BLOOD RUNS GREEN-Gillian O'Brien

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in civilized history. The dead Man Doctor P. H. Cronan was a respected Irish physician, but his brutal murder uncovered a web of intrigue, secrecy, and corruption that stretched across the United States and far beyond Blood Runs Green tells the story of Cronan's murder, from the police investigation to

the trial. It is a story of hot headed journalists in pursuit of sensational crimes, of a bungling police force riddled with informers and spies, and of a secret revolutionary society determined to free Ireland from Britain, but succeeding only in tearing itself apart. It is also the story of a booming immigrant population clamoring for power at a time

of unprecedented change. From back rooms to courtrooms, historian Gillian O'Brien defintely navigates the complexities of Irish Chicago, bringing to life a rich caste of characters and tracing the spectacular rise and fall of the secret Irish American society Clan nee Gale. She draws on real life accounts and sources from the United States, Ireland, and Britain to cast new light on Clan the Gale and reveal how Irish Republicanism

swept across the United States. Destined to be a true crime classic, Blood Runs Green as an enthralling tale of a murder that captivated the world and reverberated through Society long after the coffin closed. The book that we are featuring this evening is Blood Runs Green with my special

guest journalist, author and historian Jillian O'Brien. And Jillian O'Brien is calling from Liverpool, England today and using our direct connect with the instructions provided by blog talk radio, and we have a problem connecting for those unfortunate persons there will listen to this live which are a handful. We will give Jillian for customary a few minutes to try

to connect and I'll edit this portion out. I don't want to promise to do that, but I will and if not, I'm sure Jillian is still very interested in being interviewed regarding her book Blood Wind's Green, and there she is right now. Good evening, Jillian O'Brien, Good evening. I just did the introduction for your book, Blood Wren's Green. Thank you very much for a green to this interview. I know you're calling from your home in Liverpool.

necessarily work, and so a number of groups were established, and probably the most well known of those was the Fenian group, which was established in the late eighteen fifties, and that group as a secret society and it's it was dedicated to using force to try and establish an Irish Republic, and very often in these Irish Secret Society is the very first thing on any agenda is the split.

And so there were a lot of divisions within those groups between how they would achieve this freedom and the various strategies that would use, and the level of connection they would have with their counterpart in Ireland and in Britain.

And so the Fenian Movement U ultimately had sort of a series of uprisings or attempted uprisings in the late eighteen sixties, particularly in eighteen sixty seven, and there were again they weren't as successful as they thought they would be, and out of the sort of disappointment associated with the lack of success, you have a split in the Fenian movement, and out of that you get the establishment of a group called Clan the Gale, which means the Family of

the Irish or the Family of the Gale. And that's the group that I was particularly interested in when I came to write the book.

Klan the Gale and it progressed further. So tell us about the importance in the secret societies and some of the codes that were involved, and where it really came from. The traditions.

on Irish soil. Now, one of the problems with the Society of United Irish Man is that it was a secret society and it was designed to operate in secrets. But one of the issues that they had was that they held many of their meetings will be held in essentially saloons or bars, which isn't ideal for any sort

of secret society. Because a lot of alcohol's been taken very often, the secrets begin to pass around those areas, and so later generations had recognized that there were issues to do with secrecy and the problems with secrecy within these Irish Republican organizations, and so by the time you get to the Fenian movement, they have established quite a developed sort of level of secrecy, and they are inspired by sort of the Freemasons and a number of other organizations.

So there are things like secret codes. So if you were to meet but a member of Planet Gale or with the Fenians, you would if you were a member and you wanted to alert another man to another man that it was a member, you would run your finger along the inside of your collar from sort of where your ear is down towards your neck, and you would do that twice, and that would indicate to the person

you were looking at that you were a member. If they recognized that symbol, they would respond by running the middle finger of their right hand down the side of their face. So then you would recognize each other and be able to converse about sort of secret matters. So they had all sorts of sort of secret signs in that way. They also in some cases wrote in invisible ink and they had a code to the plane, had a code that they use, a sort of secret cipher

which they wrote in code. Now, the problem with that was that it was a very easily it was a very discoverable code. So all they did was they replaced one letter with another, So you would replace the letter I with the letter J, so each letter that came after it in the OFFHBET will be replaced. So it was extremely easy to decipher, and therefore anytime a letter was intercepted, the British police would easily know what the plans were.

New York, and they established themselves in those cities, and they then spread through the United States. So most of these organizations began along the Eastern seaboard. But as the trains moved towards the west, as new opportunities for growth and for jobs developed, many of the Irish in New York, in Boston and other places also moved west. And one

of the places that they moved to was Chicago. A lot of them moved part of doing for building the Big Canal network, an awful lot moved because of the stockyards and the employment available in the stockyards. A lot of them moved because of the railways. And so you have a move west as far west really as San Francisco,

where you begin to have a large Irish population. So by the time we get to the eighteen eighties, and particularly in the period after the Great Fire of eighteen seventy one, when Chicago had to entirely rebuild itself, and it did with great enthusiasm, but it also did with huge manpower, and many Irish came and rebuilt Chicago into something that was bigger and better and grander than had existed before. And that's really why you get that move

from the East coast to the Midwest. But it's also because the leadership of the Catholic Church, and most of these Irish who were involved were Catholic. The leadership of the Catholic Church in Chicago with more sympathetic towards radical Irish Republicanism than it was in other parts of the United States.

file members would have been laborers or unskilled workers. Now in Chicago, if you were arriving in Chicago as an unskilled labor you certainly needed a job, and you wouldn't have been long in Chicago before somebody would suggest that joining Colnegale what would have was the way forward to getting a job. Now, in terms of raising money, they Conegale and other groups really did raise a lot of money through their picnics, through the Saint Patrick's Day parades,

and that money and through membership. You had to pay a sub to become a member, and you would pay a weekly amount as well, and that money was used to pay for their campaigns to achieve Irish freedom. So the attraction really for many people was the job over Irish freedom, and they put that first and foremost. In Irish freedom was very much a secondary affair.

handcuffed behind his back for thirty five days. Tell us about a couple of these events that really helped to shape this movement.

treasonable offenses. So they were found guilty of membership of the Fenian organization, and they were Some of them were found guilty of plotting to bomb a number of places and they would have served time in British and Irish prisons, one of them being O'Donovan Rossa, who was particularly badly treated. Another was John Devoy, who became a great leader of Irish America. And when O'Donovan Rossa and John Devoy, along with another number of other leaders, they arrived sort of

in triumph, having been released from jail. And when they were released from jail, they were they had to leave Ireland permanently. They were banished from Ireland forever. So they land into America and O'Donovan Rossa and Devoi come on a boat called the Cuba and they become part of a gang known as the Cuba Five, and they were going to senior figures and they arrived to great fanfare, and they become extremely well known, particularly along the Eastern seaboard.

And that attracts a lot of attention and a lot of new members. And then the other big thing that attracted a lot of attention in new members was in the mid eighteen seventies with the Catalpa Rescue. And the Catalpa was a whaling ship that was bought by the Fenian organization and it was kitted out and sent from

Maine to Australia. And the purpose of it going from Maine to Australia was not on a whaling mission, but it was going to Fremantle in Western Australia, which was a penal'con colony at the time, and the idea was that it would rescue five Fenian prison from that Fenian colony and bring them back in triumph to America. Now that sounds like a completely bonkers plan in the mid

eighteen seventies. You've no way of communicating, you don't know how long the ship's going to take, you don't know the ship is ever going to even make it there, So it seems like a ridiculously expensive and futile plan.

But the remarkable thing is that it takes a year for the ship to get to Fremantle, and they do manage to get these five Fenian prisoners and they achieve their escape, and they sail back to New York and they are greeted in triumphs, and the Mayor of New York comes down and welcomes them to New York and in Dublin and in Cork in Ireland. They have candlelight

processions to say how wonderful this is. And that brings with it huge numbers of new members to the Fenian organization at Clonegale, and it brings with it money because the more members you have, the more money you have coming into the coffers. So they have a number of those sort of very so it was important propaganda victories which helps both through the numbers in the United States.

a shoe store in Detroit. That shoe store had a mysterious fire that burnt it to the ground, and he was suspected of arson. Now he fled Detroit before the trial could happen, and he ended up heading towards the Southern States, where he became a tax collector. He became a newspaper owner. He ended up back. He ended up in Chicago, where he was a journalist for a short period. He then became a city official. He was a postmaster at one point, and then eventually he qualified as a

lawyer and all of that. During all of this period he was involved in American politics, not Irish politics, so he was an abolitionist at one point. He was a member of the Republican Party. He was a Democrat at another point. He was a gambler at a later point.

And he had all of these sort of myriad of different careers before really he came to Irish Republicanism in the mid eighteen seventies, and then he very quickly established himself as a key figure in Irish Republicanism, both in the United States and very specifically in Chicago.

position as school teacher and become a journalist. And she went on to become a very well known journalist, but she remained involved in education matters in Chicago, and at one significant meeting about the Board of Education in Chicago, it was alleged that a rumor had circulated to say that she was using undue influence with the mayor in

order to have certain Catholic schools established. And when Alexander Sullivan heard that her honor had been insulted, he discovered who had made these comments, and he went to this man's house. And the man who'd made these comments was a man called Francis Hanford, who was a school principal in the Chicago area, and he went to this man's house with his wife and there was an altercation and Sullivan shot the man dead. And there were two trials.

He was tried twice for the murder of Francis Hanford. On the first occasion they couldn't the jury couldn't come to a conclusion. On the second occasion he was acquitted. Though it's very clear from the evidence that we can see now that the jewelry then was bribed to find in his favor. So it was in many ways an inauspicious start to his career in journalism and in law in Chicago. But he weathered that storm in the way that he weathered almost every other storm.

It was the worst year of the Irish famine, and they traveled around quite a bit. They didn't settle for a number of years, but eventually they settled in Canada, and when Cronin had finished his schooling, he returned to the United States and then he had a number of He started off in the mining regions of Pennsylvania, and he ended up in Saint Louis, Missouri, where he worked in a number of not particularly impressive jobs, but he eventually got a sponsorship from a timber merchant who sponsored

his way through medical school, and he qualified as a medical doctor in Saint Louis and he worked there as a medical doctor until eighteen eighty two, when he moved to Chicago and took up a position as a doctor in Cook County Hospital, a position he held for quite a short period because he decided he wanted to be a doctor to a primarily to an Irish community, so he set up into the private practice and had two private surgeries in Chicago itself, where a lot of his patients were Irish immigrants.

couteri of very very firm followers. So he joined in the mid eighteen seventies, and by eighteen eighty one when there's a convention Clanegale convention in Chicago, he essentially by eighteen eighty one, he essentially is in charge of Clanagale, not just in Chicago but in the United States. And he's not just in charge of Colnegale. He's also involved in constitutional nationalism, So he's involved in the Land League in America, which was more of a constitutional it wasn't

dedicated to using fourth to promote an Irish republic. So he had his finger kind of in every possible pie. And by eighteen eighty one he's the leader of what became known as the Triangle and the Triangle was Clanagane, and they were called the Triangle because he signed any of these sort of internal memos that would go round rather than signing with his own name because it would absolutely identify and he signed it with just a symbol, which is the symbol was the Triangle.

the Irish Republican Brotherhood policy was altered as well. Tell us about a little bit more about the violent or the the faction that was planning and resorting or talking and discussing such things as using dynamite and violence in its approach.

Alexander Sullivan became increasingly frustrated with the Irish Republicans in Ireland. He felt that they were too slow to act. They felt that he they were raising all the money and that nothing was happening in Ireland or in Britain, and so he determined that they would just ignore the leadership of Irish Republicanism who was based in Ireland, and that they themselves would run what he called and others called a dynamite war. So he wasn't the first to think

of this. In fact, there had been an earlier period where this had also been used. But this was a very well on pay per certainly a very well planned campaign. And the idea was that you would train young Irish Americans in the use of dynamite, which wasn't difficult to do because many of them were using dynamite in the building of railways and in mining, so they already knew how to do that, and that they would be sent from America to Britain. And the plan was that they

would then blow up a series of targets. Most of these targets were in London, so they would blow up strategic. Strategic targets are high profile targets, so they would blow up things like the Tower of London, London Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Scotland Yard, some tube stations, and that that would generate an enormous amount of attention and it would also generate an enormous amount of fear, so that

the British Parliment would be forced to discuss the Irish question. Now, this wasn't a universally accepted plan and there were a number of reasons why it wasn't. One was that some of those in favor of using force did not want to risk lives, and so they were in favor of using force only in places where there wouldn't be casualties human casualties, and they felt it was very risky to attack things like tube stations and to presume that you

wouldn't endure or kill civilians. And the second reason that some people were opposed to it is that there was some progress being made in terms of getting home moved for Ireland, which wasn't going to be a Republic, but it would give Ireland back of Parliament, and it was believed that i chance that Ireland had of getting home rule, which was certainly a step towards freedom, would be damaged

by setting off these bombs. And so that began a very serious split within the plan, with one group on the side of Alexander Sullivan in favor of this dynamite campaign, and another group on the side of John Devoy, who was one of the leaders, and also Patrick Henry Cronan, the doctor in Chicago, who really disagreed with this dynamite war. Now, the dynamite war went ahead and fifteen bombing missions were sent.

They were all unsuccessful, so the British authorities, the Secret Service knew about them, and in many cases the men were arrested before they got to plant their bombs anywhere. So it wasn't a successful campaign. But even before it had failed, there were issues to do its agreement over the policy.

So they didn't like the overruling. They didn't think that the targets that were being chosen were well chosen. They thought there was going to be too high a chance of their being civilian casualties, and they thought the timing of it was all wrong. So for many reasons they opposed Sullivan's plans.

that there were spies and informers. Now it's something that later becomes an issue, But at the time when all these missions were failing, I've certainly not come across any or many letters where somebody says there must be We couldn't possibly just be unlucky every time somebody must be giving this information. At no point during that period does

that seem to be the case. Now, they later talk about how they must have been a spy, but they don't do it at the actual time, which is strange because Irish secret societies had been bedeviled by five in the past.

the families of the dead or the imprisoned dynamiters. So many of them had wives, and many of them had children, and so this campaign began, and it raised a lot of money because people wanted their family, those families to be looked after, but the families never got the money. And in fact, there were a number of letters from the widow of one particular man called Machi Lomosny, who had been killed while setting his bomb, saying that she had a number of children, they'd had no money, and

that they really needed money. And this prompted Cronan to wonder what had happened to the money, and he found a paper trail which indicated that about one hundred thousand dollars had been funneled into the private banking account of Alexander Sullivan, and that that money had gone from Alexander's Sullivan's account, and I bought stock on the Board of Trade in Chicago, and that that money had then completely disappeared, and the money had disappeared, not because Sullivan had ultimately

disappeared with anything to do with the stock. That money had been a bad investment, and the value of the stock that he bought had completely collapsed. But the fact was that he had taken that money, put it in his private bank account, and invested it. Now he claimed that he'd invested it for Clone Gale, and that the organization would benefit from whatever advance or whatever increase in value he'd made. Now that seems unlikely to a large extent.

But as soon as Crownin decided saw this, he thought and it really confirmed what he had previously thought. He believed that Alexander Sullivan was what he called a professional patriot, and by that that it was a huge insult to go from in a professional patriot, and professional patriot simply meant that you were interested in Irish freedom for what you could get out of it, so for his own advancement in America, and not actually for Irish freedom in itself.

But he Cronan firmly believed that Alexander Sullivan was his professional patriot, that he really wasn't dedicated to Ireland, but he was dedicated to himself. And that set in train. I suppose a number of things that would ultimately lead to well, ultimately would lead to Cronan's death.

So he was then charged with treason for making these accusations against the leader of Clanagale, and a trial was held within Clanegale itself, and he was charged with treason for making these accusations, and he was found guilty of treason and he was expelled from Clanegale. Now, as soon as he was expelled from Clanegale, he begins to bring

his accusations to a much wider audience. So essentially he'll talk to the Irish community more broadly, not just those who are a member of this society, and he begins to talk to journalists. So you see appearing in newspapers in Chicago papers, particularly mutterings about all not being well within the Irish community in Chicago and Patrick Henry Cronan

making a number of allegations. So that's quite a slow you know, but there's a growing awareness within Chicago that Alexander Sullivan, who's quite higher profile individual, he's a high profile lawyer and was well known, that accusations are being leveled against him. And Sullivan is very very unhappy that his reputation has been tarnished in this way.

probably not have heard of Cronin. But as soon as he is dead, everybody has heard of from and everybody knows the story. So it is like so many other cases of murder, it's once the person has been killed, they suddenly become a household name and whatever they you know, they've been interested in, or whatever they've been involved in, suddenly becomes headline news. But up until his death, his campaign was restricted largely to Chicago.

or not Sullivan took that one hundred thousand. So we'll have a meeting which will take place in New York, and it will bring everybody together, including Cronin and Sullivan, and we will thrash it all out and we will then emerge from that united. Whatever that finds, we will still emerge from that united. And so that happens, except

they don't emerge united. This trial of Sullivan and this investigation to Sullivan is very much it's a false investigation, and Sullivan ends up being cleared of any accusations of wrongdoing. But and Cronin is not happy with this. So instead of having agreed that everything will be fine and assuming they'd all sort of shake hands and that they'd all go their separate ways, that doesn't happen. He returns to Chicago from New York, and he's absolutely adamant that he's

going to continue this campaign against against Sullivan. Now at the same time, there are things happening in London that do have an impact on what happened in Chicago. At the same time as the trial of Sullivan and Crona and all his accusations are taking place in New York. There's a thing called the Parnell Commission taking place in London. The Parnell Commission was a sort of a trial of Charles Stewart Parnell, who was the leader of the Irish

Parliamentary Party, so a constitutional political party. Now, there had been accusations leveled against Parnell that he had associates.

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when there's a surprise. Witness takes the stand in the Parnell Commission in London and he turns up. He's traveled all the way from America. He turns up and he's a very elegant looking gentleman with a proper waxm stand. He takes the stand and he announces that he is his name is Thomas Beach. But for twenty five years he's been in America within alias, and his alias is Henri la Carran and he's pretended to be a Frenchman

for twenty five years. And for that quarter of a century, this Frenchman, or this Englishman masquerading as a Frenchman, has been a spy, and he's been a spy in the pay of the British Secret Service, and he can prove, he says, these links between Alexander Sullivan and Charles Stewart Parnell, which would obviously seriously damage Parnell. Now these are sort of devastating revelations. He had never been suspected as being

a spy. He was extremely close friend of Alexander Sullivan, and during his testimony he was alleged to have suggested that there were other spies in Chicago, and people who didn't like Cronin thought, wha, this is it. He must be the other spy. Something that they made no sense at all, because to be a spy you need to be close to the leadership, and in fact, what everything Cronan had done had pushed himself as far away as

possible from the leadership. But people wanted to condemn. So there certain people wanted to condemn Cronan, and this was how they were going to do it. And so rumors began to circulate in Chicago that not only was Lecran a spy, but so too was Cronan. And once rumors began to circulate that he was a spy, essentially his days were numbered.

so that secrets would remain secret. Now, Camp twenty was the camp that Alexander Sullivan was a member of, and there were a number of other men. There were a sort of maybe twenty five members of Camp twenty who were all very loyal to Alexander Sullivan because he wasn't

the leader of their camp. A man called John F. Beggs was what was known as a senior guardian, but despite not being the official leader, he really was in charge of Camp twenty, and that was the camp that was most loyal to Alexander Sullivan.

to carry a gun around with him. And he also he's called out on a number of kind of fake medical emergencies to vacant plots. So he is very conscious that there are people who have not his best interests at heart, but this group who conspire to take chrone out of the picture. Ultimately, what they do is they rent a cottage in the north of Chicago in what is now a suburb called Lakeview, but actually in eighteen eighty nine was a separate jurisdiction. It was a separate city.

It doesn't get brought into Chicago until later in eighteen eighty nine as part of an annexation. So they hire this cottage. They rent a cottage from a Swedish couple called the Carlsons, and they rented using aliases and they say that it's a fur particular family who are moving I think from Baltimore and are going to move in. And the family, of course never move in. And they also establish a connection with Cronen, though he thinks it's

an innocent connection. He's approached by a man called Patrick O'Sullivan who's no relation to Alexander Sullivan, but Patrick of Sullivan owns an ice house, and ice houses do very well in the summer when Chicago's very hot, and they essentially they go around and they sell ice to individuals and to businesses, and they travel around and they cut chunks of ice off the back of a lorry and they sell it so that people can keep their food

from going off. And he approaches Cronin and says, during the summer months, when I'm busiest, would you be my doctor on call? And I will pay you a retainer, a monthly retainer for this business. But if I have an employee who gets injured cutting ice, would you attend him?

And Cronan says yes. And his only sort of method of making sure that he's not called out in a fault call is he says, I will only attend if whoever comes to call for me brings a copy of your business card, so I know it's a legitimate call out. So that's agreed, and the two men go on their way. But it is part of the conspiracy. And so on the evening of the fourth of May eighteen eighty nine, is a knock on Cronan's door at his surgery and a very panicked young man is there saying been an accident.

There's been an accident. He presents a card to Cronan from Patrick of Sullivan's ice house, and Cronin packs up his medical case, hops in the buggie the horse that's waiting outside, and disappears and he's never seen alive again.

themselves to look for him. They tell the police of their shoes that he's been murdered, and they give them the backstories to why they think he would be murdered, and they tell the newspapers and they have a lot of connections. A lot of Cronan's friends were newspaper men, so they were able to get this story in the press. But Alexander Sullivan is married to a very well known journalist, so he too and his sort of goes putting forward. His side also have access to the press, so Cronan

there's no body or anything found. So over two weeks the press run with all sorts of stories. Firstly, they say that he'd run away because he was having an affair with one of his patients and that the husband had found out, so he had to skip town. Another is that he was performing illegal abortions and one had gone wrong, so he had to skip town. Another man

comes forward and says that he murdered Cronin. He says that he had a dream where Queen Victoria told him to murder Cronan, and that he hired four Italian brigands and gave them cutlasses and they killed Cronan, that that man ends up in a mental asylum by the end of the year. And then there's a rumor that he's left town because he's going to turn up in London and become you give evidence, just as honorary the Kuran

had done. And the final rumor is that he's gone to Canada, that he's just had enough of all the pressure and he's gone to Canada, and that in a way isn't a surprise because that's where most of his

family are settled. And in fact, a reporter on a Canadian paper says he meets Cronin, and he conducts a whole interview with Cronin which is published in the Chicago Papers, where there's a full interview saying, yes, when I got set up this is I couldn't function as a doctor who was easier to leave and settle in Toronto, and that's what I'm going to do and set up all

is Irish nonsense. And that's published as an interview. So there are all two orders of rumors, but that's the most I suppose seems the most authentic and the one that makes most sense. But it's not, of course true.

And he was naked, and the only thing he had sort of left on him was a holy medal, that is a metal that Catholics often where the protection against arm which had clearly not done him any good at all. And it was very clear from from even though he'd obviously was quite badly decayed from having been in the sewer for two weeks. It was very clear that he'd been beaten very brutally around the head before being being

dumped in the sewer. And so that put paid to any all of the rumors that he'd disappeared to Canada or run away. It was very clear that he'd met with a particularly brutal end.

family called the Carltons. And when they knocked on their door, the Carlton Carlton admitted that they knew that something bad had happened in the house because when their tenant disappeared, they went into the house and they noticed it was covered in bloodstains and that something unpleasant had happened, But they didn't report it because they felt that if they reported it, they'd never be able to rent the house out again, you know, if it became known that some

some murder had taken place there, or something really dreadful had happened. And so very quickly the police were able to find the scene of the crime, if not actually the weapon us and there was the rocking chair and a number of other things that were completely had been destroyed by the brutality of the attack on Cronan.

neither of them were particularly committed. So they had dismissed that because there was no body, they dismissed it as not relevant. But as soon as Cronin's body was sound, they put to into the together and they decided that what had happened was he was killed in the house.

His body was then placed in the trunk, and that the trunk was and the intention was I think that the trunk would be that the trunk would be taken to Lake Michigan, to the shore Ofake Michigan, put on board a boat, and the body and trunk tipped over the side into Lake Michigan. But for whatever reason happened, the boat didn't meet them, and so instead they had to improvise, so they put the body in a sewer and then they just dumped the trunk on side of

the road. But it wasn't until the body was sound that they made so they connected the dots in terms of the trunk.

area as well. So anybody thinking that this is a new phenomena or a recent phenomena, not so recent phenomena of people being fascinated by this and heading to the scene of the.

as they're concerned. And so, you know, hundreds of columns of news print were spent describing the murder and how he was beaten in the police investigation, and you're right, hundreds of people turned up. They were to see the body. He was laid out in the end of Michigan Avenue and you couldn't actually see the body when he was sort of put on a play, but there was a closed casket, and thousands of people filed past just to see the closed casket. And these people didn't know, they

just knew the story. And on the day he was buried, you've got forty thousand people lining the streets of Chicago. Then the population of Chicago it's about a million at the time, forty seven people lyeing in Michigan Avenue. It's the largest funeral since Lincoln's funeral through the city. So it's an absolute phenomenal. They filled a Holy named cathedral with thousands and more turn up to Unions Depot where the train that takes his body just north of Chicago

to Evanston for burial. Thousands more turn up to watch the burial. I mean, it's a compleet phenomenal for a man that most of these people did not know, had never heard of before. And that's party to do with things like the dime museums in Chicago. They were really quick to have waxworks. They had waxworks of the dead body, and as soon as the suspects are arrested, they've got

waxworks of the suspects. So you don't even need to be literate in English in Chicago, and a huge numbers of people weren't, you know, it's a huge immigrant population. But you can still go and see what the body looked like after it came out of the sewer, which is a deeply unpleasant sight. But not only that. In the Carlton Cottage, newspaper men journalists interfere with the with the crime scene because they bring more blood. They bring ox blood and beef blood, and they distribute around to

make it more gory than it already was. And then the family of the Carltons who owned the cottage, far from not being able to rent us, they can't keep people away, so they open the cottage and you can pay a dime to go to the cottage. You can have a little tour around, and then you can pay an extra dime if you want to take some bloodstained wood away with you, as you're a souvenir. So if it catches the public imagination in many many ways, and

dime novels are written about. There's at least two dime novels written about this murder. It's front page news right across the United States, in Canada, in Britain, it's in Welsh language newspapers, it's in New Zealand, it's in Australia. Had he not been murdered, the story of Alexander Sullivan taking that money would not be known. But as soon as he's dead it takes on a whole life of his own.

and much different response from the public. But what I found, again equally incredible, is this White Chapel Club that you refer to, established by twojournalists from the Chicago Herald in eighteen eighty nine, inspired by the Cronan murder and Jack the Ripper murders in London, and the theme of the

club is sensational crime. Rooms decorated with macabre memorabilia from hangings, murders, coffins served as tables and sculls as lampshades, hands cuffs used by Martin Burke, shards of wood, like you say, from the Carlson cottage, and bloodstained cotton from a trunk that had Cronan's body, and apparently eighteen eighty nine it was ethically sound for journalists to collect memorabilia and as you say, or evidence from cases they covered, and to

tamper with the scene of the crimes, sometimes then dismiss it as a joke. I found this incredibly fascinating.

skulls as their lights. It's completely bonkers. And that building was demolished, so there's no kind of relics of us. But they were involved in all sorts of very bizarre things, and I think in some ways it's very representative of the late nineteenth century and you can see a sort of in how things are reported and Jack the Ripper, which is obviously they were murders that took place in

London around the same time as the Chrona murder. It's referenced all of the time in the press about how the Chrono murder has echoes of Jack the Ripper, though it really doesn't, but people are quick to make those connections. And I think that in Chicago, the new certainly took a certain pleasure is the wrong word, but they were keen to show that they kind of had had a murder that was just as fascinating as those that were taking place in London.

attempt to find twelve men. I suppose the closest comparison is something like the OJ Simpson trial in terms of just the amount of attention it had, And one of the reasons it has that level of attention is that they eventually try five men or five men are accused of murder, and one of those and the reasons the press were so interested one of the men that was charged with the man called Daniel Cocklan, and Cochlan had been the chief detective charged with finding Cronin when he

went missing. And so if you're a newspaper man, that's just gold dust is that the man who was meant to find the missing man turns out to be the man accused of murder. And so for papers, this is just amazing. So there's hardly anybody in Chicago who hasn't read all the papers. And so when these people are called as potential jurors, then they're asked one of the first questions is do you have an opinion on the case, and they go, absolutely, they should hang, and then they

get dismissed because I'm clearly they're biased. Takes the best part of two months before they can find twelve men who don't have say that they don't have an opinion, and that's you know, then once the trial gets up and running, it doesn't take particularly long to get through the evidence. If that takes longer to pick twelve men than it does to actually have the trial.

state's attorney and said, this is what's happening. There are attempts to bribe, and that's something that was very often the case in Chicago in the nineteenth century and well beyond. I think.

But because the court of public opinion convicts Sullivan. But in order to I suppose convict the others, the state's attorney and those who were supported of Cronin, they wage an enormous financial campaign. So not only is the state's attorney, who would normally just be the prosecutor, there's about nine very senior attorneys who are part of the prosecution, and the defense are also very well represented. Each one of those men who is charged and are five men charged

have their own individual attorneys. And these are not wealthy men, So somebody's paying for those. Those men were not men who could have afforded to have an attorney themselves. More from one of them, Begs could probably if he was an attorney himself, but the rest of them would not have been able to afford significant legal representation. So it is that's why I think, you know they mention is

King of the OJ Simpson case. These are the biggest guns that Chicago can put together in terms of legal teams.

And there's an awful lot of color pieces. So so O'Sullivan becomes knows the Iceland because he owns the ice house, and there they're completely fascinated with Dan Cocklan because he was the detective. So you get a huge amount of attention paid and you know, Paige after page. The newspapers cover this on a daily basis because it's absolutely the story of its time.

fact you get half of the police force. Now, not all of those were involved in Calnegale, but quite a lot were, and so certainly the press suggested that there were a lot of the police force who had a vested interest in this case not coming forward. And the newspapers prided themselves on having kind of discovered a lot of the clues and having brought that to the police. Now that some of that's hyperbole. They didn't discover all of it, but they certainly laid claim to having discovered

a lot of it. But they were right. There were definitely elements within the police force that didn't want this trial, with this case to go ahead, and there certainly were things that were discovered by the journalists that hadn't been discovered by the police. So I get in some way, I suppose it was a combined a combined effort. But the newspaper certainly blew their own trumpet as much as they could.

Crown had disappeared. And so he went to the police and reported Cochlan's involvement, and the police initially dismissed him and said they weren't interested and clearly it had nothing to do with Cochlan. And eventually Dinand took that higher and went to more senior police officials who took him seriously, and that was really the link that brought the detective into the murder investigation.

So he didn't have thin through Cronin's disappearance. But as soon as Cronin was discovered has been murdered, Spelman did sort of step in and go to Camp twenty and say, you need to destroy any evidence that there might be that might link you to this murder. So most of the records, in fact, all of the records of Camp twenty were burned or destroyed in some way when Spelman visited the Chicago.

places places in there. But I think the evidence of people like the Carlsons who owned the cottage and they were able to identify demand Burke, who rented the cottage, fund and they could identify him. They were able to prove that O'Sullivan and Burke knew each other. So I think the mixture of the Carlsons and Dinam are particularly important.

leader of Camp twenty. He was acquitted of being involved in the conspiracy. But three of them were found guilty of murder, but they were not sentenced to death. They were sentenced to life in prison. And the reason they weren't sentence to death is because if to sentence some to death, you have to have all twelve members of the jury to agree a death sentence, and in this case, only eleven members of the jury would agree a death sentence, and the twelfth man was opposed to the death sentence.

In principle didn't matter. He was not in favor of the death sentence. So the public were disappointed. I think they were paying for blood and were disappointed that they didn't get their executions. But there were three men found guilty and three men sentenced to life in prison.

they were deemed to be sympathetic to Clanegale. They entirely reorganized how the policing system works worked in Chicago, and there were questions raised about jury bribing and the judiciary. So there were all sorts of kind of repercussions that go beyond just the Irish community in Chicago that really spread much further afield.

well into the twentieth century. So it has massive repercussions in that sense that that sort of money that people were expecting to be sent back for these organizations are not sent back and for more than a generation that continues.

home country behind. And so this idea of hyphenated loyalty was something that was sort of disapproved of, and people began to think, we couldn't really trust the Irish because not only are they kind of keeping one eye on what's happening in Ireland, but now there are murders taking

place in its name on the United States soil. And so that did not go down very well, particularly with those who were anti immigrants, and there were a lot of those who were anti immigrants in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century.

He didn't serve a full term in prison and was ultimately released, but he ended up having to go on the run, and he dies under an assumed name on a banana plantation in Honduras. So very far from any freedom fighting for Ireland, right.

and so his role is absolutely diminished. He really does not have any authority at all, so even though he doesn't serve any time, his position is very much diminished as a result of the murder.