The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
The Rookeries are the Parts of London in which the Irish Chiefly dwell.
The parts of the metropolis in which the Irish are most | |
314 | numerous, are in the neighbourhood of , , , parts of , , , , ,, , and the crowded lanes and courts between and the new street in . In some of the outskirts there are also a considerable number. This is especially the case in , , , , , , , , , and . In fact, wherever in London what has expressively been called a " Rookery " exists, we may be assured that it is inhabited by Irish. Where such a statement as the following can be made, "I have 12 families who live in a single room, and 10 families in another room; in general, a single room contains from 3 to 7 families,"[1] it may be with certainty concluded, that district is an Irish rookery. Our English poor will not live in that manner. The poverty, the quarrelling, the drunken disturbances, the dirt, and the excessive crowding together of the Irish, wherever they form a London colony, cause that they lower the character of every neighbourhood in which they settle, and landlords are often glad at length to refuse them as tenants, and to sweep them away. To a very great extent they remain distinct from the English, and but few intermarriages between the nations among the poor occur. While this may be a cause for thank- fulness, so far as the English poor are concerned, it is at the same time a very great preventive of the benefit to the Irish, which they could scarcely fail of receiving from intimate association with the people of a Protestant nation. And it tends to make it the more important that they should receive the visits of Protestant missionaries and Scripture-readers. The separate congregating together of the Irish in London renders them also more easy to be reached in that manner. |
Footnotes: [1] "London City Mission Magazine," November, 1851. |