Hopelessness of the Irish in Nineteenth Century England
Throughout my research into the subject of the Irish in England's industrial north during the early nineteenth century, one fact became quite clear; contemporary writers' treatment of the Irish was both minimal and negative. I consulted many sources, Friedrich Engels, Leon Faucher, James Kay-Shuttleworth to name but a few and the reoccurring theme as pertaining to the Irish in all these works was mainly consistent; the Irish were a lazy, vulgar people prone to drinking and brawling.
It was not until 1841 that Great Britain's government made its first attempt to count the number of Irish migrants in the Census of 1841. Data compiled from the actual census and other
…show more content…
These changes diminished the amount of industrial labour available for harvesting purposes in England, and increased the field of employment for the Irish harvesters. 1.
He continues, stating that the Irish were represented throughout most of the agricultural districts of England but for purposes of this report, his comments on those in Lancashire county are important to note;
The harvesters landing at Liverpool seem to have spread across the country from Lancashire to Lincolnshire,...Their employment in Lancashire calls for no explanation: in the middle of the century they were regarded as indispensable there through the scarcity of English agricultural labour. 2.
Although welcome by the English farmers as a surplus pool of cheap, temporary labour, the English harvesters still in existence were not quite as pleased. Most Irish were willing to work for much lower wages than their English counterparts and thus were blamed for driving down the wages of all. In defense of the Irish, even the lowest wages offered in England represented a higher standard of living to them than that they experienced back home. Thus, most Irish were willing to work for what the English considered starvation wages. Although this led to some riots between the Irish and English harvesters, it had the added effect of motivating many English to
Nineteenth-century Ireland was the most densely populated country in Europe: in 1800, its population was 4.5 million, and by 1841, it had risen to eight million (Kinealy 15). Yet much of this population existed in condition of sorrow and misery lay in the dependence of the peasantry on just one staple crop, the potato; in western countries like Mayo and Galway, nine-tenths of the people ate nothing else (MacManus 602). Here was a disaster waiting to happen, made worst by the rapid rise in population in the first half of the century which forced the peasants to subsist on smaller plots of land (O Grada, The Great Irish Famine 63).
K.H. Connell, in his paper “Land and Population in Ireland, 1780-1845”, describes and explains the significant population growth in Ireland prior to the famine of 1845 and how the uses of the Irish land changed with the population growth.
During the early 18th century Britain, Britain was in the middle of Industrialization. Factory workers were also paid low wages and had to endure harsh workers conditions. Accidents were common since machinery was very new at this point and were not safe. The factory workers during this time were forced to put up with being exploited because the owners of the factories and the workers themselves knew that there would always be someone else willing to take their job if they quit. To these factory workers, low wages was better than having no income at all. Factory wokers in Britain during the early 18th century were paid low wages such as how cotton textile workers were also paid low wages during the mechanization of the cotton industy in Japan and
The Irish had come from a hostile Boston in search of a place in the job market. They found an equality they had been unable to find in New England (Potter 670; Howard 225). Although they found jobs, few were very successful. A majority still lived in shantytowns and poverty even in California.
The majority of the Protestant emigrants of the Famine era appear not to have been well off. Most of them spent a few years visiting relatives and working in Carleton or Middlesex counties after arriving from Ireland in the 1850s (Elliot, 2014, p.111).
Immigrants from Ireland were driven to the United States due to the Great Famine of 1845-1850. Many people were almost completely dependent on potatoes, an easy-to-raise crop, due to Britain’s change of religion. These potatoes then fell victim to the unknown disease that left many families starving, and people dead. Families saved money for several winters to be able to send even one person to the United States, although they would only be able to arrive if they managed to survive the unsanitary and unsafe journey over. After arriving, many Irish immigrants began working in factories, or took jobs in the households of native-born families - then sent money back to Ireland to feed their suffering families, or to pay for another family member
As people today enjoy “being Irish” on St. Patrick’s Day, back in the day the Irish were not well-received. Hundreds of years of oppression by Anglo-Saxons in Britain followed them to America and Irish were portrayed in cartoons as “ape-like Celts” while caricature images depicted the British race as “men of genius” (Mendible Lecture Notes). In her Afterword to Mary Doyle Curran’s novel, The Parish and the Hill, Anne Halley addresses former assumptions stating the Irish were distrusted first because of their religion and second because they may not be loyal to the American ideal: “They were Catholic – a religion thought to be based upon superstition and controlled by priests and a foreign power, the Papacy, that demanded absolute loyalty; potentially subversive of Protestant America […] they might never put America first” (Curran 226). Many Irish left after The Great Famine in 1846 immigrating as free citizens or indentured servants. Those arriving in Boston, New York or Philadelphia became the usurpers of free Blacks’ employment opportunities. Because they would work for lower pay, and they resembled “whites,” Irish families dislodged free blacks from their place in that society. In How the Irish Became
The End of Hidden Ireland by Robert James Scally is a unique case study of something entirely not unique: the lives of the poorest peasants of Ireland before and during the Great Famine. The story of Ballykilcline, a small townland in County Roscommon, is unique because of how they handled their imminent eviction off the land, and how they worked together as a community to try and survive. Yet, that closeness, as Scally will prove, is the very thing that kept the community (and doubtlessly, other townland communities) homogenous and isolated, and therefore unable to understand themselves. This is a marked departure from Daniel Corkery’s work, The Hidden Ireland, which insists the culture was prevalent all along but was never understood by historians.
The British also made a mockery of the Irish by creating stereotypes in which the Irish were drunk and violent people. When the chance came around for home rule, Ulster nationalists were not very happy because they wanted Ireland to be ruled
England was one of the main contributors to the hatred of Irish Catholics in the America. This is clearly demonstrated as the Know-Nothing Party campaigned against Irish immigration and laws limiting their freedom analogous to British suppression. “... critics branded Irish as lazy, thieving, drunkards, poor material for either labor or citizenry.” This quote sounds very similar to how the British saw Irish Catholics, indicating where these nativists got their prejudices and bias from. Discrimination was evident on signs like, “No Irish Need Apply” hung on many employers’ windows.
The newly arrived Irish immigrants looked for work but found little to no jobs to be found. When they did find jobs they were the lowest unskilled jobs available to them. Men were hired for little to no pay.
During the time period in which this was written, England owned the majority of Ireland. Most of the Irish people at this time lived and worked off from farms, but with rent
While the texts in question approach similar subject areas and have similarities in their approach, they do differ in historiographical angles. This is due to the time period that the texts discuss – rather than being associated with historical trends about continuity and change, or being an arbitrary choice, the Irish Revolution is a relatively new period of interest that is still heavily relevant to the understanding of the divisions in Irish society today. Bielenberg’s article focuses more on the economic factors that led to Protestants migrating, whereas Hart focuses on the social impact of violence and sectarianism that was embedded through religion to explain the causes of migration. The biggest justification for the different conclusions
In 1841 to 1850, the loss of potatoes caused about 1.3 million people to emigrate overseas, 70% went to the U.S.A., 28% went to Canada, and 2% went to Australia. During the emigration of Ireland many people had to pay for their own fares to emigrate to the U.S.A., Canada, and Australia. The Fares that were paid for emigration by landlords were only about 3% and these people were usually sent to Canada because these were the cheapest fares, and they were usually sent overseas on coffin ships. To emigrate to the U.S.A was a little more expensive, usually the ones that could afford to pay a little more to emigrate went to the U.S.A. to seek work. Irish immigrant labor in America consisted of unskilled factory workers, which also included children; and Irish males provided much of the labor to construct railroads. Many Irish women could speak English, helping women get jobs as servants in the homes of wealthy second and third generation Americans. In the 1800’s The Irish Potato Famine caused many to die of starvation forcing others to emigrate, leaving about 5 million people in Ireland; in 1845 about 8.2 million, and in 1851 about 6.2 million. Presently there are about 5 million people residing in Ireland and another estimated 20 million Irish scattered throughout the world.
Irish Literary Revival was an enormously important movement in the history of Ireland for the works of that time continue to influence many authors to this day. The exact date of the beginning of the Revival is rather indeterminate, however, it is considered to emerge around the period of 1880-1890. Felton describes the movement in words “The Revival drew together many of Ireland’s finest writers and scholars in an effort to rejuvenate an Irish literary and cultural tradition that been subverted by hundreds of years of British political domination” (2007:4). The movement started to disappear in the 1920s.