When we think of emigration from Europe, we think of crossing the Atlantic to North America or going to Australia. For the Irish, immigrating to Scotland would have been just as difficult as if they had moved to a new continent.
The Irish started to arrive in Dundee, Scotland around 1825, lured by the prospect of regular employment in the growing jute industry. Within 30 years, the Irish community of Dundee had grown to 14,000.3
This quote from James Myles, a local Dundee author, in Rambles in Forfarshire, 1850, gives us a taste of how the Irish immigrants were perceived by the Dundonians:
A great proportion of them are Irish. Drawn hither by the work they obtain at the spinning mills; and it is to be deeply lamented that the vast hordes that have migrated to the Scouringburn are composed of the most debased and ignorant of their countrymen. Their vile slang and immoral habits have seriously injured the poor population of Dundee.2
The first Irish McHughs to move to Dundee, Scotland were brothers John and Patrick McHugh. They both married in Dundee and worked in the jute mills all their lives. And their families continued to work in the mills for generations, almost a century.3 Like most of the Irish immigrants, John and Patrick probably already had experience in the textile industry in Ireland and most likely came from one of the counties that produced linen and yarn.4
The Irish settled where the jute mills were located in Lochee, Dundee, also known as Little Tipperary. 5 The McHughs, like the other Irish immigrants and unlike most Dundonians, were Roman Catholics. The Church of Scotland has been the dominant religion in Scotland since the Scottish Reformation of 1560 and the Roman Catholics would have been looked upon with disapproval and suspicion.
It is not surprising that the Irish Roman Catholics lived in the same area and worshipped at the same Catholic churches in Lochee for decades. I can find registrations of marriages, baptisms, and deaths for the McHughs for generations. The McHughs remained steadfast Catholics during their century of living in Dundee and only branched out into other religions once they arrived in Canada in 1912.
The Irish were also seen as carriers of disease, such as typhus, also known as ‘Irish fever.’ Of course, this was due to unsanitary and crowded living conditions in which they lived.6
In 1904, the Lochee Harp Football team was formed by Lochee Irishmen to provide recreation for the poor immigrants. Even today, Lochee is considered the Irish quarter of Dundee.7
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/immig_emig/scotland/perth_tayside/article_1.shtml#:~:text=Irish%20workers%2C%20lured%20by%20the,Dundonians%20had%20grown%20to%2014%2C000., accessed April 11, 2021.
- Google books, Rambles in Forfarshire, Myles, James, Edinburgh, A. and C. Black, 1850. Thanks to Angus Folklore, The Dundee Irish and Other Catholics, Coleman, Keith, September 9, 2017, http://angusfolklore.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-dundee-irish-and-other-catholics.html, accessed April 22, 2021.
- It is assumed that Patrick McHugh emigrated to Scotland with his brother, John, as Patrick married in Dundee and died there, as did John.
- BBC Legacies, Perth and Tayside, Little Tipperary, The Irish in Dundee, http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/immig_emig/scotland/perth_tayside/article_1.shtml#:~:text=Irish%20workers%2C%20lured%20by%20the,Dundonians%20had%20grown%20to%2014%2C000., accessed April 11, 2021.
- John Gray Centre, A brief history of emigration & immigration in Scotland, https://www.johngraycentre.org/about/archives/brief-history-emigration-immigration-scotland-research-guide-2/, accessed April 22, 2021.
- Wikipedia, Lochee, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochee, accessed April 24, 2021.