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Pigs, Green Whiskers, and Drunken Widows: Irish Nationalists and the “Practical Censorship” of McFadden's Row of Flats in 1902 and 1903

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Abstract

Radical Irish nationalists attacked a musical farce, McFadden's Row of Flats, in 1902 and 1903, because of the green whiskers on the Irishman, the pigs in the Irish household, and the drunken, lascivious Irishwoman on stage. This play had been produced in Philadelphia, an Irish nationalist stronghold, for five years before Irish nationalists decided to stop the performances with direct confrontations in the theater. The timing of this decision and the style of the protest were based on competition among Irish nationalists, particularly the resurgence of Irish ethnocentrism and physical-force nationalism.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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References

1 [Gus Hill], McFadden's Row of Flats (1896?), 1. Typescript, Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

2 Ibid., 17.

3 Ibid., 19, 3. Mary Ellen notes Levi's “sheeny tricks” (19).

4 “Issue Protests,” Daily News (Denver), 13 Oct. 1902, 2. Historian Timothy Meagher notes that the Ancient Order of Hibernians in Worcester, though officially neutral in nationalist debates, “strongly supported revolutionary nationalism” in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Timothy Meagher, Inventing Irish America: Generation, Class and Ethnic Identity in a New England City, 1880–1928 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 257.

5 “Play Mobbed by Irishmen,” New York Sun, 28 March 1903, 1, clipping, McFadden's Row of Flats clipping file, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library – Lincoln Center (hereafter BRTC).

7 “Irishmen Pelt Actors with Eggs,” Public Ledger, 31 March 1903, 1.

8 “McFadden's Flats Quiet,” New York Times, 7 April 1903, 9.

9 “Reform It Altogether,” Irish World, 11 April 1903, 12. A few months later, in a debate over another cartoon theatrical, Happy Hooligan, the Irish World again explained that “a matter of shaving off green whiskers has little or nothing to do with the case. The Stage Irishman must go, with or without whiskers.” “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 9 May 1903, 8. Edited by Patrick Ford, the Irish World had a circulation of 125,000 by the 1890s, while the Gaelic American, published by rival nationalist and Clan na Gael leader John Devoy, reached only 30,000 by 1913. Before 1886 Ford supported a variety of radical causes, including civil rights for African Americans, but he became more conservative in the late 1880s and increasingly concerned with “respectability.” James Rodechko, Patrick Ford and His Search for America: A Case Study of Irish-American Journalism, 1870–1913 (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 50.

10 “Play Mobbed by Irishmen.”

11 “The Stage Irishman Insult,” Irish World, 18 July 1903, 8.

12 “‘Stage Irishman’ War,” Irish World, 10 Jan. 1903, 8.

13 “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 2 May 1903, 8.

14 The Finish of Bridget McKeen (Edison, 1901), Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress.

15 “Insult the Irish Again,” Gaelic American, 4 May 1904, 5. The Gaelic American also objected to a humorous story that featured “Bridget” cleaning her employers' windows with a fish. “Libelling Irish Girls,” Gaelic American, 21 Nov. 1903, 4.

16 “Baldus and the Irish,” Gaelic American, 15 April 1905, 7.

17 “New stage Censorship,” Brooklyn Eagle, 26 Jan. 1907, 4.

18 Lucy McDiarmid, “The Abbey and the Theatrics of Controversy, 1909–1915,” in Stephen Watt, Eileen Morgan, and Shakir Mustafa, eds., A Century of Irish Drama: Widening the Stage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 65.

19 Meagher, Inventing Irish America, 243.

20 Dorman, James H., “Ethnic Cultures of the Mind: The Harrigan and Hart Mosaic,” American Studies, 33, 2 (Fall 1992), 2141.Google Scholar

21 Onkey, Lauren, “‘A Melee and a Curtain': Black–Irish Relations in Ned Harrigan's The Mulligan Guard Ball,” Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 4, 1 (Fall 1999), 6.Google Scholar

22 Townsend had published stories about children in immigrant ghettoes in the 1890s, such as Chimmie Fadden in 1895; the new name of the comic strip seems to have come from Townsend's stories about Chimmie Fadden.

23 Soper, Kerry, “From Swarthy Ape to Sympathetic Everyman and Subversive Trickster: The Development of Irish Caricature in American Comic Strips between 1890 and 1920,” Journal of American Studies, 39 (August 2005), 277CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 “Columbia Theatre: McFadden's etc.,” 26 Oct. 1897, clipping, McFadden's Row of Flats clipping file, BRTC.

25 Hill registered his title McFadden's Row of Flats in Oct. 1896. He did not produce the show until the following theatrical season, in 1897–98. By then, the Yellow Kid craze sometimes included competing shows in the same city. In Philadelphia during the last week of March in 1898, The Yellow Kid's Army played at the 11th Street Opera House, while McFadden's Row of Flats was at the National Theatre. Public Ledger, 29 March 1898, 17.

26 I believe the undated script is Gus Hill's production because its plot matches the description of Hill's play in New York City in 1897 (“People's – McFadden's Row of Flats,” New York Dramatic Mirror, 9 Oct. 1897, 16). The characters are identical, including the “Yellow twins” – Alex and George – played in 1897 by Curtis and Harry Speck. Mark Winchester notes that the Speck Brothers became a “key part of Hill's McFadden's Row of Flats” (Mark Winchester, “Cartoon Theatricals from 1896 to 1927: Gus Hill's Cartoon Shows for the American Road Theatre,” Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1995, 94). It also seems likely that a copy of a script representing the most controversial production of the play would have been preserved.

27 The program for Gus Hill's production of McFadden's Row of Flats at the Academy of Music in Washington, DC on 29 November 1899 lists “Bud Taggem” instead of Jacob Baumgartner. See McFadden's Row of Flats Program, 20 November 1899, McFadden's Row of Flats Folder, Theater Division, Free Library, Philadelphia, PA.

28 [Hill], McFadden's Row of Flats, 14.

29 Frank Dumont, The Yellow Kid Who Lives in Hogan's Alley (New York: Dewitt Publishing Co., 1897), 7.

30 The play appeared at the National Theatre (28 March–2 April 1898), the Auditorium (27 Feb.–4 March 1899), the People's Theatre (20–25 March 1899), the Auditorium (6–11 Nov. 1899), the People's Theatre (27 Nov.–2 Dec. 1899), the National Theatre (15–20 April 1901 and 3–8 March 1902). See Philadelphia Theatre Index at the Free Library, Philadelphia, PA.

31 “Reform it Altogether,” 12.

33 As one review explained, “they have to labor hard to keep the plot from being lost sight of, owing to the many vaudeville features injected into the play.” “Auditorium – McFadden's Row of Flats,” Public Ledger, 28 Feb. 1899, 15.

34 McFadden's Row of Flats advertisement, New York Dramatic Mirror, 17 April. 1897, 8. As quoted in Winchester, Mark, “The Yellow Kid and the Origins of Comic Book Theatricals,” Theatre Studies, 37 (1992), 55Google Scholar.

35 Richard F. Outcault, “Hogan's Alley,” New York World, 3 May 1896; reprinted in Bill Blackbeard, ed., R. F. Outcault's The Yellow Kid: A Centennial Celebration of the Kid Who Started the Comics (Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1995), The Yellow Kid throws a snowball at her in “Signs of Snow,” New York Journal, 2 Jan. 1898; reprinted in Blackbeard.

36 Richard F. Outcault, “McFadden's Row of Flats,” New York Journal, 1 and 8 Nov. 1896; reprinted in Blackbeard.

37 Outcault, “McFadden's Row of Flats,” New York Journal, 15 Nov. 1896; reprinted in Blackbeard.

38 Outcault, “McFadden's Row of Flats,” New York Journal, 1 and 22 Nov. 1896; reprinted in Blackbeard.

39 Winchester, Mark D., “The Yellow Kid and the Origins of Comic Book Theatricals, 1895–1898,” Theatre Studies, 37 (1992), 54Google Scholar. See also Soper, Kerry, “From Rowdy, Urban Carnival to Contained Middle-Class Pastime: Reading Richard Outcault's Yellow Kid and Buster Brown,” Columbia Journal of American Studies, 4, 1 (2000), 143–67Google Scholar; and Soper, “From Swarthy Ape to Sympathetic Everyman and Subversive Trickster.”

40 Úna Ní Bhroiméil, “The American Mission: The Gaelic Revival in America, 1870–1915,” Ph.D. dissertation, Lehigh University, 1998, 23.

41 John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 137.

42 Ní Bhroiméil, 120. During his 1905–6 tour of the United States, Hyde reported that he tried to dispel the anxieties of “wealthy” Irish men and women who were “afraid that we were somehow against the Parliamentarians.” Ibid., 146.

43 Meagher, Inventing Irish America, 201–68.

44 Kerby Miller concludes, “The Irish-American bourgeoisie tended to be morbidly sensitive to real or imagined threats to their tenuous grasp on respectability.” Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 498. William H. A. Williams argues that the “most powerful force driving the change in their image was the Irish-American community's search for respectability.” William H. A. Williams, 'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream: The Image of Ireland and the Irish in American Popular Song Lyrics, 1800–1920 (Chicago and Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 203. Thomas J. Rowland claims that the Ancient Order of Hibernians campaigned against the stage Irish as part of their “quest for respectability,” but he does not mention that the protests were often disorderly. Rowland, Thomas J., “Irish American Catholics and the Quest for Respectability in the Coming of the Great War, 1900–1917,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 15 (Winter 1996), 7Google Scholar.

45 McDiarmid, “The Abbey and the Theatrics of Controversy,” 65.

46 “Purging the Stage,” Irish American, 4 April 1903, 4; “Rioters Who Need Suppression,” New York Times, 2 Feb. 1907, 8.

47 Timothy Meagher, The Columbia Guide to Irish American History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 214–15. Meagher, Inventing Irish America, 243.

48 Dennis Clark, The Irish in Philadelphia: Ten Generations of Urban Experience (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973), 136.

49 Miller, 541.

50 Dennis Clark, The Irish Relations: Trials of the Immigrant Tradition (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982), 121.

51 Terry Golway, Irish Rebel: John Devoy and America's Fight for Irish Freedom (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 178. Golway writes, “The Clan, by 1900, was prepared to resume its place at the center of the international conspiracy to win Ireland's freedom” (178). The Clan reunited in 1900 and three years later Devoy began to publish the Gaelic American, which covered the campaign against the stage Irish with great enthusiasm. A year or so after the Clan was unified, the United Irish American Societies of New York was established. With prominent Clan participation and leadership, the UIAS was at the forefront of protests against the stage Irishman. Daniel Cohalan, a prominent leader of the Clan na Gael, regularly chaired committees for the UIAS. See “Irish American Societies Stand Firm,” Gaelic American, 4 May 1910, 1; see also “Disruptionists Are Again Defeated,” Gaelic American, 18 June 1910, 1. The Gaelic League risked its non-partisan stance with its participation in the struggle over the UIAS. “Further Reply of New York Irish Gaelic Society,” Irish World, 19 June 1910, 5. Dennis Clark notes Ryan's election as president of the UILA in 1908. Dennis Clark, Erin's Heirs: Irish Bonds of Community (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), 161.

52 Clark, Erin's Heirs, 149.

53 Ibid., 150.

54 “Yeats' Anti-Irish Campaign,” Gaelic American, 18 Nov. 1911; and “Advertising that Doesn't Pay,” Gaelic American, 13 Jan. 1912, 4.

55 Clan na Gael correspondence from this period indicates that 726 Spruce Street was a Clan location. William Crossin wrote to Danial Cohalan from the Irish American Club at 726 Spruce Street in Philadelphia on 24 and 26 January 1902 (Folder 27 “Correspondence – Clan na Gael, 1900–1904,” Box 2, Daniel F. Cohalan Papers, American Irish Historical Society, New York). Clark notes (Erin's Heirs, 164) that the Irish American Club was “controlled by the Clan na Gael.”

56 Clark, Erin's Heirs, 147; “Societies Raise Funds to Defend Irishmen,” Public Ledger, 4 April 1903, 2.

57 “Dr. Peter McCahey Dead,” Gaelic American, 28 Oct. 1916, 2. The North American listed a Peter McCahy [sic] as the leader of the riot against McSwiggan's Parliament on 28 April 1887. “A Row Up at M'Caull's,” North American, 29 April 1887.

58 “Societies Raise Funds to Defend Irishmen,” 2. The remaining three were Michael Mooney, Robert Grogen, and John P. Gibbs. See the Clan List of Delegates, 1903, Minute Book, Irish American Club, Box 1, Folder 9, Dennis Clark Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

59 “Bad Eggs Showered on Stage Performers,” Public Ledger, 31 March 1903, 6.

60 I was able to identify the occupations for nine of the eighteen arrestees; of these nine, six were semi-skilled or unskilled.

61 Meagher, Inventing Irish America, 243. Meagher refers mainly to AOH membership, but notes that many people were members of both organizations. Meagher notes (243) that the Clan na Gael drew on “immigrant, lower-class Irish.”

62 David Brundage, “In Time of Peace, Prepare for War: Key Themes in the Social Throught of New York Irish Nationalists, 1890–1916,” in Ronald Bayor and Timothy Meagher, eds., The New York Irish (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 332.

63 Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 74.

64 Meag0her, 252.

65 Clark, Irish Relations, 121.

66 “Clan na Gael War on Irishmen,” Irish World, 12 July 1902, 4. John F. Finerty led a UILA celebration in Chicago, where one speaker stated the desire for Ireland's “full and complete independence” but added that “armed resistance to English rule is to-day impossible.” “Ireland's Day in Chicago,” Irish World, 30 Aug. 1902, 5.

67 “Malignant Factionalism,” Irish World, 18 Oct. 1902, 2.

68 “Keep up the Good Work,” Irish World, 25 April 1903, 12.

69 Alan O'Day, Irish Home Rule, 1867–1921 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998), 196.

70 “Land Ahead for Ireland,” New York Times, 22 Feb. 1903, 4. On 17 March the Irish Times printed a transcript of Parliament in which John Redmond asked, “When the Irish Land Bill will be introduced?” Mr Balfour answered, 25 March 1903.

71 “Irish-Americans on the Irish Land Bill,” Irish World, 11 April 1903, 2.

72 O'Day, 197.

73 “The Fraud Land Bill,” Gaelic American, 3 Oct. 1903, 4.

74 “Irish Americans on the Irish Land Bill,” Irish World, 11 April 1903, 2.

75 “Irish Rise Against Race Caricatures,” 28 March 1903, clipping, McFadden's Row of Flats Clipping File, BRTC.

76 “Rare Ripe Eggs for McFadden's Flats” North American, 31 March 1903, 1.

77 “Gaelic Notes, Irish World, 11 April 1903, 8.

78 “Put the Blame for Riot on Irish Societies,” Public Ledger, 1 April 1903, 2.

79 “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 4 April 1903, 8.

80 “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 11 April 1903, 8.

81 “The scene that was egged in New York, in which Mrs. Murphy, who is styled the Queen of the Flats, drives on stage seated in a cart drawn by a donkey, passed off without so much as a hiss.” “Irishmen Pelt Actors with Eggs,” 1.

82 Ibid., 1.

83 Protests against “Mr. Dooley” are noted in “Clean the House,” Irish World, 2 May 1903, 8; and “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 2 May 1903, 8. One Irish critic derided “Mr. Dooley” as McFadden's Row of Flats music in “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 5 March 1904, 8.

84 Stanley Appelbaum, ed., Show Songs: From “Black Crook” to “The Red Mill” (New York: Dover Publications, 1974).

85 “A Row Up at M'Caull's.”

88 Irish activists in New York City announced a list of specific objections to McFadden's Row of Flats. They complained that “the donkey and cart represent the lowest grade of Irish life, that a pig which runs out of a house and is pursued by Kerrigan [a police officer in the play] is an insult to every decent Irishman, and that the scene in the Five Points with Irish women running in and out of a saloon is disgraceful.” “Play Mobbed by Irishmen,” 28 March 1903, clipping, McFadden's Row of Flats Clipping File, BRTC.

89 “Put Blame for Riot on Irish Societies,” Public Ledger, 1 April 1903, 2.

90 “Hooted off the Stage,” Irish World, 4 April 1903, 12. James Dolan, national president of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, also condemned the “baboonfaced stage Irishman.” “He Denounces Stage Insults,” Irish World, 11 April 1903, 12.

91 “The Stage Irishman Knocked Out,” Irish World, 7 Jan. 1905, 1. Around the same time, the president of the AOH criticized a play in which a caged monkey greeted two passing Irishman with a thick Irish brogue: “How are ye, byes?” “The Stage Irishman Again,” National Hibernian, 15 Jan. 1904, 4.

92 “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 11 April 1903, 8. Another protester noted such “an Irishwoman as never was seen in real life.” “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 4 April 1903, 8.

93 For example, the Irish World stated that the stage Irishwoman was “an infinitely more offensive creature than the ‘stage Irishman.’” “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 9 Dec. 1905, 7.

94 “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 24 Jan. 1903, 8.

95 “Gaelic News,” Irish World, 11 April 1903, 8.

96 “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 18 April 1903, 8.

97 [Gus Hill], McFadden's Row of Flats, 7.

98 Ibid., 7.

99 “Rhode Island,” National Hibernian, 15 June 1906, 5.

100 “Stage Indecency Suppressed,” Gaelic American, 30 March 1907, 1.

101 “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 16 Feb. 1907, 7. The Irish World noted an offensive Irish woman with her “whiskey bottle” in May 1904 (“The Stage Irishman in Brockton,” Irish World, 7 May 1904, 8). Drunken Irish women are mentioned in “The Stage Irishwoman,” Gaelic American, 17 Sept. 1910, 4. See also Kibler, M. Alison, “The Stage Irishwoman,” Journal of American Ethnic History, 24, 3 (Spring 2005), 530Google Scholar.

102 “San Franciso Irishmen,” Gaelic American, 6 April 1907, 2.

103 Hasia Diner, Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 113.

104 Ibid., 113.

105 Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will, 43, 63.

106 Ibid., 59.

107 Madelon Powers, Faces along the Bar: Lore and Order in the Workingman's Saloon, 1870–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 35.

108 “Stage Indecency Suppressed,” 1.

109 [Gus Hill], McFadden's Row of Flats, 7.

110 Ibid., 7.

111 Ibid., 23.

112 “Stage Indecency Suppressed,” 8. In 1910, the Gaelic American was similarly outraged over the appearance of the stage Irishwoman because it attacked the “most cherished treasure of the Irish people.the matchless purity and unsullied virtue of our womanhood.” Ibid.

113 Patricia Kelleher, “Gender Shapes Ethnicity: Ireland's Gender Systems and Chicago's Irish Americans,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1995, 151; Deirdre Moloney, American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 94–95.

114 Kelleher, 153–54. Even anti-Catholic and anti-Irish critics “grudgingly admitted that Irish women ‘preserve the abstinence from sexual vice which distinguishes them so honourably at home’.” Diner, Erin's Daughters in America, 116.

115 “Gaelic notes,” Irish World, 11 April 1903, 8.

116 One of the most prominent images of the Irish maid was “Biddy,” a cook, who was an older, bulky woman who often threatened her employers and supported Irish revolutionary causes. She was gruff, large, and strong; she was masculine. Maureen Murphy, “Bridget and Biddy: Images of the Irish Servant Girl in Puck Cartoons,” in Charles Fanning, ed., New Perspectives on the Irish Diaspora (Carbondale, IL, 2000). Murphy also discusses an alternative image of the Irish domestic servant, Bridget, an attractive young woman.

117 “Death of the Stage Irishman,” National Hibernian, 15 July 1906, 7. See also Murphy.

118 “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 23 May 1903, 8.

119 “Irish Rise Against Race Caricatures” (28 March 1903), clipping, McFadden's Row of Flats Clipping File, BRTC.

120 “Hibernians and the Stage Irishman,” National Hibernian, 15 March 1903, 1.

121 “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 3 Sept. 1904, 8. This complaint referred to a picture postcard on which “Paddy, wearing a plug hat and carrying a shillalay, is leading a fat pig, presumably to the market, but the rope, instead of being tied around the pig's foot, is tied to its tail.” An 1830 satire on the Irish, The Irish Stew, depicted people and pigs eating out of the same tub. Robert Malcomson and Stephanos Mastoris, The English Pig: A History (London: Hambledon, 1998), 8.

122 L. Perry Curtis Jr. writes that English painters drew Irish rebels with porcine features: “Given their puffy cheeks and exposed nostrils, some of these rebel faces strongly suggest the presence of a porcine ancestor.” L. Perry Curtis Jr., Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971), 71.

123 Way, Peter, “Evil Humors and Ardent Spirits: The Rough Culture of Canal Construction,” Journal of American History, 79, 4 (March 1993), 1404CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

124 Judge's, Sept. 1901. Quoted in Dormon, James H., “Ethnic Stereotyping in American Popular Culture: The Depiction of American Ethnics in the Cartoon Periodicals of the Gilded Age,” American Studies/Amerika Studien, 36, 2 (1991), 179–83Google Scholar. More broadly, Ireland had been known as Muck Inis in Gaelic or “Hog Island.” See Smith, Eric D., “‘I Have Been a Perfect Pig’: A Semiosis of Swine in ‘Circe,’,” Joyce Studies Annual, 13 (Summer 2002), 129–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 Malcolmson and Mastoris, 44.

126 “Put Blame for Riot on Irish Societies,” 2.

127 “Irish Societies Welcome German Fleet,” Gaelic American, 15 June 1912, 1. The Gaelic American also published a critique of Men and Women, a Catholic publication with “a Dutch accent,” for describing a St. Patrick's Day celebration filled with pigs. “The chief features of the menu are to be ‘a roast pig done to a beautiful brown, resting on a bed of lettuce and baked murphies.’” “Baldus and the Irish,” Gaelic American, 15 April 1905, 7.

128 “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 11 April 1903, 8.

129 “McFadden's Flats Quiet,” New York Times, 7 April 1903, 9.

130 “Again a Hit,” 8 Jan. 1906, clipping, McFadden's Row of Flats Clipping File, BRTC.

131 According to the Philadelphia Theatre Index, McFadden's Row of Flats played at Blaney's Arch Street Theatre 25–30 March 1907, at the National Theatre 14–19 March 1910, and at the National Theatre from 27 Feb.–4 March 1911. Philadelphia Theatre Index, Theatre Collection, Free Library, Philadelphia.

132 “Music and Vaudeville,” Public Ledger, 24 March 1907, 34. Another review described the play as “made over.” “At the National,” Public Ledger, 15 March 1910, 7.

133 “Piloting McFadden's Flats,” Gaelic American, 5 May 1906, 5. A few months later the Irish World noted that that smell of ancient eggs “hangs round [the play] still.” Protests against the play in New Haven and Paterson were “not quite effective in either place,” according to the report. “Gaelic Notes,” Irish World, 21 April 1906, 7.

134 “To the Men Who Put an End to the Vile Production,” Irish World, 4 April 1903, 12.