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AND WE DON'T WANT THE IRISH!!!!!!
Posted on: July 29, 2020 at 14:38:34 CT
Tigrrrr! MU
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JULY 29, 1849 - 171 years ago today
THE ST. LOUIS WHARF - A HOWITZER FOR THE IRISH
Two or three hundred volunteer firefighters and anti-Irish nativists clamored toward the wharf, where the Irish immigrant and dock-labor boardinghouses were, pushing a howitzer cannon stolen from a steamboat called the Missouri, to show they meant business. Having loaded the weapon with “slugs and boiler-iron punchings” — scraps, anything they could find — a madcap contingent lumbered down Morgan Street. Neither the mayor nor the police department (now reinforced by 50 new volunteers) could persuade the mob to give up their cannon. Nothing could. Not even the pouring rain. Earlier that day a fistfight broke out after an Irishman had heckled the firefighters while they fought a steamboat blaze that was spreading across the levee. Someone began throwing rocks. Others joined in. Mayhem ensued. It didn’t go so well for the Irish. Outnumbered, they retreated to James O’Brien’s saloon, where they defended themselves with weak volleys of pistol fire. When police arrived to cart culprits off to the “calaboose,” the saloon was demolished; so was Murphy’s Boarding House, Shannon’s coffeehouse, Gilligan’s on Cherry Street and Terrence Brady’s coffeehouse on Fifth and Morgan.
(Based on descriptions in Lion in the Valley, by James Neal Primm, and in the Missouri Republican, Tuesday morning, July 31, 1849.)
THE ST. LOUIS WHARF - A HOWITZER FOR THE IRISH
Two or three hundred volunteer firefighters and anti-Irish nativists clamored toward the wharf, where the Irish immigrant and dock-labor boardinghouses were, pushing a howitzer cannon stolen from a steamboat called the Missouri, to show they meant business. Having loaded the weapon with “slugs and boiler-iron punchings” — scraps, anything they could find — a madcap contingent lumbered down Morgan Street. Neither the mayor nor the police department (now reinforced by 50 new volunteers) could persuade the mob to give up their cannon. Nothing could. Not even the pouring rain. Earlier that day a fistfight broke out after an Irishman had heckled the firefighters while they fought a steamboat blaze that was spreading across the levee. Someone began throwing rocks. Others joined in. Mayhem ensued. It didn’t go so well for the Irish. Outnumbered, they retreated to James O’Brien’s saloon, where they defended themselves with weak volleys of pistol fire. When police arrived to cart culprits off to the “calaboose,” the saloon was demolished; so was Murphy’s Boarding House, Shannon’s coffeehouse, Gilligan’s on Cherry Street and Terrence Brady’s coffeehouse on Fifth and Morgan.
(Based on descriptions in Lion in the Valley, by James Neal Primm, and in the Missouri Republican, Tuesday morning, July 31, 1849.)
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AND WE DON'T WANT THE IRISH!!!!!! - Tigrrrr! MU - 7/29 14:38:34