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Hibernians Versus Hebrews? A New Look at the 1902 Jacob Joseph Funeral Riot1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Edward T. O'Donnell
Edward T. O'Donnell
Affiliation:
College of the Holy Cross
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Extract

On July 29, 1902 a massive funeral procession for Jacob Joseph, the esteemed Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox community, wound its way through the streets of New York's Lower East Side. The solemn occasion was marred, however, when the procession was attacked by a group of factory workers. As the melee blossomed into a full-scale riot, a contingent of New York City policemen arrived and proceeded to pummel and arrest the mourners rather than the instigators. Historians have consistendy cited this ugly incident as a vivid example of Irish Catholic antisemitism, noting that both the workers and policemen were “predominantly Irish.” Indeed, it was a quest to learn more about the roots of Irish Catholic antisemitism that drew this historian to the subject. And yet, a thorough examination of the incident produced a startling result: a dearth of Irish defendants and a flawed historiography that ultimately call into question the validity of the Jacob Joseph Funeral Riot as an example of Irish Catholic antisemitism.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , April 2007 , pp. 209 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2007

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References

2 For recent examples in both non-fiction and fiction, see Kellman, Steven G., Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth (New York, 2005), 44, 49, 56Google Scholar; and Quinn, Peter, The Hour of the Cat (New York, 2005), 260–63Google Scholar.

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7 The most complete detailed account of the riot is contained in the “Report of Mayor's Committee on Responsibility for the Riot” (hereafter referred to as the “Report of the Mayor's Committee,” with pagination corresponding to the American Hebrew), printed in the American Hebrew, Sept. 19, 1902, 497–99.Google Scholar See also: Life, “Hard on the Jews,” 40, Sept. 25, 1902Google Scholar; Collier's Weekly, “The Fighting Qualities of the Hebrew” and “A Riot in the Ghetto,” Aug. 16, 1902Google Scholar.

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9 Report of the Mayor's Committee,” 497; New York Sun, July 31, Aug. 2, 1902.

10 New York Sun, July 31, 1902Google Scholar; New York Times, July 31, 1902Google Scholar; New York Tribune, July 31, 1902.Google Scholar For additional information on the funeral as ritual, see Goren, Arthur A., “Sacred and Secular: The Place of Public Funerals in the Immigrant life of American Jews,” Jewish History 8 (March, 1994): 269–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 R. H. Hoe and Co. was founded by Robert Hoe, the Henry Ford of American printing. His introduction in 1832 of a two-cylinder press dramatically increased the speed and lowered the cost of printing to 4,000 sheets per hour. Continued innovations increased the output by 1855 to the unthinkable rate of 20,000 sheets per hour. Hoe's firm became the largest manufacturer of printing presses in the United States, a ranking it held in 1902, the year of the riot. For more on the Hoe firm, see: Frank E. Comparato, Chronicles of Genius and Folly: R. Hoe & Company and the Printing Press as a Service to Democracy (Culver City, CA, 1979)Google Scholar; Lee, Alfred McClung, The Daily Newspaper in America: The Involution of a Social Instrument (New York, 1947)Google Scholar; and McMurtrie, Douglas C., A History of Printing in the United States (New York, 1936)Google Scholar.

12 “Report of the Mayor's Committee,” 497-98; New York Sun, July 31, 1902Google Scholar; New York Times, July 31, 1902Google Scholar; New York Tribune, July 31, 1902Google Scholar.

13 The police later admitted that they were aware of such acts over the years. Only months before the riot, Hoe management posted a sign inside their factory admonishing their employees to refrain from continued harassment or face termination. “Report of the Mayor's Committee,” 498.

14 Jewish Messenger [Yiddish], July 30, 1902, p. 1Google Scholar; Forward, July 31, 1902, p. 1Google Scholar; American Hebrew, August 15, 1902, p. 345Google Scholar: “It is clear as a pikestaff that the Jews of the East side have been looked upon as the legitimate prey of the police; that the police have ruled them as their masters, and have altogether failed to understand that a public official is a public servant, even to the humblest citizen.” Later the editor surmised that if the riot served to bring this point home to the police, it “will have been a blessing in disguise.”

15 Forward, July 30, 31, Aug. 1, 2, 1902Google Scholar; Times, Aug. 1, 2, 1902Google Scholar; Sun, Aug. 1, 2, 1902Google Scholar.

16 ^American Hebrew, Aug. 8, 1902, 331, and Aug. 15, 1902, 355.

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19 See, for example, Rahden, Till van, “Beyond Ambivalence: Variations of Catholic AntiSemitism in Turn-of-the-Century Baltimore,” American Jewish History 82 (1994): 7–42Google Scholar; and Norwood, Stephen H., “Marauding Youth and the Christian Front: Antisemitic Violence in Boston and New York During World War II,” American Jewish History 91 (June 2003): 233–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also footnotes 45, 46, and 47 for examples.

20 Examination of the Records of K. Hoe & Company, New York Public Library, Science and Business Library Branch, microfilm, 15 Reels, revealed no reference to Irish workers. See also the New York Times, June 7, 1907 for an article on the graduates of the Hoe & Co. apprentice program. Of the nine names provided (of sixteen total), only one (Barry) is identifiably Irish.

21 New York Tribune, July 31, Aug. 2, 1902.

22 American Hebrew, Aug. 1, 1902, p. 292.

23 Forward, July 30, 31, 1902Google Scholar; Jewish World, July 30, 31, 1902.Google Scholar See also the letters from Mayor's Committee member, Louis Marshall, regarding the riot. Neither mention Irish perpetrators. Reznikoff, Charles, ed., Louis Marshall: Champion of Liberty, vol. I (Philadelphia, 1957), 10–12Google Scholar.

24 Irish World, Sept. 13, 1902, p. 11Google Scholar.

25 New York Tribune, Sept. 17, 1902.

26 New York Times, Aug. 1, 1902 (editorial) and Aug. 21, 1902 (“Irishman”). Meyer Schoenfeld, a labor leader, also argued against calling the attacks antisemitic. As he testified before the committee, “There is not anti-Semitism over here. These attacks are made by loafers and toughs, and are not the result of any sustained feeling.” American Hebrew, Aug. 15, 1902, p. 355Google Scholar.

27 New York Sun, July 31, 1902.Google Scholar For information regarding the ethnic origins of surnames, see: Robb, H. Amanda and Chester, Andrew, Encyclopedia of American Family Names (New York, 1995)Google Scholar; Smith, Elsdon C., New Dictionary of American Family Names (New York, 1956, 1973)Google Scholar; and Hanks, Patrick and Hodges, Flavia, A Dictionary of Surnames (New York, 1988).Google Scholar Ethnicities in parentheses refer to likely ethnic identities as cited in the above surname sources: Stockhusen (French/German), Stillgenbauer (English/German), Church (English), Adams (English, French, Catalan, Italian, German, Flemish, Dutch, Polish, Jewish).

28 Those who testified (ethnicities in parentheses refer to likely ethnic identities as cited in Robb and Chester, Hanks and Hodges, and Smith): Edward A. Collins (Irish), Herman C. Dwyer (Irish), Alexander McClay (Scottish), Walter Nevers (possibly English/German/Flemish), John H. Wilson (English/Scottish), Walter Paul (many possibilities, none Irish), Wallace Carver (English), William Seakchhaver (unknown), Edward Shepard (English), George A. Duncan (Irish/Scottish), Henry Renken (German), Wilfred Hector (German/Scottish), Richard Fichte (German), and William May (English/French/German/Jewish). See New York Times, Aug. 19, 20, and 21, 1902; New York Tribune, Aug. 20, 1902.

29 Records of the City Magistrates’ Court, Third District, City and County of New York, subgroup 40321, indicate that Church lived in Stamford, CT. Records of the City Magistrates’ Court, Third District, City and County of New York, subgroup 40320 indicate that Adams lived at 756 McDonough Street in Brooklyn. The New York Times, July 31, 1902, and New York Sun, July 31, 1902, say Stockhusen lived at 28 Grand Street, Brooklyn. An address for Stillgenbauer could not be found.

30 Demographic information on the Irish on the Lower East Side is found in Bayor, Ronald and Meagher, Timothy, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore, 1996), 552–53.Google Scholar Demographic information on Germans in the area, comes from U.S. Industrial Commission, Reports of the Industrial Commission on Immigration, Including Testimony with Review and Digest (1911, repr. New York, 1976), 470.Google Scholar See also Nadel, Stanley, Uttle Germany: Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in New York City, 1850-1880 (Urbana, 1990), passimGoogle Scholar.

31 See the New York Tribune, Oct. 2,1905, for an example of Italian toughs attacking Jews. See also Brown, Mary Elizabeth, “The Adoption of the Tactics of the Enemy: The Care of Italian Immigrant Youth in the Archdiocese of New York during the Progressive Era,” in Immigration to New York, ed. Pencak, William, et. al (New York, 1991), 109–25Google Scholar; Gabaccia, Donna R., From Sicily to Elizabeth Street: Housing and Social Change among Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930 (Albany, 1984), 67Google Scholar; Kessner, Thomas, The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Mobility in New York City, 1880-1915 (New York, 1977), 48–50, 56Google Scholar.

32 Report of the Police Department of the City of New York for the Year Ending Dec. 31, 1902 (New York, 1903).Google ScholarRichardson, James F., The New York Police, Colonial Times to 1901 (New York, 1970), 235Google Scholar; New York Times, Dec. 21, 1933Google Scholar, states that at least 7,204 (36 percent) of the city's 20,000 policemen were Irish-born or Irish-American.

33 Haller, Mark, “Historical Roots of Police Behavior: Chicago, 1890-1925,” Law and Society Review 10 (Winter 1976): 303–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Gutman, Herbert, “The Tompkins Square 'Riot' in New York City on January 13, 1874: A Reexamination of Its Causes and Its Aftermath,” Labor History 6 (Winter 1965): 48–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 See ch. 7 in O'Donnell, Edward T., “Henry George and the ‘New Political Forces’: Irish Nationalism, Labor Radicalism, and Politics in Gilded Age New York City,” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1995)Google Scholar.

36 Henry, Sarah, “The Strikers and Their Sympathizers: The Brooklyn Trolley Strike of 1895,” Labor History 32 (Summer 1991): 329–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; New York Times, Jan.-March, 1895Google Scholar.

37 That Irish policemen also failed to show favoritism toward their fellow ethnics is indicated by arrest records of the period in question. Irish-born residents of New York City accounted for 22 percent of the city's foreign-born population, but 14 percent of those arrested (the highest of any group). Jews, on the other hand, constituted 25 percent of the foreign-born population, but just 7 percent of those arrested. Source: Report of the Police Department of New York Cityforthe Year Ending December 31', 1902 (New York, 1903), 42–43.Google Scholar See also the New York Tribune, Aug. 19, 1905Google Scholar, for an example of Irish policemen taking on a crowd of violent strikers to save four Jewish bakers.

38 The spark which ignited the riot was the stabbing death of a police officer by a black resident of the West Side. See New York Times, Aug. 14-Oct. 30, 1900Google Scholar; Osofsky, Gilbert, “Race Riot, 1900: A Study of Ethnic Violence,” Journal of Negro Education 32 (Winter 1963): 16–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Marilynn S., Street Justice: A History of Police Violence in New York City (Boston, 2003)Google Scholar; Sacks, Marcy S., “’To Show Who Was in Charge’: Police Repression of New York City's Black Population at the Turn of the Century,” Journal of Urban History 31 (Sept. 2005): 799–819CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 There is only one reference to this antisemitic outburst. All other statements by Jewish leaders expressing outrage at Cross cite his words as, “Club the life out of them” and “Kill them” (Sun, Aug. 1, 1902). Given the primary role played by Cross and the attention given him by previous historians, it is worth delving a little more deeply into his background. A name like Adam A. Cross, after all, is not exactly Irish. According to Robb and Chester, Hanks and Hodges, and Smith, the name Cross is mainly English and occasionally Irish. Genealogical research into Cross's ethnic origins makes clear that he was of mixed ethnicity, part of which may or may not have been Irish. His father, George Washington Cross, was born to Augustin Cross and Desire Bliven, both of New York. His mother Nancy was born to Adam Mattice and Nancy Uprans. Source: Department of Health of the City of New York, Bureau of Records, Certificates of Death: no. 34516 for Nancy Cross, no. 14472 for George W Cross (both give names of parents).

40 Rischin, , The Promised City, 272–73Google Scholar.

41 McNickle, , To Be Mayor of New York, 16–19Google Scholar.

42 Morris, Edmund, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1988), 481–514Google Scholar; Brands, H. W., T. R.: The Last Romantic (New York, 1997)Google Scholar; and Roosevelt, Theodore, The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt, ed. Andrews, Wayne (1913, repr. New York, 1958)Google Scholar; Richardson, , The New York Police, 240-42, 248–67Google Scholar.

43 Riordan, William, Honest Graft: The World of George Washington Plunkitt, ed. Olson, James (New York, 1993), 69.Google Scholar See also Hammack, David C., Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1982), 89Google Scholar.

44 Henderson, , Tammany Hall and the New Immigrants, 22–23Google Scholar.

45 Brown, Thomas N., Irish-American Nationalism, 1870-1890 (New York, 1966), 57Google Scholar.

46 Gaelic American, Jan. 9, 16, 1904.

47 For examples, see New York Times, June 6, 1904,Google Scholar and Oct. 15, 1905; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 14, 1894, April 30,1899, and Aug. 7, 1902.Google Scholar See also Glanz, Rudolf, Jew and Irish: Historic Group Relations and Immigration (New York, 1966), 102Google Scholar.

48 Keogh, Dermot, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust (Cork, Ireland, 1998), 26–53.Google Scholar See also Jones, Pamela Fletcher, The Jews of Britain: A Thousand Years of History (Gloucestershire, UK, 1990), 150-52, 170–71Google Scholar; Englander, David, ed, A Documentary History of Jewish Immigrants in Britain, 1840-1920 (Leicester, UK, 1994), 247–49, 281-88Google Scholar.

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50 Masserman and Baker, The Jews Come to America.

51 Cowen, Philip, Memories of an American Jew (New York, 1932), 289Google Scholar.

52 Cowen's reference to “small one-family houses” in a section of Manhattan choked with tenements is further evidence that his memory and or knowledge of the Lower East Side ca. 1902 was quite poor by 1932.

53 Rischin, , The Promised City, 91Google Scholar.

54 Glanz, , Jew and Irish, 103Google Scholar.

55 Higham, , Send These to Me, 114–15Google Scholar.

56 Feldstein, Stanley, The Land That I Show You: Three Centuries of Jewish Ufe in America (Garden City, NY, 1978), 181Google Scholar.

57 Sachar, Howard M., A History of the Jews in America (New York, 1992), 274–75.Google Scholar See also Richardson, The New York Police, for use of the riot to illustrate Irish antipathy toward new immigrants.

58 See Dinnerstein, Leonard, Anti-Semitism in America (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; and Michael, Robert, A Concise History of American Antisemitism (Lanham, MD, 2005), 99Google Scholar.

59 Higham, , Send These to Me, 115Google Scholar.

60 The outstanding account of ethnic strife and especially Irish antisemitism is Bayor's, Ronald, Neighbors in Conflict: The Irish, Germans, Jews, and Italians of New York City, 1929-1941 (Baltimore, 1978)Google Scholar.

61 See for example: Jewish Messenger, Aug. 15, 1902,Google Scholar editorial support for the Irish boycott of theaters featuring plays with “stage Irishmen” caricatures; Jewish Messenger, Aug. 29, 1902,Google Scholar editorial chastising a Protestant minister who delivered an anti-Catholic sermon; Jewish Messenger, Sept. 5, 1902Google Scholar, effusive theater review of “The Emerald Isle“; Jewish Messenger, Nov. 14, 1902Google Scholar, editorial praising a resolution in support of the pogrom victims in Russia made by an organization of “Irish women [who] have always been famous for the generous hearts”; American Hebrew, Nov. 14, 1902, p. 741Google Scholar on the growth of Irish-Jewish business ventures; Irish American, June 6, 1903Google Scholar, editorial praising Tammany Hall for appropriating $2,500 for the fund to aid victims of “bigotry and intolerance of the Russian horde who were responsible for the inhumane massacre of Hebrews” in Kishenev (see also Jan. 13, 1903); Irish World, Sept. 13, 1902, reprint of Catholic Mirror editorial condemning the Jacob Joseph riot.

62 Tchen, John Kuo Wei, “Quimbo Appo's Fear of Fenians: Chinese-Irish-Anglo Relations in New York City,” in The New York Irish, ed. Bayor, and Meagher, , 125–52Google Scholar.

63 Orleck, Annelise, Common Sense and a Little Fire (Charlotte, NC, 1995), 44Google Scholar.

64 See Dermot Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland.