The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd (8 page)

Workers employed by a Mr Fitzgerald of Rocklodge, near Cloyne, refused to allow their master to send his corn to ships at Cork or to the market, stating that they would give him the price he demanded for it. There were serious riots in Dungarvan and in late September 1846, bakers’ shops in Youghal were raided in an attempt by the starving mob to prevent the export of bread. The mob was eventually dispersed by the military.

By October 1846, vast tracts of land throughout Ireland were home to communities that had become utterly destitute. Father Daly of Kilworth reported in the
Cork Examiner
that many of his congregation were subsisting purely on cabbage leaves. Given this state of affairs, it is little wonder that the people were growing increasingly angry and frustrated with their remote Government on the British mainland. Sir Robert Peel’s cabinet had provided a modicum of relief during the initial stages of the famine, but when Peel’s party were succeeded by the Whigs (under Lord John Russell) in June 1846, much of the financial burden of providing for the starving Irish workers was passed to the landowners.

However, despite offering precious little assistance, the Government was wary of the increasing insurrection and dispatched army regiments to trouble spots with the intention of stamping out any trouble before it began. The army presence only increased the animosity towards the British Government. On 8 October, ‘A Pauper’ wrote to the
Cork Examiner,
‘On yesterday morning the 7th instant, on my way to the Union-house in company with my three destitute children, so as to receive some relief in getting some Indian meal porridge, to our great mortification the two sides of the road were lined with police and infantry – muskets with screwed bayonets and knapsacks filled with powder and ball, ready to slaughter us, hungry victims... If the Devil himself had the reins of Government from her Britannic Majesty he could not give worse food to her subjects, or more pernicious, than powder and ball.’

By the end of 1846, thousands of Irish had become so poor that they could no longer afford to keep their own homes. Although many landlords had done their best to waive as much rent as possible, they had to collect some money in order to pay their own staff. Consequently, the previously loathed Workhouses were becoming ridiculously overcrowded, especially as the fast-approaching winter made sleeping rough too awful to contemplate. On 23 October, the
Evening Post
reported that the Workhouses of Cork, Waterford and some other towns contained more inmates than they were calculated to accommodate.

Altogether, the increase as compared with the previous October was fifty per cent. The fact that even the Workhouses had reached capacity was, for some, the end of the line, as this sad article from the
Tipperary Vindicator
illustrates: A coroner’s inquest was held on the lands of Redwood in the Parish of Lorha, on yesterday, the 24th (October) on the body of Daniel Hayes, who for several days subsisted on the refuse of vegetables and went out on Friday morning in a quest of something in the shape of food, but he had not gone far when he was obliged to lie down, and, melancholy to relate, was found dead some time afterward.’

In an attempt to provide the destitute with at least some form of income, the Government-run Board of Works set up ‘task work’. This employment took the form of extremely menial, repetitive jobs such as ditch digging, drain clearing and road laying and workers were treated in a similar manner to that of common criminals. The task work was despised by the Irish and most chose to work for the landowners rather than join the task work gang. However, by the end of 1846, the landowners had problems of their own. Despite their best efforts to provide relief (by December 1846, many landowners had completely waived any yearly rents due), their funds were not limitless and the famine had proved to be a massive drain on their resources. The landowners were gradually running out of money.

By the end of 1846, Ireland was in an unprecedented and truly horrific state of destitution. The once hardy population had withered away to skeletons. Disease was rife, with dropsy, cholera and typhus raging through and destroying entire communities. Coffins were so scarce that most of the dead were buried in the clothes they had died in. Entire fields that had once contained the potato crop became makeshift graveyards. The crisis had become an utter catastrophe.

1847 brought with it yet more problems. Once again, the populace’s worst fears were realised as the potato crop succumbed yet again to the devastating blight and the country was on its knees. The Government-run task work groups ground to a halt as workers became too ill and malnourished to perform any useful jobs and with the wage earner jobless, families literally starved to death. Despite this dreadful state of affairs, the Government still refused to subsidise alternative foodstuffs such as meat and bread. Starving Irish stood on the docks and watched as container-loads of the food they craved disappeared across the sea. The military was required less and less as communities became too apathetic and weak to organise any form of protest. The dead lay undiscovered in deserted villages for days on end.

The landlords who had done so much to help their tenants, were finally coming to the end of their resources and, fearing another blight the following year, searched for a solution. It came in the form of passenger ships bound for the New World and the British mainland.

In a bid to literally save the lives of their countrymen, many Irish landowners offered to pay their tenants’ passage on ships bound for America, the British mainland and other English-speaking countries. Their offer was accepted by thousands, who felt that they simply had no other choice. The prospect of a new life in the New World appealed greatly, but the ships used to flee the island carried dangers of their own. Disease was often rife on board and once the ship arrived at its destination, passengers were forced to stay in infected, low boarding houses while waiting to be naturalised.

In the first six months of 1847, 567 people died on the passage from Great Britain to New York. Conditions on ships working the passage between Ireland and Canada were even worse. It was not uncommon for half of passengers to die before reaching the Canadian ports. Newspapers in Quebec carried eyewitness reports of the terminally sick being thrown from vessels onto the beach, where they were left to die. Emigration carried an immense degree of risk, but for many, it appealed more than remaining in the wasteland that had once been their home.

By the time the famine finally began to subside in 1849, up to 1.5 million Irish families had fled their homeland. During that period, it is estimated that 46,000 Irish arrived in London and by 1851, the census recorded that 109,000 Londoners had been born in Ireland. Due the circumstances surrounding their arrival in the Capital, the vast majority of Irish immigrants had virtually no money at their disposal and so settled in areas where work could be found quickly and housing was cheap. According to the contemporary writer John Garwood, the most popular parts of London for the Irish immigrants to settle were St Giles, Field Lane, Westminster, parts of Marylebone, Drury Lane, Seven Dials, East Smithfield, Wapping, Ratcliff, The Mint in Southwark and the ‘crowded lanes and courts between Houndsditch and the new street in Whitechapel’. However, virtually any area that possessed a rookery became home to impoverished Irish families.

London became home to many of the poorest families simply because they couldn’t afford to escape anywhere further afield. The opportunities in the new world of North America made it the preferred destination for most displaced Irish. Even those who came to London initially hoped that they would eventually be able to afford the passage across the Atlantic. John Garwood noted ‘they do not regard England with any fondness, excepting that they generally consider the English as honest, although heretics, who will keep their word and pay them what they agree for. They generally simply desire to come, in order to obtain money to get over to America.’ In the cases of the poorest families, it was common for one or two of the fittest men to travel from Ireland to the British mainland or North America.

Once they had secured some reasonably-paid work, they began either sending money home or purchased sea passage on behalf of other family members. This method of gradually evacuating entire families from Ireland became extremely popular: in 1852, the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners noted, ‘the misery which the Irish have for many years endured has destroyed the attachment to their native soil, the numbers who have already emigrated and prospered remove the apprehension of going to a strange and untried country, while the want of means is remedied by the liberal contributions of their relations and friends who have preceded them. The contributions so made, either in the form of prepaid passages, or of money sent home, and which are almost exclusively provided by the Irish, were returned to us, as in:

1848, upwards of £460,000

1849, upwards of £540,000

1850, upwards of £957,000

1851, upwards of £990,000.’

The majority of famine refugees who migrated to Spitalfields took up residence in the courts and dilapidated lodging houses in the southernmost part of the district, close to the Whitechapel and Commercial Roads. However, the overcrowded streets that lay closer to Christ Church also provided much-needed accommodation when space allowed. Since the silk-weaving industry had gone into decline, Dorset Street had received a steady stream of Irish settlers, many of whom set up boot and shoe-making workshops in the old weavers’ garrets.

One such immigrant was James Rouse who had lived and worked on the street since at least 1840. Rouse possessed a talent for his trade combined with shrewd business sense. By 1861, he had accrued sufficient savings to relocate to more spacious premises in Lamb Street and described himself in the census of that year as a ‘master boot maker’. Two of his sons are listed as apprentices. The profit made from the business in the following decade allowed him to retire in the 1870s and live a comfortable life in the middle-class suburb of Bromley.

In 1851, there were 50 people living in Dorset Street who had been born in Ireland. Some like James Rouse and his family had lived in London for some time while others almost certainly arrived on the street as a direct result of the famine in their homeland. At number 16, William Keefe and his family shared their home with four women who had almost certainly escaped deprivation in Ireland and were attempting to make new lives for themselves in the British mainland. Three of the women, Margaret Casey, 35, Margaret Lynch, 20, and Mary Ann Doughan, 35, hailed from Cork while their room-mate, Catherine Allen, 27, hailed from Galway. None of the women were married and so it was entirely up to them to ensure the rent was paid on time. The two Margarets and Catherine worked as seed potters (probably for one of the merchants in Spitalfields Market). This type of work was both home-based and seasonal. One can imagine the mess as flowerpots were filled with soil ready for seeds to be planted in the spring and the growing anxiety felt by the women as summer approached and work became increasingly scarce.

Irish refugees with families in tow found emigration to London particularly challenging, both emotionally and financially. Back in Ireland, even the largest cities such as Dublin were nowhere near as noisy, dirty and frenetic as mid-19th century London. In order to lessen the inevitable homesickness and to keep a rein on rental expenditure, many set up home with members of their extended kin. The Keating family arrived in Dorset Street in the late 1840s. Like so many other Irish immigrants to the East End the head of the family, John Keating, was a boot maker who brought not only his young wife and child with him but also his mother-in-law, brother-in-law, niece and an apprentice. Although the family comprised six adults and a seven-year-old, they all lived in one room at number 25 Dorset Street while John attempted to make a go of his business.

The arrival of famine refugees on the streets of Spitalfields was not well received by the locals, including other Irishmen. The migrants soon gained a reputation for attempting to fit far too many members of their family into one room in order to save money (see the Keatings above). The resulting noise and constant comings and goings irritated their neighbours who did not understand that the extreme overcrowding was due to poverty rather than choice. In 1853, John Garwood unkindly noted ‘in the days of Queen Elizabeth, it was customary to divide the Irish in to three classes: the Irish, the wild Irish and the extreme wild Irish... The same divisions may be made in the days of Queen Victoria... And the class of Irish with which we are most familiar in the courts and alleys of London, are by no means the most favourable specimens of the nation.’

Many Londoners resented the fact that the majority of refugees used their city as a stepping-stone to their goal of reaching America. This even caused divisions between the immigrants and their own countrymen. Garwood explained, ‘of the Irish immigrants who remain in London, few have any such intention at first. But they gradually become accustomed to the place and its habits, and at length settle down in it. Their descendants are called “Irish Cockneys,” and the new-comers are called “Grecians.’ By these names they are generally distinguished among themselves. And the two divisions of this class are most distinct. The animosity which subsists between them is very bitter, far beyond that which often unhappily exists between the Irish and the English. The Cockneys regard the Grecians as coming to take the bread out of their own mouths, and consider their extensive immigration as tending to lower their own wages. Having also succeeded in raising themselves, at least some steps, from that abject poverty and nakedness which distinguished them on their first arrival, they now look on the Grecians as bringing a discredit on their country by their appearance and necessities. There are constant quarrels between the two, and they are so estranged that they will not live even in the same parts of the town, after the first flow of generous hospitality has passed over.’