The Beat Cop: Chicago’s Chief O’Neill and the Creation of Irish Music

The title of this work from O’Malley (history and art history, George Mason Univ.; Face Value: The Entwined History of Race and Money in America) is a groaner of a pun; not only was Francis O’Neill a police officer (in fact, he was the general superintendent of the Chicago Police Department from 1901 to 1905) but he also effectively policed what came to be considered Irish music in the United States. Several times throughout this biography, O’Malley notes that O’Neill’s application of modern policing, with its emphasis on administrative records and investigatory techniques, also made him a superb collector and archivist—albeit one biased by his own ideas of what Irish music ought to be. O’Neill’s own reticence when it came to recording his personal life, and the destruction of his letters after his death, force O’Malley into occasional, though well-founded, speculation. Nonetheless, a clear impression emerges of a man who tried, not always successfully, to balance an archivist’s meticulousness with an idealistic vision of community cohesion.