NOTE TO TEACHERS: Modern
students will usually be surprised by the prejudice Irish immigrants faced in
America. To spark interest, I liked to ask my classes if anyone knew why the
Boston Celtics were named the “Celtics,” and why their symbol was a leprechaun.
The next section includes my notes from Boston’s Immigrants by Oscar Handlin. Handlin describes the background conditions in Ireland that led so many to flee: “Ruinous wars decimated the population from 1,300,000 in 1650 to less than a million in 1660, and confiscations and anti-Catholic penal laws aimed at depriving ‘the majority of the Irish people of all wealth and ambition,’—frankly, ‘to make them poor and keep them poor.’” (p. 38.)
He quotes John O’Donovan, who loved his native land, but wrote in 1848:
I see no hope for Ireland yet, the potatoes produced too large a population….I see no prospect of relief for two years or more. The number of poor is too great….I am sick…of Ireland and the Irish and care very little what may happen; for whatever may take place things cannot be worse….I would leave Ireland with a clear conscience!! I would leave it exultingly, retire to the Backwoods of America…move into the deserts of the western world there to learn a RUDE but STURDY civilization that knows not slavery or hunger.
The ordinary cottier, said another writer of that era (1847), felt the pain even more intensely. He or she “stood…begging…soup which…would be refused by well bred pigs” and daily faced the slavery of the workhouse. (47)
The Cunard Line opened in 1842, marking the start of regular transatlantic steam communication and kept rates so low even the poor could afford to cross. Many of the Irish arrived in Boston or New York penniless, and had no choice but to remain in the cities. (48-49)
Says Handlin, “Most Americans ‘would rather want bread than serve to gain it,’ [Boston Pilot; August 19, 1854] and farm girls in service for a few years while waiting to be married usually lacked the essential attributes of servility and loyalty. Under these circumstances the ‘Irish help’ were triply welcome for their good spirits, their loyalty, and their cheap wages.” (61)
By 1845, he says, the caption: “None need apply but Americans” was common in Boston papers. (62)
The good old days weren’t really all that good: “Unscrupulous exploitation was the theme of the construction camp; and dirt, disorder, and unremitting toil were its invariable accompaniments.” Daily wages: $1.00-1.25. Skilled stone layers and masons often got $2.00-2.50.
But most were victimized by rapacious sub-contractors who monopolized supplies in isolated construction camps and took back in exorbitant prices what they paid out in wages. The railroads themselves frequently resorted to equally dishonest practices. The Irish, after traveling several hundred miles, had no recourse when the company decided to pay less than it had advertised. Many roads, by deliberately asking for more men than they needed, built up large labor reserves with which to bludgeon down the wages of those already working for them.
As Emerson wrote, “‘Ferried over the Atlantic, and carried over America,’ despised and robbed, downtrodden and poor, they made the railroads grow.” (72)
The conditions of work were as bad as its price was low. The laborers and their employees spoke a different language. Their work week in Ireland had not included Sundays, but in Boston they must toil the full seven days….The leisurely independent peasant live was ended—replaced in a fifteen-hour working day by a feverish struggle for bread under the commands of an alien master.” (86)
One immigrant remembered it this way: “In the new society ‘one in a hundred may live and prosper, and stand to be looked at as a living monument of…prosperity, but ninety-nine in a hundred are lost, never to be heard of.’” (87)
Living conditions for the Irish in Boston were often abominable. In 1857, Samuel Hooper built two four-story structures, each holding 32 one room apartments. A narrow path... separated the two. The path was obstructed by privies and water hydrants. (104)
An attempt to map some of the crowded slums of Boston failed; such areas were “full of sheds and shanties” it was said in 1850. (106)
Handlin says:
The Irish sections were the most congested in the city and immigrant homes felt a consequent strain upon living resources. They were “not occupied by a single family or even by two or three families; but each room, from garret to cellar [was]…filled with a family…of several persons, and sometimes with two or more…” Every nook was in demand. Attics, often no more than three feet high, were popular. And basements were even more coveted, particularly in the Fort Hill area; by 1850 the 586 inhabited in Boston contained from five to fifteen persons in each, with at least one holding thirty-nine every night.
Underground dwellings enjoyed refreshing coolness in the hot summer months and coal-saving warmth in the winter…
A space eighteen feet square and five high held fourteen people. One room, six feet square or less, had no ventilation, except through a second bedroom; and most of the room was taken up by a bed. (109-110)
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Some said the Irish would bring crime to America. |
In many neighborhoods drainage and sewage removal were primitive at best. Many houses and apartments had only one sink and one privy, “usually a mass of pollution, for all the inhabitants, sometimes amounting to a hundred.” (So said an official health report in 1851). Rubbish disposal was difficult; and the spaces between buildings became what Handlin calls “storehouses of accumulated filth.” (111)
Half Moon Place was described by the Cholera Committee in 1849:
A large part of the area is occupied by…twelve or fourteen privies, constantly overflowing, and by ill constructed and worn out sinks and drains, into which are hourly thrown solid substances, of all sorts, which choke them up and cause the liquid…to run over. Into the area…a steep…staircase affords a passage to Humphrey place, some fifty feet above. Side by side with the staircase, and fully exposed, a large, square, plank drain makes a precipitous descent, conducting, half hidden, half revealed, not only the waste waters of the houses in Humphrey place, but also, the contents of its privies to the area below; which, as may be supposed, is redolent of the fact. (112)
The situation of the Irish was even worse. A report in 1871 notes:
This whole district is a perfect hive of human beings, without common necessaries; in many cases, huddled together like brutes, without regard to sex, or age, or sense of decency; grown men and women sleeping together in the same apartment, and sometimes wife and husband, brothers and sisters, in the same bed. Under such circumstances, self-respect, forethought, all high and noble virtues soon die out, and sullen indifference and despair, or disorder, intemperance and utter degradation reign supreme.
After 1845, smallpox often flourished in Boston. In 1849 cholera spread from Philadelphia and New York to the city; 611 people died, with mortality particularly high in Irish neighborhoods. (113-114)
Handlin quotes from the Boston Catholic Observer (March 20, 1848):
Religious liberty means, not religious slavery, not simply the liberty of infidelity, the liberty to deny and blaspheme, but…that religion herself is free…to be herself, and to discharge her functions in her own way, without let or hindrance from the State….Who asserts the freedom of religion asserts the subjection of the State. Religion represents the Divine Sovereignty…in the affairs of men; the State…merely…human sovereignty. Is the Divine Sovereignty higher than the human…? Then is religion…higher than the State….Religion overrides all other sovereigns, and has the supreme authority over all the affairs of the world….This is a terrible doctrine to atheistical politicians, infidels, and anarchists; and hence…they are the enemies…of religious liberty. (129)
Same paper (March 22, 1848): “Christianity is ‘part and parcel of the law of the land.’…We are professedly a Christian State, and acknowledge ourselves bound by the law of nature as interpreted and re-enacted by Christianity.”
Same paper (March 29, 1848):
…the liberty of each man to be of what religion he pleases or of none…a low and an altogether inadequate view…merely a political…not a religious right at all; for no religion that has any self-respect can acknowledge that one has the right to be of any religion he chooses. No man has or can have a religious or moral right to be of any religion but the true religion….Every religion by its very nature is intolerant of every other, and condemns itself, if it is not.
John Adams, by comparison, had once written that “every honest, well-disposed, moral man, even if he were an atheist, should be accounted a Christian.” (130)
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Some said the Irish would never be loyal to this country, only to the Pope. |
Judith O’Rourke accepted her lot in a new land and in 1854 told a reporter she scoffed at educating her children. She hoped her sons would “grow up honest good men, like them that’s gone afore them, not ashamed of their station, or honest toil.” Her daughter, she hoped “‘ll be the same lady her mother is…an’ that’s a good enough….She’d look purty I’m thinkin’ wid her music in one corner an’ I wid my wash tub in another.” (132)
Irish leaders were often opposed to reform ideas which “have revived pagan orgies in the pitiful farce of ‘Women’s Rights,’ and Bloomerism.”
There was a fear of compulsory public education in 1848 (Handlin’s notes aren’t clear where this quote comes from:
The consequence of this policy is…universal disobedience on the part of children…Our little boys scoff at their parents, call their fathers by the name of Old Man, Boss, or Governor. The mother is the Old Woman. The little boys smoke, drink, blaspheme, talk about fornication, and so far as they are physically able, commit it. Our little girls read novels…quarrel about their beaux, uphold Women’s Rights, and ---…We were a Boston school boy, and we speak of what we know. (135)
Writing in the Boston Pilot in 1856, Dr. John McElhern vilifies the Saxon race, including in his view, Germans, Scandinavians, Russians, Turks and Anglo-Saxons. Unlike the Celtic race, they are “essentially stupid…false, cruel, treacherous, base and bloody…” with “little or no faculty for poetry, music, or abstract science.” Lowest of all were the Saxons, “the very dregs and offal of the white population in America…These flaxen-haired German men and women…are lower than the race with black wool….Even when they are well to do they send their children out to beg.” (145)
In 1864, Handlin says, more than 1,000 “gamins between the ages of eight and twelve were still prosecuted for vagrancy.” (162)
Group conflict ebbed and flowed in Boston, Handlin explains. In 1839 the city finally repealed laws against intermarriage of the races; in 1855 separate schools for Negro children were abolished. In 1866 some 150 Negroes attended the city’s primary schools, 103 the grammar schools, five the high school. Handlin says: “Public pressure forced the Eastern and New Bedford Railroads to admit colored people to their cars in the forties; and former slaves began to move to the same streets as whites.” The 54th Massachusetts included 300 fugitive slaves. Negro regiments were segregated, but many Boston leaders “taking life and honor in their hands cast their lot with” the segregated troops.
The latitudinarian belief increased in the early nineteenth century, that “inside of Christianity reason was free.” Governor Hancock had abolished Pope’s Day and in 1780 the Massachusetts constitution eliminated legal restrictions aimed at Catholics. City Council agreed to give Catholics special privileges to insure freedom of worship. Streets near Holy Cross Church were closed to limit the noise of passing trucks. (179-180)
The Irish, the American editorialized on October 21, 1837,
…instead of assimilating at once with the customs of the country of their adoption, our foreign population are too much in the habit of retaining their own national usages, of associating too exclusively with each other, and living in groups together. These practices serve no good purpose, and tend merely to alienate those among whom they have chosen to reside. It would be the part of wisdom, to ABANDON AT ONCE ALL USAGES AND ASSOCIATIONS WHICH MARK THEM AS FOREIGNERS, and to become in feeling and custom, as well as in privileges and rights, citizens of the United States.
Mayor Lyman complained that the Irish were “a race that will never be infused into our own, but on the contrary will always remain distinct and hostile.” (185)
Rebecca Reed’s lurid tales of life in a Catholic convent stirred intense fear. Trouble erupted when a “demented nun,” Elizabeth Harrison, appeared and then disappeared. The Mother Superior of the Charlestown Convent refused to allow entry of authorities who were pursuing rumors of dungeons and torture chambers. A mob gathered and burned the Convent down.
The press, generally, did object. A mass meeting at Faneuil Hall led to a resolution of sympathy, “to unite with our Catholic brethren in protecting their persons, their property, and their civil and religious rights.”
A reward of $500 resulted in 13 arrests; eight men were tried, one convicted for the arson. (188-189)
Irish political power increased; one leader said he would work hard to blend their interests with the regular political parties. “A man,” Richard O’Gorman wrote to a friend, “has no right to interfere in American politics unless he thinks as an American.”
Opposition grew in the 1850s; the Irish were faulted for their anti-liberal ideas. Handlin explains,
Failure of the enforcement of the prohibition laws was laid at the door of the Irish, and the State Temperance Committee announced it would fight Catholicism as part of its struggle for human freedom. The Burns case [involving apprehension of an escaped slave named Anthony Burns in 1858] clearly linked the immigrants to pro-slavery forces and man-hunters. The Pilot [an Irish paper] supported rendition of the fugitive slave; and the selection of the Columbian Artillery and Sarsfield Guards to protect him against indignant mobs seeking his freedom, incited an inflammatory handbill:
AMERICANS TO THE RESCUE!
AMERICANS! SONS OF THE REVOLUTION!!
A body of seventy-five Irishmen, known as the
“Columbian Artillery”
have volunteered their services to shoot down the
citizens of Boston! and are now under arms to defend
Virginia in kidnapping a Citizen of Massachusetts!
Americans! These Irishmen have called us
“Cowards and Sons of Cowards!”
Shall we submit to have our Citizens shot
down by a set of Vagabond Irishmen?
In May, 1854, John S. Orr, called “The Angel Gabriel,” led a mob that seized the cross of the Catholic Church in Chelsea. In July another church was blown up in Dorchester. The Know Nothing Party increased in power and ruled Massachusetts until defeat in 1857. The Party argued that it did not want to exclude immigrants, rather to make them “be as we are.” When Irish votes helped defeat Fremont in 1856, the Republican Party helped pass an amendment the next year, making the ability to read the state constitution in English and to write, prerequisites for voting; in 1859 a provision was added denying the vote for two additional years to naturalized citizens. (198-204)
The Civil War helped bring the Irish into the mainstream. Governor
John A. Andrew wrote the Secretary of War, “Will you authorize the enlistment
here…of Irish, German and other tough men…? We have men of such description,
eager to be employed, sufficient to make three regiments.” (207) Patrick Gilmore, an immigrant, wrote When Johnny Comes Marching Home. (211)
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The Irish Brigade at the Battle of Antietam. |
I suppose you could say the Irish had arrived fully in 1876, when John Boyle O’Reilly took over editorship of the Pilot. He railed against attacks on Negroes, Jews, and immigrants, generally Like most of the Irish, however, he considered the Chinese a threat and called for their exclusion. (224)
Expenditures for poor relief grew rapidly: (1847) $43,700, tripling to $139,217 (1852) (Boston’s Immigrants, Table III, p. 240)
In 1836 16,902 passengers entered Boston by sea, only 443 from Ireland; in 1846 those numbers grew to 112,664, including 65,556 Irish. The following year the totals were roughly the same, another 63,831 Irish arriving. (Boston’s Immigrants, Table V, p.242)
In 1850, Boston listed four teachers of Irish nativity. There were 356 Irish carpenters, 203 masons, a single Irish undertaker, and 1,045 tailors; 2,292 Irish served as domestic servants and 7,007 (nearly half, 48.01 percent) were laborers. (Boston’s Immigrants, Table XIII, pp. 250-251)
By 1864 those of Irish nativity made up most of the arrests in the city, 9,791 of less than 12,000. (Boston’s Immigrants, Table XXIV)
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