*
*Migration Histories > Irish > Settling
* Camden 
 
Camden was already a centre of Irish settlement in the 1840s where railway construction work provided much employment for labourers. In August 1846 there was rioting at the Round House, a large engine shed in Camden Town, between Irish and English labourers. Twenty Irishmen were arrested and tried at the Old Bailey. Seventeen received prison sentences of between 3 and 9 months.

*
Fallen Railway Arches at Camden Town
*
Fallen Railway Arches at Camden Town
Camden was to become a magnet for Irish people arriving in London, close to Euston station, terminus of the Irish Mail train, and its lodging houses for Irish construction workers on nearby building sites are described in D Thompson's In Camden Town (1985). He is writing about an labourer from Donegal:

The lodgers, all men, shared rooms and some of them shared bed. They had to take off their boots at the front door when they came in and the landlady issued them with bed caps and bed socks for the night - the bed-caps anti-Brylcreem and the socks anti-dirty feet. If she found dirty pillows or sheets when she made the beds in the morning she gave the offender a week's notice and many had to leave. Michael obeyed the rules and grew to like her. When he moved some years later to a house without a resident landlord he saw the need for the strict discipline which she enforced, even during meals, because the second house, in Camden Road, was dangerous to live in.
Many casual workers, recruited by sub-contractors, at a particular pick-up point or after an agreement over a pint in a pub, were paid by the hour or the day, cash in hand - neither insured or officially registered - a system sometimes nick-named "The Lump". Some never settled down or saved for an old age when they could no longer manage heavy manual labour, lost their links with family and friends in Ireland and now live in hostels such as Camden's Arlington House.

"It was all casual work then", said one former hostel resident who came to England from Antrim in 1971 and spent the next 25 years working around the country, often sleeping rough. "The building bosses came down to Camden and there'd be hundreds of us queuing up to get work. If someone gave you the nod, you were hired for the day". Today such work is more likely to be going to labourers from Eastern Europe.

< Previous | 1 | 2


Creators: Aidan Lawes

 
*