The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
Their Numbers.
FROM a careful inquiry made in , by the missionaries of the , it was ascertained that about one family in every seven of the families under their visita- tion was Irish and Roman Catholic. And it appears fair to assume that the proportion in the remaining visitable parts of the metropolis is much the same. Among the operative classes in London, therefore, nearly 200,000 belong to this class. It is the largest class which exists among our teeming population. No other class at all approaches to it. Two towns only in all England number more people, with all classes combined, than the Irish poor alone of London. The num- ber is one-fifth of what the whole of itself contained but two centuries since, and one-tenth of the entire popula- tion at only the commencement of the last century. The metropolis of England probably numbers more Irishmen | |
246 | among its inhabitants than the metropolis of itself. The Irish population of London equals the entire population of the three next largest towns of , viz., , , and . would require to give up entire a dozen other of her largest towns to make up the numbers of the poor Irish in London. So vast a class, all immigrants who have traversed the ocean to reach us, renders a brief allusion to their own country, and its history and condition, important at the onset. |