![]() ![]() the cartoon comes from a British satirical magazine called Judy and is part of a transatlantic discourse of anti-Irish prejudice. The Wild Beast image is especially interesting because it places American history in a transatlantic framework. in the cage next to him, sketched in outline, is a second beast. around his waist he is wearing an “infernal machine,” a terrorist bomb that was usually disguised as a harmless everyday object, in this case a book. The Irish-American “Dynamite Skunk,” clad in patriotic stars and stripes, has diabolical ears and feet and he sports an extraordinary tail. Political cartoons such as the “Wild Beast” offered an exaggerated version of these complaints. in both words and pictures, critics of the Irish measured character by perceived physical appearance. ![]() Native-born Americans criticized Irish immigrants for their poverty and manners, their supposed laziness and lack of discipline, their public drinking style, their catholic religion, and their capacity for criminality and collective violence. survey I use images of this sort when examining the history of anti-immigrant prejudice and its relationship to American racism. “The Most Recently Discovered Wild Beast” (1881) is one of a series of nineteenth-century images portraying the Irish as violent and subhuman. ![]() Source: Judy, or The London Serio-Comic Journal, August 3, 1881 ![]()
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