John Creagh

John Creagh, CsSr (Thomondgate, Limerick, Ireland; 1870 – Wellington, New Zealand; 1947) was an Irish Redemptorist priest. Creagh is best known for, firstly, delivering antisemitic speeches in 1904 responsible for inciting riots against the small Jewish community in Limerick, as well as, secondly, his work as a Catholic missionary in the Kimberley region of Western Australia between 1916 and 1922. Limerick boycott Creagh played a significant role in launching the “Limerick boycott” of 1904–06, in which many non-Jews economically boycotted, on an antisemitic basis, the small Jewish community in Limerick. The boycott was accompanied by antisemitic assaults and intimidation, and caused some Jews to leave the city. The boycott and associated events are sometimes referred to as the "Limerick pogrom" (a name derived, in part, from the Eastern European origins of many Jews in Limerick). There had been a community of Irish Jews in Limerick City as early as 1790. A small number of Lithuanian Jews, fleeing persecution in their homeland, began arriving in Limerick in 1878. They formed an accepted part of the city's retail trade, and established a synagogue and a cemetery. From 1884, there was occasional and sometimes violent, antisemitic activity.