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From the early 17th century onwards, the Irish have been a large part of the population in London. The causes that led them to leave their homes were both internal and external. In the first case, reasons to migrate included inequality and tedious work in Ireland. In the second case, migration was triggered by the chance to find better-paid jobs and by the chance of leading a better life in industrialised urban centres.

Many Irish people migrated to America, but because of its proximity, Great Britain was the main destination. Seasonal workers wouldn't have left if the journey was long, difficult or expensive, and they counted on the possibility to go back home, although they often ended up moving permanently.

Finding work

Although it could sometimes be difficult to be accepted by the British, the Irish managed to find work quite easily thanks to their availability to take up difficult and tiring jobs. The first migration waves were due to harvest jobs, and other occupations for the Irish would be quasi-beggarly. However, the more they integrated the more the job offer would widen to include better positions, such as street sellers, building labourers and owners of alehouses.

The possibility to run pubs could be combined with a day job: many Irish-born men who lived in Cumbria were recorded in the censuses with two occupations, for example iron miner and beer seller. In the poorest areas, the Irish would run lodging houses to provide cheap accommodation for the immigrants that continued to arrive.

Migration waves also included specialists, such as carpenters, masons or bricklayers, who could respond to England's skill shortages. In non-industrial London, skilled people could join the tailoring and cobbling sectors, although the Irish were usually offered work in sweatshops. Elsewhere, the Irish would work in the iron and steel industries, chemical factories, shipbuilding and general labouring. The metal and shipbuilding industries well-paid sectors, where Irish were over represented if compared with the overall work force.

A great number of Irish-men came to Great Britain to become navvies, that is to say labourers who worked in civil engineering projects, like building canals and railways. It is though that the Irish made up the majority of navvies, but in reality they were only a small part of the hundreds of thousands of men who came from all over the country.

Joining the British Army was yet another option. After the Battle of the Boyne, The Penal Laws of the 17th century had excluded Irish Catholics from England’s military service. This ban extended to Irish Protestants as well, because it was believed that any Irish-man could be a papist. The possibility of war with France after the French revolution led to the lifting of the ban in 1799. Irish soldiers who joined the British army were young men from rural areas, like farmers, weavers, navvies or labourers. In 1830, the Irish made up more than 42% of total army personnel.

The conflict between Protestants and Catholics

The religious conflict of the 17th century arose from the establishment of a policy of religious tolerance on the part of King James II, who took the throne in 1685. In fact, during the time he spent exiled in France to seek refuge from the English Civil War, he approached the local culture, until he finally converted to Roman Catholicism around 1688. Since about 75% of the Irish population were Catholic, James found a great support in them.

The leading political circles were suspicious of the king’s faith and religious openness, as well as of his relations with France, and the tension intensified even more when James Francis Edward Stuart, King James’s son, was born, because this changed the line of succession. In fact, Mary, The king’s daughter, who was a Protestant and the wife of William of Orange, was displaced in favour of her brother. To avoid a Roman Catholic dynasty, the most powerful members of the Tories and of the Whigs turned to William of Orange, who accepted to intervene for fear of an Anglo-French alliance, but in return for military intervention, he demanded the title of king. In November 1688, in what is called the Glorious Revolution, William overthrew James II, establishing the supremacy of the Protestants.

However, the Irish Parliament still recognised James as the king, and an Act for Liberty of Conscience was passed to grant religious freedom for both Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. With the support of the Irish and the help of the French army, James tried to win the throne back, but William of Orange in the Battle of the Boyne defeated him once again in July 1690.

When James introduced his policy of religious tolerance, Catholics were allowed to hold official positions in the majority of Irish counties under the influence of Richard Talbot, First Earl of Tyrconnell, who was given command of the Irish army and made Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1687. Soon, Talbot filled the army with Catholic officers and recruits, a fact that gave the Irish Catholics a hope for the reclamation of their lands and political power, which the Protestants feared. Thomas Wharton’s response was the satirical ballad known as Lillibullero, which had the aim to mock not only Talbot, but also Roman Catholics in general. In the ballad, we read about an Irish soldier's hope to see all of Ireland become Catholic, and possibly about an Irish independence movement:

Now the heretics all go down

Lillibullero bullen a la

By Christ and St Patrick's the nation's our own

Lillibullero bullen a la

— Thomas Wharton, "Lillibullero"

Although there are many theories that attempt to unfold the mystery around the name of this ballad, a possible explanation could be found in the Gaelic language. Brendan Behan proposed that the term Lillibullero might come from a corruption of the Gaelic "An Lile ba léir é ba linn an lá", which translates to "The lily won the day for us". In Breandán Ó Buachalla's opinion, it should be read as "Lillí bu léir ó, bu linn an lá", which means "Lilly will be manifest, the day will be ours". According to these theories, Wharton had created a sort of Irish gibberish. However, Jonathan Swift, who knew what Irish sounded like, claimed that these are "not Irish words".

The Irish and the law

The legal context provides clear instances of the ways the Irish were dealt with, starting from the fact that they were denied access to the Poor Law, a system of assistance for the less wealthy.

The early Old Bailey Proceedings show that the attitude of Londoners toward the Irish was represented on the pages of trials through reproductions of their accent intended to humiliate and ridicule them. For instance, in February 1725, James Fitzgerald testified against a prostitute who, he said, had stolen his watch:

On the 25th of February last, about 11 at Night, O' my Shoul, I wash got pretty drunk, and wash going very shoberly along the Old-Baily, and there I met the Preeshoner upon the Bar, as she wash going before me.

— Old Bailey Proceedings, February 1725, Susan Grimes (t17250407-66)

The purpose of representing Fitzgerald's accent was not only to perpetrate prejudices, but also to provide entertainment to those who were going to read the report. His ‘s’s were transcribed as ‘sh’s, which, according to Hitchcock and Shoemaker, made him look like he was drunk. A few months later, the Court of Aldermen censored the transcription of this trial. Not only did the publisher and the person who had done the transcription have to apologise for their offence, but they also had to promise not to cause other offences in future publications.

When the accused were found guilty, they were sentenced to death, but as the tolerance for violence decreased, the majority of them were pardoned and given less harsh punishments, such as branding and transportation. When executions did take place, they were often characterised by conflicts that arose from the battle between surgeons and anatomists on one side and the family and friends of the condemned on the other side over the possession of the corpse. Most people believed that the soul had a physical existence, and they feared that dissecting the body would threaten its passage into the afterlife. It was also important that the body should be whole and consecrated in order for resurrection to take place.

Alexander Byrne and Terence McCane were two 23-year-old Irishmen from Dublin who had come to London in their teenage years and ended up being found guilty of highway robbery. Four of the accused who were to be hanged on Monday 11 November 1751 were pardoned, but for these two young men there was no way out. The only thing their friends could do was to save their corpses from the surgeons.

On the day of the execution, Michael MacGennis and Christopher Williams led a crowd, made up mainly of Irishmen who knew the condemned, to rescue the bodies. In order to transport them, they took the two horses and cart of a certain Richard Shears, who had positioned near the gallows to allow people to get on the cart and see the execution in exchange for a few pence. Testimonies about what happened between the two parts are inconsistent. One witness referred that Shears had told the crowd 'gentlemen I hope you will be so good, as not to throw these dead bodies up into my cart; for I am obliged to go home about some business'. According to another witness, Shears was not so polite: 'there was a sort of a skirmish, and the deceased was striving to get his horses and cart from the prisoner, and two or three more, who had got them from him: the prisoner would not let him have them, and the man that drove the horses threatened to knock his brains out, if he did not go about his business'.

The crowd had been drinking since the morning, and after the rescue they drove to Bayswater, where they drank some more. When MacGennis and Williams headed home, they encountered Shears, who tried to take his properties back. MacGennis took a knife from under his coat and hit Shears, fracturing his skull. Hannah, Shear's wife, found him covered in blood in Hyde Park Infirmary, where he died, not before telling her who his murderer was: 'it was a short thick Irish Milkman, that gave him his death wound, that he was wilfully murdered, and that they ran away with his cart and horses, and that murder will never be hid'.

At his own trial for murder, MacGennis proclaimed his innocence and called a great number of character witnesses in his defence. Nevertheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to hang. On the same occasion, Williams, who didn't stand his own trial, declared himself innocent, claiming that he had even sought help for Shears: 'I saw the man all bloody; I said go and get your head dressed, I'll drive your horses as well as I can'.

On 23 March 1752, MacGennis was executed and his body was then delivered to his friends. The Ordinary's account describes him as a hardworking husband and father, 'esteemed a quiet, harmless Youth by those who knew him in his early Days'. Like many of MacGennis's friends, the Ordinary was doubtful about the conclusion of the case. About the convict's claim that he did not kill Shears, the Ordinary commented: 'Who did it we have no Authority yet to say, unless that of the Court and Jury, who convicted Mac Gennis, upon full Evidence, unimpeached; and as the Scheme set up to prove the contrary did not succeed, we can scarce believe, but that he was justly convicted, and suffered accordingly'.

Anti-Irish riots

In 1736, William Goswell, in charge of the rebuilding of St Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch, decided to dismiss his English workers, who were demanding higher wages, and to employ cheaper Irish labour. In addition, Irish people were also being employed in both Shoreditch and Spitalfields in the weaver industry. In response to this, the English, who were now unemployed, started an anti-Irish outbreak that began on Monday 26 July, when hundreds of people gathered in Shoreditch, shouting ‘Down with the Irish’. By the following evening, the crowd, which had grown to thousands people, attacked a pub frequented by Irish people. However, it was on Friday 30 that the riot reached its peak. Two houses in particular, the Rose and Crown and the Bull and the Butcher, were object of the violence of the English, who broke windows, doors and stole or broke goods. For example, in Robert Mickey and Joshua Hall's trial we read:

John Waldon. I keep the Bull and Butcher in Cable Street [...] The 30th of July, every one in the House was gone to bed but my self, and I was stripped all but my Stockings and Breeches; but hearing the Mob come down, and crying, down with the Irish, and seeing all the Houses illuminated, I bid all my Lodgers get up and shift for their Lives: I got over a Wall 8 Feet high, and some of the Neighbours helped the Lodgers off. I left the House to their Mercy, (for my Wife was out at a Woman's Labour) and they stole and broke every Thing I had. I staid in the House, 'till the Shutters and Glass all flew in together. They did not enter the House, but they reached in with their Arms, and took Meat out of the Windows. Six of my Shutters were broke, and 70 odd Panes of Glass, which Damage cost me 3 l. 13 s. to repair. I can't say I saw any of them.

— Trial of Robert Mickey and Joshua Hall (t17361013-6)

The effects of discriminations

Gin Lane, from Beer Street and Gin Lane (1751) by William Hogarth.

All the discriminations left the Irish in a general condition of poverty and social exclusion that concerned not only newest generations of immigrants but also the most settled ones. The conditions in which Irish communities lived were inhumane: since families could not afford the cost of living, they were forced to share rooms. In 1849, Thomas Beames found that eighty-eight men, women and children lived in a single house in Saffron Hill:

The house we select contained five rooms, one of which was inhabited only by a man and his wife; whether the landlord was the occupant here, we know not, but in the four remaining rooms, 86 human beings were massed together. [...] No. 3 was the front attic at the top of the house, it was a low square room, [-61-] inhabited chiefly by Irish.

— http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications5/rookeries-04.htm

In 1849, The Times published a letter written by fifty-four people who lived in such places and who denounced their conditions:

We are Sur, as it may be, livin in a Wilderniss, so far as the rest of London knows anything of us, or as the rich and great people care about. We live in muck and filth. We aint got no priviz, no dust bins, no drains, no water-splies, and no drain or suer in the hole place.

— http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/bleakhouse/carter.html

St Giles in the Fields, an area where the Irish were settled, was one of the many rookeries of London. A depiction of living conditions in this area can be observed in William Hogarth's print from 1751, Gin Lane.

Living in such situations, with extremely poor sanitary conditions, led to an increase of the mortality rate, and the problem was aggravated in the early and mid-nineteenth century, when old groups of Irish people came into conflicts with new groups that moved to England either to escape the Great Famine or to work in the Industrial Revolution.