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Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Immigration


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The First Famine Ship Arrives at Grosse Île

The Syria, the first ship to arrive during what Québécois call the “Summer of Sorrow,” lands at the Canadian quarantine station in the St. Lawrence River, just north of Quebec on May 15, 1847.

When the authorities in Quebec hear the news of ships arriving with sick passengers, they quickly set up Grosse Île as a port of entry and quarantine station at which all ships are required to dock before moving on to the mainland. The island had dealt with epidemics before. In 1830, about 30,000 immigrants arrived in Quebec, and two-thirds were Irish. These huge waves of immigration were concurrent with cholera epidemics in Great Britain and Europe.

Areas in the west of Ireland – mostly Mayo, Donegal, and Galway – are experiencing potato crop failure. In fact, the crop fails to various degrees all over the country throughout the 1830s, though no one is sure exactly when the blight that caused the successive crop failures of 1845-49 arrived in Ireland. In 1847, 100,000 Irish people travel to Grosse Île to escape starvation, unaware of the hardships they will encounter upon arrival.

The Syria, the first “coffin ship,” named for their crowded and deadly conditions, arrives on May 17, 1847, the ice still an inch thick on the river. Of the ship’s 241 passengers, 84 are stricken with fever and 9 died on board during the Atlantic crossing. The first victim dies on the day the Syria arrives. Her name is Ellen Kane, a four-year-old from Kilmore, County Mayo.

With the hospital equipped for only 150 cases of fever, the situation quickly spins out of control. More and more ships arrive at Grosse Île each day, sometimes lining up for miles down the St. Lawrence River throughout the summer. On these coffin ships the number of passengers stricken by fever increases exponentially.

The island is ill-equipped, to say the least. Hastily built, the quarantine hospitals lack proper sanitation, supplies, and space to accommodate all the sick patients. Many of the doctors dispatched to Grosse Île have never even seen the effects of cholera let alone treated it, and all are overworked. Being taken to a quarantine hospital is soon viewed as more of a death sentence than an opportunity to get better.

Between 1832 and 1937, Grosse Île’s term of operation, the official register lists 7,480 burials on the island. In 1847 alone, 5,424 burials take place, the majority are Irish immigrants. In that same year, over 5,000 Irish people on ships bound for Canada are listed as having been buried at sea.

Today, the island is a National Historic Site that serves as a Famine memorial. It is dedicated in 1996 after a four-year-long campaign to protect the mass gravesite.

The Grosse Île Celtic Cross, erected by the Ancient Order of Hibernians in 1909, bears an inscription in Irish commemorating the victims of the epidemic and condemning colonial rule. In English, it reads: “Children of the Gael died in their thousands on this island having fled from the laws of foreign tyrants and an artificial famine in the years 1847-48. God’s blessing on them. Let this monument be a token and honor from the Gaels of America. God Save Ireland.”

(From: “When 40 Irish Famine ships anchored at Grosse Île quarantine station in 1847” by Aliah O’Neill, IrishCentral, http://www.irishcentral.com, May 31, 2023)


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The Broad Street Riot

The Broad Street Riot, a massive brawl between Irish Americans and Yankee firefighters, occurs in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 11, 1837. At the time of this particular riot, nearly all of Boston’s firefighters are volunteers.

Boston is a major center for immigration in the 19th century due to its large seaport. Nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment is strong, especially among working-class men whose jobs and wages are threatened by an influx of poor Irish immigrants. On Broad Street, it is common for groups of nativist Yankees to vandalize Irish homes and attack lone Irishmen.

At about 3:00 PM on Sunday, June 11, 1837, Fire Engine Company 20 returns to their station on East Street from a fire at the Boston Neck. Some of the men go straight home from there, however most stop at a nearby pub for drinks. The pub is apparently operating illegally as it is a Sunday and, in Massachusetts, blue laws are then in effect.

The men have just emerged from the pub “in a more or less bellicose mood,” when they collide with a crowd of about a hundred Irishmen who are on their way to join a large funeral procession on Sea Street. Nearly all of the firefighters pass through the crowd without incident, however, when 19-year-old George Fay, who has reportedly had too much to drink, insults or shoves several of the Irishmen, and a fight breaks out. Fay’s friends rush to his aid, but the firemen are outnumbered and are badly beaten. Their foreman, W.W. Miller, orders them back into the firehouse.

By some accounts, the Irishmen then take over the firehouse. According to others, the crowd had begun to disperse, and the matter might have ended there had the foreman not “lost his head completely.” In any case, Miller orders his men to sound the emergency alarm. First, they roll their wagon into the street, ringing the fire alarm bell. Then Miller sends men to ring the church bells, summoning all the fire engines in Boston. According to the Boston Transcript, Miller then runs to another firehouse, shouting, “The Irish have risen upon us, and are going to kill us!”

Company 9, responding to what they think is a legitimate fire alarm, arrives just as the funeral procession is turning onto New Broad Street. Their horse-drawn wagon veers into the crowd, scattering and knocking down the mourners. The Irish assume the assault is deliberate, and another brawl erupts. As more fire companies arrive, and Irishmen pour out of nearby houses into the street to help their friends and relatives, the fight escalates into a full-blown riot. Before long, an estimated 800 men are doing battle with sticks, stones, bricks, and cudgels while at least 10,000 more urged them on. Protestant workmen come running to the aid of the firefighters, while underfoot, injured and unconscious men lay sprawled on the pavement.

Outnumbered, the Irish are defeated and driven back to their homes. That is when the home invasions begin. A “gang of stout boys and loafers” raid nearby houses, breaking doors and windows, and in some cases beating the occupants. Furniture and other possessions are destroyed and thrown into the street. Some Irish families lose their homes altogether.

After raging for about three hours, the riot is quelled when Mayor Samuel Atkins Eliot calls in the National Lancers, a newly formed cavalry company, and some 800 other members of the state militia with fixed bayonets. Among them are the Montgomery Guards, a short-lived Irish American infantry company which is forced to disband the following year due to the extreme nativist and anti-Catholic sentiment in Boston.

No immediate deaths result from the violence. Many people suffer serious wounds, however, and there is no nearby hospital to care for them. Given the lack of hospital and police records, the number of people who eventually die of their injuries cannot be determined. Thousands of dollars in damage are done to property belonging to some of the city’s poorest inhabitants.

The militia, being composed nearly entirely of Yankees, arrest 34 Irishmen and 4 Yankees. A grand jury indicts 14 of the Irishmen and all four of the Yankees. At the municipal court trial, a Yankee jury acquits the four Yankees and convicts four Irishmen, three of whom are sentenced to several months of hard labor.

Three months later, in September, Mayor Eliot establishes a professional, paid fire department, with all new hires requiring the approval of the mayor and aldermen. The Boston Police Department is established the following year.