Posted by Jim on March 1, 2015
Irishtown’s code of silence made it a formidable opponent for the US authorities in the Brooklyn Whiskey Wars. Photo by: LOC
The Famine Irish settled along the Brooklyn waterfront neighborhoods in large numbers after the Great Hunger and continued pouring in throughout the late 1800s. From Greenpoint to the Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn wards were filled with families looking for regular work and the piers and docks where the ships let off provided the best opportunity.
The people of Irishtown were a gritty, hard-working lot employed by the ship builders of the local Brooklyn Navy Yard and the gas works companies. They were longshoremen, firemen or factory workers and filled the ranks of what became known as the Fighting 69th, New York Infantry of Thomas Meagher’s Irish Brigade during the American Civil War.
Workers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, 1861
The residents of Irishtown became known for their distinct Irish spirit – and spirits.
Long before Prohibition in the 1920s, Brooklyn’s Irishtown was famous for its home-made, illegal whiskeydistilleries and the battles pitched to defend them.
“Whiskey was the prevailing beverage down there, and water was mainly used to wash with,” said a resident.
Secrecy was what made Brooklyn’s Irishtown different than Manhattan’s Five Points. All the same things happened in Irishtown that happened in Manhattan’s infamous neighborhood (portrayed in “Gangs of New York“), but Irishtown kept its secrets.
As the famous bank robber Willie Sutton (born on Nassau and Gold streets in Irishtown) once quipped, “a code of silence was observed in Irishtown more faithfully than omertà is observed by the Mafia… Nobody ever talked in Irishtown.”
It was a separated society, similar to a commune, that violently closed itself off and refused the influence of Anglo-America. The people of Irishtown provided their own policing measures when someone got out of line, which was inevitable in such a rollicking neighborhood. The numerous gangs were the ones that maintained order as the local authorities and courts were largely ignored.
Inevitably though, there would be a showdown between the street corner “bucks” in Irishtown and the American notion of law and order. Similar to what brought Al Capone down much later, the U.S. government would confront Irishtown over alcohol and taxes.
Distilleries were honeycombed throughout Irishtown, hidden in tenement basements and rooms. But what made them illegal was the fact that Uncle Sam didn’t get to dip his finger into the profits.
Brooklyn’s Irishtown as viewed from the Brooklyn Bridge, 1883.
According to lore from local bards, revenue officers supported by the police “invaded” the neighborhood to overturn the stills, but were harassed and their blackjacks were no match for the great number of loyal Irishtown residents who had no interest in allowing outsiders to tell them what they could and could not do.
Inevitably, a few barrels were dumped in the East River, but gangs fought them deftly. Mothers shamed them away, and at the end of it Irishtown distillers used their political connections to remedy the problems the police and revenue officers created.
Newspaper articles from the time note that when a police officer “made himself obnoxious, his transfer to some other district was easily secured.”
But more telling are the many stories of police and revenue officers having an open-handed policy toward the distillers; an “open hand” as in they accepted bribes and were allowed a portion of the distillers’ profits in exchange for keeping the Irishtown “raids” controlled or giving a notice in advance. And it was certainly true that after these raids, “the illicit product would go on as merrily as if a still… had never been seized.”
The Irishtown distillers, in fact were a boastful, blaguarding lot. Fellows like “Ginger” Farrell, “Ned” Brady and John Devlin were “men of robust physique, bluff manners and iron determination.”
Using Irishtown’s built-in defenses, these men made great profits without having to pay tribute to the government.
As one paper wrote, “The margin of remuneration was wide enough to lead the illicit distillers to take desperate chances in preparing and disposing of their fraudulent fluid.”
Whiskey barrels
But for The Gas Drip Bard, an Irishtown native storyteller of “dear old Irishtown,” the distillers were famous for other reasons. These Irishmen, who had come from extreme poverty, suffering, and even, some say, genocide, suddenly become rich beyond their dreams. Prancing around the neighborhoods “gaudily tinseled” they gave orders to all the paupers like the gypsy-kings of Kings County they were and “had wild, barbaric notions of what constituted real luxury.”
This black market Irishtown economy had no shortage of comical double-dealers and swindlers. One story tells of a miscreant jeweler named Grady who seemed to rise above them all, dubbed “purveyor of ornaments.”
According to a resident, Grady had “by his sly machinations bled each of (the distillers) of a small fortune” by selling them stolen merchandise such as headlight-sized diamond studs and large gold watches with gold chains “long enough to hang a ten year old boy by the heels.”
Irishtown was by no means a wealthy neighborhood, but it had its own stories and drank its own “sweet poteen.” The neighborhood was held together by its own ruffian gangs that patrolled the streets and were connected to the right people with their own rogue businessmen who paid outsiders to stay away.
Then came the decorated Brooklynite and Anglo-American politician Silas B. Dutcher. On December 3, 1873, under Dutcher’s command “as the snow was falling fast,” the United States Marines, reinforced by the revenue officers and police all marched out of the Navy Yard with bayonets fixed to their guns. The Siege Of Irishtown was underway.
The Velvet Caps of Irishtown, a gang that was headquartered on the Little Street docks, sprung to action and fought valiantly. People took to the clapboard and tenement rooftops with their “Irish confetti,” throwing “dornicks” (rocks), paving stones, chimney bricks and from kitchen windows women threw streetwise their “kitchen utensils… gyrating through the air.”
A great battle ensued, but the soldiers had ten-day rations and held fast. Although illegal stills and gangs didn’t completely disappear, the old days of Irishtown’s insular, Celtic civilization began to wear away, particularly so after the immigration of so many other ethnic groups into the area.
Unlike Five Points, Irishtown stayed powerful, if not insularly powerful, up until Prohibition. During this time, however, the New York Harbor and its great shipping industry was slowly giving way to new methods of transportation, and so went the people of Irishtown, who found new jobs and moved up and out. To New Jersey, Long Island, upstate or Connecticut and eventually Florida they went, as the great exodus from America’s cities to the suburbs had begun.
But also unlike Five Points, the story of Irishtown is little-known today. Ultimately, what kept the old Irish ways in Irishtown alive for so much longer than Five Points, was also what kept its reputation out of the lime light. The Code of Silence may have kept the police and others out during Irishtown’s heyday, but in the long run it also left historians without much to speak of.
Eamon Loingsigh is the author of Light of the Diddicoy, the first book in the Auld Irishtown trilogy. The second book is due out March, 2016 via Three Rooms Press. Read more of his writing on his blog, artofneed.
Posted by Jim on
A St Patrick’s Day parade in Scotland is facing cancellation because it
could be attacked by loyalists, according to reports this week.
The St Patrick’s Day parade next month in Glasgow is being opposed
because of official “nervousness” about the response of loyalists and
the anti-Catholic Orange Order.
The “nervousness” is contained in a report drawn up by the British/Irish
Parliamentary Assembly (BIPA), which has controversially urged that
symbols of Irishness in Scotland be suppressed over fears of a sectarian
response.
BIPA is comprised of parliamentarians from both the Dublin, London and
Edinburgh parliaments, as well as members of the Welsh and Stormont
Assemblies.
Its draft report warned that symbols of Irishness could be “demonised by
sectarianism”. It revealed that at least two Irish centers in Scotland
have been burned down in sectarian attacks, and suggested the centers
were at fault for exhibiting excessive Irishness.
Some Irish community organisations were regarded as “troublemakers”, it
said, and Irish songs and symbols were “contentious”.
A committee of members produced the document, but it was not adopted by
the full Assembly after some Scottish members said that it was
inflammatory — to unionists.
Mary Scanlon, a Scottish Conservative and Unionist, objected to
labelling the Irish in Scotland as a minority, which she claimed was
“divisive”.
“I am a unionist for the UK. We have just come out of the most divisive
election ever in the history of my time in Scotland,” she said.
Labour MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North Jim Sheridan said the Irish
should not be regarded as a minority and insisted public money must not
be spent on a St Patrick’s Day march in Glasgow.
“People need to look forward, move forward and think of a modern
Scotland and stop living in the past,” he said.
Posted by Jim on February 26, 2015
Martin Galvin with a letter in today’s Irish News. Martin Galvin is a US Attorney with a long history of campaigning on behalf of Irish republicanism and the rights of nationalists in the North of Ireland.
A chara,
It seems contradictory to be called ‘anti-agreement’ under the Irish News February 5th headline (TUV leader and ex-Noraid member agree on parade). I can hardly agree when Jim Allister’s biggest argument against infiltrating the PSNI into New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, is outrage over the British constabulary following me, as an Aide to the Grand Marshal.
Recently Bloody Sunday families marched in Derry against the PSNI’s failure to arrest those who shot down their loved ones. CAJ’s report “Apparatus of Impunity?” put the PSNI center stage in gifting de facto immunity to crown force members for shoot-to-kill or collusion murders. SDLP member Dolores Kelly said the PSNI was shielding agents complicit in the 1997 murder of GAA official Sean Brown. A former Scotland Yard constable charged that the PSNI shelved his damning investigation into RUC and UDR collusion in 120 Glennane Gang murders.
Are we expected to applaud this disgraceful record in a parade celebrating our Irish heritage? Must the many relatives of victims who march or watch the parade stomach this!
There are fundamental issues at stake. The parade has a proud history that dates back more than 250 years. Many times, when freedom from British rule for any part of Ireland seemed a hopeless cause, the parade was a beacon of hope and support.
Last year Allister voiced unionist objections about a British constabulary marching amidst Irish flags and “England get out of Ireland” banners. The British dismissed his protests, pursuing old objectives of normalization, criminalization and Ulsterization.
If the PSNI were accepted, so British strategists thought, it would mean their constabulary was now viewed as a normal police force, that those it arrested like Gerry McGeough and Ivor Bell must therefore be criminals, and American scrutiny of British injustice was outdated. It would signal that Americans were starting to forget that six contingents in the parade represented counties where freedom from British rule is still unfinished business.
The British went to great efforts. Last year the PSNI was initially refused. They were permitted entry on the eve of the parade only after Irish parties interceded for them. Photos with Enda Kenny were arranged. It was claimed as a success.
Such claims were premature. They succeeded in reminding Americans about the six contingents which the British want forgotten. Draw your own conclusions about my being elected an Aide.
The PSNI told Allister that its members will not attempt to enter this year’s New York parade. They refuse to say why. Perhaps they will try a last minute u-turn. Perhaps they will try again behind next year’s Aides. It will not matter.
We will not let down those six contingents or the six counties they represent. There is unfinished business.
Posted by admin on February 21, 2015
New research has shown the 26 County state is now the most unequal
country in the European Union for the distribution of income, and one of
the worst in the western world for health inequality.
A report by the TASC research institute shows the gap between rich and
poor is on the rise, with more than a third of all income concentrated
in the hands of the top 10 per cent of earners.
With one in five workers on low pay, the system in Ireland is in danger
of being “stretched to breaking point”, the report warns.
“Income inequality leads to poverty and social exclusion. But it also
lowers demand in the economy in a downward spiral of lost spending,”
said Nat O’Connor, director of Tasc.
“The concentration of income in fewer hands gives the wealthy more power
to lobby for tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit them.”
Meanwhile, separate international research has shown that the gap in
physical health between rich and poor young people is higher in Ireland
than in almost every other country in Europe or North America.
When life satisfaction was measured according to socioeconomic
background, Ireland ranked third worst in the world, after Greenland and
the Netherlands.
The findings come at a time when inequality is starting the dominate the
political agenda in Ireland.
After the European Union and the International Monetary Fund bailed out
the 26 County economy and its banks in 2008, socialists have argued that
the strict austerity conditions attached made the economy more
unsustainable, not less.
For decades to come, every child born in the state will inherit a debt
of some ten thousand euro as the state is forced to pay billions in
interest on its bailout loans.
With ever increasing taxes and charges, and government politicians
determined to re-inflate Ireland’s property bubble, the state remains one
of the five most expensive countries of Europe.
Irish families are facing life on the streets for the first time since
the great Hunger, according to leading homelessness campaigner Fr Peter
McVerry, as up to a hundred home repossessions go through the courts
every day.
Sinn Fein TD Peadar Toibin today welcomed the publication of the
inequality research.
“We know from Eurostat and OECD data that Ireland has one of the highest
rates of underemployment in the EU, and low pay in the developed world,”
he said.
“The challenges facing low income households have been compounded by
each of the regressive budgets introduced by Fine Gael and Labour over
the last four years.
“Tackling the prevalence of income inequality is fundamental to ensuring
Ireland’s recovery is fair and sustainable, but government’s attention
must be equally directed towards fair taxation, equitable public service
delivery and supports, as well as industrial relations policy.”