Historic Philadelphia

were perceived as taking jobs away from working
class residents of growing industrial neighborhoods
in Kensington, Richmond, Frankford,
Bridesburg, Germantown, Manayunk, and parts
of West Philadelphia.
The Moyamensing Temperance Society
held a parade on August 1, 1842. White
onlookers attacked some black marchers, and
“a terrible fight, riot and bloodshed ensued,”
the Public Ledger reported. A mob formed and
looted black homes on Lombard Street
between Fifth and Eighth. Beneficial Hall,
owned by black clergyman Stephen Smith,
was burned, as was the African Presbyterian
Church. There was fighting between Irish and
black workers in Moyamensing coal yards the
next day.
On Friday, May 3, 1844, a meeting of the
American Republican Association, rabid anti-
Catholics, convened in a schoolyard in
Kensington, carefully choosing the heart of an
Irish neighborhood to make bigoted jingoistic
speeches. They were driven away by rockthrowing
residents. The meeting reconvened
on May 6, provocatively near the Hibernian
Hose Company firehouse. Within gunshot
range, in fact: shots blamed on the Irish
firemen killed George Shiffler, eighteen, later
described as murdered while heroically
defending the American flag. Sheriff Morton
McMichael and the militia broke up the
crowd, but at 10 p.m. a rabble assembled
outside the Female Seminary, a Catholic
convent at Fourth and Phoenix (now
Thompson). The troublemakers ran off when
McMichael and the troops arrived and fired a
musket volley over their heads.
On the 7th, a “Native American” rally in
Independence Square ended with a mob
marching north to raise a flag on the spot
where George Shiffler was killed. Shots were
fired from a house. The mob fired back, then
burned the house. Before the afternoon
ended, thirty houses were ashes. The Hibernia
and Caroll fire engines were wrecked when
the firemen tried to save the buildings. Troops
arrived near midnight and routed the rioters.
Soldiers guarded all eleven Catholic
churches in the county overnight, but withdrew
in the morning. The rioters reassembled. They
set fire to St. Michael’s Church at Second and
Jefferson and the seminary, which had been
evacuated. Part of the mob then marched south
to St. Augustine’s on Fourth below Vine. Mayor
John Morin Scott left his daughter’s birthday
party and went to the church to reason with the
crowd. He was hit in the head with a thrown
rock, and the church was torched.
Tradition has it that some rioters planned
to attack century-old St. Joseph’s near Fourth
and Walnut, but a ringleader ruled against it,
saying of the Jesuit pastor, Father Felix Barbelin,
“That little Frenchman won’t hurt anybody.” It
was the Irish the hatemongers were after.
✧
Top, left: Dr. Philip Syng Physick.
COURTESY OF THE DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN PORTRAITS.
Top, right: The thirty-two-room residence of
Dr. Philip Syng Physick from 1815 to 1837
was built by Henry Hill, a very popular
Philadelphian in the eighteenth century
because he was the major importer of the
upper class’s favorite alcoholic beverage,
madeira. Hill died in the 1793 yellow
fever outbreak.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
CHAPTER III
65