University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1979 Beyond the ballot box : a social history of the Boston Irish, 1845-1917. Dennis P. Ryan University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Ryan, Dennis P., "Beyond the ballot box : a social history of the Boston Irish, 1845-1917." (1979). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1374. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1374 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 3120bt)D135741bl wSm& - WM|iM,\". -mm BEYOND THE BALLOT BOX: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE BOSTON IRISH, 1845-1917 A Dissertation Presented by Dennis Patrick Ryan Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. April 1979 History (c) Dennis Patrick Ryan 1979 All Rights Reserved. - 111 - BEYOND THE BALLOT BOX: A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE BOSTON IRISH, 1845-1917 A Dissertation Presented by Dennis Patrick Ryan Approved as to style and content by: t Howard H. Quint (Chairman of Committee) (Member) April, 1979 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Anyone attempting a study of this scope, naturally incurs debts of gratitude, many of them unpayable. My special thanks to Professors Milton Cantor and Joseph M. Heraon of the University of Massachusetts for innumerable editorial and substantive suggestions; Joanne Laptewicz and Christina Daniel who typed this manuscript; the University of Massachusetts for a research fellowship in 1978; my oldest brother, John Francis Ryan, the keeper of family folklore and history and luckily the owner of a banking account that more than once bailed this writer of modest means out of financial difficulty; Marie Murphy of the Boston Archdiocesan Office, Brighton, Massachusetts; Katherine Haywood of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Boston; Father Joseph J. Shea, S.J., of the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts; Thomas E. Cone, Jr., M.D., of the Children's Hospital Medical Center, Boston; Ronald K. West, the proprietor of the Brady-Fallon Funeral Home, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts; the late Sister Dorethea Furfey of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur; James A. Marsh of Filene's and Sons, Boston; Thomas W. Kilmartin, a fellow graduate student at the University of Massachusetts; and the staff at the Saint John's Seminary Library, Brighton, Massachusetts. My deepest appreciation and gratitude is reserved for my mentor, Professor select Howard H. Quint, of the University of Massachusetts. He not only helped two of the six topics discussed in my thesis but read it with uncommon scrutiny and meticulousness, offering criticisms, suggestions, and when required, the second solemn admonition to write more with my head than with my heart. For a Proressor generation Irish Catholic like myself, this was no easy task, as neither him nor Clio. Quint well knows. But hopefully I have disappointed -V- PREFACE On a mild evening in March 1912, over eight hundred guests crowded into the main function room of the Hotel Somerset in the Back Bay to participate in the annual dinner of the Charitable Irish Society. Featuring a menu of oysters, brook trout, "Roast Jumbo Squab", "fancy ice cream" and a head table graced by President William Howard Taft, William Cardinal O'Connell and Mayor John F. Fitzgerald of Boston, the occasion was a long way, both in a historical and symbolic sense, from the days of the "coffin ships", which transported the ancestors of many of these very same guests from a famine-ravaged Ireland 1 to the Hub less than three quarter's of a century before. Realizing how little research has been done on the non-political experience of the Irish in Boston between 1845 and 1917, this study attempts to break new ground by investigating the Irish's institutional response to poverty, their learning experience in the parochial school, their difficulties breaking into business and the professions, their relations with other ethnic and racial groups (Jews, Italians, Blacks, etc.) as opposed to Yankees; and finally, but no less important, the roles assigned to Celtic women and the Hibernian's infatuation with leisure activities, as mirrored in their myriad of clubs, fraternities, athletic associations and if it must be said, drinking establish- ments. -VI- FOOTNOTES Bo ston Globe , March 19, 1912; "Program of the Charitable Irish Society Dinner, March 18, 1912", deposited with the Stephen O'Meara Papers Boston Public Library. : -vii- ABSTRACT BEYOND THE BALLOT BOX A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE BOSTON IRISH, 1845-1917 (Degree Date, May, 1979) Dennis Patrick Ryan B.A., Suffolk University M.A., Northeastern University Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Directed by Professor Howard H. Quint Realizing how little research has been done on the non-political experience of the Irish in Boston between 1845 and 1917, this study attempts to break new ground by investigating the Irish's institutional response to poverty, their learning experience in the parochial school, their difficulties breaking into business and the professions, their relations with other ethnic and racial groups (Jews, Italians, Blacks, etc.) as opposed to Yankees; and finally, but no less important, the roles assigned to Celtic women and the Hibernian’s infatuation with leisure activities, as mirrored in their myriad of clubs, fraternities, athletic associations and if it must be said, drinking establish- ments. Believing that the best kind of help was self-help, the Boston Irish by 1917 had organized and built an impressive array of social agencies and charitable institutions to care for approximately fourteen thousand of their sick, poor and disadvantaged. A reflection of the Catholic Church's long tradition of pastoral care and the selflessness and generosity of prominent laymen like Andrew Carney, Thomas Ring, and Patrick Donahoe as well as thousands of ordinary, faceless, working-class people, these institutions also mirrored -viii- a certain distrust on the part of the Irish of public and private charitable agencies where proselytizing was not unheard of. Consequently, serving both as physical and spiritual havens. Catholic-run institutions thus provided its clients with the added assurance of being ministered to by individuals who usually shared the same faith and cultural heritage. This world of ethnic and religious kinship would be known to leading Protestant Boston social workers like Robert A. Woods and Frederick A. Bushee. Yet, as outsiders, it would never be fully appreciated nor fully understood by them. And for a people who at one time measured distance by the number of rosaries that could be said, the Boston Irish, educationally speaking, had also come a long way by 1917. With approximately twenty-nine elementary schools, four high schools, four academies and one college, they could be justifiably proud. Secure within friendly classrooms and corridors, the life sustaining forces of faith and culture were assured of being passed on from one generation of Irish Catholics to the next. As wives, mothers and wage earners, Irish women, on the other hand, would do their part in managing and stabilizing society's most crucial institution, the family. Even though not taking full advantage of the opportunities available to them in business and the professions, many other Irish still managed to prosper as lawyers, doctors, journalists, or as grocers, liquor dealers, con- tractors and undertakers. Separated as much from their fellow immigrants by language, customs and manners as they were from native Yankees, the Irish, nevertheless, as power brokers within the Democratic Party, the Labor Movement recently and the Catholic Church, would moreover play a major role in educating arrived Italians, Jews, Poles, etc., on the realities as well as the myths of the American dream in Boston. -IX- While attending to these solemn responsibilities however, they never lost sight of the important fact that life was meant to be enjoyed as much as it was to be productive, in an economic and monetary sense. Consequently, they organized their own parish socials, fraternities, and clubs while leaving a lasting impression on the world of professional sport and theatre. Politics, Irish style, would additionally liberate Boston from the restraints of its Puritan past, where office seekers and holders were expected to be heard but not seen mingling with the masses at ward meetings, picnics, street corner rallies and the neighborhood saloon. -X- TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iv Preface v I. The Irish Against Poverty 1 II. Bridget and Other Irish Women 29 III. The Little Green Schoolhouse and Beyond 56 IV. Irishmen of Property and Standing 86 V. The Irish at Leisure 123 VI. The Irish and The Melting Pot 149 Conclusion 189 Notes on Key Sources 191 - 1 - Chapter 1 THE IRISH AGAINST POVERTY "Go among the poor yourself, see for yourself, no tongue can tell you one tenth part of what you will realize when you see... the point of the nails and put your finger into the place of the nails that have fastened so many a poor man and woman living in anguish crucified on the cross of poverty." Thomas Ring, President of the Boston Particular Council of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, 1891. To the thousands of poverty-stricken Irish immigrants who passed through Boston's ports during the 1840's the city signified a hopeful if apprehensive beginning. Bewildered, confused and frightened, the newcomers could at least take comfort in the fact that they had escaped the fate of over a half million of their count rymen who perished during the disastrous potato famine. In having decided to emigrate, they had made the desperate choice between the ship or the coffin.