It was a crime almost as sensational in its day as Jack the Ripper’s attacks on prostitutes. In the spring of 1889, just months after five women were murdered in the Whitechapel district of London, the body of Patrick Henry Cronin was discovered rotting in a storm sewer on the outskirts of Chicago. Cronin, a doctor and prominent nationalist, had disappeared more than two weeks earlier, after a mysterious summons to attend to a patient. His friends suspected that he had been abducted and were convinced that the culprits were members of Clan na Gael, a secret society of Irish-Americans determined to end British rule in Ireland.
They were right, and the headline-grabbing trial that followed exposed Chicago's links to an earlier wave of bombings in British cities that had targeted the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London and other landmarks. A murder the Chicago Tribune called a "tale of mystery and horror" scandalised and divided Chicago's Irish community and dealt a blow to American support for Ireland's independence.
Blood Runs Green is the first book in more than a century to examine Cronin's execution-style killing and the trial of five men on charges of conspiracy to murder. Gillian O'Brien's retelling of this pivotal yet almost forgotten story is worth the wait.
O’Brien, a lecturer in history at Liverpool John Moores University, has been extremely diligent in her quest to establish who killed Cronin and why. “It is daunting,” she notes, “to embark on writing a book whose many main characters are members of a secret society.” Still, with a thoroughness and insight worthy of an academic Sherlock Holmes, O’Brien has mined newspaper accounts, court records and archives in Ireland, Britain and the US to breathe life into the people and events connected to the case.
For all of her research Patrick Henry Cronin remains something of an enigma. He was born in Buttevant, Co Cork, during the Famine, and his family joined the exodus to North America. Cronin was a railway ticket agent whose rich singing voice – a rendition of God Save Ireland became his signature performance – earned him a sponsor and the chance to go to medical school.
He set up a practice in Chicago, a booming metropolis and the hub of Irish nationalist activity in the US. Cronin became a leading member of Clan na Gael, which succeeded the Fenian Brotherhood as the standard-bearer for the Irish cause in the US, as well as a key supporter of its ruthless and ambitious leader, Alexander Sullivan.
The Canadian-born son of Irish immigrants, Sullivan was a journalist turned lawyer who found his niche in Chicago as a powerbroker in the local government. Almost one in five Chicagoans claimed Irish heritage, and Sullivan became the man to see for favours and jobs. His power to deliver the Irish vote gave him the ear of US presidents, and his ability to raise money to support Home Rule and land reform in Ireland made him an ally of Charles Stewart Parnell.
Unlike Parnell, however, Sullivan believed that actions spoke louder than words. “The mystery of an unknown power striking in the dark . . . is far more terrible than the damage inflicted,” he once noted, echoing modern terrorists.
Under his leadership Clan na Gael dispatched bombers overseas in the “dynamite war” that spread panic and destruction across Britain in the early 1880s.
Cronin opposed violence and became a bitter and vocal critic of Sullivan’s leadership. He attacked Sullivan for siphoning off Clan na Gael funds to finance terrorism and, in the process, undermining Parnell’s campaign for Home Rule. The allegation split the organisation and made Cronin a marked man. He began to carry a revolver and told a friend to expect “his coming death at the hands of assassins”.
His prediction came true in May 1889, when he was stabbed and bludgeoned to death at a secluded cottage north of the city. Five men, four of them Clan na Gael members, were charged, including a detective with Chicago’s largely Irish police force.
Sullivan was arrested, and, although never indicted, newspapers accused him of orchestrating the murder. The stigma destroyed his hold on Irish America.
O’Brien deftly dissects the murder investigation and trial, and despite her misgivings about researching the century-old machinations of a secret society she exposes Clan na Gael’s internal strife in remarkable detail. And she does not neglect the backdrop to the story, offering insights into everything from 19th-century press sensationalism to corruption and incompetence in the ranks of the Chicago police.
After a long trial three men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for plotting Cronin’s murder. A fourth, who played a minor role, served a three- year term.
Two of the main conspirators died in prison, but the third, a former police detective named Dan Coughlin, a Sullivan ally, won an appeal and was acquitted at his second trial.
In death Cronin achieved the goal that eluded him in life: Sullivan’s downfall. O’Brien concludes that there is no doubt that Sullivan’s supporters murdered Cronin to silence him, but she found no evidence that the Clan na Gael leader himself planned or ordered the killing. His conviction in the court of public opinion, however, rendered his actual guilt or innocence irrelevant.
As for Clan na Gael, it never recovered from being dragged into the spotlight. “The fissures within Irish republicanism were laid open for all to see,” O’Brien writes, “and for a secret society this was a disaster.” Membership and support flagged. John Devoy, a Sullivan opponent and one of the most prominent nationalists in the US, later claimed that the Cronin case “did more harm to the Irish cause than any single incident for many generations”.
Blood Runs Green not only rescues Cronin's death and legacy from obscurity; it also sheds light on a turning point in Irish history.
Dean Jobb is the author of Empire of Deception, the true story of a swindler who hoodwinked the elite of 1920s Chicago, to be published in May by Algonquin Books
