The Irish migration of the nineteenth century stands at a strategic point in the history of Wales. It coincided with the onset of industrialisation, and the intellectual process of coming to terms with a new social order was confused by the sudden acceleration of Irish immigration. Awareness of a crisis in public health dawned just as Irish immigration reached its peak. It is little wonder that the two were conflated: at least one newspaper referred to an ‘Irish Plague’. Public health inspectors concentrated their attention on the areas of Welsh towns that were identified as Irish, while the sporadic riots and disturbances that greeted the arrival of Irish migrants reached a peak around 1848. Frequent disturbances within Irish communities – usually relics of factional fights and feuds from the old country or the result of over-exuberant celebrations of St Patrick's Day – had the further effect of fixing a reputation for disorderly behaviour on the whole immigrant population. They were also identified with criminal behaviour – an ascription that was less unfair than many of the other charges, but which had its roots (like most crime in the period) in poverty and insecurity rather than in racial characteristics. Hostility resurfaced in the later 1860s when the Irish became identified with Fenianism and revolution and further attacks were made upon them as people who stood outside the pale of respectable Victorian society.

But most of these views were inaccurate or at least exaggerated. While it is true that the Irish migration was highly weighted towards poor and working-class people, it was never entirely the kind of lumpenproletariat that writers such as Engels imagined and feared. There were always skilled workers as well as the destitute and always a small middle-class element in the migration. Nor were the Irish the only residents of the central areas of towns in which the poor and migratory population was increasingly concentrated. The so-called ‘Little Irelands’ were in fact dense conglomerations of Irish, Welsh and English people, although it is true that the Irish were to be found in disproportionate numbers in these areas.

The overwhelmingly hostile environment in which Irish people found themselves led many to make assertive public displays of their respectability.