Irish in Britain in the First World War

[RichardOS]

again..pretty, pretty interesting..without even considering that there would be a hint of any precise answer, I presume the Irish "characteristics" of the Regiment might have been slightly higher in August 1914 (amongst their pre war TA base)...no doubt Londoners would dominate at the start of the war but equally presume that there was an Irish ancestry/connection present amongst quite a number (perhaps that's covered above).

 

Of course, the recruitment hype did play on the presumed "Irishness" of the London Irish Rifles (eg drives fronted by John Redmond/Pat MacGill etc) but suppose the attached cartoon may reflect a truism of the time..

 

thanks.

[Tomo.T]

May I recommend J. F. Lucy's excellent book ' There's a Devil in the Drum', ( Naval and Military Press Ltd.) A true classic ! 2 Bn. R.I.R.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, RichardOS said:

....I presume the Irish "characteristics" of the Regiment might have been slightly higher in August 1914 (amongst their pre war TA base)...no doubt Londoners would dominate at the start of the war but equally presume that there was an Irish ancestry/connection present amongst quite a number (perhaps that's covered above).

 

 

Richard. I would also have expected the first cohort to exhibit evidence of stronger Irish characteristics, however the data does not really support this assumption. The three charts below segregate the men into three groups of 1,000 each, based on the chronological sequence of their Army Number. In theory men with a low (early) Army number would mostly be pre-war enlistments. While there are some very small hints at Irish genetic atavism such as rising B-C, the strong English H  and the six pillars still dominates the first Cohort. 

 

Either they were dominated by men whose Irish ancestry was derived from an Irish mother and and English father, or their Irish genes came from 2 or 3 generations back and the surname again obscured through English fathers and grandfathers. If the latter is the explanation we then start to ask how 'Irish' one can be if three of the four grandparents are in fact English. 

 

Every sample does have names that are undoubtedly Irish  - there are five men named Murphy in the 2nd Cohort  for example - however the samples remain dominated by 'English' distribution characteristics. I have done the same exercise with the Tyneside Irish and we see very similar patterns. 

 

Any mistakes are mine. MG

 

 

[RichardOS]

I'm gripped..

 

Obviously, I'm not trying to make the London Irish Rifles sound "more Irish" than they actually were/are... as mentioned in an earlier point, as with most people, I'm interested in the human connection - as fascinating, is that the Second World War drew men from Co Cork/Kerry/Dublin/Monaghan/Tipperary/Donegal etc as well as from Co Down/Antrim/Armagh etc and scores would find their way to join up with the London Irish Rifles to fight in Iraq,Tunisia and Italy.  

 

On one of the your points, my own "nearest" Irish born direct ancestor was born in 1856 in Longford, eventually moving to London during the 1890s - my surname stems from a Limerick man, born around 1818, who moved to London in the late 1840s - if pressed, I definitely would define myself as "English"...of course, for various reasons, the story of Irishmen/women coming to London, and helping to build a great city, is one that has evolving resonance.  

 

best wishes

[Guest]

Three more charts to ponder.....

 

1. LIR  BWM data (as before).....................3,433 names

2. Connaught Rangers 1914 Star data .....2,943 names - benchmark Southern Irish

3. Grenadier Guards BWM data ..............15,634 names - benchmark English

 

The Connaught Rangers data should be an extremely good benchmark for a southern Irish regiment. The 1914 STar data is chosen as it will represent men already serving as well as Reservists in 1914.

The Grenadier Guards data is useful as the Guards tended to divert Scots into the Scots Guards and Irish into Irish Guards. Also the formation of the Welsh Guards plundered the Grenadier Guards ranks of anyone who had been near a leek. The net effect was a largely ethnically English group, although it still does contain a few Murphys. It should provide a good 'English' benchmark.

 

Connaught Rangers' data shows some distinctive features:

Weak letter A

The strong Irish C, distinctly stronger than letter B. 

Flattish F,G,H

Weak I,J but strong K (incidentally Kelly was the most common name)

Relatively stronger O

Weaker S and W than English samples.

The Celtic M dominates. This time at 17%. The dominance of this feature varied slightly across Ireland and was more pronounced in the north where Ulster Scots surnames were dominant.

 

MG

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, RichardOS said:

On one of the your points, my own "nearest" Irish born direct ancestor was born in 1856 in Longford, eventually moving to London during the 1890s - my surname stems from a Limerick man, born around 1818, who moved to London in the late 1840s - if pressed, I definitely would define myself as "English"...of course, for various reasons, the story of Irishmen/women coming to London, and helping to build a great city, is one that has evolving resonance.  

 

 

In the remote chance that you have not already read it, I would strongly recommend:

 

Irish Migrants in Britain 1915-1914 by Roger Swift 2002 Cork University Press.

 

It is a fascinating read and more importantly it is extremely well researched and heavily referenced. The other book worth reading is The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith. MG

[Guest]

Last charts

 

1. Connaught Rangers 1914 Star.................2,943 names

2. Royal Inniskilling Fus 1914 Star................1,750 names

3. Grenadier Guards BWM.........................15,634 names

 

Note how the Celtic M spike is more prominent with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers: 23.1% including 13.9% with names prefixed with "Mc". The group also retains the distinctly Irish rise and fall of B,C,D .... yet the same sample retains the 'English staircase' of rising E,F,G,H.

 

 

Also

1. London Irish Rifles BWM roll........3,433 names

2. Connaught Rangers 1914 Star.....2,943 names

3. Irish Guards 1914 Star roll..........1,546 names

 

Edited 17 December , 2016 by Guest

[David Filsell]

"May I recommend J. F. Lucy's excellent book ' There's a Devil in the Drum', ( Naval and Military Press Ltd.) A true classic ! 2 Bn. R.I.R."

•  

A book that should need no recommendation - quite the best work on the service in the Great War by a ranker and one of the best works by anyone at any rank,  As you say a true classic

Edited 17 December , 2016 by David Filsell

[Guest]

Some further data that might challenge some preconceptions.

 

The forename most distinctly associated with Irish born is the name 'Patrick'. Among the 21,087 men who served in Irish Regiments who were known to be born in Ireland some 1,807 men, or 8.6% had 'Patrick' as a forename.  By contrast among the 6,469 English-born who served in Irish regiments, only 70, or 1.1% had 'Patrick' as a forename. The difference is nearly eight-fold.

 

A cross check with the 1914 Star data for the Connaught Rangers reveals 12.8% had a 'Patrick' as a forename. However this contrasts with the data from the Royal Inniskilling Fus 1914 Star, (a regiment that recruited predominantly from the Ulster Protestants pre-war) which shows just 0.5% of men had the forename 'Patrick'. In this case the predominantly Catholic regiment had proportionally 25 times more men with a forename 'Patrick'. At risk of stating the obvious, the forename 'Patrick' is clearly predominantly associated with southern Irish regiments and men of a Catholic faith.

 

Only 0.4% of all men on the London Irish Rifles' BWM medal roll had 'Patrick' as a forename. This raises some interesting questions. If the incidence of dominant Irish forenames such as 'Patrick' is extremely low among the London Irish Rifles even among the first Cohort, it might be explained by a dominant recruiting policy titled towards men of Irish protestant extraction. My speculation.  

 

Is there any evidence to support this? To my mind it would be the only possible explanation why the LIR data is so far from the bulk of 'Irish' data. It still wouldn't explain the absence of the Celtic M spike, particularly as it is significantly more pronounced among the Ulstermen. MG

 

Edited 19 December , 2016 by Guest

[squirrel]

On 17/12/2016 at 12:09, RichardOS said:

I'm gripped..

 

Obviously, I'm not trying to make the London Irish Rifles sound "more Irish" than they actually were/are... as mentioned in an earlier point, as with most people, I'm interested in the human connection - as fascinating, is that the Second World War drew men from Co Cork/Kerry/Dublin/Monaghan/Tipperary/Donegal etc as well as from Co Down/Antrim/Armagh etc and scores would find their way to join up with the London Irish Rifles to fight in Iraq,Tunisia and Italy.  

 My grandfather on my mother's side was Irish, Daniel McMahon. My uncle, Mother's brother, East Surrey Regt., was drafted to Italy just after the landings at Salerno in 1944 and ,together with a number of other men from different regiments, was drafted again to the London Irish Rifles. On their way to Monte Cassino, they discovered that while none was Irish, being mainly from Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London, they nearly all had Irish or Irish sounding surnames.

 

27 minutes ago, QGE said:

S

 

Only 0.4% of all men on the London Irish Rifles' BWM medal roll had 'Patrick' as a forename. This raises some interesting questions. If the incidence of dominant Irish forenames such as 'Patrick' is extremely low among the London Irish Rifles even among the first Cohort, it might be explained by a dominant recruiting policy titled towards men of Irish protestant extraction. My speculation.  

 

Is there any evidence to support this? To my mind it would be the only possible explanation why the LIR data is so far from the bulk of 'Irish' data. MG

 

This thought had crossed my mind too...

 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, squirrel said:

 This thought had crossed my mind too...

 

 

Unfortunately this would not explain the absence of the spike in Celtic M which is particularly strong in Ulster and gets stronger still the further north one goes. Among the Cameron Highlanders 30% of men on their 1914 Star medal roll had names beginning with M. The point is that it is extremely difficult to mistake known Celtish-born groups with English-born groups unless one finds a concentrated group of expatriates.

 

I have lived in New York and Hong Kong and both have expatriate communities with rather strident claims to Irish and Scottish heritage respectively. The Caledonian Ball was a social highlight in Hong Kong. One wonders if the home countries had anyone left. The romantic ideals have a rather magnetic force and I wonder if the volunteers of 1914-15 grasped at the slimmest of connections to join a unit with some other national identity, or whether they were economical with the truth.

 

If men 'qualified' as being 'Irish' on the basis of just one Grandparent's genes, one wonders how neglected the other 75% of the gene pool must feel. Nationality is a highly subjective and emotive subject, particularly when borders have been crossed. 

 

My perception is that the London Irish Rifles were not particularly Irish during the Great War regardless of how far authors might like to stretch definitions. I would be delighted to be proven wrong. For anyone who is remotely interested, the Tyneside Irish data exhibits extremely strong English characteristics and is almost indistinguishable from benchmark English data from across England (not just Northumberland), despite its proximity to a celtic border and proximity to large concentrations of Irish expatriate communities in the industrial heartlands of Co Durham. The dilutive effects of conscription can not be the only explanation as half of all enlisted men were volunteers. I suspect the propensity for expatriate Irishmen to volunteer in 1915 was about as strong as it was in Ireland and the shortfall was filled with men who had decreasing links with Ireland as time marched on.

 

The known Irish-born population in England peaked in 1861; the generation whose sons and grandsons were of Military age in 1916. If the Irish folklore and traditions were passed on by the parents, I suspect some of the less palatable truths of the ordeals of being Irish in Victorian England were also passed on, particularly those concentrated in the urban slums. Decades of discrimination by the English towards the Irish in England cant really evaporate overnight. 

 

It is interesting that the Irish rejected the idea of incorporating the Tyneside Irish into the 16th (Irish) Division. MG

[squirrel]

Yes, more London than Irish certainly appears to have been the case and replacements from further afield as the war went on.

[RichardOS]

Thank you - and sorry to Ronan for hijacking the thread.. his book is very good by the way.

 

No real science in anything I say here but just to put some of the early years of London Irish Rifles' illustrious history into slight context...

 

When a group of Irish residents met in Central London under Chairman, The Marquis of Donegall to form "The Corps of Irish Gentlemen at Arms", they stated that "the qualification of membership, being a connection with Ireland by birth, marriage or property".. that being said, the attached excerpt of its first membership roll shows that it was not particularly representative of Irish residents living in London (which by then included one of my my great, great, grand Dads working as a Arsenal Labourer in Woolwich).

 

Its first 40 years of existence, life in the unit was pretty mundane - marksmanship and annual camp and occasional public duties are mentioned and a few members travelled independently to fight in the Franco/Prussian war - until the London Irish sent several hundred men on detachment to South Africa in 1900 and then, in 1908, on the formation of the Territorial Force, they became part of the London Regiment.

 

At the outbreak of war, 1/18th Bttn was at annual camp, with just about all the men coming back to London to collect their bounty of five pounds in gold. after seven months of training, and accepting various reinforcement drafts, 1080 London Irish Riflemen travelled to France on March 9th 1915. At that time, one of the London Irish Rifles' very own "Patricks" from Glenties, stated, with a certain amount of poetic licence, that, "rumour has it that the Colonel (Concannon) and I are the only two real Irishmen in the Battalion.." 

 

1/18th's war time trail is well known, with nearly 900 men serving with them being killed in France and Belgium.

 

After authority was received for the 2nd Battalion to be raised on August 31st 1914, its full complement was completed after 5 days - 1,050 having enlisted. Ernie May provides a snap shot of some of the men who joined up with the London Irish Rifles during September 1914, some of the names being familiar as they later joined up with 1/18th Bttn during 1914/15:

"The Commanding Officer was Lieut Col Matthews (to be replaced by Lieut Col Murphy before enbarkation for France in June 1916) ; the Second in Command, Major Scott Allan and the Adjutant, Captain Curtis. The eight company commanders were Captain Sladen, Payton, Archer, Harding, Freyer. Thrussel, Newton May and Beamish. Among the junior officers, I recall the brothers HA and HS Lane, Skevington, Jacob, McClure, de Ferrars, Wanklyn, Barnett, Barber, Ashby, Champion, and the three Ds – Deacon, Dale and Dircks. The Medical Officer was Captain Burrows."

 

2/18th suffered over 100 deaths in France, Greece and Palestine before being disbanded in July 1918 - a 2nd Battalion was reformed in April 1939.

A third battalion, 3/18th was raised in 1915

 

It's clear that following the "Big Push" of Sept 1915, the London Irish Rifles' exploits started to be utilised for recruitment purposes, as illustrated by the poster of John Redmond and TP Connor's (MP for Liverpool Scotland - ie Scottie Road area) visit to London in November 1915... Ed Harris explores elements of the "Irish dimension" in his book.

 

Plenty more to be discovered on this subject...

 

best wishes

 

 

 

Edited 19 December , 2016 by RichardOS

[Guest]

2 hours ago, RichardOS said:

 

At the outbreak of war, 1/18th Bttn was at annual camp, with just about all the men coming back to London to collect their bounty of five pounds in gold. after seven months of training, and accepting various reinforcement drafts, 1080 London Irish Riflemen travelled to France on March 9th 1915. At that time, one of the London Irish Rifles' very own "Patricks" from Glenties, stated, with a certain amount of poetic licence, that, "rumour has it that the Colonel (Concannon) and I are the only two real Irishmen in the Battalion.." 

 

 

The 1914-15 Star medal roll shows among the 828 men, names such as Boyle, Dillon, Donovan, Fitzpatrick, Hogan, Horan, Kelly, Moyne, Murphy (3), O'Connor (3), O'Neill (2) etc. perhaps suggesting there were more than just two  with Irish heritage. MG

[Guest PEW]

Many thanks for the very informative thread. It raises a question for me which I hope is OK to post here?

 

My grandfather was John Fenton, Private 120072 Machine Gun Corps. Family legend has always said that he was born in Cork although I've never been able to prove it. He was a coal miner living in Abertillery in Monmouthshire in 1917.

 

Graham Sacker from the MGC Museum told me that, " He was originally conscripted into the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, but on or about 29/9/1917 he was compulsorily transferred to the MGC whilst still in the UK, before having gone abroad. A period of specialist training would have followed, either at Belton Park near Grantham, but most likely at Clipstone Camp near Mansfield, so that the earliest time that he could have been posted overseas would have been about the end of November 1917 - but possibly later." I queried the conscription with Graham but he's confident about it from the transfer record.

 

So if John was conscripted in 1917 (or earlier) and I understand it correctly that Irish conscription didn't begin until April 1918, would I be correct in thinking he couldn't be Irish born?

 

Many thanks

 

Paul

[RichardOS]

1 hour ago, QGE said:

 

The 1914-15 Star medal roll shows among the 828 men, names such as Boyle, Dillon, Donovan, Fitzpatrick, Hogan, Horan, Kelly, Moyne, Murphy (3), O'Connor (3), O'Neill (2) etc. perhaps suggesting there were more than just two  with Irish heritage. MG

Indeed, Pat MacGill was certainly on a flight of fancy with that comment. Add Cunningham to the listing there..