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Overview
In Search of a Better Life challenges the traditional histories of British and Irish migration, the stories of oppression and exile that form an essential part of the existing literature. By no means were all migrants forced to leave their country by circumstances; many looked forward to a better life abroad. They were largely opportunists rather than victims, whether financed by the state or by landlords or philanthropists, or, as was the case for the majority, by themselves or their families. This was a huge movement of people that formed part of a European exodus to the New World. In placing British and Irish migration alongside each other, there is recognition of the commonalities among both sets of emigrants that will surprise many readers. The poor condition of labourers in 1840s Dorset and Wiltshire were akin to those found in County Cork during the Famine years. British and Irish emigrants were commonly found on the same ships en route to the Americas and Australasia, both settling in predominantly English-speaking countries. With case studies by a variety of contributors, set within the broader context of current scholarship, this compilation features new research on a popular subject which still resonates today. It will prove particularly useful for family historians.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752474601 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 11/08/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
In Search of a Better Life
British and Irish Migration
By Graham Davis
The History Press
Copyright © 2011 Graham DavisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-7460-1
CHAPTER 1
People on the Move: Mobility in Victorian Dorset
John Fripp
Times were hard in the nineteenth century for the rural poor, particularly in the southern counties of England. Agriculture went through long periods of depression, wages were low and employment was uncertain. Dorset agricultural wages and living conditions were so poor that they came to national attention. But those contemplating protest were only too aware of the deportations following the Swing Riots and the Tolpuddle Martyrs episodes of the 1830s. However, while employment on the land declined, growing towns offered new opportunities and in the second half of the nineteenth century many country folk were attracted to them. Others left the county and perhaps the country altogether. Surplus labour in the south, particularly in Dorset, provided the incentive to emigrate, and some were assisted to do so by members of the gentry or clergy or by overseers of the poor.
Although emigration and immigration have been studied, little work has been done on internal movements within the country, particularly in Dorset. This essay aims to establish more clearly the extent of movement in Dorset over the Victorian period. A small sample of Dorset rural parishes and two larger settlements are examined to show the extent of mobility, both geographically and socially. Among the topics to be addressed are how movements into and out of small villages compared with those generated by larger centres, for example the Island of Portland and the growing town of Weymouth. To what extent did Portland or Weymouth offer employment to people from Dorset or more widely? How far did people move and what types of trades or occupations were most likely to move around? Were females or males more mobile? Questions such as these are clearly of interest to those concerned with either the history of families or groups, or of a particular locality. Apart from providing the opportunity to find work, people on the move clearly had a wider impact, contributing to the exchange of ideas and news, and serving as a powerful adhesive force in provincial society, 'integrating towns with the villages of their hinterlands'. In Dorset, the worst areas of depression were to the south and east of Dorchester, and records show many instances of farms being sold, with about one in five farmers leaving the land in the last quarter of the century. Yet, even more than now, relocation from one settlement to another could be a traumatic experience.
Mobility was, of course, not invented in the nineteenth century. Peter Clarke points out the 'profound and pervasive effect' physical mobility had on early modern society, and how in previous centuries poor migrants had roamed across the land, and the difficulties they caused for housing, public order and food supply. Writing about Lincolnshire, Steve Hindle described the widespread hostility to poor migrants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Parishes were reluctant to accept them because of their effect on the Poor Rates, and vagrancy statutes acted as powerful disincentives among poorer folk. However, the New Poor Law made it easier for the distressed to move around, aided by improving road networks.
Previous mobility studies have focused on a range of different issues, including emigration, internal moves as part of the urbanisation process, marriage or literacy. Many sources can be used to study internal mobility, including apprenticeship records, settlement certificates, removal papers, baptisms, diaries and court records. One approach is to record baptisms and burials in a particular settlement over a period of years and assume that those baptised for whom no burial can be found were 'out-migrants', and those buried for whom there is no baptism were 'in-migrants'. Another method is to count the occurrences of particular names over time in a particular locality. The most sophisticated approach is the longitudinal method using detailed family histories, often documented over several centuries. However, this method is less suitable for mainly within-county movements over a generation or two.
Censuses can only offer snapshots of settlements at ten-year intervals, but they reveal movements of individuals and provide a wealth of detail allowing, for example, movements of occupational groups to be traced. They can be augmented with parish registers and other sources, and several such studies have been published. From 1851 onwards, censuses contain the parish and county of birth, thus allowing movements within a county and from outside it to be deduced. The availability of some censuses, in a digital, searchable form, provides a powerful research tool and the Dorset censuses in this form for 1851, 1881 and 1891, and others in microform, will be used here. The statistical analysis is supplemented by brief histories of some local families, illustrating various types of movements. Also featured are extended accounts of particular developments in the village of Spetisbury and on the Island of Portland, both of which led to unusual patterns of inward migration, particularly from Ireland. Table 1 shows population details of the six Dorset settlements investigated:
[TABLE OMITTED]
The Sample Parishes
Hilton is a large parish about 6 miles west of Blandford, and Milton Abbas lies immediately to the south-east of Hilton. Milton Abbas was wholly owned by Joseph Damer, Lord Milton, and his descendants until 1852, when it was sold to the Hambro banking family. Both parishes are remote from the railway. Moreton is unusual in that its population at first declined and then grew fairly steadily over the second half-century. The parish lies in the valley of the River Frome, about 6 miles east of Dorchester, and was mainly owned by James Frampton. The village has a railway station on the London and South Western Railway. The fourth village, Spetisbury, is a large parish on the banks of the River Stour, 3 miles south-east of Blandford, and is also served by a railway. As Table 1 shows, most Dorset rural parishes grew until around 1860 or 1870 and then declined. The population of the three parishes, excluding Moreton, peaked around 1861. All four are relatively isolated rural parishes and were chosen for their different ownership patterns and for their central location in the county. Inter-parish movements were therefore more likely to be recorded in the Dorset censuses. Seasonal in-migration at harvest time in such parishes should not significantly affect the results since the census dates for 1851, 1881 and 1891 occurred too early in the year. The growing town of Weymouth (including Melcombe Regis) was included as it was one of the largest and fastest growing settlements in the county, and therefore likely to attract a wide range of employment opportunities. The Isle of Portland came to prominence in the nineteenth century as a naval base and for a range of large construction activities employing many people. Fig. 1 shows the positions of the chosen settlements. Table 2 shows the size and ownership of the four small parishes:
[TABLE OMITTED]
For the purposes of this research, we define three types of movement into and out of a settlement. 'Stayers' were those who had been born in the census parish; 'joiners' were those who had been born elsewhere and had moved into the parish by the census date; 'leavers' had been born in the parish but had moved out. 'Movers' were defined as the average of leavers and joiners. For comparative purposes, the numbers of people moving shown throughout this chapter are often expressed as a percentage of the relevant settlement population at census date. Table 3 shows movements in and out of the smaller settlements in 1851 and 1891, and 1881 for Moreton.
[TABLE OMITTED]
The first conclusion is that few people had moved into any of the four parishes from outside the county, with the exception of Spetisbury, which will be discussed later. Consider the average movements of all four parishes, shown in the right-hand two columns of the table. Only 7 per cent of parishioners in 1851 and 14 per cent in 1891 had come from outside Dorset. Those travelling from beyond the four adjacent counties (Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire) only amounted to 4 and 7 per cent respectively. This contrasts with the 35 and 51 per cent who left the parishes to go elsewhere in the county. Within-county joiners and leavers indicate a high and increasing degree of mobility. Movers averaged 42 per cent in 1851, and in 1891 over half of the population of the four parishes had not been born where they lived. Barry Stapleton examined the parish registers of Odiham in Hampshire for the period 1541 to 1820, and found broadly similar levels of inward and outward movements. Similar results have been reported before for other parts of the country. In 1891, the increase in Moreton joiners was due to increasing numbers moving from within the county and from beyond it, but those from beyond Dorset were still only a minority, perhaps reflecting the relative inaccessibility of the region or its lack of attraction for employees.
Considering the parishes individually, a number of movements do stand out. In 1851, leavers to Dorset varied greatly, from 17 per cent in the case of Milton Abbas, to 93 per cent for Moreton. Milton Abbas was clearly a comparatively popular place to live. Moreton had an average level of stayers and joiners in 1851 but a very high level of leavers. In 1891, Moreton joiners were the highest observed and stayers were the lowest. Ties to the parish of birth were clearly weakening. Among the Spetisbury movements which seem unusual was the high number of joiners coming from outside England in 1851. These were predominantly Catholic nuns and priests who came over from Ireland to work at St Monica's Priory.
Spetisbury Priory
In 1735 William Hody built what Hutchins described as a 'small but elegant seat' in Spetisbury. The house passed through several hands until in 1800 it was occupied by a group of nuns, the sisters of the Augustinian Order of St Monica. They had abandoned their former convent at Louvain and fled France to avoid the revolutionary French army in 1794. Their French monastery was one of the most ancient of English establishments on the Continent, being founded in 1609, but by the end of the eighteenth century it was in debt and the sisters bought the house in Spetisbury as a school. By 1810, Hutchins reports that the society had thirty-three members and the Superior was Mrs Stonor, of Oxfordshire. The bulk of the house was occupied by the young ladies they educated, about seventy people in all. There was also a separate building in which 'the chaplain and some respectable borders then resided'.
The 1851 census shows where the thirty-three nuns, including the Superior and a governess, originated. Three were from Ireland – one from Newbrook, County Mayo, one from Westport, County Mayo and one from Mount Jerome, Dublin; and one was from Pembroke, Wales. But of the others, only three came from Dorset. The majority came from far and wide in England, five each from Lancashire, London and Warwickshire. The staff outnumbered the sixteen scholars, who were aged between 9 and 17, and who came mainly from the south of England. In an adjoining building lived two Irish Roman Catholic chaplains, a boarder from Berkshire and a female servant from Wiltshire.
The nuns stayed until 1861, when they were succeeded by a group of English Bridgettine nuns, who arrived from Lisbon, their order having been founded by St Bridget in Sweden in the late sixteenth century. By 1871, the house had been renamed 'Sion House', and the numbers had shrunk to seventeen in total. Nine of the fifteen nuns had been born in Lancashire, and the chaplain was from Belgium. They employed only one servant, in contrast to the seven employed by the Anglican rector and his ten children at the time. Ten years later, a new priest from Surrey had arrived and of the fifteen nuns (including the abbess and prioress), eleven had been present in 1871. Newcomers were recruited from across England, although none came from Dorset.
The Bridgettines left in 1887 to be succeeded by some Canons Regular of the Lateran, of Bodmin Abbey, who were there until 1907. In 1891, the house was called St Monica's and two Roman Catholic priests lived there, one from Italy and one from Ireland. Of the seven theology students, aged 17 to 21, one was from Ireland and the rest were from England. Also in the household were three elementary teachers, two lay brothers, from Devon and Lancashire, and an Irish kitchen maid. This is a typical example of a religious house where foreign in-migration could be found throughout the century.
Moreton
The 1881 nationwide census makes it possible to trace movers who crossed county borders, and the parish of Moreton was chosen as an example. Moretonians steadily became more mobile over the century, travelling to and from more widespread areas of the country. As Table 3 shows, over 70 per cent had left Moreton in 1881. Then, for every three people who had left Moreton to live elsewhere in Dorset, one had moved to the adjoining counties and one even further. Very few went to the emerging industrial areas of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derby or Cheshire, preferring either London or elsewhere in south-east England. In all, Moreton-born people were living in twenty-two counties in 1881. Moreton residents had certainly come from all over Dorset. In 1851 they came from fifty-two different parishes, increasing to seventy-one in 1881 and eighty-two in 1891. However, even in 1891, over seven in ten joiners still came from within the county. In that year a mere 19 per cent were stayers in the parish, but 81 per cent had moved to the village from elsewhere, a higher level than anywhere else at the time. Leavers had declined from 93 per cent, the previous highest level, to under two-thirds.
The Parmiters were a farming family living in Moreton who were examples of both joiners and leavers. Edward came from Ludgershall, Wiltshire, and married Lucy from Kimmeridge in Dorset. They had at least three sons and four daughters between 1816 and 1833, one in the nearby parish of West Lulworth. In 1841, the family was in Moreton and Edward had become an overseer of the poor. Ten years later, Edward and Lucy were living in Moreton with two daughters. None of the other children are to be found in Dorset. No more Moreton-born Parmiters appeared in the parish census from 1871 to 1901, but the Moreton registers showed that their four children chose to be married where they had been brought up. In 1842, daughter Mary, born in Moreton, was married to another Parmiter, Samuel, a tradesman and farmer's son from Southampton. Nine years later, daughter Edna married a widower and draper from Wareham. Her father was described as a yeoman and his father as a brewer and they both signed the registers. A year later a third marriage took place. This time, son Thomas Parmiter, a yeoman from Moreton, married another Moreton farmer's daughter, Sophia Henrietta Forss, whose family had been in the village many years. Both fathers were yeomen. Daughter Rebecca made an equally good marriage in 1856, when she married Charles Hudson, a land agent from Devon. Two years later, Eliza Parmiter married a yeoman, also from Southampton. Parents, Edward and Lucy, were both buried in Moreton, and the burial of second son, Thomas, in 1863 brought their association with the village to an end. No more Parmiters were to be found in Moreton up to 1901. The Parmiters are an example of a middle-class family who moved around extensively but many of whom felt ties to their family and the place of their birth and upbringing.
Hilton & Milton Abbas
The differences between the adjacent parishes of Hilton and Milton Abbas are particularly striking. In both years, Hilton leavers to Dorset exceeded those from Milton Abbas, and in 1851 Milton Abbas experienced far fewer joiners from Dorset. These differences are possibly a reflection of their different forms of ownership. The terms 'open' and 'closed' parishes have been defined in a variety of ways, but a key influence is property ownership. In closed parishes like Milton Abbas, the owner was often able to restrict settlement by controlling the supply of housing and discouraging or evicting people thought likely to claim poor relief. The control on joiners, in our terminology, may also have had the effect of ensuring work for those already settled in the parish. Even if additional labour was required, owners of such villages could control rents and limit the number of labourers who gained settlement, thus making it necessary in some cases for workers to walk to work from nearby parishes. Those who may have done so do not count as 'movements' in this chapter, and in any case would be very hard to trace. The idea of the open and closed parish 'system' has been proposed, in which those from a closed parish migrated to a nearby open one, and the closed parish relied for its labour on the open parish. This may have been the case for Hilton and Milton Abbas. Milton Abbas certainly seems to have been a more attractive place to stay than Hilton, and in 1851 movements both into and out of the 'closed' parish were far smaller than for the 'open' neighbour.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from In Search of a Better Life by Graham Davis. Copyright © 2011 Graham Davis. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Notes on Contributors,Introduction,
1 People on the Move: Mobility in Victorian Dorset John Fripp,
2 Irish Railway Workers & Soldiers in Wiltshire Lynda Brown,
3 Politicians, Philanthropists & the People: Early Emigration from Somerset & Dorset to Australia Celia Martin,
4 'Great Britain of the South': The Irish in Canterbury, New Zealand Sara Moppett,
5 From Sligo to St John's: The Gore-Booth Assisted Emigration Scheme, 1847 Emily Slinger,
6 James Hack Tuke & Assisted Emigration from the West of Ireland in the 1880s Tessa English,
7 Irish Hard-Rock Miners in Ireland, Britain & the United States Graham Davis & Matthew Goulding,
8 Reconstructed Memory: Irish Emigrant Letters from the Americas Graham Davis,