side of
the city that he was in the habit of frequenting, more especially those
in the neighborhood of Chicago Avenue and Market Street, he had been
heard to frequently say that Cronin "ought to be killed as a British
spy." Little was known as to Burke's antecedents. Even his uncle, Phil
Corkell, who kept a small grocery store on the north side, professed to
know little or nothing about him. All that the police could learn at the
time in tracing his record was that he had reached the United States
from Ireland some time in 1886. A year later he turned up in Chicago. He
had not been long in the city when he joined the Clan-na-Gaels. The
notorious Camp 20 was the one he chose to gain admission to the order.
Dan Coughlin, John F. Beggs, Mike Whelan and other leading lights of the
order at this time dominated the affairs of this particular camp. For
some reason or other--certainly not because he was particularly sharp or
bright, for his uncle described him as a soft sort of a fellow, without
any "gumption"--Burke attracted the favorable attention of Beggs, and
the latter, aided materially by Alexander Sullivan, procured him
employment in the city sewer department. He was assigned to work at the
Chicago Avenue pipe yard, which at that time was a hot bed of Irish
Nationalists. Accordingly to all accounts he earned no small proportion
of his salary by boasting to his fellow workmen of his influential
backers. It was his burden of conversation that Alex. Sullivan, Beggs,
Coughlin, and other Clan-na-Gael leaders were his staunch friends. He
also boasted that he came from the same part of Ireland, on the borders
of Mayo and Sligo, in which Michael Davitt and other eminent
Nationalists were reared, and he never tired of narrating his
experiences with "moonlighting" expeditions in the west of Ireland.
After Le Caron had testified before the Parnell Commission, in London,
he varied his conversation, and was eternally denouncing and breathing
imprecations upon the "British Spy." Early in 1889 he lost his job in
the pipe department. From that time on he had no steady employment.

At the same time he had plenty of money and spent it freely in the
Market Street saloons.

This of itself was sufficient to arouse suspicions, for when he was at
work he was always in debt. Occasionally he varied his saloon loafing by
taking trips to Lake View.

To his associates he explained that he had a young female acquaintance
in that neighborhood, a