1The “exile” motif which was traditionally attached to the emigration experience of Irish people has recently been the subject of scholarly scrutiny1. With a few notable exception2, however, little attempt has been made to consider how far the characterisation of emigration as exile has seriously misrepresented the experience of Irish women, who have dominated the migrant flow at most periods during the last two hundred years, a most unusual situation in Europe. Their numbers – over three million in the nineteenth century alone – would render their historiographical invisibility profoundly unjust, but what is known of them powerfully suggests that not only were their motives for leaving Ireland and their levels of preparedness for doing so different from those of men, but also that they generally integrated more quickly and successfully with the host society, and worked with considerable determination to provide both the means for their kin – and particularly their sisters – to follow them, and to ensure the continuance of the family homestead in Ireland.

2Modem scholarship has confirmed the perceptions of literature and folklore in showing that the prospects facing Irish girls in the later nineteenth century were dismal indeed, and showed little real improvement with the coming of the new State. A convergence of economic and cultural imperatives had created the paradoxical situation whereby Irish women who stayed in Ireland faced a life of domination by fathers, brothers, and – for the minority who were able to marry – husbands, and yet were free in one important respect: there were few impediments to their leaving. It was the lack of economic opportunities rather than flight from poverty which was responsible for the vast numbers of young girls and women – often in sibling groups of two, three or more – who went to America and increasingly after the turn of the century to Britain; they were in large part turning their backs on a rigid rural patriarchy which was eventually destroyed by the demographic imbalance thus created. In many parts of rural Ireland the elderly bachelor farmer became a sad indicator that Irish women were choosing emigration or the socially derided single State rather than any condition of life on the land. Irish girls exploited the humble educational facilities available to them with considerable determination3 in order to prepare themselves for employment markets overseas and, having reached their destinations, lost no time in creating the channels which would render emigration a fourth dimension in Irish life.

3Irish women’s work in Britain has been, and continues to be, concentrated in a fairly narrow range of occupations, with substantial over-representation in both Professional Services and Service work (classes II, IV and V), clustering in the former area preventing the formation of a strong working class stereotype such as attaches to Irish males; this pattern is largely accounted for by the very high numbers of Irish-born nurses and, to a lesser degree, teachers, in this country. Trained and intending nurses, midwives and teachers were exceptions to the wartime restrictions on Irish immigration imposed by the British government, and indeed were recruited in large numbers. The 1951 census revealed a doubling of the numbers of Irish-born people since the last census in 1931, and a very strong representation – 22, 4% – of Irish women in the professions in comparison with Irish men and indeed with British women. 11, 4% of the total number were nurses and midwives. Heavy recruiting into what had come to be seen by British women as a poorly-paid and increasingly undesirable occupation persisted and increased during the 1950s at a time when the annual rate of emigration from Ireland became a “haemhorrage from the land”. It was not simply a matter of unemployment in Ireland and opportunity in an expanding British economy: this has been shown to be too simple an exposition of the conditions affecting the decision to emigrate from Ireland (...)4 Certainly the complexities of Irish supply and British demand are even greater in the field of nursing and midwifery, and less amenable to analysis by the theorists of the single labour market. A very considerable “over-supply”5 exists which has yet to be explained, although many factors suggest themselves: the strong socialisation of Irish women into the “caring” professions; the narrow range of occupation available to them in Ireland; the influence of Irish Catholicism and the education System in channelling girls into a profession ideologically reconcilable with their ideal future roles as wives and mothers; and, not least, the relatively much higher status of nursing in Ireland.

4Whatever the reasons, far more Irish women wish to be nurses than could ever be employed in Ireland, however spectacular an economic transformation took place there; the 1971 Census6 tables reveal, for example, that there were 31,000 Irish-born nurses in Britain – some 12% of nursing staff – at a time when there were 19,000 in Ireland itself. The rate of advancement was also very high compared with their compatriots’ fortunes in other occupations in Britain; in the mid-1960s, they constituted 11% of senior nursing staff in England and Wales7. How do these women regard their emigration from Ireland and their lives in Britain? To coin a phrase, did they jump or were they pushed?

5In the summer of 1991, a small study of Irish-born midwives based at Arrowe Park Maternity Hospital on the Wirral Peninsula in the North West of England was conducted8. Only one of the hospital’s fifteen Irish-born midwives declined to be interviewed; in addition, two Irish women who had moved on from the hospital to positions of very great responsibility in North-Western health authorities, and one retired midwife who had come to England in the special circumstances of World War II were interviewed. Many of the questions asked in the course of these lengthy interviews were similar to those in Bronwen Walter’s 1989 study of Irish nurses in London, and the responses provide intriguing comparisons with her findings9. The Wirral sample was predominantly middle-aged; the youngest was 38, the oldest (retired) member aged 70, with fourteen aged between 43 and 59: this reflects the massive emigration of the years from 1945 to 1961, and also the intense recruiting of nurse trainees of that period. This age distribution is in marked contrast to that of Walter’s sample, in which 67% were under 26 years of age. Ten of the seventeen respondents came from farming families, and twelve of the twenty-six counties and one in the North were represented: three respondents came from Donegal, two each from Roscommon and Cavan, and one each from Mayo, Sligo, Offaly, Monaghan/Louth, Limerick, Waterford, Kerry, Dublin and Down, this distribution giving eloquent testimony to Ireland’s post-war rural depopulation. Farms varied in size, and fathers often pursued supplementary or complementary occupations such as fishing, poultry rearing, timber-dealing or seasonal migration: fathers in non-farming families were mostly tradesmen and small businessmen on rural communities. Reflecting the very low representation in Ireland of married women in employment, only one respondent’s mother had worked other than on the farm after marriage. Prior to their marriages, mothers had worked in only a very narrow range of occupations, i. e. domestic service, book-keeping or helping on the farm; one had been a nurse and one a teacher.

6Although six of the respondents had left school at the age of fifteen or less, beyond which schooling in Ireland was not free, nine had continued their education to the age of eighteen, and one to seventeen. Only one, the youngest, had gained her nursing qualification in Ireland. With the exception of one other, who had left Ireland to marry an Englishman, only entering nursing much later, and two whose original purpose in leaving had been to act as companions to their sisters who were nurse trainees, the decisions to emigrate and to enter the profession were inextricably bound together. Most cited the difficulties of entering nursing in Ireland:

there were long waiting lists, (...) fees, (... the costs of books and uniforms (...); you had to know the right people to get in (...): if you were a doctor’s or a solicitor’s daughter you were all right, or from one of the big farmers (...).

7Those girls from poorer backgrounds whose career options were already limited by their necessarily truncated education found further barriers to advancement in that Irish hospitals also required trainees to have Leaving Certificates, while provincial hospitals in Britain felt it worth their while to make up any educational deficiencies. This combination of circumstances Walter describes as leading to emigration (...) not specifically sought but inevitable (...); (Women were) pushed out of Ireland by lack of opportunities;10 Only one of the Wirral midwives, however, recalled any sense of expulsion: (...) Where I came from (Achill Island, Co. Mayo), all the youngsters had to go (...); there’s nothing, no work (...); I would have liked to be at home (...).

8Most respondents, while conceding that they “probably would have” or “might have” stayed had ample training and employment been available, clearly did not interpret their move as expulsion:

It just seemed like something to do at the time.
I was impatient.
I wasn't prepared to join queues (...) and anyway we’re inclined to travel.
A family friend who was a midwife talked about it (...) it whetted my appetite.

9For some, leaving Ireland was clearly part of the attraction:

Well, I had three sisters nursing in England, and two more working in the NAAFI, and one brother (...); like all Irish women, I thought I’d take off (...); I didn’t want to marry young (...).
We all had itchy feet, and my mother encouraged us. It wasn’t exile, no, that’s not true (...), the Irish will always go, whatever happens (...).
I wouldn’t marry a farmer (...), not on your life (...), you’d have to battle the old mother.

10When invited to recall and explain their reasons for emigration, a majority of the midwives were markedly nonplussed by the implied description of themselves as emigrants; despite the huge and continuing significance of emigration in Irish life, the term carries strong connotations of failure even while the process continues to involve the country’s best-qualified and most enterprising people as well as those less likely to achieve success elsewhere:

I never regarded myself as emigrating, never mind being an exile (...); to me, England was just an extension of Ireland.
I just don’t feel that there is this big gap (...); it was just like moving hospital (...).

11 None could recall emigration being discussed at school, a curious silence considering the inevitably high proportion of pupils who would emigrate; the youngest respondent was quite definite: Of my contemporaries only 25-30% are left (in Dungarvan, Co. Waterford), but emigration was never discussed in school, by staff or anyone.

12Given the special economic and cultural niche occupied by nursing and midwifery in Ireland, and by its Irish practitioners in Britain, surprisingly few – only five of this group had “always” wanted to nurse or recalled an early sense of vocation; others entered on impulse, or almost accidentally, attracted by the social life enjoyed by sisters or acquaintances, or as second-best where families could not afford the desired university education. Several indicated a sense almost of inevitability, nursing and teaching being the only careers ever mentioned at school, or because of strong family tradition: my mother was a nurse, my aunt also (...), my daughter is a nurse, my cousin is Head of Midwifery at Addenbrookes; two of my sisters are nurses, one in the States (...). Most had decided on midwifery as a specialty to advance their careers, especially those wishing to work abroad, but came to value it for the high degree of professional independence it brings with it in this country:

I am a practitioner in my own right: I can admit, discharge, prescribe; it is the pinnacle of the nursing profession.
It is one area where we know as much as the doctors (...), and I enjoy knowledge (...).

13For some, nursing was part of a plan, deliberately pursued, to improve their long-term prospects, to avoid a lifetime of domestic service, or of assisting, unmarried, on family farms: I left with determination to succeed, to not fail, I disciplined myself (...); if I’d stayed, I’d be there now, not married, with nothing (…).

14A high proportion of the Irish nurses studied by Walter in 1989 reported the paradoxical experience of being welcomed and valued in their working life while being the subject of racist discrimination outside of it; the Wirral sample, while recalling, in many cases, periods of severe homesickness after their arrival in this country, remembered not only the “intense loyalty” and “comradeship” of other Irish girls – always present and often in the majority in the training schools of the 50’s and 60’s – but also were unanimous in their praise of the kindness and friendliness of the English trainees towards them: There were only two English girls out of twenty-seven in the class (...) but they were lovely, so kind, so nice (...); they took us home to their people (...). Only two of the seventeen recalled any subsequent incidents, either inside or outside their hospitals, which could be described as racist or discriminatory, although, since the resurgence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in 1969, several admitted feeling the need, reported also by Walter’s respondents, to avoid being identified as Irish in public after particular incidents of violence, most notably the killing of Lord Mountbatten at Warrenpoint in 1979. A majority considered that being Irish was actually an advantage in nursing; patients assumed that Irish women were good nurses, often regarding them also as angelic (...), particularly dedicated (...), several also asserted that, because of the high proportion of senior posts occupied by Irish women, especially in midwifery, Irish nurses often benefitted from positive discrimination in appointments and promotions, an impression that would obviously be difficult to test!

15If the rate of intermarriage between the immigrant and host populations is one of the best indicators of integration11, then the Irish midwives of the Wirral are a very integrated group indeed: against a national endogamy rate for Irish-born females of 54%, and Walter’s finding of 59% amongst the London Irish of her sample, only one in this group had married an Irishman; twelve married Englishmen and one a Scot. Assimilation to the norms of British society in terms of family size is also complete although almost all the sample came themselves from very large rural families of eight or more. These second-generation Irish children have almost all had third-level education. Among this group of Irish women there was certainly very little sign of the self-indulgent communal morbidity12 of the exiled, but has their successful integration, as their comfortable middle-class lifestyles, their professional status13, and their educational attainments of their children, been purchased only by a costly assimilation – the loss, rejection or suppression of their Irish identity? The area of the study designed to examine management of identity revealed a pattern of considerable complexity. All the women involved had maintained contact with their homeplaces in Ireland by return visits to varying, but always remarkable, degree over so many years: thirteen still “went home” at least once a year – some for four or more visits annually. Contact with siblings in Britain and America were also frequent and regarded as extremely important. Fourteen of the seventeen listen to the Irish radio regularly, five on a daily basis, and almost all attend concerts of Irish music given in the area.

16Considering that only one of the sample had an Irish husband, the extent to which a sense of Irish identity had been transmitted to the children was remarkable: a majority would describe this sense as “very” or “extremely” strong; the daughter of one and the son of another have gone to live in Ireland, many visit Ireland independently of their parents or support Irish team sports. Very few of the midwives had had any specific policy during their children’s early years to bring this about, although virtually all felt it entirely desirable for them to “know their heritage”. The informants found it considerably more difficult however to categorise their own identity with a word or a phrase; although a majority described themselves as “Irish of course”, or ‘very Irish”, several also wished to qualify this with terms such as “Irish and British”, “Irish and cosmopolitan”, “international”. Also strongly expressed was the desire to proclaim a sense of belonging in England, an appreciation of their “adopted home”.

17Given the high level of contact maintained with their families and home areas in Ireland, it was surprising that not one of these midwives had any intention of returning to live in Ireland, even when they retired: this seems even more remarkable in the light of their confessions that no fewer than nine of their English husbands who “loved the way of life there”, would “like” or “very much like” to retire to Ireland! Not surprisingly, most of the women were unwilling to leave their social circles of “such very good friends” – many English – and the roots, not replacing but complementing the Irish ones, which they had put down in this country, but repeatedly, the informants cited the “too easy-going”, “too laid-back” way of life in Ireland as an important deterrent to their return, and also the bleakness, isolation or lack of cultural activity in rural communities. Frequent mention was also made of the lack of privacy in small towns and villages, “everybody knowing your business”: I’ve grown away from all that (...); I just couldn’t stick that now (...). In several different ways, informants articulated the desire to control what is known of their private lives, and felt that control to be unattainable in their home communities in Ireland: I like not to speak to my neighbours if I do not wish to (...); I like not to be surrounded by relatives (...).

18The attractions of living in England were perfectly summarized by one midwife: I like being near home, but not at home.

19The levels of satisfaction with their lives expressed by the Wirral midwives appear markedly higher than those of Walter’s 1989 London sample, and a number of reasons for this, apart from adjustment over time amongst generally older women, suggest themselves. A majority came here during the years of high recruitment into an expanding post-war British economy, and filled a clearly perceived need; they came also to an area of historic Irish settlement where British hostility was rarely obvious. They benefitted, as generally well-educated young women, and as intending nurses, from a much more positive stereotype than their male compatriots. Now, in this suburban, semi-rural area, their homes are of a size and standard which would be prohibitively expensive in London, and most are enjoying the most affluent period of their lives.

20Although exhibiting all the “markers” of successful integration with their host society, these women clearly have not rejected their Irish identity: they value and conserve their cultural heritage, and rejoice in their children’s strong identification with all things Irish. Several expressed their awareness and appreciation of “having the best of both worlds” – two distinct cultures and ways of life available to them, to be possessed and celebrated in their lives and those of their families.

21What significance can there be in the findings of such a small study, whose methods enjoyed neither the inviting anonymity of the questionnaire, nor the developed relationship between informant and researcher reported in recent work with middle-class Irish women in London?14 Recent research has concentrated, quite properly, on the reasons for Irish people’s continuing over-representation in Britain in insecure and low-status employment and inferior housing, for their alarming levels of poor physical and mental health, and on the worrying position of many of Britain’s ageing Irish-born population, but it would be misguided to classify the whole range of emigrants by reference to the marginalised and unfortunate. The experience of the successful, the satisfied and the empowered – and it is suggested that Irish women have always been more than equitably represented among these – has a validity independent of numbers, and there seems little reason to suppose that the findings of this study could not be duplicated in many other areas of Britain. It has been recognised that, for women at least, far more than a simple economic exchange is involved in the decision to leave Ireland: the factors determining destination and successful settlement will be at least as complex, and as deserving of scholarly attention.