In May 1889, the largest funeral since Abraham Lincoln’s in 1865 transfixed Chicago. The dead man was P. H. Cronin, a Cork-born Irish emigrant, doctor and nationalist leader in the city of Chicago. With around one-fifth of the city claiming Irish birth or heritage, it is little wonder this event turned heads. More than 40,000 were said to have lined up to watch and follow the 4,000 mourners who accompanied the hearse. The case of Cronin’s funeral was not merely a reflection of the esteem in which this solid citizen was held. Any number of good Irishmen in the city could claim such a position. What captured the imagination of the people was the nature of his death, by murder, and of the investigation and trial that followed. It was, to that point, the longest trial in U.S. history. Cronin’s killing was no ordinary murder. His badly beaten, naked corpse was found in a sewer, some two weeks after he had disappeared. Understandably there was great public interest.
Cronin’s friends and associates believed he had been abducted and killed by members of Clan na Gael. This was not a turf war so much as a battle for Irish hearts and minds. Cronin had clashed with Alexander Sullivan, a rival Clan na Gael leader. Sullivan was a physical-force nationalist in the style of the Fenians, O’Donovan Rossa or Patrick Ford. He used Clan funds to support the Irish-American dynamite bombing campaigns of the mid-1880s in England. Cronin, a Parnellite-style moderate, was critical of these moves. Cronin’s friends said he came to fear assassination; that he began carrying a gun. Sometimes, in these situations, hysteria takes over, shadows come alive, and no potential threat goes unnoticed, even if no such threat exists. This was not the case with Cronin. He was right to be scared. He was at risk. He was abducted. He was murdered.
While Sullivan’s associates killed Cronin, Sullivan himself could not be connected personally to the final act. O’Brien has researched every imaginable detail of this case, sifting personal accounts, trial records, and masses of press accounts. She brings to life, as far as humanly possible, the inner-workings of a shadowy secret society. Two of Sullivan’s associates who were convicted, Martin Burke and Patrick O’Sullivan, died in prison. A third one, a former policeman, Dan Coughlin, was acquitted at a second trial. Clan na Gael was seriously damaged by this brutal and unedifying case. Cronin had to perish to achieve the curtailment of Sullivan’s power, so in this sense he did not die in vain. It was high price to pay, but that uncompromising type of physical nationalism advanced by the likes of Sullivan, took a serious hit when the truth behind Cronin’s murder emerged.
One is reminded of several other instances where Irish dramas such as this one opened up a seamy world of spies, lies, betrayal, and murder. In the mid-1850s, Cincinnati hosted two trials, first of the English consul, and secondly of a group of Irishmen who had been the Briton’s accusers in a battle over Crimean War recruitment and Irish nationalist organisation. The Molly Maguire trials in 1870s Pennsylvania, also uncovered Irish secret society cells (this time of the Ancient Order of Hibernians). The detective work brings to mind Breandán MacSuibhne’s End of outrage, another study of internecine, secret-society betrayal. Spies, informing, brutal conflict and sometimes murder are repeating themes in the history of Ireland and its diaspora, as well as in the world of Irish nationalism. However, no one has uncovered so much about one of the most remarkable incidents as Gillian O’Brien. It is a true story of Chicago and the Chicago-Irish. But it is also a study in transatlantic nationalism and in the way that some among the millions who left Ireland returned with malign intent to strike at the heart of the British world. All of this is here, in Blood runs green.
This is a highly-readable and richly-researched work. O’Brien fully appreciates how a small story that made it big can be used to tease out wider implications of the stresses and strains of immigrant life in these large and growing American cities. She writes with élan: a crisp, driving narrative launched from a strong research base. It is nicely illustrated. There are prison mugshots of the convicted and classic as well as little-known cartoons displaying the Irish as half-savage beasts.
The blend of accessibility and scholarship explains why Chicago University Press is selling copies for $25 or less for the paperback. This is a cross-over study and deservedly so; but it also is a work of rich and scholarly poise. It should make the reading lists of all courses on the Irish diaspora. But general readers also will, and can, consume it.
