When “Street Thugs” Were Irish

Cleveland, Ohio, was the richest city in the world in the Gilded Age. But in immigrant neighborhoods, wild gangs ruled the streets.

Anyone who pays attention to media headlines in 2022 knows that crime rates are up. As Americans emerged from COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020, another crisis ensued: a sudden uptick in the number of murders and other violent crimes, including carjackings and armed robberies. In 2021, Cleveland’s murder rate hit a 30-year high.

It might feel like we’re living in an unprecedented age. But this isn’t the first time the streets of Cleveland have been unsafe, for rich and poor residents alike. In the Gilded Age — roughly 1870 to 1910 — Cleveland was the richest city in the world, with more wealth concentrated on Euclid Avenue than the most exclusive neighborhoods in Paris or St. Petersburg.

However, it was also a time of soaring wealth inequality and declining standards of living for the working class, which tend to go hand-in-hand with escalating crime.

Today, we envision street criminals as “inner-city youths,” mostly African-American. But in the Gilded Age, two-thirds of the people arrested for street crimes were Irish Catholic immigrants.