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PART 3: THE IRISH INFLUX
1840-1870
by
Guild Nichols
folks@NorthEndBoston.com
The
Irish have been part of Boston - in small numbers to be
sure - from the very outset of the American Revolution.
Patrick Carr of Ireland was one of the five men shot by
British soldiers on the evening of March 5, 1770 in what
has come to be known as the Boston Massacre. And General
George Washington even used the password "St. Patrick"
as a secret code for his Colonial troops on Evacuation
Day, March 17, 1776, when the British Militia
"evacuated" Boston.
Irish Immigrant Ship
Yet,
the fact remains that over the 40-year period, from 1815
to 1855, over 1 million Irish emigrated to America.
Boston was a major destination, the North End
neighborhood its poor haven. In an almost arithmetic
progression: 2000 Irish were living in Boston in 1820,
5000 in 1825, 7000 in 1830, and between 1846 and 1855,
37,000 more Irish had fled Ireland for Boston. In 1847
alone 13,235 Irish emigrated to Boston. This was the
year known as "Black 47" and was the most deadly year of
Ireland's Great Potato Famine or, as it was called in
Gaelic, An Górta Mor or "The Great Hunger."
Arriving in Boston, many Irish immigrants initially
settled in the North End and along its waterfront -
impoverished and in despair. Disease became so endemic
to the overcrowded neighborhood that by 1845 the
neighborhood suffered a communicable disease rate twice
that of the rest of Boston. "Children in the Irish
district [North End]," wrote Bostonian Lemuel Shattuck,
"seemed literally born to die."
By 1850, the Irish comprised over half of the North
End population of 23,000 and five years later 14,000 of
the 26,000 North Enders were Irish born. Families were
packed together in one-room decrepit apartments and
run-down boarding houses - all in a neighborhood
comprising less than 70 acres traditionally used for
housing (the remaining 30 acres comprised waterfront
warehouses and wharves). Moreover, as Thomas H. O'Connor
has written: "Native Bostonians might have been willing
to send money and food to aid the starving Irish as long
as they remained in Ireland, but they certainly didn't
want them coming to America." Thus began the long saga
of incessant suffering and discrimination.
Unlike the subsequent waves of immigrants that
followed over the next half-century - the Portuguese,
European Jews and the Italians - the Irish had neither
the resources nor the competitive skills to adjust
easily. Employment opportunities were limited and
anti-Irish job discrimination was rampant: "No Irish
Need Apply" signs seemed to be everywhere. The Irish
were forced to take only the lowliest, most menial jobs
- as domestics, laborers and unskilled factory workers.
And most of these jobs were outside the North End. Much
of the work force employed for Boston's land reclamation
projects, such as the filling in of the City's Back Bay,
were Irish laborers from the North End. They also helped
build Boston's transit system and the bridges and
highways to the suburbs.
It was the American Civil War (1861-65) that
provided an opportunity for the Irish to demonstrate
their national loyalty and in so doing help Boston's
Brahmins to temper their "Nativist" sentiments. Over
10,000 Irishmen from Massachusetts served in the seven
Irish regiments, including Col. Thomas Cass's "Fighting
Ninth" 9th regiment that distinguished itself at the
Battle of Malvern Hill.
What is perhaps most telling, however, is how the
sheer number of Irish immigrants to Boston came to
re-shape electoral politics in the city and hence, over
time, the socio-economic conditions of Irish men and
women at the dawn of the 20th century. By 1880, more
than 70,000 Irish lived in Boston. A decade later,
Boston had become the only city in the United States
(with populations in excess of 200,000) where the Irish
represented more than half of the foreign-born
population. Efforts redoubled to organize these
newly-arrived Irish voters as a new and potent force for
political change.
In 1882, Patrick Collins became the first
Irish-born Congressman from Boston. Two years later Hugh
O'Brien was elected the City's first Irish Catholic
Mayor. He was succeeded in turn by Collins in 1902. And,
John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, who lived on Moon
Street in the North End, became the first American-born
Irish Mayor in United States history in 1906. He was
also the first Boston mayor without a beard or mustache.
His daughter, Rose, who later married Joseph P. Kennedy,
was born in 1890 at 4 Garden Court just off North
Square.
With the election of David Ignatius Walsh as the
first Irish Catholic Governor of Massachusetts in 1914
and James Michael Curley's mayoral victory in the same
year, there began a succession of Irish-American mayors
that would span the next three decades to 1993, when
Thomas M. Menino would become Boston's first
Italian-American mayor.
Yet despite
these political developments, the North End
remained relatively isolated and certainly
impoverished. The Irish immigrant population
that had peaked in the late 1870s began a
swift decline as European Jews and Italians
moved in. By the turn of the century, the
Irish population had dwindled to less than
3,000 (from a high of over 14,000 just two
decades earlier). South Boston replaced both
the North End as the area of the majority
of Irish settlement.
Click here
to go to the 4th Part:
Our Jewish Heritage:
1870-1900...
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