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One can’t help but notice that once again the Orange Order and riots have been in the news again.
When we look back in the history books it’s really hard to believe the amount of trouble Orange parades have caused. In the history of Belfast almost every single major conflict since the 1840’s has been over an Orange parade going through an area in which it was not wanted and although we think that this is a problem native to our own land then you may be shocked to know that this really is not the case. Many of us are aware of parades by organisations such as Aryan Nation (Nazis) and the Ku Klux Klan going through areas in the United States where they are simply not wanted but how many are aware of the massacre caused by the last Orange parade which took place in New York?
BAN OVERTURNED
When the Orange anniversary came round in July 1871, the tiny Orange societies turned out, protected by the military and police. Acting upon instructions received from Mayor Hall, superintendent Kelso, the day before, had issued an order forbidding the parade. This, as the result, played unintentionally into the hands of the Orangemen as it aroused public opinion in their favour. Governor Hoffman hastened from Albany and issued a proclamation countermanding Mayor Hall’s order giving permission to the Orangemen to parade, promising at the same time that a police and military escort would be supplied to them.
PLANNED ROUTE
The route of the march was down Eighth Avenue to Twenty-Third Street, and up that thoroughfare to Fifth Avenue, to Fourteenth Street, to Union Square, and down Fourth Avenue to the Cooper Institute, where the procession was to break up. Eighth Avenue, in the vicinity of Lamartine Hall, where the Orange societies were forming inline, was jammed with an excited throng. The police advanced and swept the street, from Thirtieth to Twenty-Eighth Street, the police forming several deep, and only leaving room enough for the carts to pass.
ARMOURY ATTACK
Police Headquarters, in the meantime, has assumed the air and bustle that pervaded the place during the week of the draft riots. Commissioners Manierre, Smith, and Barr were in their offices; General Shaler and staff were located in the Fire Marshal’s office, while squads of soldiers and policemen kept arriving and departing. The place presented a decidedly warlike appearance.
Inspector Jameson, with 250 policemen, was dispatched in stages to Forty-Seventh Street and Eighth Avenue; Captain Allaire, of the Seventh Precinct, was hurried off with 50 men to protect Harper’s Building in Franklin Square, which, it was rumoured, was to be attacked by the rioters; 500 policemen were massed in Eighty Avenue; Captain Mount, with a hundred policemen, was detailed to look after a gang of rioters who had made an attack on the Armoury, at No. 19 Avenue in the hopes of securing arms; Drill Captain Copeland was given five companies with which to seize Hibernia Hall, where they charged and dispersed the crowd.
MILITARY GUN ATTACK
The Orange headquarters were, however, the focal point of excitement, to which converged knots of hot-blooded men, women (for, as usual on such occasions, the weaker sex was well represented), and the maledictions that were breathed on the heads of the Orange societies were both loud and deep. The Orangemen formed in line in Twenty-Ninth Street. The strong body of police was massed in advance. Next came the Ninth Regiment, followed at a short interval by the Sixth Regiment; while a body of police succeeded them. Two thousand soldiers and hundreds of police escorted 161 Orangemen through the predominantly Catholic Irish neighbourhood of Hell’s Kitchen. Nothing much happened until the head of the procession reached Twenty-Sixth Street, when some little disorder was occasioned by an attempt of the police to clear the sidewalk. A halt was ordered at Twenty-Fourth Street. A shot was fired from a window, and in an instant the Eighty-Fourth Regiment had the spot covered with their muskets, when, without waiting for orders, they discharged a volley, the Six and Ninth Regiments followed the example of the Eighty-Fourth. The next instant, as the smoke cleared off, 11 corpses were seen stretched on the sidewalk, with terrified men, women and children, overturning and trampling on each other in maddened excitement to get out of the way of the slaughter. “A pause of a few minutes now followed,” says Headley in his Sketches of the Great riots, “while the troops reloaded their guns.
SIXTY FOUR DEAD
A new attack was momentarily expected, and no one moved from the ranks to succour the wounded or lift up the dead.Women from the windows looked down on the ghastly spectacle, screaming wildly. The police now cleared the avenue and side streets, when the dead and wounded were attended to, and the order to move on was given. General Varian, indignant at the conduct of the Eighty-Four in firing first without orders, sent it to the rear, and replaced it on the flank of the Orangemen with a portion of the Ninth. The procession, as it now resumed its march, and moved through Twenty-Fourth Street, was a sad and mournful one. Two of the police and military were killed, and twenty-four wounded, all, however, from the reckless discharge of the muskets of the military; while of the rioters 62 were killed, and 67 wounded, making in all 155 victims.
HOSPITAL SCENE
The procession resumed its march and moved through Twenty-Fourth Street. The windows along the route of the procession were filled with spectators, and crowds lined the sidewalks, but all were silent and serious. No more trouble took place and the Cooper Institute was reached and the processions disbanded. Much indignation was expressed at the action of the troops for firing without waiting for orders, and firing so wildly as to wound and kill some of their own men. The scenes at Bellevue Hospital, where the dead and wounded were taken, were of a most distressing character. The ambulances kept discharging their bloody loads at the doors, and groans of distress, and shrieks of pain filled the air. Long rows of cots filled with mangled forms, were stretched on every side, while the surgeons were kept constantly employed dressing the wounds of the injured. The dead lay in the morgue.
The embattled Irish of New York City, many of them Famine emigrants, angrily buried their dead and went back to the grim tasks of survival in a strange and hostile land. Despite their seeming victory, the Orangemen never marched in the streets of New York again.
• Joe’s website on the Barrack area of the New Lodge is back on line. It contains hundreds of stories of local historical interest as well as countless photographs of the New Lodge area over the past 100 years. Check it out at www.thebarrack.com.
'So venceremos, beidh bua againn eigin lá eigin. Sealadaigh abú.'
--Bobby Sands