Transcript Document 7269125

Subversive Consumption
19th Century Irish Immigrants in America
Linda Scott
University of Oxford
Conflict and Consumption
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Alcohol
Fashion, festivals, theater, birth control
Public and private goods
The “reform” movement
Transformative consumer research.
Irish Immigrants to America
• The Great Famine 1840s
• The “little famine” 1870s
• First major wave of immigrants into
(formerly British) America
• Large, sudden, invasive
• Catholics in a Protestant land.
Leaving Ireland
• Inheriting the land
• Prospects for marriage
• Resulting demographics.
Process of Entry
• Money for passage
• Conditions of travel
• Arrival in America.
Entry
and
Settlement
Sizeable and Sudden
• No appreciable immigration before 1830
• Between 1830 and 1920, 5.5 million
Irish immigrated
• Concentrated between 1845 and 1880
• Boston population doubled in 15 years
• 1865 more than half Boston’s
population was Irish.
Reception at Entry
Cultural Conflict
Puritan Consumption Ethic
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Denial of the flesh, austerity
Inconsistent application
Sumptuary laws
Dress, drinking, entertainment
Sexuality, grooming
Worship, gatherings, and festivals.
Irish Condition and Attitudes
werecan
We
thought
conclude
of asthis
an sketchy
inferior account
people and,
of the
like
history
Completely
broke
and
incomparisons
poor health
of•Ireland
all
oppressed
by saying
people,
that
began
whatever
to half
believe
it
• English-speaking,
some
literacy
might
themselves.
or might
Like
notallbesuch
made
people,
to other
they
groups,
were torn
the Irish
came
between
to this
the desire
country
forwith
respectability
a history
ofand
a of
thousand
savage
• Political
subversion,
hatred
British
years of misery,
resentment
of their
suffering,
oppressors.
oppression,
If anyone
violence,
thinks that
• twin
Determination
and
ambition
exploitation,
the
themes
atrocity,
of respectability
and
genocide.
and Their
resentment
country
are
was
not
given
of no
thesolidarity
opportunity
heritage of to
thedevelop
American
intellectually
Irish, he or
• part
Group
economically.
simply
does notTheir
knowaristocracy
the American
wasIrish
repeatedly
very well.
• Desiring
respectability,
upward
mobility.
liquidated or exiled.--Andrew
TheirGreely,
cultures
Irish and
Immigrants
even(1981,
their68)
language were systematically eliminated. They
Housing the Irish
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Slums
Sanitation
Disease
Alcoholism
Crime
Abandonment.
Consuming Public Goods
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Hospitals
Insane asylums
Prisons
Orphanages, schools
Charity organizations
– Boston: aid doubled
– New York: 60% of almshouse residents
were Irish.
Irishmen and Drink
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Major social problem
Violence and domestic abuse
Waste of wages
Abandonment of families.
Irishmen and Politics
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Brutal, dangerous, difficult jobs
Gendered “spheres”
Growth of urban Irish, solidarity
Block vote potential
Pubs as organizing centers
Took over major northern cities within
25 years.
Consuming Public Goods (Part 2)
• Monopoly of municipal jobs
• Control over services and infrastructure
• Privileges and loyalty.
Female Immigration
• Domestic service and factory work
• 80% of domestics in Boston and New
York were Irish
• Lived “downstairs” in Protestant homes
• Negotiating wages
• Spending on fashion
• Savings.
Young Irish women, according to a number
of observers, seemed to be dressed in
fashionable clothes as soon as they stepped
off the boats at Castle Garden.
--Lois Banner,
American Beauty
I have been amused, on a Sunday morning, to
see two Irish girls walking out of my basement
door dressed in rich moire antique, with
everything to correspond, from elegant
bonnets and parasols to gloves and gaiterboots--an outfit that would not disgrace the
neatest carriage in Hyde Park. These girls had
been brought up in the floorless mud cabins
covered with thatch, and gone to mass without
shoes or stockings very likely, and now enjoy
all the more their unaccustomed luxuries.
Irishwomen and Money
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Accusations of prostitution
Investigations into spending/saving
Shrewd management, creative uses
Remittances and the chain of
immigration
• Building an Irish infrastructure.
Building Catholic Churches
• Visible evidence of Catholic
“invasion.”
• Irish priests and hierarchy
• Institutional power base
• Irish iconography
• Social service mechanism
• Educational infrastructure.
By 1870,Catholics were running 296
schools, of which 209 were for girls.
Upward Mobility
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Significant second generation mobility
Nurses and teachers versus maids
Education and gentility
Learning of trades, entrepreneurship
By 1907, the Irish passed the British
average in college attendance.
“Reform” Movement
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Abolition of slavery
“Woman” movement
Temperance movement
Social purity
– Elimination of prostitution
– Censorship
– Moral hygiene
– Dress reform.
Carmel Snow,
Harpers’ Bazaar
Amusements and Sexuality
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“Lower” rather than “higher” pleasures
Seeking of “vicious excitement”
“Gratification of animal instincts”
“Slaves of passion.”
“It is as natural for a Hibernian to tipple as it is for a pig to grunt.”
Popular
Theater
Margaret Sanger,
Birth Control, &
The Comstock Law
Sociability and Festivity
•Puritans and gatherings
•Christmas in Puritan America
•Commercialization, Christmas, and
the Irish consumer.
Samhain &
Paganism
Thanksgiving as Cultural Defense
St. Patrick’s Day
Assimilation and Invisibility
Potatoes
Finding an Irish Voice
• Consumption behaviors as imposed,
exogenous conditions
• Consumption as conflict
• Consumption as resistance
• “Reform” as control and defense
• Freedom and the material
• Spirituality and material expression.
Discussion