Chapter 5: A Diverse and Volatile City, 1820-1860

There is no doubt that the of the 1820s and 1830s was changed significantly by the infusion of such large numbers of foreign immigrants during the following two decades, but exactly what (or who) changed is very difficult to pinpoint. Clearly, Baltimore had a huge impact on the immigrants and they in turn had altered, to one degree or another, the direction of the city’s mainstream culture and society. Baltimore’s antebellum Irish immigrants are a rather obscure group. Many could not read or write and few of those who could left any personal records. A rather private and family- oriented group, more comfortable with informal associations rather than regular clubs and societies, the history of Baltimore’s Irish-Americans is seldom recorded in minute books or journals of proceedings. No local Irish-American newspaper or newsletter survived for any length of time and few examples of these publications have survived. The formal institutions that attracted Baltimore’s Irish men and women were almost all linked to the , but since the church was not a specifically Irish organization, especially in where Anglo- American and German Catholics played an influential role, even these records are disappointing. Unfortunately, the views of other Baltimoreans regarding the Irish immigrants are plentiful and most are uncomplimentary. Irish men tended to be sneered at or pitied as almost hopelessly ignorant peasants and tools of crafty Roman Catholic priests. They were almost all stereotyped as formidable men with their fists--especially when they had been drinking. Descriptions of Irish brawls, presented with a mixture of amusement and disgust, were grist for even the city’s most respectable newspapers. Unfortunately, the stereotype had some foundation in fact. While there seems little doubt that the great majority of Irish men were individuals of generally sober character who worked hard and remained devoted to their families, too many of them were not. Adult Irish males (both the foreign born and their American-born descendants) composed about ten percent of the city’s adult male population, but during many years the almost one-third of the residents of the city jail were Irish. Likewise, one out of three inmates in the Baltimore Alms House was Irish--most of them women with dependent children whose husbands were dead or who had abandoned them. Irish women, thousands of whom found places as servants in Protestant homes or chambermaids in the city’s hotels, undoubtedly made a better impression of hardworking, honest and loyal employees, yet even their image was tarnished by the several hundred sad female alcoholics who wandered the streets, yelling, picking fights, and sleeping in doorways. For those who wished to view the Irish as a hopelessly degraded and inferior ethnic group, there were many striking examples to be seen during the 1840s and 1850s, but overall the picture was actually quite different. No one has yet attempted a detailed comparison of Baltimore’s Irish community with those in the other large cities of the northeast, but there is good reason to believe that the Baltimore Irish were a good deal better off and better established in their community than the Irish of cities like , , or . Baltimore had a much larger group of established middle and upper class Roman Catholics, including a number who

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