Part 1
Being the new kid on the block is never the easiest thing, sometimes you’re greeted with open arms and in other cases your welcoming is less than warm. Before beginning I knew that immigrants and their families faced discrimination, competing for available labor, space, ways of life, religious beliefs and who they’re descended from caused issues. I knew that the Irish were portrayed as a short-tempered people with a tendency for drink, fighting, and crime, and to a degree they still are even today. There was a lot of negativity for a great many races that decided to settle in the US. We didn’t hear too much about the Irish and what they had to deal with when they settled in the US. My family holds a lot of Irish in our blood, so I wanted to know more about the quality of life was like for the Irish American in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What was life for an Irish American like, how was the quality of life the majority of them held?
The information I found while looking for an answer to my question did answer my question. The sources I found showed how the majority of Irish lived, and how they were treated by their fellow Americans. The sources I found displayed a harsh life and that the Irish were looked down upon as a lesser people.
Part 2
Initially I did a quick search on google because I wanted to get a general idea of what I would be looking at, I read a bit on Wikipedia and JSTOR as well as found a few articles on History.com that caught my eye. The time spent on those sites helped me narrow down a location and led me to deciding to focus on New York City. Focusing on a specific location helped me make the amount of information I had to sift through a lot smaller, which was nice. I didn’t find many journals or letters from Irish Americans that were around our time frame, a lot of them were early and mid-1800s letters home when there was many Irish immigrating from Ireland because of famine and unrest in their homeland. This was frustrating because I really liked reading the letters and journals from way back when in class. I did however find a book written by John Francis Maguire, an Irishman who was both an active writer and politician, in 1867 called “The Irish in America”. The book is actually pretty interesting at points and I plan of finishing it. I eventually found a sketch of some upper-class people “slumming” it with police escort through the Five Points neighborhood in 1885. I couldn’t decide on just two source though so I’m including a couple others I found interesting. I found a cartoon by Thomas Nast “The Day We Celebrate” that showed how he saw what happened in 1867 on Saint Patricks Day between Irish immigrants and the police, what caught my eye was how they depicted the Irishmen. I also found a set of photographs done by Jacob Riis that was featured in his book “How the Other Half Lives”. Lastly, I wanted to show the Tenement House Act of 1901.
First, I was looking into how non-Irish Americans viewed the Irish. It wasn’t pleasant, they held little regard for them, they were faced with blatant dislike and discrimination. Some job ads even featured “no Irish need apply”, sources for this was hard to find for the time period we were studying. These searches led me to find a sketch that showed the distaste others felt for the Irish and their sons and daughters. I then went to one of the databases because I wanted to see if there were other images that reflected what I was finding others thought of Irishmen. That led me to a cartoon called “The Day We Celebrate”, He drew the in away that strongly painted them to be animalist, subhuman, they bared sharp teeth and were armed with weapons as they beat police. The words Rum and Blood stood out in this cartoon too. I was then looking for any sort of written records, I didn’t find much but found a couple passages in a book about the Irish in America. These passages showed what the writer believed to be the most serious obstacle to the advancement of the Irish in America, as well as humorous interaction between an Irish girl and a priest while she worked for a Protestant family around their house. After that I decided to look into living conditions, and what I found was tenement houses. The conditions these people lived in were abysmal, the death rate and spread of disease were ridiculously high. I ended up finding a set of pictures taken by Jacob Riis that showed ‘how the Other Half Lives’ and having found this led me to finding out that Roosevelt was inspired with the images found in Riis’s book. When Roosevelt became vice president, he helped make the Tenement House Act of 1901 happen, this led to improved living conditions for not just the poor Irish living in tenement house filled slums but all those that were stuck in those types of situations. Immigrants and their families lived harsh and usually short lives.
This sketch shows some upper-class people coming to a part of the Five Point neighborhoods to “slum it”. They received a police escort, I noticed immediately the look on the wealthy women’s faces, disgust and disdain are evident as they look at those that live there. The policeman holds a baton out towards a child on the street like he is telling him to back away from is wealthy charges. This sketch does a good job showing what others felt towards their new Irish neighbors. Because although the Irish were white, they were considered to be less, they were descended from the wrong kind of white.
This cartoon shows Irishmen beating policemen in a riot on St. Patrick’s Day in 1867. They were made to look animalistic baring sharp teeth as they beat down the defenseless police. They even show a young Irish boy joining in with his own weapon baring equal sharp teeth. This shows that some viewed the Irish as drunk and violent out of control animals determined to draw blood. Some people did view them as lesser humans.
This text by John Francis Maguire about the Irish in America stated that what he thought was holding the Irish in America was drink. Not that he thought they drank any more than other races in America, but the way other Americans prejudices said that the Irish were drunks. He touched on the congested living conditions and limited work with and increasing amount of people wanting and needing to work. The last section he tells a short bit about an Irish girl by the name of Kate who helped in a family’s home with their children. A priest makes repeated rude comments about her religion and here country and just makes fun of her, he also had a habit of calling her Bridget. (a very common Irish girls name at the time) “Stopping next to his chair, and looking him steadily in his face, while she grasped the tureen of rich green-pea soup more firmly in her hands, she said: 'Now, sir, I often asked you to leave me alone, and not mind me, and not to insult me or my religion, what no real gentleman would do to a poor girl; and now, sir, as you want to know what I pay for absolution, here's my answer!' and, suiting the action to the word, she flung the hot steaming liquid over the face, neck, breast—entire person—of the playful preacher!” (Maguire 219) The Irish had to deal with a lot of ridicule and sometimes the best thing you can do when someone is being mean to you is introduce them to the wonders that pea-soup can do for the skin, by force.
Jacob Riis took many pictures often depicting the lives of the less fortunate. He often shot pictures of tenement houses and the unsanitary living condition the many people who lived in the suffered through. This picture shows a set of dilapidated tenement houses he named Dens of Death. The squalor Irish people lived in while packed into dark and unventilated tiny rooms like sardines allowed a number of diseases to breed and spread rapidly through these houses. If they were living like that there was a good chance that they were unable to pay for medical care when they got sick. This resulted in many people dying, it was especially uncommon for children to make it to adulthood. Riis’s book “How the Other Half Lives” held a lot of the photographs he took; many fans of Riis would be influenced by those images they saw. Roosevelt was one those fans, he then strived to do something about the issues Riis portrayed.
Shortly after Roosevelt became vice president, he made the Tenement House Act of 1901 happen. Basically, it pushed for these new tenement houses to be built with safer materials and made to have proper ventilation, windows, and proper fire safety as well as indoor bathrooms. This was an important set of laws that helped to reduce the spread of disease and helped the people living in these building to be safer than if they continued building the tenement houses the way they had before.
Part 3
I learned a lot more than about my topic than just what I had thought I would, it was interesting and found I kept looking at more and more stuff. Something interesting I found was that there was evidence of quite a few intermarriages and families between Irish Americans and African Americans which was surprising. The fact that there was a good bit of this behavior didn’t help the public’s view of the Irish at the time, as you can image. I learned that I’m not always going to be able to find exactly what I want but will likely come across something else that is perhaps even better than what I was originally looking for. The research process helped me narrow down where specifically I wanted to investigate for the Irish American’s quality of life and an approximate time-period, though it was more of a broad time span that a specific time. I don’t think my researched changed my research question so much as made me want to add more and more info to it.
The primary and secondary sources I found showed very clearly what some of their fellow Americans thought of them and what their living conditions were like for a majority of the Irish. The initial question I asked is still the same at the end of it, I looked into what their quality of life was. I think it stayed the same, I learned how they were treated by their fellow communities, what was it like where they lived, how was their health. I found that there was evidence of harsh attitudes and they were subjected to strong stereotyping by their fellow Americans. I found that many Irish Americans and their families were poor and that led to a large percentage of them living in unsatisfactory conditions which in turn led to a lot of disease and death. I learned from my sources that the Irish were subjected to just as much discrimination and hate as all the other races that immigrated to America. The Irish Americans quality of life wasn't high during that time. They lived rough and often short lives while just trying to scrape by and survive. Despite everything the Irish Americans still managed to find a way to thrive. Sometimes I must admit that people and their drive to thrive even in places that seem to be uninhabitable and unwelcoming are amazing.
Citations:
Primary Source: https://wwnorton.com/college/history/eamerica/media/ch12/resources/documents/maguire.htm
Primary Source:
https://www.loc.gov/item/99400238/
Primary Source:
https://glc.yale.edu/day-we-celebrate-cartoon
Primary Source:
https://archive.org/stream/tenementhouseref00veilrich#page/10/mode/2up
Primary Source:
Secondary Source:
https://www.history.com/news/tenement-photos-jacob-riis-nyc-immigrants
Secondary Source:
https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/irelandHouse/documents/FerrisAJISVol92012.Final.pdf
I love all the images you included. There are so many layers here, in terms of how and why Irish people are being "observed" from the outside. The "slumming" illustration might be the most interesting one for me. There's so much to think about when it comes to class dynamics, the history of early 20th century reform movements, and how different groups were portrayed in photographs and media.