On June 11, 1837, Volunteer Firemen Attack a Boston Irish Funeral Procession

On June 11, 1837 a brawl erupted in downtown Boston when an Irish funeral procession and a volunteer fire brigade returning to the station reached an intersection at the same time.  In what became known as the Broad Street Riot, the firemen and their supporters chased the Irish along Purchase and Broad streets into their houses, which were then attacked by the enraged mob.  

“The air was full of flying feathers and straw from the beds which had been ripped up and emptied into the streets,” wrote Boston historian J.B. Cullen.  

Mayor Samuel A. Eliot ordered 800 National Lancers, a military group, to quell the riot and maintain peace.   Read this letter of complaint about the mistreatment of the Irish by the firemen.  

Artist Thomas Nast's depiction of Irish immigrants as apes, 1867

The riot was part of an escalating anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment among nativist Bostonians whose jobs were being threatened by new immigrants.  That prejudiced was fulled throughout the century by the media, including Punch Magazine artist Thomas Nast in the illustration above. 

Excerpt from the book, Irish Boston: A Lively Look at Boston's Colorful Irish Past.