Divergent paths

Family histories of Irish emigrants in Britain, 1820–1920

John Herson

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781526107268
  9780719090639
• eBook ISBN:
  9780719098321
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is unique in adopting a family history approach to Irish immigrants in nineteenth century Britain. It shows that the family was central to the migrants' lives and identities. The techniques of family and digital history are used for the first time to reveal the paths followed by a representative body of Irish immigrant families, using the town of Stafford in the West Midlands as a case study.

The book contains vital evidence about the lives of ordinary families. In the long term many intermarried with the local population, but others moved away and some simply died out. The book investigates what forces determined the paths they followed and why their ultimate fates were so varied.

A fascinating picture is revealed of family life and gender relations in nineteenth-century England which will appeal to scholars of Irish history, social history, genealogy and the history of the family.

1 Irish emigrants and family history: a new approach

ALLEGED MANSLAUGHTER BY AN IRISHMAN.

An inquest was held on the death of Patrick Mannion, 61, who died from injuries received in a disturbance in his house in Snow’s Yard on Saturday night. Shortly before midnight his son, John Mannion, and a labourer, Patrick Power, who was lodging there, had a quarrel. Patrick Mannion went upstairs to quieten them. Power struck him in the face and knocked him down. Mrs Mannion fell downstairs and hurt her face badly. A youth, Henry Ferneyhough, saw Power kick Patrick Mannion in the stomach in the back kitchen. Power then put on his boots and left the house … John Raftery, living in Greyfriars, said Power aroused him early on Sunday morning … Power said ‘Jack, I’ve done it – I’ve crippled old Mannion. I’ve crushed his bones for him.’ The witness told him it was not creditable to hurt an old man who had reared a big family.¹

DEATH OF MR BARTHOLOMEW CORCORAN.

Mr Corcoran died on Wednesday at 24 North Street where only two days previously he had taken up residence. He was 77 years of age. Mr Corcoran came to Stafford about 50 years ago and carried on a business as a plumber and decorator for about 30 years in Foregate Street, retiring about ten years ago. Mr Corcoran took a keen interest in public affairs and served as a member of the Town Council from 1894 to 1903, whilst from April 1895 to 1901 he represented the East Ward on the Board of Guardians. As a member of the Catholic community, the deceased was a liberal benefactor to St Patrick’s Church and Schools, and as a memorial to his first wife he presented the Stations of the Cross to St Patrick’s Church. He was manager of the day schools and for many years was president of the St Vincent de Paul Society. The deceased, who was twice married, has eight children living.²

Patrick Mannion and Bartholomew Corcoran were Irish. They had left Ireland in the 1850s and settled in Stafford, a small town in the English West Midlands. They were just two individuals in the great wave of emigration that by 1900 meant more Irish people lived outside Ireland than in the country itself. Irish emigrants and their descendants were to be found in most parts of Britain, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South America, South Africa and elsewhere.

Patrick Mannion was killed in 1899 whilst Bartholomew Corcoran died in 1908. Mannion died in Snow’s Yard, one of Stafford’s slum courts. Its squalid circumstances illustrate a common image of Irish immigrants struggling to survive in poverty, insecurity, drink and violence. His story could be repeated almost anywhere the Irish settled in Britain. Bartholomew Corcoran’s life shows a different side of the Irish experience. He started off in another Stafford slum, Plant’s Square, but died a prosperous and respected man. His success demonstrates how the paths of Irish immigrants could diverge from the common picture of misery and suffering. Corcoran’s story could also be replicated amongst the Irish in other towns and cities.

A family-history approach to Irish emigrants

The press reports about Patrick Mannion and Bartholomew Corcoran contain some other evidence of a type generally ignored by historians of the Irish. These men were not isolated individuals. Both stories mention the family relationships of the deceased. They were, in other words, members of wider families. During their lives they had lived in various sorts of family situation and their actions had been influenced by other people, both related and unrelated. These simple facts define the target of this book. It tests a new approach to the study of Irish migrants by focusing on their families and on what happened to them. It charts the history of a representative sample of families and individuals settled in Stafford. It documents the lives they led and what happened to their descendants, and shows the ways by which many families, though by no means all, became integrated into English society. The aim is to show what their lives were like in a small town during the Industrial Revolution, and to extend our understanding of the variety and complexity of the Irish experience in nineteenth-century England.

The family is a core social institution. Sociologists debate the precise definition and significance of the family as a social phenomenon, but earlier research on Stafford demonstrated in practical terms both the importance and the persistence of family units amongst its Irish population.³ This might seem a statement of the blindingly obvious, yet very few historians have looked at the family dimension to Irish immigration. Lynn Hollen Lees’ study of the Irish in London discusses families generally both before and after migration, but she only occasionally mentions the experiences of specific families.⁴ Bruce Elliott’s book on Protestant Irish families in Canada was a pioneering work that includes some genealogies and limited family histories, but its approach is more diffuse than this book since it tracks families from their origin in Ireland to a multiplicity of places in Canada. His work has not been emulated for Britain.⁵

Some historians have documented family ties across the Irish diaspora using the evidence of letters and other sources. David Fitzpatrick’s book of personal accounts of Irish migration to Australia offers fascinating insights, as does Kerby Miller and partners’ work on early Irish immigrants to America. The letters of the Reynolds family in Manchester are rare evidence of life in a migrant family spread between Britain and America. There are a number of studies of localities in Ireland that trace emigrant families into the Irish diaspora.⁶ These works provide some evidence of family structures and forces. Even so, their sources are inherently scattered in geographical terms and they do not record the long-term history of a sample of families in a specific location. They also deal almost exclusively with the perceptions of the emigrants themselves, not those of succeeding generations. Furthermore, we learn nothing of ‘ordinary’ families who left no documentary material.

Most historians of the Irish in Britain have ignored or glossed over the family dimension. There has been some work on family structures that includes the Irish. In 1971 Michael Anderson published his book on family structure in nineteenth-century Preston. This remains a seminal work that incidentally has a lot to say about the Irish. In 1994 Marguerite Dupree looked at a similar topic in the Staffordshire Potteries, an area close to, but very different from, Stafford town. She unfortunately had little to say about the Irish. Neither author looked at the long-term trajectories of specific families, however.⁷ Carl Chinn’s study of the Irish in Birmingham has selected family information and reminiscence but is not a comprehensive study of Irish families in the city.⁸ Studies that document Irish households in the census enumeration returns have the problem that the census just provides a snapshot at one moment. Unless individuals and families are traced from one census to the next such studies cannot follow peoples’ lives and experiences over time. They are forced to paint an aggregate picture of change in the Irish population, a process that can produce crude generalisations. It cannot document the variation in the immigrants’ life trajectories and, more particularly, those of succeeding generations. As a result, the majority of long-term studies of the Irish in Britain tend to rely on associational evidence of people in workplaces, churches, political organisations, clubs and so on, or on instances of petty criminality and conflict documented by the State and in the press. Such an approach sees the Irish either as individuals operating in various social contexts or as a mass with a range of assumed identities and loyalties. Both fail to encapsulate the variations to be found in the total Irish population and do not reveal the family, kin and social connections they may have had over time. This book originated, therefore, in dissatisfaction with these conventional approaches to Irish immigrants.

No previous attempt has been made to explore how the evidence provided by family history can be used to explore the story of Irish migrants in Britain. This book intends to do that. It argues that a focus on families rather than on individuals or the mass offers a fruitful and sensitive way of understanding the Irish experience. The picture that emerges is complex. It challenges simplistic interpretations of the relationship between the Irish and the host population, and particularly the notion that there was inherent tension or conflict between them. It shows the ways, often problematic, by which Irish immigrants and their descendants became integrated into the evolving society of England. In doing this it is a counterweight to the common view of Irish emigration with its emphasis on exile and victimhood. The processes of identity formation and social interaction bound up with family life in practice led to many different outcomes.

The Irish experience and family history

By focusing on families this book provides new evidence on seven issues concerning the Irish migrant experience. The first is that of timescale. It is important to take the long-term view of a migrant population and its descendants. Popular perceptions of the Irish naturally focus on the Famine and the massive emigration it provoked. The process of emigration and settlement was inevitably stressful, and there is copious evidence of the uncertainties and sufferings that the migrant generation had to endure. Modern research has increasingly tried to take a longer view, however. What happened to the Irish and their descendants in the decades up to and beyond the Great War? The answers to this question are often rather generalised or focus on those people whose Irishness was still identifiable. The Irish inevitably fanned out in different directions, h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• A note on citations
• 1 Irish emigrants and family history: a new approach
• 2 The context: Irish emigration and Stafford
• 3 Stafford’s Irish families: the overall picture
• 4 Pathfinders: labouring families before the Famine
• 5 Refugees from the Famine
• 6 Labouring families in the Famine’s aftermath, 1852 onwards
• 7 Lace curtain Irish? The families of craft, clerical and service workers
• 8 Old soldiers and their families
• 9 The Irish in the shoe trade
• 10 The forgotten Irish: entrepreneurs and professionals
• 11 Divergent paths: the conclusions to be drawn
• Bibliography
• Index