Though never as seedy or villainous as New York’s Five Points, Eliza’s new home came with a much-deserved reputation. Originally the site of the nation’s first agricultural industrial complexes, the area quickly became the hub for the new B&O Railroad. Built by the rail company to house the largely immigrant population responsible for laying its tracks, Pigtown was the first of its kind in the United States: a planned neighborhood that came into existence as a direct consequence of the Industrial Revolution and its new demands for workers. Just as the workers back in England were finding new residences and making do on sweetened coffee and bread with jam—quite possibly the original fast food—so too were those in America. Industrial magnates knew that the best way to manage their employees was to keep them close. They also kept close their commodities, which is how the neighborhood earned its unfortunate name. Each day, railway cars would offload their occupants, sending hundreds of pigs into the narrow streets, where most were flushed through the neighborhood to the slaughterhouses in South Baltimore. In a single year, 150,000 pigs would pass within reach of Eliza’s front door.
The muck from the pigs of Pigtown was only one of the challenges facing the O’Learys. A single pump at the end of the block was their only source of water, but because its well was only ten feet deep and covered in sand, the water it produced was little better than the puddles that settled into the manure- and trash-filled street. Even the barrels they used to collect rainwater were covered with an ashen sheen that seemed to permeate every inch of this newly industrialized city and its inhabitants. Nevertheless they had a home of their own. Jerry and Anne could both attend school, and Mary, the eldest, would stay home to help her mother.
In many ways, the living conditions in Pigtown perfectly embodied the lives of the railway workers and their families who lived there. Construction of the B&O Railroad, like the Ottawa and Erie Canals, had been both a boon and a blight for its many Irish workers. Injury and casualties were common; so too was unruly behavior fueled by camp whiskey. Fights broke out there, though it took the inflamed pen of a critical press to convert them into the “brawls” reported in the pages of Maryland’s newspapers and beyond. No doubt, this reportage was part of the reason so many Irish were finding it difficult to locate the golden opportunities they had been promised. In places like Baltimore, their poverty and lack of opportunity rivaled that of African Americans.2 Try as they might, even the women couldn’t deny their Irishness. In America in 1849, there weren’t many things worse than that.
The contempt for the Irish people that had begun several years earlier was growing into something far more insidious—and codified—through-out America. What had begun as privately held stereotypes was now equal to Britain’s public system of racism, and no venue or medium seemed immune. “From Ireland,” reported the editor of the Baltimore Sun just as the Jeanie Johnston was arriving, “we have the usual quantity of misery and crime.”3 The same ideology behind Manifest Destiny that lured Florence Sullivan west was making it hard for women like Eliza O’Leary and her fellow passengers to stay in the east. America may have been providentially chosen, but that was far from true for a good number of its inhabitants. The same racist ideology that allowed this generation of people to so easily take land from the Mexicans and Native Americans was also endowing them with the justification they needed. The Irish, a growing number of Americans maintained, were not just a different race; they were visibly inferior.4 Throughout the country, “Irishism” described a “condition of depravity and degradation.”5 Concomitantly organizations such as the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner were springing up all over the United States, united in their distaste for all things Catholic and, more specifically, Irish. As such, they were proving themselves at least as deft as their British brethren in making a racist argument against the Irish people. John Sanderson’s Republican Landmarks, first published in 1849, described Irish Americans as “creatures more debased than the Yahoos of Swift—creatures having only a distant and hideous resemblance to human beings.”6 Others referred to the Irish as simian or brutish. James Redfield’s Outline of a New Physiognomy, also published in 1849, claimed, “The Irishman walks heavily upon his heels . . . his gait being more like that of a horse on a bridge than like that of a cultivated gentleman. The slow, heavy tramp of the iron-shod ‘heder and ditcher’ is in keeping with the ‘don’t care’ spirit of the lower ten thousand, be they white or black.”7
While “Irish” and “black” were becoming synonymous when it came to social standing, some took it even further. When the legendary landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted visited the docklands of Alabama, he was surprised to see black slaves throwing bales of cotton into the holds of ships, where they were caught by Irish workers. When asked about this distribution of labor, an overseer replied, “The niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are knocked overboard or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything.”8
Small wonder, then, that Catherine Martin and Mary Evans were having difficulty finding work. Each day the ads for employment were littered with exceptions for the Irish:
Wanted—a white woman to cook. German preferred.
Laborers wanted to do farm and dairy work. No objection to Irishmen—but North Ireland preferred.
Wanted: German woman who understands housework.
Wanted: protestant girl.
These were the first manifestations of NINA, a multigenerational boycott of potential employees in which No Irish Need Apply. As Mary and Catherine soon discovered, those audacious enough to apply for a job would never receive a second glance.
Now penniless in addition to being homeless, the two women found refuge in Eliza O’Leary’s small row house, where they could at least count on room and board and the kindness of a friend. Catherine, at least, would soon find work as a domestic servant for an Irish family who farmed just outside the city. But in the meantime, life outside Eliza O’Leary’s new plaster walls was feeling awfully fragile.
23
Royal Visit
THE JEANIE JOHNSTON returned, laden with grain, to Cork’s port town of Cobh on July 23, 1849. The shipping news made polite mention of her return, but few papers could spare more than a line or two announcing the barque’s entry into customs. All of Britain was focused on what was, for the time being at least, a far more impressive vessel. The royal yacht Victoria and Albert would soon be arriving in Cobh as well, and on it were not only the queen and her husband but four of their children. It was Victoria’s first visit to Ireland; both she and the Irish dignitaries intended it to be a memorable one.
That began with her ship. At 1,034 tons, the Victoria and Albert dwarfed the Jeanie Johnston, and everything else about the royal yacht was designed to be larger than life. Two enormous paddlewheels flanked the midship; between them an imposing smokestack rose above her 430-horsepower steam engine. Powerful, reliable, and built to succeed when the wind failed, the Victoria and Albert represented the future of shipping. The queen herself ensured that no money was spared when it came to appointing her state-of-the-art staterooms and salons.
But no amount of opulence could save the queen from the seasickness that plagued her as she crossed the Irish Sea in late July and arrived in Cobh on August 2. Given the timing of her arrival, it is entirely possible that the Victoria and Albert passed by the Jeanie Johnston upon entering Cobh. An artist’s rendering of the queen’s arrival shows two barques the size of the Jeanie anchored on either side of the yacht, dwarfed by the Victoria and Albert’s multiple decks, not to mention the two large guns permanently fixed there.
The splendor and armaments were a powerful metaphor for the conditions that brought Victoria and her yacht to Cobh that summer. Many of her advisors had warned against such a trip; although the political agitation present earlier in the year appeared finally to be subdued as far as physical violence was concerned, the groups supporting the protests were still plenty hostile to a royal visit. It was a dangerous time to arrive, both for the queen�
�s safety and her popularity. But Victoria was resolute: despite protestations from many in Parliament, she would make good on her promise to visit Ireland and her desire to become “personally acquainted” with the island. More important, it was an opportunity to declare the famine over once and for all. Charles Trevelyan’s troubled Board of Health had been disbanded. The potato was expected to return. Henry Grey’s policies heralded a new beginning for the Irish economy. The future, she insisted, looked bright for all.
Victoria had urged John Russell to join her on this mission of hope and accord, but the prime minister refused, citing a need “to remain quiet for three weeks.”1 In response, the monarch sent her regrets, along with spirited accounts of Ireland and its people. They were receiving the queen with enthusiastic and open arms—at least so it appeared. Bedecked with bunting and streamers, Cork put on its most celebratory face for the arrival of Victoria, who anchored her royal yacht there for two nights, enjoyed a tour of the town, and met with local dignitaries, including representatives of the Murphy family. Not to be outdone, town officials in Cobh petitioned Victoria to rename their city Queenstown, a request she was happy to grant. And so it would be called until 1922, when the founding of the Irish Free State necessitated a return to the original. But for now, the town leaders seemed content with their new royal associations.
Still, those watching emigration trends in Queenstown could see even then that something was amiss. Key members of the Catholic clergy were noticeably absent from receptions and lines of dignitaries welcoming the queen. Protestors chanted in the streets. Victoria, however, was carefully shielded from all of this and observed that the crowd of people who came out for her arrival was “noisy, exciteable, but a very good natured one, running and pushing about, and laughing, talking, and shrieking.”2 Ireland, she concluded, was very much a foreign place, and throughout her trip, she and Albert lectured repeatedly on the importance of loyalty—even to a seemingly foreign crown.
That this message was delivered by a stylish young mother and the husband she clearly adored, and that she also happened to be the queen of the most powerful empire in the world, was enough to engage even some of her most ardent Irish critics. The positive response to Victoria in places like Cork was undeniable. Dublin too was swept up by the queen’s arrival there; having endured the worst of the summer’s cholera outbreak in Ireland, the city was described by at least one nationalistic paper as “a city rose from the dead.” Perhaps, conceded Victoria’s advisors, the queen really had succeeded in establishing allegiances in Ireland and promoting greater affinity for the crown.3
However, as the queen departed for England, much of the enthusiasm seemed to depart as well. Her visit did little to end the evictions and hardships across the island, not to mention the desire of thousands to vacate as soon as possible. Coffin ships continued to leave Ireland in droves. As the royal yacht dropped anchor in the Thames, the Jeanie Johnston raised hers, departing once again with a full complement of passengers for North America.
• • •
The Jeanie’s reputation for maintaining health and order preceded her, and to no small degree. Captain Attridge made this late-season trip to Quebec, the Jeanie’s third as a passenger ship, in record time and, upon arriving there in late September, found an uncharacteristically easy reception from George Douglas. The captain wrote to Nicholas Donovan that the quarantine doctor “saw the passengers in such good health this voyage and the last, that he did not require to land the passengers at Grosse Ile as usual.”4 In appreciation, a group of passengers collected what meager funds they had remaining and spent them on an ad that ran in all the Quebec newspapers:
TO CAPTAIN JAMES ATTRIDGE
We, the passengers of the ship Jennie Johnston, under your command, take leave to express our deep sense of the kindness which characterised your conduct during a voyage marked by tempestuous weather and demonstrations of your abilities as a mariner.
Permit us to say, in fulness of our gratitude, that your affability and characteristic benevolence have not failed to win the hearts of all your passengers. And, let us add, that we will not fail to advise those of our friends and relations in Kerry, who may be disposed to emigrate to this country, to come by the ship under your command—the fast sailing Jennie Johnston. We have a good warrant for doing so in your long experience as a navigator, as well as the good qualities of which you are the rich and happy possessor.
This is our humble judgement, and it is the language of our hearts—the present testimony of our admiration and gratitude. Nor do we presume too much when we say that it is sanctioned by the high authority of our much esteemed medical attendant, Doctor Blennerhassett, of whom it is but justice to say, that he spared no exertions on his part that had for its object the health and comfort of the passengers. The total absence of disease amongst us during the voyage is the happy result, under God, of his long experience at sea as emigration physician.
Dear and much esteemed Sir, long and fondly will you be remembered by us. Long will your deeds of kindness be fresh in our memory. May you live long, and glide along the vale of life crowned with the best gifts of Heaven.
Signed, John Corridon. James Dunn. Francis Twiss. George B. Hare. Charles Mason. John Hallinan. John Egan. Alex Murphy. John Sullivan. John Gwinn. Patrick Sheehan. William Quinn. Philip Johnston. James Reardon. Edmund White. James Bailey. Thomas Moriarty. Bartw. Griffin. Michael Real. Maurice Stack. Patrick Horgan. John Carroll. Daniel Connell. Francis Sullivan.5
Donovan wasted little time ensuring that both of Tralee’s major papers ran the letter. It was a welcome piece of good news for a region that had yet to see any evidence of an end to the famine and its misery, despite the pronouncement of its queen. Evictions remained rampant and appeared to be growing more atrocious by the day. On the Marquess of Lansdowne’s estate, more than 150 individuals were suddenly homeless after their cottages were leveled. As a kind of peace offering, Lansdowne’s manager offered the dislocated tenants their choice of destinations in North America. Long since grown distrustful of British policies, most chose New York. When they arrived, even Gotham, a city accustomed to the arrival of so many destitute Irish people, was appalled by their condition. Lansdowne responded by sending the remaining tenants to Quebec, which was cheaper, aroused significantly less bad publicity, and required fewer regulations.
In many ways, Lansdowne represented the newest—and perhaps gravest—problem to plague Ireland: powerful landlords acting out of self-interest. As the calendar turned to 1850, more than four thousand paupers continued to languish in the Tralee workhouse, 445 of them in the hospital. Try as they might, there was no way for the Board of Guardians to hide the fact that their Poor Union was failing; there was just not enough money or vision to keep it afloat. The board passed a resolution alerting the Poor Law commissioners in Dublin to what they called “the inconveniently large size” of the Tralee Poor Union and urged that it be divided, if not abolished altogether. They also elected to reduce Henry Blennerhassett’s salary from £100 to £60 a year. He resigned from his post as their medical advisor. The commissioners thanked him for his work and issued an ad for his replacement. Annual salary: £52.6
Faced with growing pecuniary shortages, the board consented to the appointment of a visiting committee headed by Nicholas Donovan. Donovan had just won a lawsuit against a local farmer who the importer alleged had tried to claim payment twice for one load of grain. That kind of careful bookkeeping was precisely what the guardians felt they needed. It was also the kind of recognition that Donovan had always longed for. Still, his reintroduction into town politics was all but eclipsed by his latest and perhaps greatest achievement: victory at a massive land auction that arose as part of the Encumbered Estates Act. It was the first real opportunity for a Catholic—even a wealthy merchant Catholic—to own land in Ireland. More than thirteen thousand acres of John O’Connell’s “very important estate” were in play in Ardfert, and they represented an opportunity, if not to buy a part of the
city on a hill, then at least to own a piece of the hill of miracles. By afternoon Donovan had outbid even his father on multiple occasions. Nine parcels were his at the price of approximately £13,000 (about $1.3 million today).7 So too was the nearly £1,000 in annual rent. Nicholas Donovan was not only a landowner now; he was also a landlord.
24
Steaming Ahead
1850
BACK IN QUEBEC, John Munn welcomed the New Year without much enthusiasm. Try as he might, he too was finding it increasingly difficult to care for those in his charge. For that matter, he was finding it increasingly difficult to care for himself.
To a casual observer, all looked well at the Munn establishment. The reconstruction of his yard had been a success: with 1,650 feet of shoreline, he now commanded the lion’s share of property in St. Roch. A large brick office—it would have to be brick; no fire would again destroy all that he held dear—served as the nucleus of the yard. Brick and stone structures also housed his employees and the shops, along with the new addition of boilers for steam work. They were backed by the dramatic cliff that separates lower and upper Quebec. Looking down from that promontory, Cousin Elizabeth kept house in a grand home once owned by Montcalm, the French war hero, and even had time to tend the large gardens and orchard there.
Despite his seeming prosperity, John Munn knew what was on the horizon. In places like the shipping quarters of Quebec, the fanfare over the queen’s recent Irish visit was less about royal gowns and promises and more about the mighty steamer ship that ferried her. The age of sail was coming to an end, and the new world of steam was proving unkind to Munn. Since launching his first steamship, he had struggled to remain current in the industry. Philanthropic to his very core, he had agreed to back the People’s Line of Steamers, a consortium comprising mostly local grocers with more ambition than acumen. Perhaps, Munn hoped, with his yard and expertise, he could make the line a success. Instead it was proving a disaster.
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