3-034-544 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Irish Orange Riots in New York, 1871. 'The 12th of July, the anniversary of a great historical event in Ireland, which the Protestants and Catholics of Ulster have been too apt to celebrate with mutual bloodshed, was kept this year at New York in the same way. There was a triumphant militant procession of Irish Orangemen, guarded by soldiers and armed police. The Irish Catholics, or the Fenians, met and attacked the procession...More than eighty persons were killed, of whom half a dozen were policemen...[with] about twice as many wounded...Large mobs gathered, and three regiments of troops and 500 police were sent to the spot...There were ninety Orangemen and twelve musicians; they wore orange scarfs and carried banners...A general street fight [began and]...continued until the Orangemen reached Twenty-fourth-street...Here a shot was fired...at the Orangemen, followed by other shots at the troops...the men of the 84th Regiment, without orders, pointed their muskets at the building whence the first shot came...they fired into a detachment of police...When the smoke cleared, nine dead bodies - one a woman - lay in front of a building...One hundred and sixty-five rioters, arraigned at the Tombs Police Court, have been committed for trial'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.