Single Irish Women & Domestic Service in late 19th Century New York City

As many as two million Irish people relocated to North America during the Great Hunger in the mid-19th Century. Even after the famine had ended, Irish families continued to send their teenaged and 20-something children to the United States to earn money to mail back to Ireland. In many immigrant groups, it was single men who immigrated to the US in search of work, but single Irish women, especially young women, came to the US in huge numbers. Between 1851 and 1910 the ratio of men to women arriving in New York from Ireland was roughly equal. Irish women often took jobs in domestic service, drawn by the provided housing, food, and clothing, which allowed them to send the bulk of their earnings back home to Ireland.

Joining me to discuss Irish immigrant women in the late 19th Century is Irish poet Vona Groarke, author of Hereafter: The Telling Life of Ellen O'Hara.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The transitional audio is “My Irish maid,” composed by Max Hoffmann and performed by Billy Murray; Inclusion of the recording in the National Jukebox, courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment.

The episode image is: “New York City, Irish depositors of the Emigrant Savings Bank withdrawing money to send to their suffering relatives in the old country,” Illustration in: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, v. 50, no. 1275 (March 13, 1880), p. 29; courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; no known restrictions on publication.

Additional Sources:

• “Immigration and Relocation in U.S. History: Irish,” Library of Congress.
• “The Great Hunger: What was the Irish potato famine? How was Queen Victoria involved, how many people died and when did it happen?” by Neal Baker, The Sun, August 25, 2017.
• “The Potato Famine and Irish Immigration to America,” Constitutional Rights Foundation, Winter 2020 (Volume 26, No. 2).
• “Immigrant Irishwomen and maternity services in New York and Boston, 1860–1911,” by Ciara Breathnach, Med Hist. 2022 Jan;66(1):3–23.
• “‘Bridgets’: Irish Domestic Servants in New York,” by Rikki Schlott-Gibeaux, New York Genealogical & Biographical Society, September 25, 2020.
• “The Irish Girl and the American Letter: Irish immigrants in 19th Century America,” by Martin Ford, The Irish Story, November 17, 2018.
• “Who’s Your Granny: The Story of Irish Bridget,” by Lori Lander Murphy, Irish Philadelphia, June 26, 2020.
• “The Irish-American population is seven times larger than Ireland,” by Sarah Kliff, The Washington Post, March 17, 2013.
• “Irish Free State declared,” History.com.

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