Everything A Woman Could Ask For?: Irish Women in Late-Nineteenth Century New York

The sixth instalment in our series of posts by BAIS postgraduate bursary winners comes from Beth Kitson (Oxford). Beth used her bursary funding for a research trip to New York, where she examined archives relating to the lives of Irish women in America.

Irish emigration and Irish economic development are the focus of many important historical studies. But many (or most) of these studies have, and continue to be, studies of men.  It has often been argued that Irish emigration declined in the late nineteenth century due to ‘rising living standards’ in Ireland: but this does not take into account that, despite an overall decline in emigration rates over the course of the late-nineteenth century, an increasing proportion of these emigrants were women. My research addresses the consequences of migration for the well-being of Irish-women – for those who left and for those who stayed behind.

Evidence from the 1880 United States Census shows that Irish-born women were the most urban of all migrant groups residing in the United States. Just under 20 per cent of female population of New York were born in Ireland. What was life like for these women, many of whom moved from the rural west of Ireland to the most densely populated city in America? Statistics, such as those found in the census, are useful but can tell us little about the quality of life. Thanks to the generous support of the British Association of Irish Studies, I  spent four weeks in New York City conducting archival research to analyse the well-being of Irish migrant women.  I researched a variety of sources in a range of archives, looking at issues such as health, work, education and skills, family, home life, friendship and use of leisure time.

My research began in the New York Municipal Archives, which holds a huge range of material on the City. Of particular interest were the city’s Almshouse Ledgers and Board of Education records. The Almshouse Ledgers Collection contains over 400 handwritten volumes on city-run institutions – including almshouses, workhouses and hospitals – sometimes supplemented by details found in the Letterbooks of Almshouse Superintendents.  While these were not specifically for Irish migrants, the almshouse collections often recorded age, gender, disease, dates of admission/discharge and birthplace; allowing analysis of whether Irish women were over-represented in almshouses?  The records also enable the tracking of the lives of some individual inhabitants, such as Ellen McNamara, a 20-year-old domestic servant, who I first identified in the Almshouse Superintendent’s Letter Book of 1897. Ellen, who had been in New York since she was 15, was being sent back to her father in Co. Clare accompanied by an almshouse nurse.  Ellen’s story can be traced through both almshouse admissions and hospital records: she arrived at the almshouse on July 31^st. 1897 and was admitted to the hospital straight away. I hope to be able to trace more stories of women such as Ellen to understand the importance of health, institutions and family for women’s well-being.

My next stop was the Tamiment Library at New York University, where I was able to research a wealth of emigrant letters written by men and women both living within and outside New York. These letters, combined with others I studied at the Tenement Museum’s Archives, will give further insights into Irish women’s perceptions of their well-being. In her April 1970 letter to her parents (who lived back in Ireland), Mary McHenry Malone, a mother of twelve children, living with her husband and in-laws on the outskirts of New York  declared that, despite having ‘a very large family to take care of myself’, she had ‘everything a woman could ask’ for.

I spent the last week of my research trip at the New York History Society (NY-HS) which is located next to Central Park – I recommend a research trip here during autumn to take advantage of the stunning location. NY-HS holds a wide range of material on life in the city. While I thoroughly enjoyed reading through accounts of charity balls, school recitals and discussions of popular Irish fiction in New York; the most thought-provoking material included records of patients in maternity hospitals, notes left with children at orphanages, and applications for children’s care homes. These records often identified birthplace of the mother (or, sometimes, the parents) which will provide further material about Irish women’s experiences of family life and social care.   

This is a brief account of my research in New York. And there is plenty of analysis still to do, as well as further quantitative analysis of census data, and archival research in Ireland. But I left the archives with some emerging ideas. As one might expect, the well-being of Irish women was multidimensional and shifted throughout the life-cycle, often contingent on factors such as family, relationship, occupation, age, and location. If there was, however, one theme that persisted throughout many women’s lives, it was that of resilience.

Beth Kitson is a third-year History PhD student at the University of Oxford. Employing a mixed-methods approach, her research integrates an analysis of women’s well-being within the discussions of Irish economic and migration history during the late nineteenth century. It analyses how the experiences and expectations of Irish women were shaped by place, socio-economic conditions; and the intersecting perceptions of work, gender, and ethnicity.

*Photos courtesy of the author.