Review
Chief O’Neill’s Sketchy Recollections of an Eventful Life in Chicago (Brandon)
Second City Chief
What if all police corruption was this benevolent? Asks Sean McMahon.
Frank O’Neill is remembered in Chicago as an incorruptible police chief and among musicologists as the publisher of such priceless collections as Music of Ireland (1903), Dance Music of Ireland: 1001 Gems of Irish Melody (1907) and at least three others. He described the growth of his interest in Irish folk music, A Fascinating Hobby (1910) and produced a standard work Irish Minstrels and Musicians (1913).
His patronage of Irish musicians, enrolling them in the force in jobs that would leave them leisure to practise their art might in some eyes seem another form of corruption but surely a benevolent one. Born in Bantry in 1848 and very well educated for the time he portrays in his ‘sketchy recollections’ a life of marine adventure and Windy City advancement in spite of endemic political chicanery. Edited by the Chicago historian, Ellen Skerrett and O’Neill’s great-granddaughter, Mary Lesch, the book is an essential part of the historiography of Irish-America and is especially useful for the list it prints of over 600 rare Irish books from O’Neill’s private collection, now the proud possession of the city’s Loyola University.
