Who paid for the Irish to emigrate?

[Clarrie]

Dear all,

I'd like to pick your brains.

The vast majority of my ancestries came to Sunderland from various parts of Ireland after the famine.  Most arrived in the 1850's and appear to have come on their own; sometimes their parents turn up a decade or so later.  However, I have one family, the Pattersons, who were in Ardcarn, Roscommon in 1856.  By 1859 the parents John and Bridget are both in Sunderland (the mother dies and the father registers the death) and all the children are with their father on the 1861 census.  I'm assuming they came together or soon after each other.

I could imagine that single people might be able to scrape together the fare, perhaps with the support of their family, but I really wonder how eight people could find the money, especially after a famine.  The father always had labouring jobs in various places, rather than anything more skilled, so I don't think an employer here would have coughed up.  And they left some nine or ten years after the famine, so I should have thought any mass clearances would have been done years before. 

Does anyone know?  I have consulted the excellent "When Paddy met Geordie" but am no further forward.    I have also in the past posted a similar question on the Irish boards to no avail. 

Also, any guesses as to their route?  Roscommon to Belfast to Glasgow?

Best wishes and thanks,

Clarrie

[Drosybont]

An article on public health in Cardiff which I've seen says that in the late 1840s people were given free passage from Ireland, being cheaper to load and unload than other forms of ballast.  Maybe this still happened in the 1850s and with ships to other ports too, which might account for the sea voyage.

Drosybont

[Elwyn Soutter]

According to IRISH PASSENGER STEAMSHIP SERVICES, VOL 1 North of Ireland, by DB McNeil 1969, in the mid 1800s competition for passengers was fierce, and fares were very low. Agents would tout for business and on at least one occasion an agent offered free food and free passage. (The main business being cargo with passengers being just a potential source of top up revenue). Fares were often as low as 6d. So getting a whole family across to England, even in famine times, wasn’t necessarily a very expensive business.

People from the Midlands of Ireland tended to head for Dublin. I’d be inclined to think their route was Roscommon – Dublin-Liverpool – Newcastle.

[Drosybont]

Another possible route would be from one of the Irish ports to Whitehaven, then across to County Durham from there. 

Drosybont

[mulvi3]

I am researching my g/grandmother from Co Armagh to West of Scotland.  One thing I noted that the fares could be as low as 6 pence and that some workers (possibly single) travelled back and forth at harvest time.  Others of course like my g/grandmother and whom ever she came with intended to settle and did.

However, not too sure how much it would have cost to get a family cross country to Sunderland if that was their route. 

I admire them so much for coming to improve their lot.  Their journey must have been difficult, leaving behind their family and not knowing what to expect at the other end.


Vera

[Elwyn Soutter]

People had been pouring out of Ireland all through the 19th century. It speeded up during the famine years with nearly 2 million leaving between  1841 and 1851 alone but it went on all through that century. If there’s anything positive to be said about the exodus, it did at least mean that the various routes (whether to the US, Scotland or England etc) were well trodden and well established (the newspapers of the mid 1800s were stuffed with adverts for emigration. Every small town had agents selling tickets), and for those who could read and write there were plenty of letters home from others who had gone before, letting the next wave know what to expect. I don’t think many set off blindly. Many had a contact (often another family member) in their destination who would offer to assist them whilst they settled in. The choice was the prospect of a comparatively well paid labouring job “across the water” against subsistence living or worse, at home, and so whilst leaving their family may have been a wrench, overall it was probably not such a very hard decision to make.

[Clarrie]

Dear all,

Many thanks for such informative responses!  The idea of people as ballast or similar is depressing but makes sense.

I am full of admiration for my ancestors who travelled so far.  The conditions they had in Sunderland were very hard, which only underlines how bad things must have been in Ireland for this to seem like a better life.

Thanks again

Clarrie

[Skoosh]

As it was all the one country it wasn't really emigration, starvation was the spur, Queen Victoria sent £20 to help out I believe, and the political results are still with us. A British Establishment which allowed over a million of its own people to die of hunger while foodstuffs were still being exported from Irish ports is nothing short of a national disgrace. Britain at the time was the richest country in the world.
The "Famine" in Shetland lasted for 20 years, was the situation in Ireland any different?
 If folk had money America was the goal, many a distressed family was kept alive by money from a good son in the US.

Skoosh.

[Elwyn Soutter]

The "Famine" in Shetland lasted for 20 years, was the situation in Ireland any different?

The Irish famine didn’t really last 20 continuous years as in Shetland. It was more on and off.  There were many years in the 1800s when the potato crop was partially blighted. The really bad years were around 1846 – 49 when there was blight for 3 years in a row, and so people had to eat their seed potatoes leaving them nothing to plant the next season (and no means of purchasing more).  I have read that Irish soil and climate for some reason meant that the blight was slightly more vigorous there than in other places (blight hit parts of England and north eastern Canada and North Eastern US at the same time, as well as Scotland and Ireland, but overall the impact was generally less in those places).

The other snag was that many people in Ireland had become one crop dependent. You can grow more potatoes on a given piece of land than almost any other crop. They are also low maintenance. So if land is scarce, and you had a large family, people opted for potatoes over other vegetables. I have seen estate documents from the Earl of Antrim & Lord Erne papers in the 1840s suggesting to their tenants that this was a risky strategy and that they grew other things as well as potatoes but obviously that advice wasn’t always heeded.