1843.

Parallel to Crosbie Street, where the club room was situated, was
Blundell Street, where my uncle, Hughey Roney, lived in a house
immediately behind McArdle's--the back door of the one house facing the
back door of the other. This side of the street, with the whole of
Crosbie Street, has long since been absorbed by the railway company
before mentioned.

I cannot imagine why my mother chose this particular day to take me to
see our relatives, except it was the inveterate longing which her early
surroundings and training had given her to assist at the "batin' of an
Orangeman," or why I should have been the chosen one of the family to
come, unless it was that she thought I was the one most after her own
heart in her warlike propensities. However this may have been, there we
were in the first-floor front room of my Uncle Hughey's. Every room,
from cellar to garret, was crowded with stalwart dock labourers--at that
time these were almost to a man Irish--prepared to support another
contingent of Hibernians who garrisoned McArdle's in a similar manner.
Hearing outside the cry--"he Orangemen!" I looked out of the window and
up the street, and there, sure enough, was a strong body of them
marching down, armed with guns, swords, and ship carpenters' hatchets.
At once the word was passed to the contingent in Crosbie Street to be
prepared to meet the threatened attack.

Nearer and nearer the Orangemen came. They had got within some thirty
yards of Roneys when, between them and the object of their attack, out
of Simpson street, which at this point crosses Blundell Street at right
angles, there intervened the head of a column of police, under the
Liverpool Chief Constable, an Irishman, Michael James Whitty. There was