Author Description

The largest concentration of Irish immigrants in Victorian England was found in Liverpool, Manchester and neighboring towns of industrial Lancashire. This book uses local sources, from census book data to police reports, to reconstruct a comprehensive social history of this important working-class community. The Irish became prominent in Lancashire town life when thousands arrived as fugitives from the great famine of the 1840s. Over a quarter-century they used their Irish cultural heritage and experience to form themselves into a distinctive and mature community. Detailed analyses of how they lived and worked and their relationships with their English neighbors create the social context for the development of a sophisticated co mmunity life and identity that produced a uniquely Lancashire brand of Irish nationalism.