The mystery of Peter Hoban – early days & influences

Where to begin with the life of Peter Hoban? On the football pitches of Dublin? Under cover of darkness in a Liverpool warehouse before it burst into flames? In the streets and Union halls of Chicago facing off against rivals as disperate as the Mafia, Jimmy Hoffa and even the United States Government? His is a life of many chapters that defies easy narration, every aspect worthy of its own focus but for the sake of clarity lets begin chronologically with March 18th 1895 in the town Westport, Co. Mayo. There in his mother’s family home Peter Joseph Hoban was born, the first child to Henry and Catherine. While both Henry and Catherine (Kate) were from Mayo, Henry was already living and working in Dublin as a bricklayer and was a member of the Ancient Guild of Incorporated Brick and Stone Layers, one of the oldest craft unions in the city. The Union would be led by Richard O’Carroll, a City Councillor and Irish Volunteer who was killed in the 1916 Rising.

By the time of the 1901 census the family were living on Villa Bank in Phibsborough, directly opposite Mountjoy Prison and close to the Royal Canal, Peter had been joined by sisters Mary and Kathleen and a brother Michael, however on census night Peter was away from his parents and staying with his maternal grandparents, Peter and Catherine Mulkerin back in Westport. The family remained living in the Phibsborough area and by the next census in 1911 had moved the short distance to Enniskerry Road. Peter, now sixteen years of age was the eldest of eight children and by this stage would have been attending the well-known O’Connell’s School just off the North Circular Road where his uncle, Rev. Michael Angelus Hoban was on the teaching staff. This uncle, years later was recalled to have been sympathetic to the Irish Revolutionary movement and was alleged to have assisted Éamonn Ceannt with storing guns for the rebels in advance of the Rising by the O’Connell’s school historian, Brother W.P. Allen. Perhaps these views from his uncle and teacher had an impact on the young Peter?

Many of the leading figures of the Revolutionary period had been students in O’Connell’s around this period, including future Taoiseach Seán Lemass, rebel and author Ernie O’Malley, and executed 1916 leader Seán Heuston. Whether Hoban encountered these men, all relatively close in age, during his schooling we don’t know for certain, however just weeks after his 21st birthday he would be involved in the taking of the Four Courts as part of the 1916 Rising and apparently fought in the North King Street area of the city during Easter Week.

The 1916 Rising and footballing progress

This being the case he is somewhat lucky as North King Street was the focus of heavy fighting and a controversial and disputed order to “take no prisoners” which led to the murder of fifteen men and boys who were either shot or bayonetted by members of the South Staffordshire Regiment. The precise details of Hoban’s actions in both 1916 and the War of Independence are scarce, Hoban would spend limited time in Ireland after 1916 and apparently never applied for either a military pension, any service medals nor left a Bureau of Military History witness statement.

Whether Peter was arrested after 1916, whether he was interned in Frongoch or elsewhere, or managed to avoid arrest is not clear, however we do know that he begins to appear on the footballing teamsheets of Richmond Asylum from 1917 onwards. Richmond Asylum were the works team of the psychiatric hospital located at Grangegorman in modern Dublin 7, not far from where Peter lived. The hospital had a long and enduring connection with football and over the years featured teams under the various names of Richmond Asylum, Grangegorman, and later St. Brendan’s. We know that Peter’s father Henry had been a staff member there as a mason and bricklayer from roughly 1912 until 1937 which would suggest a likely connection to the team of the asylum for young Peter. We know also that prior to this, in his late teens a player, most likely Peter Hoban, was already active playing for Midland Athletic among other local sides. Midland Athletic were a works team of the Midland Great Western Railway centred around the Broadstone, founded by among others. another O’Connell’s student, Trade Unionist and future Bohemian Joe Wickham.

Peter spent at least two seasons playing for Richmond Asylum in the Leinster Senior League (Division II) with highpoints being an appearance in the 1917-1918 Leinster Junior Cup final, which was lost to a strong Olympia side in front of a crowd of more than 2,000, and an appearance for the Irish junior international side against Scotland in April of 1918. The Irish lost 1-0 in front of a crowd of 7,000 in Firhill Park in Glasgow though there was positivity that five of the starting eleven were selected from Dublin clubs as there was a percieved bias in favour of Belfast based players by the IFA selection committees.

Such was his success that year that Hoban moved the short distance to Dalymount Park to join Bohemians for the 1918-19 season. With the First World War only ending with the Armistace of November 1918, football in Ireland was still regionalised and the Irish League had not resumed. The Leinster Senior League, Division I was the highest level of football being played in Dublin at the time and Bohemians had been Leinster Senior League champions for the 1917-18 season.

Peter was usually deployed as a left-half, that is a left sided mostly defensive midfielder in the old 2-3-5 formation employed by the vast majority of teams until the late 1920s. Hoban was a regular in the half-back link for Bohemians, making twenty appearances and scoring once during the 1918-19 season. It wasn’t to be the most successful year for Bohs as the club’s great rivals Shelbourne won both the Leinster Senior League and Cup and also knocked Bohemians out in the first round of the Irish Cup. During his time at Bohemians he would have played with a number of high-profile players such as current and future internationals like Bert Kerr, Dinny Hannon and John Thomas. He continued with Bohemians into the following season, making six appearances before a departure for England.

The Irish Independent reported that;

Mr. Peter Hoban, the Bohemian and Irish Junior international half-back, has signed an amateur form for Barrow F.C., a team in the Lancashire League. This hard-working and consistent player has not reached the zenith of his football prowess, and he is certain to make good in his new quarters. He will carry with him the good wishes of Dublin footballers.

Irish Independent – 15th July 1919

A gas man and a Rover

But why a sudden move to Lancashire? Later that year the Lancashire Daily Post told readers that Hoban “came to Barrow to complete his training in engineering just as the present season opened, and at once expressed his willingness to play for the club”. It also listed Hoban as being 5’7″ tall and weighing 11 stone, although like many footballers moving between countries at the time (and later) there seems to be confusion about his age, the newspaper listing him as 21 years old when in fact he was 24 by that time. Whether that is a simple mistake by the journalist or a piece of misinformation provided by Hoban isn’t clear but it isn’t the last time that a confusion around age would have an impact on Hoban’s career.

Peter’s time at Barrow, playing in the Lancashire Combination would be relatively short, he was back in Dublin visiting family at Christmas 1919 and lined out again for Bohemians into early 1920, one of his teammates at the time was Emmet Dalton who would shortly become IRA Director of Training. In early 1920 he seems to have relocated closer to Liverpool and was employed at the Garston Gasworks near the eastern bank of the River Mersey. The gasworks towered over the district and had been constructed in 1891 before being expanded significantly in the 1920s. Garston Gasworks also had a football team and Peter Hoban played for them briefly in early 1920 before moving across the Mersey to Birkenhead and providing his footballing services to Tranmere Rovers. Tranmere was another step up, moving from the Lancashire Combination to the Central League. The following year they became founding members of the Football League Third Division North.

While living on Merseyside, forging a career as an engineer and continuing his passion for football Peter Hoban hadn’t forgotten his committment to Irish independence. Again, much like his time in the Four Courts and around North King Street during 1916 records are sketchy but several later reports indentify Peter as being active with the Liverpool IRA. Hugh Early, the Commandant of the Liverpool IRA estimated their strengh as being around 310 men at their peak but of that number only about 130 could be described as being particularly active. The Military Service Pension records turned up 156 applicants from the Liverpool area to date, however there are tens of thousands of further files to process so this is not a final total, but the estimation by Early still seems broadly accurate. In the early days their primary role was in the sourcing and supply of arms to the IRA operating in Ireland.

In October 1920, during the height of the War of Independence in Ireland the Liverpool IRA were visited by senior figures in the movement, Rory O’Connor and George Plunkett. Attacks on England (though not on Scotland or Wales) had been authorised, and as O’Connor put it there was a desire to disrupt “the daily life of enemy people”. September 1920 had seen the sack and burning of both Balbriggan and Trim by Crown Forces and there was a desire to bring the reality of such destruction home to the English public.

The initial plan had been to bomb the actual docks at Liverpool which, if blown when the Mersey was at a low ebb could have scuppered any ships docked there and would have caused significant and costly damage. However, these plans were uncovered and additional security was placed on the docks as a precaution. Attention was then switched to the dock warehouses, adjacent to the docks but outside the heavily secured area. Most of these warehouses were full of flamable material like timber, or more commonly cotton brought in to supply the Lancashire textile industry.

On the night of November 27th 1920 fifteen cotton warehouses and two timber yards in Liverpool and Bootle, some of them six storeys high, were targetted by up to forty men of the Liverpool IRA armed with revolvers and bottles of paraffin. The impact was immediate and estimates of the damage ranged from £750,000 up to £1,500,000, while some of the fires were still burning on the evening of the 29th. The fires weren’t without further incident however, a local man, William Joseph Ward was killed when coming across one of the warehouse fires on the way back from a meeting at a local Catholic mission. In his witness statement Early alleged that Ward was among a group of young men who attacked the Liverpool Volunteers as they were burning one of the warehouses, and several of those involved in the arson attacks were later arrested. Once again however, Peter Hoban remained at liberty and was in the first team for matches with Tranmere directly after the attacks and throughout December 1920.

It is worth noting that the attacks on the Liverpool dock warehouses took place less than a week after Bloody Sunday and the reprisal massacre of civilians at Croke Park by Crown Forces followed by the mass arrests that took place across Dublin. The day after the warehouse attacks the Kilmichael ambush took place in west Cork which resulted in the death of sixteen members of the RIC’s elite and feared Auxilary Division which shows the significantly increased levels of activity on the part of the IRA.

The dock warehouse fires are the only specific action during this period where Hoban is mentioned as having been involved and his exact role is not completely clear, however we can see that it was part of a coordinated escalation of activity by the IRA in both Ireland and England. As for Peter we know he remained in and around Liverpool, he appears in 1921 once again lining out for the Garston Gasworks team and by August 1922 he seems to have moved to the Kent town of Ramsgate and is mentioned as signing for Ramsgate FC. We can likely assume that this move was motivated by employment reasons however his stay on England’s east coast was to be relatively short-lived.

An Irish return

We know this because by September 1922 he had enlisted in the army of the Irish Free State, then in the midst of the Irish Civil War against the forces of the anti-Treaty IRA. By the time Peter had joined the army on 23rd September 1922, much of the convential warfare was coming to a conclusion, the anti-Treaty forces had been defeated in the battle of Dublin and large scale arrests had been made during the summer months there. In Munster and parts of Connacht aquatic landings by Free State forces had surprised those on the anti-Treaty side and resulted in the loss of control over key towns and territory, however by the end of August, National Army Commander-in-Chief Michael Collins was killed in an ambush in County Cork.

Peter’s time in the army would be relatively short-lived, he was discharged in January of 1924 and the Civil War had effectively ended by May 1923 with the issuing of the “dump arms” order by Frank Aiken of the anti-Treaty side. However, those months of September ’22 to May ’23 would be marked by a particular viciousness, characterised by executions (both “judicial” and summary), reprisals, and a move away from more convential warfare to a conflict of small scale skirmishes and assassinations as well as a focus by anti-Treaty forces on the destruction of infrastructure in an attempt to bankrupt the nascent Free State.

Peter, given his engineering background, having worked in gasworks, and listed on his army attestment as a fitter was placed in the Motor Transport Corps and spent much of his time in the Gormanston camp in Co. Meath. Tom Barry, the famed leader of the Kilmichael Ambush during the War of Independence was imprisoned and escaped from Gormanston shortly after Peter was posted there. While billeted in Gormanston it seems Peter was still able to find time to indulge his passion for football, an issue of An t-Óglách, the magazine of the Free State army, from December 1923 records a dispute over whether Hoban had played a match for his former club Richmond Asylum in September of that year against a Bohemians B side. Hoban denied this was the case and was backed by Sergeant Major Duffy who said that Hoban was in Gormanston on the day in question so couldn’t be the same man who played in the match. However another witness, identified only in the short snippet as Mr. Harris stated emphatically that it was Hoban and that he had spoken with him. In the evidence against him there is a Hoban listed on the Richmond Asylum teamsheet for the day in newspaper reports and is worth noting that “foreign games” such as Association Football, Rugby, Hockey and Cricket were looked down upon and banned by the Army Athletic Association and those serving were not accomodated in these sporting pursuits within the armed forces, a situation that would persist for decades to come.

While the Army during the Civil War could obviously be a dangerous place – attacks from the anti-Treaty forces, friendly fire, limited training and accidents due to lack of familiarity with equipment all added to a not insignificant death toll and injury list – it was a relatively well paying job for the era. However, after the end of the Civil War, with the Free State counting the massive cost of the infrastructural damage wrought, it couldn’t support and didn’t require a bloated army whose numbers were to be significantly reduced.

Peter sets sail

The intervening time period of about a year from his demobilisation are not so clear in Peter’s life but we know that by March 1925 he was back in Liverpool. He wasn’t there this time to find work in the city, his residential address was still listed as the family home on Geraldine Street in Phibsboro, but to travel from Liverpool as his port of disembarkment for that of St. John’s in Canada, before travelling on through to Detroit and eventually Chicago. Just after his 30th birthday Peter set sail from Liverpool aboard the Marloch bound for St. Johns arriving after a ten day voyage, from there Peter journeyed on to Detroit, later claiming to have set out on his voyage with only £5 to his name. By September of 1925 he was living in Cook County, Illinois and the process of his naturalisation as an American citizen was being completed by that stage.

We know that Peter likely chose Chicago as his ultimate destination due to family connections in that city, with aunts, uncles and cousins living there, indeed his own parents may have lived there briefly prior to his birth. Among this sizeable family was his cousin Edward Hoban, born in Chicago, he later became the Catholic Bishop of the Chicago dioscese of Rockford and later still became the Archbishop of Cleveland, Ohio.

Hoban’s experience with the Army Motor Corps may have played a role in his choice of employment as a milk wagon driver. Perhaps having been familiar with working in unionised jobs and union politics from his father’s role with the bricklayers craft union he had decided by 1929 to become a member of Local 753 the Milk Wagon drivers Union of Chicago. For context 1929 in Chicago was also the year of the Valentine’s day massacre, followed a month later by the arrest of Al Capone, leader of the “Chicago Outfit” organised crime gang, his numerous trials and Capone’s eventual imprisonment.

Union dues – the Mob and the Milk Wars

Capone’s gang were involved in a raft of illegal activity, though by far their most lucrative was the illegal sale of alcohol, its distilling or importation for sale was known as “bootlegging”, which generated massive income for criminal gangs across the United States after the introduction in 1919 of the Volstead Act which prohibited the sale of alcoholic drinks. However, by the late 1920s it was clear that this Act might be revoked, in the Presidential election of 1928 the Democratic candidate, Al Smith had campaigned on a platform of scrapping the bill, and while he was roundly defeated by Republican, Herbert Hoover, there was a growing groundswell of opinion that Prohibition’s days were numbered. If alcohol were to be legalised again then Capone’s mob would have to look to diversify into other areas to maintain their staggering revenues. Their attention turned to other goods including the dairy industry. They took over the Meadowmoor Dairy and, with Capone now in prison, his associates Frank Nitti and Murray “The Camel” Humphreys, sought to take control of the union that could control the distribution of their dairy products, specifically their gaze shifted to the over 7,000 members, who generated almost $1 million in union dues for the Milk Wagon drivers union and delivered milk and dairy products across the city.

Come 1932, the Mob’s Meadowmoor dairies wanted to hire non-union workers to undercut the other dairies. Then when Union protests would natually follow this would give Meadowmoor reason to raise milk prices again. This required union cooperation and was a proposal put towards the then leader of the Milk Wagon drivers local 753, Steve Sumner. All of this was in exchange for the mob’s cooperation and protection, of course. Steve Sumner, the no-nonsense leader of the union refused to be intimidated or acquiesce, and a conflict known as the “Milk Wars” ensued.

A position as a Union official was no protection from the Mob, a year before the visit to Sumner, William “Wild Bill” Rooney, the colourful boss of the Sheet Metal Workers’ Union in Chicago had been gunned down in front of his home, while Patrick Burrell, a senior International Brotherhood of Teamsters (from here abbreviated to IBT or simply Teamsters) official whose office was in the same building as Sumner’s had also been murdered. Sumner took to driving around in an armoured car and having the walls of his office lined with steel plating. What followed were bombings, beatings and the destruction of vehicles and property. The unions picketed the dairies, but these methods found them involved in court wrangles over the legality of such practices, which often included allegations of threats and violence by union officials.

While these disputes dragged on through the 1930s, Peter Hoban was rising through the ranks of the Milk Wagon drivers union, in 1939 he was elected as recording secretary as the old guard of Sumner and his colleagues, who had once been promised positions for life, were voted out. Robert Fitchie, one of the older, outgoing officials referred to Hoban and his colleagues as “a radical element within the union”. As a fresh-faced youth at the turn of the century Steve Sumner had lied about his age, remarkably claiming to be 17 years older than he actually was, at the time of the 1939 election when he was replaced by James Kennedy and Hoban was elected as secretary, everyone believed him to be almost 90 years of age despite only being in his early 70s!

Rising the ranks and fighting on all sides

By 1942 Hoban had become union Vice-President, and was also represented on the regional War Labour Board which were set up to mediate labor disputes as part of the American home front during World War II. After James Kennedy’s death in 1951 Hoban replaced him as President of the Milk Wagon drivers union local 753. In later interviews Peter claimed to have gone to night school to study economics at the University of Chicago and also to have studied labour law around this time. With his studies and his work it was not a quiet time for Hoban coupled with the previous mob influence, and the changing marketplace; with more milk being sold from stores and chains and less being delivered door to door was changing things significantly for their drivers, changes that the union didn’t take lying down.

In 1941, Hoban and seven other union officials were hit by an injunction against picketing the Belmont dairy, who alleged that union officials including Hoban, were responsible for violence and intimidation, citing the slashing of tyres on vendor delivery trucks. Hoban and the other union officials denied these allegations and stated that individual vendors (who owned and drove their own delivery trucks) had all sought union membership.

The picketing case against Meadowmoor dating back years ended up in front of the US Supreme Court In Milk Wagon Drivers Union v. Meadowmoor, 312 U.S. 287 (1941), where the Court upheld an injunction by a local Illinois court against peaceful picketing, which the state court believed was enmeshed in what they called “contemporaneously violent conduct”.

Similar allegations were made that same year by the Maywood Farms Company Independent Dairy in relation to imtimidation, including the insinuation that a union official and close ally of Hoban, Thomas Haggerty may have been responsible for running a milk truck off the road, but these allegations were thrown out of court due to lack of evidence.

Things didn’t quieten down for Peter either once he became President of the union in 1951, nor did his ambitions stop there. In 1953 he sought election to the Teamsters joint council for Chicago to the position of recording secretary. There were two distinct factions for three key positions, one featuring a polling slate of John Bray, Virgil Floyd and Hoban faced off against three other candidates for the roles of trustee, secretary treasurer and recording secetary. The opposing slate of candidates were backed by Joseph Glimco, a member of the Teamsters joint council in Chicago but also a feared former henchman of both Capone and Frank Nitti and someone whose rise to prominence in organised labour circles owed more to death threats, bombings and shootings than any aptitude in labour negotiations.

Both Bray and Floyd were convinved to drop out of the race at the last minute, leaving Glimco (and by extention the Mafia’s) chosen candidates unopposed. Henry Burger, a labour representative opposed to Glimco’s faction in the Byzantine world or American labour politics said of Virgin Floyd;

He was a loyal friend. I knew that if I asked him to stay in the race, he would, but I did not want him to be killed”.

Henry Burger on Virgil Floyd’s withdrawal from election.

With the two other positions now due to be elected unopposed the only role that would go to a vote was that of recording secretary where Peter Hoban faced off against William Hicks. When asked about the pressure to withdraw from the race, Hoban replied somewhat nonchalantly;

After Bray and Floyd dropped out, I got all the pressure, but I remained in the race. I figured that if Glimco had representatives on the executive board then the Milk Wagon Drivers should have one too.

Peter Hoban when asked about withstanding pressure to withdraw from the election race.

Hoban’s courage and refusal to be intimidated wasn’t enough to carry the day and he lost out by a margin of 43 votes.

Glimco was closely aligned with Jimmy Hoffa and by 1957, Hoffa, a vice President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters since 1952, saw his chance to become President at their convention in Miami. Peter Hoban had been a loyal follower of fellow Irish-born, labour leader Daniel Tobin who had been ousted by Dave Beck for Teamster leadership in 1952 with the support of Hoffa and Glimco. Newspaper reports would refer to Hoban as a “bitter foe” of Hoffa and there was tension at the the 1957 convention where the almost 2,000 delegates in Miami heard that Teamster membership stood at 1.4 million and that the union had a net worth of $38 million prior to voting for their new leaders.

Hoban was campaign manager for his friend Thomas J. Haggerty in opposition to Hoffa, though Hoffa easily defeated him and the small selection of other candidates who opposed him. While Hoban could not get Haggerty elected he was successful in campaiging to get the Irish tricolour installed alongside the flags of other nations in the convention hall. Surely a proud, personal moment for Hoban, but as he walked up the aisle holding the flag aloft one of Hoffa’s supporters tried to trip him up. As one report noted;

Famous in Ireland as a professional soccer player in his youth, Hoban did a quick side-step, kicked the goon in the ankle and marched on.

Peter Hoban at the 1957 IBT convention

Despite the apparent rude health in terms of membership and finance of the Teamsters there were also significant challenges facing them, federal officials were aware of labour racketeering and mob involvement, not helped by the election of individuals such as Hoffa who’s reputations preceeded them. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations expelled the Teamsters that year and had charged that Hoffa himself was corrupt. Peter Hoban came under some scrutiny for defeding the hiring of a yacht at the Miami convention to entertain delegates. This would seem to be representative of the man, whatever his views of his opponents within the IBT, and it was clear he had little time for the likes of Glimco or Hoffa, he was vocal in fiercely defending the Milk Wagon Drivers local 753 and the wider Teamsters organisation.

This fierce devotion was best exemplified in an extraordinary letter written to Robert F. Kennedy in 1958 when Kennedy was the chief counsel of the United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, more commonly known as the McClellan Committee after Senator John McClellan. The five page letter was published, with a further one page editorial introduction in the September 1958 issue of The International Teamster , official magazine of the IBT. In it Hoban responds to the McClellan committees descriptions of the Teamsters and Kennedy’s own appearance on a television interview where he was quoted as saying that “the leadership of the Teamsters, is gangster and hoodlum controlled, and that the highest officials of the Union, are gangsters, or are controlled by gangsters or hoodlums.”

While Hoban is at pains to point out that he opposed Hoffa and that he was not a “yes man” for him and didn’t seek to gain any special consideration from Hoffa, he defended Hoffa’s election and the overall work of the Teamsters citing the work done to lift workers out of poverty and the hypocrisy of certain Senate committee members who claimed to be friends of the working man.

Describing himself and his fellow Trades Unionists, Hoban writes in the following manner; “I am a trades unionist, and, I believe in the progressive, idealistic, and militant type of Trades Unionism, as embodied by The International Teamtster the Executive Board, and the General President of the Teamsters, and the philosophy of our Great Teamster Movement.”

In the final page Hoban signs off with something of a flourish, noting Kennedy’s Irish heritage, he likens the situation of Trade Unionists in the United States to that of Irish Rebels and gives some of his own personal history while also having a not so subtle dig at Kennedy’s style of chosen language, the final page is worth reading alone!

The front cover of the magazine bears an animated photo of Hoban speaking into a microphone and it would seem useful to Hoffa that a vocal opponent of his would come to the defence of the Teamsters and was given prominence in the edition along with an editorial by Hoffa himself. It is also interesting to note that when comparing the treatment of the Teamsters by the committee to the treatment of the Irish at the hands of the English, Hoban says the tactics used “against Organized Labor, and especially the Teamsters, was used by Imperialistic England, against the young leaders of the Irish Republic, away back in 1916, until 1923!”

Considering that we know Peter Hoban was in the Free State Army for some of 1922 and all of 1923 it is an unusual choice of dates to include the Civil War period!

Connections to home and later life

Hoban did make a number of visits back to Ireland that we know of; in 1952 he returned and conversed with Irish labour officials and urged the youth of Ireland not to emigrate, in 1954 he returned to attend the funeral of his uncle Michael who had taught him during his time in O’Connell’s. And he came back again two years later to present the Provisional United Organisation of the Irish Trade Union movement, with a cheque for over £1,500. That organisation was attempting to restore an historic Trade Union split, which it did eventually in 1959 when the Congress of Trade Unions and the Irish Trade Union Congress amalgamated to form the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Incidentally this author’s great uncle (Terence Farrell) was the last President of the Congress of Trade Unions prior to their amalgamation and may have met Hoban during his visit, perhaps at the reception in the Shelbourne Hotel when Hoban presented the cheque. There was also comment during his visits about the scale of Hoban’s salary, reported as $6,000 per annum at a time when the average Irish industrial wage was somewhere in the regiod of £600 per annum.

Hoban continued to work with the union until 1961, and continued to be an occasional controversial and confrontational character, fighting the union’s corner until the end. While it is clear he was deeply involved in local and national Teamster and wider labour politics in the United States he never forgot his family or his homeland.

An earlier visit had occured in 1948 when Peter, apparently on whim deceided to adopt Brendan McVeigh, then aged 3, from the St. Patrick’s Guild orphanage in Blackrock. Brendan would journey to join his new family the following summer accompanied by an air stewardess, and a Chicago newspaper would later report thay he was “doing nicely” in his new home and was enjoying the confectionary luxuries afforded by an affluent American childhood. By that stage Peter already had two children with his wife Helena (nee Helena McLaughlin, born on 25 October 1899 in Arigna, Roscommon), their oldest son, Peter Jerome was also adopted but from a Chicago orphanage while they also had another son named Joseph.

Peter Hoban passed away, doing what he loved, speaking passionately from the pulpit of a union meeting hall in 1961. A relatively minor dispute involving a union member named Farrell (no relation) over sick leave and the issuing of a traffic ticket had descended into acrimony and in the course of giving a robust defence of the Milk Wagon drivers local 753 Peter Hoban had a heart attack and died aged 66. Hoban had endured a minor stroke some years earlier but their was to be no recovery from this second cardiac incident. His body was brought home to Glasnevin accompanied by his widow and three sons, one of whom we are told was a member of the United States Air Force.

Peter Hoban’s granite tombstone is located in a prominent location within Prospect Cemetery, Glasnevin, in the shadow of the Daniel O’Connell tower and mere feet away from many prominent Republican graves. On the morning of my visit the maintenance crews of the cemetery were busy cleaning some gravestones directly opposite that of Peter’s, they were the graves of the De Valera family. His gravestone gives little hint at his busy and remarkable life, merely stating “Peter Hoban, Who died in Chicago, September 14 1961”.

In his obituaries some of the many facets and complexities of his life were mentioned, despite the 40 year gap since his last football match in Ireland his prowess as a soccer player was discussed prominently, even by US newspapers, as was his service with the IRA during 1916 and the War of Independence. Many reports spoke of his larger than life character, described as an excitable speaker and physically as a “brawny Irishman”. Clearly a rebellious character we can see how those in his family, education, sporting and social circles may have influenced his views on Irish Independence and on the importance of worker’s rights and trade unionism as a boy and young man. The passion and conviction (and perhaps a willingness to resort to physical methods) that could be found in a 21 year old rebel in 1916 was still evident in the man 30 or 40 years later in his work on behalf of the Milk Wagon drivers of Chicago and the Teamster movement more broadly.

It may seem difficult to reconcile how someone who stood up to mob intimidation in union elections when others backed down and who was a visible and vocal critic and rival to Jimmy Hoffa and those in his thrall, could then so robustly attack Robert Kennedy and the Senate committee he represented, going as far as to use a Hitler comparison! Knowing what he knew about Hoffa I can only speculate that it was his devotion to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, that he felt this organisation’s importance was about far more than just one man. Or that he saw the role of the Senate committee was less focused on dealing with corruption in the Teamsters and more as a tool to weaken the Teamsters as a political force and as a representative of organised labour. His personal criticisms in the letter to Kennedy of the worker’s rights records of some of the more critical Senators suggests this. And while he may have been a firebrand he was also clearly someone with a more thoughtful side who also remained deeply connected to his country or origin as shown by flying the tricolour at the Teamsters Congress, his frequent visits back to Ireland and his personal and financial aid to the Irish Trade Union movement, and of course ultimately his decision to be buried back in Dublin in Glasnevin cemetery.

There is still plenty I don’t know about Peter Hoban but would love to learn about, did he continue playing football in his 30s as a Chicago resident, what was his exact role within 1916 around the Four Courts and North King Street? How involved was he with the Liverpool IRA? Are some of his family members still alive, his youngest son Brendan would only be in his late 70s if still with us? If you know more about the enigmatic Peter Hoban please get in touch.

And as always my screeds are never mine alone but can only be written with the kind help and assistance of others. A special thanks to the following; to Sam McGrath for posing the question as to whether Peter Hoban, who was then just a paragraph in a Jimmy Wren book on the Four Courts, could have played for Bohs, thanks also to Michael Kielty, especially for some of the American newspaper and archival research, and to Stephen Burke for Peter’s Bohemian stats.