The familiar story of Irish migration to eighteenth and nineteenth-century London is one of severe poverty, hardship and marginalization. This book explores a very different set of Irish encounters with the metropolis by reconstructing the lives, experiences and activities of middle-class migrants. Detailed case studies of law students, lawyers and merchants show that these more prosperous migrants depended on Irish connections to overcome the ordinary challenges of day-to-day life. In contrast to previous scholarly assumptions that middle-class migrants assimilated completely to English cultural and social norms, this book emphasizes the possibilities rather than the limits of Irishness and argues that Irish identity had a unique, operative value of its own, for which there was no substitute. Guided by recent works that stress the capacity of communities to operate across space rather than being anchored to specific places such as the street, neighbourhood or village, Irish London argues that the middle-class migrant’s frame of reference went far beyond the metropolis. The three case studies in this book focus on Irish lives in the city, but also follow migrants further afield—more specifically to Jamaica and India— to explore what middle-class communities were, how they worked and who belonged to them. By doing so, this study seeks to move us towards a better understanding of what it meant to be a middle-class Irish migrant in the global eighteenth century.

"… a very valuable contribution to the field and one deserving of consideration by historians of Britain, Ireland, and the British Empire as well as by those interested in the intersections between migration, trade, and ethnic identity."

Adam Chill Source: The Journal of Modern History

Historians of eighteenth-century London have only relatively recently started paying attention to her many significant immigrant communities: the Huguenots; the Jews, both Spanish and German; the Scots; and now the Irish. Craig Bailey's investigation of a particularly interesting and quite overlooked segment of that last group, the Irish, concentrates on what he calls "middle-class migration," though he acknowledges that this description could cover a broad range of types. So e sensibly selects two subgroups of such men, specifically lawyers and merchant bankers, and considers their origins, religious affiliations, interactions - both fiscal and personal - with each other, and the chains of connections they formed both in London and in the wider world of British enterprise abroad.
     Bailey has many interesting things to say about the nature of Irish male bonding, both personal and professional, during this period. Thus, when remarking on the "functional, polite and formal" nature of British society in India, Bailey notes that subgroups like the Irish were effectively communities of families and friends who provided mutual assistance, patronage and protection in a volatile colonial world (145). In his analyses of Irishmen both in London and abroad, he provides detailed geographies and chronologies f such links without neglecting instances of linkages with non-Irish fellow Britons. He also includes a few instances in which class affiliations seemed to trump those of Irish identity. Thus, this in an important, impressive and useful foray into the world of a particular Irish community, both in the British and global worlds. 
     However, given that his stated desire is to explore the nature of Irish communities of family and friends, there are two omissions that need to be explained. The first, the virtual absence of women in the book, is mentioned, it is true, as a hope for future research in the book's final pages, but a community cannot exist without women. Men marry and have female and male friends (Craig gives one instance of a letter between an Irish banker and such a friend), as well as female children, all of whom are integral members of any community. Who do these Irishmen marry? Bailey provides information for a few individuals, but there is no systematic account of whether such men married "in or out" and what part of their fortunes they provided as dowries for their female offspring. Eighteenth-century wills also frequently mention the bequest of "mourning rings" to particular friends, both male and female, and such information might well have proved useful to round out our picture of this community. 
     Finally, there is nothing said directly about the clubs or societies that Irishmen frequented, such as the Benevolent Society of St. Patrick or the Cisalpine Club. Who ran these social groups and for what purposes? What role did Irishmen play in them and why did they join? Were any notable middling Irishmen members of any of the many London philanthropic societies? Did they donate to these causes? Bailey's book may be the beginning of such enlarged investigations.

Source: The Historian