Forging a future - the lot of the Irish immigrant in 19th century Wolverhampton

Caribee Island, Wolverhampton in the 19th century

Migration is a big topic at the moment and for Irish people and people of Irish heritage and ancestry, it has been a feature of our society and our culture for hundreds of years.

According to figures from the last UK census published by the Office of National Statistics, there were 630,000 foreign-born residents of the West Midlands region in 2011. This is about 11% of the resident population. People born in the Republic of Ireland were ranked 7th on a list of the countries of birth of all residents, though bear in mind that in front of them on the list are people born in England, Wales and Scotland. 42 thousand West Midland residents in 2011 were born in the Republic of Ireland (0.8% of the population) and a further 19 thousand were born in Northern Ireland (0.3% of the population). The overall UK figures of Irish born residents declined from the 2001 census, perhaps showing that migration from Ireland into the UK had slowed or even reversed.
  
If cities like Liverpool, London, Glasgow and Manchester were better known as destinations for Irish migrants in the 19th century, today it is estimated that Birmingham has one of the largest Irish born populations per capita in the UK. Every year Birmingham hosts the UK’s largest St Patrick’s Day Parade (the world’s third biggest) and has Britain’s only officially nominated ‘Irish Quarter’, defined in commercial and cultural terms with many traditional Irish pubs and community services radiating around the Birmingham Irish Centre in Digbeth.

Irish people began arriving in the West Midlands region in large numbers from the mid-1800s, moving here for work in the construction, public service and manufacturing industries. Apart from Birmingham, other local destinations of settlement for Irish migrants included Coventry which attracted labourers to its factories, first making silk ribbon and then employed in the motor industry. Following the devastation of the city during World War II, there was an active recruitment campaign in Ireland, inviting people to work in Coventry’s hospitals, on public transport and in the construction industry. During the 19th century the areas of Caldicotts Yard, Gosford Street and Jordan became Irish neighbourhoods. In the 1950s and 1960s Irish communities formed in Coundon, Radford and Earlsdon.

Like Birmingham, Coventry has a rich Irish culture today with dance halls, clubs, pubs, dancing schools, theatre groups, language teachers and musicians in abundance. It also has a long standing Irish Festival which takes place around St Patrick’s Day.

The Black Country was another big destination for Irish migrants in the 19th century. An Irish community formed in Wolverhampton around the alleyways of Stafford Street and Canal Street in an area which became synonymous with poverty and over-crowding. An area known as Caribee Island became established as the most densely concentrated Irish community in the town and unfortunately the community attracted hostility and prejudice, fuelled by the press who referred to Wolverhampton as ‘Little Rome’ because of its proliferation of Catholic churches. But in spite of all of this, Irish people worked alongside their Black Country neighbours in the factories and foundries, for the most part successfully.

The Higgins family followed a typical pattern of settlement into the Black Country. In the 1861 census James and Honnor Higgins, both born in Ireland, were living at 81 Stafford Street, right in the middle of the new Irish community and surrounded by poverty. Like many Irish people around him, James was working as an agricultural labourer. Living on the same street were James’ brothers Patrick and Thomas, and just like James both men and their sons were working as agricultural labourers.

A black country puddling furnace

Within a decade, James Higgins had died and his widow Honora had moved with her family to Bilston. In the 1871 census their daughter Bridget was employed as a labourer in a forge. By 1881 Honora had remarried at Holy Trinity Church in Bilston and her children continued to work in the nearby factories and foundries of the industrial Black Country. One of her sons, named James after his father, was working as a puddler at the local ironworks, a job he continued to do for at least 20 years.

The job of a puddler was skilled work in hot and demanding conditions. His job involved putting pig iron which had been produced by blast furnaces through a secondary smelting process to remove impurities and make higher quality wrought iron. The puddler’s job was to carefully control factors such as heat, fuel and air supply and involved a lot of experience to produce oblong blocks of high quality iron.

By the time of the 1901 census James and his family were living in Smethwick near the M&B brewery where he now worked as a labourer. His family had close associations with St Patrick’s church on Dudley Road. James died in 1909 but many years later his grandson, John Higgins, with help from the archivist at St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham, traced the family tree back to the village of Elphin in Roscommon. The story of the Higgins family is probably quite typical of many of the migrants who left Ireland around the time of the famine of the 1840s and came to the West Midlands. Their families lived in poor conditions but worked hard and eventually thrived through their own labours.