320 pp., 61/8 x 91/4, notes, index

Ann, Margaret, and Catherine were all part of the massive Irish migration during the potato famine. The history of the famine and migration has been told often, from many different perspectives, and needs no detailed retelling here.[3] In the fall of 1845 a deadly blight struck the potato crop in eastern Ireland. The next year the potato famine swept across the country. In 1847 the potato crop was small, although the yields were actually fairly strong, but 1848 saw another round of disaster. Four years of poor harvests took a tremendous toll, as a weakened citizenry fell easy victim to typhus, dysentery, and other deadly diseases. By some estimates, roughly a million Irish men and women—or about a ninth of the total population—succumbed to starvation and disease because of the famine.[4] Many others faced eviction or fled their homes in search of new lives. Between 1845 and 1855 an estimated 1.5 million Irish women and men sailed for the United States, landing largely in New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Boston, and Baltimore. Another 600,000 left Ireland for England, Canada, Australia, and other destinations.[5]

During the peak of the Irish famine migration the H & A Cope Company—which had five vessels in operation in 1848—was sending packet ships westward from Liverpool to Philadelphia on the twelfth of every month. The passenger lists ranged from as few as 150 to well over 300 steerage travelers per voyage, the vast majority coming originally from Ireland.[6] Between January 1847 and the end of 1849, Cope's Philadelphia offices sold more than 2,500 tickets for passage from Liverpool, primarily to Irish immigrants who mailed them home to friends and relatives. Perhaps a hundred or so of the small notes written on the back of tickets survive.[7] Taken together they describe a world of great opportunities, but a journey fraught with dangers and hardship. John Stott's message to John and Sarah Glehill and their four young daughters was typical: "we hope that you will brace your nerves and steel your face and be nothing daunted and you will soon join with us on this Great Continent. There will be dificultyes to meet with but then consider the object you have in view."[8] Often those difficulties would be from strangers, with familiar sounding brogues, who haunted the Liverpool and Philadelphia docks preying on migrants who carried all their possessions in their hands and their savings in their pockets. One correspondent warned Howard Berne that "Liverpool is full of Imposters if they can trick any person they can lay hold of . . . you will require to be very cautious & clever & no way shy without getting your rights."[9] Mary Kon left home with explicit instructions to seek out a Mr. Lynch in Liverpool; if he did not appear she was to "inquire for the Constable and show him the card and he will dirrect you wher the house is."[10] Catherine Cardary directed Alice Cleland to a small court off of Carlton Street "opposit the cloureness dock liverpool," adding that "we think you would be safer there thane aney other plase when you lave the steem boat."[11]

Other notes offered advice on what food to pack to supplement the meager official rations and appropriate clothing for the voyage. "My advice to you" wrote Hugh Clark to Mary Clark, "is to keep off the Deck in the night and stormy times as it is dangeres[.] you will want [a] tin pan . . . in the shape of a bottil that will hold 4 qt for your fresh water[.] you will want some tin plats and some tin cups and a boiler[.] you need not get any new close [clothes] as it is not the fashins in america that thy hav at home."[12] Many other correspondents shared this last suggestion. Apparently clothing in Philadelphia was sufficiently inexpensive and distinctive that even the humblest migrant should expect to acquire a new wardrobe on arrival.

Those immigrants who were fortunate enough to have relatives or friends in the United States were generally told to hurry to a particular lodging house or tavern near the docks where a friendly face would await them. One woman was to "Inquire for William Rushworth" at the "English Tav[ern,] No 87 South Water Street Philadelphia."[13] Another correspondent told his nineteen-year-old brother that "when he lands in Philadelphia Enquire for 252 North Water Street and you will find your Friend to welcome you."[14] Catherine Whelan told her brother and sister to "come to Mrs. Weines[,] 159 Front Street between Spruce St and Dock St."[15] Some of the Philadelphians who mailed tickets promised to meet each of the Cope vessels until their relative arrived. Whatever their economic prospects, strangers were best off with a trustworthy human contact as a buffer against a potentially hostile new world.

The disaster that struck Ireland in the late 1840s had a very real agricultural basis. By some estimates the lost potato crop between 1846 and 1848 was enough to have fed almost five million people daily. Nonetheless, the Irish peasantry had ample reason to see human agency behind their troubles. Parliamentary debates about the Irish crisis moved within tight ideological constraints, shaped by a trio of powerful—and often painfully abstract—ruling principles: localism, laissez-faire economics, and "less eligibility." Landlords, encouraged by public policy, sometimes ruthlessly drove starving tenants from their homes; between 1846 and 1855 an estimated half-million people faced eviction. The public relief forthcoming from Parliament amounted to a tiny portion of the nation's resources, as policymakers clung to a faith in charitable assistance and local poor rates.[16] One historian has described the Great Famine as "the tragic outcome of three factors: an ecological accident that could not have been predicted, an ideology ill-geared to saving lives and, of course, mass poverty."[17] A similar confluence of factors—material conditions, intellectual assumptions, and the serendipity of events—shaped the experiences of the Irish migrants as they fled their homeland.

Proximity and shipping routes dictated that most emigrants headed for Liverpool. The first step in the journey would be overland to an Irish port, where crowded ferries made the crossing to the Merseyside city in twenty-four hours or more. Many would remain in the thriving port city, either by design, or because of limited resources, or simply because disease took its toll too quickly. Others soon boarded ships bound for North America. Along the way the weary, often sickly travelers were subject to all sorts of dangers. The passage across the Irish Sea was barely regulated. Ferry operators cared little for health and sanitation as they crammed as many deck passengers as they could onto each vessel. The migrants arrived in Liverpool seasick, exhausted, and ripe for plucking at the hands of an assortment of unscrupulous "runners," lodging house keepers, ticket brokers, and other crooks. The lucky ones had a place to sleep and prepaid passages in hand. However long they stayed, the migrants found themselves in a world of crowded housing, unsanitary streets, and ethnic tension. For those who set off for North America, the hardships were just beginning. Ships varied tremendously in size and condition, generally falling far short of their advertised specifications. A slowly evolving set of laws regulated the amount of sleeping space, the food and water to be allocated for each passenger, and the circumstances when a surgeon was required to be on board. But much of the most important legislation passed on both sides of the Atlantic came after the heaviest migration. On their arrival at an American port, passengers were liable to physical inspection, quarantine, and perhaps prohibitive bonds. As they disembarked, the exhausted immigrants were once again targets for competing armies of shady characters and diverse philanthropists. It is no wonder that the snippets of advice written on the back of the Cope tickets stressed packing food and clothing with care and trusting no one along the way.[18]

The famine migrants are at the center of this book, but it is not really their story. Rather, it is the story of the worlds that they entered and the ways in which their presence helped to change those worlds.[19] If the circumstances of their exodus and the nature of their journeys reflected the combined forces of historic chance, contemporary ideology, and material circumstances, so too did the evolution of their new homes. This book compares the histories of two important host cities—Liverpool and Philadelphia—during the famine years. It is an attempt to understand how the famine migration both illuminated and shaped circumstances and policies in each city and nation. In a broader sense, this study seeks to use the years of the famine migration to compare two societies at a crucial moment in their histories.

As for any historical study, the design of this book reflects several conscious decisions, each with its own underlying assumptions. The project has its genesis in a desire to examine nineteenth-century urban development, with a particular emphasis on the ways in which cities confronted the broad array of social challenges that accompanied increased size and population density. Having spent considerable time studying Northern cities during the American Civil War, I was drawn to the immediate antebellum decades as the occasion for many of the most crucial urban developments. I also brought to this project an interest in comparative history and a conviction that my examination of these urban questions should not be confined to a single nation. Clearly English and American cities faced many of the same challenges at roughly the same time. My goal was to construct a study that would allow for a profitable comparative analysis across the Atlantic.[20]

The decision to focus on the Irish famine migration proceeded logically from this scholarly agenda. Given my interest in examining how cities in both England and the United States faced numerous midcentury challenges—including poverty, disorder, and disease—the central task was to sharpen the focus as much as possible to enhance the value of the comparison. The famine migrants did not create these urban problems, but their arrival made the circumstances more dire in some cities, suggesting the possibility that cities in both countries may have been addressing similar problems at roughly the same time. But that having been said, I also did not want to let the tail wag the dog. My comparative focus is on the responses to a specific set of urban problems during the famine years, not merely on the direct responses to the Irish newcomers. In some cases the analysis indicates that the crucial institutional developments preceded the migration, and in other instances the immigrants did not prove to be the major shaping forces in one or both cities. In such situations the focus remains on the emerging responses to the specific constellation of problems, not merely on the institutions and policies as experienced by the Irish immigrants.

The final preparatory decision was to compare Liverpool and Philadelphia. There were certainly other reasonable candidates, including London, Manchester, and Glasgow on one side of the Atlantic and New York, Boston, and Quebec on the other. I quickly excluded London as an option, both because it was several times larger than any American city at midcentury and because the Irish community had been already so carefully examined by Lynn Hollen Lees. Among the remaining alternatives, I selected Philadelphia and Liverpool largely because they were similar in size (both demographically and geographically) and had similarly large Irish populations, allowing for some control over those crucial variables.[21] In selecting those two cities I was also opting for a relatively limited comparison, rather than, for instance, attempting an analysis of a half-dozen cities of different sizes and circumstances. This choice reflects a preference for depth over breadth. By limiting my research to two cities I have been able to address a wider range of topics in some detail, rather than restricting my attention to a single set of issues.[22]

Liverpool and Philadelphia at Midcentury

Liverpool and Philadelphia played similar roles in their respective worlds.[23] Second in size and importance to the dominant metropolises of London and New York, they both enjoyed international prominence as major ports and commercial centers. Between 1831 and 1851 the borough of Liverpool's population jumped from 165,175 to 375,955. In the same two decades Philadelphia County's population more than kept pace, rising from 167,751 to 408,742.[24] Both cities, too, had large Irish populations dating from well before the potato famine. By midcentury nearly 72,000 Philadelphians (17.6 percent) and 84,000 Liverpudlians (22.3 percent) were Irish-born immigrants.[25] Philadelphia's population was otherwise more demographically diverse than its English counterpart, with nearly 50,000 (12 percent of the total population) non-Irish immigrants, including 22,750 (5.6 percent) Germans and 17,500 (4.3 percent) English natives. Over 10 percent of Liverpool's residents were non-Irish immigrants, but the vast majority of these were from neighboring Wales (20,262, 5.4 percent) and Scotland (14,059, 3.7 percent), with a mere 1.4 percent from other nations. Nearly 5 percent (19,761) of Philadelphians were African American, giving the city a racial diversity almost completely absent in Liverpool.[26]

A modern observer landing at either nineteenth-century port might well have been struck, at a visceral level, by the cities' similarities. With sanitation measures lagging far behind needs, a newcomer's senses would have been overwhelmed by the odors from scores of "nuisances," ranging from overflowing privies to foul-smelling slaughterhouses and rag-and-bone shops.[27] But contemporary travelers, arriving with different sensibilities, generally stressed each city's distinctive characteristics.

Americans landing in Liverpool marveled at the city's magnificent docks. Herman Melville's fictional Wellingborough Redburn "never tired of admiring" the "long China walls of masonry; vast piers of stone; and . . . succession of granite-rimmed docks." To Redburn the docks were like "the old Pyramids of Egypt," in sharp contrast to New York's "miserable wooden wharves."[28] Other travelers were equally impressed with the docks and with the view across the River Mersey to Birkenhead, which some observers compared to Brooklyn across the Hudson River from New York.[29]

Like other nineteenth-century cities, Liverpool boasted a wide assortment of monuments and impressive public buildings.[30] "A Stranger in Liverpool" reported back to the Philadelphia Public Ledger that "the public buildings of Liverpool are both numerous and beautiful" and that the Nelson monument was particularly noteworthy.[31] One Georgia diarist admired Liverpool's large granite railroad terminal and the new Northern Hospital. Nathaniel Bowe was impressed with the "rather nice dwelling places" in "the upper part of the City." Another observer, writing in The Workingman's Friend and Family Instructor, insisted that "the general appearance of Liverpool was more inviting than I had supposed. Its streets, though not so wide or regular as those of New York, are much cleaner, and better paved." But one suspects that that correspondent protested too much. More typical was a European traveler in the late 1850s who acknowledged that "the George's Hall which occupies a central site is a splendid and imposing edifice" but generally concluded that "Liverpool is a large and growing commercial emporium but with the exception of 2 or 3 public buildings of great magnificence there are but few objects that strike the stranger on his first arrival in the city." Even those travelers willing to praise a few buildings found much to criticize. The Public Ledger's reporter wandered Liverpool's streets and claimed that "incredible as it may seem, [they] are much more filthy and irregular" than New York's. John Twiggs found "the buildings . . . very dingy, being very much smoked, clouds of this article always overhanging the city." After several weeks of rain, mud, and smoke, the Georgian was thrilled to see the last of the "miserable city." Soon after arriving to serve as U.S. consul to Liverpool, a melancholy Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote home that "Liverpool is a most detestable place as a residence that ever my lot was cast in—smoky, noisy, dirty, pestilential."[32]

Most visitors saved their harshest comments for Liverpool's legions of paupers. The Ledger's "Stranger in Liverpool" reported:

I have seen more beggars in one week in Liverpool than I have ever seen in all my life. The streets are full of them; at every step you are arrested and often followed by the pitiful cries of distress and want. Poor, ragged and haggard wretches, with four and five barefooted and poorly clad children. The most of these distressed beings are Irish, and have been driven over the channel by the approach of starvation. Some of these poor creatures may be undeserving of charity, but most of them, I doubt not, are proper objects of Christian benevolence and kindness.[33]

Philadelphia fared better in the estimation of both American and foreign visitors. William Penn's carefully laid out grid of streets—with a large, open square marking each corner—gave Philadelphia a sense of order that stood in sharp contrast to Liverpool's bewildering web of streets and lanes, which wandered across the terrain more like those in Boston than in Philadelphia or even New York.[35] Philadelphians took pride in the city's broad, clean, well-paved streets and in a host of grand public buildings.[36] A Bostonian writing in a local paper called Philadelphia "a charming city to look at" with "handsome streets [and] wide sidewalks."[37]

Europeans touring American cities were sure to pass through Philadelphia and visit several important sites. W. I. Mann's experience was typical. In his brief stay the Liverpudlian stopped at Girard College Orphanage, which he found far "too good for the little orphan boys that we saw running about," and the Fairmount Waterworks, which he grudgingly acknowledged would be "a very pretty place in summer." Mann also shared the common observation that Philadelphia's streets were much cleaner than those in New York City. Anne Holt, a young Liverpool Unitarian, spent several days in Philadelphia in May 1851. On arriving she noted that her "first impression of Philadelphia is that it is a decidedly handsome city." She, too, toured the waterworks and Girard College, recording her admiration of both spectacles. Holt was also interested in visiting Philadelphia's House of Refuge to see how local officials treated the poor. Southerner Henry L. Cathell made his own pilgrimage to Girard College in 1856. But although impressed with much of his visit, Cathell returned from a rainy afternoon walk with the conviction that "There is but one description of the streets of this place[,] speaking of one you speak of all—viz—plain and straight—There are three predominant colours about the buildings—White, Red & Green—Homes built of brick that is red,—window sills . . . and front door trimmings of white marble & all woodwork painted white,—that is white—The blinds of windows, painted green—that is green." The sardonic Cathell had certainly resisted Philadelphia's charms, but his criticism hardly compares with the more scathing indictments of Liverpool's environment.[38]

Although visitors passing through Liverpool and Philadelphia were most likely to note buildings, monuments, streets, and the like, the urban geography also presented a revealing map of each city's economic, demographic, and political life. Liverpool's tremendous docks spoke plainly of what one scholar described as the city's "single-minded devotion to furthering commerce." By midcentury steamers from Liverpool were a familiar sight in ports across the globe. This tradition of trade had often led the city to look toward America; Liverpool's merchants grew rich trading slaves and cotton across the Atlantic. Between 1820 and 1850 four-fifths of the raw cotton entering England came through the port. The opening of the Liverpool-Manchester railroad in 1830 buttressed the city's economic links to the industrial North, strengthening an already heavy trade in manufactured goods. Liverpool's emphasis on commerce and its modest manufacturing sector combined to shape a workforce dominated by casual laborers. Workers could find ample day labor unloading ships, carting goods, or performing similar unskilled tasks, but only a small portion of local laborers worked in manufacturing.[39]

Philadelphia, long a major trading port, had by the 1840s emerged as a leading industrial center even as it was losing ground commercially to New York City. The development of canals in the 1820s, and railroads in later decades, enabled Philadelphia manufacturers to look to the hinterlands for raw materials and markets. By 1850 Philadelphia County had 58,000 manufacturing workers. As manufacturing grew and railroad transportation developed, the districts surrounding the city blossomed into distinct communities, each with its own ethnic flavor. North of the city center, Kensington and Germantown were important textile centers attracting skilled immigrant workers. Germantown, for instance, became known as an important enclave for German stockingers. Several miles to the northwest, the borough of Manayunk—the self-styled "Manchester of America"—became home to British weavers and spinners. And as cotton and woolen textile industries boomed, Philadelphia's machine works prospered by supplying the new factories.[40] We should not, however, overstate the impact of Philadelphia's superior manufacturing base on its Irish newcomers. At midcentury Irish immigrants were far less likely to find skilled manufacturing work than their German and native-born brethren, clustering instead in day labor and other unskilled jobs, much like their counterparts in Liverpool.[41]

Although neither city had truly insular ethnic or racial "ghettos," both Liverpool and Philadelphia had become increasingly segmented along ethnic and class lines.[42] Neither Philadelphia nor Liverpool had developed streetcar lines by midcentury, but both cities had horse-drawn omnibus lines that enabled the wealthiest citizens to move away from the city centers. Philadelphia's African American community supported a small, vibrant elite with a complex network of churches, newspapers, and institutions. But most Philadelphia blacks were poor. Many crowded into congested neighborhoods in Moyamensing, just south of the city center, a district that was also home to large numbers of Irish poor. Irish immigrants dispersed throughout both cities, but clustered in poor neighborhoods near the waterfronts. Philadelphia's Irish were most concentrated in the industrial areas of Kensington and Southwark, north and south of the city. But unlike later immigrant groups, the Irish did not find a ready supply of deteriorating center city housing in which to settle.[43] In Liverpool, the populations in six wards adjoining the docks were roughly a quarter Irish-born in 1851, and two—Vauxhall and Exchange—were nearing half Irish-born.[44] Both cities had streets in these Irish neighborhoods that became notorious for their crowded, unsanitary conditions.[45]

Like their physical and economic characteristics, the political structures of Liverpool and Philadelphia had essential similarities, but also marked differences. Both cities had an elected Council and a separate elected Board of Guardians to address the needs of the poor.[46] The bureaucratic structure of each city was complicated by a variety of separate political subdivisions. By midcentury the relatively compact city of Philadelphia was bordered by five built-up suburbs to the north and south. Philadelphia County included an additional twenty-three townships, boroughs, and districts. For most purposes these were distinct political units, with their own elected officeholders and police. But the outlying areas relied on the city for some services—water, for instance—and certain government bodies, such as the Board of Health and the Guardians of the Poor, had jurisdictions that went beyond the city boundaries. The 1854 Act of Consolidation solved many jurisdictional dilemmas by absorbing the entire county into the city of Philadelphia. The parish of Liverpool was divided into twelve wards. The borough of Liverpool, as extended in 1835, included the parish and an additional five extraparochial wards. The Council had jurisdiction over the entire borough, but Liverpool's Guardians of the Poor—charged with administering poor relief and running the workhouse—only addressed parochial concerns. (In this sense, then, the cities were mirror images of each other: Philadelphia's Council controlled a smaller area than the Guardians, whereas Liverpool's Council administered an area touching more than one Poor Law Union.) Both Councils oversaw a range of committees, often composed of Council members, that attended to various new urban functions including policing, health, and sanitation. As we shall see, these Council committees occasionally conflicted with the local Guardians, revealing organizational shortcomings that were periodically aggravated by the flow of Irish migrants.[47]

From the institution of its royal charter in 1207 until the 1830s the Corporation of Liverpool had been under the control of the city's freemen, a hereditary body that initially included most adult males but eventually evolved into a small, closed group. Since 1695 the Council had consisted of elected councillors—who served for life—and a mayor, selected from among the councillors. The Council occasionally ventured into municipal reform, but the councillors generally concentrated on supporting local commercial interests, which often meant emphasizing the Liverpool docks. The 1835 Municipal Reform Act reorganized the Council and opened up the franchise to local ratepayers. Still, access to the vote remained limited. In 1832 Liverpool had a registered electorate of only 11,283; twenty years later that figure had climbed to 17,433, or less than 5 percent of the total population.[48]

Philadelphia, in contrast, was never controlled by a small, self-perpetuating group comparable to Liverpool's freemen. Since 1776, nearly all adult male taxpayers had had access to the vote. In 1838 the new Pennsylvania constitution opened up the franchise to all white men aged twenty-one or over (in the process, it formally disenfranchised all black men as well as all women). In 1841 the mayor became an elected officer, rather than a Council appointee. In the 1849 local elections over 40,000 county residents (roughly 10 percent of the population) cast a vote, or more than twice as many as Liverpool's registered voters in 1852.[49]

Before the 1835 reforms, Liverpool's government had been dominated by Tory-Anglican interests. The reformed Council following the 1835 elections included fifty-eight Liberals among its sixty-four members. Although political debates continued to center on commercial questions and officeholders continued to be drawn from the city's elites, the Liberal Council pushed through a number of important reforms in its six years in power.[50] Before the 1840s Philadelphia's elections pitted Whigs against Democrats, with the traditionally wealthier Whigs controlling the Council and the Democrats (who claimed to speak for the masses) holding sway in the outlying districts. This two-party system fell into disarray with the rise of the nativist Know-Nothings.[51]

It may be possible to look beyond differing suffrage laws and discover fundamentally different assumptions about the roles and responsibilities of local government. Certainly officeholders in both cities struggled mightily with the problems posed by rising populations. But Liverpool's councillors consistently saw their charge as largely to protect commerce and to keep rates down. Consider, in contrast, the Public Ledger's thoughts on "Municipal Government in Philadelphia," published in 1848:

The good government of a city is a simple, and yet a difficult object, being plain in its general principles, yet complex in its details. Watching and lighting by night, a good day police, clean streets, faithful public agents, a healthy atmosphere, property secure from depredations, and personal safety amply provided for by the dispersion of crowds and the suppression of mobs, violence and outrage, the arrest and punishment of thieves, the maintenance of public morals, and decorum in the streets and highways, and the construction of combustible buildings prevented, and in fine, the removal of all nuisances, and the prevention of all disorders and breaches of the peace, constitute the sum and substance of good municipal government.[52]

The social, cultural, and institutional life of Liverpool and Philadelphia was intrinsically linked to each city's ethnic makeup. Thus the sudden increase in poor, Irish Catholic immigrants had an important effect on the equilibrium in both cities. Whereas many of the earlier Irish migrants were Protestants, the famine immigrants were heavily Irish Catholic. In both cities these Catholic newcomers entered largely Protestant, often hostile, worlds, placing particular strains on local Catholics who struggled to provide their coreligionists with spiritual and benevolent support. In Liverpool, the dominance of the Established Church in public affairs only complicated matters.[53] The immigrants also entered worlds with complex associational patterns both in and out of the Church. Philadelphia's Irish developed a multitiered associational world, including elite clubs, literary societies for the upwardly bound, friendly societies for those who were closer to the edge, and volunteer fire companies, which attracted a range of classes, including many working-class immigrants. The Irish newcomers also became active participants in labor unions and political clubs.[54] Liverpool's Irish joined many of the same kinds of associations. But whereas Philadelphia's fire companies served as an important gathering point for Irish and German immigrants (as well as working-class nativists), the Irish in Liverpool congregated in an assortment of secret clubs.[55]