3.3 Migrant communities in the c19 Industrial Age

Question 1

Who came and why?

Answer 1

• During the nineteenth century hundreds of thousands of people migrated to the industrial cities of England in search of work
• Significant numbers of Black people were present at different levels of society, especially within the working classes
• Towards the end of the nineteenth century there was a new mass migration of eastern European Jewish refugees fleeing anti-Semitic pogroms

Question 2

What was their impact?

Answer 2

• biggest mass immigration so far in Britain’s history
• Britain’s power and wealth was heavily dependent on migrant labour as well as the labour of people in the colonies
• Irish, Scottish, Italian, German, Jewish and other settlers had a huge impact on every aspect of British culture; food, entertainment, business, media, science, politics, transport infrastructure and even health

Question 3

How did Britain’s relationship with the wider world affect immigration?

Answer 3

• During this period, Britain grew to be the world’s superpower by a combination of conquest and trade
• Places were colonised for their raw materials, for cheap labour and as markets for goods being produced at low cost in the factories of the north of England and the Midlands
• The Industrial Revolution pulled in poor migrant workers from all over Britain and Europe in mass immigration that was needed to power the manufacturing economy

Question 4

What were their experiences?

Answer 4

• As the population of cities grew, families were crowded into homes with poor sanitation and cramped conditions, working long hours for low pay
• Some lived in distinct communities focusing on specific areas, such as the Italian food and Jewish clothing trades
• The century saw the rise of an industrial working class and trade unions, with movements for social change often led by people whose families had arrived as immigrants

Question 5

Irish migrants

Answer 5

• The largest migrant community in the C19th was Irish and a collapse in agriculture in 1815, brought many poor migrant Irish families to cities in Britain looking for work in the new industrial towns
• Irish workers known as navvies often did the hardest, dirtiest jobs for low wages and lived in cramped and appealing conditions
• The influx of Irish migrants saw tension between the Irish and English develop based on the belief that they were undercutting English workers, were responsible for a rise in crime, they were Catholic and politically motivated to blame the English government for the occupation of their homeland

Question 6

Tension and conflict - Pay

Answer 6

• Many thought that by accepting lower wages Irish workers were undercutting English workers and keeping pay low.
• The prime minister, Robert Peel, said that ‘Irish workers bring the advantage of cheap labour.’
• However, others argued that the Irish were doing the difficult work that English workers did not want to do.
• The Irish workers were accused of persuading their employers to hire only people from Ireland.

Question 7

Tension and conflict - Crime

Answer 7

There was a common perception that there was a high rate of crime by Irish people and they were often harassed by police

Question 8

Tension and conflict - Religion

Answer 8

• While most people in England, Scotland and Wales were Protestant, the majority of Irish migrants were Catholic
• Many Protestants saw Catholicism as a foreign institution that promoted absolute rule, censorship and corruption

Question 9

Tension and conflict - Worker’s rights

Answer 9

• Until 1825, trade unions were illegal.
• However, many Irish worker joined them and took an active part in campaigns for worker’s rights, which put them in conflict with employers
• In 1868, Irish coal-carriers at the London docks protested about their terrible conditions
• Their leaders were hanged, along with many other Irish activists
• Some Irishmen were willing to work as strike breakers, though, which made them unpopular with trade unionists

Question 10

Reasons Irish migrants began to settle in Britain from 1800

Answer 10

• A collapse in agriculture after 1815 at the same time as a population boom in Ireland meant there was a shortage of food, and prices went up.
• Land was unfairly distributed. Most of it was owned by wealthy English landowners, who treated their Irish tenants badly, forcing them to pay high rents for poor-quality housing
• Many families had depended on rural cottage industries such as cotton-weaving and nail-making, but these items were now being produced far more cheaply in factories in Britain. This meant that many people in Ireland lost their source of income

Question 11

What was the result of the famine of 1840s?

Answer 11

• The system of unfair land ownership and an underdeveloped economy forced millions of poor people to rely for food on potatoes, which grow well in cold, wet climate
• In the late 1840s, potato crops across Ireland were destroyed by disease
• As a result, around 1 million people died of hunger and about 2 million left for Britain, Canada and the USA
• The British government insisted on continuing its exports, shipping the potatoes to other countries instead of using them to feed the starving Irish people

Question 12

English attitudes to the Irish

Answer 12

• The Irish were stereotyped as half-human ‘apes’: violent, drunken and stupid
• Racist anti-Irish riots were common
• They took place in Cardiff in 1848, in Greenock in 1851, and in Wigan, Preston, Blackburn and Oldham in 1852
• In Stockport in 1852, when an annual Catholic procession went ahead in spite of a government ban, a mob ransacked Catholic Churches and attacked Irish people
• They burned down houses, killing one person and making 24 families homeless

Question 13

Why was there regular conflict between Irish people and the British government?

Answer 13

Ireland had been colonised by the English in the Middle Ages and from 1800 it no longer even had its own parliament, being ruled form London. Many Irish people regarded Britain as an occupying force, and conflict with the British government flared up regularly.

Question 14

What proportion of Irishmen joined the British Army?

Answer 14

between 20% and 40% of the total

Question 15

Where did Irish migrants settle and what sorts of jobs did they do?

Answer 15

• Irish immigrants often did the toughest, dirtiest jobs - in coal mines, gasworks, quarries and tanning, textile and chemical factories
• Many also joined the army

Question 16

What was the other, truer side of the story of Irish immigrants?

Answer 16

• Most Irish migrants did not live in extreme poverty, nor were they infested with dirt and disease
• A Liverpool doctor reported in 1845 that the ‘migrant population is a much more healthy class than residents of the town’

Question 17

Describe ‘anti-Irish racism’

Answer 17

The idea that the English are superior to the Irish and that there is significant difference between the two ‘races’

Question 18

Pogrom

Answer 18

A violent attack on a group of people; most usually associated with Jews in Europe

Question 19

Black working-class life

Answer 19

Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta (1843-80)
- a West African princess named Tina
- orphaned and enslaved, then given to Captain Forbes as a gift by the King of Dahomey
- presented to Queen Victoria, who became her godmother
- married a prominent Yoruba businessman and they moved to Nigeria
- has many descendants in England and West Africa

Feargus O’Connor (1794-1855)
- Irish protestant MP who argued for greater rights for Irish people and a tax on property
- founded a racial newspaper, the Northern Star, in Leeds and was imprisoned for his views several times
- became a Chartist leader and was a great public speaker who drew huge crowds all over the country

Question 20

Chartism

Answer 20

• the biggest organised mass protest of the mid-nineteenth century, calling for major reform in the political system
• many of its methods came from the campaign to abolish slavery, including the use of petitions
• more than 3 million people signed one calling for the right to vote for all men and secret ballots in elections
• two prominent leaders of the Chartist movement had immigrant roots

Question 21

Why did people start to leave Italy?

Answer 21

• People started to leave Italy in seek of a better life
• They were rural people escaping a country in crisis - a time of war, fatal epidemics of the disease typhus and changes in agriculture that caused great poverty on the land, forcing people to emigrate

Question 22

Where did Italian immigrants settle in the UK and what type of work did they do?

Answer 22

• Most Italians settled in the Clerkenwell area of London, which became known as ‘Little Italy’
• By the end of the nineteenth century there were about 20,000 Italians in England and Wales, and another 5,000 in Scotland, with large communities also in northern English cities
• Some found work in tough occupations such as laying asphalt on new roads
• Many survived as street musicians. By 1881 there were over 1,000 Italian musicians in Britain

Question 23

Opposing views of Italian immigrants in 1856

Answer 23

• In 1856, The Times wrote: ‘We endure them simply as idle people endure dirt and vermin - because we have not the moral energy to get rid of them. It is an evil which threatens to make London unendurable.’
• They also faced anti-Catholic prejudice
• However, London’s assistant medical officer for health reported: ‘In the matter of cleanliness, the Italians have, as a rule, a far higher standard than that which obtains among English people of a similar class.’

Question 24

Define Trafficking

Answer 24

The illegal smuggling of goods or people, for example of exploited children

Question 25

Trafficking of Italian immigrants

Answer 25

• Young boys working under the control of men called padrones, who often treated them badly
• It was a case of child trafficking and some padrones were taken to court

Question 26

How were Jews able to integrate (assimilate) and become accepted into British society?

Question 27

What were the conditions like for these new Jewish migrants?

Answer 27

• The conditions faced by these new arrivals were often terrible, both on the journey and when they arrived
• Crammed into overcrowded lodgings in Whitechapel in extreme poverty
• It could be especially dangerous for women, some of whom were kidnapped into prostitution
• Some were slightly luckier, finding work in the Bryant and May match company or in the clothing sweatshops, which were the main employers
• In these tiny rooms, women and men worked long hours sewing garments for little pay

Question 28

What was the reaction of Jews already in Britain to those newly arrived due to pogroms in Eastern Europe?

Answer 28

• Jews already in Britain had mixed reactions to this new influx
• Some, especially wealthier communities leaders, were worried that their own position in Britain would become more insecure
• The chief rabbi even wrote to European rabbis asking them to persuade their people not to come
• Others, however, provided help and support, setting up relief charities such as the Board of Guardians for the Jewish Poor and fundraising campaigns such as Giving without a Murmur

Question 29

What did the Jewish chronicle say about these newly arrived Jewish migrants in 1885?

Answer 29

Declared that ‘they must either earn their own living without charity or return to the land from whence they came.’

Question 30

Define Asylum Seeker

Answer 30

Someone who has applied to be accepted as a refugee

Question 31

Where were refugees coming from?

Answer 31

France, Latvia, Russia, Italy

Question 32

Define exile

Answer 32

Being forced to live away from your homeland against your will

Question 33

Who were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles and how did they become refugees?

Answer 33

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were both granted asylum in England after taking part in failed revolutions in the 1840s
• They played an active role in working-class political movements in Britain and internationally
• Their political, social and historical writing laid the foundations for Communism

Question 34

Who were Ellen and William Craft and how did they become refugees?

Answer 34

• Ellen craft was born into enslavement in Georgia in the USA in 1826
• She and her husband William escaped to Boston, and risked being kidnapped by slave-catchers
• They came as asylum seekers to England in 1850, they raised five children and gave public lectures

Question 35

What was the result of exiles from across the world coming to the UK?

Question 36

Scottish migration

Answer 36

In the mid 1850s, many Scottish people were evicted from the Highlands as their landlords realised they could make more money by using the land for sheep farming, deer forests and tourism. Some drifted to London, some joined the armed forces