Bristol and the Irish Potato Famine

Though the Bristol public had raised a generous sum for Irish famine relief in 1847, the prospect an increased flow of largely poor and Catholic Irish migrants into the city drew a less enthusiastic response. 

Mainly from Cork, and Waterford, some used Bristol merely as a temporary staging post for America, but others stayed. Their arrival coincided with a time when anxiety about Papal influence, public health and Chartism was at its height. Generally speaking, Bristol’s post-famine Irish population was overwhelmingly Catholic and largely unskilled. They seemed to have had a wider spread of jobs than, say, their counterparts in York, but generally speaking, the men were partly concentrated in labouring and portering jobs, and partly at the most impoverished and least skilled end of the clothing and building trades.