Limerick boycott

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The Limerick boycott, also called the Limerick pogrom, was an economic and social attack on Limerick’s small Jewish community from 1904 to 1906. It began after a Redemptorist priest, Father John Creagh, gave a harsh anti-Jewish sermon and urged people to shun Jewish shops. The crowd gathered near the church and then moved through the streets, frightening Jewish shopkeepers who kept their doors closed. A teenager was jailed for tossing a stone at the rabbi, and a shop was defended by a local man until police arrived.

Background helps explain what happened. In the late 1800s, Lithuanian Jews arrived in Limerick and joined the city’s retail trade, mainly on Colooney Street. They set up a synagogue and a cemetery. Antisemitic incidents had already occurred in 1884, 1892 and 1896, but the 1904 sermon sparked a sustained boycott.

The boycott lasted more than two years. Five Jewish families left Limerick because of the agitation, and about 32 people eventually left. Many others stayed, and some Protestants in the city supported the Jews. Over time, Creagh’s superiors moved him away, and people in Ireland spoke out against religious persecution.

There is debate about whether this was a pogrom or a boycott. It did not end the Jewish presence in Limerick. By 1911, 122 Jews lived there (up from earlier years), though numbers fell after 1922, with about 30 remaining by 1926.

Some families who left moved to Cork, Leeds, or South Africa. In the years that followed, people from these families became notable in Irish life and culture.