Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request Seeking Info On Birkenhead's Irish Influx

What may help is a street directory with occupants for 1851/61/71,if anyone has one. Also i have Ancestry, does anyone know if its possible to bring streets up only on various census.

I used to just put street name and town in the "keywords" box and leave every other box blank,if i remember correctly.

Thanks PP, doesn't seem to want to work for me. Just wanted to see if some streets, areas, had a higher portion of Irish people.

My membership has expired,but i can still view,let me go and see if i can search the free census,back in 5

Since I started writing this there have been other posts covering some of my observations. Rather than make changes, here are my thoughts:

I think you’re right Bert. Although I have not found anything definitive, there are mentions in various reports and articles about particular areas being predominantly Irish. For example, the report I posted on the smallpox outbreak (1870) states that the population in the area around Egerton Street “partakes largely of the Irish element”. Also the Garibaldi riots (1862) were centred around Holy Trinity Church in Price Street “which was sited in the midst of streets housing thousands of Irish Catholic labourers and their families” (THSLC, 1981).

If we make some assumptions, it is possible to get an idea of where and why the Irish immigrants might have gathered within the town. It is reasonable to think that many of the immigrants landing in Liverpool on the 1840/1850s were aware of, or soon found out about, the major building works being carried out in Birkenhead: Monks’ Ferry Tunnel, railways and - the biggest of the lot - the docks and warehouses. These building works would require a huge pool of ‘new’ labourers (in 1845 at least 1500 were working on the docks alone) and it is probable that a high proportion of these were Irish.

The Birkenhead Dock Company realised early on that “they must submit to much inconvenience, expense and delay, if they did not provide accommodation for their numerous workmen” (W.W. Mortimer), and by 1845, 350 ‘cottages’ had been built. I've not been able to find where these were. By 1847, the Dock Company owned all the land between Poulton Bridge and St. James’ Church extending along Wallasey Pool to Woodside. Assuming that the Company continued with its policy of providing accommodation for its workers, then I would expect that this would be the area where they would be built (the Dock Cottages?). Going back to my first assumption that a high proportion of the workmen would be Irish this would account for their congregation in this general area. It would be natural that subsequent Irish immigrants would tend to gravitate to these areas.

The quote about the Garibaldi riots specifies the Irish Catholics so a useful exercise might be to identify where the early Catholic Churches were founded.

Indeed the churches and possibly Catholic schools, are they normally built in close proximity to the churches?

Not sure if this is a complete list for Catholic churches in Birkenhead. Taken off Genuki.

Birkenhead, St. Werburgh (Roman Catholic), Grange Road. Founded 1834.
Birkenhead, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception and St. Edward the Confessor (Roman Catholic), Cavendish Street. Founded 1854.
Birkenhead, St. Laurence (Roman Catholic), Beckwith Street. Founded 1864.
Birkenhead, St. Joseph (Roman Catholic), North Road. Founded 1900.
Birkenhead, Holy Cross (Roman Catholic), Hoylake Road. Founded 1928

The years between 1834 and 1854 saw a huge influx of Catholics into the town - many of them presumably Irish. This is illustrated by the fact that Our Lady's, designed by Edward Pugin, was at one stage proposed to be a new cathedral, moving the Catholic diocesan headquarters from Shrewsbury.

list of churches pic posted by chriskay

I don't think all the Irish would have been Catholics.

Not all Derek but a fair assumption most would be.

Out of curiosity (and because I’m turning into a sad anorak), I’ve done an analysis of a street in the 1851 census. I chose Neptune Street for the only reasons that it was there in 1851, seemed to be in the right area and wasn’t too long.

The bare facts are:

Number of occupied houses - 23
Total residents – 224 of which 108 were born in Ireland
House occupation: 1 family – 8; 2 families – 13; 3 families – 1; 4 families – 1.
(41 families lived in 23 houses).

Not included in the figure of those born in Ireland are children who appeared to be born in Birkenhead of Irish parentage. So, those of Irish heritage exceeded 50% of the street's residents.

The average occupation density of almost 10 per house is very high even for those times. I have no idea of the size of the houses in Neptune Street but cannot imagine them being particularly big. However, average figures can blur reality. For example, number 23 was occupied by 16 people: 2 families consisting of 9 adults and 7 children/babies under the age of 8. The conditions they must have been living under are unimaginable.

Well done NW, I've worked on property's in Neptune st and they are not that big, I suppose cramped living conditions became the norm for some working class families especially those who just come here, life being what it was, any roof over their heads must have been acceptable compared to the alternative.
The street being right on the east float would have been close to where the employment was.