What exactly is a 'hawker' and did women do this too? I've never properly known.
One of the articles you kindly showed me said that the Irish moved around "like shoals of fish" and were prepared to be nomadic in order to find work (put food on the table).
Some people think this constant shifting-around is a fault of character (i.e. the Irish didn't seem able to stay in the same place) - but surely they miss the point? You have to go where the money is, or you starve...
My granddad first went to England when he was a lad in his teens with a gang of haymakers and harvesters. He was a "spalpeen", "an spailpin fanach", "the wandering labourer". Gangs of Irish haymakers were known as "scythe-men" or "July barbers". One of his memories was his group leaving their lodgings at midnight after finishing their haymaking stint in Lancashire and crossing into Yorkshire a couple of hours later, removing their boots so they could pass silently through a settlement where local men had fought with them in an earlier year.
Maiden Stone
Thanks so much for this.
Your granddad's testimony is valuable - and rather alarming!
So there was always a potential for violence, when these Irish came over for work.
Do you have any more stories from your granddad?
It's helping me to understand how my own family must have lived, while trying to establish a new base in late 19th century England.
Also: it disturbs me to find that nomadic people looking for work are classed as 'vagrants'. It seems insulting.
Just because a person doesn't have a fixed home at a particular point doesn't make them a criminal.
Of course, there are are always a minority of humans who live a lawless life, but people who are trying to work aren't usually those.
But I can see why travelling peoples could be seen as a threat, and it's still happening today, e.g. I lived on the UK south coast for a while, and there were terrible problems when the Eastern European economic migrants flooded in, and literally took over some of our coastal towns. [The locals were up in arms.]
D