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Abstract
Historians seeking to identify the Irish have overwhelmingly relied upon nominal record linkage, thus limiting studies to periods and contexts in which corroborating records exist. Surname analysis provides an alternative: a subset of 283 Irish surnames was able to correctly isolate 40 percent of known Irish individuals across thousands of entries, which is sufficient for sampling the Irish in demographic studies. This conclusion was based on an analysis of 278,949 names from the London area in the 1841 census, and was tested and refined against 42,248 historical records pertaining to the poor in London between 1777 and 1820.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Angela Kedgley, Janice Turner, Amanda Goodrich, Ian McBride, and Willard McCarty for commenting on earlier versions of this manuscript, and to the attendees of the British History in the Long Eighteenth Century seminar at the Institute of Historical Research (2012), and the participants at the London Irish Conference at the University of Warwick (2012) for their questions and comments on the article.
Notes
1 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.1, September 24, 2013), October 1804, trial of Ann Adams, alias Riley (t18041024–74).
2 The Old Bailey Proceedings can be consulted at the Old Bailey Online. Tim Hitchcock, Robert Shoemaker, Clive Emsley, Sharon Howard, and Jamie McLaughlin, et al., OBO, 1674–1913 (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.1, April 2013).
3 The MCR (National Archives, HO 26) is available electronically through Ancestry.com.
4 National Archives, HO 26, Middlesex; 1804. Piece: 10; Page: 3.
5 The MCR contain 3,858 individuals who also appear in the OBP. Of these, 388 (1.5 percent) are Irish born out of a total 25,267 defendants.
6 French (2,988 matches), English (2,760), Irish (1,438), German (1,104), British (872), American (608), Scotch (584), Spanish (550), Welsh (519), Dutch (499), Italian (492), Indian (308), Russian (275), Scot (234), African (132) Portuguese (129), Prussian (122), Australian (121), Belgian (100), Turkish (94), Austrian (81), Swedish (78), Chinese (75), Scottish (55), Canadian (51), Japanese (42), Danish (41), Norwegian (36), Hungarian (24), Flemish (19), Finnish (2), Total: 14,433 matches out of a possible 197,745 criminal trials. This calculation is via the OBP web-search interface.
7 In the twenty years between 1801 and 1820, Irish appears just 187 times in the OBO, 118 of which are national adjectives describing a person, though not necessarily describing the defendant.
8 OBP, September 1816, trial of Mary Ann Caffray (t18160918–82).
9 OBP, Searched for all offenses where the transcription matches “cork,” between 1801 and 1820.
10 OBP, April 1805, trial of Elizabeth Otway (t18050424–125).
11 OBP, Searched for all offenses where the transcription matches “limerick,” between 1801 and 1820.
12 The following keywords related to Irish place names were searched in the OBP: Irish, Ireland, Dublin, Belfast, Waterford, Antrim, Armagh, Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Cork, “County Down,” Donegal, Fermanagh, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny, Leitrim, Limerick, Londonderry, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Tyrone, Westmeath, Wexford, Wicklow, Ulster, Munster, Connacht, Leinster.
13 OBP, September 1818, trial of John Driscoll (t18180909–48).
14 An adult male was defined as a male of at least 20 years of age. Children were omitted from the analysis because of the high numbers of London-born children with Irish parents.
15 3,026 of the 58,964 names in the sample have only Irish-born members. 6,632 names have at least one Irish-born member.
16 Derived from “1841 UK Census”, 6 June 1841, Ancestry.co.uk http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/grouplist.aspx?group-1841uki (Accessed 2010–2011).
17 HO 26, the National Archives.
18 National Archives, HO 26, Middlesex; 1801–1805. Piece: 8; Page: 99.
19 National Archives, HO 26, Middlesex; 1801–1805. Piece: 8; Page: 90.
20 OBP, October 1805, trial of Charles Donavan (t18051030–42).
21 National Archives, HO 26, Middlesex; 1801–1805. Piece: 8; Page: 80.
22 R. C. Russell, US Patent 1,261,167, April 2, 1918.
23 OBP, April 1802, trial of Edmund Nowlan (t18020428–74); National Archives, HO 26, Middlesex; 1801–1805. Piece: 8; Page: 95.
24 Data available from Adam Crymble, Tim Hitchcock, and Louise Falcini Citation2014, “Vagrant Lives: 14,789 Vagrants Processed by Middlesex County 1777–1786.” doi:10.5281/zenodo.13103. The Middlesex Vagrancy Removal Records were originally part of Sessions Papers—Justices' Working Documents; “Home Office: Criminal Registers, Middlesex,” 1805–1791, HO 26, The National Archives, Kew. Names were only counted once per family group.
25 Settlement was not necessarily a marker of origin or birthplace. One could gain settlement in a new parish through a number of channels, including renting a property worth more than £10 per annum, possessing a freehold estate, through an apprenticeship, yearly service to a master, by holding certain offices, paying parish poor rates, through parentage, and in the case of women, through marriage. However, since vagrancy records refer primarily to the very poor, being sent to Ireland in this instance is a useful indicator of Irishness. For more, see K. D. M. Snell (Citation1991, 375–415).
26 The surnames list correctly identified the Irish returnees in 642 out of 776 matching individuals. There were 2,559 Irish vagrants in the whole sample.
