3-070-900 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Irish harvesters on their way to England, 1881. 'This party of men and women travelling on foot along the road in Connemara from their native district, to reach...the nearest seaport for passage to England, was sketched by our Special Artist in the West of Ireland...many poor people yearly [come] over to this country for the purpose of harvest work, arriving by hundreds at Liverpool, Bristol, or Glasgow, and walking all over the agricultural shires to find temporary employment in the service of our farmers...they save what they earn...And having, in a very good harvest, made perhaps £10 or £12, they cross the Channel again...Mr. Bright [said that] under favourable circumstances, they might become a very admirable part of the population of any country...Every year, as soon as they have set their potatoes...there begins a constant stream of these harvesters, on the roads leading to the seaport towns, where there is a special service to carry them to their destination. As the holdings are so small that they cannot support the large families who live on them, the younger members of the family go on these harvesting expeditions...It is their hope to return in autumn, relieved of the one burning anxiety of the tenant class of Ireland - the rent'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.