Essays and Such
Irish Cultural Society
of San Antonio Texas
Promoting Awareness of Irish Culture
Boston Irish Cop
by PETER F. STEVENS Boston Irish Reporter
July 2004, pg.17
"FROM THE BOGS OF IRELAND" The Tradition of the Boston Irish Cop Began in 1851 -But Not Without Trouble BY PETER F. STEVENS Boston Irish Reporter July 2004, pg.17 Irish Cop and the Boston Police - the terms have become inextricably entwined over the years. Kathleen O'Toole now heads the department, and it is a sure bet that at the Democratic National Convention, many of the men and women wearing the shield of the department will not only sport names that are decidedly of the "old sod," but will also be second-, third-, or even fourth-generation officers from the same families. The hue of the Boston Police has long been tinged with "green," a tradition that unfolded in 1851. But for that first Irishman to wear the badge, the milestone came amid a firestorm of protest from "Proper Bostonians." In the afternoon November 5 late 1851, a burly man burst through the door of the guard room of the Boston city police. He encountered raised eyebrows from the assembled force. "Barney McGinniskin," he shouted, "from the bogs of Ireland!" Boston had its first Irish cop. And a political, social, and cultural furor soon erupted in the land of "Yankee icicles." "This person woke up one morning and found himself famous," noted the Boston Pilot. "He is the first Irishman that ever carried the stick of a policeman, and meetings, even Faneuil Hall meetings, have been held to protest against the appointment." The very notion of an Irish policeman enraged Brahmins and Yankeetradesmen alike in the Boston of 1851. Of the city's population of nearly 140,000, 53,923 hailed from Ireland, but on Boston's eightman Board of Aldermen, no Irishmen represented the immigrants,and only one, Edward Hennessey, of the West End, on the 48-man Common Council. Alderman Abel B. Munroe summed up the sentiments of many Yankees with his contention that appointing any Irishman to the police force would create "a dangerous precedent" because, in his opinion, Irishmen committed most of the city's crimes and so would receive special consideration from any of their own wearing the blue. Many Irishmen did have their eyes on a slot with the police, for the job's salary - two dollars a day for the morning and afternoon beat, and $1.20 for the night watch - offered nearly twice the wages of the laborers' jobs that were the only work open to most immigrants. By 1851, City Marshall Francis Tukey, a transplanted Maine mechanic who had battled his way through Harvard Law School (1843) and seethed with political ambition, commanded a police force of 44 men, noted for their quick fists and controversial raids on North End red-light spots dubbed "The Black Sea' and the "Murder District." None of Tukey's men was Irish, and most of the locals wanted to keep it that way. On June 9,1851, Tukey sent to Mayor John Prescott Bigelow a letter breaking with the "No Irish Need Apply" credo of the boys in blue: "My dear Sir, As you directed I have made inquiries in regard to Bernard McGinniskin,and find him to be a man of 42 years old, and has a family, has been in this country 22 years-has been employed in a grain store and as a cab driver, resides in the rear of 275 Ann Street, has the reputation of being a temperate and quiet men. Very respectfully your obt. Servt, Francis Tukey, City Marshall" On the rare occasions when a police office dismissed from his cherished sinecure, a horde of rough-and-tumble men applied for the vacancy. McGinniskin was the first local Irishman with the temerity to seek the job. And to buttress his application, he provided Tukey references from a "who's who" of Yankee merchants lauding McGinniskin's credentials for the police force. On September 19, 1851, Mayor Bigelow recommended the Irishman to the alderman, and all eight voted in his favor. A few days later, Alderman Abel B. Munroe did a "about-face" on McGinniskin's application. Claiming that he had not understood the mayor's espousal of an Irishman, Munroe switched his position and demanded that a new vote be taken. In an impassioned plea remarkable for its pitting a Yankee "champion" of an Irishman against entrenched New England prejudices, Bigslow harangued the alderman: "What, then, stands in his way to be treated like other respectable applicants? The answer to him is this: You were born on the wrong side of the ocean.... We cannot forget that you cradled in the bower of the Shamrock. You cannot be trusted." Mayor Bigelow refused to withdraw McGinniskin's application and proclaimed he would not act as a "consenting party to the spirit of such an answer." When the tally was taken, only Munroe voted against the Irishman. McGinniskin received orders to report to Tukey for duty immediately. With one hurdle cleared for McGinniskin, a second materialized in the "dark, handsome" visage of his new boss, City Marshall Tukey. Miffed that he might be perceived as a mere lackey of the mayor in McGinniskin's appointment,Tukey unleashed a personal campaign to boot the Irishman from the force even before he reported for duty. Tukey, arrayed with anti-Irish Bostonians, decried McGinniskin's appointment at "the expense of an American. On November 5, 1851, McGinniskin strode into police headquarters and handed Tukey a letter from the mayor, who had ordered the marshal to place the Irishman an the night force. At Tukey's command, McGinniskin introduced himself to his comrades in blue and headed out into the "mean streets" of the waterfront that night for the first time. Tukey's vendetta against the city's first Irish cop escalated over the next few weeks as the marshal declared that McGinniskin "is not a fit or suitable person" for a policeman. Tukey claimed that he had launched his own investigation of the immigrant, and had uncovered evidence that he was a noisey, quarrelsome, meddlesome" cab driver and a ruffian who, in 1842, had been "indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced, for being engaged in a riot on the Lord's Day, in a church." In a diatribe against McGinniskin, the marshal alleged that when the Irishman had introduced himself to his comrades as "from the bogs of ----------------------------------------------- By the century's turn Hibernians like this Irish beat cop were commonplace in the Hub. Not so when Barney McGinniskin first broke into the ranks in 1851. --------------------------------------------------- Ireland," he had proven himself a belligerent Irishman looking for a fight. Of all the vitriol Tukey tossed against McGinnisken, the allegation that the marshal had never recommended him to the mayor goaded a response from the immigrant. He fought back in a public, notarized statement chronicling his interview in June 1851 with Tukey and also released the letter in which the marshal had described him as a peaceable, not a quarrelsome, man. Most tellingly, the Irishman proved that although he had been convicted in the riot, he had actually tried to break up a fracas at St. Mary's Church in the North End between a pair of factions brawling over two local priests' disparate views. The Pilot declared that the furor over McGinniskin was a clash between the mayor and the marshal. For the moment, Bigelow won out,and McGinniskin remained on the force. But on Jan. 5, 1852, scant hours befare auctioneer Benjamin Seaver, whose victory had come partly because of Tukey's support, took office as the new mayor, Tukey fired McGinniskin with out giving any reason. The press, though divided in its opinion of the Irish, assailed Tukey as a power-drunk official "getting too big to be contained by Boston." Reporters and editors "do not care a fig ... so far as McGinniskin ... is concerned," but regarding the papers' and the general public's growing ire at Tukey, Seaver got the message. He reinstated the Irishman. Barney McGinniskin proved his mettle for nearly three years on the police force, showing as little favoritism toward Irish miscreants as toward Yankee ones. But in 1854, a ground swell of anti-Irish rancor espoused by the "Know-Nothing" American Party shook Boston politics and bounced McGinniskin from the police ranks for good. The Pilot would record: "Mr. McG was discharged from the Boston Police for no other reason than he was a Catholic and born in Ireland." Mr. Ginniskin was unbowed by the prejudice. He supported his family by working as a cooper (a barrel-maker) and by eventually rising above Yankee bias to become a United States Inspector at the Custom House. At his home, which was at 29 Clark Street, close to St. Stephen's Church, at police headquarters, and at the Custom House, his life proved a fitting tribute to the tenacity of the Boston Irish, scrapping for their owm piece of the American Dream. McGinniskin died of rheumatism on March 2, 1868, his name soon forgotten by history. But in the decades following his death, every time an Irishman donned the blue of the Boston Police, the legacy of Barney McGinniskin - the city's first Irish cop - loomed large. That legacy still helps to fill the ranks of the Boston Police Department with men and women whose uniforms are blue and whose bloodlines are green.