LIVERPOOL'S "LITTLE IRELAND."

Otago Witness, Issue 2569, 10 June 1903, Page 71

LIVERPOOL'S "LITTLE IRELAND."

Dublin in Lancashire— such is a certain quarter of Liverpool. No other city m England, not even London itself, has so large an Irish population, for while there are estimated to be 120.000 people from the Green Isle in the Mersey port, the metropolis contains little ,more than halt that number of Irish. And this huge concourse is composed in the main of the poorest of the poor, mostly herded together in tt "Little Ireland" which, alike for extent, squalor, and misery, is WITHOUT A COTJVIERPART.I.V THE KINGDOM. Glasgow's Milesian settlement resembles it in some particulars, but wipei fie' ally, from the bricks and mortar standpoint, it Ls altogether different. Liverpool's "Little Ireland" is the most Irish of the Irish colonies in England. It is the district of which Scotland road is the promenade and market. That rath*r gloomy artery gives the note of the neighbourhood. Thd names over the shops, the contents bills of liish journals before the newsagents' establishments, the religious statues and pictures in some of the windows, the hawkeis at the corners of streets behind trays containing a few oranges or onions, the bare-footed women and children (numbers of the females are bareheaded as well, while absolutely the only garments on some of the awful figures are a shawl and one skirt), and, above ali, "Paddy's Market," transport you in imagination to the byways of Dublin. "Paddy's Market," however, is unique ; there is nothing exactly like it anywhere, liven its namesake in Glasgow is magnificent by comparison. The Bon Maiche of Squalid Liverpool, it is virtually an old clothes exchange, a cheap and nasty edition of Rag F ar. On Saturday afternoon a considerable part of its daik and sordid interior is occupied by scoies of women — there are about 150 in all — who sit side, by side on forms, w ith snrill heaps of ca«t-off clothing on the stones at their feet. And an extraordinary concouise of merchants thsy foim Here and there one sucks away stolidly at a short, duty clay pipe, indifferent, to tlm w oiidfci ing gaze of the chance, visitor, while THE MAJOR] 1Y II Wr M.ITHTR II IT NOR BOX NTT on their much-oiled hair. The women are, in fact, "tatter 8 ," the city's g'orified chiffoniers Th°y go fiom house to house in the morning in quest of old rlothes. and offer then spoil for s d-e here in the afternoon, paying a nomn.il rental of one p n nny per square yard for their "pitches." That they are mostly Irish the .slanginij matches, which are frequent and free, abundantly testify. The wares on sale are every whit a= remarkable as the vendors, since they look as if tbey had como from an inferior marine ' storei in a poor neighbourhood^ But if they have long since seen their b»^t days, they are very cheip, or, at al! events, very low 'priced. There is a tradition that you can buy a suit for fifteen pence ; but the market report, if one were published, would run something like this: Good supply, but poor demand White shirts, clean boiled, fair to middlu^,, 3d ; collars were stiff at Id ; f-kirts remained slack at from 2d to 6d ; boots were dull at fiom 3d. Truly, nothing fetches much, and foi th-s best of all possible reason* — ■ TIIE HABirUES HAVE VI.RY LITTLE TO I SI 1 INI). Off Scotland road lie great masses of | wretchedness. It X a depressing region altogether — a congeries of the meanest streets, ,whose pavements are dotted with | ugly ashbins overflow ing with gaib.ige, j among winch bedraggled loosters scratch and peck, and of unlovely courts, some of I them strewn with firewood, which womon and girls chop aiid bundle in the open air and afterwards sell, all for a wretched pittance ,of about tenpence a day. Along street after street are series of Livei pool's "caves," thov^ dark, damp, and dismal cellars in which whole families drag out a wretched existence. Some of them are ' so bad tint if a man kept a donkey or other 1 animal in them, he would inevitably ba i piosecuted foi cruelty. The number of 1 p.nons supposed to live in a subterranean

dwelling is, two; but four, and even six, may sometimes be found in it. And the poverty in this noisome slum is abysmal. Any day, for instance, you may see a girl or woman enter a publichouse with a teapot in her hand. People who ought to know better are prone to draw the worst possible conclusion from this common spectacle ; they think that the utensil has been pressed into service to .fetch beer or spirits. Nothing of the kind. It contains tea, and the object in taking it to a licensed house is to beg some boiling water, because there is not, in many cases, a fire at home. In the puilieus of Scotland road thousands of the Irishy live an animal life. Deaths are frequent* and they aie generally followed by a good rousing wake, notwithstanding that SUCH ORGIES ARE STERNLY DENOUNCED by the Roman Catholic Church, and that inanv a pnest has dispersed the "mourners" at the- point of his stick. On entering a room not long since a rent collector found a coffin up-ended in one coiner. It contained the corpse of a man, with a short pipe stuck in the mouth. The body was ready for the wake, which was to take place at night. At the foot of the coffin sprawled the bereaved and sorrowing wife, who was hopeless' y chunk as a result of having sought consolation from the bottle by, her side. Disgraceful scenes frequently take place at wakes, though very little is heard of them. While the niouvners were dancing ,iound a corpse — that of a murdered man — soni" yeais b.ick, the floor gave wav beneath tlipm, and the whole lot, dead bcclv included, fell into the cellar. On another occasion a post moitem debiut h -v.is kqifc up all night and we'l into tli»_* following <lav without anvtLi'ii occurring to mar the harmony of the proceedings. When, however, the undi.* taker's men came on the scene A CEVPRM. riCITT \\ AS IV mOGRFSS One of the deceased's bi others, ha\ing been "knocked out,'' was th^n prone underneath the offin, ,-md the rest of the paity were hammeiing at one another in Donnybrook Fair style Of course, the newcomers endeavoured to restore peace ; but in that they did rot succeed till the coflin — renting, by tli9 way, nma couple of orange boxes — had b-en knexked over That d.d bring the disputants '-omewhut 1o tlirir senses. A.s soon a- the departed's list eaithlv tenement w-Mit to th- floor with a, bang, they all paused, and then, going from one extreme to thp oth r -r. lx-c.imc of a sudden filled to ovei flowing with the mi'k of human kindness, and .solemnly swore an etirnal friendship. Again and a.gain, too, incidents have hap pc-ned illustrative of tha dancers of holding wakes. It is not many months since, to take a single case in point, that one of the candles surrounding the corpse of a baby fell on the drapeiy beneath, fitting it on fire, with the remit tli.xt only after considerable difficulty was the body recovered fiom the flames. A collection is often made for the v. ake and the .subsequent Jjneial ; but in many instances, thanks to insiitance, too niuv.li mon-\v is available The Scotland rend district is on." of the be^t m Kn_;land for life offices, though tin 1 - is so more Bnr\usK or gambling in Dh.vur than because of the legitimate birsine^s done here Besides the people — and there are many English ninon* them — who insure their relatives, fnendg, and even enemies, there are man and women who traffic in policies. These body birds not only effect an insurance on the life of any promising subject, such as some poor wretch whose hacking cough is as sweet music to their ears, but take up policies on which the original holders aro no longer ablo to pay the premiums An old woman who died not long back in tha workhouse was insured for about £300, uot, as may bo supposed,

by one speculator, but by several; and a still larger sum was paid in respect of the death of a man who w u& for years in receipt of parish relief. Some traffickers lay i»ut a considerable sum every week in premiums on lives in w hich they have no incurable interest whatever. Another foim of speculation carried on largely in "Little Ireland"' is ing-1.-NOLIsII AS WELL IRI^H CAPITALISTS ARE IZXGAv.KD in this lndustiy, which is al"=o supported by people of both nationalities — dockers, sailors' "wives, etc. The usual rate of interest exacted i-> l£d or 2d in the shilling per week, so that when a seafarer's wife is obliged to borrow all the while her husband is absent from horne — which may be, say, for three weeks— «lw has to pay 4£d or 6d in the shilling on part of the loan. One man used to lend in snwll sums £10 per week, and on that insignificant capital ho had an income more than sufficient to keep him. Like all of Ins class, he had losses occasionally, some of his "clients" ignoring their liabilities when the time for lepayment came.; but these were not very venous, because he never hesitated to resort to brute force in dealing with his Creditors. A certain female usurer was long notorious for this sort of thing, though she took her revenge by deputy. If a man failed to pay her what lie owed, some of her hired bullies casually ran against him down ut tho docks, and gave him a decidedly ungentle hint that Tie had better wipe off the f-core. Did he continue obdurate, there was a ' hospital job," and he was in it. KELICiIOrS FKELINU HUNS HIGH in "Little Ireland," though the Orange and Roman Catholic processions are very tame nowadays. Formerly they were always attended by disturbances, while there were many incidents in between to relieve the monotony of life in the Scotland road division. Some years ago a certain cellar was used as a band room. One night an emissiry of the other tide broke into the place, and when the demonstrators came for their property they found that the big drum was a melancholy wreck and the cornets, trombone^, and other instruments had been reduced to scrap brass. But though the old antagonism between Orangeman and Roman Catholic still exists, and may blaze out again on either of the great festivals, it does not come to the surface as it did in bygone days. With all these phases of life in "Little Ireland" there co-exists A DEGREE OF MISERY THAT DEFIES DESCRIPTION or analysis. Nearly all of the men in the settlement are unskilled labourers, of whom Liverpool probably has more in proportion to population than Uny other city in the kingdom; and, as there are singularly few manufactories within its borders, practically the whole army is dependent on the docks, where, of course, work fluctuates enormously. In general, even when trade is fairly" good, the supply of labmir exceeds the demand ; when, it is at all bad the market is glutted, and a dozen men are clamorous for every job. But the nornvil condition cf Squalid Liverpool — of which Little Ireland, after all. it must be remembered, is only a smill part— is terrible, worse in some respects than that of any other part of the country.