The Removal of Irish Paupers from Britain

During the nineteenth century, local officials sought to deal with their Irish pauper ‘problem’ by removing these poor migrants back to Ireland under the laws of settlement and removal. Over the course of the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of Irish paupers were forcibly repatriated in this way. For much of the century, Irish immigrants had little chance of gaining a settlement in Britain, and even though their settlement rights gradually improved over time, removals to Ireland were still taking place into the twentieth century.

The system was widely recognised as being cruel and unfair, especially in Ireland where the removal of Irish paupers from Britain garnered considerable political and press attention. Much was made of the illegality of some removals, and of harsh removals involving widowed women, children and the elderly. Sometimes, those who were sent back had no knowledge of the ‘auld country’. Such migrants, who had left Ireland as children, found themselves unable to seek support in Britain even after a life-time of work, and so were sent back to an entirely alien land. The fact of these thousands of removals raised serious questions about the fairness and equality of being Irish under the Act of Union. This book brings to the fore vital social and political dimensions of Irish immigration, poverty and pauperism in nineteenth-century Britain.