‘Another stafford street row’: Law, order and the irish presence in mid-victorian Wolverhampton

Abstract

A small Irish community had developed in Wolverhampton during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when road improvement schemes, canal construction and the advent of the railways offered employment opportunities. The Irish Famine witnessed a further influx of migrants, principally from the countries of Mayo, Sligo and Roscommon. Irish living conditions were generally the very worst in the Victorian industrial slum, and Irish neighbourhoods were frequently characterised by appalling overcrowding poor sanitation, vagrancy, disease, alcoholism, and general squalor. The Religious Census of 1851 indicates that there was a high degree of religious pluralism in Wolverhampton, with a strong leaning towards Methodism. The extension of religious and educational provision suggests that the Irish community was becoming more organised and self-assertive in Wolverhampton during the mid-Victorian period, and that the Catholic Church played a crucial role in this process.