'No Irish need apply' - New exhibit shows how Irish immigrants have fared in England

"No Irish need apply" are the discriminatory words which once accompanied job advertisements in some parts of Britain and the United States of America.

The same phrase is now the title of a new exhibition in Dublin's immigration museum, EPIC, which examines what life has been like for Irish people who emigrated to England in the past 200 years.

There are around 500,000 Irish-born people living in England today, and thousands of Irish have been emigrating to the UK for centuries.

Researchers used "vital" records, such as the census, and birth, marriages, and death certificates, to track infant mortality and life expectancy to measure living standards.

The number of Irish-born people in England peaked at around 900,000 in the 1970s, due to mass emigration in the 1950s.

Researchers from the London School of Economics (LSE) examined over 500,000 surnames from the 1911 UK Census to create a list of so-called Irish family names to track the economic and social well being of the Irish community, including both immigrants and those born in England with Irish heritage.

What the found suggests that, as generations of English people slowly built up wealth, the Irish remained poorer.

In the 1800s and the 1900s, the Irish in England were on average 50% poorer than the English, according to research in the exhibition.

Before the famine (pre-1845), there were over 400,000 Irish born people in England.

This number grew by more than half in the following decades.

Since the 1930s, England has been the major focus for Irish migration, with big waves during the 1940s to the 1950s and the Irish recession of the 1980s.

Since the creation of Northern Ireland, 25% to 35% of Irish people emigrating being from Northern Ireland.

"About a quarter to a third of the Irish people going to different times were from Northern Ireland many of them going for work, many of them immigrating during the troubles because of the difficulties in Northern Ireland but they were a very important part of the Irish community in England," said curator Dr Christoper Kissane.

"Work was the major reason why people left Ireland during any period of economic difficulty at home when there was no opportunity, low wages and high unemployment, England was the place you went to try and get a better life, to try and work and a better wages, millions of Irish people followed that path.

"Over the course of 150 years we find that the Irish were substantially poorer over their English neighbours, it's a substantial part of the research."

Researchers used "vital" records, such as birth, marriages, and death certificates, to track infant mortality and life expectancy to measure living standards.

Professor Neil Cummins analysed some of these records which shine a light on what life was like for Irish people in England during the past 200 years.

But why did the Irish have such a hard time in England?

Cummins said the "flow" of migration from Ireland to England was dominated by the exodus of lower educated, lower class Irish people.

"There is quite strong evidence, anecdotal and now statistical from colleagues in LSE that there was specific discrimination against Irish people in the labour force.

"There does seem to be an Irish penalty in England."

But Cummins, who has lived in England himself for about two decades, says life is much better for Irish people in England now.

"London, I think for me, is wildly different than it was for the Irish 50 years ago. It is a multicultural place where being Irish confers many advantages."

Head of communications at the EPIC museum Holly McGlynn lived in London for 16 years, where she moved with her boyfriend after the Irish financial recession in 2008.

She had three children in England and said she missed her family but was "taken in by the bright lights in the city of London".

"But then Covid hit and reassessed my values," she told BBC NI.

"I had a very positive experience living in London. People were always very excited to hear that I was Irish."

Kissane said "things have changed a lot" for Irish people in England over the past 30 years, mostly since the Celtic Tiger.

Irish people are no longer emigrating in such large numbers and "those that do go tend to be very highly qualified professionals and those are some of the best earning people now so they have integrated".

"The Irish have gone from being one of the poorest in England to one of the best off groups in England."