SNIPPET: The Irish presence in Manchester is older than the 1800s, but it was early 19th century improvements in ships and increasing rivalry between steamship companies which drove down fares and led to a massive jump in the number of Irish migrants living in England. A peak was reached in 1861, when 806,000 people of Irish birth were living in England. Almost half of these lived in Lancashire and Cheshire. The 1851 census shows that 13% of the population of Manchester and Salford was Irish born. Liverpool apart, there was no city in England more Irish. The suffering of the Irish continued in England where the Irish in Manchester faced considerable hostility and hardship. "Little Ireland" came to represent all the evils of a modern industrial society. Despite this they gradually established themselves as a permanent feature of the developing city, while managing to retain their distinctive culture and identity. Many of the most damaging slurs made against them were groundless and despite official endorsement of popular prejudices the potency of these slurs diminished as the turn of the century approached. Those who had arrived in the 1847-51 period, victims of the Great Hunger and its deadly fallout of disease and evictions, were largely rural in origin and totally destitute. Half a million of those coming through Liverpool during this period were paupers who were met with fear and hostility. To meet the needs of this influx, an additional poor rate burden was imposed on householders, causing considerable resentment among the comfortable middle classes. Many indigenous workers saw the Irish as a threat to their wage rates, as it was widely believed that the Irish were prepared to work for less than the going rate. Although typhus was raging in the English cities, there was a popular perception that this was "Irish fever." In 1847, an outbreak of cholera similarly decimated the slum population and fixed in the popular psyche the image of the Irish as the bearers of poverty and death. The concentration of Irish immigrants in certain areas of the city was seen as a sinister development. Nothing did more to fix the nation of the teeming Irish ghetto in the popular mind than "Little Ireland," Manchester. It had a population of 2,000 and was made famous by J. P. KAY's pamphlet, published in 1832, the year of the great cholera epidemic in which he graphically described the part of Manchester inhabited by the Irish: "A portion of low, swampy ground, liable to be frequently inundated, and to constant exhalation, is included between a high bank over which the Oxford Road passes, and a bend of the river Medlock, where its course is impeded by a weir. This unhealthy spot lies so low that t! he chimneys of its houses, some of them three storeys high, are a little above the level of the road. About two hundred of these habitations are crowded together in an extremely narrow space, and are chiefly inhabited by the lowest Irish." He goes on to describe dwellings in which the ceilings are black with cockroaches. Cellars house as many as could find s! pace on the fetid straw which covered the floor. Friedrich ENGELS visited the twelve years later, in 1844, when researching for "Condition of the Working Class in England." He found it no better. "About four thousand human beings, most of them Irish live there. The cottages are old, dirty and of the meanest sort, the streets uneven, fallen into ruts and in parts without drains or pavements; masses of refuse, offal and sickening filth lie among the standing pools in all directions; the atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these and laden and darkened by the smoke of a dozen tall factory chimneys. A horde of ragged women and children swarm about there, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage heaps and in the puddles...such a hateful and repulsive spectacle as can hardly be equalled." KAY's description of "Little Ireland" so resonated with fear and revulsion that few social commentators could resist its power. It captured the quintessential dread evoked by the alien Irish hordes, who came to embody all the problems of the burgeoning industrial cities. An analysis of court records later, however, while showing a disproportionate number of minor offenses committed by Irish immigrants, did not apply to more serious offenses. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the strong Irish sense of community posed a number of problems for the Manchester Constabulary. The police were seen as enemies and it was common for those who found themselves in "Little Ireland," or "Angel's Meadow," as it was incongruously named, to be attacked. The Irish had a reputation for resisting arrest, almost as a matter of principle, and would, in the words of one police witness, struggle until the shirt had been torn from their backs. By this time a crowd of locals would have ! gathered and mobilized to act in support of their countrymen. Anti-Irish bigotry and anti-Catholicism were commonplace among all strata of English society. Around the mid-century these prejudices were more frequently expressed in public disorder directed against the Irish community. The restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales led to an outpouring of anti-Catholic hysteria and the cry of "No Popery." (In reference to the Pope). Catholic churches in Stockport, a town outside Manchester with a substantial Irish population were destroyed in anti-Catholic rioting. The findings of the 1836 Royal Commission suggests that the Irish were in the forefront of trade union activity and conspicuously active in all the major building disputes in Manchester from 1833 to 1870. The records of the Manchester Bricklayers Labourers' Union confirms this. In 1856, it had 900 members, organized into nine lodges. All the officials were Irish, as were the great majority of members. The Union's activities seem to have been fully integrated into the life of the community, for its trustee and treasurer was Canon TOOLE, parish priest of St. Wilfred's, Hulme, an area to the south of the city centre with a sizeable Irish community. At the end of 1867, an attempt by the Fenians to blow up part of the prison wall in Clerkenwell Jail, London, led to the deaths of innocent people. A newspaper cartoon appeared depicted a demented-looking Irishman lighting a barrel of gunpowder in the midst of women of children. Bottom line - The suffering Irish in England brought with them a strong tradition of cooperation which ultimately gave rise to a culture in which cooperative self-reliance was a significant feature. -- Excerpts, Cork's "Irish Roots" magazine