The Irish Immigrant Experience
Multiculturalism for Clinical Psychologists
PSY 6010
R. Paul Johnson
Saybrook University

Abstract Popular media typically portrays the myth of the Irish-American experience as the story of starving paupers fleeing Ireland in old broken wooden ships and arriving in some unwanted land, such as Boston or New York. Always remaining in their dockside slums, working dockside as longshoremen until they were able to become police officers. This same myth continues to hold that their descendants continue to live in three storied houses within ethnic ghettos where they have big parades of St. Patrick’s Day. The reality of Irish immigration to America holds a much more complex story. This paper will provide some historical context of the experiences of Irish emigration as well as the immigrants themselves. The trauma associated with early emigration has had a lasting effect on this ethnic group which will also be evaluated herein.

The Irish Immigrant Experience

It was during the great famine of the 1840’s in Ireland that tens of thousands began to immigrate to America in hope of creating a better life for themselves and their families. Many fled to the Boston area and within one year Boston’s Irish population grew from 30,000 to nearly 100,000 ( Gordon, 1964). Upon arriving to the United States many of the new immigrants set out to find a job immediately, a majority of them finding positions as servants and in fact during this time period 70% of servants in Boston were Irish immigrants and of the 70% of the Irish that were servants, two thirds of them were Irish women (1964). Reportedly Irish servants were said to be, full of melancholy and loneliness, and Irish women suffered from high levels of mental illness. As a result, by 1908, there were more Irish than were any other nationality in a mental hospital (LaFromboise, Coleman, & Gerton, 1993). The Irish immigrant experience was not easy. Many washed onto the shores of America with few skills besides cooking, cleaning and just enough for them to work in factories. Additionally they had to deal with bigotry as well as stereotypes. The Irish were often ostracized from American society for many reasons other than just being a new immigrant. The Irish were ostracized for being Catholic, and many Protestants and Native Americans were distrustful of a religion that was, as they viewed it, highly irregular with its beads, meditative prayers to Jesus’ mother, oils, saints and statues. The Irish were also categorized as angry, alcoholic beings and in fact the term, “don’t get your Irish up”, stemmed from a stereotypical belief in the volatile Irish temper. Many also held that the Irish were as a culture illiterate, greedy, therefore desperate to make money, and their families were too, “clannish, and bred like rabbits” (Interview, 2013). Many of these images were portrayed in the daily newspapers, photographs and other types of media of the time. Those looking to escape these stereotypes and rise above the fray and become part of American society had to work hard and take many knocks before any changed was rendered. It was during the Civil War that the Irish began to feel a bit more needed as it was their sheer numbers that allowed them to outnumber the Southerners. However, camaraderie during the war did not change the opinion of the Irish for most Americans in the late 19th century. By the 1870’s and 1880’s, many Irish, some of them new immigrants, sill occupied the slums of East Boston (). It was around this time that the Irish began to try their hands at both business and politics. Some Irishmen became ward bosses for the political machines and parties in their cities. They were the mediators between the political parties who promised favors to the Irish and other immigrants as long as they voted Democrat in the elections (Sinnerbink, & Silove, 1997). Joseph, P. Kennedy’s father, PJ Kennedy was a ward boss for the Democratic Party and therefore one of the most powerful political figures in Boston. Many of these ward bosses however were heavily caricatured in many of the cartoons that the newspapers in Boston. Even as the many of the Irish ascended to a more prominent role in society the elite of Boston enjoyed degrading the Irish. The area of Beacon Hill and the Northside of Boston is where many of the businessmen, newspaper owners and the like set the standards for the city resided. It was during this time that many Irish families began to look to other cities for opportunity or for a better place to raise their families. Some moved to other large cities such as New York and Chicago, while other migrated out west, often taking odd jobs along the way to support themselves and their families. Even after leaving the oppressive city of Boston many of these immigrants continued to experience prejudice and stereotypical treatment. Nonetheless the Irish continued to immigrate to the United States and continued to move west looking for a better life.
The Interview Several years ago I had the honor to meet an elderly lady while taking some classes at a local community college. Although she did not speak with an Irish accent it was evident by her attire and jewelry that she was either Irish or was extraordinarily passionate about the Irish culture, as it turned out she was both. When I first spoke with Cassandra Corker I knew she was an interesting person, I also knew that I wanted to further our conversation as she is an excellent story tell, it was if I listening to an audio book. It was evident that she knew a great deal about Irish history as well as Irish folklore. This began a friendship of mutual admiration as she enjoys hearing stories about my grandparents growing up and living in the South, picking cotton and making whisky, and I can sit and listen to her talk about the history of Ireland for hours. What was most interesting to hear was that although she is third generation she knew the story of how her family came to American and the struggles that her ancestors endured as well as her parents and in some respects herself. It was in 1843 that Cassandra’s grandparents emigrated from County Cork Ireland to Boston, they traveled by ship in the steerage class, and by all accounts it was a trip filled with sickness, filth, crime and even death. Cassandra (Cass), produced a diary that her grandmother had written in nearly every day of the nearly month long voyage. The Irish were unfortunately divided during much of the nineteenth century and was therefore helpless in the face of its grave problems. The Act of Union of 1803 incorporated the island into British polity, but was useless in easing the difficult situation of the people (Gordon, 1964). With an overly large population as the result of the Napoleonic Wars, the Irish soon became impoverished. And with the religious prejudice of Protestant Masters to the Catholic Irish, plus political subordination, many had no alternative but to emigrate to the Unites States for relief. Between 1820 and 1860, the Irish were never less than a third of all immigrants (Gordon, 1964). The only mode of escape was emigration. Starving families that could not pay landlords faced no alternative but to leave the country in hopes of a better future. And thus the steadily scaling number of Irish who entered the U.S. between 1820 and 1830 skyrocketed in the 1840’s, nearly 2 million came in that decade. The flow persisted increasingly for another five years, as the first immigrants began to earn the means of sending for relatives and friends. The decade after 1855 showed a subside in the movement, but smaller numbers continued to arrive after the Civil War. Altogether, almost 3.5 million Irish entered the U. S. between 1820 and 1880. Immigrating to the United States wasn’t the magical solution for most of the immigrants. Peasants arrive without resources, or capital to start farms or businesses. Few of them ever accumulated the resources to make any meaningful choice about their way of life. Fortunately for them, the expansion of the American economy created heavy demands for muscle grunt. The great canals, which were the first links in the national transportation system were still being dug in the 1820s and 1830s, and the time between 1830 and 1880, thousands of miles of rail were being laid. With no bulldozers existing at the time, the pick and the shovel were the only earth-moving equipment of the time. And the Irish laborers were the mainstay of the construction gangs that did the grueling work. In towns along the sites of work, groups of Irish formed their small communities to live in. By the middle of the nineteenth century, as American cities were undergoing rapid growth and beginning to develop an infrastructure and creating the governmental machinery and personnel necessary to run it, the Irish and their children go their foothold – on the ground floor (Interview, 2013). Casandra’s grandfather and father were both policemen and became part of the legacy of the Irish working in the emergency services. Irish policemen and firemen are not just stereotypes: Irish all but monopolized those jobs when they were being created in the post-Civil War years, and even today Irish names are clearly represented in those occupations (Daniels, 1990). Irish workmen not only began laying the horse-car and streetcar tracks, but were some of the first drivers and conductors (Interview, 2013). The first generations worked largely at unskilled and semiskilled occupations, but their children found themselves working at increasingly skilled trades. By 1990, when Irish American men made up about a thirteenth of the male labor force, they were almost a third of the plumbers, steamfitters, and boilermakers (Daniels, 1990). Industry working Irish soon found themselves lifted up into boss and straw-boss positions as common laborers more and more arrived from Southern and Eastern Europe. In the years after 1860, within the printing room of a large cotton mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts Irish immigration persisted (Daniels, 1990). More than 2.6 million Irish came in the decades after 1860. However, larger numbers of immigrants from elsewhere masked the inflow of the Irish. Those Irish who did continue to flow in the United States tended to settle in the already existing Irish communities, where Catholic Churches had been built, and cultural traditions were carried out. However, materialistically poor they were, the Irish were rich in cultural resources, and developing institutions that helped them face hardship without despair. Cultural events such as St. Patrick’s Day were regarded by most Americans as evidence of the separateness of these immigrant, but helped hold the Irish culture together (Daniels, 1990). The desire for self-expression showed that the Irish understood their group identity. Poor as they were, they drew strength from a culture that explained their situation in the world and provided spiritual resources to face if not to solve the problem. Aside from the church, the most important media of the Irish culture was the press and the stage. All Irish newspapers had either a nationalistic or a religious base, some published as church organs, other drawing support from patriotic societies. Their newspapers interpreted news, accommodated information, and printed popular poems and stories. The stage was even more appealing because it did not demand literacy, presenting to attentive audiences dramas as real as life but not as painful. By the late 1800’s, the painful initial Irish transplantation into American society had ended. Second and third generations born and educated in the U.S. replace the immigrants, but their heritage still stemmed from the peasants’ flight from Ireland and of the hardships of striking new roots in the New World.

References
C.Corker, (Personal Communication, September 12, 2013)
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