Lorna Moloney produces and presents the Genealogy radio show and this airs weekly from wonderful Kilkee at Raidio Corcabaiscinn. Corcabaiscinn is the name for an old tribal region of county Clare. The radio show has over 100 shows podcast and all are available. Lorna is currently running a Family History research week : Clans and Surnames for 2018 and this will take place in Nenagh, County Tipperary May 14-18, 2018,
Irish Surnames in London, England: Sources and Influences When researching Irish surnames in London, we again became immersed in patterns of movement, emigration and settlement. We found origins of those who arrived in the early 17th century from Ireland. We found some excellent sources which will be of great assistance to those researching Irish surnames in London. The impact of powerful events in Ireland all played a part in how surnames migrated and influence regions. Our Irish surnames in London showed different origins in Ireland for surnames at different times. For instance, during the Irish Famine of 1845-1848, we found that surname origin tended to be from Connaught and Munster: our provinces west and south of Ireland. Our sources were essential to inform and find how pattern overlapped and provide many learning guides and we are happy to recommend them. You can hear the show now through the button below or at this link https://www.mixcloud.com/raidiocorcabaiscinn/the-genealogy-show-series-7-episode-9-irish-surnames-in-london-history-and-influences/
Our show airs from Raidio Corcabascinn in beautiful Kilkee, Co. Clare which is dedicated to community radio, educational disadvantage and supporting the community. There is a great team behind the show, Steven Baddy, Mike Curran, Sadhb Smyth, to name just a few. It is produced and presented by Lorna Moloney. Lorna is a professional genealogist and historian. Today's show: Irish surnames in London: Influences and evolution can be heard though our Mixcloud app.
London became home to Irish immigrants from early times and we quickly found that sources such as Proceedings from the Old Bailey online provided evidence of Irish surnames and sometime
a great deal of information about informants, defendants, victims or perpetrators. You can search the Old Bailey Online - The Proceedings for more information on this source. This resources is highly recommended. We would give this *****.
Emigration to England as occurred from the earliest recorded history to the present. There has been a continuous movement of people between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain due to their proximity. Ireland was a feudal Lordship of the Kings of England between 1171 and 1541; a Kingdom in personal union with the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Great Britain between 1542 and 1801; and politically united with Great Britain as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland between 1801 and 1922. This show concentrated on Irish surnames in London. So Ireland’s been a lordship, a kingdom, and a colony in an 800 year period. All this has influence migration, movement and settlements. Today, millions of residents of Great Britain are either from Ireland or have Irish ancestry. It is estimated that as many as six million people living in the UK have at least one Irish grandparent (around 10% of the UK population). So what of our evidence, surname evidence of Irish in London.
"The Irish Immigrant Community in Eighteenth-Century London Irish immigrants have formed an important part of the London population from at least the early seventeenth century, becoming particularly associated with seasonal labour, street selling, and the areas around St Giles in the Fields during the course of the eighteenth century. Irish men and women formed a particularly large percentage of the poor. At the end of the eighteenth century, Matthew Martin found over a third of the 2000 beggars he interviewed were Irish, and the Irish are very well represented in the Proceedings. During the nineteenth century a pattern of growing prosperity and integration in the first half of the century was fundamentally transformed by the desperate, large scale migrations associated with the Irish famine. The Irish born population of London reached its peak around 1851, when the census counted their number at 109,000. This large population, in combination with London’s role as the centre of British politics (and hence, in the nineteenth century, of Irish politics) ensured that the city was a primary site for both Fenian political agitation, and violence. The greatest flow of emigration from Ireland to London occurred in the early to mid nineteenth century, in response to the agricultural depressions following the Napoleonic Wars, the increasing demand for Irish labour associated with the Industrial Revolution; and finally, and most dramatically, by worsening conditions in Ireland associated with the Great Famine (1846-9). But by this time Irish communities had been a common part of the London scene for at least two hundred years. Early migration patterns were dominated by seasonal employment at harvest time. This was significantly modified during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by the workings of vagrancy and settlement legislation, which ensured that many seasonal workers were forcibly returned to Ireland by parochial and county authorities. As a result of the military adventurism of the eighteenth-century state, large numbers of Irish soldiers found themselves discharged onto the frequently unwelcoming streets of London at the conclusions of Britain's innumerable wars." (Old Bailey Online - Proceedings)
We can make some generalisations, and this has been derived from Claire Santry’s article on Migration from Ireland to Britain. The Genealogy Toolkit written by Claire Santry provided this information. http://www.irish-genealogy-toolkit.com/
- Emigrants from Ulster settled in Scotland
- Emigrants from Connacht and the central strip of Ireland travelled via Dublin to Liverpool
- Emigrants from Munster and other southerly or western areas of Ireland sailed to South Wales, London or the English south coast.
It is important to mention that these are generalisations and hold good before air transportation. We are talking about shipping routes here. Industrialisation meant that construction and service industries are highly dominated by Irish. But also military paths which may have ended up in England and especially London as one of the biggest ports in the world have to be factored in during the seventeenth century onwards.
John Grenham's subscription site which is an annual membership charge. It is a ***** recommendation from us and we used it to find our definitions of our surnames. It provides a very good source. https://www.johngrenham.com/
We need to move away from the idea that people only emigrated to London around the time of the Great Famine of the nineteenth century. Many emigrated before then and for different reasons.. However, we know from Historical sources cited in journal articles and primary source material by Henry Mayhew that Irish emigration was at an all time high during the middle of the nineteenth century and also in other accounts as below.
"They are Irish, all of them; Irish, every man, woman, and child. Turn whichever way you will, the same "wild, Milesian features, looking false ingenuity, restlessness, misery, and mockery, salute you" on every side. Glance down these narrow courts and filthy alleys that open upon you at every step, and again and again you recognise the race; "there abides he in his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken violence, as the ready-made nucleus of degradation and disorder." Alas! that is should be so; that centuries of neglect - of wrong legislation - should have reduced a people capable of so much to so low an ebb as this; to be a plague-spot upon the garment of her more fortunate sister - a breeder of paupers for a land that has already far too many of her own. Let us take a group, - a fair sample of this unfortunate and improvident class. It is a family picture, and one that it pains the heart of the philanthropist to witness. The man who comes first, in his rough gray coat, and other garments of curious make, lounges slowly along, partly from fatigue, partly from habitual indolence; his hands deep sunk in his pockets, his eyes wide open with astonishment as he contemplates the (to him) wondrous sights around. His wife follows close on his heels; one child held in her arms she endeavours to shelter from the rain beneath her scanty shawl, while another is slung at her back, bending her nearly double with the burden. Three others cling about her garments, and partially running by her side, keep pace with her, as strong in a mother's love and hope, she tramps sturdily along. This is a family picture, as we said. But a few days ago, these parents, with their wild-looking children, were in Connaught, doing badly enough in all conscience, yet with a "chance" before them. They are now in London, with no chance at all; and but one hope - the workhouse” Watts Phillips, The Wild Tribes of London, 1855
Of the Irish street-sellers, at present, it is computed that there are, including men, women, and children, upwards of 10,000. Assuming the street-sellers attending the London fish and green markets to be, with their families, 30,000 in number, and 7 in every 20 of these to be Irish, we shall have rather more than the total above given. Of this large body three-fourths sell only fruit, and more especially nuts and oranges; indeed, the orange-season is called the "Irishman's harvest." The others deal in fish, fruit, and vegetables, but these are principally men. Some of the most wretched of the street Irish deal in such trifles as lucifer-matches, water-cresses, &c.
I am informed that the great mass of these people have been connected, in some capacity or other, with the culture of the land in Ireland. The mechanics who have sought the metropolis from the sister kingdom have become mixed with their respective handicrafts in England, some of the Irish -though only a few -taking rank with the English skilled labourers. The greater part of the Irish artizans who have arrived within the last five years are to be found among the most degraded of the tailors and shoemakers who work at the East-end for the slop-masters.
"A large class of the Irish who were agricultural labourers in their country are to be found among the men working for bricklayers, as well as among the dock-labourers and excavators, &c. Wood chopping is an occupation greatly resorted to by the Irish in London. Many of the Irish, however, who are not regularly employed in their respective callings, resort to the streets when they cannot obtain work otherwise. The Irish women and girls who sell fruit, &c., in the streets, depend almost entirely on that mode of traffic for their subsistence. They are a class not sufficiently taught to avail themselves of the ordinary resources of women in the humbler walk of life. Unskilled at their needles, working for slop employers, even at the commonest shirt-making, is impossible to them. Their ignorance of household work, moreover (for such description of work is unknown in their wretched cabins in many parts of Ireland), incapacitates them in a great measure for such employments as "charing," washing, and ironing, as well as from regular domestic employment. Thus there seems to remain to them but one thing to do -as, indeed, was said to me by one of themselves -viz., "to sell for a ha'pinny the three apples which cost a farruthing." Very few of these women (nor, indeed, of the men, though rather more of them than the women) can read, and they are mostly all wretchedly poor; but the women present two characteristics which distinguish them from the London costerwomen generally -they are chaste, and, unlike the "coster girls," very seldom form any connection without the sanction of the marriage ceremony. They are, moreover, attentive to religious observances." (Henry Mayhew).
The surnames reviewed for this show were as follows: Aherne Barrett Bolger Bradley Brennan Breslan Brien Buckley Burke Carey Carolan Carroll Carty Casey Caughey Clancy Clune Clyne Coffey Colfer Colgan Collins Connaghan Connaughton Conway Corrigan Cronan Cronin Crushell Daly De Burca Deady Dempsey Doheny Donaghy Donnellan Dunne Egan Elliott Ferry Finneran Fitzgerald Flatley Flynn Foley Furey Gallagher Galvin Gauguin Gavin Geogheghan Grady Gray Grealis Greed Griffin Guilfoyle Halloran Hamill Harte Hayes Healy Hennessey Hogan Hynes Jennings Kearney Kelleher Kelly Kilduff Knox Lenihan Loughran Lynskey Maher Mallin McAveety McCarthy McCormack McCrea McDonagh McElwee McEneaney McGinty McGivern McGonagle McKenna McKeon McLoughlin McMahon McManus McQuillan McShane Molloy Moran Moylan Moylan Mulcahy Muldoon Mulkerrin Mullaney Mullarkey Mullholland Murphy Myers Mythen Nagle Neary Nolan O'Beirne O'Connor O'Donahue O'Donnell O'Flaherty O'Heney O'Meara O'Neill O'Reilly O'Shea O'Sullivan O'Toole Owens Roche Rogers Ruane Ryan Shanahan Shaughnessy Sloan Sloane Switzer Tooher Tracey Wallace Weadick
Hence it is important always to check the 1901 and 1911 census for the surnames so you see if they have moved from points of origin. You can look at these free of charge at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/