Sunday, June 11, 2023

The Broad Street Riot on This Day in History

 

This day in history: The Broad Street Riot occurred on this day in 1837. The Broad Street Riot was a massive brawl that occurred in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 11, 1837, between Irish Americans and Yankee firefighters. An estimated 800 people were involved in the actual fighting, with at least 10,000 spectators egging them on. Nearby homes were sacked and vandalized, and the occupants beaten. Many on both sides were seriously injured, but no immediate deaths resulted from the violence. After raging for hours, the riot was quelled when Mayor Samuel Eliot called in the state militia.

In the wake of the riot, Boston's police and fire departments were established.

The Irish had a rough go at it for quite some time in the past. Anti-Irish sentiments in Victorian Britain and 19th century United States stereotyped the Irish as violent and alcoholic. Magazines such as Punch portrayed the Irish as having "bestial, ape-like or demonic features and the Irishman, (especially the political radical) was invariably given a long or prognathous jaw, the stigmata to the phrenologists of a lower evolutionary order, degeneracy, or criminality." 

Protestants of the nineteenth century would use crime statistics to allege that Irish Catholics were over-represented in crime. There were theories that the over-representation was due to a lack of morality stemming from Catholic religious belief, and other theories that Catholics were racially inferior to Anglo-Saxons.

The Irish were often used as slaves, and were even deemed to be of less worth than a black slave.

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