Extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand
It was front-page news when Johanna McNamara was found dead on the day after Christmas, sitting in a rocking chair at a friend’s house with a smile still visible on her face. Johanna’s death was so unlike her tumultuous life that Cincinnati’s journalists spilled barrels of ink competing to communicate the irony. Here is the Times-Star [26 December 1900]:
“The passing of Johanna McNamara takes from the police stage a character who was known to almost every policeman on the force. Simple-minded, she was a good woman when sober, but when drunk she was a terror to them. She would fight like a tigress and many a policeman has had his clothing ruined by her vicious attacks.”
The Commercial Tribune [27 December 1900] echoed the theme:
“Every policeman, every fireman, the newsboys around the corners, tell incidents regarding Johanna. For years she resisted arrest and fought as few men can fight. Many a ‘copper’ has been sent to the ground by a blow from Johanna’s terrible right; many a man who presumed to take advantage of her condition regretted, with aching jaw or black eye, his presumption.”
And the Enquirer continued the accolades, with flourish:
“In those halcyon days Johanna liked nothing better than a scrap, and it invariably required the combined efforts of four or five officers to land her in the patrol wagon. She could hit like John L. Sullivan and many a policeman has been floored by a blow from her good right.”
Who was this phenomenal woman? Johanna Doyle was born in Ireland around 1845 and emigrated to the United States as a young woman. She married William McNamara in 1867. He was a pastry chef at the Burnet House, at that time among the most elite hotels in the United States. Johanna was the head laundress at the Henrie House, past its days as the best hotel in the city, but still respectable. They had three children together. After more than a decade in comfortable circumstances, William contracted pneumonia and died. His death drove Johanna to the bottle and she never recovered. She spent so much time in the drunk tank and the Workhouse that her children were taken from her and she had no permanent address, crashing wherever circumstances led her. Although dissolute and abandoned, Johanna was unanimously known among the police for her honesty, for the highest moral character, and for being always scrupulously clean.
One day, wandering near the Gibson House, Johanna was approached by a man who uttered a very improper remark to her. With one punch, Johanna set the cad sprawling into the middle of Walnut Street. According to the Commercial Tribune [27 December 1900]:
“She struck him once, and that was enough. He rolled half way across the street, and by the time he had picked himself up, Johanna was there, newspaper in hand, scraping the mud from his clothing. After repairing as much as she could the soiled condition of his clothes, she told the man, by that time thoroughly ashamed of himself, to in the future be a gentleman and then walked up the street looking for other worlds to conquer.”
Johanna was as attentive to her own attire as she was to her victims’. Police and reporters regularly remarked how clean she and her clothing were no matter the situation. Per the Commercial Tribune:
“Johanna, picked up after a drunken spree of days, was always clean. When arraigned in court, or while in prison, her appearance was always a model of neatness. Somehow, somewhere, Johanna always found a place and a way of caring for her clothing.”
Although the police dreaded the call to corral the feisty Irishwoman, reporters loved to write about her exploits. Almost every court appearance involved a wry twist. Hauled in before Christmas in 1897, the judge fined Johanna and sent her to the Workhouse for a month. When the prosecutor inquired whether she had been drinking, she blamed, according to the Cincinnati Post [18 December 1897], the liquor-infused holiday baked goods: “Judge, your honor, I only ate some Christmas mince pie, but it was too mellow.”
In those days, when parades clogged the city’s streets almost every week, the Cincinnati Police turned out in force, not for crowd control, but to march. Johanna saw the coppers’ contingent as an opportunity to do some parading herself and, for once, the officers indulged her fancy, knowing it was unlikely she’d attack any of them while on review. According to the Enquirer [27 December 1900]:
“One of her characteristics was to join in with the police at any time the force appeared on parade. With her hat set jauntily over one ear, with a jag, and with her dress lifted up over her shoetops, she attracted much attention. She would keep up a running stream of talk to the rear end of the parade and the coppers had hard work keeping straight faces.”
Despite their long acquaintance, the police and the courts realized something had to be done to help the charming miscreant. Even Johanna’s friends were reaching the limits of tolerance. Johanna had to apply to the city infirmary for shelter one night and a judge reminded her that a new habitual criminal law had been enacted. Her thirty-day respites at the Workhouse might now involve years in prison. Johanna made a good effort to stay sober and succeeded for the best part of a year. One of her estranged daughters brought her into her home and it looked like Johanna was on the road to a new life.
But the end of December brought wassail and toasts and Johanna rolled out a legendary bender. After three days roaring, Johanna ended up at a friend’s house on Sycamore Street. She fell asleep in a rocking chair, her chin on her chest, and that’s how they found her next morning. Johanna’s sister took care of funeral arrangements and the immaculate nemesis of the Cincinnati Police rests peacefully now in New St. Joseph Cemetery.
Extracted from microfilm by Greg Hand.
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