Oh phew, I was stressing I may upset someone.
I can't find my ggg grandparents definite details, so really trying to think out of the box, but using facts from history in the area.
We KNOW the industrial revolution and poverty and slums were across the UK. BUT the families in Ireland were suffering the most.
SO, if you are in the Kelly family (me), I may have 20 people - uncles, cousins, dad, etc that can leave Ireland and work, some could have gone to Scotland, some to England. BUT the ones who went to England, if Mike was in Manchester, I wonder if more of his family went further into England all the way to Liverpool depending on their skills.
So the families of Longford, Roscommon, Strokestown are ALL in the same are, imagine if 2 of my Kellys were teens, they went with a family of Greens who have the parents and tiny kids, they had the community support because they knew each other but they also built a relay network too - the family in Liverpool give the money to the cousin in wherever until the money reaches Manchester and then goes to Ireland.
Families were desperate - they were starving and their babies were dying from hunger. But our ancestors were clever, with or without formal schooling and literacy, we had incredible ancestors who HAD to be problem solvers - their lives depended on it. We look at what they achieved when they lived abroad. I noticed random families stuck with my Kelly ancestors when they came to AUstralia, but now I think it was their culture to support each other, they had to. Imagine being in a new country trying to build a house, with 8 children, farm for food etc. NO one person could do that, I feel the families would have supported each others farms too, especially if the wife is having a few days off to have a baby
What if someone was sick? Work had to be done, so they helped each other.
By having the families in Roscommon or wherever, there were lots of families, I wonder if they mixed up the families to spread the risk for wages, some strong young men go to the coal mines in England, but some of the older (haha 40) and people with young children go to Manchester. So some of the Greens, the Kellys etc went mining, some of the Greens and Kellys went to Manchester. They were ALL the same community and came down to a core of a few families - even if its ten families, its still a small amount of families.
BUT.... when we mix the families, we may need to use an open mind to know that the 5 Green family members on the census may NOT be husband, wife etc, it could be brother, sister, cousin, sister in law etc. It means we need to scrutinise the census to find the connections. There would definitely be families who are husband, wife and children but not all of them, there could be an extra sister or brother of the family head on the census. It would have been a way to spend time as a family and community, keep up with whats happening in the families and home in Ireland and around England but also giving their families the best opportunity to survive. Some jobs would have received higher wages, but come with more danger. So basically spreading the risk and putting the stronger people in jobs where they could earn more. Maybe creating a relay line of workers so getting the money from the south of England to Ireland was NOT the hours of travel, but simply visiting the next town, then that person took the money to the next village, so no real down time from work.
