Leaving England

About this book

The British Isles provided more overseas settlers than any country in continental Europe during the nineteenth century, but English emigrants to North America have remained largely invisible, partly for lack of records about their departure or their experiences. In this book Charlotte Erickson uses new sources to understand this long-neglected group and the nature of their lives in a new land. She draws together some of her work of the past thirty years on the dynamics of migration, including three new essays and revised versions of five previously published studies. From the passenger lists of ships arriving in U.S. ports, Erickson reconstructs the changing social and demographic profile of the English newcomers and compares them with emigrants from other parts of the British Isles and from continental Europe. One new essay contrasts the English immigrants to the United States in 1841 with those who went to Canada and Australia, examining through immigrant letters and memoirs their motives for coming, their hopes and expectations, their problems of adapting. Another discusses the particular experiences of emigrant English women. In a new essay she considers a sample drawn from county histories of emigrants from the very heartland of the Industrial Revolution, the county of Lancashire, to trace their occupational careers and migrations on both sides of the Atlantic. Her introduction explores current knowledge about this exceptional emigrant stream and comments on promising areas for future research.