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Protestant London, No Popery and the Irish Poor: II (1850—1860)1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2017

Sheridan Gilley
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Extract

‘Wanted immediately, a member of the Church of England, of devoted missionary spirit, willing “to spend and to be spent” in labouring amongst a degraded metropolitan population, chiefly Irish. A fair knowledge of the Roman Catholic controversy is desirable Unexceptionable testimonials as to personal piety, energy, and general ability will be required.

… An average salary at least will be given.’

Rev. S.P.D. (1853).

The Protestant societies engaged in evangelizing the Irish in London were mostly staffed by laymen, but had the enthusiastic aid and counsel of the Evangelical clergy, and were only some of the institutional strands in the Evangelical Vicar's encounter with urban poverty from the early 1830s, as the Evangelical urban parish was divided into units of manageable size, and developed lay forms of district-visiting to bring under parochial supervision the huge urban slum populations: or, as the Evangelicals put it themselves, as they brought a remedy to the material and spiritual destitution of the great godless cities, and to London, the greatest and least godly of any. The lay societies needed clerical approval, patronage and protection, and the Evangelical clergy worked as hard as their laymen.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1971 , pp. 21 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1971

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Footnotes

1

For Part I, 1830-50, see the January 1970 number of this Journal. Books cited in full in the notes to this first article are referred to only by author here.

References

Notes

Abbreviations
Boase Frederick Boase: Modern English Biography 1850-1900 (Truro, 1892-1912).
D.N.B. Dictionary of National Biography.
I.C.L. Islington Central Library.
L.C.M.M. London City Mission Magazine.
M.M., L.C.M. Minutes of Meetings, London City Mission.
O.L., B.O. Oratory Letters, the Oratory, Birmingham.
P.A. Reports, Protestant Association, Tooting.
P.P. Parliamentary Papers.
P.R.S. Reports, Protestant Reformation Society, Barnet.
S.A.A. Southwark Archdiocesan Archives.
S.V. Vestry, St Giles-in-the-Fields.
V.R. Visitation Returns.

2 Record, 10 March 1853.

3 ‘The typical figure in the history of the nineteenth-century Establishment is the town parson … The creation and working of the urban parish constituted one of the most important achievements of the Church of England in the nineteenth century.’ Smyth, Charles: ‘The Evangelical Movement in Perspective’, Cambridge Historical Journal 1943, Vol. 7, p. 161. This theme, never properly worked out hitherto, is the subject of a forthcoming book by Canon Michael Hennell.

4 First Annual Report 1828, pp. 19-20 P.R.S.

5 Thus Bishop Anthony Thorold, while Rector of St Giles's: ‘There is another tradition, that the rectors are to look after the rich, and the curates after the poor’. Simpkinson, C. H.: The Life and Work of Bishop Thorold (London, 1896), p. 40.

6 Thus T. J. Rowsell, a protegé of Pusey and Vicar of St Paul's, Stepney, was not ashamed to declare that he had ceased to pester the ‘nest of Irish’ in his parish with his religious ministrations; he now asked sick Catholics if they wanted a priest: “They constantly say’, he reported, “Yes, sir, if you will continue the meat … ” I have written to their priest, finding that they had no faith in me … ’ Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to Enquire into the Deficiency of Means of Spiritual Instruction and Places of Divine Worship in the Metropolis … P.P. 1857-58, Vol. 9, p. 119; also Mackonochie, A., Parchment book, 1862, Archives of St Alban the Martyr, Holborn, County Hall, P82/ALB/133/1-19. On Rowsell's churchmanship, see ‘The Principal Clergy of London classified according to their opinions on the great Church question of the day’ (1844): add MSS. Bodleian, c. 290 (1886), Delane Papers, and, on Protestant charges of Pusey ite-Roman co-operation, L.C.M.M. May 1857, Vol. 21, p. 33.

7 Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Coalwhippers Act, P.P. 1857, Vol. 12, pp. 71-89.

8 Report on Spiritual Destitution, pp. 168-9; see also L.C.M.M., August 1854, Vol. 19, p. 174.

9 See the Rev. W. Acworth of Plumstead's testimony, Report on Spiritual Destitution, p. 148: Phillpotts of Exeter pressed him to declare his notion of responsibility to the Irish in his parish; Acworth replied that he knew what his duty was, but could not be induced to say what he did about them: ‘I take my own way, and I think that it is a better way to win them than otherwise’.

10 V.R., Lambeth Palace Archives, 1858 and 1863.

11 Thus the Vicar of St Peter's, Islington, described his parish as ‘Externally very orderly—the Irish courts in which the Romanists live … an exception'; Charles T. Woods, of the Woburn chapel, Tavistock Place, called the ‘large number of Irish R.C.s resident in my district’ ‘a hindrance to getting the poor to church—I can suggest no remedy’, while at St Giles's, Anthony Thorold described them as ‘Crowded together, constantly changing their abode, unaffected by public opinion and often in great destitution through their own fault, they present great difficulties to the most experienced as well as the most ardent labourers … ’ V.R. 1858.

12 Birks, op. cit., pp. 363-72.

13 Ibid., pp. 416-22.

14 Balleine, op. cit., pp. 206-07.

15 See Bickersteth, M. C.: A Sketch of the Life and Episcopate of the Right Reverend Robert Bickersteth D.D. (London, 1887), pp. 51–54 Google Scholar; Dallas, op. cit., pp. 372-7.

16 Cumming, John: The Church: a Sermon, preached in St George's, Edinburgh, 4 June 1856, on behalf of the Society for Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics (London, 1856), p. 19.Google Scholar

17 M. C. Bickersteth, op. cit., pp. 72-73; cf. his speech to the Reformation Society. Record, 5 May 1858.

18 Cheney, R. H.: ‘Papal Pretensions’, Quarterly Review, September 1851, Vol. 89, pp. 488-9Google Scholar.

19 Ward, Wilfred: The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (London, 1900), Vol. 1, p. 568 Google Scholar. ‘I use this slang word for courts and alleys… because Cardinal Wiseman has made it classical …’ Hollingshead, op. cit., p. 101.

20 ‘ … as he terms it, the slums—an expression of extreme vulgarity, which … does not belong to the English language, and which… belongs only to the meanest of the rabble … ’

‘Popery in the Nineteenth Century’, Blackwoods, February 1851, Vol. 69, p. 250. For the Evangelical reaction, see Comments on Cardinal Wiseman's Appeal (London, 1850), pp. 10-11; on the rival merits of the Roman Church and the City Mission for work in the Westminster slums, The Midnight Conference between Westminster Abbey and St George's Catholic Church, overheard by a Protestant fabulist (London, 1851), p. 22, and ‘Westminster Proper’, in the L.C.M.M., January 1851, Vol. 16, pp. 1-24, esp. pp. 2 and 24: ‘Shall Cardinal Wiseman have its poor? Shall Popery win them over to its tyranny and follies … ?’ Some Evangelical clergy also made the Cardinal's letter the theme of appeals: see the Rev. G. E. Tate of St Jude's, Southwark, in the Record, 9 December 1850: ‘Cardinal Wiseman … comes asking for our poor; he comes taunting us with our neglect of them … are you disposed to give him the poor?’ For more favourable press reaction, see Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 8-9.

21 Sinclair, Catherine: London Homes (London, 1853), p. 58 et. seq. Google Scholar

22 On her relationship with the Mendicity Society, ibid., p. 6.

23 Boase, Vol. 3, cols. 586-7.

24 Sinclair, loc. cit.; cf. a Scripture Reader on a Roman Catholic: ‘He can no longer defend his creed … he feels it false, yet he clings to it, and why? He is a drunkard! … ’ L.C.M.M., December 1855, Vol. 20, p. 294.

25 Times, 12 February 1851.

26 ‘Alpha’, 10 June 1851, to the Christian Guardian, June 1851, Vol. 43, pp. 163-5.

27 Charge to the Archdeacons and Clergy of the Diocese of Canterbury, Lambeth, 21 November 1850; reproduced Gilbert, op. cit., p. 12.

28 Ibid.

29 See L.C.MM., November 1851, Vol. 16, pp. 248-60.

30 Ibid., pp. 257-9.

31 Armstrong, John Elchin (1807- ); born Dublin, B.A., T.C.D. 1831; M.A., LL.B. and LL.D. 1850; B.D. and D.D. 1853. Burtchaell, G.D. and Sadleir, J. W. (eds.): Alumni Dublinenses (Dublin, 1935), p. 20.Google Scholar

32 For their history see L.C.M.M., May 1856, Vol. 11, pp. 97-99.

33 Report of the Proceedings of the Aberdeen Reformation Society, and of the Speeches lately delivered there, by the Rev. J. Armstrong and J. E. Gordon Esq… (Aberdeen, 1831).

34 Record, 12 May 1854.

35 The Rev. George Evison, who later relapsed to Rome; cf. Record, 19 April 1852.

36 Dallas, op. cit., pp. 425-6.

37 See Garwood, op. cit., p. 304.

38 Garratt, ‘The Irish in London’, op. cit., p. 190.

39 See his ‘Urgent Appeal on behalf of the Distressed Converts from Popery in Bermondsey, and its Neighbourhood’, during the harsh winter of 1854, Record, 26 January 1854; and his ‘Earnest Appeal’, Record, 29 June 1854: ‘Many have objected to the principle of relieving distressed converts from Popery, on the ground that it is liable to be misinterpreted by the enemy…

Are converts from the apostasy alone to be shut out from the exercise of Christian benevolence?

What will converts think of our religion? Will they not say, “You preach well, but where is your practice?”

Is not the first fruit of the Spirit love? …

40 Ibid.

41 Record, 2 May 1853.

42 Thus the case of Dennis Hurley, Irish dock labourer, ‘charged with throwing a brick-bat at the head of Patrick Connell, another labourer, whereby he sustained such an injury as to unfit him to follow his occupation … ’ Record, 26 February 1852.

43 See Armstrong's account of the fate of the confirmation candidates of 1853. Record, 29 June 1854.

44 Cf. Round the Tower, op. cit., pp. 158-9.

45 Tablet, 13 June 1852; see also ‘The Paupers in Bermondsey’, Lamp, 26 June 1852.

46 See his letter to the Morning Herald, reproduced in the Tablet, 3 July 1852; cf. Tablet, 24 July 1852.

47 ‘By his desire she summoned the priest before the magistrate; and, as she was not much hurt, he was not sorry for what had happened, as it gave him an opportunity of exposing the wickedness of Popery, through the whole of London, and the whole of England … ’ Bulwark 1852-53, Vol. 2, p. 268.

48 Ibid.; cf. the convert missionary whom the Irish denounced as ‘a turncoat who had sold myself to the Devil, and that I came to see if I could induce them to do the same.. . ’ L.C.M.M May 1852, Vol. 17, p. 110.

49 Bulwark, loc. cit.: for another Irish Cockney demonstration of the same type, on behalf of a Catholic priest prosecuted for celebrating an illegal marriage, see Record, 7 September 1854.

50 Bulwark, 1851-52, Vol. 1, p. 296.

51 ‘ … while our Legislature is spending £30,000 a year, in keeping up a perpetual and ample supply of superstition in Ireland, the dregs of their own manufacture are flooding the streets. alleys, and courts of our own metropolis, and overflowing with rags, filth, and misery, the very purlieus of our Houses of Parliament.’ Record, 8 September 1853.

52 Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the London City Mission, L.C.M.M., June 1853, Vol. 18, pp. 134-5. Record, 8 September 1853.

53 Boase, Vol. 2, col. 239.

54 Hodder, Edwin: The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. K.G. (London, 1886), Vol. 2, pp. 330-40.Google Scholar

55 M.M., L.C.M. 18 November 1850, Vol. 6, pp. 175-6.

56 Ibid., 7 April 1851, pp. 257-8. He apparently supported four; L.C.M.M., May 1852, Vol, 17, p. 112.

57 L.C.M.M., November 1851, Vol. 16, pp. 237, 246.

58 In Old Gravel Lane, St George's in the East; Brewer's Court, St Giles's; Barrett's Court, Marylebone; Orchard Place, Marylebone; Aldersgate; Fox's Lane, Shadwell, and London Road, Southwark. There was also an English Scripture Reader for Church Lane, St Giles's, L.C.M.M., May 1852, Vol. 17, pp. 105-24; cf. M.M., L.C.M. 7 April 1851, Vol. 6. pp. 257-8; 14 April 1851, p. 262; 19 May 1851, pp. 275-7.

59 Appeal. Record, 4 November 1850.

60 Ecclesiastical Developments in the Churches of Rome and England and Missionary Efforts by the Protestant Reformation Society (London, 1872), p. 11; Appeal. Record, 23 February 1852.

61 Notably George Montague, sixth Duke of Manchester (1799-1855), President of the Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics and the author of numerous books on Scriptural prophecy: Boase, Vol. 2, col. 715; John Winston Spencer Churchill, sixth Duke of Marlborough (1822-83), Marquis of Blandford (1840-57), Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Grand Master of the Order of St Patrick, 1876-80; as Marquis of Blandford, a patron of the Irish Church Missions and the Irish Society: Boase, Vol. II, cols. 740-1; Stephen Moore, third Earl of Mount Cashel (1792-1823), patron of the Irish Society: Boase, Vol. 2, col. 1007; George Horatio, second Marquess of Cholmondeley (1792-1870), Vice-President of the Irish Society, Boase, Vol. 1, col. 613, and George William Finch-Hatton, fifth Earl of Winchelsea (1791-1858), notorious for his opposition to Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and author of the Earl of Winchelsea's letter to the Tories calling upon the Protestants of Great Britain to Unite Heart and Soul in Addressing the Throne for a Dissolution of Parliament (London, 1851); Vol. 3, col. 1433.

62 Record, 23 June 1853, 24 August 1854.

63 Record, 2 May 1852.

64 Record, 24 January 1853.

65 Record, 6 June 1853.

66 L.C.M.M., June 1853, Vol. 18, p. 127.

67 And also at Broadway in Worcestershire, in Birkenhead, Bradford, Birmingham, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Northampton, Preston, Stone in Staffordshire (not an important Irish centre, but a stronghold of Dominican nuns), and Lutchford; with requests for more missions from Devenport, Kensal Green, Newport, Leeds, Stalybridge, York and St Helen's. Record. 27 March 1854.

68 See his speech to the Annual Meeting of the Church of England Scripture Readers’ Association. Record, 5 May 1852.

69 See the Society's Annual Report, Record, 11 May 1852.

70 These Fifty years, op. cit., p. 40.

71 Garratt, Evelyn R.: Life and Personal Recollections of Samuel Garratt: Part I: a Memoir; Part II: Personal Recollections of Nineteenth Century Religious History by himself: henceforth cited as Garratt, Memoir; or Garratt, Recollections (London, 1908).

72 Monthly letter, 1 August 1853, item no. 122, P.A.

73 Also the Hon. Captain Francis Maude, R.N., Treasurer to the Irish Society of London; Sir Thomas Blomfield, Bart; General Sir Peregrine Maitland; and sixteen clergymen, including Robert Maguire (see below) and, probably best known, the Rev. William Cadman of Marylebone.

74 Record, 16 January 1854.

75 Record, 23 June 1853.

76 One at Walsall, and the other at Downside, Somerset—to do battle with the English Benedictines; and in Durham, Stafford and Dorset, later in the same year. Record, 10 July 1854.

77 Report of Annual Meeting, Record, 5 May 1856.

78 M.M., L.C.M., 19 April 1852, Vol. 6, pp. 453-4.

79 Armstrong, J. E.: Protestantism and Popery: or, Two Sermons preached before the University of Dublin, 30 January and 6 February 1853 (London, 1853)Google Scholar; the quotations from The Confessional: its Wickedness: a Lecture by the Rev. John E. Armstrong, D.D., LL.D., given at the Town Hall, Brighton … (Brighton, 1856), p. 2.

80 Ibid., p. 9.

81 Bulwark, 1854-55, Vol. 4, pp. 211-13; 1855-56, Vol. 5, pp. 218-20.

82 The Rev. William Duncan Long, B.A., T.C.D. 1837, M.A. 1840, P.C. of St Paul's, 1855-59, Rector 1859; Crockford's Clerical Directory for 1860 (London, 1860), p. 387.

83 Kirkham, G., Scripture Reader to St Paul's, Bermondsey, to Bishop A. C. Tait of London, 22 September 1856, 105, ff. 7-16; December 1858, 111, f. 407-10; Tait Papers, Lambeth Palace.

84 Hansard, 1847, Vol. 92, cols. 678-86. For a kindred episcopal dislike of Irish clergymen, see Davies, G. C. B.: Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter 1788-1989 (London, 1954), p. 122.Google Scholar For bitter Tractarian abuse of the Irish influx into English livings, see Baring-Gould, S.: The Church Revival: Thoughts Thereon and Reminiscences (London, 1914), p. 49.Google Scholar

85 Garratt, Recollections, op. cit., pp. 231-2.

86 Ibid., p. 235; cf. L.C.M.M., December 1855, Vol. 20, p. 289.

87 Thus the Irish Church Missions: its annual income (excluding special legacies and appeals) was £45,000 in 1852, £37,000 in 1853, £39,500 in 1854, £27,500 in 1855, £31,000 in 1856 and £27,000 in 1857. Record, 5 May 1856, 14 May 1858.

88 See the Appeals for the Irish Society of London, and for the English and Irish Church Missions. Record, 4 August 1853, 19 September 1853.

89 See Captain Vernon Harcourt's account of the disagreement at the Protestant Reformation Society's 1858 Annual Meeting. Record, 6 May 1858.

90 M. C. Bickersteth, op. cit., p. 85.

91 On the City Mission's part in the appointment, see Weylland, J. M.: Valiant for the Truth: being the autobiography of John Matthias Weylland (London, 1899), pp. 152-3Google Scholar.

92 See Record, 5 May 1858.

93 Dallas, op. cit., p. 476.

94 Ranyard, Mrs Ellen (‘L.N.R.’), The True Institution of Sisterhood: or a Message and its Messengers (London, 1862), p. 13.

95 The Book and its Missions, June 1860, Vol. 5, pp. 161-3, July, pp. 193, 206, October, pp. 272-7; June 1861, Vol. 6, p. 155; July, pp. 187-9, 255-6; September, pp. 206-07; May 1862, Vol. 7, pp. 123-4, November, pp. 289-90; September 1863, Vol. 8, p. 226 et. seq.

96 March 1860, Vol. 5, p. 72; June, p. 168.

97 June 1858, Vol. 3, p. 138; July, p. 276; July 1863, Vol. 8, pp. 172-7; Ranyard, op. cit., p. 5.

98 See the account of a Biblewoman who won acceptance from the people of Jennings Buildings by nursing a dying Catholic, and ‘continued to minister there until the houses were pulled down. No cabbage stumps were ever thrown after her again …’ Selfe, Rose Emily: Life amid London Shadows … (London, 1906), pp. 90–92.Google Scholar

99 By the Rev. George Mansfield, of St Peter's Saffron Hill: Monthly Letters, 1 August 1853, item no. 124,2 January 1854, item no. 188, P.A.; Record, 1 June 1854,13 July 1854; Bulwark, 1855-56, Vol. 5, p. 77. A Scripture Reader from the City Mission was supported by the Alliance in 1853-54; M.M., L.C.M. 31 January 1853, Vol. 7, p. 47; 22 May 1854, p. 384.

100 On the ‘miniature St Giles's’ in Islington, see L.C.M.M., January 1843, Vol. 8, p. 11.

101 Protestant Magazine, November 1846, Vol. 8, pp. 140-1.

102 Maguire, Robert (1826-90). Born in Dublin, B.A., T.C.D. 1847, M.A. 1855, B.D. and D.D. in 1877; Alumni Dublineses, op. cit., p. 547; D.N.B.

103 Record, 11 November 1850.

104 Yeast, Chapter 10, pp. 175-8.

105 Record, 27 January 1853.

106 Monthly Letters, 1 August 1853, item no. 123 P.A.; Islington Protestant Institute Reports, 1847 YK 701(1), I.C.L.

107 Dessain, Stephen: The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman (London, 1961), Vol. 11, p. 350.Google Scholar

108 Oakeley, Frederic: MSS. Autobiography B, p. 20, Balliol College, Oxford.Google Scholar

109 Bulwark, 1851-52, Vol. 1, p. 239 L.C.M.M., February 1853, Vol. 18, p. 39.

110 ‘Copy of a Declaration read in St John the Evangelist's Church, Islington, on the mornings of Sunday, 29 January, and Sunday, 5 February 1854; reproduced in the Dally News, 20 February 1854, Guardian, 15 March 1854; cited in the L.C.M.M., October 1854, Vol. 19, pp. 207-08; Bulwark 1853-54, Vol. 3, p. 278; Maguire, Robert: Perversion and Conversion: or, Cause and Effect (London, 1854), pp. 172-3.Google Scholar

111 St Patrick and the Early Irish Church (London, 1854): rebutted in the Lamp, 15 April 1854, 25 November 1854, Vol. 7, pp. 227-30, 739-42; cf. the Bishop of Cashel at the annual meeting of the English Church Missions: ‘he believed St Patrick to have been a right good Protestant (Laughter)’, Record, 5 May 1856.

112 A True Catholic: The Priest's Curse: or, a Conversation between Pat, Tom and Mr N——suggested by a denunciation pronounced by the Rev. F. Oakeley, a Roman Catholic Priest (London, 1854), p. 5; cf. Bulwark, 1853-54, Vol. 3, pp. 104-07. There was another genus of pamphlet in the Protestant armoury, the testimony of converted Catholics: see Tracts No. 110, 141 and 628, issued by the Religious Tract Society.

113 Oakeley, F.: The Religious Disabilities of our Catholic Prisoners … in a letter to the Viscount Palmerston (London, 1854).Google Scholar

114 Kingsmill, Joseph (1806-65), B.A., T.C.D. 1831, M.A. 1836; chaplain to Pentonville Prison 1843-59; author of various works on prison reform. Burtchaell, op. cit., p. 471; Boase Vol. 2, p. 236.

115 Kingsmill, J.: Roman Catholic Chaplains to the Gaols: a letter to the Rt. Hon. Viscount Palmerston M.P. (London, 1854).Google Scholar

116 For a highly prejudiced account of the first court hearing, see The Times, 24 July 1851; for the Protestant moral, The Times editorial, 25 July 1851; cf. Tablet, 2 August 1851. The Protestant greengrocer responsible for the prosecution was presented with a piece of plate by the parish at the successful outcome of the case. YJ. 854 I.C.L.

117 Oakeley, Frederic: Statement of Facts relating to the Case of Mr William Weale, Master of the Poor School at Islington (London, 1851).Google Scholar

119 Weale, W. H. J.: A Popish Recusant's Reply to the Questions of a Protestant Proselytiser, or the statements contained in the Rev. R. Maguire's tract on St Patrick and the early Irish Church, proved to be reckless and false (London, 1853).Google Scholar

120 Pinks, W. J. and Wood, E. J.: The History of Clerkenwell (London, 1881), pp. 71–72.Google Scholar

121 See Davies, C. M.: Orthodox London: or, Phases of Life within the Church of England (London, 1874), pp. 108-22Google Scholar. It was virtually the last act of Samuel Wilberforce's life to prevent his delivering a series of ‘ultra-Protestant lectures’ in St Saviour's, Southwark: Wilberforce, R.: Life of the Rt. Revd. Samuel Wilberforce D.D. (London, 1882), Vol. 3, p. 421 Google Scholar. There is only one reference to what Maguire called ‘the superstitious follies of simple Irish Roman Catholics’ (Perversion and Conversion, op. cit, p. 124) in all his many tracts, showing that his theological rancour entirely prevailed over his social interest in the Irish per se.

122 Stock, Eugene: The History of the Church Missionary Society: its Environment, its Men and its Work (London, 1899), Vol. 2, pp. 80–81 Google Scholar; The Islingtonian: the Magazine of the Church Missionary Society College, No. 6, December 1902, pp. 41-42, Archives of the Church Missionary Society.

123 The Church Missionary Society made an annual grant of two hundred pounds to the Mission, ‘on the ground that it supplied such admirable training for the students in practical missionary work’, while the schools continued to be maintained by the Protestant Institute. Ibid.

124 The City Mission fund for the Irish was never more than three hundred pounds in the early ’50s.

125 Notably, the Bishops of Tuam and Cashel.

126 Garratt, Recollections, op. cit., p. 236.

127 These Fifty Years, op. cit., pp. 206-09.

128 L.C.M.M., November 1844, Vol. 9, pp. 162-5; September 1845, Vol. 10, pp. 195-200; April 1860, Vol. 25, pp. 113-48.

129 Like ‘Mr Crespi, until lately a Capuchin monk and missionary of the Propaganda at Rome … (who) has recently arrived in England, and is now zealously engaged as a Protestant missionary among the poor Italians in London … ’ Penny Protestant Operative, 1846, Vol. 7, p. 19; or Fr Donato Moscardi, a Neapolitan, M.M., L.C.M. 9 August 1850, Vol. 5, pp. 141-3, 10 February 1851, Vol. 6, p. 213; cf. Viney, Valdo: Evangelici Italiani esuli a Londra durante il Rlsorgimento (London, 1961 Google Scholar). I owe this reference to Dr D. Beales of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. On Catholic fears for the Italians, which caused them to build the church of St Peter's, Hatton Garden, see Tablet, 29 June 1850.

130 These Fifty Years, op. cit., pp. 203-06.

131 See the claims of the English Church Missions, Record, 9 March 1854, e.g. the Irishman who thought Our Lady a member of the Trinity, L.C.M.M. July 1841, Vol. 6, p. 109; or the Irishwoman who knew neither what sin was, nor the Lord's Prayer, L.C.M.M., March 1849, Vol. 14, p. 65; or the Irishwoman who thought that Paine's Age of Reason, so highly recommended by her Protestant neighbours, was the Bible, L.C.M.M., September 1854, Vol. 19, p. 201.

132 On the deathbed of a lapsed Catholic, who ‘was nothing at all, neither Catholic nor Protestant, for I have not been to worship. I don't know the time when, I can't read, and I don't know a great A from a bull's foot … ’ L.C.M.M., August 1841, Vol. 6, p. 143; cf. L.C.M.M., October 1850, Vol. 15, p. 243; or, the ‘miserable looking old Irishman, in extreme poverty and almost in a state of nudity', who declared: ‘I don't want no religious talking, don't care a —— farthing for no religion at all; soul! Never see it, don't care no more for heaven or hell as I do for a cat.. . ’ He swore horribly, intended, he said, to kill himself, and couldn't be bothered by the theological consequences. Oppenheimer, op. cit., p. 12; cf. pp. 6, 108.

133 ‘The Priest and the Biblewoman Nurse’, in Raynard, Mrs Ellen: Nurses for the Needy (London, 1875), pp. 238-46; or the female found ‘in a polluted and miserable condition … she has renounced Romanism … Her gratitude to me for the benefits received, appears to be unbounded … ’ L.C.M.M., January 1853, Vol. 18, p. 20; cf. April 1848, Vol. 13, p. 89; May, pp. 102-03.

134 L.C.M.M., April 1843, Vol. 8, p. 53.

135 L.C.M.M., November 1851, Vol. 16, pp. 250-1; May 1852, Vol. 17, pp. 114-16; The Book and its Missions, July 1863, Vol. 8, p. 176; Oppenheimer, op. cit., pp. 1, 44-45, 79, 96.

136 E.g. Robert Bickersteth's account of the St Giles's tailor, ‘a bigotted [sic] Roman Catholic', who was in receipt of thirty-five shillings a week, had no lack of employment or difficulty in obtaining a subsistence, was converted in an ‘enquirers’ class’ and became a Scripture Reader in Dublin, Record, 3 May 1854; cf. L.C.M.M., June 1853, Vol. 18, p. 126; Round the Tower, op. cit., p. 158.

137 Record, 8 September 1853.

138 Garratt, ‘The Irish in London’, op. cit., p. 204.

139 See Robert Baxter and Joseph Payne to the Annual Meeting of the English Church Missions, Record, 8 May 1857; Oppenheimer, op. cit., p. 54.

140 ‘Would you make them contented and peaceable in adversity, provident and frugal in prosperity, give them that blessed book which assures them that “godliness is profitable for all things, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come … ” Beamish, op. cit., p. 15; while of Armstrong's converts it was said that theirs ‘was not a mere change of creed’, even ‘their … respectable appearance testifying to the change’. Round the Tower, op. cit., p. 157.

141 Oppenheimer, op. cit., pp. 86-87; cf. L.C.M.M., June 1847, Vol. 12, pp. 154-5.v

142 L.C.M.M., March 1849, Vol. 14, p. 65; Oppenheimer, op. cit., p. 67.

143 Ibid., p. 14.

144 Ibid., p. 35.

145 Ibid., p. 67.

146 See the extraordinary story, L.C.M.M. September 1842, Vol. 7, pp. 161-4.

147 These Fifty Years, op. cit., pp. 151-66, esp. pp. 152-3; Hodder, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 165.

148 Mackonochie, Parchment book, 1857-62, 8 June 1859, P82/ALB/1, County Hall.

149 ‘Having read in the Cardinal's manifesto, that he intended to pay particular attention to the backslums in Westminster, I … attempted to bring it to his recollection, by sending up to his own house several samples of Roman Catholic thieves and prostitutes… I had had at my own house 844 Roman Catholic thieves and prostitutes; … and, as a large number of them told me their friends had paid their priests to make them Christians, I ventured to remark, that … he could … help some of these poor creatures … “ L.C.M.M., December 1852, Vol. 17, p. 300. Jackson was reprimanded for this attempt at co-operation with Roman Catholics: L.C.M.M., February 1853, Vol. 18, pp. 3-4.

150 ‘It is really heart-rending to see these poor creatures in extreme poverty…’ Oppenheimer, op. cit., p. 38 S.V.

151 Garwood, op. cit., p. 256-61, on ‘The pleasing Peculiarities in the Irish Character’; Garratt, ‘The Irish in London’, op. cit., pp. 217-18.

152 ‘Rome unmans a nation. It produces a slothful, indolent and improvident character … ’ Garratt, op. cit., p. 215 et seq.; cf. Pity for the Perishing, op. cit.,pp. 9, 196, 217-18: ‘Popery possesses no power to raise the squalid, outcast element of the population …’ Garwood, op. cit., p. 263.

153 Curtis, op. cit., pp. 66-73, and for the opposite opinion see Garratt, loc. cit.: ‘It is not Irish air in infancy, or Celtic parentage, that has made the Irish in London what they are … ’

154 Curtis, op. cit., pp. 71-72. See the Rev. John Clay, on a group of criminals: ‘But any one who has an eye for form may perceive, at a glance, that the generality of these unfortunate persons have small, ill-shaped skulls, with (and among the Irish particularly) “foreheads villanous low”.’ Clay, Rev. W. L.: The Prison Chaplain: a Memoir of the Rev. John Clay (London, 1861), p. 569, cf. Chambers, Robert: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (first edition, 1844: London, 1887), p. 209.Google Scholar

155 Garratt, ‘The Irish in London’, op. cit., pp. 214-15, 219-21.

156 See the London City Missionary on the Catholic tailor's wife who supposed ‘that the Missionary's prayers were the chief ones necessary for her salvation. So strongly did this delusion display itself that I felt bound to refuse to pray with her while it continued … ’ L.C.M.M., March 1842, Vol. 7, p. 65; cf. Armstrong in the Bulwark, 1853, Vol. 2, p. 269; ‘It is difficult to keep them from transferring to the minister the same blind faith which they have reposed in the priest’; Garwood, op. cit., p. 263.

157 L.C.M.M., March 1849, Vol. 14, p. 56, for the woman's story of the priest who ‘would never … cure anyone until he had had six or eight glasses of punch … ’; and ibid., p. 61, on the man reluctant to go to confession, whose father ‘made it up with the priest by presenting him with a trifle of money “to give me confession, and not require any prayers of me” … “Of course”, said he, “the priest was glad to make that bargain with him; they are so covetous for money”.’

158 L.C.M.M., May 1852, Vol. 17, p. 118.

159 So Ullathorne asked Newman in a letter written 3 September 1851, in the wake of the Oratorian's appeal for ‘an intelligent, well-instructed laity', but ‘not disputatious’, whether ‘the poorer classes especially the Irish, will they not think however erroneously, that it supports and encourages their love of religious controversy which some of them like to carry on in pothouses … ?’ Dessain, op. cit., Vol. 14, p. 345.

160 In Spitalfields: L.C.M.M., March 1852, Vol. 17, p. 56: ‘The Roman Catholics from Court came out and helped them in their wicked deeds, trying to excite the Jews the more against me’.

161 Lowder, Revd. Charles, Vicar of St Peter's, London Docks: Twenty-One Years in St George's Mission … (London, 1887), pp. 19-20; Mackonochie, Parchment book pp. 8-9, P92/ALB/1 (1862) County Hall. Mackonochie does not say that his assailants were Irish: as he was rabbled in Baldwin's Gardens, the inference is only too probable.

162 Tablet, 8 April 1843.

163 Vere, George Langton: Random Recollections of Old Soho (London, 1908), pp. 69–70. S.P.Google Scholar

164 See the case of the Donoghues, assisted in their passage to the United States. Penny Protestant Operative, 1840, Vol. 2, p. 78; and for yet another, L.C.M.M., December 1852, Vol. 19, p. 300.

165 Adey, Rev. John, Minister of the Union Chapel, Horsleydown, London: The Convert from Popery (London, 1851), p. 17; cf. L.C.M.M., July 1848, Vol. 12, pp. 153-4.

166 Mayhew, op. cit., Vol. 3, pp. 69, 72.

167 Ibid., p. 64.

168 Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 237.

169 See the story of Pat Rooney, whose Catholic doctor doubted the sincerity of his Protestant conversion, and told him that he was dying: ‘If I'm as bad as all that’, exclaimed the consciencestricken Patrick, ‘for God's sake send for Father Barge!’; also the tale of Irishmen who had no scruples about attending Protestant meetings and receiving alms: ‘When I remonstrated with some… (they replied), “Sure, and didn't they steal it from us at the time of the Reformation!” ’ Vere, op. cit., pp. 25, 26.

170 Cf. his agonized catalogue of ‘societies for the multiplication of regular and irregular agents of various sects, not only of additional curates, but of Bible-readers, catechists, lay missionaries, tract distributors and other innumerable … societies for publishing and distributing tracts and fly-sheets by bales, with that most gigantic living evidence of sterility ever given by heresy, the Bible Society with its millions of unfruitful volumes … Missionary Societies, Anglican or Dissenting, for every part of the world. And oh! more grievous still, more than one such combination… for waging war against the poor of Ireland, and perverting its starving inhabitants … Evangelical Alliances … promoters of ragged schools … Other school unions (who) hold out every enducement to our children, of gratuitous admission, efficient education and eleemosynary seduction to attend them … ’ Pastoral, 10 June 1858; reproduced in Tablet, 19 June 1858.

171 Round the Tower, op. cit., pp. 156-7. See my article in Recusant History, July 1969.

172 E.g. the ‘appalling discovery’ that Catholics in the district had been ‘made a prey of sectarian wolves … administering to the pinching wants of poverty … ’ London and Dublin Orthodox Journal, 6 March 1843, Vol. 12, pp. 151-2, and ‘Review of the Third Report of the St John's Association for the London City Mission’, Dolman's Magazine, October 1848, Vol. 8, pp. 251-4.

173 E.g. in Jenning's Buildings, Kensington, L.C.M.M., May 1857, Vol. 22, pp. 133-4; cf. Annual Report of St Giles and St George Bloomsbury, Ragged and Industrial Schools, 1849; ‘it was no uncommon thing for the windows to be broken, and the building in which we met to be covered with mud, while the persons of the teachers were assailed with missiles, and their ears pained with language of the most disgusting character … ’ also Bulwark, 1 April 1857, 1 August 1858.

174 See my Recusant History article, July 1969.

175 MacGregor, John: ‘Ragged Schools, their Rise and Progress’, in Motives for Missions, op. cit., p. 47.

176 Tablet, 24 January 1852.

177 Hutchison to Newman, 13 May 1851, May-July 1851 O.L., B.O.

178 Hutchison to Newman, 3 May 1851, May-July 1851 O.L., B.O.

179 Tablet, 3 July 1847.

180 See his Pastoral in the Tablet, 28 August 1858, and the Tablet's presentation of his case, 10 April 1858.

181 Cullen to Grant, 15 January 1858, 30 January 1858, Grant Papers, S.A.A.

182 See Edward Bagshawe's open letter to Cullen, 8 December 1857, published in Tablet, 10 April 1858; for an Irishman in England's complaint, Shee, William: A Letter to the Hon. A. Kinnaird, Treasurer of the Marylebone and Paddington Auxiliary Society for Church Missions to the Roman Catholics of Ireland (London, 1852).Google Scholar

183 See Bellasis, Edward: Memorials of Mr Serjeant Bellasis (London, 1893), pp. 102-03.Google Scholar

184 Colquhoun, J. C., English President of the I.C.M., in The Only Complete Copy of the Correspondence between the Rev. G. Webster, M.A., Chancellor of Cork, and the Revds N. C. Eade and A. R. C. Dallas, relating to the charge of bribery against the Irish Church Missions (Dublin, 1864), pp. 43–44 Google Scholar; cf. Colquhoun in the Ragged School Union Magazine, March 1864, Vol. 16, pp. 57-59.

185 George Webster, ibid., pp. 96-97.

186 See Hall, Samuel Carter: Retrospect of a Long Life (London, 1883), Vol. 2, p. 318.Google Scholar

187 Garwood, op. cit., p. 308.

188 Montague, C. J.: Sixty Years in Waifdom: or, the Ragged School Movement in English History (London, 1904), p. 273.Google Scholar

189 For the history of the Removals Acts and for their many abuses, see Maguire, John Francis: Removal of Irish Poor from England and Ireland … shewing the Nature of the Law of Removal (London, 1854)Google Scholar. There were five parliamentary reports in the ‘50s on the workings of the Removals Acts as they affected the ‘removable’ and ‘irremovable’ English and Irish poor, with a mass of social information on the condition of both: P.P. 1854, Vol. 17; P.P. 1854-55, Vol. 13; P.P. 1857-58, Vol. 13; P.P. 1859, Vol. 7; P.P. 1860, Vol. 17.

190 Thus although a third of the population of St Giles's was nominally Catholic, all the parochial ticket pensioners and all but one of the almshouse inmates were Protestant, even towards the end of the nineteenth century: Ticket Women Book, 1871-1890; St Giles's Almshouses and Outpensioner Charity: Casebook 1880-1900; Minutes of Almhouse Trustees 1874-83, St Giles's Almshouses.

191 Like the Bloomsbury dispensary, which cared for thousands of Irish every year, and even made a special study of the ague which plagued the harvesters from Kent on their return to St Giles's: ‘Annual General Meeting of the Bloomsbury Dispensary’, 3 April 1850; 1 October 1851; Dispensary Minutes Book 1835-60, St Giles's Almshouses. On the liberality of many Protestant clerics, see Hollingshead, op. cit., p. 258.

192 St Patrick's Parish Report 1861, p. 12, S.P., wherein the parish priest thanks a nondenominational ‘Society for the Relief of Distress’ for money given to relieve the Catholic poor.

193 The Oblates of Mary Immaculate of the Tower Hill mission applied to the Mansion House committee of 1875, for aid to their starving East End parishioners, before the local Protestant clergy could organize; the former thereby won control of the money and the latter had to approach them for their share. Cooke, Rev. R., O.M.I., Sketches of the Life of Mgr de Mazenod, Bishop of Marseilles and Founder of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (London, 1882), Vol. 2, p. 287.

194 See M'Cree, The Moral Condition of London, op. cit.: ‘O Lord, our God, save London from the fate of Sodom, Nineveh and Babylon!… el seq., p. 16; cf. his Nineveh and London: a Sermon (London, 1875).

195 M'Cree, Wilson, George: Twenty Years in St Giles's: a Sermon preached in the Bloomsbury City Mission Hall, Moor Street, St Giles's, 13 December 1868 (London, 1868), p. 5.Google Scholar

196 Cf. the Catholic attack on Ragged Schools, and on the obvious bias of their ‘anti-Papalist’ patrons Canterbury and Shaftesbury, Lord Kinnaird, Admirals Hope and Harcourt, Champneys, dimming, etc.; Lamp, 25 November 1853. Shaftesbury's patronage was given sinister overtones by, for example, his twenty pounds to George Mansefield, Vicar of Saffron Hill, in his struggle with local slum Catholicity: Record, 13 July 1854. There is no discussion of the bitterness of the Catholic response to Shaftesbury, by his various biographers, who of course describe his attitudes to them: Hodder, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 324-41; Vol. 3, pp. 1-24.

197 Miss Mason: Kate Geary: or, the Irish in London; serialized in the Rambler, 1851-52. The novel was published in 1853, but the British Museum's copy was destroyed by a German bomb, and others have not apparently survived elsewhere.

198 Rambler, March 1852, Vol. 9, pp. 196-9.

199 Tablet, 6 May 1854; cf. Anthony Hutchison's attack on Shaftesbury in his letter on the Reformatory Schools Bill, Tablet, 8 July 1854.

200 Tablet, 7 January 1854.

201 Garratt, ‘The Irish in London’, op. cit., p. 206.

202 See my forthcoming article in the January 1971 issue of the Downside Review.