

New York's importance as a communications center, as well as its huge Irish made the city a unique force in the Irish American As Dennis Clark has suggested. New York could rightly

population and wealth, nationahst movement.

claim to be the "overseas capital" of Irish nationalism. Rebel exiles from

MacNeven, Emmet, and Sampson, Rossa and Devoy, flocked to the to free their in the early in the

1

to Meagher, Mitchel,

and O'Mahony, to

and most settled there while they plotted

homeland. Major conclaves of nationalists 1

860s,

World War I

city,

—from Repeal meetings

mass rallies of the Fenians at Jones's Wood in Yorkville and the great Madison Square Garden gatherings during and after were usually held in New York. Most of the important nationalist

840s, to the

—

movements were also headquartered in the city: the Young Ireland's "Directory" met in New York in the 1840s; the Moffat Hotel in Union Square was the Fenian "capital" in the 1 860s; Ford's Irish World was the headquarters of radical nationalism in the early 1880s; John Devoy directed the Clan na Gael and spun many conspiracies from his hotel room on the Lower East Side through most of the tum-of-the-century period; and the central offices of the Friends of Irish

Freedom, organized to press

540 The Irish

New

York

for Irish

independence

after the Easter

RebeUion,

were there as well. Of course, nationalism flourished in other cities. Boston was a Stronghold of conservative nationalists in the early 1880s, for example,

and

Chicago a powerful influence in both the Clan na Gael and the Land League through the

rest of the decade. Still,

New

York has remained more or

less the

epicenter of Irish nationalism for almost 200 years. Irish American nationaUsm

no longer has elsewhere as

as broad a cross-generational or cross-class appeal in it

New York or

did before the creation of the Free State or the declaration of the

Republic. Nevertheless, because

New York continues to be America's commu-

nications center and also draws a disproportionately large

number

of the Irish

who emigrate to the United States, it still is at the forefront of the Irish American nationalist

The

movement.

^^

New York Irish may have been important to

the nationalist movement They and Irish nationalists about how the nationalist war should be waged and

in America, but they did not all speak with one voice.

around America disagreed what kind of Ireland they wished to see emerge after victory. By the 1 880s those disagreements had crystallized into three distinct nationahst ideologies: constitutional nationalism, dedicated to working through the British political system for home rule; "physical force," or mihtant nationalism, committed to violent revolution to make Ireland a republic but not to change its economic system;

and

radical nationalism endorsing a variety of tactics to

work an economic

as

well as political transformation of the old country. There was no clear regional cast to the support for these clashing visions in America. Rather, conflicts

usually occurred within American ver,

cities; in

communities as disparate

Worcester (Massachusetts), and Pittsburgh, as well as

nationalist ideologies

won

New York,

as

Den-

all

three

support and vied for local control of the movement.

and place of origin in Ireland— not region of —were generally the most important determinants of who

Class, generation, even gender

residence in America

would support which of these nationalist ideologies. There were some regional differences, but they were of degree, not kind: in Denver, Boston, and Worcester, middle-class constitutionalists tended to dominate local movements; in places like Chicago and Butte, Montana, physical force nationalists usually ruled; and in

many mining towns and some

nationalists

radicalism grew weaker and

York.

Some

small

New

England mill

cities the radical

were especially powerful. Through the 1890s and 1910s economic all

but disappeared in most

Montana, where there were strong

local socialist

including New New York or Butte,

cities,

radicals reappeared in the 1910s in places like

movements, but these

radical

groups were usually tiny or ephemeral bands.'* In contrast to the fuzziness of regional differences in the Irish

nationahst movement,

some

American

historians have argued that regional divisions are

very important to understanding the history of American Catholicism. They

have suggested that CathoUc America has long been divided into a conservative "core," centered in the East Coast dioceses,

where Catholics

are

numerous and

powerful and thus have had httle need to adapt their church to American culture, in

and a liberal Midwest and Western periphery, where Catholics are fewer

number and have had

to

work hard

to

powerful neighbors. Such an explanation

accommodate themselves

may oversimplify

to

more

complexity within

both the core and the periphery. Where a diocese was located may not have been so important in shaping its leader's opinions on religious issues as the conditions of its

environment. In late-nineteenth-century

New York there were few incen-

tives for Catholic bishops to adjust their thinking

Democrats dominated the

on

religious questions.

War and became

city after the Civil

increasingly

dependent on Catholic voters through the early twentieth century. They thus

had no interest in harassing the church about parochial education or forcing to

make any

other adjustments in

Democrats sought tions. After

to help the

Tammany's

its

religious positions; indeed,

church with subsidies

it

Tammany

for its charitable institu-

collapse and after the Irish fought their stubborn rear

guard action to preserve influence and power, the issues they contested with

Jews or wasps were sometimes religious or moral, as well as economic

liberal

and

political.

political

In

Such

fights

may have

hardened their cultural as well as their

and economic conservatism.

any

case,

whether because

inclination, McCaffrey,

such conditions or simply from personal

of

McNickle, and Reimers point out that

New York's Irish

Catholic bishops usually aligned with Catholic conservatives in the battles

within the church and between church members and outsiders over Catholi-

was an important issue in these commitment to a separate Catholic system. Leo Hershkowitz tells how Archbishop Hughes waged a celebrated battle to win pubhc funds for his schools in the early 1840s; cism's role in America. Parochial education

battles,

and

New

York's bishops were outspoken in their

defeat in that battle only hardened his resolve to build a separate Catholic

system. In the 1880s and 1890s the fight within the American church over parochial education escalated to public debate. Michael Corrigan of

New York,

who had emerged as a spokesman for the conservatives, adamantly opposed the efforts of liberals like Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul to explore new options of

accommodation with the public

of

New York's Irish clergymen,

McGlynn and many of liberal priests

schools.

of his associates in the

within the

Not

all

New

Yorkers, not even

all

agreed with their conservative leaders. Edward

"Academia," a loosely knit group

New York diocese,

were committed

to "american-

izing" the church and they therefore opposed parochial education.

By 1900 a

Vatican crackdown had routed the liberals, but their suspicion of parochial

education

may have had some

By 1898 only one-third

of

effect

New

schools, and in 1900 only a little

schools.

on Catholic schooling in the archdiocese.

York's Catholic students were in parochial

more than

half of

New

York's parishes had

That proportion was higher than the percentages in some big

dioceses like Boston or San Francisco, about the

same

as in Philadelphia,

city

and

substantially lower than the proportion in Chicago. Nevertheless, by the middle

54 Conclusion

The Irish

New

McNickle and Reimers suggest, no bishop and no fully committed to theological orthodoxy, conservatism, and the building up of the ghetto church than Francis

of the twentieth century, as

542 York

diocese in the country political

seemed more

Cardinal Spellman and his Archdiocese of

The

New

New York.'''

York Irish and the Future of Irish American and Ethnic Research

A great deal of research is now being done on this and other aspects of Irish and ethnic experience in New York. Nevertheless, unexplored avenues still abound. For example, the Irish have often been pictured as victims of or combatants in ethnic confUct in

New York, Boston,

Philadelphia, and elsewhere, yet little has

been written about cooperative intergroup particular,

relations. Irish

have been examined in the context of

offers a different perspective in his

Graham Hodges

study of the Sixth Ward. In

polyglot neighborhoods, where the daily routine of different

—black contacts, in

hostility.

life

New

York's

brought people of

backgrounds together, cooperation as well as conflict was evident.

Historians have only begun to focus on cooperation as part of the spectrum of

ethnic relations.

Most notably in

their

book on Ybor City, George Pozzetta and

Gary Mormino revealed the long-term cooperative contacts between Cuban, and Spanish immigrants.'* Yet the earlier

Italian,

an even

example, and there are others as well. In the midst of racial tensions and

violence, fully.

Irish experience reveals

many

Irish

The dynamics

between the

Irish

and black

New Yorkers were

able to live together peace-

of that relationship for the Irish

and blacks,

as well as

and other groups, must be further analyzed. In a multiethnic,

competitive society in which conflict continues to be the norm, an understanding of the basis for cooperative living takes on a special importance.

Kuo Wei Tchen looks at Irish-Chinese relations Quimbo Appo, a Chinese immigrant who married

In a different context, John

and images through the

life

of

an Irish woman. The little-known contact between these two groups, occurring in the Sixth

Ward

as well as the Fourth, also involved both cooperation

conflict. In this chapter,

which

analysis of stereotypes and the Irish, Chinese, and black place in

ethnic hierarchy indicates a

and

further discusses Irish-black contacts, Tchen's

new way

New

York's

of looking at group relations. Irish

performers were able to manipulate stereotypes to their group's advantage. Irish entry into a white Euro-American group foreshadowed the race-based ethnic alliances that have developed in the of

mid to

late

twentieth century.

The process

changing ethnic images and the evolution of group coalitions is a timely topic

that speaks to the

New York and America of today. It is a topic that has not been

fully researched but nonetheless

can provide useful insights into the dynamics

of a multiethnic, multiracial society in regard to confUct, cooperation, inter-

marriage, mobility, pluralist politics, and images of oneself and others. Especially for the Irish,

America,

it is

with a greater proportion

of

women than men emigrating to

important to consider intermarriage. To do so would open up a

topic that has not received the attention life

over a

Hodges and Tchen

new

deserves. Furthermore, Irish family

it

number of generations remains

largely unexplored.'^

are not the only contributors to this

focus and further research. Residential mobihty

Snyder's and Marion Casey's papers. Snyder's

hood succession

to the present

is

volume who suggest

work brings the process of neighbor-

and comments on the forces that shaped and

able to provide a long-term view

is

is

not a

new

and a needed personal and

contemporary emphasis through his use of oral history. His analysis, in a sense, the story of

all

New

a

covered well in Robert

changed the commimity. Although neighborhood ethnic succession concept, Snyder

York neighborhoods that have undergone

transition.

is

The

longing for the old community, the attachment to place, relations between incoming and outgoing groups, and the pull of suburbia

they do in the history of

all

form parts

many changing communities.

hood over time, noting earher ethnic

of his narrative, as

His survey of the neighbor-

relations, provides a

good prototype

for

understanding the long-term dynamics of community cohesion and transition. Casey's study of Irish residential mobihty suggests a

new and

intriguing

way

of

looking at this process. Previously, historians focused on an increase in income

through a better job to explain upward residential mobihty. occupational status often brought with least for the Irish it did

it

a

move

A

rise in class or

to a better neighborhood. But at

not always happen this way. In this detailed study of Irish

The opening up of new neighborhoods make them affordable created a horizontal mobility. Irish were able to move into better housing with more neighborhood

residential choices, another pattern emerges.

and

Irish strategies to

New

Yorkers

amenities without an accompanying the suburbs or buying a

rise in

income or

class levels.

Moving

into

home did not necessarily indicate social mobihty. It was a

move that exhibited a rise in the standard of hving but not class. Low-income New Yorkers have always designed various strategies to be able to afford their housing. But to understand

how

it

was used

(for

example, taking in boarders)

Casey takes this mode of hving a step further

to disperse a working-class ethnic population

throughout the city and beyond and into better neighborhoods.

New

housing and transportation

ously in early-twentieth-century

movement. Apartments able.

How much

of this

which developed almost simultane-

York, were the factors spurring this

in better neighborhoods

was

a particularly

further research. Other groups to secure footholds in upscale

must be revised that

lines,

New

may have

York

accessible

and

avail-

Irish response awaits

used or are using the same strategies

communities.

tie residential

became

New

If

that

is

the case, then the theories

mobility strictly to class and occupation and

suggest an ethnic succession that brought newer groups into a neighborhood as older groups,

now wealthier, moved

to better areas.

Snyder and Casey also raise the issue of the suburbanization of the

Although dealing well with the suburbs historians

must address the ethnic

formed in those new

areas.

Irish

in

543 Conclusion

Irish.

terms of residential mobility,

and Catholic religious culture that

Snyder speaks of "maintaining an ethnic identity in

suburban towns far removed from city neighborhoods" and of an ethnic identity

544 The Irish

New

York

if it is to endure." What type of community emerged and what forms ethnicity took need further exploration. Irish reUgious behavior gets a new look in CoUeen McDannell's essay. Focusing on parish fairs, she makes a convincing case for the diversity of Irish-Cathohc

that "will have to be constantly recreated

reUgiosity. Breaking from the usual stereotypes,

analysis of Irish rehgious practices

She also discusses the way in which

than on the

clerics.

their fairs

into the

fit

McDannell provides a more textured

and places her focus on the lay people rather

American consumer culture,

and the role of women in the parish fairs

Irish

Catholics through

their relations

with Protestants,

as contrasted to the male-run St. Patrick's

Day parades. As her conclusions make clear, much more work needs to be done on the nuances of group behavior. Although the subject has been broached in a few

— or example, in Robert Orsi's work on Itahan reUgious behavior, and Andrew —the intertwining of religious

cases

^f

Heinze's on Jews and American consumerism culture,

consumerism, and attitudes toward other religions and gender

illustrates

the interconnections possible in a detailed and wide-ranging analysis and the

elements in

Irish

American rehgious history

The chapters deahng with Doyle, also develop

new

Irish

that need further research.^"

nationahsm, by David Bnmdage and by Joe

insights into Irish attitudes. Brundage discusses the

period between two peaks of Irish nationalistic activity. Concentrating on the leadership element, he looks particularly at attitudes toward the Catholic

Church, socialism, and class and gender issues. Noting a divergence of views

on these topics between the 1 890s nationalists and those of the preceding period,

Bnmdage explains how these changing opinions affected and defined the nationalist

organizations and

with Doyle's study,

Doyle

rights.

offers

ships in 1920 that

is

movement.

Particularly interesting,

his discussion

on

an intriguing look

was

precipitated

at a

by

and a good

tie-in

women in the movement and women's longshoremen's strike against British

Irish

American

women nationaUsts and

involved the joining together of Irish and black stevedores. Reflecting both the role of

women in the movement and the possibilities for interracial cooperation,

his analysis, like others in this book, sheds light

and

New

York history and

offers a

new

on neglected aspects

of Irish

perspective by combining issues

extending from intergroup relations to union activity to gender

roles.

Both

analyses also reveal the impact of Old World issues on American ethnic groups, a much-discussed topic that Irish

American

been a

much

books,

it is

politicos.^'

still is

relevant today for the Irish and others.

politicians, especially those involved in

Tammany, have

also

covered topic. After Steven Erie's and Christopher McNickle's

easy to ask whether anything more needs to be said about Irish

Yet John

McClymer offers a different approach through his compari-

son of the careers of John Purtoy Mitchel and Al Smith. Mitchel, the consum-

mate assimilationist, and Smith, tied closely to his ethnicity, indicated the ways in which the Irish (and presumably other ethnic groups) could become part of America's political life. The impact of each on progressivism and on the

development

of

urban liberalism in

New York is also noted. Different views on

Americanism, reform, and ethnicity revealed different results.

That successful Irish politicians could reflect

styles indicates the variety of attitudes

leadership. This chapter

political styles

totally opposite

views and

found in any ethnic community's

in with a reevaluation of ethnic leadership

fits

and

and

identity evident in Victor Greene's 1987 book.^^

Other topics that have previously received

much

attention are Irish

workers and entrepreneurs, unions, ethnic organizations, and involvement

major national events

in

(in this case,

the Civil War). Each of the chapters

on these subjects provides either a different perspective or new information. William Devlin's study,

example, depicts the role of the Irish in the

for

burgeoning clothing industry. Famine-era immigrants included skilled

who were

sans and businessmen

arti-

able to enter into and succeed within this

industry. Devlin presents a first-time in-depth look at the Irish presence in

such industries as hatting. In

a close analysis of

New York's garment industry,

the author describes ethnic entrepreneurship, succession, the workings of this industry, and Irish

consumerism ("dressing

like an

American was an

indispensable part of becoming one"). His narrative offers a ready compari-

son to other ethnic entrepreneurial studies and indicates the research

needed on the in the city's

add nuance to commonly held notions

Irish to

economic structure.

John McKivigan and

union

still

of their place

activity,

Thomas Robertson

concentrate on Irish workers and

noting the shift of most of these workers from radicalism to

conservatism within the labor movement. Although focusing on unions, they also include information

on ethnic succession.

employment concentrations, the and socialism. There

is

New

role of the Catholic

York

politics, ethnic

church in workers'

also an interesting discussion

on the

union leadership positions during a period when there was an ethnic city's

The

workers, a situation that later occurs

Irish clearly

had

a significant

among other

impact on the

issues,

Irish control of shift in the

ethnic groups as well.

city's labor

movement, and

it

continued beyond their period of dominance.

John Ridge's essay on

Irish

county societies reverses the tendency to view

ethnic communities as inexorably ones.

He

number

moving from local identifications to national

studies the continuation of regional or county loyalties. Noting that a of these societies appeared long after the

peak immigration years and

continue to the present, Ridge suggests that historians' declarations of the end of these local feelings,

He

once

a national ethnic sense

emerged, were premature.

carefully relates the flowering of these societies, their role in the ethnic

community, and

in Ireland.

While maintained by immigration over the

years,

their very persistence indicates the multifaceted nature of ethnic identity.

Furthermore, Ridge reveals a migration network from various counties to specific

New

York neighborhoods that was

first

noted by Carol Groneman: a

chain migration that needs more detailed study but appears similar to previous

545 Conclusion

—

The Irish

New

work on Italians, Norwegians,

in-depth

546 York

Slovaks, and

Germans in New York and

other parts of the United States.'"

Edward Spann's study

of the Irish during the Civil

War seemingly

treats a

subject that has already received significant attention. Yet he brings something

new

to the discussion

Irish

community: on

political attachments,

by focusing on the impact

community

institutions,

A persistence of Irish identity is, of course, culture and language. Kenneth Nilsen Irish

of the

war

on the

specifically

recruiting, Irish participation in the war, acceptance,

on the

and

identity.

also related to a sense of a unique Irish language,

Rebecca Miller on

music, and Charles Fanning on literature discuss the cultural aspects of

Nilsen describes the strength and retention of Gaelic in nineteenth-

identity.

century

nance

New York and the efforts to maintain the language.

for other

attention

it

groups as well

is

Language mainte-

a topic that has not always received the

deserves but remains important in a nation where "English only"

has become the war-cry of traditional Irish

modem

music and dance

nativists.^'' Miller's

indicator of ever-changing ethnic pride and interest in their traditional

study of popular and

form "as an

traces the perseverance of this art

community

identity."

And

music shows, that identity has remained

Miller reveals the interplay between assimilating to the

new

as the strong.

culture and

retaining elements of the old, the feelings of embarrassment for traditional

music along with pride

in the

Old World musical

tradition.

She

ties in

the

changing attitudes to the political and cultural milieu in the United States and offers

one

of the

few analyses on ethnic music

scholarly attention but has of yet received

—a

little.

topic that also deserves

Fanning's study of Irish

literature since the 1960s reveals the same duahty. Considering a number of works, he looks at the persistence of a concern with ethnicity, family, and community and the value of each even to those who have moved beyond

American

the ethnic world. Further works should consider the impact of this ethnic music

and

literature

A

on American culture and the interplay between the two.^^

continuing stream of Irish immigrants, beginning in the colonial era and

continuing virtually uninterrupted into the 1990s, has been a factor in maintaining the

Old World culture and

disparate origins of this ethnic

Gaelic Irish

Irish, Scots-Irish, Anglo-Irish,

and

identity. Joyce

the colonial

its

component

parts

and German-Irish. She concludes that the

specifically the Anglo-Irish (mostly

groups in colonial

Goodfriend discusses the

community by studying

Anghcans) represented important

New York. The Gaelic Irish (Catholics), while present among

Irish,

were a minority and one that historians have largely ne-

glected.

A

initially

but began to fade as religion and class fragmented the group.

sense of

The most recent come to the city as

some ethnic cohesion was evident among Irish

the city's Irish

immigration also reveals fragmentation.

illegal

immigrants, and try to

make

Many

Irish

use of existing ethnic

networks. But these immigrants represent a culture and lifestyle somewhat different

from present-day

Irish

Americans, and as Mary Corcoran relates there

tension within the ethnic group. But the reasons for emigrating, from the

547

colonial to the contemporary periods, remain similar, and the impact on a

Conclusion

is

sense of identity in both eras

strong. For example,

is

some

old Irish neigh-

borhoods, businesses, cultural activities, and organizations, such as the

county associations that Ridge discusses, have experienced a resurgence with

Who

the recent immigration.

why did

come

they

to the

new

are the

United

States,

their place within the established Irish

Irish

immigrants to

coran seeks to answer. These are questions for other

Their

fit

New

York,

what jobs do they take, and what is community, are the questions Cor-

new

arrivals as well.

on already established ethnic communities and unexplored. Yet, group comparisons would be useful.

into and impact

cultures are relatively

The recent Russian Jewish immigration and neighborhoods and American Jewish culture interesting comparison to the Irish.

on fading Jewish

its effect

in general

would make an

^^

While Goodfriend and Corcoran write about the Irish community in its very early years

and present time, respectively, Paul Gilje discusses the transforma-

tion of that

community before

Goodfriend noted, the

the Famine exodus. Fragmenting in the

Irish split

emerged and defined the working class. As Gilje

Irish

manner

along religious and class lines. The group that

community

for decades

states, middle-class Irish efforts to

into a nonsectarian and broadly based

was Catholic and

shape the Irish group

body did not succeed. The

ing reveals the intragroup friction evident as well

among

Irish splinter-

other

New

York

ethnics in a later period. Although not as severe, splits in the Jewish and Italian

communities showed a similar class-based antagonism. In Gilje's narrative, we

immi-

get a close look at these early nineteenth-century working-class Irish

grants

—their

neighborhoods, occupations, organizations, and politics

the developing cohesion of their community. ethnic, religious

and work

frustrations,

and

The violence based on

rivalries, that

class,

erupted frequently

also indicated the drawing together of the lower-class Irish Catholics. of identity emerged, as Gilje contends,

—and

A sense

through "a mixture of class awareness

and ethnicity."

An identity with a specific ethnicity and class also brought with it stereotyping of their group from others. Nativists often attacked the Irish because of their ethnic, religious,

and

class identities.

The

attacks sometimes revolved around

the diseases the Irish immigrant supposedly brought into the United States.

Using the discussion on disease to look illness,

Alan Kraut also

health, nativism,

dice" applied to of this

and the

at

immigration practices regarding

an expansive discussion of immigration

Irish.

What Kraut

calls the

policy,

"medicalization of preju-

many groups over the years and is still evident today. The nature

medically related prejudice and

immigration for

offers

policy, are topics that

its

impact on the group attacked, and on

have not been well researched until recently

any ethnic group. Although historians have made these connections

they could delve even deeper into these topics.

before,

Whatever the

548 The Irish

New

York

New

ethnicity,

topic,

it is

clear that the Irish

York, and American

life.

had

impact on

a significant

Walter Walsh provides one

new

aspect of this influence in regard to the first court cases involving the free exercise of religion in early-nineteenth-century

"ethnocultural of

.

.

.

New York.

Looking

at the

construction of law," he discusses particularly the role

William Sampson, a Protestant and United

Irish exile, in arguing this

Once

concept, and in supporting "religious and cultural equality."

again the

fragmentation of the Irish community along religious and class lines as the Irish republican vision of a broad

and egalitarian

Irish

noted

is

community

faded.

Combined with

the overviews, the chapters in this

comprehensive a history of the as well the topics that

need further research. As such, the book

and others a study that should be the starting point

New York.

history of the Irish in

importance of the

Irish to the

of this discussion

was one

The

Irish,

one

volume provide

offers historians

for writing a definitive

That book will have to inform readers

study of ethnicity and

aims

of the

of the first

1990s.

It is

passes

all

between

is

of the

New York. The beginning

of this collection.

immigrant groups

to be analytically studied,

group that has been in the United States long enough to see the assimilation at work,

as

New York Irish as is now available. They suggest

also part of the

new immigration

to

full

and a

process of

America

therefore a key group in America's ethnic mosaic, one that

in the

encom-

the elements needed to understand the differences and similarities earlier

immigrant migration, adjustment, and assimilation and the

behaviors of today's arrivals.

Its

history also sheds considerable light on such

issues as intergroup relations, stereotyping, the identity, the

development

of

an Eiu-o-American

impact of a new migration on those of the group aheady

neighborhood succession, mobility, and gender a group that challenged the cultural

hegemony

roles.

Furthermore, the

settled, Irish, as

Americans in

of the majority of

the nineteenth century, provide a good comparative example through which to

understand the friction evident today as the sources of immigration have shifted to

non-European countries. Finally, the Irish experience raises the questions of

an ethnic group studies

the

is

between the

New

shaped by and shapes Irish in various cities

York experience, owing

its

how and

in

can answer the

first

to the size of the city

question, but

and the

population, and the continuing Irish migration into the present, of the analysis.

The

what ways

environment. Comparative

role the Irish played in shaping their

Irish

must be part

environment

raises

American ethnicity and its impact. One might well ask what New York would have been like without the Irish. Their impact on politics, neighborhood development and residential patterns, industry, unions, and culture, as well as on other groups, is evident. New York's development, from neighborhoods to businesses, was largely due to a key issue in understanding

the multitudes of immigrants

it

received.

And

the Irish were a major part of

the immigrant influx. Understanding the role of ethnicity in

means

also understanding its role in shaping

American

urban society. The

Irish

life

549

were

Conclusion

not the only ethnic group to play such a role, of course, but their longevity in the city, along

with other

factors,

makes them an important group

consider in assessing the impact of ethnicity on

New

to

York, not to mention

the entire nature of ethnicity in the history of this country.

APPENDIX

1

Statistical Tables

TABLE A.J. Irish-bom Population, New York

City,

by Decade, 1860-1990

I

I

I

552 Appendix Statistical

1

J

2

Tables

(S

a

rt

CO

VO

O

—

N-

vO

-H

O

-H

—

—

ro

CS

— ^

*

1^ 00

[^ t^

o -H

00

t^

(N

O

o"

-

nT

J

•^

2

^3

I* (2 e

> ^ P C 3 -Si'

*

«|

|M^

III ^? -S| S

22

2|

si |l

f£ l2

1^

E 3J=

,*;;

" °

t;

S " C

J3

2IS-2

3

52

D.

o

-H

O ^~ O

S

—

—r VO

tv-

1--^

oo"

oC

—

o

1^

Si I

t^

*

I

o o

3

2 Soli's

O

_

^i

Tl-

§

I

e «

I

« S c c a •S

t^

O

i

3

37 00

IS


-S2

t 6-ti

1^

I 5:!

a>>&p

.

^o e

-.s

?:= o

Z

t. 20, 1890);

Nov.

Cork, 500 {Msb Advocate, June 19, 1909); Sligp, 125 (Financial Secretary's Book, SUgo

Men's

S. &. B.

Association, 1909); Cork, 600 [Irish Advocate, Apr. 16, 1910); Queens, 150

Vrish Advocate, Feb. 22, 1913). 45. Corkmen's Mutual Aid Society, corporare dissolution papers. Supreme Court County of New York, 191'^. The Corkmen's Mutual Aid Society's members were concentrated berween 42nd and 96th streets, where 49 of the 107 Manhattan members Uved. Twent>-three lived south of 14th Street and 14 between 14th and 42nd. The remainder Lived north of 96th Street. The financial records of the SUgo Association bervseen 1909 and 1914 also reveal a small percentage of members residing outside of

Manhattan. 46. Whenever a home address for an officer ai^>eared in the Irish American press, was almost ^vithout exception a Manhattan address. In a list of coire^XMiding 32 men's and ladies' county organizations only one (in the Bronx) resided outside of Manhattan [Irish Advocate. Feb. 5, 1910). 47. Caroline Ware, Greenwich Village (Boston, 1935), 204-5. The Clare colony stretched along the waterfront from the vicinity of West 14th Street south to what is today modem Tribeca and SoHo. it

secretaries for

48. Ibid.. 20*. 49. Socier>-

The employment

of 43

.Manhanan members of the Corkmen's Mutual Aid directories from 1914 to 1917 was as follows:

who could be traced using the cir>

12 laborers. 4 clerks, 3 poners, 2 conductors, 2 prison guards, 2 foremen, 2 saloon keepers.

One

of

each of the following emplo>Tnents were also

643 NaUstoPtigfs

listed: bartender, printer, stoker,

boarding house (pn^rietor), motorman, inspector, lawyer, carpenter, sreward, caulker.

water piper, teamster, badges, plumber, and horseshoer. The directories had a reputation

g^^ „

p

for not hsting laborers,

and presumably many

of those not

found were in

this category.

Author's interview with Monsignor James Brew of the Clare Association,

50.

May

James Mulvihill of the Kerrymen's Association, Feb. 6, 1992; and William J. Cumiingham of the Donegal Association, Mar. 11, 1992. See also Iiish Advocate, Apr. 11, 1978;

11, 1911.

51.

Banquet speakers sometimes alluded to

how

employed. "Kerrymen are in every hne of business in the professions and there

number

their

immigrant members were

New York;

them

they can be found in

and Federal Department alone, there are at least 500 Kerrymen, of which four are Police Captains and a score of Lieutenants, Sergeants, etc." (Irish Advocate, Mar. 2, 1912). The Corkmen's P. &. B. was proud "of its lawyers, of its doctors, of its pohcemen, firemen and letter carriers and Plebians" [Irish Advocate, Nov. 12, all

New York

service. In the

quite a

is

of

in the City, State

Police

1910).

At the championship match at Celtic Park, at the grounds, Hearst had the honor of at one time president of the United Irish League of New York City, the political arm of John Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary party. See Irish Advocate, Jan. 27, 1913. 53. Buckley's trip back to Kerry in 1913 was the local equivalent of a royal visit. He was welcomed with a elaborate celebration in the Parish of Tuogh, where the local pipers' band escorted him through the streets of the village playing "See, the Conquering Hero Comes." A children's choir entertained with "The Exile's Return," and the locals himg on "The Big Chief's" every word. Suitably honored but also suitably cornered, they got Buckley to promise he would raise the money to build their new parish hall with the aid of the New York Kerrymen. 54. William J. Crowley, president for several terms of the Clare Men's Association, was a successful businessman in the Clare stronghold on the Lower West Side. In addition to his hquor stores, he was the owner of the Huron Cigar Company, which employed 200 hands. The Clare organization endorsed his candidacies for alderman, and although he lost he did quite well for a Republican in such an overwhelmingly Democratic district, losing by only a 3 to 2 margin {Brooklyn Eagle Almanac, 1912; also Irish Advocate, Nov. 4, 1911, and Oct. 25, 1913). James J. Hagan of the Longford Association was a regularly featured speaker at various county functions with a reputation as a capable master of ceremonies. He made an unsuccessful bid for county clerk of Manhattan as a Democrat in 1909 but lost to a fusion candidate 169,015 to 135,573 {Brooklyn Eagle Ahnanac, 1910, 555). 52. Irish

Advocate, Nov.

which had one

of the largest

19, 1910.

crowds ever seen

throwing out the football to the Kerry and Kilkenny teams. Mitchel was

55.

Irish World,

Mar. 25, 1899. The

Mayomen unveiled a statue in January

1896 of

Nally who had died almost six years before. See also Hibernian Monthly Magazine, Dec, 1896, 888. 56.

Gaehc American, Nov.

14, 1905.

Advocate, Sept. 3, 1910. James McElroy, Red Bricks and Green Bushes, 12. In 1910, however, Tyrone occupied a box along with 10 other counties at the Carnegie Hall reception for John 57.

Irish

58.

Redmond,

"We

leader of the Irish Parliamentary party and joined in the resolution that stated

indorse

{sic)

most sincerely

Parliamentary Party" 59. Irish

{Irish

Advocate,

that splendid

Advocate, Oct.

Jan. 13, 1912.

8,

body of unselfish workers the involved in the

Roscommon

organization as early as 1891. Such prominent Irish nationalists as Harry Boland, Plunkett, and Father Michael

Irish

1910).

Thomas Rock was

OTlanagan became members

after 1919,

if

Count

only in name.

and

60. /rish

Advocate, Feb.

61. Irish

Advocate, Aug. 24, 1918. The deaths of

11, 1911,

Ian. 13, 1912.

^45 many county members were

recounted on a weekly basis as the American army joined the Father Duffy thought that

members

of the

members

69th Regiment. As

far

of the Irish

last big

push in France.

county associations made the best

back as the Civil War some units

of the

69th were

probably recruited in part from immigrants from a particular county. See John T. Ridge,

New York— The Irish from

Sligo in

Co. Sligo 1849-1991

Author's Interview with Michael

62.

Coimties Association, Mar.

6,

f.

(New

York, 1991), 16.

Flaimery, past president of the United Irish

1982.

Funchion, "United Irish Counties Association," 269.

63.

Chapter

THE IRISH AMERICAN WORKER IN TRANSITION,

12:

1877-1914 (McKivigan and Robertson) 1.

Edward

K. Spann,

The

Thomas

New

York Metropolis:

New

York City, 1840-1857

(New

and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City 1880-1915 (New York, 1977), 48; Dirk Hoerder, ed.. The Immigrant Labor Press in North America, 1840s-1970s: An Annotated Bibhography, 3 vols., Volume 3: Migrants from Southern and Western Europe (Westport, Conn., 1987), 25; Graham Russell Hodges, New York City Caitmen, 1677-1850 (New York, 1986), 136-37; Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: NewYork City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 [New York, 1984], 11 8-19; Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (New York, 1990), 1 12, 238. In a survey of five other industrial cities and towns, York, 1981), 440-41;

Kessner,

The Golden Door:

Italian

Theodore Hershberg and his colleagues noted a similar grouping of unskilled jobs in the

first

half of the nineteenth century.

"Occupation and Ethnicity in Five Nineteenth-Century

Irish

Americans in

Theodore Hershberg Cities:

Methods Newsletter 7 (June 1974): 197-220. 2. Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the America (New York, 1985), 521.

A

et

al.,

Collaborative In-

quiry," Historical

3.

Steven

R

Erie,

Machine

Political

Henderson,

Irish

Exodus

to

North

Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemma of Urban 1840-1985 (Berkeley, Calif., 1988), 26, 49, 61; Thomas

Politics,

Tammany Hall and the New Immigrants: The Progressive Years (New York,

1976), 72.

David Bensman, The Practice of Sohdarity: American Hat Finishers in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana, 111., 1985), 118; Erie, Rainbow's End, 49; Bernstein, New York City 4.

Draft Riots, other

1

cities.

12, 238. Irish

"UnestabUshed hishmen: Hoerder,

ed.,

Americans were noticeably absent

See Hershberg et

New

al.,

lU.,

metal trades of most

Immigrants in Industrial America, 1870-1910," in Dirk

American Labor and Immigration

Studies (Urbana,

in the

"Occupation and Ethnicity," 199; David N. Doyle, History, 1877-1920s: Recent

European

1983), 194-97.

5. Gerald Grob, Workers and Utopia: A Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement, 1865-1900 (Evanston, 111., 1961), 34-59; Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers: Labor in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1989),

79-91, 142. 6.

Grob, Workers and Utopia, 37.

7. David Montgomery, "The Irish and the American Labor Movement," in David Noel Doyle and Owen Dudley Edwards, eds., America and Ireland, 1776-1976: The

Notes

to

Pages

299-303

American Identity and the

g^g Notes

to

Pages

Irish

Connection (Westport, Conn.,

1976), 214-15; Doyle,

"Unestablished Irishmen," 217-19.

David Montgomery, "The Irish Influence in the American Labor Movement," (Hibemian Lecture, Notre Dame, Ind., 1984), 2; John R. Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, rev. ed. (New York, 1930), 153-54; Gary M. Fink, ed.. Biographical Dictionary of American Labor Leaders (Westport, Conn., 1974), 583-84 (hereafter cited as BDALL); Warren Van Tine, The Making of the Labor Union Bureaucrat: Union Leadership in the United States, 1870-1920 (Amherst, Mass., 1973), 62-63; Robert D. 8.

303-305

The Emergence of Liberal Catholicism in America (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), 188; 50; Hoerder, Immigrant Press, 257. 9. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 499-500; Bernstein, New York City Draft Riots, 238, 243^8; Erie, Rainbow's End, 49; Fink, BDALL, 583-84; Irwin Yellowitz, "Eight Hours and the Bricklayers' Strike of 1868 in New York City," in Irwin Yellowitz, ed. Essays in the History of New York City: A Memorial to Sidney Pomerantz (Port Washington, N.Y., 1978), 78-79, 84-85; Montgomery, "The Irish and the American Labor Movement," 210; Michael Gordon, "Studies in Irish and Irish-American Thought and Behavior in Gilded Age New York City" (Ph.D. diss.. University of Rochester, 1977), Cross,

Erie,

Rainbow's End,

467-68; 10.

Bernstein,

New York

City Draft Riots, 243-57.

Samuel Bernstein, The First International in America (New York, 1962), 24648, 290-92; Thomas R. Brooks, The Road to Dignity: A Century of Conflict (New York, 1981 19-20, 31-33; Walter Galenson, The United Brotherhood of Carpenters: The First 11.

),

Hundred

Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 22-26, 33-34, 86-88; Fink,

Mark

BDALL, 380-81;

"Who Is the Father of Labor Day?" Labor History 14 (Fall

Larry Grossman,

1973): 612-13;

McGuire's Trade Unionism: Socialism of a Trades Union Kind?" Labor History 24 (Spring 1983): 165-97; Michael Kazin and Steven J. Ross, "America's Erlich, "Peter

Labor Day: The

J.

Dilemma

American History 78 American Thought and

of a Workers' Celebration," fournal of

(Mar. 1992): 1297, 1299-1302; Gordon, "Studies in Irish and Irish

Behavior," 487. 12.

Leon Fink, Workingmen's Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American 111., 1983), xii, 4; Martin Segal, The Rise of the United Association:

Politics (Urbana,

National Unionism in the Pipe Trades, 1884-1924 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 20-21; Laurie, Artisans into Workers, 148-51; Erie, Rainbow's End, 49; Leon Fink, "The Uses of Political

Power: Toward a Theory of the Labor

Labor," in Michael H. Frisch and Daniel

J.

Movement in the Era of the Knights of

Walkowitz,

eds.,

Essays on Labor, Community, and American Society, (Urbana,

Montgomery, 13.

"Irish

lU., 1983),

104-5,

1 1

1-15;

For example, Joseph A. Mullaney headed the Salamander Association, fournal

of the Knights of Labor, July 14.

Working-Class America:

and the American Labor Movement," 216. 3,

1890; Fink,

BDALL, 261-62.

fournal of United Labor. Sept. 10, 1886, and Feb. 26, 1887 Journal of the Knights

Movement," 215-16; American Thought and Behavior," 502, 525. Democracy, 11. 16. In the Irish World, Ford also defended the Irish Catholic immigrants from attacks by Protestant nativist critics and occasionally twitted the local Catholic prelates for their opulent living and indifference to the cause of Irish independence. Ford also condemned the leaders of both the city's Democratic and Republican parties as interested solely in the spoils of office and sometimes backed third-party groups such as the Greenback-Labor Party. Florence E. Gibson, The Attitudes of the New York Irish toward State and National Affairs, 1848-1892 (New York, 1951), 305-7, 321-22; James R of Labor, July 3, 1890; Montgomery, "Irish and the American Labor

Gordon, "Studies in 15.

As quoted

Irish

and

Irish

in Fink, Woricingmen's

Rodechko, "An Irish-American Journalist and Catholicism: Patrick Ford of the

Irish

World." Church History 39 (Dec. 1970): 524-29; William Leonard Joyce, "Editors and Ethnicity: A History of the Irish-American Press, 1848-1883" (Ph.D. diss.. University of

Michigan, 1974), 155. 1 7.

A key figure in this agitation was John Devoy, an exiled Fenian who had spent number of New York City dailies. From 1881 to

the 1870s working as a journalist for a 1885,

Devoy operated

his

own

paper, the Irish Nation,

and

rallied the city's Irish

population behind the Land League. Together with Irish radical Michael Davitt,

Devoy

persuaded Clan na Gael mihtants to support the economic program of Pamell's

"New

Departure" campaign. Patrick Ford's Irish World also enhsted in this movement. Peter A. Quinn, "John Devoy: Recollections of an Irish Rebel,"

American

Irish Historical

Society Recorder 40 (1979): 27-28; James Reidy, "John Devoy," Journal of the Irish

American Historical Society 17 Rodechko, "An Irish American

(1928): 419; Joyce, "Editors

Journalist," 532-33;

Movement in the United States,: 1858-1886" 18.

and Ethnicity," 165-66;

William D'Arcy, "The Fenian

diss.,

Cathohc University

of

Amer-

398-^01, 407.

ica, 1947),

Tammany

Tammany members received "Tammany Hall Irish Relief Fund. " Eric Foner, "Class,

boss 'Honest' John Kelly and other

Pamell in 1880 and also set up the Ethnicity,

(Ph.D.

and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: The Land League and

Irish- America," in

and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (New York, 1980), 157, 164-66, 177; James J. Green, "American CathoHcs and the Irish Land League, 1879-1882," Catholic Historical Review 35 (Apr., 1949): 27. 19. Peter A. Speek, "The Single Tax and the Labor Movement," in Bulletin of the

Eric Foner, ed.. Politics

University of Wisconsin, Economics and Political Science Series 8 (Oct. 1917), 57-61;

"The History of Boycotting," Magazine of Western History 5 (Dec. 1886): Bensman, The Practice of Sohdarity, 118, 123-24; Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 549; Michael A. Gordon, "The Labor Boycott in New York City, 1800-1886," Labor History 16 (Spring 1975):185-86; Michael A. Gordon, "Irish Immigrant Culture and the Labor Boycott in New York City, 1880-1886," in Richard L. Erlich, ed.. Immigrants in A. D. Vinton, 212;

Industrial America, 1850-1920, (CharlottesviUe, Va., 1977), 114, 118. 20. New York Times, July 16, 1882, as quoted in Gordon, "Studies in Irish and Irish American Thought and Behavior," 549; Gordon, "Irish Immigrant Culture," 111-12; Montgomery, "Irish and the American Labor Movement," 213-14. 21. New YorA Times, Apr. 7, 1 889, as quoted in Gordon, "Irish Immigrant Culture,"

117. 22.

As quoted in Gordon, "The Labor Boycott," Labor Radicalism and the

Political Factory: [sic],"

Radical History Review

28^0 (1984),

198; David Scobey, "Boycotting the York City Mayoral Election of 1884 282, 287-95; Gordon, "Studies in Irish and

New

Irish-American Thought and Behavior, 457, 461-65. 23.

Scobey, "Boycotting the Political Factory," 288-89; Kazin and Ross, "America's

Labor Day," 1299-1300; Speek, "The Single Tax and the Labor Movement," 91; Louis Post and Fred C. Leubuscher,

Henry George's 1886 Campaign: An Account

F

of the

George-Hewett Campaign in the New York Municipal Election of 1886, rev. ed. 6, 16-17; Gordon, "Irish Immigrant Culture," 117; Gordon, "Studies in Irish and Irish- American Thought and Behavior," 577.

(New

York, 1961),

24.

[New

Bernstein,

York] Boycotter, July 10, 1886; see also Irish World, June 17, 1882;

New

York City Draft Riots, 243-48; Gordon, "Studies in Irish and

Irish-

American Thought and Behavior," 467-68, 558, 583-84. 25.

in

New

One

were eUgible to vote native bom, 42.5 percent were all

careful study calculates that 87,685 Irish-bom voters

York City

in 1880,

and that

of those hsted as

g^y Notes

to

Pages

305-306

or part Irish in ancestry. Erie, Rainbow's End, 51; Gibson, Attitudes of the

gAg

Irish,

Notes

to

New

York

321-22.

Pages

26.

During

before

we

bitterly remarked:

"We

are Irish, or anything else."

New York City editor, Jeremiah New York are American pohticians

and

this period, the Fenian exile

O'Donovan Rossa

Irish of

As quoted

in Erie,

Rainbow's End,

50. See also

Theodore J. Lowi, At the Pleasure of the Mayor: Patronage and Power in New York City, 1898-1958 (London, 1964), 34-35; Henderson, Tammany Hall and the New Immigrant, 87; Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 496; Joyce, "Editors and Ethnicity," 151. 27. Much of its "patronage" was diverted from the city payroU to jobs with pohtically cormected and frequently Irish American contractors. While these private contractors certainly became wealthy, there is little evidence that this indirect form of patronage did much to raise the economic status of other Irish Americans in their employ.

Erie,

Rainbow's End, 56-57, 60-63.

McGuire, Jeremiah Murphy, and other Irish Americans longshoreman Roger Burke, a labor candidate for state assembly in 1882. One notable exception to the movement away from pohtical action after 1882 was the Typographers Local 6, headed by John R. O'Donnell, which endorsed Grover Cleveland because of their opposition to Blaine's miming mate, William W. Reid, 28.

Robert

Blissert, T. B.

campaigned actively

also

for

managing editor of the New York Tribune, which the union was boycotting. While Local 6 frequently claimed to have provided Cleveland with his narrow margin over Blaine in

New

York City, giving him the White House, the

Tammany

Hall, not labor.

real beneficiary

New

George A. Stevens,

turned out to be

York Typographical Union No.

6:

Study of a Modern Trade Union and Its Predecessors (Albany, 1913), 386-92, 657-58; Gordon, "Labor Boycott," 200-201, and "Studies in Irish and Irish American Thought and Behavior," 491-92, 556-60.

New

1886), 713;

York State Bureau of Labor Statistics, Fourth Armual Report (Albany, Bensman, The Practice of Sohdarity, 118; Stevens, New York Typographical

Union No.

6,

29.

30.

May

388-92; Gordon, "Labor Boycott," 184.

[New York],

II, 1884,

Annual

May

Boycotter, Jan. 31, Oct. 31, 1885;

9 and July

Report, 744; Speek,

II, 1886;

"The

Single

New

[New York] fohn Swinton's Paper,

York Bureau of Labor

Statistics,

Fourth

Tax and the Labor Movement" 56-57; Gordon,

"Studies in Irish and Irish American Thought and Behavior," 551-59, 571-77. 31.

New York Irish

World, Nov.

4,

1882; Neil Betten, Catholic Activism

and

the

James Dombrowski, The Early Days of Christian SociaUsm in America (New York, 1936), 35-49; Miller, Emigrants and Exiles,

Industrial Worker (Gainesville,

Immigrant Labor

442; Hoerder, 32.

The CLU-organized

Fla., 1976), 7-8;

Press, 257-58.

"labor conference"

on August

5,

1886,

which created the

Independent Labor Party, was attended by 402 delegates, representing 165 labor organizations, including the Socialist Labor Party. Speek, "The Single Tax and the Labor

Movement," 33.

It

63.

also

seems

that,

with the exception

of Peter

McGuire, the leadership of the

Americans. Howard H. Quint, The Forging of American Sociahsm: Modern Movement (Columbia, S.C., 1953), 37^8. 34. PostandLeuhuscher, Henry George's 1886 Campaign, 133; Robert Emmett Curran, the Shaping of the New Conservatism in American J., "The McGlyim Affair and

SLP had few

Irish

Origins of the

S.

(1980): 187; David Saposs, "The Cathohc Church and the Labor Movement, Modern Monthly (June 1933): 294-95. 35. [New York] fohn Swinton's Paper, Oct. 24, 1886; Post and Leubuscher, Henry George's 1886 Campaign, 132; Speek, "Single Tax and the Labor Movement," 90-91,

CathoHcism, 1886-1894," Catholic Historical Review 66

101-3, 105.

36. Powderly actively participated in the George campaign because, he argued, "the nomination of Henry George by the laboring men of New York was a solemn protest against the manner in which the rights of the many were ruthlessly trampled under foot

by the ringsters

power." Journal of United Labor, Nov. 25, 1886; Terence

of the party in

Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 1859 to 1889 (Columbus, Ohio, 1890), 288, 293-94. 37.

Rodechko, "An

38.

Post and Leubuscher,

39.

Martin Shelter, "The Electoral Foundations of the Pohtical Machine" in Joel Sibley,

Allen Bogue, and

Irish

Wilham

American Journalist," 533. Henry George's 1886 Campaign,

Flannigan, eds.. The History of

168.

American Pohtical Behavior

(Princeton, N.J., 1978|, 287-92; Scobey, "Boycotting the Pohtics Factory," 303-17.

The

Committee had been McMackin, McGlynn, and Professor David B. Scott, but Scott declined because of illness and was replaced by Redpath. It is interesting that Daniel DeLeon was chairman of the platform committee. DeLeon, who would later be prominent in the Socialist Labor Party, was a strong George supporter, even compromising his position at Columbia University in order to set up Henry George Clubs and give speeches on the candidate's behalf. DeLeon would survive the SociaUst Labor Party and United Labor Party spht by staying with the George camp. DeLeon would later 40.

totally

original Central

try to downplay his involvement with the George camGlen Seretan, Daniel DeLeon, The Odyssey of an American Marxist

embrace sociahsm and

paign, see, L.

(Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 24-28; Post and Leubuscher, Henry George's Campaign, 177. See also Charles A. Barker, Henry George

and the Labor Movement," 41.

J.

(New York,

1955), 485; Speek,

"The Single Tax

91.

H. M. Laslett, "Haymarket, Henry George, and the Labor Upsurge in Britain

and America during the Late 1880s," International Labor and Working Class History 29 (Spring 1986), 77; Post and Leubuscher, Henry George's 1886 Campaign, 171-77; Quint, Forging of American Socialism, 43. 42.

In

one

letter in the

New York

Tribune, Oct. 28, 1886, Preston stated flatly that

George's "principles are unsound and unsafe and contrary to the teachings of the

church." Also see Post and Leubuscher, Henry George's 1886 Campaign, 132; Betten, Cathohc Activism and the Industrial Worker, 7-8; Speek, "Single Tax and the Labor

Movement," 90-91, 101^, 105. 43. Quint, Forging American Sociahsm, 46; Speek, "Single Tax and the Labor Movement," 101-5. 44. [New York] John Swinton's Paper, May 8, and June 26, 1887; John L. Thomas, Alternative America: Henry George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Adversary Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 231-32; Laslett, "Haymarket, Henry George, and the Labor Upsurge," 77-78.

Curran, "The

45.

McGlyrm

Affair," 184-94; Foner,

"The Land League and

Irish-

America," 187-88; Speek, "The Single Tax and the Labor Movement," 103^, 147^8.

[New

46.

York) John Swinton's Paper, July

Journal of United Labor, Mar. of Labor 47.

(New

1

0,

1

888;

3,

1887, also

May 29,

1887;

[New

York]

Henry Browne, Catholic Church and the Knights

York, [1949] 1976), 284-85, 292, 307-9.

In his appeal to have his

excommunication lifted, McGlynn had received New York City, such as James Cardinal Gibbons.

support from liberal Catholics outside

and the Industrial Worker, 7-8; Dombrowski, The Early Days Christian Socialism, 46-49; Curran, "The McGlyrm Affair," 199-203. 48. Knights of Labor and the Federation: Mass Meeting of Wage-Earners at Cooper

Betten, Catholic Activism

of

Union,

New York [n.p.,

1890), \-6; Journal of the Knights of Labor, ]\Ay 3, 1890;

Coffin Syrett, The City of Brooklyn, 1865-1898:

241^2; Joshua

B.

A

Political History

(New

Freeman, In Transit: The Transport Workers Union in

Harold

York, 1944),

New York City,

^^g Notes

to

Pages

1933-1966 (New York,

g^Q

1989), 16-17;

James

J.

McGinley, Labor Relations in the

New

(New York, 1949), 259; Segal, Rise of the United Association, 24-27, 48; Grob, Workers and Utopia, 128-32; Patricia Ann Cooper, "From Hand Craft to Mass Production: Men, Women and Work Culture in American Cigar York Rapid Transit Systems, 1904-1944

Notes

to

311-312

I

Factories, 1900-1915," (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1981), 3-5.

United Labor, Oct. 15 and Dec. 31, 1887; Irwin Yellowitz, Labor and in New York State. 1897-1916 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1965), 22-23,

49. Journal of

the Progressive

Movement

1 86-87; David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 105-6; Gary M. Fink, ed.. Labor Unions (Westport, Conn., 1977), 37^9, and BDALL, 520-21; Grob, Workers and Utopia, 128-32, 136; Stevens, New York Typographical Union No. 6, 392-93,399^01. 50. Elizabeth Bogen, Immigration in New York (New York, 1987), 6-7; Melvyn

27-28, State,

Dubofsky, "Organized Labor and the Immigrant in

New York City,

1900-1918," Labor

History 1 {Spring 1961): 183. 51. One special category of Irish American immigrants to note were the large nimibers of single women leaving their island homeland throughout the century and entering the work force in New York City and elsewhere. Scholars have long noted the unusual pattern of large nimibers of immarried Irish women who immigrated alone to the United States. The avaUabiUty of jobs in domestic service and the willingness of Irish

American women to accept those positions made this migration economically feasible. Although studies have found that Irish American women preferred work as domestics, many in New York City also entered the needle trades and other industries. Hasia R. Diner, Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1983), 30-42; Commons, Races and Immigrants, 122-23; Doyle, "Unestablished Irishmen," 193-220. 52.

Ronald L. Filippelli, Labor Conflict in the United States: An Encyclopedia (New A History of Immigrants in Urban

York, 1990), 351-52; John Bodnar, The Transplanted:

America (Bloomington, Ind., 1985), 79-80; Stephen Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America (Boston, 1981), 151-66; Ronald H. Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict: The Irish, Germans, Jews, and Italians of New York City 1929-1941 (Baltimore, 1978), 4, 22; Kessner, Golden Door, 58-59; Diner, Erin's Daughters, 70-105; Montgomery, "Irish and the American Labor Movement," 24, 298. 53. Phihp Taft, Organized Labor in American History (New York, 1964), 203-5, 209-11; Freeman, In Transit, 16-17; Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, 22-23; Diner, Erin's

Daughters, 97-98; McGinley, Labor Relations in the 258;

Montgomery, 54.

"Irish

New York Rapid

Transit System,

and the American Labor Movement," 212, 214.

Stephan Themstrom noted that Boston's

Irish at the turn of the

century were

having jobs in the clerical and sales forces or the city bureaucracy, not the professions or business. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 500-501 Henderson, Tammany Hall and the New Immigrant, 82; Timothy J. Meagher, ed.. From Paddy to marginally middle

class,

;

Turn of the Century Era, 1880 to 1920 Studs: Irish (Westport, Conn., 1986), 8-9; Diner, Erin's Daughters, 70-105; Commons, Races and Immigrants, 205; Edwin Gabler, American Telegrapher: A Social History, 1860-1890 (New York, 1988), 119-21, 123; Erie, Rainbow's End. 62; Hoerder, Immigrant Press, 257;

American Communities

in the

Gordon, "Studies in Irish and Irish- American Thought and Behavior, " 467; Montgomery, "Irish

and the American Labor Movement," 211.

55.

Commons, Races and

New Immigrants,

Inmiigrants, 204; Henderson,

Tammany

Hall and the

72-76; Montgomery, "Irish and the American Labor Movement," 207;

Doyle, "Unestablished Irishmen," 194-96.

56. Tammany regained much of the support it lost during the 1886 mayoral campaign by imitating the strategy of its chief rival, the George campaign. Local district organizations were created, which, according to historian Martin Shefter, entered into the social life of their members, "conducting excursions and clambakes, and involving the wives and children in [theirl activities." The Associated

assembly

Tammany Societies, organized in zations imder Tammany control,

1888, consolidated the local assembly district organi-

CLU helped organize

just as the

the trade unions for

George. Shefter, "Electoral Foimdations of the Political Machine," 290-91.

Ford complained editorially that the "Irish instinctively are Protectionists" but

57.

remained "a cabled annex to the Democratic party" because

of the group's "superstitious

management." Patrick Ford, "The Irish Vote in the Pending Presidential Election," North American Review 147 (Aug. 1888): 186, 189. See also Irish World, Nov. 4, 1893; Irish-American, Sept. 23, 1895; Richard L. McCormick, From Realignment to Reform: Political Change in New York State, 1893-1910 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979), 94-95; Gwendolyn Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants in American Political Development: Union, Party, and State, 1875-1920 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1986), 129, 136-37, 153-54; Henderson, Tammany Hall and the New Immigrant, 84-85; Rodechko, "An Irish American allegiance to party

Journalist," 531, 536-37. 58.

Yellowitz, Labor

59.

Erie,

and the Progressive Movement, 171-77.

Rainbow's End, 90-91.

Historians have noted that this job structure placed the Irish in a highly

60.

precarious position

when the Great Depression hit. Economic stringencies caused layoffs

and many Irish American families did not recover economically Second World War. Charles W. Cheape, Moving the Masses: Urban Pubhc Transit in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, 1880-1912 (Cambridge, Mass., 1980),

on the

city payrolls,

imtil the

80, 87-89;

Melvyn Dubofsky, When Workers Organize: New York City in the Progressive

Era (Amherst, Mass., 1968), 21; McGinley, Labor Relations in the

New

York Rapid

Transit System, 519-20; Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, 24-25; Erie, Rainbow's End,

67-69, 89-91; Diner, Erin's Daughters, 96-98; Lowi, 45;

Henderson,

Tammany Hall and the New Immigrants,

Yellowitz, Labor and the Progressive

61

New

At the Pleasure of the Mayor,

Movement,

1

69;

"Tammany

Immigrant, 146-47, 152-54; Henderson,

33,

86-87, 90.

Mink, Old Labor and the

Hall and the

New

Immi-

grants," 78-79. 62. Yellowitz,

Labor and the Progressive Movement, 2-3, 30-33, 100-101, 115,

126, 166. 63.

New York Irish-American, Feb. 4,

1895; see also Jan. 21, 1895, and July

Betten, Catholic Activism, 5; Henderson,

81-82, 86-87; Curran,

"The McGlyrm

Catholic Reaction to Industrial Conflict: Historical 64.

(Jan. 1956),

3;

Rodechko, "An

1888;

Immigrant,

"American

Arbitral Process, 1885-1900," Catholic

Irish

American

Also Betten, Catholic

Journalist," 533, 535, 537-38.

Roman Catholic Church's antisocialist forming Cathohc labor groups when radicals

among

World

No

instance of such religious-inspired dual unionism

the Irish Catholic-dominated trades of

also argued that a Catholic could not in

New York City. Patrick Ford's good conscience belong to an

organization guided by socialist or anarchist views. See Irish World, Sept. 5, 19, 26,

1,

New Abell,

In Buffalo, St. Louis, and elsewhere, the

controlled the local unions.

Irish

I.

391-93, 399.

program led priests to guide workers in occurred

The

Hall and the

196-97; Aaron

Irish World, Sept. 9, 1893; Jan. 5, 19, 26, Feb. 9, 23, 1895.

Activism, 65.

Review 4\

Tammany

Affair,"

and Feb.

9,

23, 1895. Also

Weekly People. Apr.

9,

1910, and Mar.

9,

9,

1893; Jan.

and Aug.

1912; Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, 5 vols.

3,

(New

gci Notes

to

Pages

.

From Paddy Emergence of Liberal Catholicism,

York, 1947-801,3:112-15; Betten,Catho7icAcfiVism,3, 10-13, 15; Meagher, to Studs, 23; Bayor,

Neighbors in Conflict,

4;

Cross,

Aaron I, Abell, "The Reception of Leo XIII's Labor Encyclical in America, 1891Review of Politics 7 (Oct. 1945): 164-70; Grob, Workers and Utopia. 165-66; McGlynn Affair," 196-203; Saposs, "The CathoHc Church and the Labor Movement," 227-28, 229-30; Rodechko, "An Irish American JoumaUst," 533, 535, 188;

1919,"

Curran, "The 537-38. 66.

As quoted

67.

Reidy, "John Devoy," 420; Quinn, "John Devoy," 28-29; D'Arcy, "Fenian

in Betten, Catholic Activism, 16.

Movement," 407-8; Gordon, "Studies ior,"

in Irish and Irish

American Thought and Behav-

485-86. 68.

For example. Ford's Irish World devoted less attention to labor issues and more

America (Baton Rouge, La., 1956), 212. 80-8 1; Meagher, From Paddy 538^2, 548-50; Reidy, "John Devoy," 420-21; Quirm, "John Devoy," 31-32; Rodechko, "An Irish American Journalist," 538-39; Joyce, "Editors and Ethnicity," 164-65. 69. As quoted in Charles Leinenweber, "The Class and Ethnic Bases of New York City Socialism, 1904-1915," Labor History 22 (1981): 47; see also Gary Marks and MatthewT Burbank, "Immigrant Support for the American Socialist Party, 1912 and 1920," Social Science History 14 (Fall 1990): 178-81, 186; Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, to events in Ireland. See Carl Wittke,

Also Henderson,

The Irish

in

Tammany Hall and the New Immigrant,

to Studs, 10-112; Miller, Emigrants

and

Exiles,

551. 70.

Quint, Forging American Socialism, 150-53.

71

For the ethnicity of the SLP membership see Hubert Perrier, "Socialist and the

New York,

ed., American Labor and ImmigraAmerican Socialism, 153-60. 72. Milton Cantor, The Divided Left: American Radicalism, 1900-1975 (New York, 1978), 19; Perrier, "Socialist and Working Class," 126. 73. The New York City-bom son of emigrants from Coimty Mayo, Cassiday was an officer of Local 6 of the Typographical Workers Union. In his 1909 mayoral campaign, Cassiday declared that "the greatest purpose to which a man can put his brain, his

Working Class

in

1890-96," in Hoerder,

tion History, 121-22; also Quint, Forging

strength and his

life is

to battle for the abolition of the existing industrial slavery of the

wealthy producers. " Perhaps on account of the presence of Hearst in this election Cassidy did poorly in working-class Irish wards. Finally, in 1921 the Socialists elected Cassidy

New York City alderman.

Edward F. Cassiday to Eugene V. Debs, Nov. 5, Debs Papers, Reel 4, frame 55. 74. Bom to an expatriate Irish working-class family in Edinburgh, ConnoUy became a socialist before immigrating to the United States in 1903. Although he initially sided with the SLP, and later backed candidates of Debs's Sociahst Party, including Cassiday, Connolly tried to maintain a more independent position with the ISR Connolly launched the monthly periodical the Harp, with the help of Donegal immigrant JEC Donnelly as its pubUsher and financial "angel." According to one historian, the Harp was "designed to attract members of the Irish Community into an American working class movement. CormoUy's desire [was] to make socialist inroads into a well-estabhshed ethnic commimity by manipulating the political culture of Irish- America." Austen Morgan, fames Conto a

term as a

1921, Eugene V.

.

nolly:

A

75. 76.

.

.

Biography (New York, 1988), 68-69. [New York) Harp 1 (Jan. 1908): 9, 1 (June 1908): 6, 1 (Aug. 1908): 6, 2 (Oct. 1909): 3. [New York] Harp 2 (Jan. 1909): 3. Connolly also advised Irish American voters

Political

that "as the Democratic party inability to grasp the

problems

is

going

down

of our time, shall

to

an unhonored grave because of

we

Irish

Workers

its

suffer ourselves to be

dragged to social perdition with it?"

[New

York]

Harp

1

(May

1908): 6. See also

In 1910, the discouraged

77.

Notes

ConnoUy relocated

six years later in the Easter Week Uprising.

Greaves, The Life

and Times

the

Harp

DubUn and died there

to

Morgan, James ConnoUy, 69-70; C. Desmond

of fames Connolly (London, 1961), 214-20;

Edwards, fames Connolly (Dublin, 1961), 55-65; Kieran Allen, The Politics

Ruth D. of fames

Coni3o7iy (London, 1990), 57-82.

O'Reilly

78.

left

education teacher for

the labor movement for a time in the

women

at the

1

890s to become an industrial

Asacog Settlement House

in Brooklyn. This later

developed into the Manhattan Trade School for Girls. She later represented the

garment industry

in the investigation of safety practices in the

Waist Company fire in 1 9 1

1

.

WTUL

after the Triangle Shirt

Mary J. Bularzik, "The Bonds of Belonging: Leonora O'Reilly

and Social Reform," Labor History 24 (Winter

1983): 60-83;

James

J.

Kenneally,

Women

and American Trade Unions (St. Albans, Vt., 1978), 58-60, 68-69; Nancy Schrom Dye, As Equals and as Sisters: Feminism, the Labor Movement, and the Women's Trade Union League of New York (Columbia, Mo., 1980), 26-27, 31, 34-35, 128; Mari Jo Buhle, Women and American Socialism. 1870-1920 (Urbana, 111., 1983), 189, 199-200, 226. Another Irish American leader of the WTUL in New York in this period was Maud O'Farrell Swartz. Edward James et al.. Notable American Women, 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 3:413-15.

Melvyn Dubofsky, "Success and

79.

1918:

A

Case Study," Labor History 9

Failure of Socialism in

(Fall 1968):

New York City,

1900-

361-65; Mink, Old Labor and

New

Immigrants, 201-2. 80.

There was significant

Irish

American support

Miners (WFM), the precursor to the IWW. The

first

of the

Western Federation of

president of the

WFM

was

Irish

immigrant Ed Boyce. See David Saposs, Left Wing Unionism: A Study of Radical Policies

and Tactics (New York, 1926), 152; James Weinstein, The Decline of Sociahsm in America, 1912-1925 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1967), 14-15; Foner, "Irish Land League," 199-200. 81. New York Weekly People, Dec. 10, 24, 31, 1910, and Jan. 7, 14, 21, 28, 1911; Horace B. Davis, SAoes; The Workers and tie /ndustry (New York, 1940), 171-72, 194-98;

Matthew Josephson, Union House, Union Bar: The History of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union, AFL-CIO (New York, 1956), 97-98; Saposs, Left Wing Unionism, 153; JuUan Jaffe, Crusade against Radicalism: New York during the Red Scare, 1914-1924 (Port Washington, N.Y., 1972), 26-27. 82. One notable exception to the dearth of New York Irish support of the IWW is EHzabeth Gurley Flynn. Flynn was introduced to radical politics by her father, Thomas Flynn, an associate of James Connolly, who organized a radical club in Harlem. EHzabeth

IWW mixed local as a young high school student in 1906. More intrigued with IWW than with her school work, Flynn left school and became active as an organizer

joined an

the

and speaker role in the

for the

Wobblies throughout the United States. Flynn played a prominent

IWW free speech and assembly struggles in Montana and Washington State,

as well as in the textile strikes in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 in Paterson,

New Jersey,

in 1913.

A forceful and effective speaker,

and the

silk strike

Flynn was described

with the Celt inner grey-blue eyes and almost black hair and in the way she clenches her small hands into fists when she's speaking." Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the FWW. The Industrial Workers of the World (New York, 1 969), 1 80-8 1 Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall, Words on Fire: The Life and Writing ofEhzabeth as "Irish all over,

;

Gurley Flynn (New Brunswick,

gco

(Sept.

1

1908): 6, 2 (Feb. 1909): 62, (Apr. 1909): 6.

N.J., 1987), 7;

Buhle,

Women and Socialism,

202-3, 288.

to

Pages

316-317

83.

Weekly People, Aug.

31, 1912;

DavidBrody, The ButcheiWoikmen:AStudyof

Unionization (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 67-71; Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 3: 112; Segal,

Rise of the United Association, 24-27, 48; Freeman, In Transit, 16-17;

Irish and the American Labor Movement," 206. was the International Association of Machinists. See 84. One MarkPerlman, The Machinists: A New Study in American Trade Unionism (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 19-22, 36; also Fink, BDALL, 85, 261, 276; Van Tine, Labor Union Bureaucrat, 135-37; Foner, History of American Labor, 3: 153-60; Montgomery, "Irish

Montgomery, "The

significant exception

and the American Labor Movement," 206-7. 85. Harold Seidman, Labor Czars: A History of Labor Racketeering (New York, 1938), 1 1-26, 68-93; Montgomery, Fall of the House of Labor, 298; Foner, History of the Labor Movement, 3:140; Fink, BDALL, 263-64; Van Tine, Labor Union Bureaucrat, 146-48, 175-77; Taft, Organized Labor, 209-11; Segal, Rise of the United Association, 104-7.

Road BDALL,

86. Brooks,

108-10; Fink,

to Dignity, 54-55;

85; Erlich, "Peter

Galenson, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, ].

McGuire's Trade Unionism," 190-93.

Frank Duffy, Some Facts in the Controversy between the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and foiners of America and the Amalgamated Wood Workers International Union (n.p., 1903), 5, 11; Galenson, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, 123-24; Charles A. Madison, American Labor Leaders: Personalities and Forces in the Labor 87.

Movement {New York,

1950), 140-42.

Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants, 165-66; Robert Asher, "Union Nativism and the Immigrant Response," Labor History, 330, 336; Dubofsky, When Workers Organize, 76, and "Organized Labor and the Immigrant," 185-90. 89. For example, the International Association of Machinists, led by James O'Connell, abohshed their all-white membership requirement in 1895 but admitted no blacks 88.

The Machinists, 17. See also Walter Galenson, Rival United States (New York, 1940), 37; Dubofsky, When Workers Organize, 120-21; Taft, Organized Labor, 189; Segal, United Association. 48; Herman D. Bloch, "Labor and the Negro, 1866-1910," /ournaio/ Negro History 50 (Jvdy 1965): 175-84. 90. Jesse Thomas Carpenter, Competition and Collective Bargaining in the Needle until the 1940s. See Perlman,

Unionism

in the

Trades, 1910-1967 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972),

1,

6;

Dubofsky, "Organized Labor and the

Immigrant," 186-87. 91. Charles Elbert Zaretz, The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America: A Study in Progressive Trades-Unionism (New York, 1934), 49-51, 106-10; James O'Neal,

A

History of the

Amalgamated

Ladies'

Garment

Cutters' Union, Local 10

(New

York,

A History of the American Worker, 1 933-1 941 (Boston, 1971), 66-75; Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants, 20 1-2; 1927), 12-19, 44-49, 93-95; Irving Bemstein, Turbulent Years:

Madison, American Labor Leaders, 335-38, 341; Van Tine, Labor Union Bureaucrat, 109, 157; Fink, BDALL, 485; Van Tine, Labor Unions, 57-61, 117-20; Dubofsky, "Organized Labor and the Immigrant," 186-87, 191-92. 92. A. T. Lane, Solidarity or Survival:

1830-1924 (New York,

American Labor and European Immigrants,

1987), 202-3; Zaretz,

Amalgamated Clothing Workers,

67; Jaffe,

Crusade against Radicalism, 29-32; Foner, History of the Labor Movement. 3: 261; Dubofsky, "Organized Labor and the Immigrant," 192-97, 201. 93. Jaffe, Crusade against Radicalism. 30-31, 34; Mink, Old Labor and New Immigrants, 257-58; Montgomery, Fall of the House of Labor, 356-85; Meagher, From Paddy to Studs, 26-27; Yellowitz, Labor and the Progressive Movement. 246-47. 94. David M. Emmons, The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1925 (Urbana, 111., 1989); Dennis J. Clark, The Irish in Philadelphia: Ten

Generations of Urban Experience (Philadelphia, 1974), passim; Jo Ellen Vinyard, The on the Urban Frontier: Detroit, 1850-1880 (New York, 1976); Michael Kazin,

Irish

"Barons of Labor:

The San

Francisco Building Trades, 1896-1922" (Ph.D.

diss.,

and Radicalism," 20-44; Mont-

University, 1982), 573-78; Foner, "Class, Ethnicity

and the American Labor Movement," 205-18; Marks and Burbank, "Immigrant Support for the American Socialist Party," 186-87; Doyle, "Unestablished

gomery, "The

Irish

Irishmen," 193-96.

Chapter

13:

"IN

TIME OF PEACE, PREPARE FOR WAR"

(Brundage)

Meagher and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earher versions of this essay. I would also like to thank Angela M. Carter, Dennis Clark, Joe Doyle, and Joshua Freeman for directing me toward important I

would

like to

thank Timothy

J.

sources. 1.

Ernest Gelhier, Nations

Land League

and Nationahsm

(Ithaca, N.Y., 1983), 101-9.

For the

Thomas N. Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 1870-1890

era, see

(Philadelphia, 1966); Eric Foner, "Class, Ethnicity,

and Radicahsm in the Gilded Age:

The Land League and Irish- America, " in his Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (New York, 1980), 150-200. For the 1916-21 period, see F. M. Carroll, American Opinion and the Irish Question, 1910-23: A Study in Opinion and Policy (New York, 1978); Alan J. Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relations, 1899-1921 (London, 1969); and chapter 14 2.

Tom

in this

volume.

Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland, 1858-1928

(New

York,

1987), 124-25, 172-73. 3.

T W. Moody,

"The

New Departure in Irish Politics,

1878-9," in H. A. Crotme,

W. Moody, and D. B. Quinn, eds.. Essays in British and Irish History in Honour of fames Eadre Todd (London, 1949), 303^3; T. W. Moody, Davitt and Irish Revolution, 1846-82 (New York, 1981), xv-xvii, 221-327; D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London, 1982), 192-227; Tom Garvin, The Evolution of Irish Nationahst Politics (Dubhn, 1981), 69-84; Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 85-98; Foner, "Class, Ethnicity, and Radicahsm," 154-58. Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, New York's second most famous Fenian exile, vehemently opposed the New Departure, but he was far less influential than Devoy. T.

4.

Affairs,

Florence Gibson, The Attitudes of the

1848-1892 (New York,

New York Irish toward State and National

1951), 273-75, 303-8;

Brown,

Irish

American National-

ism, 108; Foner, "Class, Ethnicity, and Radicalism," 170-77. 5.

Gibson, Attitudes of the

New

York

Irish,

326-27; Foner, "Class, Ethnicity, and

Radicahsm," 177-79; Michael A. Gordon, "The Labor Boycott in 1886," Labor History 16 (1975): 194-98; Stephen

and the Dilemmas 6. S.J.,

of Urban Machine

R

Erie,

New

Affair

York City, 1880-

Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans

Pohtics, 1840-1985 (Berkeley, Calif., 1988), 50.

Foner, "Class, Ethnicity, and Radicahsm," 187-89, 193; Robert

"The McGlyim

and the Shaping

of the

New

Emmett Curran,

Conservatism in American

Catholicism, 1886-1894," Catholic Historical Review 66 [\9m]: 185-86. 7. John L. Thomas, Alternative America: Hemy George, Edward Bellamy, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Adversary Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 1 75-8 1, 220-27; Gibson, Attitudes of the New York Irish, 396-98; Foner, "Class, Ethnicity, and Radicalism," 184-86, 198; Curran, "The McGlyrm Affair, " 186-88.

8.

Fanny and Anna Parnell: Ireland's Patriot Sisters (New York, Denver Labor Enquirer, Aug. 1 1, 1883; Curran, "The McGlyim Affair,"

Jane McL. Cote,

1991), 134-^0;

g^g Notes

to

Pages

Stanford

321-324

191-92; Peter A. Speek, The Single Tax

101^. Hasia Diner,

and the Labor Movement (Madison, Wis., 1917), Irish Immigrant Women in the

Daughters in America:

Eiin's

Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1983), 128, disputes the importance of the Ladies Land League for Irish American women, but for some vital local branches in America and for the organization's tremendous significance in Ireland, see David Brundage, "Irish Land and American Workers: Class and Ethnicity in Denver, Colorado," in Dirk Hoerder, ed., "Struggle a Hard Battle": Essays on Working-Class Immigrants (DeKalb, 111., 1986), 56-57; Timothy J. Meagher, "Sweet Good Mothers and Young Women Out in the World: The Roles of Irish American Women in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century

Worcester, Massachusetts," U.S. Catholic Historian 5 (1986): 326-27; Joseph Lee, The

Modernisation of Irish Society 1848-1918 (Dublin, 1973), 93-94. 9. Irish World, Jan. 5, 1884; James P. Rodechko, Patrick Ford and His Search for

A

Case Study of Irish-American Journalism (New York, 1976), 166-68; An Autobiography (New York, 1973), 42-43. Garvin, Evolution, 84-88; Foner, "Class, Ethnicity, and Radicalism," 189-92;

America:

Elizabeth Gurley Flyrm, The Rebel Giih 10.

Brown, Irish-American Nationalism, 153-77. 11.

Carroll,

American Opinion,

7;

Peter

J.

Sanmion, "The History

of the Irish

National Federation of America " Master's thesis. Catholic University of America, 1951); (

Thomas Addis Emmet,

Incidents of

My Life (New York,

1911), 281-89; Boyce, Nation-

alism. 259-62; Garvin, Evolution, 84-88. 12.

Carroll,

American Opinion,

7-8; Ward, Ireland

and Anglo- American

Relations,

12-21. 13.

J. J.

Lee, Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics

and Society (New York,

1989), 15;

Rod-

echko, Patrick Ford, 168-82. 14.

Alan Himber,

ed..

The Letters of John Quinn to William Butler Yeats (Ann L. Reid, The Man from New York: John Quinn and

Arbor, Mich., 1983), 78. See also B.

His Friends (New York, 1968). Irish League of America, Proceedings of the Second National ConvenJohn Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The GaeUc Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State (Boston, 1987), 152; Bourke Cockran to Moreton Frewen, July 30, 1915, William Bourke Cockran Papers, New York Public 15.

United

tion, 1904, 48;

Library;

James McGurrin, Bouike Cockran:

A

Free Lance in

American

Politics

(New

York, 1948), 220. 16. Bourke Cockran to Moreton Frewen, May 19, 1914, Cockran Papers; Carroll, American Opinion, 23-24. 17. Emmet, Incidents, 301; Richard C. Murphy and Lawrence J. Mannion, The

History of the Society of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick in the City of New York,

1

784

to 1955 (New York, 1962), 348; John Redmond to Bourke Cockran, Mar. 31, 1900, John D. Crimmins to Bourke Cockran, Nov. 21, 1901, and William Redmond to Bourke

Cockran, Mar. 1 902, Cockran Papers. For a fine discussion of middle-class Irish American nationalism in these years see Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish

Exodus

discussion of

to

North America (New York, 1985), 541-48. See also Dennis Clark's president Michael J. Ryan in his Erin's Heirs: Irish Bonds of

UILA

Community (Lexington, 18.

Ky., 1991), 157-70.

Charles Leinenweber, "Socialists in the Streets:

The New York City Socialist and Society 41 (1977):

Party in Working Class Neighborhoods, 1908-1918," Science 152-71;

Melvyn Dubofsky, When Workers

Organize: New York City in

the Progressive

Era (Amherst, Mass., 1968).

John Laslett, Labor and the Left: A Study of Socialist and Radical Influences American Labor Movement, J88J-I924 (New York, 1970), 54-97, 241-86; Leinen-

19.

in the

657 weber, "Socialists in the Streets," 152-53; Carl Reeve and

Connolly and the United States: The Road to the 1916 Highlands, tion,

N.J., 1978),

Ann

Barton Reeve, fames

Irish Rebellion (Atlantic

27-28; William O'Dwyer, interview, 81-85, Oral History Collec-

Columbia University. Rodechko, Patrick Ford, 108-17; Henry R Bedford, Socialism and the Workers 1886-1912 (Amherst, Mass., 1966), 190; Reid, Man from New York,

20.

in Massachusetts,

American Opinion, 40. Jr., Age of Industrial Violence, 1910-1915 (New York, 1966), 115-16; J. J. Huthmacher, "Charles Evans Hughes and Charles Francis Murphy: The Metamorphosis of Progressivism," New York History 46 (1965): 25-40. 22. UILA, Proceedings of the Second National Convention, 1904, 47^8, 50-51, 285; Carroll,

Graham Adams

21.

80-82. 23. Cliona Murphy,

The Women's Suffrage Movement and Irish Society in theEaily 1 72-78; Carroll, American Opinion, 16; New York

Twentieth Century (New York, 1989), Times,

May 5,

1912.

Bourke Cockran to Moreton Frewen, Mar.

24.

to

Bourke Cockran, Oct.

2,

25, 1914,

and Dr. Gertrude

B.

Kelly

Cockran Papers.

1914,

fohn Devoy, Recollections of an Irish Rebel (New York, 1929; reprint ed.. Shannon, Ireland, 1969), 392-96, 416-22; Ward, Ireland and Anglo-American Relations, 25.

8-10, 24-29; Carroll,

Ryan,

American Opinion,

6-9, 26-36.

Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries, 172; William O'Brien and

26.

eds.,

Devoy's Post Bag, 1871-1928, 2

situation existed in the separatist

vols.

movement

Cumann na mBan, played an important role

(DubUn, 1948),

in Ireland.

2:

482-83.

The women's

Desmond

A similar

organization,

in the revolutionary challenge to British

but this role was carefully defined and limited by men. See Margaret Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism (London, 1983),

rule,

88-107. 27. Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly to Erin's Daughters, 25; Carroll, 28. ies, 51,

Bourke Cockran, Oct.

2,

1914,

Cockran Papers; Diner,

American Opinion, 161

This paralleled the situation in Ireland. See Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionar-

who

argues that because separatists drew support from an unstable coaHtion of

agrarian radicals, urban workers,

and the Catholic lower middle

class,

they avoided

developing any social program that would divide these groups.

Adams, Age of Industrial Violence, 115-18. 30. Emmet Larkin, "The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850-75," American Historical Review 77 (1972): 625-52; Sheridan Gilley, "The Catholic Church and Revolution," in D. G. Boyce, ed.. The Revolution in Ireland, 1879-1923 (London, 1988), 29.

157-72. 31. Anthony M. Brogan to Bourke Cockran, Jan. 6, 1915, Cockran Papers; Joseph Edward Cuddy, Irish-America and National Isolationism, 1914-1920 [New York, 1976), 44-47; John Patrick Buckley, The New York Irish: Their View of American Foreign Policy,

1914^1921 (New York, 1976).

Part IV

Overview:

WHEN NEW YORK WAS IRISH, AND AFTER (McNickle)

Edward M. Levine, The Irish and Irish Politicians: A Study of Cultural and Social Alienation (Notre Dame, Ind., 1 966), 35-37, 45, 78; Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, fews, Italians and Irish of New 1

.

^^^^^ toPaves

329-338

.

York City. 2d

Tammany

ed.,

(

Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 221-30; William Riordan, Plunkitt of P. Erie, Rainbow's End: Irish Americans

Hall (New York, 1963); Steven

and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine

Politics.

1840-1985 (Berkeley,

Calif., 1988),

1-17. 2. Morton Keller, Affairs of State (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 239; Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall (New York, 1971 283; Terry Nichols Clark, "The Irish Ethic and the Spirit of Patronage," Ethnicity 2 (1975), 305-59; Riordan, Plunkitt. 25-29, ),

90-98.

Myers,

3.

Tammany Hall.

218; William V. Shaimon,

278-79; Glazer and Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot.

The American Irish: A Political and Social Portrait (New York,

1963), 78.

Nancy foan

4.

1968);

J.

Weiss, Charles Francis Murphy, 1858-1924 (Northampton, Mass.,

Joseph Huthmacher, "Charles Evans Hughes and Charles

F.

Mniphy, The

New York History 46 (Jan. 1965), 28; Robert Wesser, A Response to Progressivism: The Democratic Party and New York Politics. 1902-1918 Metamorphosis

(NewYork, Ira

5.

of Progressivism, "

1986), 11-12.

Rosenwaike, Population History of New York (Syracuse, N.Y., 1972), appen-

dices.

Mayor

Chris McNickle, To Be

6.

of

New

York: Ethnic Pohtics in the City

(New

York, 1993), 20-32, 48.

Weiss, Charles Francis Murphy, 28; Wesser,

7.

A Response

to Progressivism, 23.

Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York's fews, 1870-1914 (Cambridge, 42^4; Melvyn Dubofsky, When Workers Organize: New York City in the Progressive Era (Amherst, Mass., 1968), 16-18; Melvyn Dubofsky, "Success and 8.

Mass., 1962),

Failure of Socialism in (1968), 365; Irving

New

York City, 1900-1918:

A

Case Study," Labor History 9

Howe, Socialism and America (New York,

1977), 8.

Huthmacher, "Charles Evans Hughes and Charles Francis Murphy," 29; J. Joseph Huthmacher, Senator Robert F Wagner and the Rise of Urban LiberaUsm (New York, 9.

1968), 28-37; Weiss, Charles Francis

Murphy. 45^9,

88; Wesser,

A Response to Progres-

sivism. 27-30. 10. Erie, Rainbow's End; McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York. 20-40. 1 1 Shannon, The American Irish. 20 1 ^3; Roger Biles, Big City Boss in Depression and War: Mayor Edward Kelly of Chicago (DeKalb, Ul., 1984). 12. Edwin R. Lewinson, John Purroy Mitchel: The Boy Mayor of New York (New York, 1965); Jacob A. Friedman, The Impeachment of Governor William Sulzer (New J.

York, 1939). 13.

Rischin,

The Promised

City-.

Irving

of the East European fews to America 1976);

Arthur Goren,

New

and

Howe, World of Our Fathers: The Journey They Found and Made (New York,

the Life

York fews and the Quest for Community: The Kehillah

(New York, 1970); Thomas Ressner, The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobihty in New York City. 1 880-1 91 5 (New York, 1977); Luciano Salvatore Mondello, The Italian Americans (Boston, 1980), 76-91, 188-92; J. lorizzo and David Burner, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition. Experiment. 1908-1922

1918-1932 (Cambridge, Mass., 14.

Andrew M.

York, 1981

)

8,

Greeley,

1986), 74-75.

The Irish Americans: The Rise

to

138. Greeley points out that the national figures

Money and Power (New may not precisely reflect

New York, but the large number of Irish in New York implies that they must have participated Ln the upward mobility reflected across the country. Suzanne Model, "The Ethnic Niche and the Structure of Opportunity: Immigrants and Minorities

the conditions in

in

New York City,"

(Princeton,

in Michael Katz, ed.,

and the

Irish

The Underclass Debate: Views Fiom History.

1992|, 172-74.

Exodus

to

Irish, 86;

Kerby Miller, Emigrants and

North America (New York,

Arthur M. Schlesinger

Jr.,

Exiles: Ireland

1985|, 496.

Robert Kennedy and His Times (New York, 1978),

3-15. 17.

Shannon, The American

Irish, 337,

New

431-32;

York Times, Jan. 18, Mar.

9,

1961, and June 19, 1978. 18.

Charles Fanning, The Irish Voice in America: Irish-American Fiction from the

1760s to the 1980s (Lexington, Ky., 1990), 1^. 19.

Fanning, The Irish Voice in America. 238^0.

20.

Charles Scribner

III,

Fathers," 45, in Daniel

Essays in Criticism

J.

Scott Fitzgerald,

Literary Situation

(New

The Great Gatsby

York, 1958), 153, quoted in

Robert

E.

Rhodes,

"F.

Casey and Robert

E.

Rhodes,

eds.,

Irish, 234;

(New

R

"Introduction," to

(New York, 1986). 21. Malcolm Crowley, The Shannon, The American

Scott Fitzgerald: All

My

Irish-American Fiction:

York, 1979).

Emigrants and Exiles. 493; Rhodes,

22.

Miller,

23.

Shannon, The American

"F.

Scott Fitzgerald: All

My Fathers,"

31.

24. Ibid., 245; Joseph

Valley," 132, in Daniel 25.

J.

Irish, 244.

Browne, "John O'Hara and Tom McHale:

Casey and Robert

How Green Is Their

Rhodes, eds. Irish American Fiction.

E.

Fanning, The Irish Voice in America, 293-311; Barry O'Connell, "The Lost

World of James T. Farrell's Short Stories," 53-70, in Daniel J. Casey and Robert E. Rhodes, eds., Irish American Fiction. 26.

Shannon, The American

27.

Diane Ravitch, The Great School Wars,

Irish, 278.

New York City,

1805-1973 (New York,

1974), 219-33. 28.

Jay Dolan, The Immigrant Church:

New

York's Irish

and German

Catholics,

1815-1865. (Baltimore, 1975), 103; Ravitch, The Great School Wars, 33-76. 29.

John Cooney, The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal

Spellman (New York,

1984), 176-85;

William O'Dwyer, Beyond the Golden Door (New

York, 1987), 312. 30. 31. Policy.

Cooney, The American Pope,

79; Miller,

John Patrick Buckley, The New York 1914-1921 (New York, 1976), 6-7; R.

Emigrants and Exiles, 530.

Irish: F.

Their View of American Foreign

Foster,

Modern

Ireland: 1600-1972

(London, 1988), 359. 32. Foster,

rence the

J.

Modern

Ireland, 359-60; Miller, Emigrants

McCaffrey, "Introduction," in Lawrence J. McCaffrey,

American Contribution (New York,

1976), iv;

and

Exiles, 494-95;

ed., Irish

Law-

Nationalism and

Thomas N. Brown,

Irish

American

Nationalism, 1870-1890 (Philadelphia, 1966), 20-24. 33.

Foster,

Modern

Ireland, 431-61;

1899-1921," in McCaffrey,

ed., Irish

Relief in Ireland. See Francis

Opinion and the

M.

Irish Question,

Alan

J.

Ward, "America and the

Irish

Problem,

Nationalism and the American Contribution

Carroll's invaluable history of the era,

1910-1923 (New York,

New York Irish,

for

American

1978).

34.

Buckley, The

35.

Ibid.,

36.

Joseph O'Grady, "The Irish," in Joseph O'Grady,

Influence on

36.

189-90.

Woodrow

ggg Notes

Shannon, The American

15.

16.

NJ,

ed..

The Immigrants'

Wilson's Peace Policies (Lexington, Ky., 1967), 59, cited in

to

Pages

New

Buckley, The

York

Irish, 194; see also 207, 212, 221.

Also Burner, The Politics

of Provincialism, 58. 37.

Modern

Foster,

1921"; Carl Wittke,

The

Modern

38. Foster,

"America and the Irish Problem, 1899America (Baton Rouge, La., 1956), 273-85.

Ireland, 360; Ward, Irish in

Ireland, 360.

George Walsh, Gentleman Jimmy Walker: Mayor of the Jazz Age (New York,

39.

1974), 52, 67, 79-80, 165-66.

Gentleman Jimmy Walker; Matthew and Hannah Josephson, AI Smith: The Politics of Provincialism,

40. Walsh,

Hero of the

Cities (Boston, Mifflin, 1969), 444; Burner,

WiUiam E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914-1932 (Chicago,

179-216;

1958),

225^0. Theodore Lowi, At the Pleasure of the Mayor: Patronage and Power in New Thomas Ressner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York, 1989), 245-57; Edward J. Flyim, You're the Boss (New York, 1947), 73, 144; McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York. 37^5. 41.

York City, 1898-1958 (London, 1964), 38;

42.

Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest (New York,

1982), 82-83, 93, 266-73;

Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict: The Irish, Germans, Jews,

and Italians

of

Ronald

New York City,

1929-1941 (Baltimore, 1978), 87-104. Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, 87, 150-62; Cooney,

43.

Howe, World

of

44. Bayor,

The American Pope,

41;

Our Fathers, 326^0.

Neighbors in Confhct, 87-107.

45. Charles Barnes,

The Longshoreman (New York,

46.

Bayor, Neighbors in Confhct, 109-14.

47.

McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York, 55-56.

Chapter

14:

1915), 5-7.

STRIKING FOR IRELAND

ON THE

NEW YORK DOCKS (Doyle) 1.

Unpublished interviews by the author with Thomas W. "Teddy" Gleason, Feb. and Nov. 9, 1992. Mr. Gleason, president of the International Longshoremen's

11, 1983,

Union, 1963-87, was 19 years old in 1920 and a longshoreman on the West Side docks. In a speech he gave on January 7, 1983, Gleason recalled the MacSwiney strike as one of the proudest

moments

of his life.

Fanny Pamell proposed the Ladies Land League to Michael Davitt and set it in motion with an open letter to the Irish World, initially as a means to resuscitate the flagging fund-raising efforts of the American Land League. It was hoped that friendly competition from a parallel women's organization would spur the men to start contributing again, which indeed proved to be the case. 3. Ladies Land League branches were established in Denver, Boston, Buffalo; Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Carbondale, Pennsylvania; Jersey City, Hoboken, Montclair and Paterson, New Jersey; and in Fall River and Gloucester, Massachusetts. The Ladies League of Scranton, Pennsylvania, remitted $1,000 for the No Rent Campaign in July 1881. Three Ladies Land League branches were organized in Philadelphia. 4. Irish World, May 14, July 16, and July 23, 1881; Feb. 25, 1882. 5. The Ladies Land League was somewhat fragmented on ideological lines. According to Jane Cote in Fanny and Anna Parnell: Ireland's Patriot Sisters (New York, 1990), Farmy Pamell, directing operations of the American arm of the league, maneuvered Ellen Ford out of the organization for supporting the Irish World and Heruy George program 2.

of nationalizing land

and commiting acts of violence against the property

of landlords

threatening eviction. At the same time,

League as a "great sham"

for

Anna

Pamell's memoirs criticize the Land

being preoccupied with paying rent to landlords threatening

to evict their tenants. 6.

Irish World, Jan. 29, 1881, 2.

7.

Margaret Ward, Unmanageable Revolutionaries:

Women and Irish Nationalism

(London, 1983), 39. 8.

Hasia Diner, Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant

Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1983|, chapt.

7:

"Irish Men/Irish

Women

in the

Women: The World

View from the Nineteenth Century." 9.

AOH

of

them

historian John Ridge has

documented nineteenth-century

and short-hved women's auxiliaries to the

auxiliaries

lasted only a few years, sprouting

Irish

up as contemporaries

League, or organized themselves in the 1880s as Pamell's its

peak, but failed with the collapse of the Pamellite 10.

AOH

ladies'

county organizations. Most

Land

of the Ladies

home rule movement reached

movement.

Dirk Hoerder, Immigrant Labor Press in North America, 1840s-1970s,

vol. 3,

(Westport, Conn., 1987); Diner, £rin's Daughters, 143. 11.

Joan of Arc was frequently chronicled in the pages of the Irish World because

her canonization was being processed at the time by the Vatican, and because "English intriguers"

were instrumental in her martyrdom.

"The Suffrage Not a Natural Right," Irish World, June 9, Wail from the Land of Enghsh-Made Famines," ibid., Oct. 12.

1

894; "Another Piteous

4,

1890; "Sister

Mary

Catherine: Miss Drexel's Life Consecrated to the Service of the Indian and Negro Races," ibid., Feb.

13.

1991.

Helena Maloney was also a cofounder (with James and DeUa Larkin)

of the Irish

Women Workers Union in 191 1. Leah Levenson and Jerry H. Natterstad, Hanna SheehySkeffington, Irish Feminist (Syracuse, N.Y., 1986).

Nov.

14.

Irish World,

15.

Leonora O'Reilly enhsted support from Frank

from her work as head

New

12, 1914, 5.

of the

Wage

P. Walsh, whom she had known Thomas Rock of the who was a public supporter of the Women's headed for many years.

Earners' Suffrage League, and

York City Central Trades Council,

Trade Union League, which O'Reilly 16.

Bulletin of the Irish Progressive League, no.

4, Sept.

1919, 4. References in this

chapter to the Irish Progressive League are drawn in part from notes taken by Professor

David Brundage (and shared with the author) from documents in the Peter Golden Papers in the National Library in Dublin,

which include

a

number of Helen Merriam Golden's

papers.

Bernard Ferguson, in an unpublished interview with the author on

May

25, 1984,

recalled that as an 18-year-old college student he took one of these classes in public

speaking from Jeremiah O'Leary, at the 85th Street Turn Verein Hall in Yorkville.

Ferguson remembered the class as a cross section of Irish American housewives, house painters, and trolley car conductors. Each class

was brought forward

to address the class,

students heckled the neophyte and grilled her or

reproduce the difficulties the

new

new

New

Yorkers:

person joining the

with O'Leary's coaching. The other

him on points of Irish history,

soapboxer would encounter on the

outdoor meetings, Ferguson recalled substantial heckling from sidered the soapboxers disloyal to the recent Allied

war

hecklers would have been further aggrieved had they

effort.

New

trying to

streets.

Yorkers

At the

who

con-

Ferguson added that such

known that the standard operating

procedure for Irish street speakers was to borrow the ladders that served as their speaking platforms from the closest

German

deUcatessen.

ggj^ Notes

to

Pages

.

Between 1917 and 1922 Dr. William J. Maloney authored a series of highly making the case for Irish sovereignty; wrote a satire of England's manipulation of American public opinion, The Reconquest of America, which sold an 17.

influential articles

estimated 750,000

bankrolled (with Joseph McGarrity) the

copies,-

Women

Pickets'

Washington campaign,- and founded the American Commission on Conditions in Ireland and the American Committee 18. Patrick McCartan, With de Valera in America (New York, 1932), 175. 19. Thomas K. Corless, bom in Dublin, was son of the restauranteur who had pioneered the Corless oyster beds in Galway. Irish World, July 3, Times, Apr. 20.

1920,

3,

2, refers to

1

920,

1 2.

The New York

the meeting in Gertrude Corless's 8th Avenue apartment.

The Irish Progressive League was founded in the autumn of

1917.

An intriguing

October 27, 1917, in the Helen Golden Papers of Dublin's National Library, claims as its founders, Peter and Helen Golden, Nora Connolly, Padraic and Mary Colum, and calls them "the firebrands of the late lamented American Truth

letter to the editor dated

Society,"

which Jeremiah O'Leary founded

Dream {New York,

in 1912. See also

Mary Colum,

Life

and the

1947).

"Irish Americans and Woodrow Wilson and Self -Determination," Newsletter American Catholic Historical Society, vol. 74, Sept. 1963. Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Colhns (London, 1991), 92. 23. The Globe and Commercial Advertiser, Apr. 3, 1920.

21.

of the

22.

24. Hattie

McGinnis,

for

example, a "gold star mother," from Frockville, Pennsyl-

my boy who gave his life Washington Evening Star, Apr. 9,

vania, told reporters: "Self-determination, bah! That's for fighting for the self-determination of small nations."

1920. 25. Irish World, June 16, 1917, 3. 26. O'Reilly headed the Wage Earners Suffrage League from 1911 to 1912 and had been invited by Paul to join the executive committee of the National Women's Party. Inez Hayes Irwin, The Story ofAhce Paul and the National Women's Party (Fairfax, Va.,

1964).

27.

New York

Times, Apr.

3,

1920,

1.

Unlike the women suffragists, the Irish pickets were treated well in jail. Mary Galvin, for example, who refused bail for three days, reported not only that she and her fellow Women Pickets received kind treatment from jailers and prisoners alike, but the food was to her liking: "Piles of Irish potatoes were offered us, besides Hungarian goulash 28.

and

New England dinners." 29.

Newsreels

of the

Washington Evening Star, Apr. 6, 1920. pickets' campaign were shown in movie houses

women

nationwide. McCartan, With de Valera, 180. 30.

New

wedded her

York Tribune, Apr.

6,

1920. Mollie Carroll told reporters her upbringing

to the cause of Irish freedom; her mother, especially,

Ireland in the independence struggle.

a

member of

New York

Times, Apr. 3 and

had been active in 7,

1920. Carroll

was

the Irish Progressive League. Golden Papers, Minutes, Nov. 30, 1917.

31 New York Times, Apr. 7, 1920. The American public seemed to approve of the picketing campaign, to judge from mail received at Hotel Lafayette headquarters,

including the following telegram: "Five liberty bonds in National Bank, braska, belonging to undersigned

Omaha, Ne-

homy -handed son of toil to assist in defraying expenses

campaign to forestall the plan of the English govemment to massacre Hold the fort until our Nebraska women arrive, [signed] J. H. Howard." 32. Irish World, June 1920. One Woman Picket managed to get onto the floor of the House. She shouted: "Cowards! We Don't Want Your Sympathy, but Freedom for Ireland." Washington Evening Star, June 1, 1920.

of the righteous Irish people.

33.

The Irish World lionized the Women Pickets, running editorial cartoons paying them on its front page, and an appeal for funds on its back page.

tribute to

and

34.

New York

35.

Jeremiah O'Leary,

36.

David Brundage, "The 1920

Times, Feb.

Irish- American

meeting, Chicago,

17, 1934.

My Political Trial and Experiences (New York, 1919). New York Dockers' Boycott: Class, Gender,

Nationalism" (paper given

111.,

Apr. 1992),

at

Organization of American Historians

6.

To give an example of the IPL's combative organizational style: when the U.S. Post Office banned the Irish Press (published in Philadelphia by Dr. Patrick McCartan and Joseph McGarrity), the women of the IPL started selling it at the doors of Catholic churches on Simdays after mass. As the men of the IPL took on other tasks in the nationahst struggle, the IPL's women members, who had been coequals from its founding, assumed command of the organization, with Margaret Hickey and Helen Golden its

operations in 1920.

The Women Pickets by and large supported de Valera. The Women Pickets affihated with the IPL firmly, but Gertrude Corless and the more conciliatory picket women did so less firmly. Circular letter to New York newspapers, Aug. 10, 1920, Golden Papers. The IPL was expelled from the Friends of Irish Freedom on July 24. Maloney, McCartan, McGarrity, Frank P. Walsh, IRB men Liam Mellows and Harry Boland, Robert Ford, and James O'Mara, 38

director of the

bond drive for the Irish repubhc, sided with de Valera.

M. Carroll, "Friends of Irish Freedom," in Michael F. Funchion, ed., Irish American Voluntary Organizations (Westport, Conn., 1983). 40. Golden Papers, Minutes, IPL meeting, July 26, 1920. 39.

Francis

41.

Irish

42.

Reports of the size of such crowds need to be treated skeptically. Art Shields,

World, July

10, 17, 24, 31, 1920.

whose career as a New York reporter began in 1910, recalled in his memoirs the common practice of reporters to pool news stories, and then rewrite the facts, adding dramatic embellishments. Reporters called

it

"piping the news," that

is,

piping gas into the facts.

My Shaping Up Years (New York, 1983), 54-57. New York Times, July 1920. A number of the Women Pickets handed out circulars to the crowd protesting

See Shields, 43. 44.

1,

Jim Larkin's

imprisonment

in

Daimemora

for

antiwar activities. Leonora O'Reilly,

Kathleen O'Brennan, Kathleen Sheehan and Dr. Kelly were ardent campaigners on Larkin's behalf and members of the Women's Larkin Committee. Peter Golden to Congressmen and Senators, Apr. 18, 1918, Golden Papers. 45. Frank Murphy, Daniel Mannix: Archbishop of Melbourne, 1917-1963 (Mel-

bourne, 1972). 46. Irish World, 47.

Freedom

A

Aug. 21, 1920.

benefit the Celtic Players performed in August 1920 for the Friends of

for India (a cause to

which Dr. Kelly and Leonora O'Reilly were deeply

committed) and a note in the Golden Papers indicate the company was politically aligned with the 48.

Irish Progressive League.

New York

Call.

Aug. 28, 1920.

49. Charles P. Larrowe, Shape-Up and Hiring Hall, A Comparison of Hiring Methods and Labor Relations on the New York and Seattle Waterfronts (Berkeley, Calif., 1955.) Commenting on the 1919 strike by New York longshoremen, the Nation Magazine described them, along with Illinois miners, San Francisco and Seattle stevedores,

Pittsburgh steel workers, and British railroad workers, as participants in a worldwide,

post-World War

1

"revolt of the rank

and

file"

who had

to

Pages

362-366

Race

37.

directing

gg-j Notes

defied their union officials and

shown

"authority cannot any longer be imposed from above,

from below." Jeremy Brecher, the

AOH

51. Irish World,

comes automatically

widely believed that several Manhattan chapters of

6,

and

1995.

1920; Sun and New York Herald, Aug. 28, 1920. The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Age of the Civil War (New York, 1990). Men along the Shore (New York, 1966); Larrowe, Shape-Up and

May 29,

52. Iver Bernstein,

53.

it is

were almost exclusively made of longshoremen. Ridge to author, personal

communication, June

Society

it

StTikel |San Francisco, 1972), 101.

50. John Ridge notes that

Politics in the

Maud Russell,

Hiring Hall. 54.

The October 1920

issue of World's

Work

also

makes note

of the fact that the

African American longshoremen struck in solidarity with the Irish longshoremen. 55.

Robert

Hill, ed..

The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement

Association Papers (Berkeley, 56.

New York

Calif., 1983), Ixxv. 1. Thomas Milhgan of the Marine, Firemen, Thomas Rock of the Rammers and Pavers Union

Tribune, Aug. 28, 1920,

Oilers and Watertenders Union, and

also played instrumental roles in laying the 57.

New York

World, Aug. 28, 1920,

groundwork

for the

August 27th

strike.

3.

tremendous force in the Irish community. He was part of the delegation sent by the Third Irish Race Convention to lobby for Ireland at the Versailles Peace Conference. He had cleared the Women Pickets of the criminal charges accumulated against them during the Washington campaign. He was a staunch friend of Leonora O'Reilly from labor and suffrage battles. He was joint chairman, with William Howard Taft, of the War Labor Board. And he had presided over the federal Commission on Industrial Relations in June 1914 when they interviewed Chelsea longshoremen about their murderously dangerous working conditions, an experience 58.

Frank

R Walsh was

a

that permanently affected Walsh's view of labor relations. 59.

New York Times, Aug. 28,

1920. Another

member of the audience,

S.

N. Ghose,

Last night's he had "never witnessed such enthusiasm before in America. meeting convinced me that we can secure more by actions than by political manipulation We pray that you hve long [enough] to see the downfall of the EngUsh imperialism said that

.

.

.

and the dismemberment of the British empire." S. N. Ghose, National Organizer, Friends of Freedom for India, to Frank P. Walsh, Aug. 29, 1920, Walsh Papers, Manuscript

New York Public Library. New York Call, Aug. 28, 1920. New York Times, Aug. 28, 1920. New York City Directory, 1920.

collection. 60. 61. 62.

Mrs. George Warner was expelled from the

Friends of Irish Freedom in July, allegedly for breaking up the FOIF meeting (she denied the charge.) For lack of an identifying middle initial, the other 23 women who marched on the ships on August 27 cannot be traced. In answer to the question, "Were these women drawn into the movement through cultural activities?" the opposite seems to be true of the Cumann na mBan members. Months after it was formed in 1914 the Cumann na mBan suffered a spht, because Dr. Kelly's faction would not permit a banquet to be organized to raise funds. Dr. Kelly considered "feasting" inappropriate while Irish citizens were being persecuted by British soldiers. The Irish Progressive League, while receptive to banquets, songs, and poetry in their public meetings, was first and foremost a political organization, eager to make common cause with American socialists. IPL members were deeply influenced by the

writings of James Connolly. 63. IPL Minutes, Mar. 21, 1921, Papers of Eithne

Golden Sax.

1993.

New York Times, Aug. 29, 1920. New York Ameiican, Aug. 29, 1920. New York World, Aug. 26, 1920. Sun and New York Herald, Aug. 30, 1920. "MacSwiney Now in Last Weak Stages,"

65. 66. 67. 68.

New York World, Sept. 5, 1920; "MacSwiney Is at Death's Door," 69. HiU, UNIA Papers, 1: 13. David Brundage, "Dockers' Boycott,"

70.

who grew up on

Sim, Sept. 12, 1920.

Harold Gates, a waterfront teamster

12.

the West Side of Manhattan, asserted in an interview with the author

March 1980 that the decades of corruption on the New York waterfront documented New York-New Jersey Waterfront Crime Commission stemmed from long-time MacSwiney strike. Gates alleged that Ryan built a power base among second-generation Irish Americans in the union whom he led across the MacSwiney picket lines that the first-generation Irish in

by the

longshore president (1927-51) Joseph Ryan's undercutting of the

longshoremen were honoring.

New York American,

71.

women

Sept. 12, 1920.

with such slogans as "Brothers,

"Ireland's Liberty,

Our

if

Liberty, Liberty for

The women pickets made up

you scab

Ireland,

Mankind. Let

signs for the

you scab our race" and Golden

British Ships Rot."

Papers, Folder 6. See also Brundage, "Dockers' Boycott, "11.

"Decision of Colored Longshoremen Engaged in the Breaking of the Irish

72.

Golden Papers.

Patriotic Strike," Sept. 13, 1920,

New York Herald,

73.

Sun and

74.

New York

75.

Irish World, Sept. 11, 1920, 12.

76.

Papers of the Women's Trade Union League and

Times, Sept.

3,

Aug. 31, 1920,

12; Sept. 12, 1920, 22.

1920.

Its

Principal Leaders, Reel

2,

Leonora O'Reilly Papers. 77.

Golden Papers,

78.

New York New York

79.

I.PL. Bulletin, Sept. 1919, 4.

Tribune, Nov.

Times, Jan.

Chapter

15:

3,

1,

1920;

New York

Times, Nov.

1,

1920.

1923, 4; Times, Sept. 11, 1925.

OF "MORNIN' GLORIES" AND OLD OAKS" (McClymer)

"FINE 1

Edwin

York, 1965)

is

R. Lewinson, John Purroy Mitchel:

The Boy Mayor of

New

York (New

the standard biography. See pp. 248-57 for an account of Mitchel's military

service and fatal last flight. 2.

JuHan

Oswald Garrison Street,

"New

Villard,

"John Purroy Mitchell," Nation 107, no. 36 (1918): 36;

York's Fighting Mayor: Shall

Weekly 59 (Aug. 25, 1917): 46. was Theodore Roosevelt. See "Why the Fighting Mayor of

Collier's

It is

Tammany

Stay

Out or Come Back?" unnamed "political

quite possible the

prognosticator" 3.

New

York

Is

Thought

to

Be of Presidential

Caliber," Current Opinion 63 (Oct. 17, 1917): 238-39.

"John Purroy Mitchel," 36.

4.

Villard,

5.

See Oscar Handlin, Al Smith

own account is in his Up

to

and His America (Boston, 1958), 71-78. Smith's Now: An Autobiography (Garden City, N.Y., 1929), 153-60.

See also Nancy Joan Weiss, Charles Francis Murphy, 1858-1924 (Northampton, Mass., 1968).

ggc

Personal papers of Eithne Golden Sax; unpublished interview with Eithne Sax,

64.

May 30,

Notes

to

Pages

369-375

Willaim

6.

L.

Riordan, Plunkitt

Very Practical Politics (1905; 7.

Riordan, Plunkitt of

8.

The

Of Tammany Hall: A

New York,

Tammany Hall,

election of 1897

was the

Series of Very Plain Talks

on

1963), 17, 19.

first

19.

one

after the linking of the five

boroughs to

New York.

Mitchel's plurality in 1913 was upward of 121,000. "Tammany's Waterloo," Literary Digest 47 (Nov. 15, 1913) 927-29; "Significance of the Elections," Outlook 105 (Nov. 15, 1913): 567-69; "Murphy, The Terrible Ogre of American Politics," Current Opinion 55 (Dec. 1913) 403-4; R M. Michelson, "With Murphy at Waterloo," Harper's Weekly 58 (Dec. 6, 1913) 18-20; S. Brooks, "Was Tammany Really Destroyed?" Harper's Weekly 58 (Dec. 27, 1913): 8-9; B. J. Hendrick, "TwiUght of Tammany HaU," World's Work 27 (Feb. 1914) 432-40; "Final Blow at Tammany Hall," World's Work 33 (Feb. 1917): 355. See also

form "Greater"

See, for example,

9.

"Imperturbable Murphy," Literary Digest 48

(Jan. 3, 1914):

34-35.

Diane Ravitch, The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973 (New York, 227. See also Augustus Cerillo Jr., "The Reform of Municipal Government in New

10.

1974),

Low

York City: From Seth Quarterly 57 11.

(Jan. 1973),

statements 1

New-York Historical Society

"John Purroy Mitchel," 36. Theodore Roosevelt's endorsement was pub-

Villard,

lished in Collier's

Campaign,"

to John Purroy Mitchel,"

51-71.

Weekly

New Repubhc

see, for

59, (Aug. 1917): 6;

12 (Oct.

6, 1917):

Wilham

270,

Hard, "The

and 12

New

York Mayoralty

(Oct. 13, 1917): 294. For similar

example, Charles A. Beard, "John Purroy Mitchel," Survey 40

(July 13,

9 1 8): 437, and "John Purroy Mitchel: His Chief Contributions to City Government, " Svirvey

40 (Aug. 12.

Review

3, 1918):

505

ff.,

a series of

conmiemorative tributes by Mitchel appointees.

Howard Lee McBain, "Editorial: John Purroy Mitchel," National Municipal The most fulsome contemporary version of this view of Emanie N. Sachs, "Being Himian: A Great Mayor and What Happened

7 (Sept. 1918): 506.

Mitchel's career is

Him," Century Magazine 3 (Feb. 1926): 385-98. 13. Smith, Up to Now, 156. 14. Cleveland Rogers, Robert Moses (New York, 1952), 19; Oswald Garrison Villard, "The New York Mayoralty Election," Nation 105 (Oct. 25, 1917): 448. For Moses' role in the Mitchel administration and for the circumstances surrounding his recruitment by Smith see Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York to

(New

York, 1975), 70-96.

15.

A

carefully

modulated version of the Plunkitt thesis informs the only

full-scale

scholarly biography of Mitchel, Lewinson's, John Purroy Mitchel; and, via Lewinson, other scholarly treatments of Mitchel's administration such as Ravitch,

The Great School Wars,

219-29; and Robert Caro, The Power Broker, 70-86. Many scholars tend to ignore Mitchel. The most notable recent example, perhaps, is Thomas Ressner, Fiorello H. La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York, 1989). Ressner mentions Mitchel only twice, both times in passing, and misspells his name (as Mitchell) each time, in a 700-page study of

New York City mayoral pohtics in the first half of the twentieth century. 16.

pubhc

Tocqueville

is

equally critical of

"men of letters" who have

never taken part in

and are "always inclined to find general causes" for everything. The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (New York, 1896), as excerpted in Jan Goldstein and John W. Boyer, eds., University of Chicago affairs

Readings in Western Civilization (Chicago, 1988), 8: 228. 17. See Lewinson, John Purroy Mitchel, 1 7^0, 36. Ellison had served as John Purroy

when political opponents imsuccessfully attempted He had been the executor of Mitchel's uncle Henry's

Mitchel's father's attorney in 1895 to

remove him

estate in 1903.

as fire marshall.

18.

WilliamDillon, Li/eoZ/ohnMitchei, 2vols. (1888).

19.

Smith,

Up

ggy

Now, 3-68; Norman Hapgood and Henry Moskowitz, Up from E. Smith: A Biographical Study in Contemporary Politics (New 3-54; Handlin, Al Smith and His America, 6-26; Riordan, Plunkitt of to

the City Streets: Alfred

York, 1927),

Tammany Hall, 20.

7-10.

"New

See the hill-length portrait in Street,

Sachs, "Being

Human,"

"New

York's Fighting Mayor,"

7.

Also

386, 390.

York's Fighting Mayor," 39.

21.

Street,

22.

Riordan, Plunkitt of

Tammany Hall,

50, 52.

Hapgood and Moskowitz, Up from the City Streets, 75. 24. Quoted in Sachs, "Being Human," 395. Hearst had supported Mitchel in 1913 but broke with him shortly after the Fusion administration took office. The ostensible reason was a disagreement over the expansion of the subways, but Mitchel's unwilUngness to consult with Hearst on policy questions in general was in all likelihood a more important factor. See Lewinson, fohn Purroy Mitchel, 213. Oswald Garrison Villard, in his obituary of Mitchel, commented somewhat obhquely that "the evil genius of American journalism, William R. Hearst, was early ahenated from Mr. Mitchel, for 23.

reasons entirely creditable to the latter." Villard, "John Purroy Mitchel," 37. 25.

New York Evening Journal, Oct.

1

8, 1 9 1 7,

as reprinted in Lewinson, John Purroy

Mitchel, 237. 26.

New

York Evening Journal, Oct.

18, 1917, as

Mitchel, 238. For "the Little Brother to the Rich"

quoted in Lewinson, John Purroy

nickname see Sachs, "Being Human, " 397.

27. Villard, "John Purroy Mitchel," 37.

"New York's

Street,

29.

For Mitchel's ovra account, see

Independent 82 (May

10, 1915):

Workers Take Charge

of

"New

39^1. "What We Have Done For New York,"

Fighting Mayor,"

28.

New

J.

P.

Mitchel,

237^9. Other

positive accounts include "Trained Social

York City Government," Survey 31

(Jan. 10, 1914):

430^2;

York City's Government by Experts," Review of Reviews 49 (Feb. 1914): 171-78; and the City," Independent 80 (Nov. 30, 1914): 327-28; "Businesshke Mayor,"

"Efficiency

Outlook 113 (May

10, 1916): 52;

H.

S.

Mayor "Mayor Mitchel and His

Gilbertson, "Municipal Revolution under

Mitchel," Review of Reviews 56 (Sept. 1917): 300-303; and G. Harvey,

Work," North American ReviewlOS (Aug.

1917): 261-70. Favorable

accounts of the Municipal

Research Bureau, chief source of experts for the Fusion administration, include "Training

Men

1912): 307-12;

30.

and

and f.

Women for

William H. Allen,

Annals of the American Academy 41 (May R Heaton, "School for Mayors," Survey 17 (Dec. 9, 1912): 1340^1.

PubUc

Service,"

See John A. Kingsbury, "Municipal Welfare

Work as Exemplified in New York's

Treatment of Dependent Children," National Conference of Social Work Proceedings (1917), 371-79.

31

It is

possible that Kingsbury chose Doherty, a Catholic

church-run orphanage, to lead the investigation as a 32.

similar:

me.

(New York, 34.

I

'I

said, 'Oh, well,

if

from inside and not from outside

you want

to

compromise.

.

.

.'

is

[the

Whereupon

won't compromise.

can't do

it

1921), 24-26.

New York

35. Ibid., 36.

wing

fight

I have to keep my self-respect. 1 won't let them then way.'" Sachs, "Being Human," 394. Eda Amberg and William H. Allen, Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat

flared:

dictate to 33.

raised in a

Lewinson, John Purroy Mitchel, 178. Emanie Sachs's version of this story

"Fellow-churchmen begged him to

church). His right

Mitchel

who had been

way of heading off Cathohc opposition.

Times, Nov. 20, and Dec.

4,

1915.

Nov. 20, 1915.

Amberg and Allen,

Civic Lessons, 24, 26. For Allen's career see

ibid.,

78-80.

Notes

to

Pages

.

37. Father

William

Revenue (New York,

A Public Scandal (New York, and Piiest-Baiting in 1916 (New York,

B. Farrell,

1916),

1916), Charity for 1916);

Amberg and

Allen, Civic Lessons, 24.

New

38.

York Times,

May

1916.

19,

A good

account of the entire controversy

is

Lewinson, John Purroy Mitcbel, 180-88. According to Emanie Sachs, "Friends begged Mitchel to see Cardinal Farley" before making the wiretap records available to the grand jury.

one

"An appointment was to be arranged. But instead of asking for it with proper respect,

of Mitchel's secretaries telephoned the cardinal's office thus: 'The cardinal

wants

to

Mayor Mitchel. What time shall we make it?'" The reply was that '"His Eminence does not want to see the mayor.' For cardinals do not 'want to see' mayors. Mayors ask to see them." "Being Human," 394. 39. New York Times, May 24, 1916. See also "Mayor Mitchel's Charges of Criminal Conspiracy against a Group of Roman Catholic Ecclesiasts," Current Opinion 61 (July 1916): 39^0; "Mayor Mitchel and the Children," Outlook 113 (July 5, 1916): 525-26; and Winthrop D. Lane, "Mayor Mitchel Takes the Stand: A Further Chapter in the Story see

New York," Survey 36 (Jime 3, 1916): 263-65. Quoted in Lewinson, /oijn Purroy M2tc/]e7, 187. "The Mayor and His Church," Nation 102 (June 1, 1916): 585, 586; Villard, "The New York Mayoralty Election," 448; Street, "New York's Fighting Mayor," 42, 44. See also "Mayor Mitchel and His Church," Literary Digest 52 (June 3, 1916): 1621-22. 42. Street, "New York's Fighting Mayor, " 42; Winthrop D. Lane, "Mothered by The City," Survey 39 (Jan. 19, 1918): 435-39. See also "Mayor Mitchel Sustained," Outlook 113 (June 14, 1916): 342-43; "Mayor Mitchel and His Church," Literary Digest 52 (June of the Children's Institutions of

40.

41

1621-22.

3, 1916),

43.

New

Thompson 44. 45.

York Times,

May

24,

1916, contains the details of the fracas at the

hearings.

Human," 394. Smith, Up to Now, 38-42; Hapgood and Moskowitz, Up from Sachs, "Being

the City Streets,

31-32. Hapgood and Moskowitz cite Smith himself as their source for this story. 46. Hapgood and Moskowitz, Up from the City Streets, 32-^3. Smith also noted the hnk between his acting and the parish's need to support the orphanage. Up to Now, 41. 47. See Fusion's Platform: A Promise, Backed by Achievements, That Will Be Fulfilled (New York, 1917). According to Lewinson, "pay as you go" was initially imposed upon the administration as a condition for managing a city bond issue by a

coahtion of bankers in 1914. Mitchel complained that "the worst features of the transaction from the city's point of view were the conditions imposed as to the

poUcy

new

improvements." However, pay as you go soon became an Lewinson, fohn Purroy Mitchel, 126-27.

of financing public

Fusion

article of

48.

faith.

Undated

New York Evening Post story reprinted in School and Society 7 (May

11, 1918): 560.

49. For a full account see Ravitch,

influential

The Great School Wars, 195-230. The most

contemporary account of the Gary Plan was Randolph Bourne, The Gary

Schools (Boston, 1916). William A. Wirt, the originator of the plan had been a student of

Dewey himself endorsed his ideas in 1915. See John and Evelyn Dewey, Schools of Tomorrow (New York, 1915). A convenient means of following the Gary Plan controversy in New York is in the pages of the progressive education journal School and Society, which reprinted official reports, newspaper editorials, and public John Dewey's, and

statements by the principals in addition to reporting developments. 50.

John Dewey, "Public Education on Trial,"

246. Also

New York

Times, June

7,

1915; School

New Republic

and Society

1

13 (Dec. 29, 1917):

(Apr. 10, 1915): 525-26.

Ravitch, The Great School Wars, 205. Prendergast's

51

"Why New York

Prendergast,

City Needs a

New

own account is William A.

School Plan," Review of Reviews 52

ggn hi

i

t

p

(Nov. 1915): 584-88. Enthusiastic early appraisals of the Fusion plan include Winthrop

D. Lane, "From Gary to

New

York City:

A

^Hf,-^fift

Demonstration

in Better

and Cheaper

"Gary School System Moves East," World's Work 30 (Aug. 1915): 391; and William G. Willcox, "The Principle of the Gary Plan and Its Application to New York," American City 14 (Jan. 1916): 6-10. Willcox became president of the New York Board of Education the month this article appeared. Schools," Survey 33 (Mar.

New

52.

1915): 628-30;

6,

York Times, Feb.

8,

1916; Churchill quoted in Lewinson, John Puiroy

Mitchel, 160. 53. Roosevelt quoted in

Amberg and

Allen, Civic Lessons, 15. For Fusion's failure to

campaign for the plan in the affected neighborhoods, see Ravitch, The Great School Wars, 214.

Amberg and

Roosevelt quoted in

54.

Allen, Civic Lessons, 15; B. R. Buckingham,

Report to the Superintendent of Schools of New York City 1916) as excerpted in School and Society 3 (Feb. 12, 1916): 245-47. (

The most outspoken proponent of the Gary Plan for New York and the loudest Buckingham Report was Howard W. Nudd. See his "The Buckingham Tests Gary Schools in New York City," School and Society 3 (Apr. 8, 1916): 529-32. See S. Taylor, "Report on the Gary Experiment in New York City," Education Review

55.

critic of the

of the

also

J.

51 (Jan. 1916): 8-28,and the editorial in the /ourna7o/£(iucation, Nov. 15, 1917.

A

Abraham

Bachman, The Gary Schools: A General Account (New York, 1918). recent account is Children of The Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana,

Flexner and Frank

P.

J906-i960(Bloomington,

Ind., 1990).

W. H. Maxwell, Annual Report of the New York City Superintendent of Schools

56.

(1916) as excerpted in School

appears on

Reviews!

p.

638^9. The quotation Annual Report," Education

(Apr. 29, 1916):

(June 1916): 102-6.

New York

57.

and Society 3

639. See also "Superintendent Maxwell's

Times, Oct.

5,

1917. For Hillquit's opposition see Zosa Szajkowski,

and Communism, (New York, 1972), 1: 143. This account of the riots comes from Amberg and Allen, Civic Lessons, 15-20. See also the account in Ravitch, The Great fews. Wars,

School Wars, 224-26.

Dewey, "Public Education on

58.

Trial," 246.

See Handlin, Al Smith and His America;

J. Joseph Huchmacher, Senator Robert Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism (New York, 1968); John D. Buenker, Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (New York, 1963); Caro, The Power Broker: Elisabeth J. Perry, BeUe Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith (New York, 1992). 60. "Hearst, Tammany, Mitchel, and America," Literary Digest 55 (Oct. 13, 1917):

59.

F.

11-13;

"The Nation's Eyes on

"Editorial:

New

York," Nation 105 (Oct. 11, 1917): 389; McBain,

John Purroy Mitchel, " 506. See also

L. B.

Stowe,

"New York Mayoralty Campaign:

Why It Is a National Issue," Outlook 117 (Oct. 31, 1917): 332-^3; and "National Aspects of the Mayoralty Contest in New York City," Current Opinion 63 (Nov. 1917): 292-94. 61 Most accounts of the rise of urban UberaUsm in New York follow Oscar Handlin 's

lead

and emphasize Smith's willingness

their colleagues.

on

New York.

Belle

Moskowitz, Robert Moses, and

See, for example, Irving

The Journey of the East European Jews

Made (New

from

His contribution was pohtical sawyness, especially an abOity to

nicate with the ethnic voters Fathers:

to learn

to

America and the

York, 1976), esp. 385-91. Less emphasized

is

how much

commu-

Howe, World of Our Life They Found and of their earUer

reform

behef s the experts had to unlearn. See, however, Caro, The Power Broker, 7 1 -88, for a detailed

how

account of Mitchel's 62.

Robert Moses came to appreciate the perils of hitching his wagon to

star.

Quoted in William Hard, "The

Mitchel's Opponents,"

New Republic

New

12 (Oct.

York Mayoralty Campaign, I: Sizing up 6, 1917): 272. This pledge to rid the city

was Hylan's most important campaign promise. It was also the earliest theme sounded in his campaign to win the Democrat nomination. As early as January 1917 he was denouncing "the inefficient 'efficiency engineers and so-called of "outside" experts

experts'

now ruiming New York

from other parts taxpayers." 63.

of the

Quoted

City" and complaining that

many "have been

drafted

country by the promise of large salaries to be mulcted from the

in Lewinson, fohn Puiroy Mitchel, 224.

Brooklyn Eagle,

Jan. 23, 1918, as

quoted in Caro, The Power Broker,

84;

"Only

Democrats Need Apply," Survey 39 (Jan. 19, 1918): 451. For details concerning firings of experts and reformers in the city's Department of Public Charities see "Winding Up the Fusion Administration," Survey 39 (Mar. 2, 1918): 604-5. 64. This is the burden of his Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat, which on its cover the blurb, "Why every democratically governed people can find encouragement rather than discouragement in New York City's vote against Fusion carried

Reform in 1917." A similar view of Mitchel is Frederic C. Howe's. He had been on the committee that called on Mitchel to run in 1913. "As mayor," Howe believed, "Mr. Mitchel drifted away from his early [reform] militancy, he lost interest in the things he had stood for, and alienated the great mass of the people who had previously supported him." The Confessions of a Reformer (1925; New York, 1967), 245. 65. Hylan took 48.9 percent of the vote in 1917 in a four-way race. Fusion could only win if it picked up all of the Republican and Socialist vote in 1921. 66. Handlin, Al Smith and His America, 82. 67. See Julian F. Jaife, Crusade against Radicalism: New York during the Red Scare, 1914-1924 (Port Washington, 1972); Lawrence H. Chamberlain, Loyalty and Legislative Action: A Survey of Activity by the New York State Legislature, 1 91 9-1 949 (Ithaca, N. Y., 1951); John F. McClymer, War and Welfare: Social Engineering in America, 1890-1925 (Westport, Conn., 1980), 75-78, 192-215. The (Lusk) Joint Committee Investigating Seditious Activities published a four-volume report. Revolutionary Radicalism: Its History, Purpose, to

Curb

It

and

Tactics with an Exposition of the Steps Being

Taken and Required

(Albany N.Y., 1920).

68. Mitchel quoted in Lewinson, John Puiroy Mitchel, 230. See also Fusion's

platform as reprinted in

Amberg and

69.

Karl de Schweinitz,

70.

See

Amberg and Alien,

NewYork Times, Communism, 1:143. 72. See Amberg and 71.

fault," 163.

This

is

Allen, Civic Lessons, 69.

"Tammany by

Default," Survey 39 (Nov. 17, 1917): 162.

Civic Lessons, 27-29.

Sept. 22, I9I7; Hillquit

The Root quotation appears on p.

27.

quoted in Szajkowski, fews, Wars, and

Allen, Civic Lessons, 28; DeSchweinitz,

"Tammany by De-

also Lewinson's conclusion, John Purroy Mitchel, 23 Iff.

New York Mayoralty Campaign I," 271, 272. 74. ViUard, "The New York Mayoralty Election," 449. Some Mitchel supporters did oppose his use of the patriotism issue on principle. The New York World, for example, 73.

Hard, "The

urged the mayor to "stick to the issue" of Tammany versus reform. Quoted in Lewinson,

John Puiroy Mitchel, 232. 75.

See, for example, the obituary notice

of

German

militarism in

by Charles A. Beard, then

affiliated

with

must be said, too, that he early saw the menace American life, warned his coimtrymen against it, sought to

the Bureau of Municipal Research. "It

prepare for the coming storm, and then gave his

"John Purroy Mitchel," Survey 40 76.

De

77.

For Mitchel's

Schweinitz,

to the cause in

all

which he believed."

(July 13, 1918): 437.

"Tammany by

month of training at

Plattsburg in the

summers of 1915 and 1916

see Lewinson, John Purroy Mitchel, 190-94.

De

78.

Schweinitz,

"Tammany by

Default," 163.

"The New York Mayoralty Election," 449. WilUam Hard attributed Mitchel's crackdown on "the Friends of Irish Freedom," despite Fusion's rhetorical commitment to "free speech," to his commitment to "government." He was willing to allow labor to denounce capital and capital to denounce labor, but "it is of the essence of government to ensure the continuance of government." Since the Irish nationalists attacked the U.S. government's alliance with Britain, and since Mitchel saw the alliance as vital to U.S. survival, he was "stirred to action." Hard, "Mayor Mitchel's Record," in Part n of his "The New York Mayoralty Campaign," 291. 80. Plunkitt claimed "Tammany's the most patriotic organization on earth" and Villard,

79.

cited as proof positive its annual Fourth of July celebration. Five thousand of the party faithful

crammed

the Hall each Fourth and listened to the reading of the Declaration of

Independence and then to hours

of patriotic oratory,

basement were

of

flow

when

a

hundred cases

the signal

is

even though each knew that in the

champagne and two hundred kegs

given." "Just think of five thousand

men

of beer "ready to

sittin' in

the hottest

place on earth for four long hours, with parched lips and gnawing stomachs, and knowin' all

the time that the delights of the oasis in the desert were only

two

flights downstairs!

Ah, that is the highest kind of patriotism, the patriotism of long suff erin' and endurance. Riordan, Plunkitt of 81. p. 57.

Tammany Hall,

69-70.

See Kessner, Fioiello H. La Guardia, 57-58.

A

fuller

accovmt

is

The Murphy quotation appears on

Arthur Mann, La Guaidia:

A

Fighter against His Times

(Philadephia, 1960), 94-99. 82. The classic accounts are Stanley Coban, "A Study in Nativism: The American Red Scare of 1919-20," Political Science Quarterly 79 (Mar. 1964): 55-75; Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 (New York, 1964); and William Preston Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903-1933

(New York, 83.

1963), 88-237.

Concurrent Resolution Authorizing the Investigation of Seditious Activities,

re-

printed in the Committee's report, Revolutionary Radicalism. Secondary accounts of the Lusk

Committee include Julian F. Jaffe, Crusade against Radicalism: and Lawrence H. Chamberlain, Loyalty and Legislative Action. See also McClymer, War and Welfare, 192-215. 84.

New York

raids, see

Times, June

13, 22, 24, 1919.

Revolutionary Radicalism,

1:

For the committee's

own accoimt of its

20-24.

85.

New York

86.

Chamberlain estimated that the committee sometimes functioned with a

Times.

May

7,

1919.

exceeding 1,000. See Loyalty and Legislative Action,

13.

For the participation of

staff

New

York City police, see the New York Times account of the raid on the Russian People's House, Aug. 16, 1919. For Smith's acquiescence in the extra term for the supreme court, see ibid., July 10, 1919. 87.

New York

88.

Reprinted in Progressive Democracy: Addresses and State Papers of Alfred

Smith (New York,

a

Times, June 21, 13, 1919. E.

1928), 271.

89.

Reprinted in Progressive Democracy, 273;

90.

Reprinted in Progressive Democracy, 277, 278-79. Progressive Democracy was

campaign document and

it is

significant that

^j-^ Notes

Default," 163, 164.

ibid.,

272, 273.

Smith chose to include his 1920 annual

to

Pages

391-394

message, his statement against the expulsion of the Sociahst assembly members, and his Notes

to

Pages

vetoes messages for

New York

91.

Chapter want

I

to

16:

all

four Lusk

Times, Dec.

Laws

in his collection of his "addresses

17, 1922.

For the actual repeal, see

and

ibid..

"FROM THE EAST SIDE TO THE SEASIDE"

thank David Reimers, the

late

state papers."

May 27,

1923.

(Casey)

Dennis Clark, Edward Cortese and Patrick

Mullins for their very helpful comments on drafts of this essay. 1.

Thenimiberwas 165,211 (53%)

of a total of 311,638; this figure does not include

foreign stock for Northern Ireland. See table P.l in U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S.

Censuses of Population and Housing: 1960 Census Tracts, Final Report PHCfl )-104, Part 1 (Washington, D.C., 1962). This chapter does not deal with Staten Island, because its Irish

population was negligible for the time period under discussion.

The

Irish

stock of

the borough remained constant at 2 percent of the city's Irish population from 1910 to 1960. 2.

This loss

Manhattan

is

typical for the city's total population during the period. For example,

"lost 170,821 of its residents

population represents a trend that

is

between 1930 and 1938, and

likely to continue as a result of the

cheap transportation to the suburbs." Federal Writers' Project, The York City (New York, 1982, originally pubhshed 1939), 53. 3.

(1986): 90-104, esp. the

diagram on

a similar pattern. See Ira

(Syracuse, 4.

WPA

Guide

to

of

New

For a discussion of the period 1950-80, see Morton D. Winsberg, "The Subur-

banization of the Irish in Boston, Chicago and

shows

this shifting of

development

New York,

p. 96. Italian

New

York," in Eiie-Ireland 21, no.

3,

migration within the metropolitan area

Rosenwaike, Population History of

New

York City

1972), 167.

For the most recent discussions of Italian and Jewish migration, see the essays

by Donna Gabaccia and Deborah Dash Moore in David Ward and Olivier Zunz, eds.. The Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City, 1900-1940 (New York, 1992). 5.

"Many

entrepreneurs recognized that the opportunities for fast profit in real

development of mass transit." Keimeth T. Jackson, Crabgrass The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985), 124. By one 1929

estate multiplied with the Frontier:

estimate, "an elevated line

.

.

.

will approximately double neighboring land prices while

subway will multiply them from four to twelve times." R. L. Duffus, New York Times, Sept. 22, 1929, quoted in Edwin H. Spengler, "Land Values in New York in Relation to Transit Facilities," Studies in History, Economics and Pubhc Law (Columbia Univera

sity),

333

(1930): 17.

Crimmins' father began the family firm in the 1850s when he obtained street and sewer contracts during the breakup of Manhattan's large middle East Side estates. The Crimmins firm was also involved in the construction of the first elevated railroads. See Edward J. McGuire, "A Memoir of John D. Crimmins, " Journal of the American Irish Historical Society 17 (1918): 20. For Crimmins' real estate transactions on the Upper West Side see The Diary of John D. Crimmins from 1878-191 7 (privately printed, 1925), 11, 18, 20, 25, 28, passim. A copy of this diary is in the collection of the American Irish Historical Society. See also The Real Estate Record Association (RERA), A History of 6.

Real Estate, Building and Architecture in New York City during the Last Quarter CentuTy (1898; New York, 1967), 90, 96, 134; and Rosa Pringle, "The Irish in Business, Banking and Industry," TD, 1938, Box 3579, Folder 5, 17, WPA Historical Records

New York," New York.

Survey: Federal Writers Project, "Irish in

Information Services, Municipal Archives,

Department

of Records

and

For example, a 25 by 102.2-foot lot he purchased between 72nd and 73rd Streets,

7.

west of Central Park, in 1879

just

for

$10,000 (with a $5,000 mortgage), he resold two

years later for $23,000 (same mortgage). See

Likewise, the prominent Irish American auctioneer Joseph

8.

R

Day, as a 25-year-

old real estate broker, got a successful start in business by buying and selling "to a great

RERA, Real Estate, Building and "The Irish in Business," 24. 9. RERA, Real Estate, Building and Architecture, 305; also McGuire, "A Memoir," 20. Another member of the West End Association was the real estate agent and broker John F. Doyle (1837-1 911). Doyle, like Crimmins, was the son of an Irish immigrant, and both men were members of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the American Irish extent on the West Side around Central Park." See

Architecture, 194; and Pringle,

Historical Society. Doyle served three terms as president of the Real Estate Board of

Brokers.

Of him

it

was

written, "he

was a survivor

of the old days,

when the real estate made a field for the

business was regarded as an honorable business which was not to be exploitation of speculators or the exhibition of chicanery.

standards always." See necrology by Edward

J.

McGuire

He

kept faithful to these

American

in the Journal of the

Irish Historical Society, 11 (1912): 197. 10.

for a hst of purchasers in the is

lots in the area, valued at $27,930 (5% of total sale), RERA, Real Estate, Building and Aichitectuie, 145-49

Fox had already purchased

in the Jumel auction of 1882. See

Morgenthau

sale

particularly interesting because four Irish

and 134-41

women

for the

Jumel

sale.

11.

and Margaret Quinlin

This

latter

are listed as purchasers of six lots,

totaling in land value $7,245: Ellen Barry ($930), Catharine Kelly ($2,250), (2 lots, $2,1 15),

EUen O'Hare

(2 lots, $1,950).

This chapter does not discuss those parts of

New

Jersey that fall in the

metropolitan area, but a similar relationship between mimicipal improvements and real

Myles Tiemey (1841-1921) was a contractor with extended interests in transportation and public utilities who operated in Jersey City, Bayonne, Hoboken, and Weehawken. Before the turn of the century, he built "hundreds of small dwelhngs and flats in both Jersey City and Hoboken," and later he served on the original New York Tenement House Commission. Journal of the American Irish Historical Society, 19-20 (1920-21): 215-20. 12. "After the enactment of the Greater New York Charter, Mr. Dunn organized the Bureau of Street Openings in the Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens." See Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, "Memorials of Deceased Members," Necrology (New York, 1923-25), estate

development occurred

there. For example,

7-14. 13.

the

Degnon, the son

of Irish

immigrants, was raised on a farm in Ohio.

Degnon Construction Company

there in 1895 but

moved the business

He formed

to

New York

City in 1897. By 1910, the company's volume of business was valued at "nearly $6,000,000 a year" and

it

employed 4,000

men and 20 engineers.

See National Encyclo-

pedia of American Biography (New York, 1917), 14:122. See also Degnon's obituary in the

New York

Times, Apr. 23, 1925, 21.

14. See ads in the Irish Advocate placed by Thomas by the Carrollton Realty Co., Jvine 4, 1910.

15.

Crimmins

16.

New York Times,

section, 4.

V.

Dowling,

May

7,

1910, and

Diary, 536, 549, 568, 571.

The firm's

Aug. 29, 1926; see full-page advertisement in the Real Estate

late president,

Bryan

L.

Kennelly,

was said to have "made all of the

important lotauctionsaleson Long Island. " Like the Crimmins Construction Company, the Kennelly Corporation began with the breakup of Manhattan's large estates. See Kennelly's obituary.

New York

to

Pages

398-399

90-91.

ture,

gy^ Notes

RERA, Real Estate, Building and Architec-

Times, Dec. 29, 1923, 13; and Necrology, 59.

1

7.

The geographic mobility experience of

Deborah Dash Moore claims that

Jews.

suburban development in the growth

the Irish

New

in

was

less ethnic

than that of the

York City "the general process

of the outer city received a special twist: the

of ethnicity supported ethnically separate construction industries catering to

cally distinct housing market." See At

of

bonds

an ethni-

Home in America: Second Generation New York

Jews (New York, 1981), 16, 39. 18. Such as John D. Crimmins, Michael

J. Degnon, John F. Doyle, John P. Dunn, Bryan L. Keimelly, Bernard J. Noonan, and John Stratton O'Leary. The Catholic Club was an important networking institution for many of these men. 19. For a chronological list of parishes by foundation dates see Reverend John K. Sharp, comp.. Priests and Parishes of the Diocese of Brooklyn, 1820-1944 (New York, 1 944), 1 77-2 1 7; and A Guide to Vital Statistics in the City of New York, Borough of the Bronx: Churches (New York, 1942), 6-9. For institution dates and histories of local Knights of Columbus councils, see James E. Foley and Nicholas Virgadamo, The Knights of Columbus in the State of New York, 1891-1968 (New York, 1968).

20. For a discussion of ethnic population pressures

on housing and settlement

patterns in New York City at the turn of the century see Rosenwaike, Population History,

82-85.

Immigration (Dillingham) Commission,

21. U.S. Congress, Senate, Report of the

61st Cong., 2d sess., 191 22.

1, S.

Doc. 338,

serial no. 5665, 4.

Between 1900 and 1930 the trend for second- and third-generation

25 and over, was outward movement from the

city.

ethnics, age

See Rosenwaike, Population History,

Manhattan was still an attraction for second-generation Irish and Italians, while Germans preferred Queens and Brooklyn, and the Bronx attracted Jews. By 1930 there was a sharp increase in the percentage of second-generation Irish choosing Queens, and the Bronx was also more popular. See Walter Laidlaw, ed. and comp.. Statistical Sources for Demographic Studies of Greater New York, 1920 (New York, 1922), table 6, xxiv-xxv, and Walter Laidlaw, ed. and comp.. Population of the City of New York, 1890-1930 (New York, 1932), table 59. It was only after World War II that the Irish pattern began to resemble that of the Jews, with young married couples moving into modem middle-class complexes Hke Parkchester in the Bronx and Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan. Dorothy Hayden and John Cudahy, interview by author. Mar. 2, 1992, tape recording. Middle Village, Queens, N.Y. 99. In 1920, however,

Also

Thomas Ward,

interview by author, Apr.

5,

1992, Chicago, lU.

Boston's second-generation Irish also migrated out of old neighborhoods between

1900 and 1920. See Robert A. Woods and Albert

J.

Kennedy, The Zone of Emergence:

Observations of the Lower Middle and Upper Working Class Communities of Boston, 1905-1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1962; repr., Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 133. 23.

A

For

more

on changes

details

History of Housing in

New

American Metropolis (New York, 24.

1,

25. Richard

(New 26.

and land use, see Richard Plunz,

1990), pp. 122-63.

"Raise in Living Standard Cause of Cost in Building," Bronx Real Estate and

Building News, Side

in housing design

York City: Dwelling Type and Social Change in the

no. 9 (1927): 2.

O'Connor, Hell's Kitchen: The Roaring Days of New York's Wild West

York, 1958), 187-88.

Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen are very likely exceptions in the

New York experi-

ence because of the employment draws of the docks and railroads on the West Side. These

made

American popula1920s did not seek out such employment

for a relatively stable, multigenerational, working-class Irish

tion. But the emigrants from Ireland in the late and therefore had no need to settle in the outdated buildings of

this area.

Ronald H. Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict: The Irish. Germans, Jews, and Italians 111., 1988), 152. It remained one of the

27.

of

New

Irish-bom residents with each decade. 262, in Incarnation parish

An

showed 1,130

number

of two sample tracts, 261 and immigrants in 1920, 1,592 in 1950, and

examination

Irish

28. The WPA observed that the Irish moved from east of Second Avenue, between Houston and 23rd Streets, to Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues on the West Side "shortly after the Slocum Disaster (15 June 1904)." A. Fitzpatrick, "The Irish in Various Industries, Professions, Etc.," TD, 1938, Box 3579, Folder 5, 2, Federal Writers Project, "Irish in

New York."

29 Indeed, northern Manhattan and parts of the Bronx between the two world wars were both primary and secondary areas of settlement for the New York Irish. Manhattan's continuing attraction for immigrant Irish

may

also indicate lower

income

levels than

the Jews, for example. Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, 152-55, found that in general

Washington Heights Catholics (that is, the Irish) lived in lower-middle-class sections and in housing that was less superior than that chosen by the Jews in the area. In the South Bronx, the Irish tended to be working class, too. 30. After 1960

an entirely different set of conditions prevailed in the city and a lot of the neighborhoods described in this chapter resulted from

movement out

"white fhght."

It is

conceivable that before 1960 race was sometimes a contributing

factor to Irish migration (for example, in response to riots in

Depression), but there 31.

is

Harlem during the

not enough conclusive evidence at this time.

For a comparative example, Incarnation parish was established at 171st Street

andSt. Nicholas Avenue in 1911 and within six years had a congregation of 3,000. "Father

Mahoney Dead: Washington Heights

Pastor Built

Up

Large Parish,"

New

York Times,

Apr. 16, 1917. 32.

Reverend Thomas

F.

X. Walsh,

"A Study

of the Increased

Wages and the

Increased Leisure of the Working Class, in a Catholic Parish, in Upper Manhattan"

Columbia University, 1920), 2, 3, 11. A similar phenomenon was the Irish of Hell's Kitchen, where rents for railroad flats on 10th Avenue rose

(Master's thesis, affecting

$20 a month after the war. See O'Connor, Hell's Kitchen, 193-94. 33. Walsh, "Increased Wages," 37. Even for working people, the standard of living seems to have been inclined towards the middle class, reflecting the growing impact of consumerism. For example, Walsh claimed that "in nearly every home in the Parish, some sort of musical instrument has been installed, victrolas and player pianos, especially, and records ranging from those of the highest price to the type sold in the 5&10 Cent Stores." Ibid., 22. 34. Marie Walsh, letter to the author, Feb. 29, 1992. to

and Maureen Mooney, interview by author. Mar. 18, 1992, tape recordLong Island, N.Y. St. Gabriel's was an old Irish parish on the middle East Side. The impact of the turmel is best illustrated by figures from a sample tract in the parish: in 1920, Tract 78 had 1,597 Irish immigrants,- in 1940, there were 220 Irish-bom heads of families; and in 1950, 169 Irish immigrants. It is ironic to note that while the tuimel pushed Irish parishioners up the East Side, the altar, pews, statues and pastor of St. Gabriel's migrated to Riverdale in the Bronx, where a new St. Gabriel's Church was buUt in 1939. The Murphys, an Irish American family whose wealth came from constmction, were instrumental in getting the parish established there. Ibid., and Geraldine Murphy Walsh and Frank Murphy, interview by author. Mar. 30, 1992, 35. Charlie

ing, Greenlavra,

Riverdale, Bronx, N.Y.

A

similar displacement for the Irish occurred

when

Notes

to

Pages

of

2,148 in 1960.

of Irish

gyc

York City, 1929-1941 2d ed. (Urbana,

stablest Irish areas in the city through 1960, actually increasing in the

the blocks

401-403

around Lincoln Square on the West Side were razed during the 1950s

for a

new

cultural

arts center.

36. Joshua B. Freeman, In Transit: The Transport Workers Union 1933-1966 (New York, 1989), 26-27.

37. Charlie

and Maureen Mooney, interview. Mar.

in

New York City,

18, 1992.

38. Dorothy Hayden and John Cudahy, interview. Mar. 2, 1992. In 1899 John D. Crimmins had transferred title to property in Woolsey Point to the Astoria Light, Heat and Power Company. Crimmins Diary, Jan. 21, 1899, 101. Guinness had a brewery in Long Island City and was importing Irish barley for its operations. Irish Echo, Sept. 23,

1950,

9,

advertisement.

Maureen Griffin Mooney 's father was a clerk for Reeves in the late 1920s, and Dorothy Hayden 's father began working for Butler's in 1907, eventually becoming a manager. John Traynor, from Virginia, County Cavan, joined his sister in Woodside when he emigrated in 1925. Eight months later he was hired as a manager for the A&lP and, although he was assigned to a nimiber of stores, he always worked in the neighborhoods surrounding Woodside in Queens. Catherine Traynor Gregory, telephone interview by author, July 27, 1992. "To keep his overhead low, [Butler] staffed his stores with just two, or at the most three, young clerks, and to keep his overhead even lower, he hired only yoimg Irishmen many of whom he would buttonhole as they came down the gangplank who were eager and hungry and would work hard for small wages." Stephen Birmingham, Real Lace: America's Irish Rich (New York, 1973), 78. 39.

—

—

came from two sources, the profits which he was particularly shrewd.

40. Ibid., 75-85. "Butler's remarkable success

his grocery stores,

The extent auctioned "Irish in

and

real estate operations in

of his real estate transactions

off

four

milhon

dollars

worth

may

.

of .

.

be estimated by the fact that in 1929 he

of property." Pringle, Federal Writers Project,

New York," 33.

41. In 1911

James Reeves renamed the business upon the death of his brother 1. Also, Harold R Hamill, "James Reeves and Eugene Box 3579, Folder 5: "Occupations and Locations," Federal Writers

Daniel. Irish Echo, Oct. 10, 1957,

R Kinkead," TD,

1938,

New York." Reeves operated several grocery stores along Columbus Avenue on Manhattan's Upper West Side, which was very Irish at the time, and bought 25 stores on Long Island in 1927. New York Times, Jan. 15, 1927, 22; Sept. 9, 1928, 29; and Aug. 8, 1929,3. 42. "The Feminine Touch in Realty Appraisals," New York Times, Oct. 29, 1926, Project, "Irish in

X, 22.

Dorothy Hayden continued to live in this apartment after her marriage until to Queens in the 1950s. Dorothy Hayden and John Cudahy, interview. Mar. 2, 1992. When James Hayden married Deha Brennan in 1916, they first moved to Brooklyn where James had an uncle. Dorothy Hayden said that her mother "hated it, they lived for a year in Brooklyn, because her sister and her cousins and all the fim was in Manhattan." 43.

she

moved

44.

Mary Gilrane Flynn and Vincent

Flynn, interview by author. Mar. 30, 1992,

Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y. for the woman interviewed on Apr. 22, York Immigrant Labor History Collection (Herbert Gutman), Tamiment Institute Library and Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, Drawer 4, Tapes 12-14. A typed summary of this oral history by Scott Ware (especially pp. 4-5) was

45.

"Catherine Kennedy"

1974, for the

is

a

pseudonym

New

used in the preparation of this chapter. 46. Agnes Campbell Sinclair, interview by author. Mar. 22, 1992, tape recording, Wantagh, N.Y. Many of the Irish men who worked for Socony (formerly Standard Oil of

New York) commuted from St.

Teresa's parish by trolley to Long Island City. The area encompassed by the parish was variously called the Ninth Ward, Prospect Heights, or Crown Heights. Jack Devaney, "The Religious Orders of St. Teresa's," in the 1984

newsletter of the

St.

Teresa of Avila

Alumni Association

(Brooklyn, N.Y.).

T Ridge,

The Flatbush Irish (New York, 1983|, 13. 48. Charlie and Maureen Mooney, interview, Mar. 18, 1992. 49. Maurice Forge, quoted in Freeman, In Transit, 31. 50. Eileen O'Rourke Simpson, letter to author, Apr. 9, 1992. In Boston c. 1936 boarders in Irish apartments paid $20 a week for their room, meals, and laundry. Ide O'CarroU, Models for Movers: Irish Women's Emigration to America (Dublin, 1990), 38. 51. Mary Higgins Clark, "My Wild Irish Mother," Woman's Day, May9, 1989, 112. 52. In exchange for this, they received a four-room flat. Agnes Campbell Sinclair, interview. Mar. 22, 1992. In Betty Smith's famous book about an Irish American family, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (New York, 1943, 1947), Katie Nolan works as the janitor in their Williamsburg building on the eve of the first world war while her husband Johnny works as a singing waiter. 53. EUeen O'Rourke Simpson, letter, Apr. 9, 1992. 54. Hugh O'Rourke Jr., telephone interview by author. Mar. 8, 1992. 55. Charlie and Maureen Mooney, interview. Mar. 18, 1992. 56. For example, in 1914 John Fitzgerald's hotel, "on the Boulevard, near Rockaway Park," was said to be "the Mecca for Yorkville folk visiting Rockaway." "Social Notes," John

47.

Irish

Advocate, Sept.

The

57.

old

1914,

5,

summer

4.

spot,

Keansburg on the Atlantic Heights in

New

Jersey,

was

only accessible by ferry from Manhattan. Workingmen had to wait for the cut hours off their

weekend and made weeknights

John Cudahy, interview. Mar.

2,

impractical.

tides, which Dorothy Hayden and

1992.

58.

Ibid.

59.

Ibid.

60.

Immigrants settling on the Rockaway peninsula from the 1880s led to the

development

The of

tenants were not exclusively

Irish.

an "Irishtown, " which was only demolished under urban renewal

efforts

"Hammels, Rockaway (1900-1976): A Case Study of Ethnic Change and Urban Renewal" (Master's thesis. Queens College, CUNY, 1976), 6. The southern area of Hammels eventually became known as "Slum Town." However, St. Rose of Lima in Hammels continued as an Irish parish; according to Census Tract 942-942.01, the number of Irish immigrants living there increased from 69 in 1920 to 245 in 1950 and 850 in 1960. In the early 1960s, the Rockaway Irish moved further west on the peninsula to Breezy Point, where they formed a cooperative community of bungalows on 415 acres. Ibid., 12. 61 Nora Joyce, an immigrant from the Aran Islands, recalled her ambition to own a house in Boston: "We were three years married and living on top of a store and I said, we're going to buy a house.'. [In] thirty -eight we bought a house; a three family house, down at Fields Comer. I knew how to save. I knew bargains and my uncles and aunts had houses. Paying rent, you don't get nothing out of it. ... I said I'd rather hve on a cup of tea and have my own place." O'Carroll, Models for Movers, 38-39. 62. William O'Dwyer, Beyond the Golden Door, ed. Paul O'Dwyer (New York, during the 1960s. Bruce

L.

Weiser,

'

.

.

.

.

.

.

1987), 119-120. 63.

Francis

P.

Vardy, interview by author, July

6,

1992,

Michael Lennon, a plumbing contractor from County attached row house in

St.

New

Sligo,

York

City. Likewise,

purchased a two-story,

Teresa's parish in Brooklyn in 1924 after living in a series of

apartments in the neighborhood.

He

heard about

it

from a business acquaintance

who

^jj Notes

to

Pages

678 Notes

lived next door. to

Pages

409-410

He was able to afford the house because he had lucrative work instaUing

colored bathrooms in the Eastern Parkway apartment houses during the

1 920s. Although economic good times helped improve the family's Margaret Lennon Kennedy, interview by author, Mar. 25, 1992, New

^^* occupation did not change,

standard of living.

York City. According to Plunz,

64.

A

History of Housing, 131, such incidents illustrate the

"geographical stratification of the city's population based on ethnic and economic characteristics."

He

gives as an example Jackson Heights' (Queens|

poHcy against

"CathoUcs, Jews or dogs." But in general the Irish rarely encountered discrimination in

housing in

New York during this period.

The Murphys were in a

Yorkville townhouse they had built until 1911, then briefly on Long Island and in Montclair in New Jersey. Geraldine Murphy Walsh and Frank Murphy, interview, Mar. 30, 1992. Riverdale had a nineteenth century "Irishtown," inhabited by servants and gardeners who worked on about 25 local estates. These Irish were largely responsible for the establishment of St. Margaret of Cortona parish in 1887, which was the church Frank Murphy and his family attended when they first in Babylon

moved to 65.

ment ment

Riverdale.

This

is

not to imply in any

way

that there were

no obstacles

to class advance-

in the traditional sense. Steven Erie, for example, argues that municipal

employ-

was dependent upon political connections restricted mobility for the Irish. See Rainbow's End: hisb-Amehcans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840-1985 (Berkeley, Calif., 1988), 89-90. However, this chapter only focuses on the interaction between geography and social mobility among the New York Irish. 66. Dorothy Hayden and John Cudahy, interview. Mar. 2, 1992. Because the amoimt of cash available for a downpayment was minimal, multiple mortgages were common. The first mortgage was typically with a relative, or with the seller (today this is called a purchase money mortgage). To make up any shortfall, a second mortgage was often with that

the attorney

who

Donohue held their

closed the sale, and a third might be with a mortgage broker. Mr. first call; John Cudahy believes with 6 percent interest on the principal due every six

the Cudahy's third mortgage, but he had

agreement was

for 10 years,

months.

Thomas Ward, interview, Apr. 5, 1992. Stephan Themstrom argues this for nineteenth-century Newburyport Irishbom home owners; he calls it "low-level social mobility." Quotation from Themstrom, "Class and Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City," in Robert Gutman and David 67. 68.

Neighborhood, City, and MetropoUs:

Popenoe,

eds..

Sociology

(New

An

Integrated Reader in Urban

York, 1970), 361, 366.

69. CharUe and Maureen Mooney, interview. Mar. 18, 1992. 70. According to Gunther Earth, the apartment offered New Yorkers a new concept "home"; see City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth Century America (New York, 1980), 48. There is a need to analyze some of the fiction that has been written about the New York Irish community for its imique perspective on the meaning of "house" and "home"; see, for example, the novels of Ehzabeth CuUinan, Alice McDermott, and Anna Quindlen. 71. "All Roads Lead to Massapequa Park, the Transportation City" (circa 1929), brochure, "Massapequa" vertical file, Long Island Studies Institute, Hofstra University. of

72.

Clark,

73.

Irish

"My Wild Irish Mother,"

Advocate, Sept.

15,

1914,

1

2,

10.

advertisement. Another real estate agent,

Flynn, placed a similar ad with the lure: "I will teach

while learning." Irish Advocate, Oct.

10, 1914, 5,

T

you the business and pay you well

advertisement.

"Thousands

74.

of

Young Irishmen Lose Their Vocations; Successful Real

How Real Money Can Be Made,"

Operator Defines

Irish

Advocate, Feb.

19,

Estate Notes

Despite his lucrative career, Gleeson followed the typical pattern of his con-

75.

temporaries:

when he married Miss Nellie Nolan (former president of the Carlow Ladies

Association! in

St.

Gabriel's

Church on East 37th

migrate to Hempstead (where he was selling Pleasant

lots)

Street in 1914, the couple did not

but took up residence in Inwood, "at

View apartment house. No. 601 West 190th

1916, and Jan. 31, 1914,

2.

Street."

Gleeson took an active interest in

hish Advocate, Feb. Irish social

19,

and sporting

events and presumably wanted to remain within the community.

Dorothy Hayden and John Cudahy, interview, Mar. 2, 1992. John Cudahy got when he took a course in real estate that was offered by the Knights of Columbus; the $90 fee was put up for him by Jack Gleason, proprietor of the Keeper Hill Bar in the Bronx. Twenty-nine years earher, real estate man Daniel Gleeson had lamented, "Too bad that influential Irishmen in the city didn't some time 76.

his start in the business in 1945

which would acquaint our young men with the advantages from certain positions or to keep them in touch with berths that would compensate them, besides having them 'hewers of wood and drawers of water.'" Irish or other start an association to be derived

Advocate, Feb.

19, 1916.

77. Dorothy Hayden and John Cudahy, interview. Mar. 2, 1992. Jimmy Lavin later bought apartment houses on the East Side of Manhattan and in Jackson Heights. Forty years earUer, Thomas Daly was the well-known builder of "Daly's Homes" in Elmhurst

and Corona. See "Irishman's Sad Mishap

at

Corona, Long Island," Irish Advocate,

Jan.

31, 1914,6.

"Of

78.

the working

all

women

in your city

[New

York] the Irish maid

is

considered the 'easiest mark' as a subject for installment plan book agents, real estate

men, and peddlers

of religious articles.

severely alone unless she start, tell

money Irish

.

.

.

Bluntly

going to build her

tell

home on

Mary

to leave real estate

the ground she buys. For a

her to open a savings account in a regular savings bank and to keep her

there.

It

Advocate,

will bring her

4%

and she can get her 'dough' when she needs

it."

R Day

(see

Jan. 10, 1914, 2.

For their

79.

is

first

day of business in 1927, the city auctioneer Joseph

"Massapequa Park 25th Anniversary Annual Report" (1956), brochure, "Massapequa" vertical file. Long Island Studies Institute, Hofstra Uiuversity. Brady was 31 years old, Cryan 26, and Colleran 36 when they purchased a mile long by half-mile-wide tract of land in Massapequa Park for a $167,000 first mortgage and $214,000 second mortgage. "Long Island Mayor Accused of Fraud," New note

8)

lent

them

York Times, Oct.

his largest tent.

6,

1936, 15.

80. "Massapequa Park 25th Armiversary Annual Report" and "AU Roads Lead to Massapequa Park, the Transportation City," brochure (Hofstra University, c. 1929) 81. Paul O'Dwyer, telephone interview by author, July 13, 1992; "50,000 Present at New Flying Field Opening," Nassau Daily Review, May 13, 1929; "Hangar at Massapequa Park," New York Times, Apr. 27, 1930, XII, 1. Fitzmaurice gained fame for

the

first east- west

transatlantic crossing, in "the first heavier-than-air ship to reach

North America from Europe." D.

J.

Hickey and J. E. Doherty, A Dictionary of Irish and "Massapequa Park 25th Anniversary

History, 1800-1980 (Dublin, 1980), 173-74,

Annual Report." Court Today in Larceny Count," Nassau Daily Review, Oct. 6, was not a novel concept. Marie Walsh recalled being told "about mansion in the woods [at Edenwald in the Bronx] used by Irish real estate developers around World War I to entertain prospective buyers. They arranged excursions 82.

"Officials Face

1936. Apparently this

a fine old

gyg

1916. to

Pages

410-412

.

from downtown by subway to White Plains Road, about two miles to the west, and brought people to the house by horse and carriage where elaborate parties were held. It was said to be an impressive sight, particularly at night, all lit up. (They may have been

—

agents rather than developers, working through the county organizations.)" Marie Walsh, 1992.

letter, Feb. 29,

83

Fitzpa trick dropped charges

when he received a quit-claim deed to the property.

The firm's lawyer stated that Fitzpatrick's original deed "was but one of more than 4,000 negotiated by the corporation." Nassau Daily Review, Oct. Oct.

1936, Apr.

6,

7,

1937, and Aug. 26, 1937. In the long

community, the urban folklore on this incident says that Paul O'Dwyer, telephone interview, July 13, 1992.

6,

1936;

New

York Times,

memory of the New York Irish were under water."

"all the lots

"Money Coming to Restore a Lived-In Art Form in the Bronx," New York Times

84.

Aug. 20, 1976. Also

Noonan began

New York Times, Oct.

1 1,

1930, XI,

1 1,

and Dec.

9,

1943, 27. Bernard

and Manhattan before building in the

his real estate career in Yonkers

Bronx during the 1920s boom. "Noonan was responsible for the erection of several noteworthy apartment houses, including Bernard Court, Rose Terrace, Noonan Towers, Maryknoll Terrace, Wynne Terrace, and Summit Lodge." See Donald G. Sullivan and Brian

copy

J.

is

85.

Danforth, Bronx Art Deco Architecture: in the collection of the

The pool

An

Exposition

(New

York, 1976),

a

5;

Bronx County Historical Society.

Round Tower.

also contained a rephca of an Irish

Sullivan and

Deco Architecture, 5 (illustration). CharUe and Maureen Mooney, interview. Mar. 18, 1992; Dorothy Hayden and John Cudahy, interview, Mar. 2, 1992. In Census Tract 211, which includes Noonan Plaza, there were 85 Irish immigrants in 1920, 603 in 1950, and 1,337 in 1960. It is ironic Danforth, Bronx Art 86.

that to non-Irish observers, "sights such as told the visitor that the area

was

.

.

.

the vast

largely inhabited

Noonan

by the sons

Plaza apartments

of Erin."

.

.

.

Lloyd Ultan, The

(New York, 1979), 13-14. Oddly enough, no one in the Irish commimity seems to recall Bernard Noonan, even though his funeral was from Sacred Heart Church in 1943.

Beautiful Bronx, 1920-1950

87.

Patricia

O'Connor, "John Stratton O'Leary and the O'Leary Flats," New York New York Irish History Roundtable), 4 (1989): 36-38. Also,

History (Journal of the

Irish

Bronx Real Estate and Building News

4,

no. 4 (1930): 24;

and O'Leary's obituary,

New

York Times, Sept. 25, 1942. 88.

Margaret Sullivan,

husband was working for the 89.

was

a

letter to the author, Apr.

Mary Gilrane Flynn and Vincent Flynn,

policeman

10,

1992. Margaret Sullivan's

Com Exchange Bank at the time they moved to the Bronx.

at the time. In 1954, Kitty

interview. Mar. 30, 1992. Vincent Flynn

Davey's father, from County Kerry, took a

Avenue and moved his family down from a Kerry area of Woodlawn in the North Bronx. They had heard about O'Leary's superintendent's position in an O'Leary building on Beach

from friends and relatives. Kitty Davey, letter to author, Apr. 24, 1 992. Census Tract 218 in the O'Leary's Flats neighborhood shows an increase in the number of Irish-bom, Flats

from 99 in 1920 to 555 in 1950, to 1,234 in 1960. 90. Celtic

when

Park

is

also typical of the changes in

New York City housing after

"the private production of housing shifted to larger and larger scales.

The

1900

small-

development of the nineteenth century lapsed as the economic miUeu The modem development corporation emerged, involving private investment. These corporations managed all of the activity related to the production of a new scale lot -by-lot

changed.

generation of middle-class housing, from real estate acquisition to design and constmction, to rental

and maintenance." Plunz,

A

History of Housing, 130.

The only other example resembling Celtic Park was the construction of Parkchester Bronx between 1939 and 1941 by the Metropohtan Life Insurance Company. It was built on land once occupied by the Catholic Protectory, a large and well-known orphanage, which was also adjacent to O'Leary's Flats. "Most of those who moved into in the East

this instant

nity

neighborhood [Parkchester] were

was

close-knit." Ultan,

91.

New York

The Beautiful Bronx,

Times. June 28, 1931, XI

and from the begiiming the commu-

Irish,

45.

& XH,

10. Celtic Park's

attendance figures

declined not because of location but because of the competition between the Irish

American Athletic Club jIAAC) (which promoted track and field events, bicycle and handball tournaments, and Irish football and hurling) and the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) of New York (which just promoted Gaelic games). While the war did have an impact on attendance, the big crisis did not occur until the mid- 1920s when the lAAC declined and the GAA gained ascendancy in Irish athletic circles, most probably because of the arrival of thousands of new Irish immigrants. By 1 928, GAA games were ensconced in Innisfail (now Gaehc) Park at 240th Street and Broadway in the Bronx, and Celtic Park's days as a playing field were nimibered. Also "The New York GAA, 1914-1976" in The New York Irish: American Bicentennial Commemorative Issue, The New York GAA Board (Dublin, 1976), 6-11. 92. Federal Housing Administration, Four Decades of Housing with a Limited Dividend Corporation (Washington, D.C., 1939), 58. "The Regional Plan Association has found that Greater New York's center of population is in Queens and only a block or two from Celtic Park. If the Company completes the development of this property, it will have provided some 900 homes almost exactly at the city's present center of population." Annual Report of the City and Suburban Homes Company (New York, 1932), 14. 93. New York Times, Oct. 18, 1931, XI, 2, and Annual Report of the City and Suburban Homes Company, 12. While there is no way to quantify the extent of Irish occupation of Celtic Park Apartments until the 1940 census schedules are opened, the general impression is that Celtic Park had a lot of Irish tenants. Dorothy Hayden and John Cudahy, interview. Mar. 2, 1992. 94.

New York

95.

"The Worlds

Times, Aug. 30, 1931, XI, of

2.

Woodside," Newsday, Nov.

1931, XI, 2; "Woodside Rages

Over Influx

9,

1989;

of Illegal Aliens,"

New York Times, Oct. New York Times, June

18, 14,

Woodside (New York, 1978); a copy of this can be found in the vertical files of the Municipal Research and Reference Library, New York City, and contains a 1939 map of ethnic distribution in the area, showing the Irish dominance. An examination of Census Tract 235 shows 71 natives of Ireland in 1920, 606 in 1950, and 1,399 by 1960. Woodside, even more than Washington Heigh ts/Inwood, retained an Irish presence 1979. See also

throughout this century. 96. In contrast, Jewish preference for

housing of choice

Moore, At

Home in America,

97.

James

98.

It is

urban "proximity" was manifested in their

—garden style and perimeter block apartment houses in the outer

boroughs (especially the Bronx), T. Farrell,

many

of

them

built as labor cooperative ventures. See

36.

Bernard Clare (New York, 1946), 147, 150.

possible, although unexplored in this chapter, that other ethnic groups in

the city were affected by this

phenomenon

too.

99. Howard Chudacoff speculated whether "horizontal movement reflect[ed] social and economic aspirations of importance equal to or greater than occupational patterns."

See

"A New Look at

Visibility in a

Ethnic Neighborhoods: Residential Dispersion and the Concept of

Medium-Sized City," Journal of American History

60, no.

1

(1973): 92.

gg Notes

to

j^

Pages

413-415

Interestingly,

Chicago

Andrew Greeley

Irish parishes in the

some

describes the lower-middle-class contentment of

1930s and 1940s, where they lived in "moderate suburban

comfort."

Andrew M.

Ameiican

Iiish (Chicago, 1972|, 181-86.

Greeley, That

Most Distressful Nation: The Taming of the

In the nineteenth-century city, "mobile people thriving

on the opportunities

of the

modem

city as well as suffering the social insecurities that made up-and-dovwi movement possible, sought to buttress their newly gained position through the kind of housing

they rented." Barth, City People, 47.

On the other hand,

Ellen Skerrett posits a

economic advancement districts and bungalow

more

traditional view: that

by 1920

belts"); that in this

Irish

house

correlates with suburban progression ("into apartment

movement, middle-class Chicago

Irish

"preferred to live as outsiders in largely Protestant areas rather than to remain in heavily

Catholic ethnic neighborhoods"; and, yet, they identified themselves with strong Catholic

parishes in these

new areas.

See Ellen Skerrett, "The Development of Identity Among

Americans in Chicago, 1880-1920," in Timothy J. Meagher, ed.. From Paddy to Studs: Ihsh-American Communities in the Turn of the Centuiy Era, 1880-1920 (West-

Irish

port,

Conn., 1986), 119, 134.

Part

V

Overview:

AN END AND A BEGINNING

(Reimers)

Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, fews, Italians and Irish of New York City (Cambridge, 1963), 217. 2. Deborah Dash Moore, At Home: Second Generation New York fews (New York, 1981), 95-96. For changes in Irish participation see Chris McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City (New York, 1993); Theodore Lowi, At the Pleasure of the Mayor: Patronage and Power in New York City, 1898-1958 (New York, 1964). 1.

3.

New York

4.

Data drawn from Annual Reports and

Times, Mar. 18, June 13, 1947. Statistical

Yearbooks of the Immigration

and NaturaUzation Service. 5.

in

P.

J.

P.

J.

Drudy, "Irish Population Change and Emigration since Independence,"

Drudy,

ed..

The

Irish in

America: Emigration, Assimilation and Impact (New

York, 1985), 73-78. 6.

into

Dept. of City Planning, The Newest

New York 7.

who was

the

determined by 8.

City During the 1980s

Morrison visas were named

House

(New

New Yorkers: An Analysis of Immigration York, 1992), 52.

after Representative

Bruce Morrison of Connecticut

leader in shaping the 1990 immigration act.

The

visas

were

lottery.

U.S. Bureau of the Census,

New

York, 1980, vol.

I,

chap. C, pt. 34, Selected

Ancestry Groups, table 60. 9.

10.

Summary Tape

File

1,

New York City,

1990 census data.

Morton D. Winsberg, "The Suburbanization

of the Irish in Boston,

Chicago and

New York," Eire-Ireland 21 (Fall 1986): 94, 98, lOI. am indebted to Marion Casey for bringing my attention to this article. Census data are from Summary Tape File 1, New York City, New York Metropolitan Area, 1990 Census. English, The Westies: Inside the Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob (New York, 11. See T. 1990); New York Times, Sept. 28, 1992; Irish Voice, Oct. 6, 1992. 12. New York Times, Feb. 12, 1991. I

J.

13.

SMS A,

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Census of Population table P-8

and Summary Tape

File

1,

New

and Housing,

York City, 1990 census

1980,

data.

NY-NJ

1984), 102.

Joshua Freeman, In Transit: The Transport Workers Union in

15.

1933-1966 (New York, 1989), 26-29. See Now. 12, 1991.

ibid, for a

New York

Notes

discussion of transport workers and

Winsberg, " Suburbanization of the Irish, " 9 7; Andrew Greeley, The Irish AmeriThe Rise to Money and Power (New York, 1981 137^8; U.S. Bureau of the Census, General Social and Economic Characteristics, New York, vol. 1, chap. C, pt. 34, 1980, tables 108-14. See also Dennis Clark, "The Irish in the American Economy," Drudy, The Irish in America, 242^5. 1 6.

cans:

),

Community Action

See United Irish Counties

17.

American-Irish

Community in

New York

18.

the City of New York

Bureau, The Needs of the

(New

York, 1975).

Times, Nov. 28, 1993.

Warren Moscow, What Have You Done for Me Latelyf The Ins and Outs of New York City Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1967), 119. An especially good account of patronage is Lowi, At the Pleasure of the Mayor. 19.

Thomas Ressner,

20.

Fiorello H.

La Guardia and the Making of Modern

New York

York, 1989), esp. 287-89.

McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York, 66-67. O'Dv^fyer's story is told in William O'Dwyer, Beyond the Golden Door (New York, 1987), and McNickle, To Be Mayor of 21.

New York, 54-57, 82-84. A critical view of O'Dwyer's connection to criminals is George Walsh, Pubhc Enemies: The Mayor, the Mob, and the Crime That

McNickle, To Be Mayor of

22.

New York,

91, 102-8.

The

Was (New York,

discussion of

1

980).

Wagner

is

based heavily on McNickle's excellent book.

New York

23. 24. 25.

Bosses:

1,

1986.

McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York, 1 13-23. Ibid., 149-52, 169. On De Sapio see Warren Moscow, The Last of the Big-Time Life and Times of Carmine De Sapio and the Rise and Pall of Tammany

The

(New York,

Hfl77

Times, Aug.

26.

1971).

Lindsay polled only 40 percent of the Irish vote. About 22 percent went to

WiUiam

Buckley.

Buckley, The

Unmaking

of a

27.

New York Times,

28.

Dennis Clark, Hibernia America: The

Mar.

Mar.

17, 1988;

Mayor (New

York, 1966), 333.

15, 1990.

Irish

and Regional Cultures

(Westport,

Conn., 1986), 66.

McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York, 111. 30. Moscow, What Have You Done 121, 31. Cooney, The American Pope, 217-20. 29. Ibid.;

Moscow, What Have You Done 120-22. McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York, 208. The Unmaking of a Mayor 333. 35. Charles Green and Basil Wilson, The Struggle for Black Empowerment in New York City: Beyond the Pohtics of Pigmentation (New York, 1989), 22. 36. David Abbott et al.. Politics, Pohce and Race: The New York City Referendum on Civihan Review (New York, 1969), 22-23. 37. See Mayor's Commission on Black New Yorkers, Report (New York, 1988). 32.

.

.

.

,

33.

34. Buckley,

38.

New York

Times, Oct.

18, 1992.

39. Ibid., Mar. 20, 1983. 40. Patrick Fenton, "In Brooklyn, Irish

Quit the Democrats, "

16, 1984.

41.

New York Times,

Sept. 13,

Nov.

9,

1989; Nov. 4, 1993.

to

Pages

City,

Irish Voice,

(New

goo

John Cooney, The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal

14.

SpeUman (New York,

New York Times, Oct.

423-428

.

42. Irish Echo, Dec. 11-17, 1991. 43.

Steven

Machine 44.

Pope.

Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban 1940-1985 (Berkeley, Calif., 1988), 142-44, 161-65, 171-76.

Erie,

Politics,

For a critical but comprehensive view of Spellman, see Cooney, The American

The

discussion below

is

based on Cooney's account.

McCarthy see Charles F. ConThought and Action," Irish Echo, May 1 1, 1957. 46. Glazer and Moynihan, Beyond the Mehing Pot, 2d ed., Ivii. 47. For O'Connor and Koch see John Cardinal O'Connor and Mayor Edward 1. Koch, His Eminence and Hizzoner: A Candid Exchange (New York, 1989). 45. Clark, Hibernia America, 66. For a defense of

nolly,

"Food

48.

for

New York

Times, Sept. 20, Sept. 22, 1991.

49. Ibid., Jan. 6, Jan. 9, 1983.

News, New York's New World, special reprint (1990), 40. Monsignor George A. Kelly, The Battle for the American Church (Garden

50. Daily

51

City,

N.Y. 1979), 454-55. 52.

Data based on the Official Catholic Directory.

53.

New York

54. Ibid.,

Times, June

Mar.

55. Ibid., June

10, Sept. 26, 1992.

8,

1985.

7,

1986. Greeley's results can be found in several books, including

The American Catholic: A Social Portrait (New York, 1977); American Catholics since the Council: An Unauthorized Report (Chicago, 1985). 56. Greeley, American Catholics since the Council, 57-58. 57. United Irish Counties Community Action Bureau, The Needs .... 36, 54. 58. Irish Voice, Mar. 16, 1991. 59. Information furnished by

60.

New York

Times, Oct.

Ruth Doyle of the archdiocese's Pastoral Research Office. 1986.

3,

61. Ibid., Mar. 6, 1987. 62.

New York

Times, Mar.

13, 17,

63. Irish Echo, Sept. 25-Oct.

1,

1991.

1991, and Oct. 30-Nov.

5,

1991; Irish Voice, Oct.

29, 1991.

Some

64. Irish Echo, Jan. 22-29, 1992.

stration staged

New York

by another gay

Times, Feb.

rights group.

Irish also associated

Act Up, in

ILGO with

St. Patrick's

a

demon-

Cathedral in 1989.

19, 1992.

65. See, for example, the letter to the Irish Echo in the Jan. 22-29, 1992 issue. Paul O'Dwyer's criticism of the parade organizers can be found in New York Times, Nov. 13, 1992.

68.

New York New York New York

69.

See, for

66. 67.

Times, Jan.

17, 18, 1992;

Times, Mar.

18, 1972.

Mar.

and Feb.

4,

1992.

18, 1994.

example, the coverage of the twentieth testimonial dinner in Irish

People, Jan. 25, 1992.

American

10, 25, 1992; Irish Voice, Jan. 7, 21,

Times, Mar.

The dinner drew a crowd of 900 and featured many prominent Irish

New Yorkers and non-Irish sympathizers. New York Times, Aug. 30, 1972; Dec. 16,

70.

See

71.

Ibid.,

72.

Irish Echo,

73.

New York Times,

74.

Clark, Hibernia America, 67.

75.

New York

76.

Ibid.,

77.

Irish Echo, Oct. 23-29, 1991.

78.

New York

Mar., 18, 1983; Mar.

Dec.

Mar.

8,

1975; Sept. 24, 1979;

May 2,

1982.

1984.

12, 19, 1983.

Mar.

Times, Aug. 13, 1991,

4,

14, 1984.

and

Times, Mar.

1983,

Jan. 16, Feb. 20, 1992; Irish Echo. Oct. 23-29, 1991.

18, 1990; Irish Voice, Feb. 18, 1992.

79.

Irish Echo, Jan. 8-14, 1992.

80.

New York Times, 7,

1972.

Aug.

1,

1986.

ggg

18, 1983.

Notes

82.

Ibid.,

83.

In addition to Corcoran's study, see Linda

they're looking

for':

Dowling Almeida's survey

and her published analysis, '"And they

Voice, Mar. 16, 1991,

ed..

Mar.

81. Ibid., Dec.

still

in Irish

haven't found

what

A survey of the New Irish in New York City" in Patrick O'Sullivan,

Patterns of Migration, vol.

1

The

of

Irish

World Wide: History, Heritage, Identity

(England: Leicester University Press, 1992).

May 28,

84.

Irish Echo,

85.

While attendance

1988.

games at Gaelic Park in the Bronx grew during the which needed renovation, became the center of a dispute

at football

1980s, the future of the park,

between the newcomers and older 1990, and Feb. 11, 1991; Irish Echo. 86.

act

Irish Echo,

covered in David M. Reimers,

is

America, 2d

ed.

New

Irish

Yorkers. See

(New

New

York Times, Oct.

12,

Jan. 15-21, 1992.

May 21,1988; New York Times, Oct.

2,

1

99 1 The new immigration .

the Golden Door: The Third World

Still

York, 1992), chap.

1

Comes

to

8.

87.

New York

88.

For coverage of the nearly frantic efforts to win Morrison visas in the faU of 1991,

see the Irish

Times. Sept.

Echo and the

11, 1992.

Irish Voice.

The

Voice, in its Oct. 22, 1991 issue, called

it

"Visa

Echo headlined "Morrison Mania" in its Oct. 16-22, 1991 issue. Some 1 7 nullion apphcations for 40,000 slots poured in on the Merrifield, Va., post office.

Frenzy!," while the

Chapter

17:

THE NEIGHBORHOOD CHANGED

This chapter could not have been vwitten vnthout the help of

(Snyder)

many

past and present

and Inwood who shared their memories with me. Whether

residents of Washington Heights

my gratitude. 1 first examined the recent northem Manhattan while researching the press and crime in contemporary New Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University, where Bruce Cronin was my research assistant. I thank both the center and Bruce for their generous assistance. Finally, special thanks to Thomas Bender, James W. Carey, Peter Eisenstadt, Clara Hemphill, WiUiam Murphy, and Jim Sleeper for reading drafts of this essay. or not they are cited in this chapter, they have history of

York

at the

1 For the invasion formula, see the reference to Paul Cressey cited in Ronald H. "The Neighborhood Invasion Pattern," in Ronald H. Bayor, ed.. Neighborhoods Urban America (Port Washington, N.Y., 1982), 86. 2. Sally Engle Merry, Urban Danger: Life in a Neighborhood of Strangers (Philadelphia, 1981), 14, 217-21, 237^3. The quotation is from pp. 242-43. 3. Ira Katznelson, City Trenches: Urban Politics and the Patterning of Class in the United States (Philadelphia, 1981), 14, 217-21, 237^3. 4. Ibid., 75-77; Lee A. Lendt, "A Social History of Washington Heights, New York City," Columbia- Washington Heights Community Mental Health Project (New York,

Bayor, in

1960),

1

1-13, 58-59; interview

Sister Veronica, 5.

with Leo Shanley,

New York City,

New York City,

1990; interview with

1992.

Katznelson, City Trenches, 79; The

WPA

Guide

to

New York

City

(New

York,

1939; reprinted 1982), 293-306. 6.

On the neighborhood's class composition see

on population see Ronald H. Bayor, Neighbors in Italians of

New York

Katznelson, City Trenches, 79-86;

Conflict:

The Irish, Germans, Jews and

City 1919-1941 (Baltimore, 1978), 152.

to

Pages

Dumont, New Jersey, 1990; KathBuddy McGee, New York City, 1990. Interview with McGee, 1990. Gaelic Park went through several name changes Interviews with Charles and Norene Walck,

7.

leen O'Halloran, 8.

before acquiring

New York City, its

present

name

Interviews with

10.

in the 1950s.

New York City,

interview with Nora Goodwin, 9.

1990; and

McGee,

On

the dances at Innisfail Hall, see

1991.

1990; Mrs. Walck, 1990.

Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, 87-104, 152-55. Also interviews with Michael

Cohn, 1990, and Paul O'Dwyer, 1992. 11. Bayor, Neighbors in Confhct. 87-108, 155-56. 12. Interviews with Walck, 1990, and O'Dwyer, 1992. 13.

Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, 156-57; also Lendt,

"A

Social History of

Wash-

ington Heights," 75-77. 14.

Robert Lee, "Upper Manhattan:

A Community Study of Washington Heights" New York, 1954), 17.

(paper prepared for Protestant Council of the City of 15. Author's conversations with residents of 16.

This estimate

is

Washington Heights and Inwood.

based on the calculation that the ratio of native-bom to foreign-

bom Irish was, at the least, in the neighborhood. U.S. 3;

Census Tract

consistent with the ratio of native to foreign-bom for all whites Bureau of Census, United States Census of Population, 1950. vol.

Statistics, chap.

37 (Washington, D.C.,

17.

Interview with Mr. Walck, 1990.

18.

Interviews with Mr. and Mrs. Walck, 1990.

19.

Interviews with

20. Interview 21.

McGee,

1952), 98-100.

1990, and O'Halloran, 1990.

with McGee, 1990.

Interview with O'Halloran, 1990; also see

Rudy

Garcia, "Luching," Heights-

/n wood. Mar. 11, 1981,3. 22.

Calculations for her sections of Inwood derived from tracts 253 and 261 from

the 1950 U.S. census and tracts 307 and 303 from the 1960 U.S. census.

with O'Halloran, 1990. "Washington Heights Project," report attached to Aug. 16, 1957 letter from Maurice H. Greenhill, M.D. to Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Wagner Subject Files, Box 160, 23. Interview 24.

juvenile delinquency folder 25.

Lee,

— 1957,

"Upper Manhattan,"

3. 9.

in Critical Areas," 1957, Wagner Papers, Box 163, 1957 on Delinquency Prevention," submitted by Deputy Mayor Harry Epstein, Wagner Papers, Box 159, 1955 juvenile delinquency folder; "976,936 Added to Youth Board Appropriation; Agency to Open 4 New Areas, Extend 4 Old Ones, " in Youth Board News, Jvine 1955, 1, Ln Wagner Papers, Box 48, January-June 1955 folder; "Wash26.

"Juvenile

Dehnquency

folder; "Perspectives

ington Heights Project" report. 27.

InterviewwithMrs. Walck, 1990. "Upper Manhattan," 7, 17. The quotation is from p. 17. The park as a flashpoint between Irish and Jewish youths

28. Lee, 29.

is

based on an

interview with Cohn, 1990, and "Washington Heights Project" report. On the events of the night, see "Youth, 15, Killed in Park Stabbing," New York Times. July 31, 1957, 46;

and "Polio-crippled Boy 1957,

2.

Slain, Pal Knifed in Park;

25 Held" in

New York

Also see Irwin D. Davidson and Richard Gehman, The Jury

Post, July 31,

Is Still

Out (New

York, 1959), 2-3. 30. See "Youth, 15, Killed

pled Boy ..." in

. .

New York Times, July 31,

1957, 46; and "Polio-crip-

July 31, 1957, 2. Press accounts

made much

Farmer had once suffered from polio, creating the image flee his attackers. However, the judge in the subsequent murder

that to

," .

New York Post,

of a disabled trial.

of the fact

victim unable Judge Irwin D.

Davidson, determined that Farmer suffered no residual it

was not 31.

a factor in the incident. See

ill

effects

from his poHo and that

Davidson and Gehman, The /ury/s

See "Cops Guard Gang- War District

New York Post, Aug.

," .

. .

Sti7i

Out, 2-3.

1957,

3.

The

McShane and Farmer were members of the Jesters. However, the while McShane was a member, Farmer was not. See "Boy Is Badly

Post reported that both

Times reported that Hurt in 3D Gang Battle," 32.

1

New York

thank Professor Joshua

Dean

University, and Assistant

B.

Times, Aug.

Freeman

turf,

post-World War

II

Farmer

case. For

and

New

Department

of History,

Dean

identity.

Columbia

and Sciences,

me their research and the relationships

Schneider's

work on crime and gangs

in

York wUl illuminate further the kinds of issues raised by the

an ethnographic analysis

No Makin'

MacLeod, Ain't

1957, 38.

Eric Schneider of the College of Arts

University of Pennsylvania, for discussing with

between gangs,

2,

of the

It:

of interracial relations in gangs, see Jay

Levelled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood

(Boulder, Colo., 1987), 35-39, 44. 33. See "4 Youths Convicted in Boy's Murder; 3 Others Cleared, "

Apr. 16, 1958,

New York 34.

1;

and "4Slayersof Boy Get

Times,

May 29,

1958,

Stiff

New York Times,

Terms; Judge Indicts Public for Apathy,"

1.

See "Washington Heights Inquiry," a press release dated Aug.

15, 1957,

Wagner

Subject Files, Box 165, juvenile delinquency-Mental Health Board folder. 35.

Interview with Mrs. Walck, 1990.

36.

Lendt,

37.

United States Census of Population and Housing: 1950: Census Tracts: Pinal

Report

"A

Social History of

PHC (1)-104,

Part

1

Washington Heights,"

87, 93.

(Washington, D.C., 1962), 130-32.

McGee,

38.

Interviews with O'Halloran, 1990;

39.

Jim Carroll, The Basketball Diaries (New York, 1978, 1987). For the quotation

see p. 17, and also 40.

1

1990.

1-12, 23-24, 152.

New York, New PHC (1)-145, New York, New York

See 1970 Census of Population and Housing Census Tracts:

York Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area: Part

1:

(Washington, D.C., 1972), P314-P317. 41. Crime rates calculated from Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, Annual Reports (Washington, D.C., 1965-88), supplemented by data from the New York City Police Department on the 34th Precinct for the years 1970-90 and the City as a whole for 1988 and 1989. Special thanks to Bruce Cronin for his help in this exercise. In 1978, the southern border of the 34th Precinct, which covers Washington Heights and Inwood, was expanded to 155th Street. This added to the precinct an area that contained streets whose crime rates were higher than those of the northern and western sections of the Heights

42. for

and Inwood.

For an extended discussion of these issues and their theoretical ramifications

urban

politics, see

Katznelson, City Trenches, 89-189.

43. On the Dominican immigration to New York City, see David B. Bray, "The Dominican Exodus: Origins, Problems, Solutions," passim, in Barry B. Levine, ed.. The Caribbean Exodus (New York, 1987); and Patricia R. Pessar, "The Dominicans: Women in the Household and the Garment Industry," passim, in Nancy Foner, ed.. New

Immigrants in New York (New York, 1987). Interviews with Rafael Lantigua, M.D., Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and Moises Perez, executive director, Alianza

Dominicana

in

New

upon me the general failure to appreciate New York City labor force and their suffering

York, 1990, impressed

both the Dominicans' contribution to the

due to crime. The unacknowledged similarities between the Dominicans and the is based on an interview with Monsignor Thomas Leonard, New York City, 1990. 44. Interview

with Barry Dunleavey,

New York City,

1990.

ggy x,

,

Notes 1,

Irish

,

to

n

rates

.

45.

On neighborhood poUtics and its larger implications in Washington Heights and

Inwood, see Katznelson, City Trenches,

1

26-30, 132-34,

1

79-8 1 For a general discussion .

between older white ethnic groups, political machines, the demands of and the programs of the Great Society, see Frances Fox Piven, "The Great Society as Political Strategy" and "The Urban Crisis, " in Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, The Pohtics of Turmoil: Essays on Poverty, Race and the Urban Crisis (New York, 1974), esp. 274-84 and 320-24. 46. On the concentration of black and Latino children in public schools compared of relations

people of color,

with Irish and Jewish children who were more likely to be in private or parochial schools, see Katznelson, City Trenches, 129.

Tom

New York City,

Mullany,

47. Interview

with

48. Interview

with McGee, 1990. Also "Fear

Inwood Bar Scene," Heights-Inwood, 49.

"Fear of Violence

50. Interview

51

.

.

," .

1990.

of Violence,

Locked Doors Mark

July 25, 1974, 2.

Heights-Inwood, July 25, 1974,

2.

with O'Halloran, 1990.

"Police Response to Task Force Report Washington Heights-Inwood," Sept. 27,

52. Interview

New York City Municipal Archives. with Cathy Firmerty, New York City,

53. Interview

with McGee, 1990.

54. Interview

with Mullany, 1990.

55. Interview

with Cohn, 1990.

1978, vertical

file.

New York City,

1990.

56.

Interview with EUeen Quinn,

57.

Steven M. Lowenstein, Frankfurt on the Hudson: The German- fewish

nity of Washington Heights, 1933-1983,

Its

1990.

Structure

and Culture

Commu-

(Detroit, 1989),

212-16. 58. See Katznelson, City Trenches, 103, 244-45. Katznelson, using a of

block survey

northern Manhattan, calculates that in 1972 approximately 93.2 percent of the Irish

in the neighborhood

were

in the

manual and nonmanual working

class; for Jews, the

corresponding figure was 62 percent. In the categories "petit bourgeois," "professional,"

and "manager," the Jews numbered

numbered

1.6

percent

among

19.7, 9.9,

and 4.2 percent, respectively. The

the petit bourgeois, and none

among

Irish

professionals and

managers.

1980 Census of Population and Housing Census Tracts: New York, New York, Statistical Aiea: PHC80-2-260: Section 1 (Washing-

59.

New Jersey Standard Metropohtan ton, D.C., 1983), table P-8, 60.

P620-P621.

Figures calculated by comparing the average Irish percentage of the population

in 1960 census tracts 253, 261, 291,293, 295, of the population in

and 303 with the average

of Irish percentage

1980 census tracts 291, 293, 295, and 303. Tracts 253 and 261 were

omitted from the 1980 calculation because by then they had small Irish populations. See

1980 census, P620-P621. 61.

See 1980 U.S. census table P-8, "Ancestry of Persons: 1980," P620-P621. Also

New York City, 1992. On the Dominican presence in the drug trade, see Terry Williams, The Cocaine The Inside Story of a Teenage Drug Ring (New York, 1989), 51-53, also 21-25, 88. middle-class crack users see "Crack, Bane of Inner City, Is Now Gripping Suburbs,"

interview with Karen Ramos, 62.

Kids:

On New York

Times, Oct.

1,

1989,

1.

63.

See "Alcohohsm: H-I Study," Heights-Inwood News,

64.

According to

Precinct,

New

with a population

York City PoUce Department

May 6,

entire city, with a population of 7,322,564 suffered

1981, 3.

Statistics, in 1990, the

34th

same period, the 2,262 murders. The citywide total

of 198,192 suffered 103 murders. In the

was inflated by the killing of 87 people in an act of arson at the Happyland social club. Depending on whether the Happyland death toll is included, the citywide murder rate is just over or just under 30 per 100,000 inhabitants. 65.

See Beth

S.

Rosenthal and David Rubel,

"A Community in Transition:

State of

Current Resources and Needs," (paper prepared for Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation,

New York,

1989), passim.

Common Complaints," New York

66.

See "In 26 Tongues,

67.

Interview with Mrs. Walck, 1990.

Times, Aug. 20, 1989,

34.

68. For useful discussions of these changes, see

Castells, eds.,

Dual

City: Restructuring

John Mollenkopf and Manuel

New York (New York,

1991), passim.

69. Interview with O'Halloran, 1990. 70.

Interviews with Sister Elizabeth Tiemey,

New

York City, 1992, and Quinn,

1990. 71. Interview 72.

with McGee, 1990.

For the racial and ethnic composition of the neighborhood, derived from the

1980 census, see "Washington Heights 18.

at a

Glance,"

New York Newsday,

July 18, 1982,

For the quotation, see Goodwin. 73.

See the poem, "Whatever You Say Say Nothing," in Seamus Heaney, Poems:

1965-1975 (New York, 1984), 212-15. 74.

Jim Dwyer, "Crime

Is

Biased against the City,"

New York

Newsday,

Jan. 15,

1992, 2. 75.

Ibid.

76.

On the Ortiz service,

Newsday, May

15, 1989, 25;

Dispatch, Aug. 7-16, 1989,

weddings

is

see "In wood Angry at Murder of Storekeeper," New York on the O'Brian case, see "Dispatch Crime Beat," Uptown The point about the elderly Irish invited to Dominican

9.

based on an interview with Monsignor Leonard, 1990.

77.

Merry, Urban Danger, 243.

78.

Comments about

the privatization of Irish

life

with OTD-wyer, 1992; and John Finucane, Pearl River, absence of painful consequences for ethnic identity

are based

New

on telephone interviews

York, 1992.

On

among white Americans

the relative see

Mary

C.

Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley, Calif., 1990), 147-68. 79.

On

the increasingly emotional and psychological dimension of Irish ethnicity,

see interview with O'Dwyer, 1992.

Chapter

EMIGRANTS, EIREPRENEURS, AND OPPORTUNISTS (Corcoran)

18:

This chapter draws on Corcoran, Irish (Westport, Conn., 1993), a

book based on

Illegals: Transients

between Two Societies

my doctoral research. The research was partly

supported by a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research,

New York City. 1.

Brendan Walsh, Emigration:

An Economist's

Perspective (Dublin, 1988),

4.

America is a somewhat difficult term to define because of the multidimensionality and diversity of Irish American life. In this chapter I am referring for the most part to the Irish American community still living and working in New York City's ethnic Irish neighborhoods or enclaves, and to those who still maintain strong social and economic ties with the old neighborhoods. These Irish Americans are 2.

Irish

ggg Notes

to

Pages

.

generally

first

generation immigrants

stream American

who have

not fully assimilated into main-

life.

3.

Benedict Anderson, "Exodus," Cultural Inquiry (Winter 1994): 327.

4.

National Economic and Social Council (NESC), The Economic and Social Implica-

tions of Emigration (Dubhn, 1991), 52-54.

New York City, Dec. 5, 1988. New York City, May 14, 1988. New York City, Mar. 3, 1988. Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant. New York City, Mar. 14, 1988.

5.

Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant.

6.

Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant.

7.

Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant.

8.

9. Edna Bonacich, "A Theory of Middlemen Minorities," American Sociological Review 38 (Oct. 1973): 583-94. 10. Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant. New York City, Jan. 14, 1988. 1 1 Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant. New York City, Feb. 1, 1988. 12. James Morrissey, "The Eirepreneurs, " Irish Independent, July 9, 1988. 13. Brendan Walsh, Ireland's Changing Demographic Structure (Dublin, 1989), 16. Implications of Emigration, 86-87. Ibid., 9. 14. NESC, 15. Gerard Hanlon, "The Emigration of Irish Accountants: Economic Restructuring ,

.

.

and Producer Services in the Periphery," Irish Journal of Sociology 1, no. 1 (1991): 52-65. 16. Personal communication from an Irish stockbroker who spent five years working for Merrill Lynch in

New York City. Accountants."

17.

Gerard Hanlon, "Emigration of

18.

Interview with Patricia O'Callaghan, director of Project Irish Outreach,

Irish

May

10,

1990. According to O'Callaghan, Donnelly visa holders are "passive" immigrants in the

sense that they very often

know no one

in

New

York City and have

transfer easily. In contrast, she characterized illegals as "active"

generally have contacts that enable

them

to secure

skills that

do not

immigrants

accommodation and

who

jobs.

19. For a discussion of Ireland's culture of emigration see Corcoran, Irish

Illegals,

47-53. 20.

This information was obtained from an American embassy official in Dublin "Immigration in the United States Today," sponsored by the United States

at a seminar,

Information Service, Dec. 21.

6,

1989.

W. R. Bohning, "Integration and Immigration Pressures in Western Europe,"

Review 130, no. 4. (1991): 445-58. 22. Personal communication from an Irish stockbroker who spent five years working for Merrill Lynch in New York City. 23. Consular officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin provided the figure of 40,000. Immigrant activists and church sources have offered estimates in the range of 136,000 to more than 200,000. See discussion in Padraig Yeates, "A New Breed of Irish Emigrant," Irish Times, June 16, 1988. The United States Catholic Conference provided a figure of 44,000 in "Undocimiented Irish in the U.S.," Migration and Refugee

International Labor

Services Staff Report (Washington, D.C., 1988). 24.

Saskia Sassen,

"New York

City's Informal

Economy"

(paper presented at the

Hopkins University, Oct. 1986). 25. Saskia Sassen, "The Informal Economy," in J. H. MoUenkopf and M. Castells, eds.. Dual City: Restructuring New York (New York, 1991), 79-101. 26. Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant, New York City, Oct. 19, 1987. 27. Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant. New York City, Feb. 1, 1988. 28. Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant, New York City, May 14, 1988. 29. Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant, New York City, Oct. 28, 1987. 30. Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant. New York City, Feb. 1, 1988. Second Symposium on the Informal

Sector, Johns

New York City, Feb. New York City, Mar.

Interview with undocumented Irish immigrant,

31.

32. Interview

with undocumented

Irish

immigrant,

"Dominican Workers

1988.

I,

Notes

in the U.S. Labor

34.

"Rehigees for 'Slave Labor,'" Irish Post, July

35.

See, for

and Famihes:

example, Janet G. Hunt and Larry

New

Integrations or

New

9,

L.

1994.

Himt, "The Dualities of Careers

Polarizations," in A. S. Skolnick and

Skolnick, eds.. Family in Transition (Boston, 1994); 275-89; and N. Glazer,

J.

S.

"The

Decommodificaiton of Health Care in the United States" (paper presented at the Socialist Scholars Conference, New York City, Apr. 1987). 36. Interview

with undocumented

Irish

immigrant,

New York City, June

IB, 1988.

37. Ibid. 38.

William Yancey, Eugene Ericksen, and Richard

Juliani,

"Emergent Ethnicity:

A

Review and Reformulation," American Sociological Review 41, no. 3 (1976): 391^03; Michael Young and Peter WiUmott, Family and Kinship in East London (London, 1957). 39. Interview 40.

with a local

Helena Sheehan,

priest, St.

May 3,

Brendan's Parish, Bronx,

"Irish Identity Is

1988.

Only Part of What We Are, " Irish Times, Nov.

29, 1991. 41.

len Ang, "Culture and

Communication: Toward an Ethnographic Critique

Transnational Media Systems, " European Journal of Communication 42.

Anderson, "Exodus," 314-27.

43.

Susan

McKeown was

Apple," Irish Times, Jan. 44. Fintan O'Toole,

5,

nos. 2-3

(

1

of

990).

quoted by Helena Mulkems, "Not So Green in the Big

19, 1994.

"Some

of

Our Emigrants Are Happy to Go,"

Irish Times, Sept.

14, 1989.

45.

Aug.

9,

Mary Doran, Doran Film Mulkems, "Not So Green."

Personal communication from 1994. See also Helena

46. In

terms of pohtical mobilization, the

new

important to the

community were,

Irish

Irish

Distribution, Dublin,

Americans who proved most

in general, a rather different constituency

from those they encountered in the labor market.

Irish

Americans who became actively

involved in the legalization campaign were drawn primarily from the ranks of the

upwardly mobile

who have

left

the ethnic enclaves behind and

who are

integrated into

mainstream American society. In particular, the IIRM drew on the support tional leaders from a variety of influential Irish American interest groups.

of institu-

47. John M. McCarthy and Meyer N. Zald, "Resource Mobilization and Social Movements," American journal of Sociology 82, no. 6 (1977): 1212^1. 48. Richard Alba, Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (New

Haven, 1990), 16-17,25. 49.

Other ethnic groups in the New York City area engaged in similar organizing on behalf of their undocumented immigrants. The Polish and Slavic Center

strategies

nms

the biggest social services program for East Europeans in the

In 1987, led

by clergy and community

New York City area.

leaders, they successfully lobbied

the legalization of thousands of Polish illegal immigrants

who

Congress for

faced deportation.

The

American Committee for Italian Immigration founded in 1952 has also lobbied Congress to secure higher 50.

immigration quotas

The Morrison

visa

for Italians seeking entry to the

United

^g^

14, 1988.

Market" (paper presented at the Center for Immigration and Population Studies Seminar, "New Immigrants and Economic Restructuring," New York City, May 6, 1988). Patricia Pessar,

33.

States.

program was launched in October 1991. As the October 14

deadline for receipt of appUcations approached, the American embassy in Dublin fielded

more than 1 5,000 inquiries about the program. Three agencies offering visa services in Dublin reported brisk business, with some of their chents submitting up to 1,000 appUcations to

to

Pages

.

increase their chances of selection. (This practice lotteries).

On

weekend

the

before

was

later disallowed in the

Monday, October

14,

thousands of

subsequent

Irish

illegals

on the designated post office in Virginia to mail multiple apphcations. The Irish Voice newspaper in New York handled 100,000 such apphcations for its readers. The interest in the Morrison visa program was reminiscent of resident in the United States converged

the Donnelly visa program inaugurated five years

earlier.

That program had been so well

pubhcized, and strategic mailing of multiple apphcations used so successfully, that Irish

apphcants

won 41

percent of the 40,000 NP-5 visas allotted to residents of 36 countries in

the period 1987-90.

Chapter

19:

IRISH

TRADITIONAL AND POPULAR MUSIC IN

NEW YORK CITY (Miller) Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto and Irish of New York City, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), xxxiii.

1

Ricans, Jews, Itahans,

2. For detailed information on Irish traditional music, see Brendan Breathnach, Folk Music and Dances of Ireland (Dublin, 1980). 3. The distinction made here between Irish popular music and Irish American popular music is based on country of origin rather than on style or form. "Irish popular music" thus refers to that popular genre created in Ireland, whereas "Irish American popular music" refers to that created in America by Irish immigrants or by Irish Americans. The earliest known recording of Irish traditional music in the United States was made by the Edison Company (New York) in 1899 of uilleaim piper James C. McAuliffe. The recording features four tunes: "Minstrel Boy," "Miss McCloud's Reel," "Donnybrook Fair," and "A Stack of Barley." For more information on these early Irish recordings, see Richard K. Spottswood, Ethnic Music on Records, A Discography of Ethnic Recordings Produced in the United States, 1893-1942, vol. 5 (Urbana, 111., 1990). 4. Irish traditional music arrived in America with the original Irish immigrants who settled in rural areas up and dovwi the East Coast during the late seventeenth century. These immigrants were for the most part descendants of Presbyterian Scots who, a century earUer,

had been relocated from Scotland

to assist in the colonization of northeastern Ireland

by the

EngUsh. The musical tradition they brought to America was non-Celtic and more closely

6.

Lowland Scottish style. See Lawrence E. McCullough, "An Historical Sketch of Music in the U.S.," Folklore Forum 7, no. 3 (1974): 178. McCullough, "Historical Sketch," 180-81. Trow's New York City Directory for the Year Ending July 1st, 1896, 230.

7.

For an exceptional record of this period of immigrant Irish musical culture in the

related to a

Traditional Irish 5.

—

two books by Capt. Francis O'Neill: Irish Folk Music A Fascinating and Musicians. Published in 1910, these books discuss in frequently pecuhar detail and with great pride the many figures in Irish music in the

United

States, see

Hobby and

Irish Minstrels

Chicago area during the time. (Both reprinted Darby, 8.

Pa., 1973).

For further information on early Irish 78s see Michael Moloney, "Irish Ethnic

Recordings and the Irish- American Imagination," in Ethnic Recordings in America: A Neglected Heritage (Washington, D.C., 1982), 84-101; and PhiUippe Variet's liner notes to "From Galway to Dublin: Early Recordings of Irish Traditional Music," Rounder Records. 1993, 1087. 9.

Videotaped interview with Mary O'Beime, Woodside, N.Y., Nov.

New

18,

1990,

documentary From Shore to Shore: Irish Traditional Music York City (Cherry Lane Productions, 1993), hereafter cited (FSTS).

conducted

for the video

in

Videotaped interview with Mary Coleman Hannon, Woodside, N.Y., Nov.

10.

18,

1990 (FSTS).

Bonds of Community (Lexington, Ky., 1991), 50. Annual Report indicates that 210,024 Irish immigrated between 1921 and 1930, whereas only 10,973 came between 1931 and 1940. U.S. INS Annual Report, 1986 (Washington, D.C.). 12.

Dennis Clark,

13.

The

14.

Lawrence E. McCullough, "Historical Sketch," 185. Taped interview with Jack Coen, Bronx, N.Y., Mar. 7, 1992.

15.

Erin's Heirs: Irish

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service's

16.

Ibid.

17.

20.

Taped interview with Daniel Collins, Newton, N.J., Mar. 24, 1992. Taped interview with Martin Mulhaire, Flushing, N.Y., Oct. 4, 1985. Interview with Jack Coen, Mar. 17, 1992. Taped interview with Brendan Ward, New York City, Mar. 13, 1992.

21.

Ibid.

18. 19.

22.

Ann

Daly,

23.

The

headlines of the Irish Echo, Sept. 30, 1944, indicate that 14,687 Irish

workers

"Mick Delahunty,"

lost their jobs "after five years of

Census Bureau, Historical McCullough.

24.

Irish Echo, Feb.

7,

1959.

war work."

Statistics of the

United States (Washington, D.C.,

1960), 56, as cited in 25. Irish Echo,

Nov.

12, 1949, 3.

Patrick Mulhns' videotaped interview with

26.

Tom Doherty, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn,

N.Y., Feb. 24, 1989 (FSTS).

Taped interview with Paddy Reynolds, Staten Island, New York, Mar. Taped interview with Louis Quinn, Flushing, N.Y., Oct. 24, 1990.

27.

28.

20, 1992.

with Paddy Reynolds, Mar. 20, 1992. Taped interview with Paddy Noonan, Garden City, N.Y., Feb. 27, 1992. Interview with Brendan Ward, Mar. 13, 1992. Taped interview with Dorothy Hayden, Rego Park, N.Y., Mar. 4, 1992.

29. Interview 30. 31. 32.

with Paddy Noonan, Feb. 27, 1992. Taped interview with Martin Mulhaire, Flushing, N.Y., Oct. Interview with Brendan Ward, Mar. 13, 1992.

33. Interview 34. 35.

36. In the liner notes to the recording "St. Patrick's

Moloney writes that and recording

era,

1986.

its

Celebration,"

Mick

was popularized by the Gallowglass CeiU Band, heyday in the early 1950s. Playing during the radio

the Gallowglass Ceili Band incorporated nontraditional instruments

such as the saxophone and drum

set

and became a model

instrumental music. Legacy Records,

The Musicians' Union

37.

Day

4,

this style of playing

a hybrid Irish ensemble that had

in

for a

AAD CK48694,

New York

commerciaUzed

style of

1992.

City (American Federation of Musicians,

Local 802) kept a tight rein on both musicians and dance hall owners in the 1940s and 1950s. Aside from stage time

on and time

off rules.

Local 802 established additional

regulations that directly affected immigrant musicians during these years: one had to be a

union member in order to work in union halls and most

of the halls were, in fact,

unionized; to be eligible to join the union, one had to be a resident of the United States for six

months; and if a union hall hired a foreign band (for example, a visiting group from

Ireland),

an equal number

of

union musicians had to be hired ("stand-ins")

for the

evening, whether or not they actually played.

When asked about this last regulation, fiddler Paddy Reynolds comments: "Many a night

the

I

to

Pages

Ibid.

11.

Irish

gg-j Notes

brought

same

my

fiddle

as they did.

.

.

.

and sat down and never played a tune all night, but got paid That was the good thing about the union." When asked if he

485-494

.

got bored during the course of such an evening, Reynolds says, "No, goddamnit! I

got that check,

it

cured everything! Are you kidding?

When we'd get

When

our check, we'd

go somewhere else and enjoy a good seisiinl" (Taped interview by author). 38. Taped interview with Matty Connolly, Richmond Hill, N.Y., June 12, 1988. 39. Many of the ballrooms built during the late 1950s and early 1960s were part of

owned and operated by a handful of entrepreneurs. The first and one of was owned by brothers Albert and Jim Reynolds. Their first dance hall, Cloudland, opened in 1957 in Roosky, County Roscommon. At the height of the showband era, the Reynolds' empire would include 14 ballrooms that could accommoseveral chains

the largest chains

was

date audiences from 2000 to 4000. Thirty-five years later in 1992, Albert Reynolds elected Ireland's Taoiseach (prime minister). For

more on the showband

era in Ireland

Send 'Em Home Sweatin' (Dublin, 1990). Taped interview with Brendan Bowyer, Massapequa Park, N.Y., July

see Vincent Power, 40.

29, 1992.

41. Ibid.

with Matty Connolly, June 12, 1988. 43. Taped interview with Martin Mulhaire, Flushing, N.Y. 44. Interview with Daniel Collins, Mar. 24, 1992. 42. Interview

May

10,

1988.

45. Interview

with Jack Coen, Mar.

46. Interview

with Jack Coen, from Lori Jane Kaplan, "The Lark on the Strand:

7,

1992.

A

Study of a Traditional Irish Flute Player and His Music" (Master's thesis, Western

Kentucky University, 1979). 47. Taped interview with Tommy Makem, New York 48. Interview with Paddy Noonan, Feb, 27, 1992. 49. Interview with Dorothy Hay den, Mar. 4, 1992.

City, Apr. 4, 1992.

50. Ibid. 51. Irish

Advocate, Oct.

8,

I960, 6.

Taped interview with Martin Mulhaire, Flushing, N.Y., Oct. 4, 1986. 53. Taped interview with Martin Mulhaire, Flushing, N.Y., May 10, 1988. 54. Michael Moloney, "Irish Music in America: Continuity and Change, A dissertation in Folklore and Folklife" (Ph.D. diss.. University of Peimsylvania, 1992), 323. 52.

55. Videotaped interview

56. Patrick

with Andy McGann, Woodside, N.Y., Nov.

18,

1990 (FSTS).

MulUns' videotaped interview with Paddy Reynolds, Staten

Island,

N.Y., Feb. 24, 1989 (FSTS). 57.

Videotaped interview with James O'Beime

Jr.,

Woodside, N.Y., Nov.

18,

1990

(FSTS). 58.

Taped interview with Maureen Glynn Connolly,

New

Mary

Inc.,

York City, Mar.

23,

1992. 59.

C. McElwain, "Irish Musicians Association,

Musical Highhghts,"

Irish Echo. Sept. 28, 1963, 6.

was modeled after its coimterpart 60. The Irish organization in Ireland, Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, which was established in 195 1 Comhaltas' mission was to "promote, nurture, and perpetuate the playing of Irish traditional music and the accompanying song and dances of Ireland." Branches of Comhaltas formed throughout Ireland, offering sessions and music lessons with the Musicians Association,

Inc.,

intent of reviving traditional instrumental music. Comhaltas's largest presentation

every year

is

the Fleadh Ceoil na Eireann, a

summer

event consisting of music

ages and instruments and informal, nonstop music sessions. Comhaltas branches also opened in countries with large immigrant Irish populations, and eventually the Irish Musicians Association in the United States became Com-

competitions for

all

haltas Ceolt6iri Eireann affiliates as well.

Arising from these sessions

61.

Band, a

New

now

York

was the formation

in 1958 of the

New

at the time. Featuring fiddlers

Andy McGann, Paddy Reynolds, and

flutes, and an occasional drummer, the New most polished groups of its kind. The band quickly developed a strong following and was in high demand for ceili dances throughout New York. In 1960, the New York Ceili Band became the first American -based ceili band to compete in the annual Fleadh Ceoil na Eireaim. After recording an undistributed 78 record, the group fizzled the following year owing to the lack of an audience and general disinterest on the part of the public.

Coen and Mike Domey on

York Ceih Band was one

of the

62.

Telephone interview with Dr. Frank Holt, Jersey City,

63.

Ibid.

64.

Irish Echo,

65.

Notes from the 23rd Annual United

booklet.

May 29,

66.

Ibid.

67.

James

J.

May n,

N.J.,

June 29, 1992.

1957.

Counties Association Feis program

Irish

1955.

UICA Feis,

Comerford, Chairman,

program notes.

May 29,

The Invention

of Tradition (Cam-

1955.

68. Ibid. 69.

Eric

Hobsbawm and

Terence Ranger,

eds..

bridge, 1983), 2-8. 70.

Interview with Maureen Glynn ConnoUy,

71.

Brian Conway,

"The

Feis

New York City,

Mar. 23, 1992.

and Teaching the Tradition," a panel discussion that

was part of the exhibition "Keeping the Tradition Alive: A History of Irish Music and Dance in New York City," sponsored by the New York Irish History Roundtable at the

Museum of the

City of

New York,

Mar.

9,

1991.

Maureen Glynn Connolly, "The Feis and Teaching The Tradition," panel discussion for "Keeping The Tradition Alive: A History of Irish Music and Dance in New 72.

York City," Mar. 73.

9,

1991.

Videotaped interview with Maureen Doherty Macken, Bayside, N.Y., Dec. 27,

1990 (FSTS). 74.

Irish

and

Irish

American pub songs

— specifically, ballads and rebel songs— are

an exception to the passive consumption

of popular music by both Irish and Irish American audiences. Most of these songs have known composers (as opposed to traditional music where the tunes are anonymously written) and are introduced to audiences by a performer (rather than via commuxial participation). Over the years, however, many pub songs have become familiar to audiences everywhere and have taken on a Ufe of their ovwi. Their performance in public venues more often than not engages the audience

through unison singing with the performer. 75.

Just as Irish popular

pub songs

in recent years

have invited group participa-

music changed, given its expanding market in both Ireland and the United States. The enormous increase throughout the 1980s in the number of professional traditional music ensembles and individuals points to the continual evolution of Irish traditional music and its role in the music tion, so, too, has the nature of traditional Irish

industry. 76.

Taped interview with Martin Mulhaire, Flushing, N.Y.,

May

10, 1988.

band music gave way to Irish showband music, the current hybridized form of Irish music is Celtic rock, with bands such as Black 47 and Celtic Cross, which are in high demand among young Irish immigrants and Irish Americans. 77.

Just as Irish big

n

t

t

P

Larry

Redican, Paddy O'Brien on button accordion, Felix Dolan on piano, Gerry Wallace on piccolo. Jack

gnc

York Ceili

legendary ensemble of the finest practitioners of Irish traditional music in

501-507

.

Chapter 20:

THE HEART'S SPEECH NO LONGER STIFLED

(Fanning)

George O'Brien, The Village of Longing and Dancehall Days (New York,

1.

1988), 59.

Seamus Heaney, Station Island (New York, 1985), 93-94. For the pieces in which Irish community, see Finley Peter Dimne, Mz.

2.

"Mr. Dooley" recreates his Chicago

Dooley and the Chicago Irish: The Autobiography of a Nineteenth-Century Ethnic Group, ed. Charles Fanning (Washington, D.C., 1987). T. Farrell, Studs Lonigan:

A

Trilogy {\935, Urbana,

1993), 453.

3.

James

4.

Mary Gordon,

5.

Calvin Trillin, "American Chronicles: Democracy in Action,"

Final Payments

(New

York, 1978),

111.,

4, 15.

New Yorker, Mar.

21, 1988, 89. 6.

Mary Gordon, The Other Side (New

7.

A

York, 1989), 50, 160, 183-84.

subsequent autobiographical piece by Mary Gordon helps to explain her

animosity toward the Irish part of her background. This memoir describes a lonely child's fear of her Jansenist Irish immigrant grandmother and the devastating loss of her Jewish father.

When Mary's mother moved herself and her daughter back into the grandmother's

house, what seemed to the child a shocking betrayal

Important Houses," 8.

New Yorker,

was added

to her grief. See

Oliver MacDonagh, "Emigration from Ireland to Australia:

Colm Kieman,

ed.,

Australia

"The

Sept. 28, 1992, 34-45.

An

and Ireland 1788-1988, Bicentenary

Overview," in

Essays, (Dublin,

1986), 133-34. 9.

Contributors to the burst of Australian Hterary activity in the 1890s included

poets and journalists Christopher Brennan, Victor Daley, John Farrell,

Bemard O'Dowd,

John O'Hara, and Roderick Quinn. Among subsequent writers who have described Austrahan Irish life are Eleanor Dark, Ruth Park, Gavin Casey, Xavier Herbert, Frank

Desmond O'Grady, Laurie Clancy, Vincent Buckley, D'Arcy Mumane, Barbara Haruahan, David Ireland, and Peter Carey. Terence Winch, "When New York Was Irish," performed by "Celtic Thunder"

Hardy, Barry Oakley, Niland, Gerald 10.

on The Light of Other Days (CSIF 1086, Green Lirmet Recording Co., 1988). See also Celtic Thunder (GLCD 1029, Green Linnet Recording Co., 1981). 1 1 See a fine anthology full of provocative juxtapositions: David Lampe, ed.. The Legend of Being Irish: A Collection of Irish-American Poetry (Fredonia, N.Y., 1989). 12. John Montague, Born in Brooklyn (Fredonia, N.Y., 1991), 16-17, 41, 64. 13. Terence Winch, Irish Musicians / American Friends (Minneapolis, 1985). 14.

William Gibson,

A Mass for the Dead (New York,

1968),

1 1,

87.

Frank Conroy, Stop-Time (New York, 1967); Francis Hackett, American Rain(New York, 1971); Horace Gregory, The House on fefferson Street: A Cycle of

15.

bow

Memories (New York, 1971); Dennis Smith, Report from Engine Co. 82 (New York, 1 972). 16. Maureen Howard, Facts of Life (Boston, 1978), 174, 182. 17. Maureen Howard, Bridgeport Bus (New York, 1965); Expensive Habits (New York, 1986).

Amen (New York, 1973). Money (New York, 1986). 20. Joe Flaherty, Fogarty &) Co. (New York, 1973). 21. Joe Flaherty, Tin Wife (New York, 1983). 22. Pete HamiU, The Gift (New York, 1973); Flesh and Blood (New York, Loving Women, A Novel of the Fifties (New York, 1989). 23. Dennis Smith, Steely Blue (New York, 1984); The Final Fire (New York, 18.

19.

Jimmy Jimmy

Breslin,

World without End,

Breslin, Table

1977);

1975).

24.

"On the Mountain Stands a Lady," Accent

Ellen Currie,

"Lovely Appearance of Death," Dial

1,

no.

1

1 7,

gny

no. 4 (1957): 202-16;

(1959), 88-124; Available Light

(New York,

Notes

to

Pages

1986). 25. Jack Dunphy, John Fuiy: A Novel in Four Parts (1946; New York, 1976); first Wine (Baton Rouge, 1982); The Murderous McLaughlins (New York, 1988). 26. Dunphy, The Murderous McLaughlins, 234. 27. J. P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man (Paris, 1955). Donleavy has also published a book detailing the inspiration, writing, and struggles over censorship concerning this novel. See J. P. Donleavy, The History of "The Ginger Man" (Boston, 1994).

28.

Rhodes,

J.

P.

"A Fairy Tale of New York," in Daniel J. Casey and Robert E. Modern Irish-American Fiction: A Reader (Syracuse, 1989), 147-64. This

Donleavy,

eds..

collection also contains

New York stories by Betty

Smith, John O'Hara, Joseph Dever,

Maureen Howard, Jimmy Breslin, Mary Gordon, Pete Hamill,

and Elizabeth

Joe Flaherty,

Cullinan. 29.

John

F.

Murray, "O'Phelan Drinking," Nev^ Yorker, Oct.

30.

John

F.

Murray, "O'Phelan's Daemonium,"

31. T.

Coraghessan Boyle, "The Miracle

WhisAey (New York, 32. T.

3,

1977, 42.

New Yorker, May 24,

1976, 35.

at Balhnspittle," in // the

River

Was

1990), 185.

Coraghessan Boyle,

"If

the River Was Whiskey, " in // the River

Was Whiskey,

217,222,224. 33.

Frank Conroy, "Midair," in

34.

Van Morrison,

Midat (New

York, 1985), 12, 27, 28.

Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (9-23802-1,

Warner Brothers

Records, 1983). 35.

See Charles Fanning, The Irish Voice in America: Irish-American Fiction from

the 1760s to the 1980s (Lexington, Ky., 1990).

Monica McGoldrick, "Irish Families," in Monica McGoldrick and John K. and Family Therapy (New York, 1982), 335. This movement also occurs in another Conroy story in the same collection, "Gossip," in which the narrator is a yoimg writer similarly blocked: "He did not deny pain's existence, but only its power over him. (In this he was of course mistaken.) He was twenty-eight, intelligent, and ignorant of the forces that moved him." Again, the 36.

Pearce, eds.. Ethnicity 37.

narrator arrives, after experiences that have not quite yielded enlightenment, at middle

age and a measure of clarity: that pain

was

"What mattered was

part of that web,

and

yet, despite

that everyone it,

was connected in a web,

people loved one another." Midair,

89-90, 121.

Thomas McGonigle, Going

to Patchogue (Elmwood Park, 111., 1992), 34. Compare another painful chronicle of migration from the city to Long Island (in two novels of Michael Stephens, Season at Coole 1 972; Elmwood Park, 111., 1984) and The Brooklyn Book of the Dead (Ehnwood Park, 111., 1994). 40. Willa Gather, "Katherine Mansfield," in Stories, Poems, and Other Writings, ed. Sharon O'Brien (New York, 1992), 877-78. 41. Alice McDermott, That Night (1987; New York, 1988), 107, 163, 164. 42. AUce McDermott, At Weddings and Wakes (New York, 1992), 165. 43. Farrell's largely autobiographical pentalogy is as follows: A World I Never Made (1936), No Star Is Lost (1938), Father and Son (1940), My Days of Anger {1943), and The Face of Time (1953), all published in New York. 44. McDermott, At Weddings and Wakes, 206-7, 211. 45. Tom Grimes, A Stone of the Heart (New York, 1990), 1,121, 129^0. 46. T. Glen Coughhn, The Hero of New York (New York, 1985). 47. Thomas Mallon, Aurora 7 (New York, 1991), 235.

38. 39.

this case, Mineola) in the

(

515-524

"

.

Anna Quindlen, Obiect Lessons (New York, 1991 262. Thomas E. Kennedy, Crossing Boideis (Wichita, Kan., 1990), 3, 50 Elizabeth Cullinan, House of Gold (Boston, 1970). One year

48.

1,

49.

published her

first

collection of stories.

The Time of Adam

206. later,

Cullinan

(Boston, 1971).

"An Accident, " "A Foregone Conclusion, (New York, 1977), 62-98. "An Accident," in Yellow Roses, 76. 53. Elizabeth CulHnan, "A Good Loser," New Yoikei, Aug. 15, 1977, 32^4; A Change of Scene (New York, 1982). Elizabeth Cullinan, "Yellow Roses, "

51

in Yellow Roses

52. Cullinan,

54.

Elizabeth Cullinan, "Life After Death," in Yellow Roses, 178.

55.

Elizabeth Cullinan,

56. Elizabeth Cullinan,

"The Perfect Crime," in Yellow Roses, 143. "The Sum and Substance," in Yellow Roses,

57.

Elizabeth Cullinan,

"A Good

58.

Elizabeth Cullinan,

"Commuting,"

Loser,"

New Yorker,

Aug.

Irish Literary

38.

15, 1977, 44.

Supplement

2,

no.

1

(1983),

34-^5.

CONCLUSION 1.

Robert Ernst, Immigrant Life in

1979), 66-68;

New

York City, 1825-1863 (1949;

New

York,

David Hammack, Power and Society: Greater New York at the Tarn of the 1982), 83; Jeff Kisseloff, You Must Remember This: An Oral History

Century (New York,

World War II (New York, 1989), 550, 551, 553. Timothy J. Meagher, "Introduction," in Meagher, ed.. From Paddy to Studs: Irish American Communities in the Turn of the Century Era. 1 880 to 1 920 Westport, Conn., of Manhattan from the 1890s to 2.

(

1986) 5-7,

9;

Martin

J.

Towey, "Kerry Patch Revisited:

Irish

Americans

in St. Louis in

From Paddy to Studs, 139-57; Timothy Sarbaugh, "Exiles of Confidence: The Irish American Community of San Francisco, 1 880 to 1920," in Meagher, ed.. From Paddy to Studs, 161-79; William Shannon, The American Irish: A Political and Social Portrait (New York, 1974), 86-94, 183-200; John Higham, "Another Look at Nativism," Catholic Historical Review 44, no. 2 (1958): 155-58; James Walsh, "The Irish in the New America: 'Way out West," in David N. Doyle and Owen Dudley Edwards, eds., America and Ireland, 1776-1976: The American Identity and the Irish Connection (Westport, Conn., 1976), 165-77; Moses Rischin, the Turn of the Century Era," in Meagher,

ed..

"Immigration, Migration and Minorities in California: torical

Review 4\,

no.

1,

A

Reassessment," Pacific His-

Dennis Clark, Hibernia America: The Irish and The Irish in Philadelphia: Ten Generations

(1973) 81. See also

and Regional Cultures (New York, 1 986), of Urban Experience (Philadelphia, 1973);

R. A. Burchell,

1848-1880 (Berkeley, Calif., 1980); Jo Ellen Vinyard, The Detroit. 1850-1880 [New York, 1976).

The San Francisco Irish: on the Urban Frontier:

Irish

Hammack, Power and Society, on economy, 31-58, and on elites, 65-79; Richard Workers in the Metropolis: Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City (Ithaca, N.Y., 1989), 7-29; Thomas Kessner, The Golden Door: Italian and fewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City 1880-1915 (New York, 1977), 165-71; Frederick 3.

Stott,

The Rich, The Wellborn, and the Powerful: EUtes and Upper Classes in History 111., 1973), on New York, 156-57, 169-70, 189-93, 203-5, 231^3, 245-64, and 275-81; on Boston, 15-125; on Chicago, 453-554; and on Los Angeles, 581-659. It is difficult to get accurate comparative statistics for the early period. Kathleen Conzen lists data suggesting that the proportion of Irish who were white-collar workers was about twice as large in New York in 1855 as in Boston in 1850, about the same proportion as

Jaher,

(Urbana,

Occupation

6.

Weiss, Charles Francis Murphy, 86; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 32-179; Ronald H.

The Irish, Germans, Jews and Italians of New York City, 1929-1941 (Baltimore, 1978), 30-56; Arthur Mann, LaGuardia Comes to Power. 1933 (Philadelphia, 1965); Moynihan and Glazer, Beyond the Melting Pot, 263.

Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict:

7.

Stanley Nadel, Little Germany: Ethnicity, Religion and Class in

New York City,

Rosenwaike, Population History of New York City (Syracuse, N.Y., 1972), 167; Deborah Dash Moore, At Home: Second Generation New York Jews (New York, 1981), 7. Quotation in Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, 6. 8. Steven Erie, Rainbow's End: Irish Americans and the Dilemma of Urban Machine

(Urbana,

111.,

1990), 29-46, 62-103, 137-62; Ira

Pohtics, 1840 to 1985 (Berkeley, Cahf., 1988), 75-76, 180; Jack Beatty, Life

and Times

God

Save the Commonwealth:

1973), 15-58; Geoffrey Blodgett,

Kleppner,

The Rascal King: The

of fames Michael Cuiley, 1874-1958 (Reading, Mass., 1992); Alec Barbrook,

"From Party

An

Electoral History of Massachusetts (Amherst, Mass.,

"Yankee Leadership in a Divided

to Factions,"

and Charles Trout, "Curley

City, 1860-1890," Paul

of Boston:

The Search

for

Irish Legitimacy," in Ronald Formisano and Constance Bums, eds., Boston, 1 700-1980: The Evolution of Urban Politics (Westport, Conn., 1984); Harold Gosnell, Machine Pohtics:

Chicago Model (1937; Ky., 1971);

Gerald

New York,

1

John Allswang, A House for All Peoples (Lexington,

968);

Gamm, The Making

Realignment in Boston,

1

of

New

Deal Democrats: Voting Behavior and

920-1 940 (Chicago, 1 989); Bruce Stave, The New Deal and the Last

Hurrah: Pittsburgh Machine Pohtics (Pittsburgh, 1970); Michael Fimchion, "The Pohtical

andNationaUst Dimension," in LawTcnce McCaffrey, 1987), 81-91;

Edward C.

Banfield, Big City Pohtics:

ed..

A

The Irish in Chicago (Urbana,

Comparative Guide

Systems of Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia,

and

Seattle

(New York,

111.,

to the Pohtical St.

Louis

1965).

9. McNickle, To Be Mayor, 75-27 1 Moynihan and Glazer, Beyond the Melting Pot, Ivii-lxxvi; Asher Arain, Arthur S. Goldberg, John H. Mollenkopf, and Edward T. Ragow;

sky.

Changing 10.

New York

Amy Bridges,

City Pohtics

(New

York, 1990).

The City in the Republic: Antebellum

of Machine Politics (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), 19, 126-30, 141;

New York and the Origins

Hammack, Power and Society,

109-57, esp. 131; Erie, Rainbow's End, 49-51; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 1-28. 11.

Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict, 87-108; Kevin Phillips, Emerging Republican

Ma/ority (New Rochelle,N.Y., 1969), 155-68; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 176, 186-87,201; Moynihan and Glazer, Beyond the Melting Pot, xliii-lxxvi, 270; Donald J. Crosby, God,

Church and (Chapel

Flag: Senator Joseph R.

Hill, N.C., 1974),

231^2.

McCarthy and

the Cathohc Church. 1950-1957

In 1984, for example, Irish Catholics in Massachusetts

New York State

the Irish Cathohc vote was The 84 Vote (New York, 1984), 225, 227. 12. Bridges, City in the Republic, 110-11, 152. See also Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Workmg Class, 1 788 to 1850 (New York, 1978); Martin Shefter, "The Electoral Foundations of the Political Machine: 1884-1897," in Joel Sibley, Allen Bogue, and William Flanigan, eds., The History of

voted 56 to 43 percent for Mondale, but in

68 to 32 percent

for

Reagan. Carolyn Smith,

ed..

American Pohtical Behavior (Princeton, N.J., 1978), 289; Robert F. Wesser, A Response to Progressivism: The Democratic Party and New York Politics. 1902-1918 (New York, 1986), 135-227; Weiss, Charles Francis Murphy 69-90; McNickle, To Be Mayor, 1^0. 13. Weiss, Charles Francis Murphy, 98-99; Moynihan and Glazer, Beyond the Melting Pot, 224-25, 229; Thomas N. Brown, Irish American Nationalism, 1870 to 1890 (Philadelphia, 1966), 133-34, 181. 14.

Leon Fink, "American Labor History,"

in Eric Foner, ed..

The

New American

History (Philadelphia, 1990), 233-50; Richard Oestreicher, "Urban Working Class Political Behavior and Theories of American Electoral Pohtics, 1870 to 1940," Journal of

American History

74, no.

4 (Mar.

1988): 1257-86;

Sean Wilentz, "Against Exceptional-

American Labor Movement, 1790 to 1920," Internaand Working Class History 26 1 984|; John Patrick Diggins, "Comrades and Citizens," American Historical Review 90, no. 5 (1985): 619-39; James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912-1925 (New York, 1967), 149-54, 324-39; John H. M. Laslett and Seymour Martin Lipset, Failures of a Dreamt Essays in the History of American Socialism (Berkeley, Calif., 1974); David P. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 1991 133-63; Kerby Miller, "Class, Culture, and Immigrant Group Identity in the United States: The Case of Irish American Ethnicity," in Virginia McLaughhn, ed., Immigration Reconsidered: History, Sociology and Politics (New York, 1990), 96-129. 15. Emst, Immigrant Life in New York, 123-24; William D'Arcy, The Fenian Movement in the United States, 1858-1886 (New York, 1947), 2, 124; Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York, 1985), 308-12, 334-35; 538-^4; Thomas N. Brown, Irish American Nationalism, 1870 to 1890 (Philadelphia, 1 966), 34; Charles Callan Tansill, America and the Figh t for Irish Freedom, 1866-1922 (New York, 1957); Frank M.Carroll, American Opinion and the Irish QuesBuckley, The New York Irish: Their View tion, 1910-1923 (New York, 1978); Patrick of American Foreign Policy, 1914-1921 (New York, 1976). 16. Victor Walsh, "'A Fanatic Heart: The Cause of Irish American NationaHsm in Pittsburgh during the GOded Age, " fournal of Social History 1 5 (Winter 1 98 1 1 87-203; Eric Foner, "Class, Ethnicity and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: The Land League and Irish ism: Class Consciousness and the tional Labor

),

J.

):

America," Marxist Perspectives

1,

no. 2 (1978): 6-55; Michael Funchion,

"The Pohtical and

ed.. The Irish in Chicago (Urbana, 111., and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town,

NationaHst Dimensions," in Lawrence McCaffrey, 1987);

David Emmons, The Butte

Irish:

Class

1875-1925 (Urbana, 111., 1989); Timothy J. Meagher, "Irish, American, CathoUc: Irish American Identity in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1 880 to 1920, " in Meagher, ed.. From Paddy to Studs; Brown, Irish American Nationalism; Tansill, America and the Fight for Irish Freedom-, Buckley, The New York Irish; David Brundage, "Irish Land and American Workers: Class and Ethnicity in Denver, Colorado," in Dirk Hoerder, ed.. Struggle a Hard Battle: Essays on Working Class Immigrants (De Kalb, 17.

111.,

1986).

Christopher Kauffman in conversation with the author. See also

McAvoy, The Great

Crisis in

American Cathohc History (Chicago,

Meagher, "Irish All the Time': Ethnic Consciousness

among

1957);

Thomas Timothy

T. J.

the Irish in Worcester,

Massachusetts, 1880-1905," fournal of Social History 19 (Winter 1985); Vincent Lannie,

Pubhc Money and Parochial Education: Bishop Hughes, Governor Seward, and the York School Controversy (Cleveland, 1968), 245-58; Robert

Emmet

New

Curran, Michael

Augustine Corrigan and the Shaping of Conservative Cathohcism in America (New York, 1978). See also Jay Dolan,

Times

to the Present

see 282, and

The American Cathohc Experience:

(New York,

1983), 262-93,

A

History from Colonial

on regional differences

in parochial schools

on the proportion of Cathohc students in New York parochial schools see 275.

In 1901 the proportions of parishes with parochial schools

and proportions

of parochial

students of the total diocesan Cathohc populations in the following dioceses were as follows:

San Francisco, 39 percent of parishes

and

of parishes

and 5.7 percent of

total population; Boston, 41 percent

6.5 percent of population; Philadelphia, 51.8 percent of parishes

percent of population;

New

and 10.2

York, 53 percent of parishes and 3.4 percent of population;

Chicago, 73 percent of parishes and 7.8 percent of population. The Cathohc Directory,

Almanac and Clergy List 18.

Italians

jq-^ Notes

to

Pages

(

Quarterly, 1901 (Milwaukee, 1901), 48,

1

15, 135, 169.

Gary R. Mormino and George E. Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor and Their Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985 (Urbana, III, 1987).

City:

540-542

.

19.

On

Irish

women

and family

life

during the immigrant generation see Hasia

Women in the Nineteenth Century On intermarriage see Robert McCaa, "Ethnic Intermarriage and New York City," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24, no. 2 (1993): 221.

Diner, Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant (Baltimore, Md., 1983).

Gender 20.

in

Robert Orsi, The

Madonna

of 115th Street: Faith

and Community

in Italian

Harlem, 1880-1950 (New Haven, 1985); Andrew R. Heinze, Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Search for American Identity (New York, 1990).

21

Erie,

Rainbow's End, McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York. American Immigrant Leaders, 1800-1910: Marginahty and

22. Victor R. Greene,

Identity (Baltimore, 1987). 23.

Carol Groneman, "Working-Class Immigrant

Women in Mid-Nineteenth Cen-

New

York: The Irish Woman's Perpective," Journal of Urban History 4 (1978): Donna Gabaccia, From Italy to Elizabeth Street (Albany, N.Y., 1983); Jon Gjerde, From Peasants to Farmers: The Migration from Balestrand, Norway to the Upper Middle tury

255-71;

West (Cambridge, Mass.,

1985); June Granatir Alexander, "Staying Together:

Chain

Migration and Patterns of Slovak Settlement in Pittsburgh Prior to World War 1, " fournal

American Ethnic History 1 (Fall 1981): 56-83; Walter D. Kamphoefner, The WestFrom Germany to Missouri (Princeton, N.J., 1987). 24. For a pioneering study see Joshua A. Fishman and Vladimir Nahimy et al.. Language Loyalty in the United States: The Maintenance and Perpetuation of Non-English Mother Tongues by American Ethnic and Religious Groups (The Hague, of

falians:

1966).

25.

On Jews see Charles Allan Madison, Jewish Publishing in America: The Impact

of Jewish Writing on 26.

Brooklyn," in

273-304.

American Culture (New York, 1976). "The Soviet Jews:

See, for example, Armelise Orleck,

Nancy

Foner, ed..

New

Immigrants in

New

Life in Brighton Beach,

York (New York, 1987):

Select Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES Archives

New York, Yonkers, New York Archives of the Archdiocese of Brooklyn, Douglaston, New York Archives of the Archdiocese of

Archives of the Sisters of Charity,

Mount

St.

Dobbs

Ferry,

Archives of the Sisters of Mercy, Brooklyn Province, Brooklyn,

Archives of the Carmelite

Friars,

Middletown,

New York

New York City New York City

Archives of the Irish Brigade, Sixty-ninth Regiment Armory, Archives of the Transport Workers Union of America,

Collections of Papers

American Irish Historical Society, New York City American Irish Historical Society Records Catholic Club of Greater New York Records Friends of Irish Freedom Records The Guild of Catholic Lawyers Records Society of the Friendly Sons of

Daniel

F.

St.

Patrick Records

Cohalan Papers

Reverend Donald M. O'Callaghan Papers

New York New York New York

Vincent, Riverdale,

New York Province,

Archives of the Sisters of Mercy,

Butler Library,

Columbia University,

New York City

Oral History Research Office:

William O'Dwyer (1950) Paul

O'Dwyer

(1962)

James A. Farley (1957) Edward J. Flynn( 1950) Rare Book and Manuscript Library: Kilroe Collection

Mitchel and Purroy Family Papers Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.

Archbishop John Hughes Papers Papers of the Fenian Brotherhood Richard

J.

Purcell Papers

lona College,

Michael Irish

J.

New Rochelle, New York

O'Brien Papers

American Center

of Nassau, Suffolk

and Queens, Mineola,

New York

New York Gaelic Society Library

New York City

Municipal Archives and Records Center, Fiorello H. La

Guardia Papers

William O'Dwyer Papers National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland

John Devoy Papers Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa Papers National

Museum of American History,

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

John D. Crimmins Collection

New-York

Historical Society,

Devlin and

Company

New York City

Papers

John Burke Papers

Manuscript and Archives Division,

New York Public Library, New York City

William Bourke Cockran Papers Charles Patrick Daly Papers

Henry George Papers Jane

Vemer Mitchel

Papers

John Quinn Collection St.

John's University, Jamaica,

O'Dv^er Papers Tamiment Institute/Robert

New York

Paul

F.

Wagner Labor Archives,

New York University, New York

City

Michael

J.

Quill Councilmanic Papers

Newspapers

(All available

on microfilm at the

New

York Public

Library, unless otherwise noted.)

Shamrock, or Hibernian Chronicle, New York, N.Y.: (12/15/1810) to vol. 3, no. 26 (6/5/1813). Shamrock,

New

1814) to vol. series

vol

1,

York, N.Y: E. Gillespy and T. 1,

1

(9/2/1815).

no. 33 (8/16/1817).

Gillespy (weekly), vol.

(weekly), vol.

1,

no.

1,

1

no.

1

(6/18/

Suspended publication 1/28/1815; resumed new Suspended (8/17/1816); resumed (12/2/1816) to vol. 2,

no. 23 (1/28/1815).

no.

E.

O'Connor

New

Irisb-Amehcan,

Company

York, N.Y.: Lynch, Cole and

(8/12/1849) until ceased 1915

(?).

(weekly), vol.

1,

no.

1

Scattered issues missing 1849-1903, 1906-1914;

single issue 1915.

New

hish-Amehcan Advance,

York, N.Y.: Michael B.

Ryan

(weekly), vol.

1,

no.

1

(3/12/1832).

The

Irish

to 1861

The

New York,

News,

N.Y.:

Thomas

Meagher

F.

(weekly), vol.

1,

no.

1

(4/12/1856)

Microfilm begins 1858.

(?).

New

Irish People,

York, N.Y.: Michael

J.

O'Leary and

Company

(weekly), no.

1

(1/20/1866) to no. 399 (9/13/1873). Microfilm of one issue only, 1867.

The The

Irish Citizen,

New

York, N.Y.: John Mitchel, editor (weekly), vol.

5,

Irish World,

New York,

1

1,

no.

1

(10/19/

no. 38 (7/27/1872). Scattered issues missing, 1867-1868.

1867) to vol.

(9/10/1870) to vol.

9,

Industrial Liberator,

N.Y.: Irish

World Publishing Company (weekly),

no. 16 (12/14/1878).

vol.

1,

no.

Renamed TAe/risiiWor7d and AjTierican

New York, N.Y.: Irish World and American Industrial Liberator

Company (weekly), vol. 9, no. 17 (12/21/1878) to vol. 82, no. 4, 242 (12/15/1951). Renamed The Irish World and American Industrial Liberator and the Gaelic

New York, N.Y. (weekly), vol. 82, no. 4243 (12/22/1951) to 1984. New York, New York: John Devoy (weekly) 1881-85 Various issues

American,

The Irish Nation,

(?).

mutilated.

The Gaelic American, l,no.

(9/ 19/

1

Irish Echo,

New

New York,

N.Y.:

GaeUc American Publishing Co.

(weekly), vol.

1903) to vol. 48, no. 3459 (12/ 15/ 1951).

York: Charles

F.

Connolly/Patrick Grimes (weekly), vol.

1

(1928) to

present (Microfilm 1935, 1938^0, 1944-45, 1949-52, 1954, 1956-88, 1990-91).

The

New York,

Irish Voice,

N.Y.: Niall

O'Dowd,

vol.

1,

no.

1

(12/1987) to present (not

microfilmed).

Select Secondary Sources

New York Port, 1815-1860. New York: 1939. New York: A History of the World's Most Exhilarating-Challenging City.

Albion, Robert G. The Rise of Allen, Ohver.

New York:

Addison Wesley, 1990.

Bayor, Ronald H. Neighbors in Conflict:

The

Irish,

Germans, fews, and Italians of New

York City, 1929-1941. 2d ed. Urbana: University of Bellush, Jewel and Netzer, Dick, eds.

Urban

Illinois Press, 1988.

New York Style.

Politics

Armonk,

N.Y.:

M.

E.Sharpe, 1990. Bennett, William H. Catholic Footsteps in

Old New

York.

New York: Schwartz, Kirwin

andFauss, 1909.

The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. BilUngton, Ray Allen. The Protestant Crusade: A Study of the Origins of American

Bernstein, Iver.

Nativism.

New York:

Bradley,

Ann

Bridges,

Amy. A City in

Politics.

Macmillan, 1938.

K. History of the Irish in America. Secaucus: 1986.

the Republic: Antebellum

Brinkley, Alan. Voices of Protest:

New York: Vintage Books, Brown, Thomas. 1966.

New York and the Origins of Machine

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Irish

Huey Long,

Father

Coughhn and the Great Depression

1983.

American Nationalism, 1870-1890.

Philadelphia:

J.

B. Lippincott,

P. The New York Irish: Theii View of Ameiican Foreign Pohcy. 1914-1921. New York: Amo Press, 1976. Callow, Alexander B. The Tweed Ring. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Buckley, John

Carroll, Francis

M. American Opinion and

the Irish Question, 1910-1923. Dublin: Gill

and MacMillan, 1978. Casey, Daniel and Rhodes, Robert

New York: AMS Press,

American

eds. Irish

E.,

Fiction: Essays in Criticism.

1979.

The

Clark, Dennis. Hibernia America:

and Regional

Irish

Cultures. Westport, Conn.:

Greenwood Press, 1986. Cooney, John. The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman. New York: Time Books, 1984. Curran, Robert Emmet. Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Shaping of Conservative

New York: Amo Press,

Catholicism in America, 1878-1902.

Czitrom, Daniel. "Underworlds and Underdogs: Big PoUtics in

New

York, 1889-1913." Journal of

Tim

1978.

Sullivan and Metropolitan

American History 78

(Sept. 1991):

536-58. Diner, Hasia. Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant

Women in

the Nineteenth

Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.

Dolan,

Jay.

Ind.:

Catholic Revivalism: The American Experience, 1830-1900. Notre Dame,

University of Notre

Dolan, Jay

P.

Dame

Press, 1978.

The Immigrant Church,

New

York's Irish

and German

Catholics, 1815-

1965. Baltimore, 1975.

E "Catholic New York New York University, 1982.

Donnelly, James diss..

and

New

York

Socialists,

1870-1920." Ph.D.

and Revolutionary America, 1760-1820. Dublin:

Doyle, David N. Ireland, Irishmen,

Mercier Press, 1981.

Dubofsky, Melvyn.

When Workers

Amherst: Univeristy Erie,

Stephen Politics,

P.

of

Organize:

New

York City in the Progressive Era.

Massachusetts Press, 1968.

Rainbow's End:

Irish

Americans and the Dilemmas

of

Urban Machine

1840-1985. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Ernst, Robert.

Immigrant

Life in

New York

City, 1825-1863.

New York,

King's

Crovm

Press, 1949; reprint, Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1994.

Fanning, Charles. The Irish Voice in America: Irish American Fiction from the

1

760s to

the 1980s. Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky Press, 1990. Farley,

New York: 970. Women Religious and the Care

Reverend John M. The New York Police: Colonial Times to 1901.

Fitzgerald,

Maureen. "The Perils of 'Passion and Poverty':

of Single

Women in New York City,

1

1845-1890." U.S. Catholic Historian

10, nos.

1-2(19901:45-58. Foner, Eric. "Class, Ethnicity, and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: Irish

America." Marxist Perspectives

1,

The Land League and

no. 2 (1978): 6-55.

Freeman, Joshua. In Transit: The Transport Workers Union in New York City,

New York:

Oxford University

Gibson, Florence

E.

The Attitudes

Affairs, 1848-1892. Gilje,

Paul A. The

Road

New York: to

1

933-1 966.

Press, 1989.

of the

New

York Irish Toward State and National

Columbia University

Mobocracy. Chapel

Hill, N.C.:

Press, 1951.

University of North Carohna

Press, 1987.

Glazer,

Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P. Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto and Irish of New York City. Cambridge, 1963, MIT Press,

Ricans, Jews, Italians 1970.

Goodfriend, Joyce D. Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial

City 1664-1 730. Princeton,

N.J.:

1880-1886." In Richard

New York

L. Ehrlich, ed..

,

New York

City,

Immigrants in Industrial America, 1850-

1920. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1977.

Gordon, Michael. The Orange Riots:

Irish Political Violence in

New York City,

1870 and

1871. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Groneman,

— She Pays as a Man': Women Workers in a

Carol. "'She Earns as a Child

Mid- Nineteenth Century Nev^f York City Community." In Milton Cantor and Bruce Laurie, eds., Class,

Sex and the

Woman Worker. Westport, Cotm.: Greenwood Press,

1977.

Hammack,

David. Power and Society: Greater

New York: Columbia University Press, Henderson, Thomas.

Tammany Hall and

New York: Amo Press,

1976.

Hershkowitz, Leo. Tweed's

New

York:

New York

at the Turn of the Century.

1982.

the

New Immigrants:

Another Look. Garden

The Progressive

Years.

City, N.Y.: Doubleday,

1977. Joyce,

Wilham

1883.

L.

Editors

and

Ethnicity:

New York: Amo Press,

A

History of the Irish-American Press 1848-

1976.

Lowi, Theodore ].At the Pleasure of the Mayor: Patronage and Power in New York City, 1898-1958. New York: Free Press, 1964.

Mandelbaum, Seymour J. Boss Tweed's New York. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1 965. Mann, Arthur. LaGuardia: A Fighter against His Times, 1882-1933. Chicago: University of

Chicago

Press, 1959.

Mann, Arthur. LaGuardia Comes To Power 1933. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1965. McLeod, Hugh. "Catholicism and the New York Irish." In Jim Obelkevich, Lynda Roper, and Ralph Samuel, eds., Disciplines of Faith: Studies in Religion, Pohtics and Patriarchy. New York: Routledge, Keegan and Paul, 1987. McNickle, Chris. To Be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Miller, Kerby A. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America.

New York: Miller,

Oxford University

Press, 1985.

Wilbur R. Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in

New York and London,

1830-

1870. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

Model, Suzatme. "The Ethnic Niche and the Structure of Opportunity: Immigrants and Minorities in New York City." In Michael Katz, ed.. The Underclass Debate: Views from History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. MoUenkopf, John H. and Manuel Castells, eds. Dual City: Restructuring New York. New York: Russell Sage, 1991. Morris, Charles R. The Cost of

Experiment.

New York:

jqj

Princeton University Press, 1992.

Gordon, Michael. "Irish Immigrant Culture and the Labor Boycott in

Good

Intentions:

New

York City and the Liberal

W. W. Norton, 1980.

Moscow, Warren. What Have You Done for Me Lately^ The Ins and Outs of New York City Politics. Englewood CUffs, N.J.: Prenrice Hall, 1967. Murphy, Richard C and Mannion, Lawrence ].The History of the Society of the Friendly .

Sons of Saint Patrick in the City of New York,

1

784-1955.

New York:

J.

C. Dillon,

1962.

Mushkat, Jerome. Tammany: The Evolution of a Political Machine: 1789-1865. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1971.

Nolan, Janet Aim. Ourselves Alone: Female Emigration from Ireland, 1825-1920. Lexington, Ky: University of Kentucky Press, 1989.

'

^°^'^'^^

^

Old New York: The Irish Dead in Trinity and New York; American Irish Historical Society, 1928.

O'Brien, Michael. In yards.

Paul's Church-

St.

O'Connor, John Cardinal and Koch, Edward I. His Eminence and Hizzoner: Exchange. New York: William Morrow, 1989. O'Connor, Richard. Hell's Kitchen: The Roaring Days of Philadelphia:

J.

New

A Candid

Wild West

York's

Side.

B. Lippincott, 1958.

O'Dwyer, William. Beyond the Golden Door

New

York:

St.

John's University Press,

1987.

New

Pomerantz, Sidney.

York,

An American

City 1783-1803.

New

York:

Columbia

University Press, 1939. Ravitch, Diane. The Great School Wars:

New

York City, 1805-1973:

Public Schools as Battlefields of Social Change. Reid, B. L.

The Man From

New York:

New York:

A

History of the

Basic Books, 1974.

fohn Quinn and His Friends.

New York:

Oxford

New York:

Oxford

University Press, 1968. Richardson, James

F.

The

New York Police:

Colonial Times to 1901.

University Press, 1970. Riordan, Wilham. Plunkitt of

Tammany Hall. New York:

Dutton, 1963.

A Case Study of Irish New York: Amo Press, 1976. History of New York City. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse Uni-

Rodechko, James Paul. Patrick Ford and His Search for America:

American fournalism, 1870-1913. Rosenwaike,

Ira.

Population

versity Press, 1972. Scisco, Louis

Political

P.

Nativism in

New York State. New York: Columbia University

Press, 1901.

"The

Shefter, Martin.

Electoral Foundations of the Political Machine:

1884-1897." In Joel Sibley,

New York City,

AOan C. Bogue, and William Flannigan, eds.. The History

of American Electoral Behavior Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978. Sleeper, Jim.

The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the W. Norton, 1990.

Politics of

Race in

New York.

New York: W.

Snyder, Robert. The Voice of the City: Vaudeville

New York:

Oxford University

and Popular Culture

in

New

York.

Press, 1989.

Spann, Edward K. The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840-1857.

New York: Columbia

University Press, 1981. Starr, Roger.

The Rise and

Tansill, Charles C.

Fall of

New York

America and the Fight

City.

New

for Irish

York: Basic Books, 1985.

Freedom. 1866-1922.

New

York:

Devin-Adair, 1957. Truxes,

Thomas M. Irish-American

Trade, 1660-1783. Cambridge:

Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1988.

Weiss,

Nancy

J.

Charles Francis Murphy, 1858-1924. Northhampton, Mass.: Smith

College, 1968.

Wesser, Robert. Politics,

A

Response

1902-1918.

to Progressivism:

The Democratic Party and

New York: New York University Press,

New

York

1986.

Isle: Ireland and the Irish in American Sheet Music, 1800 to 1920." Eiie—Ireland 26 (Spring 1991): 19-45. Wittke, Carl. The Irish in America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956.

Williams, William H. A. "From Lost Land to Emerald

For further sources see Shea,

R. Casey. The Irish Experience in New York City: A Select New York: New York Irish History Roundtable, 1995. Distributed by

Ann M. and Marion

Bibhography.

Syracuse University Press.

Contributors

Ronald

H. Bayor

is

professor of history at Georgia

He

Journal of American Ethnic History.

is

Tech and editor

of the

the author of Neighbors in ConfUct:

Germans, Jews and Itahans of New York City, 1929-1941 (1978), and Reform (1993), a coauthor of Engineering the New South, Georgia Tech, 1885-1985 {1985], editor oi Neighborhoods in Urban

The

Irish,

Fiorello LaGuardia: Ethnicity

America

(1982),

and author

of the

forthcoming Race and the Shaping of

Twentieth-Century Atlanta.

David Brundage

is

associate professor of

sity of California, Santa Cruz.

He

is

community

studies at the Univer-

the author of The

Making

of Western

Labor Radicalism: Denver's Organized Workers, 1878-1905 (1994) and a coauthor of Who Built America^ Working People and the Nation 's Economy, Politics,

Culture and Society.

history of Irish

He is currently working on a book on the social

American nationalism

in the first

two decades

of the

twen-

tieth century.

Marion R. Casey is completing her Ph.D. degree in American history at New York University. She is the historian and associate producer of From Shore Music in New York City (video documentary, main entry on the Irish in the Encyclopedia of New York City (1995). She is also a coauthor, with Ann M. Shea, of The Irish Experience in New York City: A Select Bibliography (1995). She was presito Shore: Irish Traditional

1993) and author of the

dent of the

New York Irish History Roundtable (1987-92) and has served on the

Board of Directors of the

Mary

Irish Institute since 1989.

Corcoran

is

a lecturer in sociology at

Kildare, Ireland.

She

is

the author of Irish Illegals: Transients between

Societies (1993).

Her current research

P.

Maynooth

College,

County

Two

interests include a study of Irish-bom

entrepreneurs in the United States.

William E. Devlin teaches history at Darien High School, Darien, Connecticut, and

is

Dan-

instructor of geography at Western Connecticut State University,

A former historic preservation consultant,

bury, Connecticut.

ble for directing architectural and historic resources surveys

he was responsi-

and

for

National

Register of Historic Places nominations in cities and towns throughout western

Connecticut.

He

is

Commissioners

We Crown Them All: An Illustrated History A Handbook for Connecticut Historic District

the author of

of Danbury, Conn. (1984) and

and

(1986),

of

numerous articles on subjects of local history News-Times of Danbury, Connecticut.

(including the hat industry) for the

Hasl\

Diner

R.

is

professor of

American Studies

at the

University of Mary-

land at College Park. Her major publications include In the Almost Promised

Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915-1935

Time

(1977), Erin's

Daughters in

Female Migration in the Nineteenth Century (1984), and A Gathering: The Second Migration (vol. 2, The Jewish People in

America:

Irish

for

America). Joe

Doyle

is

president of the

New

York Labor History Association and former

executive director of the American Labor Museum in Haledon, historian,

New Jersey. A labor

he vmtes about the Irish in the American labor movement, the Congress

of Industrial Organizations,

and the

New York waterfront. He is currently writing New

a history of the National Maritime Union, as well as editing a journal for the

York

Irish History

Roundtable on the impact of the

Charles Fanning

is

1

840s Famine.

professor of English and history and director of Irish

Studies at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. His books include Finley Peter

Dunne and Mr Dooley: The Chicago

Years,

The Exiles of

Erin: Nine-

teenth-Century Irish-American Fiction, and The Irish Voice in America:

American

Fiction from the 1760s to the 1980s. His current

Irish-

work includes the

republication of James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan and a selection of Farrell's short fiction.

Paul A.

Gilje

author of The

is

professor of history at the University of

Road

to

Mobocracy: Popular Disorder

in

Oklahoma. He

New York

1834 (1987) and Rioting in American History (forthcoming).

He

is

City, 1

the

763-

has edited

New Yorkers at Work in the Early Republic with New York in the Age of the Constitution, 1775-1800

Keepers of the Revolution:

Howard

B.

Rock

(1992),

with William Pencak

(1992),

and American Artisan: Crafting Social

Identity,

1750-1850 with Howard examining American

B.

sailors

Rock and Robert Asher

(1995).

Currently he

and waterfront workers in the age

Joyce D. Goodfriend, professor of history

at the

is

of revolution.

University of Denver,

author of Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial

is

the

New York

1664-1730 (1992) and "The Historiography of the Dutch in Colonial Eric Nooter and Patricia U. Bonomi, eds., Colonial Dutch

City,

America" in Studies:

An Interdisciplinary Approach

a special interest in the ethnic

Leo Hershkowitz

is

(1988).

She

is

with

a social historian

and religious history of the American colonies.

professor of history at

Queens College

of the City Univer-

New York. He has written and lectured extensively on New York history. Included in his publications are Tweed's New York: Another Look; Letters of Abigail Franks (coeditor); Wills of Early New York Jews; and Courts and Law in Early New York. sity of

Graham Hodges the author of

is

New

associate professor of history at Colgate University.

is

York City Cartmen, 1667-1850, and several books on the

history of African Americans in

Alan M. Kraut,

He

New York and New Jersey.

The American University in WashHuddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921 (1982) and Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the "Immigrant Menace" (1994), coauthor of American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933-1945 (1987), and editor of Crusaders and Compromisers (1983). He is currently writing a biography of an eminent Jewish immigrant physician, U.S. Public Health Service epidemiologist Dr. Joington, D. C.

is

professor of history at

the author of The

seph Goldberger.

Lawrence

McCaffrey, professor of history (emeritus), Loyola University of number of articles on Irish and Irish-American history and literature, four books on Irish history and two on Irish America, coauthored a book on Irish history and another on Irish America, edited and contributed to a book on Irish history and coedited and contributed another on Irish America. J.

Chicago, has published a

McCaffrey cofounded the American Conference on its

Irish Studies

and served as

Assumption College

in Worcester,

secretary and president.

John

F.

McClymer

is

professor of history at

Massachusetts. His most recent publications include ga

till

Amerika: The

Swedish Creation of an Ethnic Identity for Worcester, Massachusetts (1994), which he wrote with Charles W. Estus Sr., and Images of Women in American Popular Culture, 2d

ed., of

which he

is

coeditor.

study of ethnic rivalries in Worcester, which

He

is

He

is

currently working

on

yn Contributors

a

tentatively titled Killed Because

Called Swede "Irish" in Saloon!

Colleen McDannell is associate professor of history at the University of Utah and holds the Sterling McMurrin Chair in Religious Studies. She is the author

The Christian

Home

712

of

Contributors

History, with Bernard

in Victorian

Lang

(1988),

America: 1840-1900

(1986),

Heaven:

A

and Material Christianity: Religion and

Popular Culture in America (1995).

John R. McKjvigan is associate professor of history at West Virginia University and the editor of

of the

Correspondence of Frederick Douglass.

The War against Proslavery Religion and more than 25

American

He

articles

is

the author

and essays on

history.

Chris McNickle City (1993).

is

author of To Be

He received his Ph.D.

currently vice president at

J.

P.

Mayor of New

York: Ethnic Pohtics in the

degree from the University of Chicago.

Morgan

in

He

is

New York City.

Timothy J. Meagher is currently archivist and museum director at the CathoUc University of America. He has published a collection of essays. From Paddy to Studs: Irish 1

American Communities in the Turn of the Century Era, 1880 on Irish American and American Catholic history

920, as well as articles

the Journal of Social History, the

New England Quarterly,

and in a number

to

in of

collections of essays.

Rebecca S. Miller is currently a doctoral student in ethnomusicology at Brown University. She is a public sector folklorist/ethnomusicologist and has documented and presented the traditional arts of a number of immigrant and refugee communities throughout the United States since 1982. Her work has culminated in festivals, publications, recordings, and radio and video documentaries. She

is

the producer of the award-winning public radio series

"Old Traditions-New Sounds" and works Public Radio and Monitor Radio. She

mentary video From Shore

is

as a freelance reporter for National

the coproducer/writer of the docu-

to Shore: Irish Traditional

Music

in

New

York

City (1993).

Kenneth

E.

Nilsen

is

associate professor of Celtic Studies at Saint Francis

Xavier University, where he has held the Sister Saint Veronica Chair of Gaelic Studies since 1984.

He

He was president

of the

New York Gaelic Society

modern Celtic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton) and has made numerous recordings of speakers of these languages in North America and in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany. He has published articles in Ainm, the Canadian Journal of Irish in 1967-68.

has studied

all

the

Studies, Celtica, Eigse, Eire/Ireland, the

Harvard Celtic Colloquium, and

several other journals.

David M. Reimers is professor of history at New York University. He is the author of White Protestantism and the Negro (1965), and Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America (1992); coauthor of All the Nations under A Racial and Ethnic History of New York City (1995), Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigration (1988), and Natives and Strangers (1990).

Heaven:

John T. Ridge is the author of The History of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Ladies' Auxiliary of Brooklyn (1985), Erin's Sons in America: The Ancient Order of Hibernians (1986), The St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York (1988), The Flatbush Irish (1990), and Sligo in New York: The Irish from Co.

many articles. He was one of the founders

Sligo,

1849-1991

of the

New York Irish History Roundtable and served as its president

[1991], in addition to

and vice president

(

1985-86)

for local history (1994-96).

Robertson is instructor of history and philosophy at Allegany Thomas Community College, Cumberland, Maryland. He is currently completing his J.

There

dissertation entitled "Because

Economic and

1934," at West Virginia University. articles

Is

No

Political Stabilization in the

He

is

Coal:

The

Struggle for Social,

Bituminous Coal Industry, 1920-

the author and coauthor of several

on the coal industry and coal communities and

present working

is at

on several projects dealing with community studies and working-class history in the

Western Maryland region.

Robert W. Snyder of

a writer and historian with a special interest in the history

is

New York City and is currently managing editor of Media Studies Journal at the

Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. He

The Voice of the

City: Vaudeville

and Popular Culture

in

is

the author of

New York

(1989)

and

coauthor, with Rebecca Zurier, of Metropohtan Lives (forthcoming), a study of the

Ashcan School

folklore

Edward

Spann

K.

New York. He is also completing a New York City transit workers.

and turn-of-the century

artists

book on the

and is

oral history of

Ideals

and

Politics:

1880 (1972) and The

more recent books

He

professor of history at Indiana State University.

authored four books, two of which relate to his chapter on the

has

New York Irish,

New York Intellectuals and American Liberalism, 1820New Metropolis: New York City 1840-1857 [1983]. Two are Brotherly

Tomorrows: Movements

Society in America. 1820-1920 (1989) and Hopedale:

for Cooperative

From Commune

to

Company Town, 1840-1920 (1992). Among even more recent and as yet unpublished works

is

a projected book

during the Civil

on New York City and the North Atlantic world

War era.

John Kuo Wei Tchen is associate professor in the Department of Urban Studies at Queens College, the director of the Asian/American Center at Queens College (CUNY), and a cofounder of the New York Chinatown History Project (1980),

A version of this

now

called the

Museum

of

Chinatown: The Racialization of Public Culture lis,

Chinese in the Americas.

essay will appear in his forthcoming book in the

New York

before

American Metropo-

1784-1882.

Walter

J.

University,

Walsh

is

associate professor in the School of Law, Seton Hall

where he teaches

legal history

and

legal philosophy.

He

has also

713 Contributors

714

taught at the University of Chicago and at the Central European University in

Contributors

Budapest, Hungary.

was at

Bom in Dublin,

he trained as a lawyer in Ireland, where he

also a director of the Free Legal Advice Centers.

He

is

completing his

Harvard University and writing a jurisprudential biography on the

thought of William Sampson (1764-1836).

S.J.D.

life

and

Index

Abie's Irish Rose (play), 7, 579nl3 Abolitionist movement, 100-101, 115, 193-94, 203. See also Slavery

Abortion, 430, 432 Abyssinian Baptist Church, 112 "Academia," 541 Acquitania (ship], 366 Act of Union of 1800,27 actors. See Theater Act Up, 684n64 Adams, John, 53 Adelaide (ship), 130 "Adhbhar ar m-Broin" (O'Beirn), 271 Advertising, in clothing industry, 186 Affirmative action, 427 AFL. See American Federation of Labor African Americans, 6, 83, 100-101, 105, 107-24, 114, 131, 134, 145^6, 227, 229, 422, 423, 542, 603-08n; affirmative action and, 427; American Women Pickets and, 357, 366-67, 370-71, 544; Chinese "superiority" to, 150; Civil War and, 193-94, 203-5, 207; co-existence with Irish, 108-9, 112-13; Irish intermarriage with, 19, 107, 123-24, 130, 140-42, 607-08n59, 608n60, 608n61, 608n64; labor movement and, 100-101, 302, 318, 654n89; neighborhoods of, 110-12; occupations of, 116-21, 13940; in the police department, 427-28; politics and, 1 16-17, 426, 537; suffrage for, 15, 132; theatrical performers' ridicule of, 143, 145; in Washington Heights/In wood

neighborhood, 444, 445^9, 450, 452, 456, 458, 459, 688n46. See also Race riotS; Slavery African Mission, 244 Aheam, John P., 378

AIDS, 168, 430, 431, 616n67 Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 423 Alamo, attack on, 16 Albany, New York, 624nl0 Alcoholism, 72, 160, 220-21; as a subject in literature by Irish American writers, 515-17; in Washington Heights/Inwood neighborhood, 456 Ale and Porter Brewers Association, 304 Alger, Horatio, 139 Alien and sedition laws, 70, 590n26 Alienist.

The

(Carr), 7

Allen, Stephen, 591 n39 Allen, William H., 382, 389

Alley Cats (gang), 444-45 All Saints' Parish (Manhattan), 413

Alms House,

21,

99

Alvarez, Luis, 448

Amalgamated Association

of Street

Railway

Employees, 317

Amalgamated Carpenters, 304 Amalgamated Clothing Workers, 316, 318 Amalgamated Trades and Labor Union (ATLU), 304, 306

Amalgamated Woodworkers

International

Union, 318 Ambrose, James (Yankee Sullivan), 25

716 Index

American and Foreign Christian Union, 257 American Armed Forces Network, 487, 495 American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, 321, 360, 372 American Bible Society, 257 American Bond and Mortgage Company, 400 American Can Company, 408 American Citizen, 52, 53 American Colonization Society, 1 16 American Commission on Conditions in Ireland, 372 American Commission on Irish Independence, 351, 368 American Committee for Italian Immigration, 691 n49 American Federation of Labor (AFL|, 227, 1, 316, 317, 318-19, 332, 628n50; Catholic Church and, 314; politics and,

304, 31

308 American Federation of Musicians, Local 802, 693-94n37 American Institute Exhibition, 237 American Irish Historical Society, 64In23 American Irish Society, 21 American Labor Party, 424 American Land League. See Irish National Land League of America American Legion, 393 American Longshoremen's Union, 367 American Protective Association, 312 American Protestant Society, 30-31, 257 American Protestant Union, 16 American Rainbow [Hackctt], 513 American Revolution, 50 American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America's War Aims, 351, 357-73, 544, 660-65n; arrests of members, 362, 662n28; British embassy protest of, 361-62; Marcus Garvey's support of, 367, 370-71; original purpose of, 360 Amityville, New York, 399 Amsterdams (gang], 443 Ancient and Most Benevolent Order of the Friendly Brothers of St. Patrick, 45 Ancient Order of Hibernians |AOH|, 281, 282, 442, 458, 639nl, 640nl4; gay participation in parade and, 433; immigration legalization and, 478; Irish nationalism and, 360; ladies auxiharies of, 359, 661n9; Molly Maguire episode and, 279; reasons for success of, 278; Woodrow Wilson and, 351

Anderson, Isaac, 76 An Gaodhal, 268, 272. See also The Gael Anglican Church, 42-43, 50 Anglo-Irish, 42^3, 546 Anglo-Irish War, 224, 225, 351, 627n49 Anti-Catholicism, 50-52. See also Nativism Antietam, Battle of, 200-201 Anti-Poverty Society, 310, 323 Antrim, County, 287, 288t, 289t, 434f, 639n6, 641n26

Appo, George Washington, 126, 127, 148, 608n4 Appo, Quimbo, 146, 147, 542, 608nl, 610n41; background of, 126-28; significance of story, 148-52; trial of, 134-38 Appointment in Samaiia (O'Hara), 346 Appomattox surrender, 208

The Arcade, 123 Ardree Company, 413 Armagh, County, 288t, 289t Anah-na-Pogue (Boucicault), 232 24 Asbestos Workers, 317 Ashbridge, Elizabeth, 46 Asian Americans, 6, 535. See also Chinese Asquith, Herbert, 330, 359 Assing, Bridget, 128 Assing, William, 128 Associated Tammany Societies, 651n56 Association for the Improvement of the Conditions of the Poor, 38 Association of the Friends of Ireland, 64 Astor, William B., 187 Astoria (Queens), 399, 400, 403 Astoria Light, Heat and Power Company, 403 Astor Place Theatre Riot, 17, 97, 1 16 Artists,

Athletics. See Sports

Athlone Guild of Friendship, 639^0nl3 Atif, Joseph, 459 Atlantic Dock (Brooklyn), 96 Atlas, 169, 183

ATLU. See Amalgamated Trades and Labor Union At Weddings and Wakes (McDermott), 520-22 Augustus Street riot, 82, 83 Auioia 7 (Mallon), 523-24, 526 Australian Irish, 511 Available Light (Currie), 515 Ayres, Tommy, 503f

Back-Lane Parliament (Catholic Convention of 1793), 164 Bacock, Paul, 223

Bagenal, Philip, 324-25 Bail bonds, 77,

598n29

Baker, Jean, 147 Baker, John, 123 Baker, Julia, 123 Ballinakill Ceili Band,

486

Baltic (ship), 364-44, 368

Baltimore, Maryland, 628n56 Baltimore Council, 244 Bamber, James, 16 Bamber, John, 16 Banished Children of Eve, (Quinn), 6 Banks, 344

Bank War, 596n91

A&P (Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company), 403

Barden, Graham, 348 Barnes, James, 136 Bamswell, George, 20 Barry, Daniel, 255 Barry s (sports team), 290 Bartlett, Caleb, 23

Appo, Catherine Fitzpatrick, 127, I34-J8,

Baseball, 231, 404f,

Antrim Men, 640n20

AOH.

See Ancient Order of Hibernians

629n66

Basketball Diaries, The (Carroll), 449-50

Bayley, Richard, 166 Bay Ridge (Brooklyn), 399, 400, 422

BBC, 487, 495 Beame, Abraham, 537 Beard, Charles A., 670n75 Beatles, 495 Beautiful

and

the

Damned. The

Bowyer, Brendan, 495 Boxing, 25, 231 (Fitzgerald),

346 Beck, Louis, 127-28, 134-35 Bedlow's Island, 155 Beirne, Frank, 433

County Antrim, Ireland, 40-41, 351 James W., 306 William H., 116, 118 Bellamy, Carol, 426 Belfast,

Bell, Bell,

Bellevue Hospital, 21, 159, 165 Bellomont, Earl of, 44, 586n69 Belton, Maria, 26 Benevolent associations, 71-72, 94, 104. See also Irish county societies Bennett, James Gordon, 164, 576n4 Bennett, William, 375, 391 Bergen County, New Jersey, 395, 421 "Best Years of Our Lives, The" (Winch), 513 Beyond the Melting Pot (Moynihan), 8 Bierne, Deborah, 360 Big bands, 487-88, 490-91, 496 Birch, Leroy,

448

Birth control, 432

Black Ball shipping Blacklists,

line, 18

305

Blacks. See African

Americans

Blakes and the Flanagans, The (Sadlier), 23 Blissert, Robert, 178-79, 188, 304, 306, 312, 323, 648n28

Bloody Sunday, 434

BMT East

River subway tunnel, 399, 403

Boarders, 406, 407-8,

Boardinghouse

Bowery Boys, 143 Bowery Life (Connors), 144 Bowery Theater, 1 1

677n50

trade, 22, 109, 120; African

Americans and, 1 1 1, 604nl6; languages spoken in, 253 Board of Aldermen, 27 Board of Commissioners of Emigration, 91 Board of Councilmen, 27 Board of Estimate, 424 BoerWar, 315, 350 Boland, Harry, 368, 644n59, 663n38 Bolshevik revolution, 393 Bonfire of the Vanities (Wolfe), 7 Booksellers, 23 Boot and Shoe Workers' International Union,

311,316 Born in Brooklyn (Montague), 512 Boru (pen name), 267 Bosnian refugees, 473 Boston, Massachusetts, 4, 92, 534-35, 624nl0; clothing industry in, 191; Irish county societies in, 640-4 ln21; Irish nationalism and, 540; parochial schools in, 541, 701nl7; politics in, 341, 536, 537; residential patterns in, 674n22 Boston system of clothing manufacturing, 191 Bothy Band, 505 Boucicault, Dion, 25, 232 Bouike, Ulick, 268

Boyce, Ed, 653n80 Boycott, Charles Curmingham, 627n49 Boycotts, 227, 305-6, 307, 627n49 Boyle, James, 23 Boyle, T. Coraghessan, 516-17 Boyne, Battle of, 61-62, 65, 82 Boys of the Lough, 505 Bradley, Sr. M. Prudentia, 202 Brady, Cryan and Colleran, 41 1-12,

679-80n 79-83 Brady, Hugh, 41 Brady, James T, 207 Brady, John E, 228 Brady, John R., 27 Brady, Michael J., 411-12,

679n79

Braham, David, 232 Braisted, William, 180

Brann, Fr. Henry, 246 Brass Workers, 306 Brattan, William, 7 Bread-and-butter immigrants, 463-64, 468 Breezy Point (Queens), 677n60

Brehon Law Society, 478 Brennan, Christopher, 696n9 Brennan, Joseph R, 298 Breslin, Howard, 347 Breslin, Jimmy, 7, 424, 511,514 Brice, John, 26 Bricklayers' Union, 307, 317 Brick Presbyterian Church, 41^2 Bridgeport Bus (Howard), 514 Bridget Loves Bernie (television program), 7 Brief Account of the Author's Interview with His Countrymen. A (O'Donovan), 255 Britain. See

Great Britain

British army, Irish regiments in, 12, 14,

37-38, 45 Brody, J.P, 26 Bronx, New York: Greater

New York Char624nl3; Irish-born naturalizations Irish-bom population in, 555t; Irish immigrants in, 474-75;

ter and,

in, 564t;

new

occupations/employment opportunities in, 404; residential patterns in, 231, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402, 408, 413, 414, 422, 674n22, 675n29. See also South Bronx Brooke, Chariotte, 262 Brooklyn, New York, 624nl0, 628n56; clothing industry in, 189; Greater New York Charter and, 217, 624nl3; Irish ancestry represented in, 567t; Irish-born naturalizations in, 564t; Irish-born population in, 93, 555t, 558-59t, 564t; Irish county populations represented in, 286, 287, 288t, 289t; Irish county societies in, 283, 296, 640n20; Irish stock in, 562-63t; residential patterns in, 231, 395, 396, 399, 400, 402t, 408, 414, 422, 674n22 The Brooklyn Book of the Dead (Stephens),

697n39

717 Index

718 Index

Brooklyn Brooklyn Brooklyn Brooklyn

Bridge, 229,

628n56

Bridge (television program|, 7 Dodgers, 23 Eagle, 188

Brooks, Philip, 39

Brooks Brothers, 179, 182, 184, 190 Brothels, 112, 122 Brotherhood of Butcher Workmen, 317 Brothers (religious), 219-20, 231, 244, 343f

Carey, Hugh, 426, 435, 436 Carey, Matthew, 65-66

Carey, Peter, 696n9

Carlow, County, 288t, 289t

Carlow Ladies Association, 679n75 Carlow Men's Society, 295 Carmelites,

Irish,

Carnarvon,

Earl,

404f

272

Carr, Caleb, 7

Brothers of the Christian School, 633n38 Brown, Rebecca, 128 Brown, William, 128

Carrigan, Andrew, 192

Brown Derby campaign, 377

Carroll, John,

Browne, Porter Emerson, 390 Browning, King, 179, 190 Brownsville (Brooklyn), 399

Carroll, Carroll,

MoUie, 362, 662n30

Brunt, Robert, 76 Buckingham, Burdette R., 387 Buckingham Report, 669n55 Buckley, Charles, 419, 426, 430f Buckley, Denis, 298, 644n53

Carroll,

Thomas, 40

Buckley, James, 426 Buckley, Michael B., 255 Buckley, Vincent, 696n9 Buckley, William F., Jr., 2, 426, 427, 683n26 Bulgarian immigrants, 473

BuU, 359 Bull Moose Party, 340 Bull Run, Battle of, 196, 197

Revenue, 26 Municipal Research, 382, 388-89 398 Burke, Joseph, 25 Burke, Fr. Joseph, 28, 257

Bureau Bureau Bureau

of City of

of Street Openings,

Carroll Club, 24

CarroU, Jim, 449-50

22 Matthew, 73

Carroll, Michael, 354f

Carroll Hall Democrats, 31

Carson, James, 37 Carters, 20, 40, 76, 97, 581n28; African

American, 116-18, 606n40 Cartman's Ward, 108 Casement, Roger, 333

Casey

(Stewart),

626n30

Casey, Gavin, 696n9 Casey, James, 180, 182 Cassiday, Edward F., 316, 652n73 Castle Garden, 92, 158, 216 Gather, Willa, 519, 520 Catholic Charities, 478 Catholic Church, 3, 102-4, 348-49, 429-33; American identity negotiated by, 578nll; bishops, ethnic background of, 630nl; debts of, 244-45; early growth of, 28-29,

Burke, Michael, 635-36nl4 Burke, Roger, 648n28 Burke, Thomas, 15

52, 103; Irish independence movement and, 350; Irish nationalism and, 324-25, 326-27, 332-33; labor movement and,

Bum, James Dawson, Bumaby, Andrew, 44 Bums, Charles, 41

221, 308-9, 310, 314, 626n26, 651-52n65; medical care and, 164-67, 613n8, 614n40, 615n50; new Irish immigrants and, 438;

Burr, Aaron,

181

52

Richard L., 28, 240, 243 Busey, Samuel, 159 Business, 13, 22-23, 94, 192, 230, 342^3. See also Financial industry; Grocery stores; Merchants; Real estate developers Butchers, 116-17, 118-19 Butler, Alban, 23 Burtsell, Fr.

Butler, James,

403^, 676n39^0

224 Montana, 540

Butt, Isaac,

Butte,

Butterfield 8 (O'Hara), 346 Byme, Jane, 324, 429

Byrne, Stephen, 93

"Cage, The" (Montague), 512 California, 534-^5. See also specific regions of

Call,

370

Callaghan, Henry, 23 Callahan, John, 181 Calvary Cemetery (Queens), 290, 299, 413 Calvert family, 49, 50 Calyo, Nicolino, lOf Campbell, Annie, 238 Caimon, Anthony. See Hart, Tony Cardinal Hayes High School (Bronx), 431

parishes, 218, 243^4, 399, 674nl9; pew and seat rentals in, 28, 245, 597n8, 631nl3; plate collections, 245; politics

and, 338, 429-31; poverty and, 221, 625n20; real estate development and, 399; socialism and, 314, 651-52n65; ThJtii Teller and, 74. See also Catholics; and names of religious orders

Catholic Catholic Catholic Catholic Catholic Catholic

Club, 674n 1 Herald, 241

Orphanage (Brooklyn), 202 Protectory (Bronx), 220f, 681n90 Question in America (Sampson), 60 Review, 282, 314 Catholics, 5, 11-12, 13, 14-17, 28, 35, 43^4, 46, 50-52, 70-73, 103^, 219-22, 226, 228, 230, 419, 540-42, 625n21; Ancient Order of Hibemians and, 278; book pubhshing 4, 23; devotional revolution and, 215-16, 218-19; disease and, 156-57; French, 253, 576n4; funeral masses and, 245; Greenwich Village riot and, 61-64, 79, 81-83; home rule movement and, 350;

and,

Irish Brigade and, 199; Italian, 342, 431; John Purroy Mitchel and, 377, 380-84; par-

tition of Ireland and, 245;

compared with

Puritans, 234-35; Alfred E. Smith and, 384-85; social work and, 99, 219-22. See also Catholic Church; Free exercise of religion; and name of religious order Catholic schools. See Parochial schools Catholic Total Abstinence Union, 220 Catholic University, 244 "Catskills, The" (Winch), 512 "Cause of Our Sorrow, The" (O'Beirn), 271 Cavanagh, Michael, 259, 264, 266 Cavan, County, 288t, 289t, 639n6 Cavan Society, 639n8, 643n44 Ceannt, Earnorm, 361 Ceili music and dances, 482, 483, 485, 487, 488, 492, 493, 494, 500, 501-2 Celtic Ishipl, 366, 370 Celtic Hall, 484 Celtic Magazine, 111 Celtic Monthly, 272 Celtic Park (Queens), 290, 291, 413, 644n52, 681n91 Celtic Park Apartments, 413-14, 680-8 ln90, 681n92-93

Celtic Players, 365, 368, Celtic rock, 695n77

663n47

Censuses: 1850, 91; 1855, 130, 172, 175; 1880, 93; 1890, 302; 1960, 449; 1970, 450; 1980, 423; 1990, 421. See also Population Centennial Exhibition of 1876, 237 Central Federated Union (CFU), 311, 317, 318-19. See also Central Labor Union Central Labor Union (CLU), 178, 306, 307, 308, 309, 311, 323, 324, 648n32, 651n56. See also Central Federated Union Central Park, 399, 401 Century Club, 24 Cermak, Anton, 341, 537 CFU. See Central Federated Union Chamber of Commerce, 20

Chambers, John, 49,

Change

of Scene,

A

53, 63, 64, 68,

(Cullinan),

588nl

528

Chanting House, 477 Charities, State Board of, 381-82 Charlton, John, 13, 39 Chelsea (Manhattan), 217, 333f, 399, 674n26 Chicago, Illinois, 4, 341; immigrants in, 641n26; Irish county societies in, 641n21; nationalism and, 540; Irish traditional music in, 692n7; parochial schools in, 541, 701nl7; pohtics in, 428-29, 536, 537 Chichesters (gang), 1 14 Chicken Soup (television program), 7 Irish

Chidwick, John, 633n35 Chieftains, 505 Children's Aid Society, 202, 220f Children's Law, 220f Child's restaurant, 404

Chinatown (Manhattan),

128, 129 Chinese, 105, 125-52, 542, 608-12n; in clothing industry, 190; criminalization of, 138^8; disease and, 167; intermarriage with, 128-30, 609nl5; Irish-Chinese mixups, 131-32, 133f; occupations of, 139-40; theatrical performers' ridicule of, 142-45 Chinese Exclusion Laws, 125, 147, 151

Cholera, 21, 100, 154, 155-56, 157-58, 159, 164-65, 166 Cholera Years, The (Rosenberg), 154 Christ Church (Manhattan), 243 Christian Brothers, 231 Christian Companion, The (Furlong), 637n41 Christian Front, 353-72, 443 Christian Mobilizers, 354, 443 Churchill, Thomas W., 386, 388 Church of England. See Anglican Church

Church

of Ireland, 42 City and Suburban Homes Company, 413-14 City Center Ballroom (Manhattan), 437, 492-94, 495, 499

Civilian

Review Board, 427 movement, 427

Civil rights

Civilservice, 229, 313, 424 Civil War, American, 33, 100, 106, 193-209,

546, 619-23n;

Cathohc

soldiers and, 199;

support of, 236, 237; effect on Irish language activity due to, 263-64, 265; Irish losses in, 200-201; labor movement and, 203^; medical care in, 201-2; miscegenation issue and, 142; orphans of, 202; support for Confederacy in, 194. See also Draft Riots Clancy, George, 177, 188 Clancy, John, 26 Clancy, Laurie, 696n9 Clancy, Lawrence, 26 Clancy Brothers, 497, 505, 506 fairs in

Clan na Gael, 225, 281, 282, 284, 305, 315, 331^3, 334, 363, 539, 647nl7; Cathohc

Church

and, 332-33; in Chicago, 540;

founding

of,

223-24; Irish county societies

and, 299; purpose

332;

of,

349; social class and,

Tammany Hall and,

226; Transport

Workers Union and, 354f;

women in,

331^2 Clare, County, 288t, 289t

Clare Men's Association, 295, 296, 299,

644n54 Clark, Dennis, 533, 539 Clarke, Thomas, 299 Clary, Mrs.

WUliam, 238

Classical and Mathematical Bookstand, 23 Cleery,

Thomas, 26

Clemens, Samuel, 131-32 Cleveland, Grover, 273, 310, 648n28 Clinton, DeWitt, 2, 15, 28, 62, 63, 64; People v. Philips and, 54, 59-60; Test Oath and, 52 Clinton, George, 15 Clinton, Henry, 14 Cloch an Chiiinne (pen name), 266 Clossey, Samuel, 13, 39 Clothier e) Furnisher Migizine, 174, 177, 185, 186, 190 Clothing industry, 169-92, 545, 6I6-19n; entrepreneurship in, 179-81; family system in, 177; health hazards in, 176; intracommunal patronage and, 180, 185; journeymen in, 176-77; labor movement in, 177-79; lack of security in, 176; mass production and, 1 73, 1 74; niche markets in, 181; production seasons in, 175; subdivision of labor in, 175. See also Secondhand dealers

719 Index

720 Index

Cloudland (Roosky, County Roscommon), 694n39 CLU. See Central Labor Union Cochran, James, 40 Cockran, William Bourke, 325, 327, 328, 330, 334 Coen, Jack, 485-87, 497, 695n61 Cohalan, Daniel Florence, 331, 349, 350, 363, 368 Cohan, George M., 2, 232, 233 Cohn, Michael, 455 Colden, Cadwallader, 44 Colden, David, 37 Coleman, Andrew, 120 Coleman, Michael, 484-85 Colleen Bawn, The (Boucicault), 25, 232 Colleran, Peter F., 41 1-12, 679n79 Colics, Christopher, 13

Colliers Weekly, 374, 383 Colligan, Patrick, 188 Collins, Daniel, 486, 497 Collins, Jerome

J.,

223

tions

11-14, 35^7, 583-87n; occupa38-41; politics in, 45-46

era,

in,

Colored Home, 244 Colum, Mary, 359, 363, 373, 662n20

Colum, Padraic, 359, 363, 662n20 Columbia College, 20 Columbia records, 484 Comerford, James

J.,

502-3, 503f

Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann, 694n60 Commercial Advertiser, 114, 115 Commerford, John, 19, 581n28 Committee or The Faithful Irishman, The (theatrical production), 40

Common Common

Council, 97 School System, 26 353-54, 429, 498-99, 539, 627-28n49. See also Red Scares; Socialism

Communism,

Communist Party, 353 "Commuting" (CuUinan), 529-31 Compdnach an Chriosdaigh (Furlong), 637n41 Concanen, Richard Luke, Bishop, 28 Condon, Patrick. See Ciindiin, Padraig Phiarais

Conelly,

P.,

Connaught

Conway,

Brian,

504

Cooke, Terrence J., Cardinal, 430, 435-36 Cooper, Francis, 14, 51-52 Cooper, Miles, 43 Cooperative Shirtmakers, 304 Coote, Richard, 12 Copperheads, 207-8, 623n62 Corbitt, Patrick, 183, 192 Corby, Fr. William, 198, 199 Corcoran, Michael, 194, 196, 197, 198, 200, 204, 205, 209 Corcoran, Tommy, 344 Corcoran Legion, 200 Cork, County, 288t, 289t, 638-39n6 Corkmen's Association (Shandon Club), 279

Corkmen's Mutual Aid Association, 296, 642^3n41, 643 n43, 643n44, 643n45,

643^4n49 Corkmen's

Patriotic

and Benevolent

Society,

285, 643n43, 644n51 Corless, Gertrude, 361, 363, 371, 372-73,

659nl9, 660n38

Collins, John, 24

Colonial

Convicts, 37

26 (province), Ireland, 286, 288t,

289t Connolly, James, 316, 322, 328, 652n74, 652n76, 653n77, 664n62; Catholic Church and, 332-33; home rule movement and,

332 Connolly, John, 29 Connolly, Matty, 494, 495-96 Connolly, Maureen Glynn, 500, 504, 505, 506 Connolly, Nora, 360, 662n20 Connolly, Richard, 279 Connors, Chuck, 143, 144-45, 152 Conroy, Frank, 513, 517, 697n37 Conscription Act, 204 Conservative Party, 427, 538 Construction workers, 302f, 424, 469-72, 473

Consumerism, 675n33 Consumption, 21, 157. See also Tuberculosis

Corless,

Thomas

K.,

659nl9

Corrigan, Jeremiah, 184 Corrigan, Luke, 1 84 Corrigan, Michael Augustine, Archbishop, 221, 226, 228, 271, 309, 310, 314, 541

Cosby, Grace, 43 Cosby, William, 43 Cosgrove, Joarma, 1 13 Costello, John,

304

Coughlin, Fr. Charles E., 353, 443, 538 Coughlin, T. Glen, 523 "Counterparts" (Joyce), 523 County Democrats, 223 Courier es) Enquirer, 16 Le Courrier des Etats-Unis, 253 Cow Bay, 123

Cowley, Malcolm, 345 Crady, Timothy, 1 Crawford, Elizabeth Ann, 25 Cricket, 290-91 Crime; in Washington Heights/Inwood neighborhood, 440-41, 450-51, 452-53, 456-57,

687n41

Crimean War, 194 Crimmins, John D.,

35, 192, 328, 329, 398,

399, 672n6, 674nl8, 676n38 Crimmins, Thomas, 255

Croker, Richard, 222-23, 228, 313, 538,

626n30 David Goodman, 141^2, 151

Croly,

Crossing Borders (Kennedy), 525-27 Croton Water Aqueduct, 26-27, 93, 400 Crowe, Helen, 369 Crowe, Robert, 174, 178, 188 Crowley, William J., 644n54 Crowley, William J., Association, 298 Crown, Michael, 119 Cryan, Frank, 411-12, 679n79 Cudahy, John, 409, 411, 678n66, 679n76 Ciiirt a' Mheadhon Oidhche, 264 Cullen, Paul, Cardinal, 215-16, 218 Cullinan, Elizabeth, 511, 525, 527^1,

678n70

Cumaim na mBan,

359-60, 361, 363, 368, 372, 373, 657n26, 664n62

Cunard

Line,

369-70

Ciindun, Padraig Phiarais, 254-55, 262 Cunningham, Nora, 238 Cunningham, Waddell, 38-39 Curley, James Michael, 341 Curran, Eileen, 360, 365, 367, 368, 369 Curran, John Philpot, 56, 593n59 Currie, Ellen, 515

Custodial work, 406-7, 677n52 Custom House, 27

Custom Custom

tailoring,

1

76-77

Tailors Benevolent and Protective

Union, 178 Cuthbert, Joseph, 53 Cutters, 174, 175, 176, 179. See also Clothing industry

Fair,

Devlin, John,

237

Daley, Richard ]., 341, 347, 428-29 Daley, Victor, 696n9

Daly, Daly, Daly, Daly,

Charles R, 20, 24, 196, 198, 202, 207 Maria, 198, 199, 201, 202 PJ.,

268

Thomas, 679n77 Dance bands, 487 Dance halls, 122-23, 418f, 489-90 Dancing, Irish, 293f, 493, 503f Dark, Eleanor, 696n9 Darrah, J. Neil, 282 Darrow, Clarence, 56 Daugherty, Michael, 41 Daugherty, Daniel, 208 Davis, Alexander, 119 Davitt, Michael, 178, 224, 226, 272, 307, 323, 324, 325, 332, 647nl7, 660n2 Dawson, James, 1 74 Day, Joseph R, 673n8, 679n79 "Dead, The" (Joyce), 522 Dead Rabbits Riots, 97, 1 14, 1 16 Deane, Elkanah, 39 Deane, Nesbett, 39 Dearie, John, 432

Death. See MortaUty rates Debs, Eugene V., 315-16, 652n73 Degnon, Michael J., 398-99, 673nl3, 674nl8 Degnon Realty and Terminal Improvement

Company, 399 Delahunty, Mike, 487-88, 491, 493

DeLeon, Daniel, 315, 649n40 DeLeon, Leonci, 448 Democratic Party, 15, 66, 78-79,

Devitt, John, 306 Devlin, Daniel, 184-87, 191, 192, 208. See also Devlin &. Co.

Devlin &.Co., 181, 183-87, also Devlin, Daniel Devlin, Mrs. Jeremiah, 238

Dail Eireann, 363, 372 Daily, Samuel, 119 Daily News, 263, 378

Dairy

Denison, John, 132 Denman, William, 31 Denver, Colorado, 540 DePoyster, Bridget, 123 DePoyster, John, 123 Depressions, economic, 95. See also Great Depression Derry, County, 287, 288t, 289t, 639n6 Derry Society, 293, 642n37 De Sapio, Carmine, 425-26 de Schweinitz, Karl, 390, 391, 392 D'Eshinville, Charles, 73 Deutsche Schnellpost, 253 de Valera, Eamon, 351, 360, 363, 364, 368-69, 372, 404f, 663n38

80, 101-2,

104, 223, 338-41, 424, 426-27, 428, 535-36, 537; African Americans and, 117; Catholics and, 31, 541; Civil War and, 193, 206-8, 209; factions of, 31, 223, 226, 227, 538, 626n31; defection from, 426-27, 428, 538; Irish language and, 257; labor movement and, 306-7, 312-14, 317, 319-20; miscegenation issue and, 142; John Purroy Mitchel and, 388-89; parochial school issue and, 3

1

184f, 188. See

79

Devotional revolution, 216, 218, 332 Devoy, John, 4, 105, 223-24, 225, 226, 265, 299, 315, 323, 331, 332, 349, 539, 647nl7, 655n3; American Women Pickets and, 363, 368; Bourke Cockran alliance with,

334 Dewey, John, 385, 388, 668n49 Diamond, 116 Dickens, Charles, 20, 112, 123 Dignity (homosexual religious group], 432-33 Dillon, Christopher, 22 Dillon, Gregory, 256 Dillon, Fr. J.M., 199 Dillon, John, 283, 330 Dillon, John L., 22

Dineen, Joan, 474f Diner, Hasia, 106, 129, 358

Dinkins, David, 426, 428, 431, 433, 436, 537 Disaffected adventurers, 464-65, 468 Discount pricing, in clothing industry, 185 Disease, 21, 100, 106, 114, 153-68, 217-218, 547, 613-16n; African Americans and, 1 14; germ theory of, 154; nativism and, 154, 155, 161-62, 167-68; quarantines and, 155, 158; reasons for prevalence in Irish, 155-56. See also Medical care District Assembly 49, The Diving Bell, 123

304, 306, 311, 315

Divorce, 432

Dockworkers' union, 303 Doheny, Michael, 223, 259, 260-62, 263-64, 266, 267, 274 Doherty, Joseph, 436 Doherty, Maureen, 506 Doherty, Tom, 489, 506 Doherty, William J., 381-82, 667n31 Dolan, FeUx, 695n61 Jay, 106 service, 77-78, 93, 95, 96, 101, 120121,217; Ahican Americans in, 109, 120-

Dolan,

Domestic

new Irish immigrants in, 473; real estate and, 679n78; residential patterns and, 404 21;

Dominican immigrants,

453problem

190, 422, 439,

45, 455, 456, 459, 687n43; drug

721 Index

Dominican immigrants [continued]

722 Index

and, 457, 688n62; illegal immigrants among, 472; lack of commimication with, 441; similarities to Irish, 451-52

Donahue, Michael, 433 Donegal Association, 282, 283, 297, 640n20, 643n43 Donegal, County, 287, 288t, 289t, 639n6,

641n26 Donegal Hill (Brooklyn], 405 Donegal Relief Fund, 278 Dongan, Thomas, 12 Donleavy, J. P., 511,515-16

Easter Rising, 224, 225, 298, 327, 331, 334, 357, 373, 540; Roger Casement and, 333; influence on Irish Progressive League, 363; Irish World interest in, 359; reaction to,

350

1 76 Dorney, Mike, 695n61 Dosai, Singmer, 130 Dougherty, Dennis, 82 Dougherty, William, 180 Dougherty, Betsy, 78 Douglass, Frederick, 116, 606n33 Dowd, Mary, 238 Down, County, 287, 288t, 289t Down Men, County, 293 Downey, Moses, 113 Doyle, Bridget, 78 Doyle, John, 1 7, 76 Doyle, John E, 673n9, 674nl8 Doyle, Richard, 35 Draddy, Daniel, 255 Draddy, John (Sean 6 Dreadal, 255

Doris, Cornelius,

Draft Riots, 26, 31, 97, 100-101, 108, 115, 116, 123, 134, 139, 206, 218, 367, 608n66; description of, 204-5; significance of,

622n49 Dramatic shipping line, 18 Driscoll, James A., 228-29 Drugs, 456-57, 688n62 Duane, Anthony, 43 Duane, James, 13 II, 41,

288t, 289t, 351, 641n26 Dublin Football Club, 642n3I Dublinmen, 292-93

Dubois, John, Bishop, 29-30, 165 Duffy, Ellen, 165 Duffy, Fr. Francis R, 2, 228-29, 625nl7 Duffy, Frank, 317-18 Dugan, Alan, 511 176, 177, 179, 180, 181,

185, 188, 189, 191

Dunleavey, Barry, 452 Dunn, Msgr. John J., 382 Dunn, John R, 398, 673nl2, 674nI8 Dunn, Maggie, 238 Dunn, Michael, 39 Dunn, Thomas, 39 Dunne, Finley Peter, 509

Dunphy, Jack, 511,515 Durkheim, Emile, 145 Dutch Reformed Church, 43

(Inwood), 449, 454

Eagles (gang), 444-45

Eco

Doody, Patrick, 306 Dooley, John, 368

Dun, R.C, &Co.,

Dyckman Houses

Eccentric Engineers, 306

Donnelly, Joseph, 177 Donnelly, Rosanna, 182 Donnelly, Terence, 192 Donnelly visas, 462, 467-68, 690nl8, 692n50

Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland,

Dwight, Timothy, 156-57 Dwyer, Jim, 7 Dwyer, John Hamburg, 25

d' Italia,

253

Eddy, Thomas, 29

Edenwald

(Bronx), 403,

679n82

Edgar, William, 13

Edison Company, 692n3 Edson, Franklin, 282 Ed Sullivan Show, 506 Education. 336f, 342, 343f, 348, 424; ethnic comparisons, 577n8; in Ireland, 215. See also Parochial schools; Schools Egyptian Dragons (gang), 446-48 Eighth Ward (Manhattan), 75 Eighty-fourth Regiment, 98f Eighty-eighth Regiment, 198, 265 "Eirepreneurs," 466-67, 468, 469 Eisenhower, Dwight David, 427 Election riots of 1834, 16 Elevated railways, 229, 397, 398, 400 Ellis Island (immigration station), 153, 216 Ellison, William B., 378, 666nI7 Elmhurst (Queens), 399

Elm Park

Festival,

Irish, Dr. El wood,

243 136

Emancipation Proclamation, 100, 203 Embury, Philip, 43 Emerald, 267 Emerald Musical Society, Inc., 488-89 Emerald societies, 437 Emerson, Mrs. K., 240 Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank, 92f, 104, 177, 186,342 Emigrants and Exiles (Miller), 233 Emigrant Landing Depot, 158 Emmet, Robert, 56, 325, 637n43

Emmet, Thomas

Addis, 15, 20,

48^9, 53, Greenwich

61, 63, 66, 68, 164, 539, 588nl;

Village riot and, 62, 79;

monument

64-65, 254, 635n7; People

v.

to,

Philips and,

William Sampson versus, 592n47 Emmet, Dr. Thomas Addis, 325, 328, 329 Emmets (sports team), 290 Employment. See Occupations Employment Division v. Smith, 589n3, 56;

592n43 England, John, 635n7 English immigrants: education of, 577n8; family size and, 565t; gainful employment and, 565t; income of, 578n8 Entrepreneurship, in clothing industry, 179-81 Erie, Steven, 544, 678n65 Erie Canal, 59 Erie Railroad, 96

Erin Guard, 194

Daughters in America (Diner), 106 Ervvin, Mary, 78 Essay on Elocution (Dwyer), 25 Estevez, Carlos, 459 Erin's

Ethnic identity, 479,

543^4

578-79nl 1; in literature, 508-9,511-12,519-22,525

Ethnicity, 6-7,

Ethnic succession, 397, 543 European Common Market, 420

European Union, 466 Evening Journal, 380 Evening Star, 16, 24 Exile, 23 Expensive Habits (Howard), 514 Facts of Life (Howard), 513-14 "Fairy Tale of New York, A" (Donleavy),

515-16 Family size, 565t The Famine, 11, 61, 67,

70, 89-90, 214, 534,

575n3; Catholic society affected by, 215; Irish-speakers increased by, 254, 256; labor movement and, 301 Farming, Charles, 345 Farley, James, 212f Farley, John M., Cardinal, 228, 244, 314 Farley, Terence, 27 Farley, Thomas M., 313 Farmer, Michael, 446-48, 686n30, 687n31 Farmer-Labor Party, 369

Herman

D.,

426

James T, 345, 347, 509, 517, 518, 522, 523; Bernard Ciare, 415

Farrell,

Farrell, John, Farrell, Fr.

696n9

William

(ship),

366-67

723

Finnegan, Patrick, 299 Finnegan, Tim, 6 Finnerty, Cathy, 454 Fire

Index

Department, 26, 105, 419, 427, 437

First

First

Ward (Manhattan), 94, 638n6 Wine (Dunphy), 515

Fitch, Drake, 75

Fitzgerald,

E

Scott, 345-46,

347

FitzGerald, Garret, 436 Fitzgerald, Fr.

Thomas, 271

Fitzmaurice, James J., 412, 679n81 Fitzpatrick, Michael, 412, 680n83 Five Points (Manhattan), 6, 20, 74-75, 99, 217; African Americans in, 1 12-13, 1 14, 122-23, 130; flash talk in, 122. See also Sixth Ward; House of Industry Flack, John, 22 Flaherty, Joe, 514

Fallon, Malachi, 19

Farrell,

Finland

B.,

382-83

Fearon, Henry, 29 Federalist, 50

595n80 United Irish Counties Association, 502-5 Felon's Track, The (Doheny), 260 Feminism, 430. See also Women Fenian Brotherhood, 6, 105, 194, 265, 305, 322-23, 539, 626n36; Quimbo Appo's Federalists, 14-15, 16, 53, 78-79, 222,

Feis,

503f,

Church and, 332; Civil War and, 209; Clan na Gael influenced by, 331; hostihty toward, 223-24; John O'Mahony and, 264 fears of, 125, 151; Catholic

Ferguson, Bernard, 66 In 16 Ferguson, D.E, 277

Fermanagh, County, 288t, 289t Fermanagh Republican Guards, 278 Ferrell, Frank, 306 Ferriter Manuscript 33, 264 Fiction. See Literature, by Irish American

Flanagan, Fr. [Lawrence D.|, 363 Flanigan, Horace C, 344 Flannery, Michael, 435-36, 435f Flatbush (Brooklyn), 400, 401, 405 Fleadh Ceoil na Eireann, 497, 694n60,

695n61 Fleishman, Flesh

Joel,

7

and Blood (Hamill), 515 Mary E, 135-38

Fletcher,

Fletcher, Patrick, 136

Flexner,

Abraham, 386, 387 399

Floral Park (Queens),

Flushing (Queens), 399 Flynn, Edward, 353, 419, 426, 537 Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, 325, 328, 653n82 Flynn, Mary Gilrane, 405 Flynn, Thomas, 325, 653n82 Flynn, Vincent, 413, 680n89 Fogarty ei) Co. (Flaherty), 514 FQIF. See Friends of Irish Freedom FoUiot, George, 39 Football, Gaehc, 287-90, 291, 418f Ford, Ellen A., 293, 358, 660-6 ln5 Ford, Patrick, 4, 224, 225, 226, 229, 332, 539; American Women Pickets and, 358-59; Irish

language and, 267-68; Irish national-

ism and, 323, 324, 326; labor movement and, 305, 308, 312, 314, 323, 329,

646-47nl6, 651n57, 651n65, 652n68; Land League and, 315

663n38 Thomas, 306 Fordham University (St. John's Ford, Robert, 359,

Ford,

College), 231,

343f, 503f

Fordham (Bronx), 398, 400, 401, 404f, 422 Fordham Property Owners' Association, 398

Field, Jeremiah, 39, 41

Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States, 67 Forest Hills (Queens), 399

Field, John, 41

Forrest,

Avenue Coach Company, 403, 409 Fighting 69th. See Sixty-ninth Regiment Final Fire. The (Smith), 515 Final Payments (Gordon), 509-10 Financial industry, 344-45

Fort Clinton (Manhattan), 216

authors

Fifth

Edwin,

1

Fort Sumter, South Carolina, 194

Finerty, John E,

Fort Tyron Park (Manhattan), 441 Fortunes of Richard Mahony, The (Richardson), 511 Forty Thieves (gang), 114

Finerty, Peter,

Fosdick,

329 592n45

Raymond

B.,

386

724 Index

George

Foster,

G., 99, 107, 108, 112, 118,

122-23 Fourteenth Ward (Manhattan), 94 Fourth Ward (Manhattan), 23, 75, 77, 94, 217, 638n6; Chinese in, 129; Irish county societies in,

276

Gallagher, James, 38 Gallagher, James, 1 13 Gallagher, Mary, 113 Gallaher, Rev. Dr. H.M., 283

Gallowglass Ceili Band, 693n36 Gallowglasses, in St. Patrick's Day Parade,

Fowler, Lorenzo, 162 Fowler, Orson, 162 Fox, Edward, 181, 183, 185, 187-88 Fox, Patrick, 398, 673nl0 Fox, Richard, 144 Francis, John, 123 Francis, Susan, 123 Franciscan Brothers of Brooklyn, 343f

86f Galvin, Mary, 662n28

Franklin, John W., 307 Franks, Jacob, 41 Fredericksburg, Battle of, 201

Garment

Free exercise of religion, 49-61, 68-69, 548, 586n65; earliest decision pertaining to, 592n54; Hibemocentric history of, 50-53;

Garvey, Marcus, 367, 370-71 Garvin, Tom, 322 Gary Plan, 348, 385-88, 668n49, 669n51,

People

V.

591n36 Fieemans

Philips and, 53-61, 589n3,

Journal, 23, 31, 194, 196, 201,

204, 208

Freighthandlers strike, 305 French immigrants, 253; Catholicism of, 576n4; education of, 577n8; income of,

578n8 French and Indian War, 37-38, 39 French Lines, 367 Frewen, Moreton, 327 Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, 13, 71, 72, 91, 94, 186, 275, 277, 351; CivO War and, 196 Friends of Freedom for India, 663n47 Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF), 333f, 334, 351, 539-40; American Women Pickets and, 360, 363, 368, 372; Irish Progressive League expulsion from, 663n38; John Purroy Mitchel and, 671n79 Fugitive Slave Act, 110, 123 Fuller, Bill, 492, 493,

Furlong,

Fr.

499

Jonathan, 637n41

Furman, Gabriel, 15 Furphy, Joseph, 511 Fusion administration, 313, 424; John Purroy Mitchel and, 375, 381, 382, 385-88, 389, 390, 391-92; school system and, 385-88 Fusion Flashlight, 390

GAA.

See

GaeUc Athletic Association

The Gael, 225, 258, 269f Gaelic. See Irish language Gaelic American, 4, 224, 349, 363; American Women Pickets and, 372; Irish nationalism and, 331; Land League and, 315; sports and, 290; World War 1 and, 350 Athletic Association (GAA), 225, 292,

Gaelic 331, Gaelic Gaelic Gaelic Gaelic Gaelic Gaelic Gaelic Gaine,

641n28, 641n29, 681n91 546

Irish, 43,

Journal, 111

League, 273, 293, 331, 489, 494, 501-2 Park (Bronx), 418f, 442, 685n85, 686n8 Revival, 269f, 293f

Galway, County, 288t, 289t

Galway

Society, 281 Gangs, 218, 446-48, 450; African Americans

and, 114, 116; in Washington Heights/Inwood neighborhood, 443, 444-45, 687n32 City, New York, 399

Garden

strike (1910), 329,

669n55 Gas House district, 217, 399, 639n6 Gay Men's Health Crisis, 2 Gay Rights movement, 7, 430, 431, 432-33, 684n64. See also Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization Gazette, 83 Gellner, Ernest, 321 General Society of Mechanics and Trades-

men, 20 General Trades Union, 19 Gentleman's Magazine, 37 Geographic mobility. See Residential patterns George, Henry, 226, 227, 307-10, 312, 330, 363, 538, 649n36, 649n42, 651n56, 660-61n5; Catholic Church and, 308-9, 326, 332; Irish nationalism and, 323, 324, 325, 326; mayoral campaign of, 324; Edward McGlynn's suspension and, 271 George, Lloyd, 364, 367 George Washington Bridge (Manhattan), 441, 456 German Irish, 43, 546

German

Jews, 340, 345; in clothing industry, Washington Heights/Inwood neigh-

190; in

borhood, 443, 455 German immigrants, 18, 91, 97, 99, 100, 216-17, 253; African Americans and, 124; baseball and, 629n66; in clothing industry, 175, 177, 189, 190, 191; education of, 577n8; family size and, 565t; gainful em-

ployment and, 565t; home ownership and, 566t; income of, 578n8; labor movement and, 99, 100; medical care for, 166; mental illness in, 161; mobility of, 276; occupations of, lOf, 22, 1 18, 230, 576n4; politics and, 102, 391, 424, 536; residential patterns of, 674n22; Alfred E. Smith and, 392 Ghent, Treaty of, 61

Ghose, S.N., 664n59 Giants (baseball team), 2, 231 Gibbons, James, Cardinal, 221-22, 314,

649n47

Society, 273,

Gibson, William, 513

Union

of Dublin,

Gift,

Hugh,

13,

Gilfoyle,

642n38 272 39, 40, 42

332

Garrick, David, 40 Garrick, Patrick, 22

The

(Hamill), 514-15 Timothy, 122

Gill,

Brendan, 525

Gillespy, Edward, 60, 73, Gilliland, William, 37, 42

Gilmore, Margaret, 371 Gilmore, Patrick Sarsfield, 640nl3 Gilmour, Richard, 324 Ginger Man. The (Donleavy), 515 Giuliani, Rudolph, 428, 433 Gladstone, William E., 224 Gleason, Jack, 679n76 Gleason, Teddy, 366, 657-58nl Gleeson, Daniel, 410-1 1, 679n75, 679n76 Glengariff Construction Company, 413 Globe &> Emerald, 23 Glynn, John, 505 Goff, John W., 332, 368 Going to Patchogue (McGonigle|, 517-19 Golden, Helen, 363, 365, 368, 369, 371, 373, 662n20, 663n37 Golden, Peter, 363, 369, 662n20 Goldwater, Barry, 427, 538 Gompers, Samuel, 311, 319, 332

Gonne, Maud, 359, 373

"Good Loser, A" (CulUnan), 528-29 Good Shepherd Parish (Manhattan), 441, 442, 444, 445, 449, 456, 458

Goodwin, Nora, 458 Gophers (gang), 218 Gordon, Mary, 509-10, 518, 696n7 Gorillas (gang), 218 "Gossip" (Conroy), 697n37 Gotham City Cutters, 318 Grace, William R., 212f, 307 Grammar of the Irish Language (Joyce), 270 Grammar School 14 (Manhattan), 93-94, 95 Grand Council of United Emerald Societies, 437 Grand Fair of the Roman Cathohc Churches (St. Patrick's Cathedral Fair), 241^2, 242f Grant, Ulysses S., 206, 223, 271 Gratton, Henry, 14 Gravesend (Brooklyn), 399 "Graveyard in Queens, A" (Montague), 512 Great Britain, 224-25, 443; American Women Pickets and, 361-62; Great Famine and, 89-90; immigration to, 466; Irish county societies and, 285; Irish Home Rule politics in, 326; Irish music affected by, 499; partition of Ireland by, 351; policies towards Ireland, 214-15, 224-25,

333-34, 434; racial connotations in antiIrish prejudice, 627n43; union movement in,

303

Great Depression, 337, 352-55, 406, 407, 420, 424, 628n59, 65In60 Greater New York Charter, 217, 624nl3 Great Gatsby, The (Fitzgerald), 345-46 Great Hunger. See The Famine Great Neck, New York, 399 Greeley, Horace, 17, 149, 205 Greenback-Labor Party, 99, 323, 646nl6 Green Dragon, 1 1 Greene, Victor, 545 Greenpoint (Brooklyn), 400 Greenwich Village (Manhattan), 329, 399 Greenwich Village riot, 61-64, 79, 81-83

Greg, Cunningham and Company, 13, 38-39 Greg, Thomas, 38 Gregory, Horace, 513 Gregory, Lady (Augusta), 359, 365 Gregory XVI, Pope, 33 Griffin, J.M.,

642n30

Grimes, Tom, 511, 522-23 Grob, Gerald, 154 Grocery stores, lOf, 22, 76-77, 109, 119-20, 403^, 598n28, 598n29, 676n39^1 Groneman, Carol, 129, 545 Guinness, 403, 676n38 Gimther, G. Godfrey, 208 Gutzlaff, Karl, 127 Hackett, Francis, 513

Hagan, James J., 644n54 Hagan, James J., Association, 298 Haitian immigrants, 168, 616n67 Halpine, Charles Graham, 205-6, 207 Haltigan, James, 272 Hamilton, Alexander, 52

HamUton, Dr. Alexander, 46, 587n88 Hammels, Rockaway (Queens), 408, 677n60 7, 514-15 Hanan, J.C., 297 Hand, Edward, 14 Handlin, Oscar, 389, 669n61 Hanford, Catharine, 273

Hamill, Pete,

Hanley, Catherine, 182 Hanlon, Ned, 231 Hannon, Mary Coleman, 484-85 Hanrahan, Barbara, 696n9 Hapgood, Norman, 379, 384 Harbutt, Charles, 474f Hard, William, 376, 391, 671n79

Hardiman,

[James],

262

Hardy, Frank, 696n9 Harlem (Manhattan), 442, 445, 449, 675n30

Harlem Harlem

Harmon

Bridge,

400

Railroad, 93

National Real Estate Corporation,

405 Harp, 316, 652n74, 653n77 Harper, James, 30 Harpers Weekly, 129, 131, 132, 133, 162, 218 Harpur, Robert, 39, 42 Harrigan, Edward, 143^5, 232, 612n67 Hart, Tony, 143, 232 Harte, Bret, 148, 150 Haskins, Mattie, Shamrock Imports, 422 Hat Corporation of America, 187 Hatters, 169-92. See also Clothing industry Haverty, Geraldine M., 269f Haverty, PM., 261 Hawley, Hughson, 302f Hayden, Deha Brennan, 405, 408, 676n43 Hayden, Dorothy, 405, 491, 498, 676n43

Hayden, James

A., 491,

676n43

Hay market Square bombing, 310 Hays, William, 12 Healy, Garth, 503f Healy, Jeremiah, 285 Healy, Paul, 75 Healy, Timothy, 297, 317 Heaney, Seamus, 458, 509

725 Index

726 Index

J, Edgar, 499 Horticultural Society, 20 Horton, Charles, 448

Hearst, William Randolph, 298, 313, 380, 390, 538, 644n52, 667n24 Heck, Barbara, 43

Hoover,

Heenan, John J., 25 Heeney, Cornelius, 20 Heffernan, MJ., 266 Heights-Inwood, 452, 453 Heinze, Andrew, 544 Hell's Kitchen (Manhattan), 6, 217, 218, 399, 422, 625nI7, 674n26, 675n32 Hennessy, Patrick, 271 Henratty, Margaret F., 25 Herbert, Xavier, 696n9 Heron, Brian, 437 Heio of New York. The (Coughlin], 523 Herron, David, 37 Hewitt, Abram S., 226, 309 Hibernian Hall, 98f, 196f Hibernian Provident Society, 71, 79 Hibernian Universal Benevolent Society, 72 Hibemia Trust Company, 344 Hickey, John, 39

Horton, James O., 124

Hickey, Margaret, 363, 368, 663n37 Higgins, Nora, 406, 410 Higham, John, 161-62 Highbinders, 52, 72-73

High

Bridge,

400

Highbridge (Bronx), 400, 403, 680n86 Highbridge Park (Manhattan), 441, 446-47 Hill, John, 39 Hillquit, Morris, 375, 387, 390, 391, 538 Hills, Richard, 448 Hispanic immigrants, 422, 423; Catholic

Church

and, 431, 432; in Washington Heights/Inwood neighborhood, 444, 445^9, 450, 451, 452, 458-59, 688n46. See also specific ethnic groups

History of Ireland (Keating), 261 History of Ireland (Plowden), 62 History of Ireland (Taylor), 60 Hitler, Adolf,

443

Hoare, Frank, 459

Hobsbawm,

166, 429; Civil War and, 195, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202, 204, 207; in medical care movement, 164-65; parochial schools and, 30-32, 68, 95, 103, 348, 541; philosophy of,

103

Hughes, Sr. Mary Angela, 166 Hughes, Tracy P, 200

Humanae

Vitae (papal encyclical), 432

Hunter, David, 205 Hunter, Robert, 40 Hunts Point (Bronx), 399 Hurley, Martin J. (Liam O'Shea), 641n29 Hurling (sport), 287-90, 418 Huron Cigar Company, 644n54 Huston, John, 128 Huston, Margaret, 128 Hyde, Douglas, 271, 273 Hylan, John Francis ("Red Mike"), 364; John Purroy Mitchel and, 375, 387, 388-89, 390, 391, 392, 670n62, 670n65; Red Scare

Eric,

(stage caricature),

lACL. See lasachta,

143-44

Hoguet, Henry, 192 Holt, Frank, 501-2

Holy Cross Parish (Manhattan), 229, 242^3 Holy Family Parish (Bronx), 407, 409 Holy Ground (Manhattan), 21 Holy Innocents Parish (Manhattan), 248 Holy Name Parish (Manhattan), 238, 243, 402 Holy Trinity Parish (Manhattan), 405 "Home in the Bronx" (Winch), 512

Home Home

ownership, 408-10, 566t Rule movement, Irish, 321, 325, 326-31, 349-50; Catholic Church and, 326-27; criticism of, 331; Irish county societies and, 299; social class and, 327-28; socialism and, 327-29; women and, 330;

World War

Home

Hoy, Hugh Kennedy, 41 Hoy, Zerviah, 41 Hoyt, John, 75 Hu, John, 151 Hudson River Railroad, 93 Hughes, Charles Evans, 340 Hughes, John, Archbishop, 20, 21, 28, 33,

and, 393

503-4 Hodges, Graham, 40 Hogan, Michael, 19

Hog-Eye

Hose Company No. 42, 26 Hotel Workers Industrial Union, 316 House of Gold (CuUinan), 525, 527-28 House of Industry, Five Points, 112, 114, 165 House of Refreshment, 19 House of Refuge, 113, 123, 582n56 House on Jefferson Street. The (Gregory), 513 Housing, 400-401,543 Howard, Maureen, 511, 513-14

1

and, 333

Rule Party, 225 Homosexuals. See Gay Rights movement Hone, Philip, 16, 19,24,27,31

Irish

American Labor CoaUtion

Eamon Mac GioUa, 267

ICAU. See Irish Counties Athletic Union Iceman Cometh. The (O'Neill), 347 "If the River Was Whiskey" (Boyle), 516-17 nRM. See Irish Immigration Reform

Movement nWC. See Irish Immigration Working Committee ILGO. See Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization immigrants, Irish, 4, 420-21, 438, 462-63, 546-47, 691n49; 1950s immigrants and, 473-74, 476; occupations of,

Illegal

468-73 See Literacy rates See Disease See Independent Labor party

Illiteracy rates. Illness.

ILP.

Immigrant Church, The (Dolan), 106 Immigration, 11-12, 17-19,36-41, 70-72, 75-76, 90-93, 213-14, 216-17, 420-17, 640nl7; alienation and, 629^0n72; Irish county of origin and, 288-89t; Irish

county societies and, 280, 643n42; laws protecting newcomers, 256; music and, 488-89, 497; quotas on, 420-21. See also

trade with in colonial era, 13. See also specific counties Il-

immigrants; New Irish immigrants Immigration Act of 1965, 462 Immigration Act of 1990, 421, 462 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 488 Immigration Reform and Control Act of legal

1986,421,438,462 Imminent Dangers to the Free Institutions of the United States through Foreign Immigration, 67 Impellitteri, Vincent,

425

Incarnation Parish (Manhattan), 444, 449, 450, 451, 456, 675n27, 675n31 Income, 421, 423-24, 578n8 Indentured servants, 36, 37, 38, 40, 583n7 Independent Labor Party (ILP), 227, 308-9, 312-13, 648n32

IND subway line,

and, 291

Ambassador. The

Irish-American,

War and,

(play),

4, 115, 181,

Irish-American Almanac, 270 Irish

Irish

American Athletic Club (LAAC), 291, American Labor Coalition (lACL), 478 Americans (sports team), 290 437

Irish Arts Center,

199-203, 206, 207, 208, 265, 621n23. See also Sixty-ninth

Irish Brigade, 186-87,

Regiment Irish Brigade

dren, 186

Committee, 198 378

Irish Citizen, 33,

Confederation of America, 281-83 Irish Counties Athletic Union (ICAU), 291-92, 298, 299, 642n30. See also United Irish Counties Irish Counties Campaign Committee, 298 Irish county societies, 275-300, 293f, 545, Irish

Institution for the Deaf and

Dumb, 27

Interboro Rapid Transit (IRT), 354f, 403, 423 Interborough Row (Bronx), 403 Intermarriage, 438; Irish-African American, 19, 107, 123-24, 130, 140-42, 607-08n59, 608n60, 608n61, 608n64; Irish-Chinese, 128-30, 609nl5; Irish-Jewish, 7

654n84, 654n89 International Brotherhood of Stationary Firemen, 317. See also Timothy Healy International Convention of the ples of the World, 367 International Ladies

Negro Peo-

Garment Workers Un-

318

International Longshoremen's Association, 367, 370 International Socialist Review, 314

Workingmen's Association, 306

Invented traditions, 503-4 Inwood (Manhattan), 422, 424, 439-60, 685-89n; crime in, 440-41, 450-51, 452-53, 456-57, 687n41; drug problem 456-57; gangs in, 443, 444-45, 687n32; residential patterns in, 401, 402,

638^5n; age

of

categories

278; Irish Confederation of

of,

members, 642^3n41;

America and, 281-83; Irish land war and, 279-81; New Irish immigrants and, 475;

International Association of Machinists,

occupations of members of, 297-98, 639nI0, 643-44n49, 644n51; origins of, 275-79; politics and, 298; reorganization of, 283-85; sick and death benefits provided by, 295; sports and, 287-92, 641n28, 641n29, 642n3I; women and, 294, 643n42, 642n40-41, 661n9 Irish County Societies of Brooklyn, Federation of, 283 Irish Dancing, 293f, 493, 503f Irish Echo, 434, 435, 436-37; Michael Flannery supported by, 436; music and, 488, 490, 494

in,

679n75

Inwood Park (Manhattan), 441

Emigrant Association, 19 Emigrant Society, 19, 92f, 94, 104, 256, 594n70. See also Emigrant Industrial Sav-

Irish Irish

ings

Bank

540 Immigration Reform Movement (IIRM),

IPL. See Irish Progressive League

Irish Free State, 321, 357, 373,

See Irish Parliamentary Party IRA. See Irish Republican Army Ireland: British policy in, 214-15, 350; Civil War in, 351, 627n49; devotional revolution in, 215-16; education in, 215; emigration from northern 40-41; Irish language preservation in, 268; Land War in, 224, 279-81; marriage in, 90, 216; partition of, 351; post-Famine social changes, 90, 216;

Irish

IPP.

24-25

295, 349; Civil

194, 195, 197, 200, 203, 204, 205,

206, 207, 208, 209; founding of, 27; Irish county societies and, 277, 280, 281, 282, 283; Irish language in, 225, 258, 259-60, 261-64, 265-66, 267, 268-69, 270, 271, 272, 273; Irish nationalism and, 323; labor movement and, 99, 308, 314; slavery and, 33, 116; sports and, 290

Irish

Institute for the Protection of Catholic Chil-

International

Advocate, 399, 410, 41 1, 498-99; Irish county societies and, 293, 295, 642n34; music advertisements and, 494; sports

Irish

Irish

691n46 Immigration Working Committee (nWC), 478 Irish in America, The (Maguire), 201 438, 478-79,

Irish

Irish Institute,

727 Index

Ireland, John, Archbishop, 221-22, 541

413, 68In91

44 Industrial Workers of the World (rWW|, 316-17,319,328, 393, 653n82 INFA. See Irish National Federation of America "Informal economy," Irish in, 469-73 Ingham, Charles C, 24 Innisfail Park. See Gaelic Park

ion,

696n9

Ireland, David,

430f

Irish language, 4, 225, 252-74, 546,

634-38n;

in church services, 28; classes in, 263, 268, 270-71, 637^8n44; Irish speakers,

Irish language [continued]

728 Index

265, 405; journals in, 272; politics and, 257, 272; societies, 268-70; type style usedfor, 261,266, 63 7n34 Irish

Lesbian and

Gay Organization

433, 684n64 "Irishmen's Petition,

(ILGO),

The" (O'Connor,

et

Music and

Social

Club

262

See Seventy-fifth Regiment

Irish Rifles.

Irish Socialist Federation (ISF), 316, 328,

Irish

of Greater

New

York, 501

Irishtown. See Seaside (Queens)

438

Irish Voice,

Musicians/American Friends (Winch), 512-13 Irish Musicians Association, Inc., 501, Irish

Irish Volunteers, 284, 285, 331,

325, 326, 327-28, 329 Irish National Grenadiers, 194 Irish nationalism, 16, 27, 32-33, 104-05, 222, 223-26, 227, 305, 321-34, 349-51, 433-37, 539^0, 544, 655-57n; Catholic Church and, 324-25, 326-27, 332-33; IrishAmericans and, 349-51; Irish county societies and, 299; Irish Republicanism and, 48-50, 64-69; labor movement and, 314-15, 323, 328-29, 366; Noraid and,

434-35, 435f; The Shamrock and, 23; women and, 359-60. See also Home Rule

movement, Pickets for

and American Women the Enforcement of America's Irish;

Widow, The

Irish

Women's Council. See Cumann na

(Garrick),

Women Workers Union,

Irish

Pickets and, 361, 368, 663 n33; anti-Semitism and, 229; founding of, 224; Irish county societies and, 284; Irish language in, 258, 267-68; Irish narionalism and, 323, 324-25, 326; Joan of Arc in, 661nll; labor movement and, 99, 305, 308, 323, 329, 646-47nl6, 652n68; Ladies

Land League and, 660-61n5; Land League and, 315; Orange-Green Riot (1871) and, 98f; women and, 358-59 Irish

Zouaves, 198

Ironweed (Kennedy), 522 IRT. See Interboro Rapid Transit Irving and Moore Literacy Association, 24 Irving Hall Democrats, 223 Irwin, Rea,

225, 226, 321, 322, 323, 333, 540; boycotts and, 627n49; labor movement and, 305, 315, 647nl7. See also Ladies Land League Irish

National League, 325, 358 News, 198, 278

Irish

Northern Aid Committee. See Noraid

Irish

League

Poor

Law

of 1838, 18

663n37 The (Furlong), 637n41

Irish Primer,

Irish Progressive

League

(IPL),

360, 361, 363,

365, 368, 371, 372, 373, 663n37-38; James Connolly's influence on, 664n62; founding of,

662n20

Race Convenuons, 367 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 434-36, 435f Irish Republican Brotherhood, 223, 225, 299, 331 Irish Republicanism, 48-50, 66, 71; abandoning of ideals of, 68; original mean-

Irish

Isham Park (Manhattan), 441

341^2, 353, 431, 547, 628n59; 1920 dock strike, 370; in clothing industry, 190; in construction industry, 470; disease and, 167; education of, 577n8; family size and, 565t; gainful

Italian immigrants, 217, 229,

and, 565t; Great Depression home ownership and, 566t; illeimmigrants and, 691n49; income of, 578n8; newspapers for, 253; politics and,

and, 352; gal

339, 341, 353, 424, 426, 427, 536-37; residential patterns of, 397, 674n22 Ivy Green Tavern, 19 IWW. See Industrial Workers of the World

Jackson, Andrew, 66-67, 626n27 Jackson, William, 592n45 Jackson Heights (Queens), 678n64

Irish People,

Irish Press,

390

See Irish Socialist Federation

ISF.

employment

Irish Palace Building Association, 284-85, 292, 641n23, 642n30 Irish Parliament, 14 Irish Pariiamentary Party (IPP), 224-25, 298, 299, 325, 334; attacks on, 331; millionaire

committee and, 328; United of America and, 326 265-67 Irish People, 434-35, 436

American

Women

National Land League, 224, 323, 627n49; Irish county societies and, 279,

280, 281; labor movement and, 307; strife in, 325. See also Ladies Land League Irish National Land League of America, 224,

661 nl3

Irish World, 4, 254, 293, 537, 539;

War Aims Irish

Irish

359

40

Irish

mBan

694n60 Irish Nation, 4, 286t, 288t, 289t, 641n27 Irish National Federation of America (INFA),

Irish

of,

nationalism Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood Centre for

652n74 Town. See Navy Yard (Brooklyn)

46

al.),

meaning

69; transformation in

Irish Shield, 23, 65

Irish Minstrelsy (Hardiman), Irish

of,

Connaught, 299

208-9

Irish Legion, 206,

ing 61

Irish republicanism. See Irish

Jacobins, 53,

588-89n2

Jamaica (Queens), 399 James n. King, 62 Janitors. See Custodial work Jarvis, Edward, 159 Jay,

590n9 Thomas, 15,49,53

John, 14, 50-51,

Jefferson,

Jeffersonians, 14-15, 66,

Jersey City,

New

Jesters (gang), Jesuits,

231

78-79 624nl0, 628n56,

Jersey, 92,

643nll 447

Jews, 341^2, 419, 541, 547; anti-Semitism, 167, 229, 353-54, 628n59; in clothing industry, 182, 189, 190, 191; education and, 31, 348; free exercise of religion and, 51;

income with,

423, 675n29; intermarriage labor movement and, 316,

of,

7;

318-19, 628n50; medical care and, 615-16n54; politics and, 339-41, 353, 424, 426, 427, 536-37, 538; residential patterns of, 397, 412-13, 422, 674nl7, 674n22, 675n29, 681n96; in Washington Heights/In wood neighborhood, 441, 442^4, 450, 455-56, 458, 688n46, 688n58. See also German Jews; Russian

Jews

John Fury (Dunphy), 515 Johnson, Andrew, 186 Johnson, Lyndon, 429 Johnson, Samuel, 42 Johnson, William, 14 John Taylor [ship], 130

Committee

670n83 Union of America,

Journeyman 303

Tailors'

1

78,

Joyce, James, 509, 522, 523 Joyce, Nora,

677n61 270

Joyce, P.W., Juba (dancer), 123

Kane, Sarah, 238 Kapp, Friedrich, 155 Kean, John, 384 Keansburg, New Jersey, 677n57 Kearns, B.E, 398 Kearny, Denis, 143 Keating, Geoffrey, 261 Keating, James, 53-54 Keenan, Mike, 7 Kefauver, Estes, 424-25 Kelley, Eugene,

KeUy, KeUy, KeUy, KeUy,

328

Austin, 190 Ed,

537

Eugene, 283 Gertrude B., 330, 332; American Pickets and, 359-60, 361, 362, 363, 365, 368, 369, 371, 372, 373, 663n44,

Women 664n62

KeUy, Helen G., 369 Kelly, Hugh, 26, 192 KeUy, "Honest" John, 26, 102, 212f, 222-23, 228, 307, 338, 538, 647nl8

KeUy, Martin, 354f Kelly, Michael, 365, 368 KeUy, Pat, 7 KeUy, Patrick, 203, 206 KeUy, Raymond, 7, 428 Kelly, Robert, 511 KeUy, Thomas, 24 Keneally,

Thomas, 5 1

Kenedy, RJ., 4, 258 Kennedy, Catherine, 405, 676n45 Kennedy, Daniel, 180

John R, 347, 427, 430f, 520-21 Joseph, 344 Robert F., 426 Thomas E., 511, 525-27, 530 William, 522 Kennelly, Bryan L., 398, 673nl6, 674nl8 Kennelly Corporation, 399, 673nl6 Keogh, Martin J., 328 Keppler, Johannes, 133, 145 Kerrigan, James, 192 Kerry, County, 287, 288t, 289t, 638n6 Kerry Men's Association, 276, 278, 639nl2,

642n30

Killoran, Paddy, 484, 485, 501

to Investigate Seditious Ac-

393, 670n67,

tivities,

John, 317

Kerrymen's Patriotic and Benevolent Society, 280-81 Kerryonians (gang), 114, 639nl2 Kevney, Margaret, 26 Kickhams (Tipperary footbaU team], 290 Kildare, County, 288t, 289t Kilkenny, County, 288t, 289t Kilkenny football team, 290

"JFK carpenters," 470 Joan of Arc, 661nll Jogues, Isaac, 2, 12

Joint

Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy,

Kimmel, John, 484 King, Rufus, 52-53, 67, 79, 595n86 Kingsbridge (Bronx), 400, 401

Kingsbury, John A., 381-82, 667n31 Kings County (Brooklyn), 558-59t, 562-63t Kings (Offaly) County (Ireland), 288t, 289t, 294, 642n40

Kipp and Brown, 22 Kip's Bay (Manhattan), 399 Knicks (basketball team), 7 Knights of Columbus, 6, 250, 314, 351, 399, 674nl9, 679n76 Knights of Labor, 227, 306, 308, 314, 367; Catholic Church and, 221; decline of, 310-11; District Assembly 49 and, 315; Irish nationalism and, 323, 324; philoso-

phy and character

of,

304

Knights of St. Crispin, 139 Knights of St. Finnbarr, 641n21 Knights of Tara (Meath Association), 279, 295 Know-Nothing movement, 33, 67, 100

Knox, Charles, 175, 180, 181-82, 185, 186-87, 192

Knox, Edward, 186-87

KnoxBmlding, 183 Knox Hats, 187, 187f,

188, 189 Koch, Edward, 428, 431, 537 Koch, Robert, 154 Kohlmann, Fr. Anthony, 54-61, 62 Korean immigrants, 431 Korean War, 411 Kortright and Company, 39 Kossuth, Louis, 259

Labor Day, 304 Laborers, 40, 95, 98-99, 217, 302f, 301-2; "informal economy" and, 469-73; semi-

skiUed, 20, 109, 229, 624nl5; skilled, 20, 97, 109, 229, 624nl5; unskilled, 20, 91, 94, 97, 203, 229, 303, 624nl5

Laborers United Benevolent Society, 99

729 Index

730 Index

Labor movement, 19, 96, 98-100, 221, 227, 301-320, 354-55, 545, 628n50, 649-55n; Catholic Church and, 221, 314, 626n26; Chinese and, 139^0; Civil War and, 203^; in clothing industry, 177-79; Archbishop Corrigan's views on, 221; Irish competition with New Immigrants in, 31 1-12, 318; Irish nationalism and, 314-15, 323, 328-29, 366; politics and, 306-10, 312-14, 315-16, 319-20, 538. See also Strikes; Boycotts;

Unions

Ladies aiuciliaries. Ancient Order of Hibernians', 359, 661n9 Ladies' fairs. Catholic, 234-51, 544, 630-34n; compared with Protestant fairs, 239, 247, 249; gender role reversal at, 237-38; goods sold at, 239-41, 632n25;

money

raised

at,

241^3, 631-32nl4; popu-

refreshments at, 239 Ladies Land League, 293, 324, 358, 642n39, 655n8, 660n2, 660n3, 660-6 ln5, 661n9 larity contests at, 241;

LaFayette, Marquis de, 62

La Guardia, 536, 537

Fiorello, 353, 392, 419, 424, 443,

Lament

of the Irish Emigrant, 18 Irish National Land League Landlordism, 222, 224-25, 227 Lane, Winthrop, 669n51 Laois, County. See Queens County (Ireland) Lapin, James, 181

Land League. See

Larkin, Delia, 661nl3 Larkin, James, 328, 329, 661nl3,

663n44

Larue, Lewis, 73 Latinos. See Hispanic immigrants

Laundry work, 139, 152 Lavin, Jimmy, 411, 679n77 Leary, James, 172, 181, 183, 187, 192 Leary, James,

& Co.,

22

Lee, Robert E., 208

Lehan, Cornelius, 329

Lehman, Herbert, 353 Leinster (province), Ireland, 286, 287, 288t,

289t Leisler's Rebellion,

50

Leitrim, County, 288t, 289t,

639n6

Leitrim Men, 298 Lendt, Lee A., 448^9

Lennon, James, 297 Lennon, Michael, 677n63 Leo, Patrick J., 257 Leonard, Msgr. Thomas, 451 Leonard, William, 1 77 LeoXin, Pope, 221,310, 314 Let Go of Yesterday (Breslin), 347 Lexington Opera House, 368 Leybum, James, 42 Liberal Party, 326, 350 "Life After Death" (CuUinan), 528 Life and Adventures, Songs. Services and Speeches of Private Miles O'Reilly, The (Halpine), 205 Life Studies (Lowell),

516

Lightfoot, Richard, 39

Limerick, County, 288t, 289t, 639n6 Limerick Guards, 278

Limerick Men's Patriotic and Benevolent Association, 292, 295 Lincoln, Abraham, 193, 203, 207, 208, 209 Lincoln Center (Manhattan), 402 Lincoln Square (Manhattan), 676n35 Lindsay, John V., 426, 427, 429, 452, 537,

683n26 Lister, Joseph,

154

Literacy rates, 215, 230f, 623-24n4; in Irish language, 255, 259 Literary Digest, 388 Literature by Irish American authors,

345^7, 508-31,

546, 678n70, 700-698n; alcoholism as a subject in, 515-17; compared with Australian Irish writing, 511; theme of ethnic identity in,'508-9,

511-12,519-22,525 Liverpool Empire Theatre, 495 Lives of the Saints (Butler), 23 Lliiid, Sean, 267 Locke, John, 49, 50, 51

Loco-Foco movement, 117, 606n37 Logan, Michael J., 225, 268, 269f, 270 Logan, Patrick, 268 Longain, Michael Mac Pheadair Ui; 262 Long Day's fouiney into Night, A (O'Neill),

347 Longford Association, 644n54 Longford, County, 287, 288t, 289t, 638n6,

641n26 Long Island, Battle of, 14 Long Island, New York, 398, 414, 421 Long Island City (Queens), 400, 403 Long Island Railroad, 407 Longshoremen, 98f, 108, 203^, 297. See also American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America's War Aims Longshoremen's Union Protective Association, 367 Loughlin, John, Bishop, 343f Louis, Joe, 23 Louis XTV, King, 43 Louth, County, 288t, 289t

Loving Women (Hamill), 515 Low, Seth, 538 Lowell, Robert, 516 Lusk, Clayton Riley, 389, 393-94, 670n67,

670n83 Lusk Laws, 393-94 27 Lynch, Dominick, 19-20, 72 Lynch, Dominick, Jr., 22 Lynch, Edward, 1 1 Lynch, James, 73, 367 Lynch, Patrick, 27 Lyric Hall (Manhattan), 237 Lyell, Charles,

McAleer, Fr. M., 271 McAleer, Martin, 23 McAuliffe, James C, 692n3 McBain, Howard Lee, 376, 388, 389 McCabe, John, 23 McCadden, Henry, 22 McCafferty, Paddy, 204 McCaffrey, Ann, 23 McCaffrey, Hugh, 22-23

McCaffrey, fohn Thomas, 213-14, 215, 216,

McNamara, George, 257

233 McCarran-Walter Act. See Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 McCartan, Patrick, 368, 663n37 McCarthy, Charles, 27, 203 McCarthy, Dennis, 64 McCarthy, John, 448 McCarthy, Joseph, 426-27, 429, 498 McClellan, George B., 200, 208, 313, 623n62 McCloskey, John, Cardinal, 103, 219, 221, 240 McComb, John, 56 McCormack, John, 232 McCormick, Daniel, 42 McCready, B.W., 113 Mac Cruitin, Aindrias, 267 McCunn, John, 20 MacCurtain, Tomas, 360 McDaniel, Edward, 1 13

MacNeill, Eoin, 359 McNeill, George, 323 MacNeven, William James, 15, 49, 53, 64-66, 539,-588nl, 614n40; Associarion of the Friends of Ireland and, 64; Democratic poliucs and, 66, 595n83, 596n9I; early years of, 163-64; Irish language and, 254; medical care provided by, 163-64; monu-

McDermott, Alice, 511, 520-22, 530, 678n70 McDermott, John, 22 MacDonagh, Oliver, 511 McDonnell, James Francis, 422-23

MacSwiney, Terence, 357, 365, 366, 367-69, 370, 371-72, 665n70 McWhorter, Mary, 359, 360, 373 Madden, Ovimey, 2 Madison, James, 15,49,59 Magner, Daniel, 270, 638n84

McFarland, Stephen, 298 McGann, Andy, 500, 695n61 McGarrity, Joseph, 331, 662nl7, 663n37 McGee, Buddy, 442, 444, 454, 458 McGee, Thomas D'Arcy, 21 McGlone, Bridget, 78 McGlynn, Fr. Edward, 226, 240, 332, 349, 541, 649n40; excommunication of, 310, 649n47; Irish Confederation of America and, 282; Irish language and, 254; Irish nationalism and, 323, 324-25, 326; labor movement and, 309, 310; suspension of,

271,310 McGoldrick, Monica, 5 1 McGonigle, Thomas, 511, 517-19

McGowan, Terence, 75 McGraw, JohnJ., 2, 231 MacGuire, Carney, 46 McGuire, Peter J, 303, 304, 311, 317-18, 323, 648n33 McGuire, Robert J., 423 McGuire, Thomas B., 304-5, 311, 648n28 McGunnigle, Bill, 231 MacHale, John, Archbishop, 262, 270

McHugh, McHugh,

James, 41

John, 303 Mack, Connie (Cornelius A. McGillicuddy),

231

McKeen, Joseph, 25 McKeon, John, 20, 27, 208

McKeown,

Susan, 477 MacKnight, Patrick, 42

Mackrelville (Manhattan), 639n6

McLees, William H., 270 McLoughlin, Joseph F., 503£ McMackin, James, 306

McMackin,

John, 309,

649n40

McMahon, J.H., 244 McManus, James R., 422 McMaster, James, 194 McNaire, William, 304 McNally, Francis, 25

ment

to, 65, 254, 265; political vision of, and Religious Liberties and, 64 McNiff School of Irish Stepdancers, 506

61, 63, 67, 68; Society for Civil

McNulty, Michael, 257 McQuaid, Bernard, Bishop, 221-22 Macready, William, 17 McRobert, Patrick, 36, 37 McShane, Roger, 446-47, 687n31 MacSwiney, Mary, 360 MacSwiney, Muriel, 360, 372

Maguire, John

F.,

Maher, James R,

201 78

1

Mahon, Peter J., 428 Mahon, William D., 317 Mahoney, J. Daniel, 538 Mahoney, Jeremiah, 26 Majestic Showband, 495-96

Makem, Tommy, 497-98, Makemie,

505, 506

Francis, 12

Mallon, Edward, 1 74 Mallon, Thomas, 523-24, 526

Malone, Dudley Field, 369, 370 Maloney, Helena, 359, 66InI3 Maloney, William J., 360, 361, 362, 662nl7,

663n38 Manhattan, industry

New in,

ter and, 217,

York, 445; clothing

89; Greater New York Char624nl3; Irish ancestry repre-

1

in, 567t; Insh-bom naturalizations 564t; Irish-bom population in, 555t, 556-57t, 564t; Irish county populations represented in, 286, 287, 289t; Irish county societies in, 276-77, 296; Irish stock in, 562-63t; occupations/employment opportunities in, 403, 404; residential patterns in, 94, 231, 395, 396, 397-98, 399^00, 40 K2, 407, 422, 674n22, 675n29. See diso specific neighboihood

sented in,

names Manhattan Bridge, 400 Manhattan College, 231, 343f Marmix, Daniel, Archbishop, 357, 363-66, 367, 369, 370 Mansfield, Katherine, 519, 520 Manufacturers Hanover Trust, 344 Marcy, William L., 16, 32 Marine, Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders Union, 367 Marine Hospital, 155 Mariners, 39-^0

731 Index

732 Index

Markievicz, Constance, 359, 373 Marks, Levi, 113 Marsh, Eleanor Taylor, 371 Martin, John, 32

Miller, Glenn,

Maryland, 43

Miller, Wilbur, 97

Mason, Jackie, 7 Mason, William, 360

Milligan,

Mason

Bill,

Miller, Samuel, 41

361

Massapequa Park, New York, 41 1-12, 679n79, 680n83 for the Dead, A Gibson 513 Masterson, Thomas, 304 Mathew, Fr. Theobald, 116, 220 Fr. Mathew Total Abstinence and Benevolent Society, 279 Matthews, David, 13 Matthews, Henry, 1 13 Mauietania (ship), 370 Maxwell, William Henry, 386-87 May Day (1919) bomb scare, 393 Mayo, Ann, 22 Mayo, County, 287, 288t, 639n6, 639n9, 641n26 Mayo Young Men's Association, 299, 640nl5, 644n55

Mass

(

|,

Meagher, Thomas Francis, 32, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205, 209, 539; attitude towards Democratic party, 206-7; background of, 197-98 Meagher, Mrs. Thomas Francis, 198 Meath Association (Knights of Tara), 279, 295 Meath, County, 288t, 289t, 639n6 Meath Football Club, 278 Medical care, 106, 153-68, 547, 613-16n; Catholic Church and, 164-67, 201-2, 613n8, 614n40, 615n50; nativism and, 154, 155, 161-62, 167-68. See also Disease Meehan, Patrick J., 4, 267, 637n33 Mehan, Denis, 75 Mehan, Patrick, 75 Melendez, George, 448 Melgola. See John O'Mahony Mellows, Liam, 368, 660n38

Melodies (Moore), 232, 262, 270 Mekose (Bronx), 400 Memoirs (Sampson), 60 Mental illness, 159-61, 217, 614n30; in

lit-

erature, 5 1

Merchants, 13, 38-39, 584n24, 586n53 Merriman, Brian, 267 Methodists, 43 Metropolitan Record, 208 Mexican War, 16-17 Michels, Stanley E., 458 "Midair" (Conroy), 517 Middle class, 402, 408; amenities in housing, 397, 400-1, 408-9, 412-13, 414; character of pre-Famine community, 71-72, 73, 74, 79, 80, 547; Great Depression and, 352; Irish county societies and, 278; Irish nationalism and, 656nl7; labor movement and, 303,

487

Miller, Kerby, 2, 43, 233 Miller, Perry, 234-35

650n54

Military. See Irish Brigade, Irish Legion,

Sixty-ninth Regiment, and specific wars or unit names Militia of Christ for Social Service (Social Service Commission), 314

Thomas, 664n56

Minstrel shows, 143 "Miracle at Ballinspittle, The" (Boyle), 516 Miscegenation, 141-42. See also Intermarriage Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, 141^2 Mission of the Immaculate Virgin (Staten Island), 220f Mitchel, James, 378 Mitchel, John, 32-33, 105, 194, 378, 539 Mitchel, John Purroy, 298, 329, 341, 348, 374-94, 538, 544, 644n52, 665-72n; background of, 378; Catholics and, 377, 380-384; Gary Plan and, 385-88; loses reelection, 375, 388-92; rejection of Irish heritage by, 379-81 Mitchels (sports team), 290

Mixed assemblies, 304-5 Mix-up, Irish-Chinese, 131^2, 133f Model, Suzanne, 534 Moleneaux, Joseph, 20 Molly Maguires, 279, 354 Moloney, Mick, 500 Monaghan, County, 288t, 289t, 639n9 Monaghan Men's Society of New York, County, 293f Mondale, Walter, 700nll Montague, John, 511-12 Montgomery, Richard, 14 Mooney, Charlie, 403 Mooney, Maureen Griffin, 406, 407, 410, 676n39 Mooney, R.J., 199 Mooney, Thomas, 117, 121 Moon Gaffney (Sylvester), 347 Moore, Armie, 153-54 Moore, Henry, 45 Moore, Marguerite, 358, 362 Moore, Mariatme, 5 1 Moore, Thomas, 232, 262, 270 Moore, William, 123 Moore, William J., 400 Moore, Winnifred, 123 Moran, Mrs. Owen, 238 Morgan, Rabbit, 642n31 Mormino, Gary, 542 Morris, Harriet,

1

13

Morrisania (Bronx), 400 Morrison, Bruce, 462, 682n7 Morrison, James, 484, 485 Morrison, Van, 5 1 Morrison visas, 438, 467, 682n7, 685n88,

691-92n50 Morrissey, John, 25, 223

Morse, Samuel KB.,

Mortahty

16, 67,

rates, 21, 155; of

157 African Ameri-

605n25 Mortgages, 409, 678n66 cans, 114,

Moses, Robert, 376, 385, 388, 669n61 Moskowitz, Belle, 388, 669n61 Moskowitz, Henry, 379, 384, 388

Mott Haven (Bronxl, 400, 422 Mount Saint Vincent College, 231 Mount Sinai Hospital, 615n54 Moynihan, Daniel

Patrick, 8, 347, 419, 420,

426, 435, 436, 535, 539 "Muddy Cup, A" (Montague), 512 Mugavero, Frank, 430 Mulcahey, Jack, 6

Mulhaire, Martm, 486-87, 492-93, 495-96, 499-500, 507 Mullaly, John, 208 Mullaney, Joseph A., 317 Mullaney, William, 26 Mullany, Tom, 452-53, 455 Mulligan, Dan (character), 143 Mulligan, Hercules, 39, 43 Mulligan, Hugh, 40 MuUins, Denis, 404f

Mulqueen, Michael J., 398 Mulvihill, Martin, 505 Municipal Research Bureau, 667n29 Munster (provincel, Ireland, 286, 288t, 289t Murderous McLaughlins, The (Dunphy), 515 Mumane, Gerald, 696n9 Murphy, Catherine, 26 Murphy, Charles Francis, 2, 227-28, 313,

339^0,

341, 538; death

of,

535-36; Alfred

Smith and, 4, 375, 392; woman's frage and, 329 Murphy, Frank, 409 Murphy, Henry C, 27 Murphy, James, & Co., 22 Murphy, Jeremiah, 305, 648n28 Murphy, Mary, 23 Murphy, Matthew, 208 Murphy, Patrick, 315 Murphy, Thomas, 22, 419 Murphy Brothers, 409 Murray, George E., 304 E.

suf-

Murray, James, 1 77 Murray, Jas. E., 268 Murray, Joan, 5 1 Murray, John, Jr., 29 Murray, John E, 516 Murray, John K., 182 Murray, Joseph, 39, 43 Murray, Thomas A., 317 Music, 25, 232, 437, 438, 481-507, 546, 692-95n; big band, 487-88, 490-91, 496; at City Center, 492-94; instrumentation, 482-83, 486, 487, 490, 491, 496; musicians' union, 693n37; New Irish immigrants and, 477; popular, 483 (defined), 488, 489-91, 692n3; showband, 494-96; songs, 232, 491, 497, 502, 505, 695n74-75; traditional. See Traditional music "My Father" (Winch), 512 Nadler, Jerrold, 422 Nagle, David, 257 Nally, PW., 299, 644n55 Nanjing, Treaty of, 127 Napoleonic Wars, 11, 18 Pat, 537 Nassau County, 421-22

Nash,

New York,

395, 411, 414,

Nast, Thomas, 133, 142, 145, 162, 218 Nation, 21, 263, 376, 383, 388, 391 National bank, 66, 67 National Defense League, 393 Nationalism. See Irish nationalism National Municipal Review, 376, 388 National Repeal Association, 32 National Republicans. See Whigs

National Review, 426 National Steamship Line and Atlantic Transport Company, 367 Native Americans Democratic Association, 16 Nativism, 16-17, 30, 80, 88-89, 102, 352; Af-

Americans and, 116-17; anti-radicalism and, 393; behind 1834 riot, 67; (gang), 52, 72-73; effect on Irish American writers, 345; Irish nationalism and, 224, 226; literature and, 345; rican

Highbinders

medical prejudice and, 154, 155, 161-62, 167-68; "Paddies" and, 51. See also Know-

Nothing movement Naturalizations, Irish-born, 564t Navy Yard (Brooklyn), 93, 336f, 400 Nearing, Scott, 392

Negro Burying Ground, 108 Neilson, Robert, 38 Neilson, Samuel, 53, 592n45 Neilson, William, 38 Nelden Corporation, 412

Nevada

New New New

(ship), 153 Beef Steak and Oyster House, 39 Deal, 536, 537

Departure, 224, 225, 323, 325, 330, 332, 647nl7, 655n3

New Haven, Connecticut, 624nl0 New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology (Fowler), 162 Immigrants Unit, in Pohce Department, 438

New New

Irish immigrants, 421, 432, 438, 461-80, 546-47, 689-92n; campaign for legalization and, 478-80; 1950s immigrants and, 473-78; statistics on, 461-62, 463t; types of, 463-68. See also Illegal immi-

grants, Irish

New

Jersey, 257, 421,

673nl

1.

See also

specific regions of

New Law

(Tenement House Law

of 1901),

400

New

Lots (Brooklyn), 399 Newman, John Henry, Cardinal, 228 Newman, Lesing, 130 New Republic, 376, 391 Newspapers, 4, 23-24, 73-74, 104; American Women Pickets and, 362; foreign language, 253; journalism as an occupation, 229; labor movement and, 99; shift to lower-class values in, 73-74; slavery and, 116. See also specific publications New York American, 368, 370, 380 New York Catholic Library Association, 24 New York Ceili Band, 695n61 New York City Lunatic Asylum, 21, 88, 159, 160, 161 New York Constitutional Convention, 15

733 Index

734 Index

New

York Cutters' and

Tailors' Association,

179

New Yorker, 510, 5\6 New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, 253 New York Evening Day Book, 130, 140, 141 New York Evening Post, 78-79, 383, 385 New York Herald, 24, 149, 164, 223, 271 New- York

Historical Society, 20

New York Irish History, 437 New York Irish History Roundtable, 437 New York lournal of Commerce, 132 New-York Mercury,

39, 45

New York Metropolitan Fair, 237 New York Post, 447 New York Review, 228-29 New York's Chinatown, An Historical Presentation of Its People

and Places

(Beck),

127-28

New York New York

Sun, 115,357 Times, 24, 102, 108, 115, 130, 157, 200, 241, 284, 423; American Women Pickets and, 361, 364, 365, 368-69, 370; Quimbo Appo and, 127, 128, 149; on the clothing industry, 1 75, 1 78 New York Tribune, 17, 24, 32, 129, 149, 205,

370

New York University, 20 New York Women's Trade Union League, New York World, 141,370

Niles Weekly Register, 156 1950s immigrants, 411, 420, 473-78, 474f '98 Club. See Wexford Men Ninth Ward (Manhattan), 75

Ninth Ward (Brooklyn), 677n46 Noah, Mordecai, 16 Noonan, Bernard J., 412, 674nl8, 680n84, 680n86 Noonan, Paddy, 491, 492, 493, 498 Noonan Plaza (Bronx), 412-13, 414, 680n86 Noraid, 434-36, 435f

Norman Monarch

Ireland, conflict in, 433-36, 479;

Joseph Doherty's deportation

to,

436; reac-

tions to hunger strikes in, 434f, 435 Star, 592n45, 593n59 Norwegian immigrants, 565t, 566t Norwood (Bronx), 422 NP-5 visa program. See Donnelly visas Nudd, Howard W., 669n55

Northern

Nugent, Robert, 204

Nuns, 219-20, 230-31, 244, 616n57. See also specific orders:

Women

Nursing, 121 NYPD Blue (television program), 7

Oakley, Barry, 696n9 O'Beirn, Patrick, 271 O'Beirne, James "Lad", 484, 485, 500, 501 O'Beirne, Mary, 484 Object Lessons (Quindlen), 524-25 O'Brennan, Kathleen, 361, 371, 663n44 O'Brian, Charlotte, 459

O'Brien, William, 313 O'Brien, William R, 419 O'Brien, William Smith,

32^3,

261, 283,

325, 637n32, 640nl5 O'Bryan, Blaney, 46 O'Byme, Feagh McHugh, 266 Occupations, lOf, 19-27, 38^1, 75-78, 94-98, 217, 229-31, 302f, 342, 423-24, 534-35, 576n4; of African Americans, 109, 116-22, 139-40; of Chinese, 139^0; Irish county societies and, 297-98, 639nl0, 643-44n49, 644n51; of ladies' fairs participants, 238; of New Irish immigrants, 468-73; residential patterns and, 403-7. See also specific work; Business O'Connell, Daniel, 31, 32, 33, 52, 60, 64, 65, 86f, 216, 222, 241, 253,

626n27

O'Connell, James, 654n89 O'Connell Brothers [John O'Connell], lOf O'Connor, George Washington. See Con-

Chuck

O'Connor, John, 430^1, 433 O'Connor, Michael, 280 O'Connor, Patrick, 46 O'Connor, Thomas, 53, 64, 594n70 O'Conor, Charles, 20, 24, 27, 594n70 Octoroon. The (Boucicault), 25 O'Daly, Angus, 266 O'Daly, John, 262, 263, 264 O'Daly, PJ., 637n43 6 Daotr, Seamas (James O'Dviryer), 260 O'Doherty, Kieran, 538 O'Donnell, John "Kerry", 418f O'Donnell, John R., 648n28 O'Donnell, M.J., 25 O'Donohue, Joseph J., 308 O'Donovan, Jeremiah, 94, 255, 635-36nl4

O'Donovan Rossa, Mary J., 331 O'Donovan Rossa, Jeremiah 105,

(ship), 367 Thomas, 264, 273-74

Northern

O'Brien, Jimmy "The Famous", 223 O'Brien, Michael J., xi, 35 O'Brien, Paddy, 695n61

nors,

316

Niblo's Saloon (Niblo's Garden), 236 Niland, D'Arcy, 696n9 Niles, Hezekiah, 156

Norris,

O'Brien, Charlotte Grace, 256-57 O'Brien, George, 508 O'Brien, Henry, 204

255, 331, 539, 648n26; Irish language and, 258, 272, 274; New Departure and, 655n3; senate race of, 638n5 O'Dowd, Bernard, 696n9

O'Dowd. The (Boucicault), 232 Sean (John Draddy), 255 O'Dwyer, James (Seamas 6 Daoir), 260 O'Dwyer, Paul, 423, 428, 430f, 443 O'Dwyer, WiUiam, 328-29, 355, 408, 419, 423, 424-25, 503f, 536 Offaly, County. See Kings County (Ireland) O'Flaherty, Edward, 298 O'Flaherty, Mary, 329 O'Flanagan, Fr. Michael, 644n59 O'Flyn, Denis, 255 O'Gorman, Richard, 202, 208 O'Grada, Cormac, 2 O'Grady, Desmond, 696n9 O'Grady, Joseph, 350 O'Grady, W.L.D., 265 O'Halloran, Kathleen, 445, 453, 458

6 Dreada,

Other Side, The (Gordon), 510 "Our Gaelic Department" (newspaper

O'Haia, Frank, 2 O'Hara, John, 346-65, 696n9 O'Hara, William P., 179 Ohio, 641 n26 O'Keeffe, David, 264-65, 269, 270 O'Kelly, Aloysius, 269f

column), 261-64 of Lourdes Parish (Manhattan), 243 of Victory School (Brooklyn), 268 Outline of a New System of Physiognomy (Redfield), 162

Our Lady Our Lady

Olcott, Chauncy, 232

Old Brewery. See House

of Industry, Five

Paddies (straw

Points

effigies),

Old Countryman, 23

Painter's Union,

Old Established Ready Made Coffin Ware-

Palmer, A. Mitchel, 389 Palmer, Gilbert, 113 Palmer, Sean, 1

house, 22 "Old Ireland" (Whitman), 508 O'Leary, Jeremiah, 359, 360, 363, 371,

661nl6 O'Leary, John Stratton, 413, 674nI8 O'Leary's Flats (Bronx), 413, 414, 680n89

O'Lenihan, Michael J., 258-59 "O Lovely Appearance of Death" (Currie), 515

Olympic (ship), 366, 370 O'Mahony, John, 6, 105, 223, 539;

Irish lan-

guage and, 259, 260-62, 263-64, 265-67, 274, 635n8, 636n30, 636-37n31, 637n36;

pen name of, 266 O'Mara, James, 663n38 6 Miodhachain, Tomas, 267 O'Neil, Bernard S., 201 O'Neill, Eugene, 347 O'Neill, Hugh, 192 O'Neill, Paul, 7 "On the Mountain Stands a Lady" (Currie),

515

Opdyke, George, 1 86 Operative Masons, 99 "O'Phelan Drinking" (Murray), 516 "O'Phelan's Daemonium" (Murray), 516 trade, 127, 146 Opportunity structures, 1 90 Orange lodges, 81, 98f Orangemen, 15, 65 Orange Riots, 97, 98f, 100, 218, 625nI8, 625nl9. See also Greenwich Village riot Order of the Star Spangled Banner, 100 Order of United Irishmen. See Sligo Young Men's Association O'Reilly, Father Bernard, 199, 202

Opium

O'Reilly, Leonora, 316, 657;

Women

American

Pickets and, 360, 362, 363,

66Inl5, 662n26, 663n44 O'Reilly, Miles (character), 205-6 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 461 O'Rourke, Catherine, 26 O'Rourke, Hugh, 406-7 Orphanages, 29, 220f, 244; John Purroy Mitchel and, 381-84 Orr, John S., 100 Orr, John W., 24 Orr, William, 592n45 Orsi, Robert, 544 Ortiz, Israel, 459 O'Shea, Liam (Martin J. Hurley), 64In29 O'Sheel, Shaemus, 511 Ossianic Society, 264, 273 O'Sullivan, John, 1

51

306

Palmer Raids, 389 Panic of 1837,67 Panic of 1873, 188

Pannonia

(ship), 366, 370 Papal encyclicals, 625-26n25. See also specific encyclicals Paper Handlers Union, 297 Paradise Square (Manhattan), 112 Parente, Robert, 457 Parchester (Bronx), 674n22, 681n90 Park, Ruth, 696n9 Park Theatre (Manhattan), 24 Parlor Mob (gang), 218 Parnell, Anna, 324, 358 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 222, 224-25, 305, 322, 358, 521, 647nI7; boycotts and,

627n49;fallof,3I4, 325 358

Parnell, Delia,

Parnell, Fanny, 324, 358, 660n2,

660-6 ln5

Parochial schools, 20-32, 68, 95, 103, 219, 244, 348, 429, 541^2, 633n38, 701nl7; closing of, 431; in Washington Heights/Inwood neighborhood, 452. See also Education; Schools Parsons, Daniel, 100 Parsons, Ralph L., 161 Pascendi Dominici Gregis (papal encyclical),

228 Pasteur, Louis, 154

Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA), 427 Paul, Alice, 361-62, 373 Paulists, 245,

634n55

Paul VI, Pope, 430 Pay-as-you-go policy, 385, 668n47 Pearse, Padraic, 365, 373 Pemberton, Catherine, 41 Pemberton, Ebenezer, 41 Penal Laws, 50, 60, 589n4 Peninsula Campaign, 200 Penn, William, 44, 49 Pennsylvania, 43, 44, 641n26. See also specific regions in

Pennsylvania Railroad terminal, 399 Pentecostals, 451 People V. Philips, 53-61, 589n3, 59In36 Perez, Reverend, 446 "Perfect Crime, The" (Cullinan), 528 Permoli v. Municipality No. 1, 592n54 Phelan, John J., Jr., 423 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 44, 536; immigrants in, 641n26; Irish county societies in, 641n21; parochial schools in, 541,

701nl7

735 Index

Philadelphia Athletics, 231

736

Philbin,

Index

Philips, Daniel,

Eugene

A.,

Popularity contests, at Catholic Fairs, 241 Popular music, 483, 488, 489-91, 692n3. See also Music Population: African Americans in, 1 10; com-

383

54 Philips, Mary, 54 Phillips, Kevin, 538

parision of Ireland and United States,

Philo-Celtic societies, 268-70, 273, 293,

642n38 Phoenix, 264-65 Phrenology, 162 Physicians, 39, 155-68

Physiognomy, 133, 145, 162 Pickering, Timothy, 52 Pieces of Irish History (MacNeven and met|, 61 Pilkington, Frank, 642n40

Em-

43 Pinckney, Charles, 64 Pillson, Robert, 41,

Porterfield,

PiuslX, Pope, 215 Pius X, Pope, 228-29 Pius XI, Pope, 353

The

(Synge|,

226 Plete, Anaste, 113

Pleurisy,

1

year of emigration, 564t, 568t; of Irish speakers, 254; in mid nineteenth century, 91, 92^93, 94; in late nineteenth century, 302; in the 20th century, 420, 421; at the turn of the century, 216-17. See also Censuses

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 536, 540 Pius Vn, Pope, 28

Planxty, 505 Playboy of the Western World,

286-87; in early 20th century, 339; Germans in, 216-17; Irish ancestry of, 396t, 567t; Irish-bom by county (New York], 396t, 556-563t; Irish-bom by decade, 555t; Irish-bom by specific census tract, 675ii27, 675n35, 677n60, 680n86, 680n89, 681n95; Irish-bom of Washington Heights/lnwood neighborhood, 442, 675n27; Irish-bom by

14

Plowden, Francis, 62 Plug Uglies (gang), 1 14 Plunkett, George, Count, 644n59 Plunkitt, George Washington, 3, 223; John Purroy Mitchel and, 375, 376, 377, 378-79, 381, 666nl5,671n80 Pneumonia, 114

Amanda, 235

Porterhouses, 119, 120 Potatoes, 89-90, 163 Poverty, 20, 74-75, 88, 94, 99-100, 217-18, 221, 423-24; African Americans and, 114; Catholic Church and, 221, 625n20; in Washington Heights/lnwood neighborhood, 457 Powderly, Terence V., 304, 310, 31 1, 649n36 Power, Tyrone, 24-25 Pozzetta, George, 542 Prendergast, William A., 385-86 Presbyterians, 12-13, 35, 41^2, 61-64,

586n53 Presley, Elvis, Press. See

Press, 592n45,

259-«0, 271 Poets and Poetry of Munster (O'Daly), 262,

Preston,

Thomas

S.,

308, 649n42

1916 (Farrell|, 382 219-20, 230; Irish language spoken by, 257, 271. See also specific orders Progress and Poverty (George], 308, 324 Priest Baiting in Priests,

264 Polish immigrants, 473; family size and, 565t; gainful employment and, 565t; home ovsfnership and, 566t; illegal immigrants, 691n49;

income

of,

578n8; politics

and, 537 Police Department, 26, 81-82, 97, 105, 352, 419, 427-28, 644n51; brutality charges and, 427; New Immigrants Unit in, 438; in popular culture, 7; 25th Precinct station, 230f; in Washington Heights/Invkfood

neighborhood, 444, 453-54 Police Gazette, 144 Political Bulletin and Miscellaneous Repository, 116 Political patronage, 117, 313,

338

45^6, 78-81, 96-97, 101-2, 222-23, 338^1, 424-31, 535^9; African Americans and, 1 16-17, 426, 537; Catholics and, 54 1 Great Depression and, 352-53; Irish language used in, 257, 272; Irish county societies and, 298-99; labor movement and, 306-10, 312-14, 315-16, 319-20, 538; United Irish Repubhcanism and, 64-68. See also specific political

Politics, 3,

;

Progressive Painters, 304

Progressivism, 377, 671-72n90 Prohibition, 352 Property Owners' Association, 398

Prospect Park (Brooklyn), 400 Prostitution, 21, 109, 112, 121-22

Protestant Council of the City of New York, 443, 446 Protestants, 11-12, 15-17, 19, 46, 70-72, 218; Chinese and, 132-33; disease/medical care and, 156, 165-66, 615n50; disestablishment of churches in Ireland, 214; Greenwich Village riot and, 61-64, 79, 81-83; Home Rule movement and, 350;

41^3, 46, 98f; Irish language used by, 257, 636n24; Irish nationalism and, 327; ladies' fairs and, 247; John Purroy Mitchel and, 383, 384; Orange lodges Irish, 5, 36,

of,

81, 98f; parochial schools and, 29-32,

68; partition and, 351; Public School Society and, 25-26, 29-30, 31, 89. See also

United

Irish

Public Scandal, Charity for Revenue,

parties

Poole, Big

495

Newspapers 593n59

Poetry, 511-13; in the Irish language,

Bill,

25

Pope, Jesse, 1 76, Pope Day, 51

1

(Farrell),

79

382

Public School No. 5, 30 Public schools. See Schools

A

Public School Society, 25, 29^0, 31-32, 89 Public sector employment. See Civil service Puck, 133 Puerto Rican Immigrants, 431, 445-48 Punch, 133, 163 Purcell, Richard, 35 Puritans,

compared with

Irish

American

Catholics, 234-35

Red Mill (Bronx dance

hall),

496

Redican, Larry, 695n61 Redmond, John, 299, 325, 326, 328, 349, 644n52, 644n58; support for British in World War I, 333-34; woman's suffrage and, 330

Redpath, James, 282, 309, 649n40 Red Scares, 377, 393-94, 426-427, 670n67,

Purroy, Henry, 227, 378

671n82 Red Star Line,

Quakers, 36, 42 Quarantine Hospital, 166 Quarantines, 155, 158 Quarrymen's United Protective Society, 99

Reeves, Daniel, 403^ Reeves, James, 404, 676n41 Reform. See Mitchel, John Purroy; Smith, Al-

Queensboro Bridge, 400 Queens (Laois) County, 288t, 289t, 640nl9; cricket team, 290-291 Queens County, New York, 400, 422; Greater New York Charter and, 624nl3;

Reformation Society, 582n56 Regan, Ann, 23 Regan, Henry, 182 Rego Records, 491 Reid, William W., 648n28 Reidy, David, 255 Reilly, Columba, O.S.F., 343f Reilly, John, 398 ReiUy, Mary, 238

Irish ancestry represented in, 567t; hish-

bom

naturalizations in, 564t; Irish-bom in, 555t, 560t, 564t; New Irish

population

immigrants in, 474-75; occupations/employment opportunities in, 403; residential

patterns

in,

402t, 408, 414,

395, 396, 399, 400, 401,

674n22

Queens-Midtown Tunnel, 401-2, 403, 675n35 Michael J., 2, 354-55, 423, 539 Quindlen, Anna, 7, 511, 524-25, 678n70 Quinn, Carmel, 491 Quinn, Eileen, 455, 458 Quinn, James, 304 Quinn, John, 322, 326-27, 328, 329, 332 Quinn, Louis, 490, 501, 506 Quinn, Peter, 6 Quinn, Roderick, 696n9 Quinn, Tommy, 642n31 Quill,

Race riots, 114-15. See also Draft Riots Racism, 105-6, 107. See also Nativism Radio Luxembourg, 495 Radio Telefis Eireann (RTE|, 486 Raffles at Catholic fairs, 239, 247 Ragged Dick (Alger), 139 Railroad workers, 139 Railway Express Company, 403 Ramage, John, 24

Rams

(gang),

444

Thomas, 40, 43 Rand School for Social Science, 393 Randall,

Rangers (hockey team), 7 Rayill, Brian, 453 Rayill, James, 453 Reagan, Ronald, 700nll Real estate developers, 397-99, 410-14,

679-80n82 Reavy, Ed, 501 Rebellion of 1798, 14, 15, 48, 51, 53, 61, 62; legacy of, 68-69; Wilham Sampson's views on, 60-61, 593n59. See also United Irish

Reconquest of America, The (Maloney), 662nl7 Reconstruction Amendments, 116 Redfield, James, 162

18,

366

fred E.

Religious freedom. See Free exercise of religion

Religious Freedom (Liberty) Restoration Act,

589n3, 592n43 Reliques (Brooke), 262 Repeal Party, 31, 105 Report from Engine Co. 82 (Smith), 513 Republican Party, 222, 424, 426-27, 536, 537; African Americans and, 132, 139; Civil War and, 193, 207, 208, 209; increasing support for, 538; Jews and, 340; labor movement and, 312-13; miscegenation issue and, 142; slavery issue and, 33; switch of allegiance to, 426-27

Rerum Novarum

(papal encyclical), 221, 314 Residential patterns, 276, 343, 395^15, 421-22, 672-82n.; Catholic parishes and, 399; ethnic succession in, 397, 543; home ownership and, 408-10, 566t; housing and, 400-401, 543; Irish-born by county (New York), 396t, 556-63t, 638-39n6; occupations/employment opportunities and, 403-7; real estate developers and, 397-99,

410-14, 679-80n82 Restaurant/bar trades, 470, 474f Revolutionary War, 13-14 Reynolds, Albert, 694n39 Reynolds, Paddy, 489, 490, 500, 693-94n37,

695n61 Rhodes, Robert E., Rhodes Gang, 218

Ribbon

345^6

societies, 81

Richardson, Henry Handel, 511 Richmond (Staten Island), 396, 402t Richmond Enquirer, 378 Rieder, Jonathan, 6 Riker, Richard, 62-63 Riley, Pat, 7

Riordon, William L., 375 Riots. See specific names Riverdale (Bronx), 409, 418f, 678n64, 675n35 Rivington's New-York Gazeteer, 38 Roach, John, 192

737 Index

738 Index

Roach, Thomas, 13, 43 Roach Guards, 114 Rock, Thomas, 299, 644n59, 664n56 Rockaway Beach, (Queens), 400, 407-8, 677n60. See also Seaside,- Hammels "Rockaway for the Day" (Winch), 512 Rockefeller Foundation, 386, 387 Rockland County, New York, 395, 421, 455 Rock 'n roll, 495 Rodgers, John, 41 Roediger, David, 539 Rogers, Patrick L. 22, 169-70, 183, 185, 187, 191, 192 Roman Catholic Church. See Catholic ,

Church

Roman Roman

Catholic Female Orphan Asylum, 27 Catholic Orphan Asylum, 27 Rooney, John, 426 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 344, 352-53, 426, 537 Roosevelt, Theodore, 223, 309, 326, 340, 374-75, 376, 386, 389, 666nll Root, Elihu, 390 Roscommon, County, 287, 288t, 289t, 639n9

Roscommon

Society, 299,

644n59

Rosenberg, Charles, 154, 158, 167 Rowan, Archibold Hamilton, 592n45 Rowland, John T., 259

Royal Showband, 495 Runners, 256 Russell,

Thomas

Emanie

Sadlier, James,

Sadlier,

N., 379,

384

23

23

Mary Ann, 23

Safeway, 404 Said, St.

St.

St. St. St.

Edward, 145

Agnes' Parish (Manhattan), 237, 239, 241, 243, 246

Alphonsus' Parish (Manhattan), 242,

632n25 Andrew's Parish (Manhattan), 111 Ann's Parish (Manhattan), 237, 239, 244 Anthony of Padua (Manhattan), 237, 238,

632n25 St. St.

Augustine's Parish (Bronx), 243 Bernard's Parish (Manhattan), 238, 241,

242 St. Brigid's

Parish (Manhattan), 242, 245, 250 Parish (Manhattan), 241

St. Cecilia's

Columba's Parish (Manhattan), 28, 257, 333f St. Francis College, 231, 343f St. Francis Hospital, 166 St. Francis Xavier Parish (Manhattan), 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 433 St.

Gregory the Great Parish (Manhattan), 402-3, 675n33 James' Dramatic Society, 384 St. James' Home, 244, 633n39 St. James' Parish (Manhattan), 28, 238, 239, 245, 247, 384, 638n6 St. James' Union, 384 St. John Nam Parish (Bronx), 431 St. John's College (Fordham), 231, 343f St.

St.

Joseph's Seminary (Dunwoodie), 228 Parish (Manhattan), 445

St. Jude's

Lawrence's Parish (Manhattan), 237, 239, 240, 241 Louis, Missouri, 641n21 St. Luke's Parish (Bronx), 406-7, 413 St.

St.

Margaret of Cortona Parish (Bronx),

St.

678n64 St. St.

Mary's Parish (Manhattan), 30 Michael's Parish (Manhattan), 244 Cathedral, Old (Manhattan), 28,

St. Patrick's

196f St. Patrick's

Cathedral, 219, 237, 239, 240,

241^2, 242f St. Patrick's

Charity School (Manhattan), 29, 30

St. Patrick's

Day, 51,65

St. Patrick's

Day

parade, 72, 86f, 419-20,

Michael Flannery and, 435f, 435^6;

gay participation issue and, 7, 433; Irish coimty societies and, 283; Irish republicanism supported in, 333f, 437; labor move-

O'Neill, 270

Sadlier, Denis, 4,

Gabriel's Parish (Manhattan), 240, 403,

675n33 St.

503f;

Russian Jews, 217, 546; in clothing industry, 189, 190 Russian immigrants; education of, 577n8; family size and, 565t; gainful employment and, 565t; home ownership and, 566t Ryan, Daniel Edward, 176, 179, 191 Ryan, James, 23 Ryan, Joseph, 366, 665n70 Ryan, Redmond, 24 Ryan, William Fitz, 426 Sachs,

St.

ment

and, 99; ladies' fairs compared with, 236, 249-50, 634n58; significance of, 104; Calvin Trillin on, 510 St. Patrick's

Mutual Alliance, 279

School (Brooklyn), 336f Church (Manhattan), 65 Paul the Apostle Parish (Manhattan), 244,

St. Patrick's

St. Paul's (Episcopal) St.

246 Parish (Manhattan), 28, 29, 52, 54, 72-73, 237 Phihp's African Episcopal Church, 1 12, 1 14 St. Rose of Lima Parish (Manhattan), 242, 442 St. Rose of Lima Parish (Queens), 677n60 St. Simon Stock Parish (Bronx), 404f St. Stephen's Parish (Manhattan), 226, 271, 310 St. Teresa of Avila Parish (Brooklyn), 400, 405, 414, 677n46, 677n63 St. Teresa of Avila Parish (Manhattan), 237, 240, 241, 243, 248 St. Vincent de Paul Society, 99, 220, 244, 248 St. Vincent Ferrer Parish (Manhattan), 237, St. Peter's

St.

238 Vincent's Hospital (Manhattan), 20, 166-67, 201 Vincent's Nursery (Brooklyn), 220f Salamander Association of Boiler and Pipe Covers, 304 Saloon keepers. See Taverns Sampson, William, 15, 48-49, 53, 55f, 63, 64-66, 68, 164, 302f, 539, 548, 588nl; Association of the Friends of Ireland and, 64; St.

St.

beliefs

mous

on law and

cases

of,

wich Village

politics, 593-94n59; fa592n45, 592n47; GreenRufus King

riot and, 62, 79;

and, 595n86; People v. Philips and, 54-61, 591n36; Society for Civil and Religious Liberties and,

64

Showband music, 494-96 Simpson, Eileen O'Rourke, 406, 407 Sinclair, Agnes Campbell, 405, 406

Sanchez, Ben, 130 Sanders, Mary, 123 Sanders, Stephen, 123 Sands Point, New York, 399 San Francisco, California, 534-35, 536, 541, 61 1-I2n64; Irish county societies in, 641n21; parochial schools in, 701nl7 Sanger, Margaret Higgins, 2 Sanitary Commission fair, 236

Single-tax

Savage, John, 640nl3

Siu, Paul,

School No. 5, 25 School No. 11,25 School No. 17,25 Schools, 25-26, 68, 89, 95; African Americans and, 1 12; Bible reading controversy in, 88-89; Gary Plan and, 348, 385-88, 668n49, 669n51, 669n55; John Purroy Mitchel and, 385-88; pay-as-you-go policy in, 385, 668n47; prayer in, 431. See also Education; Parochial schools Schrafft's restaurants, 404, 474f

Schwencke Land and Improvement Company, 410-11

41-^2, 583nl; family size and, 565t; gain-

employment and, 565t; home ownership and, 566t; music and, 692n3

ful

David B., 649n40 Scurlock, Thomas, 37

Rockaway

(Queens), 408, 677n60

Season at Coole (Stephens), 697n39

Secondhand dealers, 22-23, 182, 188 Second Ward (Manhattan), 94 Seisrins, 482, 485, 489,

505

Self-Instruction in Irish (O'Daly), 264 Selkridge,

J.F.,

Sisters of Charity, 20, 29, 164, 166, 167, 201,

202,

231,633n38

Mercy, 99, 103, 201, 220f, 336f Poor St. Francis, 166 152 Six Months in a Convent, 16 Sixth Ward (Manhattan), 23, 66-67, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 94, 11 If, 638n6; African Americans in, 107-24, 542; Chinese in, 129, 130; 1834 Riot, 80; Kerryonians (gang) and, 639nl2, George B. McClellan and, 208; police in, 26; Tammany Flail and, 80. See Sisters of

Sisters of the

also Five Points Sixth Ward Hotel, 22 Sixty-ninth Regiment, 194-95, 196, 197, 198-99, 202, 206, 229, 265, 365, 368, 625nl7, 645n61. See also Irish Brigade;

Zouaves

Sixty-third Regiment, 198, 200-201 Skeffington, Harry f., 31 Skiing,

477

Skilled labor. See Laborers

Skirmishing Fund, 640nl5

Scott,

Seaside,

330, 363

Sinn Fein, 225, 331, 333f, 361 Sinn Fein Society of New York, 299 Sisters. See Nuns

Irish

Scots-Irish, 192, 546; in colonial era, 35,

movement, 226, 308, 323, 324,

370

Shamrock

(gunboat), 203 Shamrock, or Hibernian Chronicle (newspaper), 23, 60, 73-74, 79, 597nl2 15, 19,

71-72

Shamrock Minstrels, The, 490 Shamrocks (gang), 443 Shanachie Records, 486 Shandon Club (Corkmen's Association), 279 Shanley, Leo, 441 Shannon, Joseph, 27 Shannon, William, 344 Shaughraun, The (Boucicault), 232 Sheehan, Kathleen, 363, 369, 663n44 Sheehy-Skeffington, Hannah, 360, 361, 362,

363 Shefter, George, 651 n56

Shirt Tails (gang), 114

Shoemakers union, 304

County, 288t, 289t, 639n9 Young Men's Association, 277-78, 297, 639nl0, 643 n43, 643n44, 643n45

Sligo,

Sligo

640n21 675n28

Sligo Society of Boston,

Slocum

Semiskilled labor. See Laborers Senate Special Investigating Committee on Organized Crime, 424-25 Seton, Elizabeth Ann, 29, 166 Seventh Ward (Manhattan), 75, 94, 276, 638n6 Seventy-fifth Regiment, 195, 196 Seward, William H., 30, 31, 32 Sewing machines, 185, 189

Shamrock Friendly Association,

Slave revolts, 13 Slavery, 13,32-33, 116, 145, 194,378, 586-87n70. See also Abohtionist movement

Disaster,

Sloughter, Henry, 50 SLP. See Socialist Labor Party

Smallpox, 157 Smith, Alfred E., 4, 212f, 228, 339, 340, 341, 377-79, 381, 388, 389, 544, 669n61, 671n86; American Women Pickets and, 372; background of, 378-79; as Board of Alderman president, 375, 376; Catholicism of, 384-85; as defender of civil liberties, 390; as governor, 392-94; presidential campaign of, 352; Red scare and, 393-94; St. James' Dramatic Society and, 384-85; socialism and, 392, 671-72n90 Smith, Betty, 677n52 Smith, Dennis, 513, 515 Smith, Robert, 38 Smith, Thomas, 45-46, 587n82 Smith, William, Jr, 587n82 Smyth, J.R, 271 Soccer,

477

Social class, 71-74, 79, 80, 94-95, 412; Irish county societies and, 278, 297; Irish nationalism and, 327-28, 332; labor movement and, 303; social mobility and,

396-97, 406, 407, 409, 410, 415, 678n65. See also Middle class; Working class Social control, 614-15n40

739 Index

Social

740 Index

ist

Democrat

Party, 304. See also Social-

Socialist Labor Party (SLP|, 227, 304, 308,

309-10, 315, 648n33 Socialist Party of America, 315-16, 328, 340,

390 Social Service Commission (Militia of Christ for Social Service), 314

Society for Civil and Religious Liberties, 64 Society for the Encouragement of Faithful Domestic Servants, 19, 120 Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language, 268, 270 Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, 27 Society of St. Tammany, 88. See also Tam-

many Hall Socony, 405, 676-77n46 Songs. See Music Sons of Erin, 24 South Africa, 350 South Bronx, New York, 400, 405, 406, 407, 409, 413, 500,

381,383

397 Julian, 379

Streetcars, Stret,

Chinese and, 139^0; clothing industry, 177; criticism of, 314; Erie Railroad, 96; freighthandlers, 305; garment workers, 329, 332; longshoremen, 108, 203^; William Sampson's defense of, 592n47; shoe industry, 316. See also American Women Pickets for the Enforce-

Strikes, 96, 99, 100;

ment

of America's

Strong, Charles H.,

War Aims

382

Strong, George Templeton, 17, 19, 131,

204-5, 252-53, 274 Studs Lonigan (Farrell), 345, 347, 509, 518 Stuyvesant Town (Manhattan), 674n22 Subterranean, 17 Suburbanization, 396, 672n3 Suburbs, 403, 421, 440, 543^4 Subway system, 229, 400, 441 Such /sLi/e(Furphy), 511 Sue, Ah, 130 Suffolk County, New York, 421-22 Suffrage; African American, 15, 116, 132; woman's, 329-31, 359, 361-62 Suicide, 21

Sullivan, Margaret, Sullivan,

Mary

L.,

Sullivan, "Big"

Thomas, 5

Spanish Civil War, 443 Spellman, Francis, Cardinal,

340

Street, Julian, 374,

413 369 Tim, 223, 227 Sullivan, Yankee (James Ambrose), 25

501,675n29

Southern Citizen, 378 Soviet Mission, 393 Sowell,

Stouffer's restaurants, 404, 474f

Straus, Oscar,

Labor Party

Socialism, 221, 225, 226, 539; Catholic Church and, 314, 651-52n65; Irish nationalism and, 327-29; labor movement and, 315-16, 318, 319; Alfred E. Smith and, 392, 671-72n90. See also Communism; individual socialist parties

Sulzer, William, 341 2, 4,

349,

419-20, 431, 542; loss of power by, 429-30; Joseph McCarthy supported by, 427, 429; parochial school fimding and, 429 "Spenser's Ireland" (Moore|, 511 Sports, 7, 231, 438, 629n66; Irish county societies and, 287-92, 641n28, 641n29, 642n31; New Irish immigrants and, 477. See also specific sports Sprague, Charles, 637n43 Spread the Light Clubs, 305. See also Irish National Land League of America Squeeze Gut Alley |Manhattan|, 123 "Stanzas for Kossuth" (WBR), 259 Stars of Erin (sports team), 290 State Board of Charities, 381-82 State Charities Aid Association, 381 Staten Island, New York, 672nl; Greater New York Charter and, 624nl3; Irish ancestry represented in, 567t; Irish-bom naturalizations in, 564t; Irish-bom population in, 555t, 56 It, 564t Stationary Engineers Union, 297

"Sum and Substance, The" (Cullinan), 528 Sun, 370 Sunburst, 267 Sunnyside (Queens), 400, 403 Sunset Park (Brooklyn), 400 Superintendent. See Custodial work Survey magazine, 383, 389, 390, 391 Sutter's Mill, California, 127 Swallow Tail Democrats, 223, 226, 227, 538, 626n31 Sweeney, David, 19 Sweeney, Lawrence, 46 Sweeney, Timothy, 2 Sweeney's Shambles (Manhattan), 20, 21 Sweeny, Peter B., 24, 27 Sweet, On & Co., 179 Swimming Bath, 123 Swinton, John, 310 Syle, Edward, 126-27 Sylvester, Harry,

Money (Breslin), 424, 514 William Howard, 326, 664n58 and Cutter magazine, 179 Tailors, 169-92. See also Clothing industry Table

SteeiyBiue (Smith), 515

Taft,

Steffens, Lincoln, 3

Tailor

Stephens, James, 260 Stephens, Michael, 697n39 Stevenson, Adlai, 425, 427 Stewart, Alexander T, 192 Stewart, Ramona, 626n30 Stock market crash of 1929, 352 Stone of the Heart. A (Grimes), 522-23 Stop-Time (Conroy), 513

347

Synge, John Millington, 226, 365

Tammany

Hall, 2, 3, 4, 15, 19, 33, 79-80, 88, 102, 218, 226-228, 237, 338^1, 424, 425-26, 535-36, 537, 538; Catholics and, 541; as defender of civil liberties, 377, 390; Carmine De Sapio and, 425-26; Irish National Land League of America and, 305; Irish nationalism and, 324; labor move-

ment and, 307, 308-9, 312-14, 316, 319-20, 651n56; John Purroy Mitchel and, 381, 385-87, 389, 391-92, 671n80; parochial schools and, 30; Red Scare and, 393-94; refusal to nominate Thomas Addis Emmet, 79; resistance to change, 628n53; revitalization of, 628n51; Alfred E. Smith and, 379, 392-94; Washington Heights/Inwood neighborhood and, 443 Hall Irish Relief Fund, 647nl8

Tammany Tammany

Tiger, 212f

Tap dancing, 131 Taverns, 39, 109, 122,230 Taylor, William Cooke, 60 Teachers, 95, 105, 121, 230-31, 313, 419; John Purroy Mitchel and, 385-86

Tea merchants, 128 Temperance movement, 220-21. See also Mathew, Fr., Total Abstinence and Benevolent Society

Templeton, Oliver, 43 Templeton and Stewart, 43 Tenant Leagues, 305. See also Irish National Land League of America Tender Is the Night (Fitzgerald), 346 Test Oath, 51-52 That Night (McDermott), 520, 521 Theater, 24-25, 231-33, 347, 629n68; Chinese ridiculed in, 142-45. See also Vaudeville

Thompson, Thompson, Thompson, Thompson,

(sports team),

484-85; Irish

Mu-

of, 505-7. See also Ceili music and dances Transactions of the Ossianic Society

(O'Daly), 262 Transfiguration Parish (Manhattan), 28, 73, 111, 129,238

Transit workers, 403, 406, 423

Transport Workers Union,

2, 354f, 355, 423, 539, 627-28n49 Transportation, 397, 421, 543. See also types of transportation Traynor, John, 676n39 Traynor, Thomas, 53 Tree Grows in Brooklyn. A (Smith), 677n52

Tremont

403 Company fire, 653n78 510 Trinity (Episcopal) Church (Manhattan), 42-43 Trouble of One House, The (Gill), 525 (Bronx),

Triangle Shirt Waist Trillin, Calvin,

Trow's City Directory, 179, 181, 188

Truman, Harry S., 425 Trusteeism, 591n41 "Truthful James" (Hart), 148 Truth Teller, 23, 3\, 74 Tuberculosis, 114, 167, 217. See also

Consumption TuUa CeiH Band, 499 Tweed, William M. ("Boss"), 102, 207, 638n5 Ring, 222, 307, 538

290

Thornton, Frank, 501 Tiemey, Elizabeth, 458 Tiemey, Myles, 673nll Tiffany and Company, 199 Times (London), 102 Tin Wi/e (Flaherty), 514 Tipperary, County, 288t, 289t, 638n6, 639n6; football team (Kickhams), 290 Tipperary Society, 281, 639n7, 643n43 Tobin, John F., 316 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 215, 377, 624n5,

666nl6 143

Tombs, 109, 112, 121 Tone, Theobold Wolfe, 61 Tone, William, 61

66 Touhey, Patsy, 484, 501 Toumey, John, 26 Townsend, Edward, 148 Trade assemblies, 304 Trade unions. See Unions Traditional music, Irish, 4, 437, 482-92, 496-505, 546; declining interest in, 496-500; defined of, 482-83; earliest known recording of, 692n3; employment Tories,

of,

New

Tweed

Acheson, 39 George, 120 George P, 383, 384 James, 39

Toll, Robert,

489; "golden age"

sicians Association and, 501, 694n60; York Ceili Band and, 695n61; revival

Turner, Victor, 109

"They Went Forth to Battle but They Always Fell" (O'Sheel), 511 Third Avenue Railway, 403, 423 This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald), 346

Thomas Davis Club, 24 Thomas Francis Meaghers

in,

Type style, for Irish language 637n34 Typhoid fever, 100

text, 261, 266,

Typhus, 21, 100, 113, 155 Typists, 121

Typographers Local 6, 648n28 Tyrone, County, 287, 288t, 289t, 639n6 Tyrone Men, 299

UGWA.

See United Garment Workers of America See United Hebrew Trades UlC. See United Irish Counties UILA. See United Irish League of America ULP See United Labor Party

UHT.

Ulster (province), Ireland, 13, 35, 41, 286, 287, 288t, 289t Ultramontanism, 216, 219 Union Club, 24 Unions, 105, 221, 303^, 317-20, 354-55, 545, 639n2; African Americans and, 109; Catholic Church and, 221; changes in leadership, 317-18; construction, 469-70; Irish nationalism and, 323; New Immigrants and, 311-12, 318; politics and, 312, 316; Alfred E. Smith administration and, 392-93. See also Labor movement United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, 303, 304, 317-18

United Garment Workers of America (UGWA), 316, 318 United Hatters, 1 78 United Hebrew Trades (UHT), 318-19

Irish, 49, 62, 63, 66, 71; exiles, 48-50, 61, 67, 68, 588n2; free exercise of religion and, 52-53; People v. Philips and, 57-58,

United

742 Index

59; Republicanism and, 64-68 United Irish Counties (UIC|, 284, 291, 292. See also Irish Counties Athletic Union United Irish Counties Associations (UICA|, 420, 478, 502, 503f. See also Feis, United Irish Counties Association United Irish Counties Association, 284 United Irish League, 325 United Irish League of America (UILA|, 298,

315, 325-26, 327, 329-30, 331, 333-34,

363, 644n52 United Irishman, 225, 258, 272, 273 United Irish Societies, 285, 641 n24 United Labor Party (ULP|, 227, 309-10 United Nations, 428 United Negro Improvement Association, 370-71

Unskilled labor. See Laborers Up fiom the City Streets (Hapgood &. Moskowitz), 384

Urban

liberalism, 388,

669n61

Vaik, Francis, 282 Vale, Gilbert, 115, 116

Thomas, 39 Van Buren, Martin, 64 Van Buren, William, 166-67 Vallentine,

van Schaack,

Peter,

45

Vardy, Frank, 408-9 Varela, Fr. Felix, 164

Vaticann, 429, 432, 511 Vaudeville, 231, 629n67 Veronica, St., 441 Versailles, Treaty of,

426

Victor records, 484 VietnamWar, 427, 429, 451 Village of Longing. The (O'Brien), 508 Villard, Oswald Garrison, 374, 375, 376, 380, 383, 391, 392, 667n24 Vincentians, 231 Visa lotteries. See Donnelly visas; Morrison visas

Voluntary organizations. See Benevolent associations

Volunteers of Ireland, 14 Vose, JohnD., 113 Voting. See Suffrage Waddell, Robert Ross, 13, 40 Wages of whiteness, 107, 117 Wagner, Robert F. (1877-1953|, 2I2f, 228, 340, 388, 389

Wagner, Robert

F.

(1910-1991), 425-26

Waiters, 108 Waitresses, 404, 474f. See also Restaurant/bar trades

Wakefield Park (Bronx), 291-92 Wakeman, George, 141-12 Walck, Charles, 444 Walck, Norene, 442, 443, 444, 446, 448, 457 Walker, James J., 340, 352, 353, 394, 424,

535-36 Wall, William Guy, 24, 33

Wallace, Alexander, 13 Wallace, Gerry, 695n61 Wallace, Hugh, 13, 39, 43 Wallander, Arthur, 419 Walsh, Frank P, 351, 368, 661nl5, 663n38,

664n58 Walsh, Geraldine Murphy, 409, 675n35,

678n64 Walsh, Marie, 403, 679n82 Walsh, Michael, 17, 117 Walsh, Thomas R, 26 Ward, Benjamin, 428 Ward, Brendan, 487-88, 491, 492, 493 Ward, George, 409-10

Ward Line, 367 Ward School No.

8, 26 Warner, Margaret, 363, 369 Warof 1812, 53, 64 Warren, Peter, 43

Washerwomen, 121 Washington, Washington, Washington, Washington,

Adelaide, 1 13 George, 14, 24 George (African American), 113

Harold, 429 Washington Engine Company No. 20, 26 Washington Heights (Manhattan), 439-60, 685-89n; crime in, 440^1, 450-51, 452-53, 456-57, 687n41; drug problem in, 456-57; gangs in, 443, 444^5, 687n32; murder rate in, 456-57, 688-88n64; residential patterns in, 399, 401, 402, 414,

675n27, 675n31 Washington Star, 361 Waterford, County, 288t, 289t Watts, John, 37 WBR (pen name), 259 Webb, James W., 16

Weber, John

B., 153 Webster, Daniel, 64

Weekly Day-Book, 203 Weiss, Ted, 422 Welfare democracy, 319 Welsh immigrants, 253 Welsh language, 253 Wesley, John, 43

Westchester County,

New

York, 395, 421

West End Association, 398 Western Federation of Miners (WFM), 328, 653n80 Westies (gang), 422 Westmeath, County, 287, 288t, 289t, 641n26 Westmeath Men, 298 Wexford, County, 288t, 289t

Wexford Men, 279, 281, 292, 298 "When New York Was Irish" (Winch), 395, 513 Whigs, 16, 66, 67, 80, 101-2, 222, 595n80, 595n83; African Americans and, 117, 132; parochial school issue and, 3

White flight, 675n30 White Star Line, 363, 369, 370 Whitman, Charles Seymour, 382 Whitman, Walt, 122,508 Wicklow, County, 288t, 289t Wilkinson, Joseph, 303, 304 Willcox, William G., 669n51

329-31, 359, 361-62. See also American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America's War Aims; Nuns Women's Municipal League, 391 Wood, Fernando, 26, 118 Woods, Arthur, 392

William of Orange, King, 61, 65 Williams, Barney, 24 Williams, Williams, Williams, Williams, Williams,

144 C.F., 136 Deborah, 123 Lizzie, 148 Peter (dance hall owner], Bert,

1

12,

122-23 Williams, Peter (seaman), 123 Williams, Roger, 49

Woodside (Queens), 400, 401, 403, 422, 681n95 Worcester, Massachusetts, 540

Work House,

21

Williamsburg (Brooklyn), 400 Williamsburg Bridge, 398, 400 Wilson, John, 39 Wilson, Woodrow, 319, 326, 350-51, 359,

Working

360,361,426 Wilson's Business Directory, 188, 260 Winch, Terence, 395, 511, 512-13 Wobblies. See Industrial Workers of the

Workingmen's Party, 19, 117, 143, 303 Workingmen's Petition, 117 Workingmen's Political League of New York City, 313 Workingmen's Union, 304 Working Women's Protective Union, 202 World War I, 224, 229, 333-34, 359; pro-

World Wold, Wolfe,

Emma, 371 Tom,

7

Wolfe Tones (sports team), 290

Women,

7,

class, 547,

German

93, 219, 230-31, 324; African

American, 120-22; Ancient Order of Hibernians and, 359, 661n9; Augustus Street riot and, 83; Catholicism and, 219, 429; "ethnic cleansing" and, 147; female-

headed households, 121; feminism and, 430; Irish county societies and, 293-95, 642n40-41, 643n42, 661n9; Irish nationalism and, 324, 329-32, 359-60; labor movement and, 313, 316, 650n51; mental

576n4; Irish county so-

movement and, 303; in Washington Heights/Inwood neighborhood, 688n58. See also Social class cieties and, 297; labor

support and, 350-51, 390-91

World War H, 354, 355, 441, 443 World without End, Amen (Breslin), 514 Yankee Kitchen (Manhattan), 123 Yankee Notions, 129, 131, 132, 147 Yankees (baseball team), 7, 231 Yates, Ann, 78 Yeats, William Butler, 327, 365 Yellow Roses (Cullinan), 528

Irish immiillness in, 160-61; as grants, 473; occupations of, 77-78, 95, 96, 109, 120-22, 182, 217, 230-31, 238, 336f,

Yorkville (Manhattan), 399, 677n56, 678n64 Young, Arthur, 163 Young, David, 38

404-5, 473, 474f; ordination issue and, 432; Religious orders of., 219-20, 230-31, 244, 336f, 383-84, 625n57; residential patterns and, 404-5, 407-8, 415; role in la-

Yoiing, Hamilton, 40

New

dies' fairs,

237-38, 248-^9; suffrage

for.

Young

Ireland, 31, 32, 105, 223, 259, 260-61,

321, 539 Youngs, James, 137

Youth

culture,

477

743 Index

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The New York Irish p.

/

edited by Ronald H. Bayor and

Includes bibUographical references

(p.

)

J.

Meagher,

and index.

ISBN 0-8018-5199-8 (alk. paper) 1. Irish Americans— New York (N.Y.)— History. Relations. n.

Timothy

cm.

3.

New York (N.Y.)—History.

Meagher, Timothy

F128.9.I6N49

974.7'1—dc20

I.

2.

New York (N.Y.)— Ethnic

Bayor, Ronald H., 1944-

.

J.

1995

95-20319

I