Irish Migrant Responses to Urban Life in Early Nineteenth-Century Manchester
Author(s)
Busteed, M. A.; Hodgson, R. I.
Abstract
Adjustment to urban life can be a difficult process, particularly for migrants from a markedly rural background. Their responses constitute a key area of scholarly investigation into the urban experience of both past and contemporary societies. The large and volatile Irish migrant populations which were living in most British urban areas by the middle decades of the nineteenth century provide vivid case studies. This paper discusses how the Irish in Manchester, the first modem industrial city, coped with their new political, social and economic environment. Using a wide range of contemporary sources, it shows how, when faced by an alien socio-economic environment and historic anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiments in the native population, they relied heavily upon various forms of communal solidarity, particularly as reflected in residential segregation and the Catholic Church. It also demonstrates that when the pressures of the new environment became most severe then violent, drunken, anti-social behaviour resulted.
