why did whole families move

[ewblack]

Looking for some help in understanding why whole families moved from Ireland to Scotland in the years about 1889 to 1901.

When I say whole families I mean husband & wife with their children, brothers & sisters with their partners & children, parents & aunts & uncles all moving from Ireland between these years to live in Scotland.  I have come across this in both my father's family from co Antrim & my husband's father's family from co Down.

Liz

[aghadowey]

One of the biggest reasons was probably employment. It was quite common for young men to go over to Glasgow/Greenock area from Ulster and once settled arrange for friends to get jobs in either the same place or in the area. Wives and family would then follow or the man might return to Ulster for his bride.

[fifer1947]

Lack of employment AND the terrible poverty which followed.  It was move or starve.  The following might help you understand.

"Irish seasonal and migrant workers were a highly mobile and flexible workforce, vital to Britain's booming 19th-century economy and economic revival after the Second World War. The traditional perception of the Irish navvy is by no means the whole story, but there were many who made a living in this back-breaking way.

In 1871, Thomas Ryan was a railway navvy living in the shanty town of Jericho, at Batty Green, near the Ribblehead viaduct in Yorkshire, and working on Midland Railway's Settle to Carlisle line. He had his family with him, and the birthplaces of his children, from Gloucestershire to Scotland, show how mobile they had to be. More than 2,000 navvies, mainly Irish and Scots, lived at Jericho between 1869 and 1875. "

http://www.movinghere.org.uk/galleries/histories/irish/working_lives/working_lives.htm

[ewblack]

Hi thanks for trying to help me understand the reason behind them all moving.  I found out that every male member worked in the local mines around the Auchinleck, Ayrshire area.  There have been quite a number of them killed in mining accidents.  So it probably was for employment that they moved.

Liz

[scunscan]

Eviction was another reason why a whole family & neighbouring families all moved together it was either freeze & starve or move.Before the 1890s only a small minority of Irish farmers owned the land they worked.