He became Irish in death: the Rafferty-O’Meara murder trials and press representations of Irishness in 1870s Chicago
Published in Irish Historical Studies, January 2026.
Link
Abstract
In March 1874, Christopher Rafferty was buried in Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Chicago. He had been executed for the shooting of police officer Patrick O’Meara two years previously. It took three trials for Rafferty’s death sentence to be carried out and, in that time, his class, criminality and masculinity were discussed in newspaper columns across the United States. While alluded to in life, it was only in death that his Irishness became the focus of reporting. This article uses Christopher Rafferty’s murder of fellow Irishman Patrick O’Meara to explore newspaper representations of ethnicity, class and criminality in 1870s Chicago. It argues that community mourning rituals deemed to be particularly ‘Irish’ were central to Rafferty being transformed from a petty criminal from the South Side of Chicago to an Irish-American in the press. Focusing on Christopher Rafferty and Patrick O’Meara, this article contributes to discussions on the shifting ways that identity is understood and presented in different contexts. It examines newspaper coverage to consider the ways that ethnic stereotypes were used and discarded depending on the law-and-order priorities of the day.