Irish in New York

In America today, there are many different people from all over the globe. It is normal to see this in the United States. The late 1800’s and early 1900’s was when there was the first great influx of immigrants; in the early days of the United States this was not common. This first influx of immigrants would be the Irish. Today, when people see an Irish person in the United States it is considered normal and not out of the ordinary, but this was not always the case. The first flux of Irish Immigrants came to the United States in the early 1800’s and there was only an increase in the number of immigrants from Ireland since then.
When these Irish immigrants came to America they were not welcome with open arms. These Irish immigrants faced many hardships and throughout this paper we are going to explore these hardships and analyze the effects it had on the Irish and their moral. Through Irish music we are going to be able to see some of the hardships they faced and how they felt about these hardships.
These immigrants all had to get up and leave their country for various reasons. In Ireland, these people were facing many hardships at that time. During this particular time period in Ireland the Irish were facing many prejudices: they included prejudices towards Catholics from the protestant church and also political subordination. The only thing these people could do was immigrate to another place in search of a better life. The years, in which Irish immigration was greatest to the United States though, was in the 1840’s. This was due to the Irish potato famine that occurred in 1845. This led to millions of Irish people starving and because they had no crops to sell it led to great poverty throughout the nation- in addition to a food shortage. These people had no choice, but to get up and move to another place. Millions of these people wound up coming to America, in particular New York City. (The Journey to America: The Irish).
The Irish people’s journey to America usually consisted of them coming over on the steerage class of a ship. They would make the journey to New York City with everything that they had or could carry. This usually was very little because most of these immigrants coming over from Ireland were very poor. When they finally, did arrive in New York they would receive a medical inspection. If the immigrant failed the medical inspection, they would be shipped to Staten Island and the ship would be quarantined for thirty days. If they were to make it through the medical inspection, they would then face a legal inspection. This would a series of questions that inspectors would ask to the immigrants to see if they lied on their legal papers. If the immigrant made it past this inspection they would then be granted admission into the United States (Irish Potato Famine).
When the Irish finally, arrived in New York City, they were usually greeted by people called, “runners.” These people known as runners were able to speak both Gaelic and English. These runners promised to help the Irish immigrants, but this was not the case. The runners wound up being con-artists, which would take advantage of the Irish immigrant. They runners would tell the Irish immigrant about good places to stay in the city. Furthermore, the runner would tell the immigrants lies in regards to these shelters. They would say, “It is a boarding house operated by a friend, with good meals, comfortable rooms, affordable rates, and free storage of any luggage.” This was not the case of these shelters at all. The housing that these runners were actually talking about was tenements on the lower east side that were in horrible living conditions (Irish Potato Famine).
These tenements that were located on the lower east side of Manhattan were not fit for people to live in. The cellar tenements were unsuitable for any human being to live in, yet the Irish had to adapt and were basically forced to live there. These conditions led to weakness and death in the Irish community. These terrible living conditions that the Irish found themselves in led them to be even more ostracized by main stream America. They lived in areas with a lot of sewage and waste is the streets. This led to many diseases spreading throughout the Irish community. As one can see these were not the same conditions that the runners described to these immigrants that had just got off the boat. They were not provided with meals or comfortable rooms. People would cram into three rooms sleeping wherever they could find room. The apartments tended to be dark with very little light at night. There was only one window in the entire apartment and wall would prevent light from getting into the other two rooms. The owners of the apartments would also overcharge them for the rent of these apartments.
The men in these families would be forced to work long days in order to support their families and pay their rent. In Ireland, most of these men would have been farmers, but here in America they did not have the capital and land to be farmers. They were forced to work jobs as unskilled laborers. These jobs usually consisted of working at the docks, digging canals, and working on the railroads. All they had to do was move dirt from one place to another. These jobs consisted of long hours with little pay and were very tiring. The women would also have to obtain jobs outside of the home in order to help support the family. This led to deterioration in the home life for the Irish immigrants (Irish Potato Famine).
The children of the immigrants would be left to fend for themselves at home. The children of these immigrants in New York would be forced to help out their parents at a young age if they were healthy enough. The Irish immigrant’s infants had a high mortality rate. This was due to the infants drinking swill milk. Swill milk is milk that is contaminated because the farmers were feeding the cattle leftovers from the brewery. This would cause the milk to lose its nutritious value; in turn the infants would get sick and die from this. The children that stayed healthy though, would work in order to help support the family. The boys would help with manual labor and the girls would help mothers make dresses or the girls would work in a clothing factory. When the Irish, were not working though we are able to see that they are able to enjoy themselves (Meagher).
The Irish as a group of people in general tend to enjoy their music. When exploring Irish music, we can see this is what they would do during their leisure time. The Irish would play jigs, reels, and songs in order to express themselves. They would usually play in the parlor of their homes and enjoy singing and dancing. When examining Irish song lyrics we can see that the Irish tended to be a happy group of people despite the hardships and prejudices they faced when they got to America. For instance, a song that was published in 1874, by E.H Harding and that was written and sung by Ed Harrigan is a great example of the Irish immigrants’ moral while in New York City. When I observed this song, one of the lines went like this, “in a tenement house with me brother Dan.” This shows us the location of the Irish at this period in time. Then when looking at the chorus we see the mood of the Irish at this time. The lyrics from the chorus go like this, “So come with me I will treat you dacint, I’ll sit you down and I will fill your can, And along the street all the friends I meet, Say there goes Muldoon he’s a solid man.” The authors, J.J. Lee and Marion Casey, of Making the Irish American: History of the Irish in the United States, then go on to say that Harrigan portrays the Irish in a positive sense in his song lyrics. Harrigan brings out the positive achievement that Irish made and allows the listeners to see the character of the Irish in America (New York) and additionally it allows the listener to see their Irish pride (Lee and Casey 381-393).
Through these lyrics we were able to that the Irish were able to maintain there culture in America despite their hardships. In the United States of America today, Irish people are very common. They are part of mainstream America and there have been many different great influxes of immigrants from all over the world since the Irish. These immigrants all tend to go through the same cycle. The Irish just happened to be the first very large group of immigrants to go through this process.
The Irish did survive this process in America and now there is a great influence of Irish culture in New York City today. There is great influence of Irish pubs, music, and food in New York City. We can back to the tenements that the early Irish lived in and we get a sense of what it was like for them during this time. We now know from these experiences of visiting the tenements and listening to Irish music; what the Irish went through and how reacted to it. From our experiences we saw how bad the conditions of where they lived were, but we were also able to see how they kept a positive attitude through their musical lyrics. Today, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated by all the people in the United States; that is how great Irish influence has become in this country, particularly New York City.