19th Century Emigration to the North Americas
Hospitals
A list showing some of the thousands of emigrants who received support and assistance in Saint John Emigrants Hospital, New Brunswick, between April 30th 1848 and August 1st 1849. The 'sick return' recorded such information as the patients' name, age, place of birth, circumstances of disability, date of death or discharge, time spent in hospital, where they had sailed from, where they landed, and the date they had arrived in port. Most common ailments recorded were: Dysentery, Fever, Destitution, and Venereal Disease.
One of the first immigrant hospitals set up was in Canada. Around the 1830s, an average of 30,000 immigrants were arriving annually in Québec City, at a time when major epidemics were raging on the European continent. An outbreak of Asiatic Cholera (often referred to as Cholera Morbus), a strain not encountered in Europe before, attacked the British Isles between 1831 and 1832. The disease was then transported to America and Canada by infected Irish emigrants.
Reports that people with the dreaded disease were about to arrive via the St. Lawrence River immediately prompted the colonial authorities to set up a quarantine station on Grosse Ile, an island located in the middle of the river. The station dealt not only with repeated outbreaks of cholera but with the deadly typhus epidemic of 1847-1848. Again, the main victims of this disease were the Irish immigrants. A monument on Grosse Ile reads:
'In this secluded spot lie the mortal remains of 5,424 persons who fleeing from Pestilence and Famine in Ireland in the year 1847 found in the America [sic] but a Grave.'
A note in the summary of one of the hospital registers at Grosse Ile claims;
In 1847 the deaths in the Hospital were 3,226, the interments 5,424. The difference is made up of those who died on vessels in Quarantine, or upon landing, but before they could be entered in the hospital books.'
Passenger List
Section from a passenger list: These ledgers were used in the early part of the nineteenth century.
From 1820 the United States required ships' captains to lodge lists of passengers arriving at American ports with the collector of customs. In Ireland, captains were not required to keep such lists. Those that do survive owe their existence to the ship owners, who kept such registers for business purposes.
Not surprisingly, therefore, very few of these passenger lists have survived.
Not surprisingly, therefore, very few of these passenger lists have survived.
The few that have survived can vary enormously in the details they record. As a general rule, those passenger lists compiled earlier in the century are more informative than those compiled at a later date. Earlier ones record given name, family name, age, occupation, religion and the specific area from which the emigrant came. For example, (for illustration purposes only), they would list 'Patrick Joseph Boyle, aged 44, agricultural labourer, Mary Ann Boyle, his wife, 42, seamstress, their children, Thomas, 15, apprentice blacksmith, Richard, 12, apprentice carpenter, and Harry 10, student. Roman Catholic, from Gleno, Co. Antrim'. Later lists can be very cursory: - 'Pat Boyle, wife and children, from Ireland, labourer'.
Section from a list showing those who emigrated from Coleraine, County Londonderry, for the years 1833 and 1834. This list recorded the names, ages, year of departure, townland or street of last residence, religion and the port to whence they migrated. The abbreviations under the 'religion' column are as follows: E.C. Established Church (Church of Ireland) P. Presbyterian R.C. Roman Catholic S. Seceder (a type of Presbyterianism).
American and Canadian clerks were also assigned to note the names of incoming passengers as they left the ship. The end result was that many immigrants lost their names altogether since clerks tended to write down an anglicised or phonetic version of the name pronounced by the immigrant. After all, there were a significant number of immigrants who could not spell their own name. Mairead Byrne became Mary Burns, Pierce Cochrane became Peter Cockran and any one with the name Stewart risked ending up as a Stuart, Steward, or Stuert.
