Tag: Stephen Puleo
Stephen Puleo: Boston and the Irish, on the Anniversary of the Ursuline Convent Riots
August 2010On August 11 and 12, 1834, a riot fueled by anti-Catholic fervor resulted in the burning of an Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in what is now Somerville. In this excerpt from A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900, Stephen Puleo examines the height of Irish immigration to the city in the years following the riot, and the deeply anti-Catholic and anti-Irish discrimination the new arrivals faced.
