Reporting on Croker’s death, the Boston Daily Globe noted that a ‘boss’ was a ‘self-appointed middleman’ who ‘set up other men for the empty honour of being mayor’. Tammany began as a fraternal society in New York in 1789, later becoming the city’s foremost political machine. Associated with corruption, vote-buying and jobbery in the era of William ‘Boss’ Tweed, Tammany was also synonymous with Irish-American politics from the middle of the nineteenth century, providing an important outlet for emigrants leaving post-Famine Ireland for a new life in New York. Croker succeeded ‘Honest’ John Kelly in 1886. He enjoyed years atop the organisation, but allegations of corruption increasingly clung to him, in particular the Ice Trust scandal of 1900. After the victory of the reform candidate, Seth Low, in the 1901 mayoral election, Croker departed. However, another Irish boss, ‘Silent’ Charlie Murphy, rose to the top of Tammany, improving its image, and the organisation remained influential in the Democratic Party into the 1930s.