Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Introduction: ‘A Piece Cut Off from the Old Sod Itself’
- Part One 1800–1914
- 1 Poor Paddy: The Irish in the Liverpool Labour Market
- 2 ‘The Lowest Depth’: The Spatial Dimensions of Irish Liverpool
- 3 The Holy Sanctity of Poverty: Welfare, Charity and the Sacred Irish Poor
- 4 Faith and Fatherland: Ethno-Sectarian Collective Mutuality
- 5 Electoral Politics: Towards Home Rule
- 6 Extra-Parliamentary Politics: The American Connection
- 7 ‘Pat-riot-ism’: Sectarian Violence and Public Disorder
- 8 Cultural Politics: National Regeneration and Ethnic Revival
- 9 Leisure: Irish Recreation
- Part Two 1914–39
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Faith and Fatherland: Ethno-Sectarian Collective Mutuality
from Part One - 1800–1914
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Introduction: ‘A Piece Cut Off from the Old Sod Itself’
- Part One 1800–1914
- 1 Poor Paddy: The Irish in the Liverpool Labour Market
- 2 ‘The Lowest Depth’: The Spatial Dimensions of Irish Liverpool
- 3 The Holy Sanctity of Poverty: Welfare, Charity and the Sacred Irish Poor
- 4 Faith and Fatherland: Ethno-Sectarian Collective Mutuality
- 5 Electoral Politics: Towards Home Rule
- 6 Extra-Parliamentary Politics: The American Connection
- 7 ‘Pat-riot-ism’: Sectarian Violence and Public Disorder
- 8 Cultural Politics: National Regeneration and Ethnic Revival
- 9 Leisure: Irish Recreation
- Part Two 1914–39
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
ALTHOUGH privileged in historical studies, ‘top-down’ institutional and charitable provision needs to be assessed in wider context, taking account of the various networks, formal and otherwise, by which migrants themselves adjusted to new surroundings. Working through family links, social connections and regional solidarities, many arrived in Liverpool through chain migration, with those already at destination helping newcomers (in classic ‘moving European’ fashion) to find jobs and housing, thereby protecting them from disorientation, dislocation and anomic behaviour. Unknown arrivals who lacked such support mechanisms had to integrate themselves into street or court networks of mutual aid. Invariably run by women, those who gave expected to become recipients themselves when the wheel of fortune, or the family cycle, took a turn for the worse. Newcomers to the north end courts were quickly welcomed and enlisted, as an interviewee reported to Hugh Shimmin:
Why, before my wife had got her furniture put into any sort of order, she had been visited by half the women in the court – in a friendly way, of course. One and all wished her good luck; some wanted to borrow pans and mugs, some wished her to join them in a subscription to bury a child that was dead in the top house; others that had joined for a little sup of drink, wished her to taste with them; some wanted her to subscribe to a raffle for a fat pig, which had been fed in the cellar where it now was.
Instrumental in making ends meet, such female networks were by no means devoid of bibulous conviviality, good cheer and personal indulgence, as evinced by the Monday ‘tea party’ following the obligatory weekly visit to the pawnshop to pledge the Sunday best:
On these occasions there appeared to be no lack of meat or drink, and immediately after the arrival of each visitor a little girl would be sent off to the grog shop for spirits ... There was generally a great bustle to get all indications of the tea party cleared off before the time at which the husbands might be expected home – that is supposing them to be at work – and the women separated with very loud protestations of friendship for each other.
In more formal networks of collective mutuality, however, conviviality tended to be a male preserve.
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- Irish, Catholic and ScouseThe History of the Liverpool-Irish, 1800-1940, pp. 95 - 120Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2007