Ireland in Schools Birmingham Pilot Scheme

English & Irish history for primary schools Version 4, 6 September 2007

What was it like to be an Irish immigrant

in Britain in the 19th century?

Contents
About this unit

Lessons, sources & worksheets

1. Hopes & fears
2/3. Irish immigrant experience 1
4. Irish immigrant experience 2
5. Hopes & fears revisited

Note for teachers

1. Overview of the Irish in Britain
2. Individual lessons

More information on the history of Irish immigration is available at:

http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/irish/irish.htm

A Key Stage 3 version is available at:

http://iisresource.org/Documents/Irish_In_Britain_Booklet_02.pdf

Key Stage 2, Years 4 & 5

University of Birmingham BASS University of Northampton
About this study unit

This five-lesson study unit is intended as a depth study within the Key Stage 2 History Prior knowledge
Curriculum, perhaps in years 4 and 5. It would be helpful if the
students had
The key question asks ‘What was it like to be an Irish immigrant in Britain in the 19th century?’
and examines the complexity of their experiences within a range of contexts. 1. some understanding of the
use of visual and written
Children analyse a range of sources related to migrant experiences and attitudes towards them sources.
in order to explore (1) the hopes and fears of Irish migrants coming to Britain in the mid 19th
century; (2) how far they remained in distinct communities; and (3) how far there was a uniform 2. knowledge of the
response to them. The final lesson asks how far the immigrants’ hopes and fears were justified. experiences other people
who have come to Britain
Historical links e.g. Roman, Saxon and
The unit relates the development of multicultural Britain and provides a framework for Viking invaders, migrants
comparison with other migrant groups at different times in the past. Discussions could involve and refugees from Tudor
comparisons with other groups of people who have come to Britain from earliest times times to the present day.
including Romans, Saxons and Vikings, as well as more recent settlers such as black settlers
from the 16th century, the Jewish refugees in the Kindertransport and migrants from the Second 3. Some knowledge and
World War to the present day. understanding of the Irish
Famine. (For resources
Links to other subjects on the Famine, please go
The unit leads students to consider the experiences and attitudes of different people towards to:
ethnic, cultural and religious diversity and the need to show mutual respect and understanding. http://journals.aol.co.uk/
It thus offers a stimulus for work on Citizenship (Key Stage 2 NC Citizenship Objectives, 2e, iis04/Famine.
2i, 4b and4f), looking at situations where recent migrants have faced hostility and prejudice.

The unit particularly requires speaking and listening skills.

National Curriculum Historical objectives - Key Stage 2

This unit fits in with the Victorian Britain area of study.

In addition, pupils should be taught:

2. Knowledge and understanding of events, people and changes in the past
a. characteristic features of the periods and societies studied
b. about the social, cultural, religious and ethnic diversity of societies studies, in Britain and the wider world
c. identify and describe reasons for, and results of, historical events, situations, and changes in the periods studied
4. Historical enquiry
a. find out about events, people and changes ... from an appropriate range of sources of information, including
ICT-based sources
b. ask and answer questions, and to select and record information, relevant to the focus of the enquiry
5. Organisation and communication
a. recall, select and organise historical information
c. communicate their knowledge and understanding of history in a variety of ways.

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 2

Lesson 1
Hopes & fears
Key question Starter Activities NC
(History)
What do the Use source A, fill in the circles 1. Working in groups, pupils look at one of the sources 2a, 2b
sources suggest in the graphic organiser? B, C, D and answer the starter questions for their given 4a*, 4b*
about the Irish What do see? source, deciding whether the source would put them at 5c
immigrant What is the artist saying about ease or would scare them.
experience? their hopes & fears? 2. Pupils jigsaw responses with other groups in the class.
What else do you want to ask? 3. As a class, come to a consensus as to where you
Modelling. Teacher leads the would put sources B, C, D on a continuum line - from
class in interpreting Source A, most at ease to most scared.
using the grid to ask the starter 4. Plenary: Consider the key question and then ask what
questions above. more do we need to investigate.

Illustration 1. The destination of Irish immigrants depended partly on the Irish port they sailed from.

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 3

Sources
A. The Last Hour in the Old Land
Margaret Allen, c. 1877, Gorry Gallery, Dublin
B. ‘The Dacent Irish Boy’
The hero of this song has emigrated to Glasgow,
where he has found work and is very popular.
I’m working here in Glasgow, I’ve got a decent job
I’m carrying bricks and mortar and me pay is
fifteen bob
I rise up in the morning, I get up with the lark,
And as I’m walking down the street, you can hear
the girls remark:

‘Hello Patsy Fagan! You’re the apple of me eye.

Hello Patsy Fagan! You’re the apple of me eye.
You’re a dacent boy from Ireland, there’s no one
can deny.
You’re a rarem taren, divil may caren dacent
Irish boy.’

C. Threat to Irish navvies in Scotland, 1835(?)

NOTICE is given that all the IRISH MEN on the line of railway in Fife
Shire MUST be off the grownd and out of the Countey on MONDAY
THE 11TH of this month or els we must by the strength of our arems
and a good pick shaft put them off. You humbel servants SHOTS MEN.

D. A fictional letter from an Irish girl called Bridget, Bolton, 5 January 1850.
(Inspired by actual emigrant letters written by the Doorley family who settled in England.)

Dear Lilly,

I got your letter before I went to mass on Sunday and it made me very happy. Kate ,

Mary Anne's daughter and her husband Sylvester have moved in. He is a blacksmith and

left Ireland 15 years ago. Work is hard, especially as I have to get up and go to work at

5 o'clock. I go to the mill and make blankets. I have been very sick and short of breath.

Bridget

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 4

Graphic organiser

What do you see?

Centre: What do you see?

Middle: What is the artist saying about the
hopes & fears of the immigrants?
Outer: What else do you want to ask?

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 5

Continuum line
If you were the people in picture and could see into the future, which of the sources B, C, & D would make them most at ease and which would scare your most.
Come to a consensus as to where you would put sources B, C & D on a continuum line - from most at ease to most scared.
Justify the exact point where you place the sources on the continuum.
I’m working here in Glasgow, I’ve got a decent job NOTICE is given that all the IRISH Dear Lilly,
I’m carrying bricks and mortar and me pay is fifteen bob MEN on the line of railway in Fife I got your letter before I went to mass on Sunday
I rise up in the morning, I get up with the lark, and it made me very happy. Kate , Mary Anne's
And as I’m walking down the street, you can hear the Shire MUST be off the grownd and daughter and her husband Sylvester have moved in.
girls remark: out of the Countey on MONDAY He is a blacksmith and left Ireland 15 years ago.
‘Hello Patsy Fagan! You’re the apple of me eye. THE 11TH of this month or els we Work is hard, especially as I have to get up and go
Hello Patsy Fagan! You’re the apple of me eye. must by the strength of our arems to work at 5 o'clock. I go to the mill and make
You’re a dacent boy from Ireland, there’s no one blankets. I have been very sick and short of
and a good pick shaft put them off. breath.
can deny.
You’re a rarem taren, divil may caren dacent Irish boy.’ You humbel servants SHOTS MEN. Bridget

Source B Source C Source D

Very scary Scary Happy Very happy

Fears Hopes

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 6

Lessons 2 & 3
Irish immigrant experience 1
Key question Starter Activities NC
(History)

What far did the Teacher led. Look at Try to answer the key question, question how far did the Irish 2a*, 2b, 2c
Irish stick the cards from source stick together in Britain, in terms to settlement, religion and work. 4a, 4b*
together? 1A showing the 1. Divide class into small groups: how far did the Irish live 5a, 5c*
- settlement number and together or did they live in scattered communities?
- worship percentage of Irish- Give our sets of cards with numbers of Irish-born in Britain in
- work. born people of Britain 1851 (1B) and A3 outline maps of Great Britain, with main ‘Irish
in 1841 and 1851. places’ marked as dots. Create flags that show the relative sizes
What do you notice of the Irish-born populations.
about the figures? 2. i. Read source 2A and underline words showing (a) the
What sorts of things different people, (b) how the people liked the priest, and (c) the
might have happened verbs that show actions related to (b).
to explain these ii. Divide the class into two groups and get each group to produce
figures. a still image.*
Still image1: The people ‘creeping up from the cellars' which
* Devised by Karen depicts their general state.
Wilson, Drama & Still image 2: The people actually standing by the priest.
School Improvement iii. Groups decide what this source tell about the Roman Catholic
adviser, School church kept Irish people together and helped them.
Effectiveness iv. How far do sources B, C and D support your conclusions from
Division, BASS. source A.
‘You would notice the Please explain that the vast majority of Irish immigrants in
difference in body
Britain the nineteenth century were Roman Catholics.
stance and demeanour
between the two still 3. What’s my line?/Charades.
images whilst noticing i. Divide class into groups. Each group selects an occupation
that the priest is a card from the teacher and act out the occupation for the rest of the
constant - his bearing class to guess (a) what the occupation is and (b) whether the job
won't change. The was done by a man or woman.
people derive dignity ii. Class decides how many Irish people did each of these jobs.
from the status of the iii. Look at sources 3A and 3. Find the jobs you acted out. Are
priest.’ there any surprises? How far did the Irish do the ‘posh’ jobs?

1A. The Irish-born population of England & Wales and Scotland, 1841-51 cards for starter activity

1841 1851
England & Wales England & Wales
291,000 520,000
(No. of Irish-born residents- nearest 1,000) (No. of Irish-born residents- nearest 1,000)

1841 1851
Scotland Scotland
126,000 207,000
(No. of Irish-born residents- nearest 1,000) (No. of Irish-born residents- nearest 1,000)

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 7

1B. ‘Top twenty’ Irish towns in Britain, 1851 cards for activity 2

Town: London Town: Stockport

Number Irish-born: 108,548 Number Irish-born: 5,701

Town: Liverpool Town: Preston

Number Irish-born: 83,813 Number Irish-born: 5,122

Town: Glasgow Town: Bristol

Number Irish-born: 59,801 Number Irish-born: 4,761

Town: Manchester Town: Sheffield

Number Irish-born: 52,504 Number Irish-born: 4,477

Town: Dundee Town: Bolton

Number Irish-born: 14,889 Number Irish-born: 4,453

Town: Edinburgh Town: Paisley

Number Irish-born: 12,514 Number Irish-born: 4,036

Town: Birmingham Town: Sunderland

Number Irish-born: 9,341 Number Irish-born: 3,601

Town: Bradford Town: Wolverhampton

Number Irish-born: 9,279 Number Irish-born: 3,491

Town: Leeds Town: Merthyr Tydfil

Number Irish-born: 8,466 Number Irish-born: 3,051

Town: Newcastle Town: Hull

Number Irish-born: 7,124 Number Irish-born: 2,983

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 8

 Outline map of Britain showing
top 20 Irish towns, 1851
Enlarge to A3 format

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 9

1C. ‘Top twenty’ Irish towns in Britain, 1851 for reference

Town Number Irish-born As % total

London 108,548 4.6
Liverpool 83,813 22.3
Glasgow 59,801 18.2
Manchester 52,504 13.1
Dundee 14,889 18.9
Edinburgh 12,514 6.5
Birmingham 9,341 4.0
Bradford 9,279 8.9
Leeds 8,466 4.9
Newcastle 7,124 8.1
Stockport 5,701 10.6
Preston 5,122 7.4
Bristol 4,761 3.5
Sheffield 4,477 3.3
Bolton 4,453 7.3
Paisley 4,036 12.7
Sunderland 3,601 5.5
Wolverhampton 3,491 7
Merthyr Tydfil 3,051 11.3
Hull 2,983 3.5
From C. Pooley, ‘Segregation or Integration? The Residential Experience of the Irish in Mid-Victorian Britain’
in R. Swift and S. Gilley (eds.), The Irish in Britain, 1815-1939, 66-7

Illustrations 2 & 3. Irish in British cities

2. (Left): Sandgate Market (also known as Paddy’s
Market), Newcastle
Ralph Heldley, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle
3. (Right): Houses of Irish navvies working on the
Manchester Ship canal

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 10

2A. A London priest
Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor (1861)

Everywhere the people ran out to meet him. He had just

returned to them, I found, and the news spread round, and
women crowded to their doorsteps, and came creeping up from
the cellars through the trap-doors, merely to curtsey to him.
One old crone, as he passed, cried ‘You’re a good father,
Heaven comfort you’, and the boys playing about stood still to
watch him. A lad, in a man’s tail coat and a shirt-collar that
nearly covered in his head - like the paper round a bouquet -
was fortunate enough to be noticed, and his eyes sparkled, as
he touched his hair at each work he spoke in answer....He
called them all by their names, and asked after their families,
and once or twice the ‘father’ was taken aside and held by the
button while some point that required his advice was
whispered in his ear. A Roman Catholic priest, 1902

2B. Church attendance in Liverpool (on a Sunday in 1853)

Denomination No. of seats in Average attendance
churches
Church of England 63,760 35,526
Dissenters 54,594 28,843
(Methodists, Baptists, etc.)
Roman Catholic 15,300 43,380

2C. Preparation for a Roman Catholic procession in Rook Street, Poplar c. 1912

Illustration 4. Irish immigrants attachment to their

Church reflected practices back home in Ireland
Station Mass in a Connemara Cottage, 1888.
Aloysius O’Kelly, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 11

2D. Whom did the Irish marry?
Irish marriages in Stafford Catholic churches: ethnic character of partners, 1838-1914
Hint: are there any changes over time?

Eng/Irish: ethnically English male partner, Irish female partner

Irish/Eng: ethnically Irish male partner, English female partner
All-Irish:both partners ethnically Irish
Per cent

Years: 1835-1914

Illustrations 5 & 6. Working conditions in England

5.(Left): Many Irish emigrants, including children, found jobs in textile factories in Lancashire.
6. (Right): Michael Davitt MP, on the right, was born in Ireland and began working in a Lancashire cotton mill
when he was 10. Two years later, in 1858, he had an accident with a spinning mill and his right arm had to be
amputated.

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 12

Some occupations cards for activity 3
Agricultural labourer

Servant

7. Field Working in Spring: At the Potato Pits

William Darling Kay, National Gallery of Scotland

Nailmaker

Bookbinder

8. Girl making nails, 1880

Doctor Weaver

Navvy

Lodging house keeper

9. Irish Navvies working on the Manchester Ship Canal

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 13

3A. The occupational profile of the Irish-born in Leigh, 1851
Census Enumerators’ Sheets, Leigh, Lancashire, 31 March 1851
a. Irish-born males
Description Number Description Number Description Number
Cotton Industry Labourers Grinder (factory) 1
Carder 2 Agricultural 90 Joiner 1
Grinder 1 Chemical works 5 Lodging house kpr 7
Handloom weaver 4 General 35 Miner 4
Piecer 3 Vitriol works 5 Miller 1
Labourer 1 Painter 2
Spinner 2 Other Jobs Rag collector 1
Stripper 1 Baker 1 Shoemaker 12
Tenter/Carder Brickmaker 1 Tailor 10
Weaver 2 Cordwainer 1 Umbrella maker 1
Worker 4 Dealer (fruit) 2 Chelsea Pens. 1
Drawer (colliery) 1 Total Jobs 224
Silk Industry Factory worker 8
Weaver 6 Farmer 1 No data on jobs 48
Worker 6 Doctor 1 At home 3
Scholars 4
Overall Total 280

b. Irish-born females
Description Number Description Number Description Number
Domestic & Nurse 6 Other Jobs
Household Services
Cook 1 Shoemaker 1 Labourer (agric.) 32
Charwoman 2 Seamstress 1 Chemical works
Domestic duties 11 labourer 2
Housemaid 1 Cotton Mills Factory worker 15
Laundress 2 Bobbin winder 1 General labourer 4
Servant 24 Carder 2 Nailmaker 1
Washerwoman 17 Doubler 1
Hand twister 1 Jobs Total 181
Other Services Piecer 2
Assistant in Worker 10 No Data on Jobs
Beerhouse
Bookbinder 1 Silk Industry Wife 25
Boot & Shoe Binder 1 Handloom weaver 1 Daughters 12
Dealer 3 Weaver 10 Lodgers 41
Dressmaker 3 Powerloom weaver 2 Rest 20
Hawker 2 Winder 3 Scholars 7
Lodging house kps 5 Worker 2 At home 4
Overall Total 290

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 14

3B. Irish occupations in Birmingham, 1851
Census (1851) & C. Chinn, ‘The Irish in Early Victorian England’, The Irish in Victorian Britain. The Local Dimension edited by
R. Swift & S. Gilley, Dublin, 1999, pp 68-9

Across Birmingham, 5231 Irish were recorded with 765 occupations. They ranged in
economic status from John Ryland, an Armagh accountant who lived in prosperous Ashted
Row with his family and a servant, to James Foy of 6, Park Street. He, his wife and their
five children aged three and upwards were all beggars. Overall there were few Irish who
could be regarded as middle class. Depending upon the interpretation of jobs and without
any knowledge of income, at the most they formed 2% of the total. This small group
included professionals, clerks, teachers and actors.

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 15

Lesson 4
Irish immigrant experience 2
Key question Starter Activities NC
(History)

How far was Look at Source C 1. In pairs, look at all the written sources on the next page and 2a*
there a uniform from Lesson 1 and divide them into positive and negative, giving a score for each - 1 4a, 4b*
English, Welsh produce a quick for most negative, 10 for most positive. 5a, 5c*
and Scottish news report. Justify your decision.
response to 2. If you were producing a radio broadcast to answer the key
Irish question, which two people from the sources would you interview.
immigrants? Justify your choice.
3. Produce a storyboard to your broadcast, highlighting four points
you would like to make about attitudes of people in different parts
of Britain towards the Irish.
4. Plenary: Put all the story boards on a wall and in groups of three
pairs justify their sources and story boards to each other.

Sources
I. SETTLEMENT

A. The Times, 2 April 1847 C. An Irish street in London, mid 19th

The newspaper was no great friend of Ireland. century
Ireland is pouring into the cities, and even the villages of
this island, a disgusting mass of famine, nakedness and
dirt and fever. Liverpool, whose closeness to Ireland has
already made it the most unhealthy town in this island,
seems destined to become one mass of disease.

B. Registrar General 1847, reported in Liverpool Mail,

6 November 1847
. . . Liverpool, created in haste by commerce
[businessmen wanting to make lots of money] ... without
any regard for flesh and blood, and flourishing while the
working population was rotting in cellars, has been ...
one of the unhealthiest towns in the Kingdom, Liverpool
has for a year, been the hospital and cemetery of Ireland.

II. RELIGION

D. Concert on St Patrick’s Day, 1885

The Barrow Herald, 21 March 1885
On Tuesday evening last, being St Patrick’s Day, a grand Irish ballad concert took place at the
Town Hall; most of the performers being connected with the Catholic Church in this town. The
Rev. Father Caffrey presided, and amongst those present were the Revs. Father Gordon, Father
Collinson, and Father Monaghan; Mr Palmer, and others. There was also a large attendance.

E. Catholic piety in London

M.C. Bishop, ‘The Social Methods of Roman Catholicism in England’, Contemporary Review, 39, 1887, p. 612
A priest ... got together some fifty labourers of Whitechapel [London] and preached to them
under a railway arch. The fifty increased to five hundred before long, and the congregation
migrated from the railway arch to a garret, and then to a temporary iron church. Meantime by
much begging, by the help of a few benefactors of the upper world [upper-class people who
helped the poor], but chiefly by the pence and farthings of the Romish [Roman Catholic]
roughs thereabouts, schools were built.

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 16

III. WORK

F. Irish sugar-workers in Greenock, 1836

Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers (1836) xxiv—xxvii
Mr Thomas Fairrie, sugar manufacturer, of Greenock [stated] ‘If it was not for the Irish, we should
be obliged to import Germans, as is done in London. The Scotch will not work in sugar-houses;
the heat drives them away in the first fortnight. If it was not for the Irish, we should be forced to
give up trade; and the same applies to every sugar-house in town. This is a well-known fact.
Germans would be our only resource, and we could not readily get them. Highlanders would not
do the work’.

G. Liverpool Mail, 6 November 1847

The people that come here are not labourers ... they are beggars and paupers. They never were
labourers. They never did an honest day’s work in their lives. They live by begging ... and when
they arrive here, begging is their profession ...

H. T.P. O’Connor, MP

T.P. O’Connor was

born in Athlone in
Ireland in 1848 and
became a famous
journalist in
London. He was
also the Irish
nationalist MP for
the mainly Irish
Scotland Road
Division of
Liverpool from
1885 until his
death in 1929.

I. Cartoon, 'The Mixing Room', 1854

It shows Irish women millworkers in Preston asleep on the job as their horrified employer looks on.
It reflects a view that cheap Irish labour forced down wages and undermined the trade union movement.

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 17

Lesson 5
Hopes & fears revisited
Key question Starter Activities NC
(History)

What were the Look again at 1. Assume she stayed in the country, write a letter she might have 2a, 2b
pros and cons of Bridget’s letter, written later describing pros and cons of being an Irish person 5a*, 5c*
being an Irish Source D in Lesson living in Britain in the nineteenth century.
immigrant in 1, and highlight in You have looked at several sources in the previous lessons.*
Britain in the two different colours Pick two or three and use these as the basis for your letter.
19th century? the advantages and 2. Plenary: Class secret ballot (Yes, No, Don’t know) on the
disadvantages of question:
being an Irish person Would you have liked to have been an Irish person living in Britain
living in Britain. in the nineteenth century?
3.Optional poll: How far does anything you have learned about
Irish immigrants apply to immigrants in Britain today?

* Lesson 1: A painting ‘The Last Hour in the Old Land’; the ballad, ‘The Dacent Irish Boy'; the threat to Irish navvies in Scotland; and
a fictional letter from an Irish girl called Bridget.
Lessons 2/3: Irish-born population of England & Wales and Scotland, 1841-51; ‘Top twenty' Irish towns in Britain; a London priest;
Church attendance in Liverpool ; Whom did the Irish marry?; Preparation for a Roman Catholic procession; and the occupations
of the Irish-born in Leigh and Birmingham.
Lesson 4: The Times and the Registrar General on the Liverpool Irish; the Barrow concert on St Patrick’s Day; Catholic piety in
London; the Irish sugar-workers in Greenock; the comments of the Liverpool Mail on the Irish in1847; T.P. O’Connor; and ‘The
Mixing Room’.

Lesson 1, Source D Bridget Liptrot (née Doorley) with her

A fictional letter from an Irish girl called Bridget, 5 nephew Silvester Moran
January 1850. Bridget’s family letters inspired the fictional
letter on the left.

Bolton,
England,
5 January 1850
Dear Lilly,

I got your letter before I went to

mass on Sunday and it made me very
happy. Kate , Mary Anne's daughter
and her husband Sylvester have
moved in. He is a blacksmith and left
Ireland 15 years ago. Work is hard,
especially as I have to get up and go
to work at 5 o'clock. I go to the mill
and make blankets. I have been very
sick and short of breath.

Bridget

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 18

Lesson plans
Lesson Key question Starter
1 What do the Use source A, fill in the
Hopes sources suggest circles in the graphic
& about the Irish organiser?
fears immigrant What do see?
experience? What is the artist saying
about their hopes & fears?
What else do you want to
ask?
Modelling. Teacher leads
the class in interpreting
Source A, using the grid to
ask the starter questions
above.
2/3 What far did the Teacher led. Look at the
Irish immigrant Irish stick cards from source 1A
experience 1 together? showing the number and
- settlement percentage of Irish-born
- worship people of Britain in 1841
- work. and 1851.
What do you notice about
the figures?
What sorts of things might
have happened to explain
these figures.
* Devised by Karen Wilson,
Drama & School
Improvement adviser,
School Effectiveness
Division, BASS.
‘You would notice the
difference in body stance
and demeanour between the
two still images whilst
noticing that the priest is a
constant - his bearing won't
change. The people derive
dignity from the status of the
priest.’
Activities NC (History)
1. Working in groups, pupils look at one of the sources B, C, D and answer the starter 2a
questions for their given source, deciding whether the source would put them at ease or would 4a, 4b
scare them.
2. Pupils jigsaw responses with other groups in the class.
3. As a class, come to a consensus as to where you would put sources B, C, D on a continuum
line - from most at ease to most scared.
4. Plenary: Consider the key question and then ask what more do we need to investigate.
Try to answer the key question, question how far did the Irish stick together in Britain, in terms 2a*, 2b, 2c
to settlement, religion and work. 4a, 4b*
1. Divide class into small groups: how far did the Irish live together or did they live in scattered 5a, 5c*
communities?
Give our sets of cards with numbers of Irish-born in Britain in 1851 (1B) and A3 outline maps of
Great Britain, with main ‘Irish places’ marked as dots. Create flags that show the relative sizes of
the Irish-born populations.
2. i. Read source 2A and underline words showing (a) the different people, (b) how the people
liked the priest, and (c) the verbs that show actions related to (b).
ii. Divide the class into two groups and get each group to produce a still image.*
Still image1: The people ‘creeping up from the cellars' which depicts their general state.
Still image 2: The people actually standing by the priest.
iii. Groups decide what this source tell about the Roman Catholic church kept Irish people together
and helped them.
iv. How far do sources B, C and D support your conclusions from source A.
Please explain that the vast majority of Irish immigrants in Britain the nineteenth century
were Roman Catholics.
3. What’s my line?/Charades.
i. Divide class into groups. Each group selects an occupation card from the teacher and act out the
occupation for the rest of the class to guess (a) what the occupation is and (b) whether the job was
done by a man or woman.
ii. Class decides how many Irish people did each of these jobs.
iii. Look at sources 3A and 3. Find the jobs you acted out. Are there any surprises? How far did
the Irish do the ‘posh’ jobs?
IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 19
Lesson Key question Starter Activities NC (History)

4 How far was Look at Source D from 1. In pairs, look at all the sources and divide them into positive and negative, giving a score for 2a*
Irish immigrant there a uniform Lesson 1 and produce a each - 1 for most negative, 10 for most positive. 4a, 4b*
experience 2 English, Welsh quick news report. Justify your decision. 5a, 5c*
and Scottish 2. If you were producing a radio broadcast to answer the key question, which two people from the
response to Irish sources would you interview. Justify your choice.
immigrants - 3. Produce a storyboard to your broadcast, highlighting four points you would like to make about
settlement, attitudes of people in different parts of Britain towards the Irish.
religion, work? 4. Plenary: Put all the story boards on a wall and in groups of three pairs justify their sources and
story boards to each other.

5 What were the Look again at Bridget’s 1. Assume she stayed in the country, write a letter she might have written later describing pros and 2a, 2b
Hopes & fears pros and cons of letter, Source D in Lesson cons of being an Irish person living in Britain in the nineteenth century. 5a*, 5c*
revisited being an Irish 1, and highlight in two You have looked at the following sources in the previous lessons:
immigrant in different colours the LIST SOURCES
Britain in the advantages and Pick two or three and use these as the basis for your letter.
19th century? disadvantages of being an 2. Plenary: Class secret ballot (Yes, No, Don’t know) on the question:
Irish person living in Would you have liked to have been an Irish person living in Britain in the nineteenth century?
Britain. 3.Optional poll: How far does anything you have learned about Irish immigrants apply to
immigrants in Britain today?

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 20

Note for teachers
1. Overview of the Irish in Britain
Until the advent of ‘New Commonwealth’ migration after World War II, the Irish were by far the largest ethnic group
in Britain. However, this prominence was not unique to the modern period. Irish sojourners were finding their way to
Britain as early as the Middle Ages and had begun to form permanent settlements in London by the Elizabethan period.
The eighteenth century saw further developments of this type, with Irish migration mirroring the wider growth of urban
and industrial centres. The emergence of the northern towns, and the establishment of the great commercial and
industrial cities, prompted the appearance of much larger and more closely observed Irish settlements.

The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed a substantial increase in the pace and scale of Irish migration to
Britain. The 1841 Census enumerated the Irish-born population of England, Wales and Scotland at 419,000 . By 1851,
in consequence of the massive exodus during the Great Famine, this figure had risen to 727,000.

In 1861, the Irish-born population peaked at 806,000, when it comprised 3.5% of the total population. Thereafter, as
migration from Ireland to Britain declined, the number of Irish-born migrants in Britain also progressively fell,
declining to 550,000 (or 1.3% of the population) in 1911. lodges

The Irish presence was generally unpopular. Even before the Famine, British social investigators and commentators
variously perceived Irish migration as little short of a social disaster which, it was argued, exacerbated urban squalor,
constituted a health hazard, increased the burden on the Poor Rates and was a threat to law and order in British cities
In the 1840s, the impact of the Famine and a pattern of long-lived cultural antagonisms conspired to make the Irish
in Britain the ‘largest unassimilable section of society’; ‘a people set apart and everywhere rejected and despised.’

Irish immigration ‘involved the positive movement of people in search of better economic opportunities in Britain’.
Accordingly, the Irish presence was concentrated overwhelmingly in the towns and cities of ‘the workshop of the
world’. As late as World War I, a continuing migration meant that even less fashionable Irish centres, such as
Whitehaven in Cumberland and Hebburn on Tyneside, ‘bore the cultural and political hallmarks of their
long-established Irish communities, whether in the form of thriving Catholic churches or Orange’.

These migrants, many of whom subsequently re-emigrated, were by no means an homogeneous group. Their ranks
contained both rich and poor, middle class and working class, skilled and unskilled, Catholics and Protestants (as well
as unbelievers), Nationalists and Loyalists, and men and women from a variety of distinctive provincial rural and urban
cultures in Ireland.

The majority were young, single people, disproportionately male. They were also notoriously transient, and the urban
districts they inhabited experienced continual in- and out-migration, with only a relatively small number of migrants
establishing permanent settlements. However, the vast majority of these Irish people were poor and they were Roman
Catholics, and it is their story - a story, in many cases, ‘of triumph over adversity - that looms large in the history of
the Irish in Britain.

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 21

Note for teachers
2. Individual lessons
Lessons 2 & 3: Irish immigrant experience 1
Settlement, Little Irelands’/ghettoes?
Much contemporary qualitative evidence, which referred specifically to ‘the lowest Irish’ - the very poorest Irish -
rather than to all Irish migrants, suggested that during the 1830s and 1840s in particular the newcomers were located
in socially immobile and unintegrated ghettos or ‘Little Irelands’, isolated in particular streets and courts from the
surrounding populations. The image of these districts, including St Giles in London, or Manchester’s ‘Little Ireland’,
observed by Frederick Engels in 1844, was popularly perceived to be a reality of Irish urban settlement.

Many towns did, indeed, possess so-called ‘Irish quarters’ populated by extended families, including Goit Side in
Bradford, Rock Row in Stockport, Sandygate in Newcastle, Bedern in York, and Caribee Island in Wolverhampton.
The tendency of the Irish poor to cluster in such districts was influenced by the availability of cheap accommodation,
including lodging-houses, the existence of familial and kinship networks, proximity to available employment, and the
development of Irish social, cultural and religious organizations.

Yet Irish did not congregate in ‘ghettos’ to the exclusion of other ethnic groups. For example, St Giles was not
inhabited exclusively by the Irish poor and was, as a criminal rookery, atypical of Irish districts in London. Similarly,
while there were areas of concentrated Irish settlement in Liverpool, Blackburn and Bolton, they were not wholly
isolated from the host community. Even where Irish immigrants dominated particular streets, courts and squares they
were seldom shut off from the native population.

Indeed, in Liverpool almost half the Irish lived in enumeration districts with low or medium concentrations of Irish
people, and this also appears to have been the case in London and York, where the Irish lived cheek by jowl beside
natives of the same social class. This was also true of Irish settlement in smaller English towns such as Stafford and
Chester, where the Irish-born population was geographically dispersed and where the formation of an identifiable Irish
community was inhibited by a high level of out-migration. In short, the poor Irish lived among the English poor, and
the upwardly mobile among the English upper-working or middle class.

In sum, the pattern of Irish settlement was determined largely by economic considerations, and if there was an ‘Irish
community’ it did not rest on a pattern of rigid residential segregation.

Religion
The majority of Irish people who settled in Victorian Britain were Roman Catholics, and the survival of an Irish
identity was crucially bound up with the survival of Catholicism, as the Roman Catholic Church in England, Scotland
and Wales was the only native institution with a fundamental claim on Irish loyalties. This relationship was reflected
in the unique role and status of the Roman Catholic priest within Irish communities in British towns and cities, as
Henry Mayhew observed in mid-Victorian London.

The rise of an expatriate Irish Catholicism was part of the transformation of nineteenth-century Irish religion from a
faith based chiefly on the home and on family prayers, and Gaelic devotion and pilgrimage or ‘patterns’ in a sacred
rural landscape, to a much more chapel-orientated religion of weekly attendance at Mass. This transformation, which
can be dated from Archbishop Paul Cullen’s remaking of the Irish church in the Roman mould in the 1850s, has been
described as a ‘Devotional Revolution’, and by the end of the century the Irish had become the most practising
Catholics in the world.

Work
Overall, among the country immigrants to British towns and cities, the Irish were generally the least prepared to
succeed in their new environment. The great majority of Irish-born, largely illiterate and unskilled, entered the lowliest
and least healthy of urban occupations, unless they enlisted in the army, which was 30 per cent Irish in the
mid-Victorian period. Most of those with limited or no skills were concentrated in unskilled occupations in mines,
ironworks, textile mills and manufactories; in construction industries, notably as railway ‘navvies’, and in casual dock
labour and street-selling.

These were occupations for which a highly sophisticated city like London, with a highly specialised labour force, held
very few rewards and the Irish could only enter the metropolitan economy with difficulty. Although a minority of

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 22

skilled workers entered sweated industries like cobbling and tailoring , street-selling was, as Henry Mayhew observed,
the most common occupation among the Irish in London’s East End. By contrast, in Liverpool, which was a trading
and commercial rather than an industrial centre, employment opportunities, housing and sanitation were overwhelmed
by the sheer magnitude of Irish immigration during the 1840s, and the demand for labour lay largely in unskilled
occupations for which Catholics and Protestants were in active competition.

Similarly, although the Glasgow Irish were able to find employment in mills and mines, they were excluded from
engineering by virtue of their lack of skill, from shipbuilding by the Orange Order and from skilled trades by the craft
unions. In Edinburgh, a city of legal, literary and ecclesiastical institutions, the Irish were confined to such menial
occupations as general labouring in building, domestic service, portering, street-cleaning and street-lighting

Yet it is both easy and dangerous to generalize. In the first place, not all Irish immigrants, whether Catholic or
Protestant, were poor. Even by mid-century there was a small middle-class world of professional men - doctors,
lawyers, soldiers, shopkeepers, merchants and journalists!

Irish women also formed an important sector of the migrant labour force in textile mills, laundry work, street-selling
and, most notably, domestic service, and in the longer term made notable contributions to a range of low-paid
professional occupations, including social work and nursing.

Moreover, the economic position of the Irish was far less static than many contemporaries believed and there was a
degree of differentiation in Irish occupational patterns. The survey of the Irish in Britain conducted by Hugh Heinrick
in 1872 for The Nation argued that in relative terms the economic position of the Irish depended less on the structure
of the Irish community in a given locality than on the economic infrastructure of the area where they worked. In
developing this argument, the survey pointed to the emergence of a substantial Irish middle-class in London, to the
presence of skilled workers in the Midlands and to the variable experience of the Irish in South Lancashire, where an
Irish middle-class had emerged in Manchester whilst in neighbouring Wigan and St. Helens the Irish were almost
wholly labourers of one description or another.

Lesson 4: Irish immigrant experience 2

Victorian stereotypes
The Victorians were less ready to accept such diversity among the Irish in Britain. The Victorians themselves are
responsible for the persistence of a negative Irish migrant stereotype, for most contemporary writings exaggerated Irish
poverty, immorality, drunkenness and Catholicism.

Even the briefest reading of Carlyle’s or Kay’s outpourings reveals how the image of the Irish has crowded out any
notion of their lived reality. The Irish were portrayed as the greatest nuisance of the new industrial and urban world;
they were the scapegoats for a host of problems that their arrival did not manufacture and scarcely worsened. The Irish
scapegoat was meant to explain the negative features of the Victorian city and perhaps to assuage those who feared
them.

Yet the image of the Irish as a negative and alien presence had more to do with the urban world in which they lived
than with the character of the Irish themselves. For Victorians, the words ‘Irish’ and ‘slum’ were virtually
interchangeable, each epitomising middle-class attitudes towards working-class lifestyles.

Religion
Irish Catholic identity in Victorian Britain was reinforced by manifestations of anti-Catholicism, both covert and overt.
The English, Scots and Welsh were overwhelmingly Protestant by tradition and there had been a distrust of Roman
Catholicism in Britain since the Reformation. Anti-Catholic feeling in England was rooted in an historic hatred of
France and Spain, Catholic powers and England’s traditional enemies; in scriptural and theological arguments against
Roman Catholicism; in the Settlement of 1688, which ensured the Protestant Succession of William and Mary; in the
fact that the Church of England imparted a religious dimension into political life and had therefore to be protected;
and in the belief that Roman Catholicism, with its legacy of the Inquisition, was a persecuting sect.

Thus, by the end of the eighteenth century, English Protestants held that the Roman Catholic Church was both
theologically unsound and politically subversive; that it was intolerant and persecuting; that it was a hindrance to the
moral, intellectual and economic development of its flock; and that it should be excluded from political power. In this
context, Irish Catholics were particularly vulnerable because their allegiance was to a foreigner rather than to the
Crown (the head of the Protestant Church and State), hence they were also regarded as potentially, if not actually,

IiS, Irish immigration - Key Stage 2, 23

politically subversive, a perception which Irish nationalist activity consequent upon the Act of Union of 1800 appeared
to confirm. The strength of popular Protestantism was greatly reinforced by the Evangelical Revival.

Thus religious issues provided a vital ingredient in determining Anglo-Irish relations on a local level during the
Victorian period, although Victorian ‘No Popery’ was much more than simply anti-Irishness. Nevertheless, the terms
‘Irish’ and ‘Catholic’ were virtually synonymous in British eyes and the Irish Anti-Catholic feeling was exacerbated
by the presence of Irish Protestants, largely from Ulster, in those British towns and cities also populated by Irish
Catholic migrants, particularly on Clydeside and Merseyside.

Indeed, such was the depth of anti-Catholic feeling that it contributed to the most serious clashes between the English
and the Irish in the nineteenth century - at Stockport n 1852, Oldham in 1861, London in 1862 and during the more
widespread Murphy riots in 1867-71.

Work
Such clashes were not, however, solely due to religious differences. There were deeper tensions, including competition
for jobs. The Irish were seen as willing to work for lower wages and thus deprive the English, Scots and Welsh of
jobs. At the same tine, Irish immigrants were willing to do jobs that nobody else would do.

The Irish were also said to have helped to undermine working-class trades union activity through their use by
employers as strike -breakers. Yet, while it is true that Irish immigrants were sometimes used to break strikes,
individual Irishmen - first and second generation - did become prominent trade unionists. For instance, John Doherty,
founder of the National Association for the Protection of Labour, editor of the visionary Voice of the People, and one
of the greatest trade union pioneers, was born and bred in Donegal.

Lesson 5: Hopes & fears revisited

An additional activity, which underlines the often ambivalent attitude of Irish immigrants to their experience in Britain,
would be singing and analysing the famous Irish ballad ‘The Mountains of Mourne’.

THE MOUNTAINS OF MOURNE

This song is a love letter from an Irish immigrant in London to Mary, his wife or sweetheart, whom he has left behind in
County Down. He tells her what he has done, the people he has seen and some of the differences between life in
London and Ireland.

Oh, Mary this London’s a wonderful sight,
With the people here working by day and by night.
They don’t sow potatoes nor barley nor wheat,
But there’s gangs of them digging for gold in the street;
At least, when I asked them that’s what I was told,
So I just took a hand at this digging for gold,
But for all that I found there I might as well be,
Where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.
I believe that when writing a wish you expressed
As to how the fine ladies of London were dressed.
Well if you believe me, when asked to a ball,
They don’t wear a top to their dresses at all.
Oh, I’ve seen them myself, and you could not in truth
Say if they were bound for a ball or a bath.
Don’t be starting those fashions now, Mary Macree,
Where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.

Ireland in Schools, 19 Woodlands Road, Liverpool L17 0AJ

Tel: 0151 727 6817 email: iisresources@yahoo.co.uk web site: http://iisresource.org