Chilling tale, for auction, has Buttevant connection
ON February 3, Whyte’s Auction rooms in Dublin will hold an auction of an array of historic items, with one holding a Buttevant connection linked with a shady murder.
‘ The Eclectic Collection’ boasts items from Irish history and from across the globe, and one of the items relates to the gruesome murder of a Buttevant man in Chicago in the 19th century.
Lot 66 consists of a hand coloured illustrated report of the murder of Dr Philip Patrick Henry Cronin in 1889 with an estimate sale price of €15.
Cronin was born on August 7, 1846 in Buttevant but famine was sweeping the land at the time and while still an infant Cronin’s family set out for a better life across the Atlantic. The Cronin’s landed first in New York City before finally settling in the mining areas of Pennsylvania.
Young Cronin proved to be a gifted scholar and became a doctor, taking up a position at the Cook County Hospital, Chicago state. He became highly regarded in the large Irish community there but his popularity rubbed some people up the wrong way and thus put in motion his demise.
Alexander Sullivan was the leader of the Chicago camp of Clan na Gael and he did not take too kindly to Cronin’s ambition to move up the ranks of the secret Fenian organisation. Cronin’s fate was sealed when he stated that Sullivan had been dipping into funds which had been set aside for the dynamite campaign.
Sullivan hit back by declaring Cronin a spy and in 1885, after an internal investigation, Cronin was expelled from Clan na Gael and the organisation split between those who supported Cronin and those who supported Sullivan.
The bad blood between Sullivan and Cronin continued into 1889 when Cronin mentioned to his friends in April of that year that he feared his life was in danger. Weeks later he disappeared.
On the night of May 4, 1889 a man in a distressed state arrived at the door of Dr Cronin with news that a worker at Patrick O’Sullivan’s Ice House had been injured and needed help. The ice house was located in the northern Chicago suburb of Lake View and neighbours witnessed the doctor leave with the distressed man in a buggy pulled by a white horse.
On May 6 a large trunk was found dumped in a ditch just outside Lake View. The trunk was empty except for a bundle of cotton drenched in blood and a piece of a man’s scalp with hair matching the same colour as the missing doctor.
On May 22 workers from the board of public works in Chicago went to Foster Avenue to free a clogged drain. They found the naked body of Dr Cronin and it was apparent he had endured a violent death.
Cronin’s clothes had been cut from his body and all that was left was a bloodied towel wrapped around his neck. A post mortem revealed that Cronin had a broken neck and several stab wounds to the head made by a ice pick.
Four members of Clan na Gael stood trial for Cronin’s murder, which lasted three months.
The trial ended with the jury delivering a guilty verdict for the four men - Patrick O’Sullivan, who owned the ice house; Martin Burke who rented a cottage where Cronin was killed; Dan Coughlin, a police detective who rented the buggy and horse to carry Cronin’s body, and John Kunzel, the distressed man who arrived at the door of Dr Cronin to bring him to his doom.
All four were supporters of Cronin’s nemesis, Alexander Sullivan, who was never held to account.
On May 26, 1889 Dr Cronin’s funeral took place in Chicago. Newspapers stated that it was the biggest funeral since President Lincoln as the procession which consisted of over 8,000 mourners and various brass and pipe bands made its way to Calvary Cemetery in Evanston, Cook County.
The murder of the Buttevant man in Chicago may now be a forgotten episode in Irish American history but at the time it was dubbed by the press as ‘ The Crime of The Century’.