Nick Maxwell In 1882 an Irish doctor, Patrick Henry Cronin, arrived to take up his new position at Cook County Hospital in Chicago. Cronin quickly established himself as an active member of the Irish community in the city. He was a prominent member of a number of charitable societies, regularly sang in the Catholic Cathedral on State … Read more
The murder of Dr Cronin has been largely overlooked by historians, yet the murder was more than a sensational crime story that titillated the American press in the summer of 1889. It devastated Clan na Gael, set back the cause of Irish freedom for more than a decade and had profound implications for the Chicago … Read more
Sullivan and Cronin first clashed during the Clan’s ‘Dynamite Campaign’ of the mid-1880s. The attacks, for which hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised, were intended to spread fear and cause widespread damage in Britain. High-profile buildings in London were targeted, including Scotland Yard, underground stations, the Tower of London and London Bridge. Alexander Sullivan … Read more
The first official decennial census of the population was taken in 1821, and thereafter every ten years until 1911. It is accepted that the census figure for 1871 is the first return that can be considered as reasonably reliable owing to the compulsory registration of births from 1863 onwards. The accuracy of the 1841 census … Read more
The census for 1841 returned the population at 8,175,124. In parliament, when submitting the census report, Disraeli commented that Ireland was the most densely populated country in Europe and ‘that on arable land the population was denser than that of China’. This was the first occasion when people were asked questions about their educational attainments. … Read more