Samuel O'Reilly

Samuel F. O’Reilly was born May 1854 in Waterbury, Connecticut. Both his parents were Irish immigrants, and he was the oldest of five children. At an early age, he – like so many other Waterbury residents of that era – began working in the brass industry (Waterbury was known as “The Brass City”). His early years were tumultous and he was something of a rebel and a law-breaker. By the time he was 19, he had left the clock shop he was working at and was making a living in much more unsavoury ways. This came to a head when, in 1873, he was arrested for burglary of a local convenience store. Despite being a minor at the time, O’Reilly and his two accomplices were sentenced to two years’ hard labour for their misdeeds.

Soon following his release, O’Reilly joined the Navy, which he deserted after four months. For whatever reason, it doesn’t seem that he ever suffered any consequences for his desertion, but there would be consequences for other acts. In April 1877, O’Reilly – along with his mother, father, and two of his four siblings – robbed a store. In the wake of this family outing, O’Reilly, knowing that there were warrants for his arrest, skipped town and headed for Detroit.

The wanted man knocked around Detroit without much of a purpose other than eluding authorities. Evidently, he grew sick of life on the run. The October 25, 1878 issue of the Detroit Free Press tells how O’Reilly, who was having “no luck” in Detroit, turned himself in to a beat officer whom he had befriended. Suspicion was expressed that the fugitive turned himself in to authorities so he could obtain a free ride back to Connecticut. O’Reilly received his ride and then received five years in state prison. He was now in his mid-twenties, and it seemed that prison would become his way of life. But as it turned out, Samuel O’Reilly had much more to offer this world than common criminality.

It is unknown where O’Reilly ventured right after his second state prison stint. This is when it is believed that he learned the art of tattooing. From the Civil War period onwards, tattoos had become popular for American servicemen. But with this popularity came a rise in the stigma that only drunk and disorderly military men would get tattoos. As one American socialite put it, “It may do for an illiterate seaman, but hardly for an aristocrat.” O’Reilly would soon change this particular prejudiced perspective. He resurfaces as a tattoo artist in mid-1880s New York City, where he was billing himself as “Professor O’Reilly.” He launched a tattoo studio at 11 Chatham Square, in the Chinatown section of Manhattan’s Bowery.

Though it is unclear when O’Reilly began tattooing, he had certainly made a name for himself in the industry by the late 1880s. In 1875, he opened a tattoo studio in Chatham Square, in the rundown Bowery district of New York. His career was not just as a tattoo artist, but as a showman.

By 1890, he had been dubbed “Professor O’Reilly, the best tattooer in the world and a perfect gentleman”. Many of the people he had tattooed had gone on to travel the world, exhibiting their painted skin. O’Reilly revelled in the publicity, fully embracing the attention of the curious public, and advertising his “painted people” attractions. At that time, his tattooing instrument consisted of a set of needles affixed to a wooden handle. He eventually figured there had to be a better way. Knowing that the inventor-extraordinaire Thomas Edison had been tinkering around with pens connected to motors, O’Reilly was re-purposing Thomas Edison’s failed invention, the electric pen, seeing the potential of this for the art of tattooing. Through experimentation, O’Reilly developed a machine which could make the job of a tattoo artist a lot easier - the handheld tattoo machine.

On December 8th, 1891, US Patent No. 464, 801 for an electric rotary tattoo machine was successfully filed by O’Reilly, changing the face of modern tattooing. With hand-poking, even the most experienced artist can only puncture the skin two or three times a second. His machine increased this to around 3000 perforations per minute, completely revolutionising the tattoo industry. His electric machine was more precise – resulting in more intricate and artistic tattoos with less bleeding for the recipient.

The tattoo industry was “revolutionized overnight,” according to Steve Gilbert’s “Tattoo History: A Source Book,” which adds that, “O’Reilly was swamped with orders and made a small fortune within a few years.”

Not only was he an innovative craftsman, but Prof. O’Reilly also would become the leading tattoo artist of his era. Perhaps the ultimate confirmation of his talents was that even circus tattooed performers sought out his services so they could revivify their illustrated bodies. But as tattoos became more popular, these circus tattoo performers were losing business, as their ink-laden bodies were no longer that rare.

O’Reilly’s steadiest source of clientele was the U.S. Navy. In his view, an American sailor without a tattoo was “not seaworthy,” according to Albert Parry’s Tattoo: Secrets of a Strange Art. The inventor’s studio often was packed with young men looking to be “seaworthy.” A shrewd marketer, O’Reilly circulated a pamphlet about tattooed U.S. military members fighting in the Spanish-American War. Part of this pamphlet reads: “Brave fellows! Little fear had they of shot and shell amid the smoke of battle, and after the scrub down they gloried in their tattoos.” He also tapped into the Irish-American market with his illustrations of Irish and American flags intertwined, frequently accompanied by “Erin Go Bragh.”

As the 20th century approached, at least one tattoo studio could be found in every major U.S. city. Not everyone was pleased with this phenomenon. Ward McAllister, a self-styled spokesman for New York high society, declared of tattooing: “It is certainly the most vulgar and barbarous habit the eccentric mind of fashion ever invented. It may do for an illiterate seaman, but hardly for an aristocrat.” However, even the ‘aristocrats’ were getting inked. In fact, a sensationalistic August 1897 report in the New York World said that “three-quarters of the society women in America were tattooed.” This statistic likely was much exaggerated, but people of high society were getting inked. Prof. O’Reilly made house calls (and even was commissioned to travel to other cities) to these patrician types who would not condescend to set foot in his plebian-frequented Bowery studio.

Samuel contributed, not only the tattoo machine, but he brought in the young Charlie Wagner into his Chatham Square studio. At the beginning of the 20th century, O’Reilly was no longer as prolific as he had been, and much of his energies were devoted to lawsuits against tattoo machine manufacturers who he felt were committing trademark infringement on his patent. Charlie Wagner would carry on Samuels legacy in the Bowery and around the world and, himself, go on to be considered another giant of American Tattooists.

In 1909, O’Reilly, age 54, was painting his house at 1831 Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. Suddenly the scaffolding on which he was working gave way, and the ensuing fall fractured his skull. He was brought to Kings County Hospital, where he succumbed to a brain hemorrhage on April 29th. His eternal resting place is in Holy Cross Cemetery in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. Ina slightly flippant Brooklyn Daily Eagle obituary, which describes O’Reilly, a.k.a. “Tattoo Man,” as “one mass of tattoo marks from head to foot.”