Manchester is a vibrant city in terms of its range of Irish activity and organisations. There has been a sizeable Irish community in Manchester for over 170 years. We are well informed on the period 1832-1849. There are a host of parliamentary reports, novels and travellers reports which graphically describe the situation of the Manchester Irish in that period.

PREJUDICE

Times were hard, as the historian John M Werly pointed out. The Irish were pressed into ghettos and 'whenever they did emerge from their quarters, they were subjected to considerable prejudice'

LITTLE IRELAND
There were two Irish areas in the city. Little Ireland was south of the city centre - situated in a depression in the bend of the River Medlock. Some four thousand people lived there.There is a plaque in Gt. Marlborough St which commemorates the site of Little Ireland

IRISH TOWN

The other Irish area was known as Irish Town. It was located north-east of the city centre, between the River Irk and St George's Road (now Rochdale Road). It was much larger than Little Ireland, with over twenty thousand people huddled into cramped houses and cellar dwellings.Karl Marx's collaborator, Friedrich Engels, has provided a most vivid description of Little Ireland in his book The Condition of the Working Class in England. It was published in 1845.

SQUALOR

Engels tells us 'But the most horrible spot (if I should describe all the separate spots in detail I should never come to the end) lies on the Manchester side, immediately south-west of Oxford Road, and is known as Little Ireland. In a rather deep hole, in a curve of the Medlock and surrounded on all four sides by tall factories and high embankments, covered with buildings, stand two groups of about two hundred cottages, built chiefly back to back, in which live about four thousand human beings, most of them Irish.

'The cottages are old, dirty and of the smallest sort, the streets uneven, fallen into ruts and in part without drains or pavement; masses of refuse, offal and sickening filth lie in the puddles.

'In short, the whole rookery furnishes such a hateful and repulsive spectacle as can hardly be equalled in the worst part on the Irk. The race that lives in these ruinous cottages, behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten doorposts, or in dark, wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench, in this atmosphere penned in as if with a purpose, this race must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity.

POLICE

'This is the impression and the line of thought which the exterior of this district forces upon the beholder.But what must one think when he hears that in each of these pens, containing at most two rooms, a garret, perhaps a cellar, on the average twenty human beings live;that in the whole region, for each one hundred and twenty persons, one usually inaccessible privy is provided; and in spite of all the preaching of the physicians, in spite of the excitement into which the cholera epidemic plunged the sanitary police by reason of the condition of Little Ireland, in spite of everything, in the year of grace, 1844, it is in almost the same state as in 1831.'
It should be noted that Engels wasn't putting down the Irish. Rather he was highlighting their plight and the failure of British capitalism.

DEPRIVATION

It should be noted too that all working people in Manchester at the time were living in a situation of deprivation. But the Irish faced significantly worse conditions. They encountered discrimination, as Fr Daniel Hearne, parish priest of St Patrick's in Irish Town, pointed out in the Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain, 1836. He said that the Irish were 'prevented from advancing from feelings of jealousy. A manufacturer would prefer employing English to Irish simply on the ground of they being Irish and not being worse workmen.'

ATTACKS

Furthermore, he told the commission that the Irish were attacked for working for lower wages than other workers and for placing too much of a burden on poor relief. Between 1841 and 1843, as many as 2,647 Irish were removed from the township of Manchester because they were on poor relief.
That official report of 1836 also quoted Constable Sadler who said that applying the law in Little Ireland was a most daunting task:'My officers are often maltreated by brickbat and other missiles'- with the result that they were often driven off when they came to arrest an Irishman for reasons of rent arrears or debt.

GAMBLING

The report also recorded that in 1840 there was a riot in Little Ireland. It was sparked off when the police entered the area to halt the practice of Sunday morning gambling, which the law saw as a desecration of the Sabbath. The police managed to arrest only two young boys - William Donnelly and Patrick Connelly - who were playing pitch and toss. The arrests set off a 'most desperate battle' between nine policemen and scores of Irish. Two of the officers were seriously injured.

SELF HELP

Despite, or perhaps because of the conditions that prevailed, a strong sense of community developed among the Irish in Little Ireland. The dominant institution was the Catholic Church. It provided the means of self-help and education. There was one evening school where 80 Irish children studied writing and arithmetic once a week. A charity day school run by four members of the clergy catered for 415 Irish students. There were also seven Sunday schools - the largest of which was affiliated to St Augustine's Chapel. About 1,000 children were instructed.

IRISH PRIESTS

the priests were, of course, Irish. Another historian, E P Thompson, wrote that the priests were the last link between the people 'torn up by their roots from life in Ireland'. The priests, though literate, were not far removed in social class and were free from identification with English employers and the authorities. They invariably spoke Irish, as did most of the people. Furthermore, the priestswere those who most frequently visited Ireland and brought news of home and often messages from relatives. Wexfordman Fr Daniel Hearne was foremost among the Irish priests in Manchester in that era. He was the first parish priest of St Patrick's, a church opened in 1832.

JOHN BROGAN

A most noteworthy incident occurred soon after he took charge there. There was an outbreak of cholera and an emergency hospital was opened in an old warehouse. Among the victims of the epidemic was baby John Brogan, whose father, also John Brogan, was a weaver. The family lived in Silk Street, Irish Town.Baby John's body was returned to the family in a sealed coffin. For whatever reason, the family opened the coffin to find that the baby's body was headless.

NEWS

This news spread quickly through Irish Town. People were understandably angry, as it appeared that the hospital was practising the 'black arts' on Irish children. A large crowd marched to the hospital. They were further enraged when the baby's grandfather, John Hayes, displayed the headless corpse to the gathering. Soon the hospital was surrounded, windows were broken and a fire was started in one part of the building.

PROTESTING

The local watchmen could not cope with the situation so they sent for the military. The cavalry could clear any street in a few minutes and that invariably meant heavy casualties as, with sabres drawn, the horsemen bore down on the crowd. Many of the protesting Irish would have been done to death and many more badly injured. But, fortunately, Fr Hearne arrived before the cavalry.
From the steps of the hospital, he promised the crowd that he would bring to justice those responsible for the outrageous treatment of the child. He told people to go home and pledged to give the child a decent burial.
Fr Hearne's words were heeded and the crowd dispersed. It later transpired that it was a medical student who had sawn off the child's head and sold it for research.

ROSCOMMON

Fr Hearne had a calming effect in many other ways. He used his authority to break up fights; he settled feuds between rival factions from Leitrim and Roscommon, and he reduced tension in clashes between his flock and the Orangemen who also had a presence in the city.

By any standards, Fr Hearne's time at St Patrick's was most noteworthy. He established seven schools, a convent, an orphanage and many societies. Ultimately however, he was driven out by the Church authorities.

O'CONNELL

During his early years in St Patrick's, Fr Hearne was a regular contributor to the Northern Star newspaper and he supported the Anti-Corn Law League. Though he opposed Chartism (largely Irish-led), he drew around himself people who had sympathy with the aims and methods of the Chartists. On Ireland, Fr Hearne supported Daniel O'Connell and opposed those who espoused violence.
 

WITHDRAW

However, as events in Ireland deteriorated and as the Great Famine began to loom, Fr Hearne became more radical. He became captivated by the ideals of the Young Irelanders and in expressing such views he aroused opposition from other clergymen and even from a section of his congregation. Eventually, he was forced to withdraw from Irish Town and from Manchester.

 

Read Part Two of Manchester's Irish Story here...