Lack of Means and Effectiveness: Irish Counter Representation to the Victorian

Celtic Immigrant Stereotype in nineteenth-century England

During the nineteenth century, Ireland found itself in a very precarious economic situation, which
forced numerous individuals to leave the mother country in order to find work abroad. Some people
directed their attention towards a temporary migration to England with the hope of going back to
Ireland once earned enough money, while others looked for a more permanent solution to end their
condition of poverty in embarking for the Americas. Particularly after the 1840s Great Famine, the
number of people leaving Ireland rose dramatically; in a ten years’ time-span, namely from 1841 to
1851, “the population of Ireland declined from 8,175,000 to 6,552,000”1. This major migration wave
had a social, cultural and economic impact on Ireland as well as on immigrants receiving countries.
The main destinations of the emigrants were America, Canada, Australia and Britain 2. Britain, for
instance, according to the census carried out by the Statistical Society of London in 1841, estimated
the number of immigrants who settled in England starting from the 1810s equal to one and a half
million3, most of them came from Ireland. The migrants’ reception in England had some mixed
feelings. Of course, England had a high request for workforce during the industrial revolution but the
British citizens finding themselves surrounded by these new ‘others’, despite their whiteness, started
a process of racial marginalization due to several causes, linked to work-related matters, cultural and
social differences. Newspaper articles, cartoons, police reports and literature of the time, all together
helped to create a stereotype of the Irish individual permeated with discrimination, which further
instilled this anti-Irish sentiment. Eventually, Scott claims, “emigration did define the English concept
of 'Irishness', and stereotypes, generally constructed negatively as the antithesis of Anglo-Saxon
civilization”4. However, on the other hand, Irish immigrants did represent themselves in parallel via
different means, disproving to a certain extent the discriminating label the British had attached to
them. In this essay, I will be looking at the depiction of Irish immigrants in Victorian media,
comparing it to the self-representation of the Irish from their own perspective. In particular, I will
study Ellen O’Neill’s Confession of a female Pickpocket with the aim of establishing whether she

1 D. A. E. Harkness, ‘Irish Emigration’ in International Migrations, Volume II: Interpretations Ed. By Walter F. Willcox, (NBER, 1931),
P.267.
2 Frank Neal, The Irish in 19th Century Britain- Integrated or Assimilated?, (University of Salford, 1994) retrieved on November 18th

2016 at https://www.academia.edu/566130/The_Irish_in_19th_Century_Britain-_Integrated_or_Assimilated, p.1.

3 Ruth-Ann M. Harris, The Nearest Place That Wasn’t Ireland: early Nineteenth-Century Irish Labor Migration, (Ames: Iowa State

University Press, 1994), p.134.

4 Caroline L. Scott, (1998), A Comparative Re-examination of Anglo-Irish Relations in Nineteenth-Century Manchester, Liverpool

and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Durham Theses, Durham University, Retrieved on November 17th 2016 at
http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1058/1/1058.pdf, p.223.
1
breaks away from the master narrative of the British stereotypical depiction of the Irish or if she
endorses it. In this respect, I will take into consideration the tools the Irish had at their disposal in
order to produce their own self-image in the Victorian published communications. Eventually, I will
try establishing whether the depiction of the Irish immigrants from the Irish side effectively works as
a counter-narrative to the main Victorian anti-Celtic discourse.

The printing revolution that occurred in Britain over the course of the nineteenth century, mobilized
by new technologies in the printing method such as the steam-powered printing machine, as well as
the expansion of the distribution system via the postal network, railway, and telegraphy, played a
major role in the increase of the reading public5. With the drop of the literary production and printing
costs, accordingly, novels as well as magazines, newspapers and journals became affordable to a
wider public. Furthermore, with the introduction of steel engraving lithography, it arose a new relation
between text and image; Finkelstein suggests, “Illustrated books and illustrated journals provided
spaces for readers to populate with their imagination and in which to discover and contextualize their
cultural understanding of contemporary society”6. Illustrations were a powerful means that
contributed to the shaping of public opinions and knowledge regarding different matters, one of them
being the Irish question. The assumption that Irish-born immigrants in England were of an inferior
race and culture compared to the Anglo-Saxons was common knowledge in the nineteenth century.
“The stereotype of the primitive, melancholic, and prognathous Irish Celt was documented by
anthropologists and ethnologists who constructed impressive typologies of the physiognomies of the
British and Irish peoples.”7 Accordingly, Drawings and caricatures depicting the Irish immigrants
were found in many newspapers and comic weeklies such as Punch, Fun and Judy. For Instance, the
illustration that ran in Harper’s Weekly, an American magazine, representing three different profiles:
Irish-Iberian, Anglo-Teutonic and Negro8, depicted the Irish character in a much similar way to the
Negro, which had ape-like features. However, the belief that Irish were close to apes was a notion
already popular in England in the first half of the nineteenth century; the historian J. A. Froude during
a tour of Ireland in 1841 observed that “the inhabitants seemed more like tribes of squalid apes than
human beings”9. This Idea was further discussed due to the dispute on the published account on the
comparative anatomy of man and the higher apes between Darwinist T. Huxley and anti-evolutionist
Sir. R. Owen. Furthermore, in the public British eyes, the Irish individual appeared as “childish,

5 James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural
History of Creation (University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 30.
6 David Finkelstein, ‘Publishing and the Materiality of the Book’ in The Cambridge History of Victorian Literature, ed. by Kate Flint

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 19.

7 Curtis in Vincent, J. Cheng, Joyce, Race and Empire, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p.298.

8H. Strickland Constable, 1899, Drawing: Ireland from One or Two Neglected Points of View.
9 J. A. Froude, in Frankie Morris, Artist of Wonderland. The Life, Political Cartoons and Illustrations of Tenniel, (Cambridge:
Lutterworth, 2005), p. 291.
2
emotionally unstable, ignorant, indolent, superstitious, primitive or semi-civilized, dirty, vengeful
and violent”10 and of course prone to assume disorderly behaviours as a result of excessive drinking.11
Subsequently popular cartoons appearing on weekly magazines sketched the profiles of the Irish as
“pigs, peasants, comely maidens, terrorists, mental patients and children”.12 For instance, the pigs
symbolized Ireland’s backwardness, rural and humble background. Commonly, in the representation,
‘the pigs’ were trying to be trained by the British however unsuccessfully; this depiction could allude
to Ireland’s rebellious behaviour towards England labelling the former as an unwilling colony
populated by ignorant people. Despite the comic representation of the Irish on weekly magazines was
supposed to have only a mocking purpose, “In 1882 Punch was charged by certain English Journals
with having racially maligned the Irish people”13. Complaints came also from British citizens; for
instance, F. C. Burnand wrote to the editor of the Spectator on the matter of Punch’s Irish cartoons.
He defined them disgraceful and then added that “ No savages have ever been so mercilessly held up
to loathing mockery as the Irish peasants by the one comic paper in Europe which has been most
honourably distinguished for its restraint, and decorum, and good- nature”14.

The prejudiced depiction of the Irish was a campaign that pervaded the entire British media of the
time. Biased police reports, for example, had a major influence on the public perception of Irish
immigrants. Finnegan in his book Poverty and Prejudice: A Study of Irish Immigrants in York 1849-
1875 dedicates a chapter to the Irish contribution to crime. In this section, the author claims that
despite the anti-Irish feeling present in the press, the Irish in York actually committed only one-third
of the total criminal offences, which only comprised minor lawless behaviours such as fighting and
drunkenness15. However, the relatively few local studies conducted at the time show that Irish-born
were almost three times as likely to face persecution as their English neighbours16, therefore, even
though the number of crimes committed by the Irish was lower compared to the one committed by
English-born individuals it was given more relevance. Curtis suggests that the Irish figure “served as
a convenient scapegoat for the frustrations, which arose out of a code of civilized and gentlemanly

10 Edward G. Lengel, The Irish Through British Eyes: Perceptions of Ireland in the Famine Era, (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2002),
p.3.
11 Roger Swift, ’Behaving Badly? Irish Migrants and Crime in the Victorian City’ in: J. Rowbotham and K. Stevenson, Criminal

Conversations: Victorian Crimes, Social Panic, and Moral Outrage (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2005), p. 109.
12 Michael de Nie, ‘Pigs, Paddies, prams and petticoats: Irish Home Rule and the British comic press, 1886–93’, Published in 18th–

19th - Century History Features, Volume 13, Issue 1 (Jan/Feb 2005), retrieved online on November 23d 2016 at
http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/pigs-paddies-prams-and-petticoats-irish-home-rule-and-the-british-
comic-press-1886-93/
13 Morris, p.209.
14 F. C. Burnand, ‘Punch’s Irish Cartoons. To the Editor of The Spectator’, The Spectator, September 9th 1882; 55, 2828; Periodicals

Archive Online, p. 1164.

15 Frances Finnegan, Poverty and Prejudice: A Study of Irish Immigrants in York 1849-1875, (Cork: Cork University Press, 1982), pp.132-

134.
16 Swift, p.107.

3
conduct that regulated the public lives of countless Englishmen”17. Furthermore, illustrated police
reports depicting the somatic features of criminals, despite their informative purpose, contributed to
further discrimination and prejudice against the Irish, augmenting fear of ‘the other’ based on physical
generalizations. These ideas were taken further by the Victorian interest in criminal anthropology as
well as eugenics, a science claiming that the superiority of a race can be demonstrated through the
analysis of hereditary traits.

The mainstream depiction of the Irish can also be found in many literary works of the time. For
instance, in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South, the Irish workers imported by Mr. Thornton
are portrayed as frightened and weak beings, “the stupid wretches here wouldn’t work for him; and
now they’ve frightened these poor Irish starvelings”18. They also appear as unskilled and ignorant,
“the incompetence of the Irish hands, who had to be trained to their work, at a time requiring unusual
activity, was a daily annoyance”19. Furthermore, the sole fact that they had been imported as if they
were objects and were handled and spoken to as if they belonged to the mill master, underlines the
belief of their racial inferiority to the Saxon blood. Even though Gaskell attempts to make her readers
sympathize with the unfortunate and miserable condition of the Irish, she voluntarily or involuntarily
perpetuates the stereotype of the Irishman. At the time, being Celts meant being physically, culturally
and morally antithetical to the English. Numerous other Victorian writers addressed the Irish question
in literature, one of them being George Robert Sims, who was an English journalist, play writer, poet,
and novelist. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sims published a volume entitled Living
London, which could be defined a social investigation following the line of his previous 1883 major
work How the Poor Live. In this book, Sims seems to be giving a visual experience to his reader, or
more precisely a walking tour of London to the middle-upper classes, which do not have a lot of
contact with working-class immigrants. He depicts glimpses of the immigrant London in a detailed
and yet detached way; he is an observer, however, absent from a reality so far from himself and his
lifestyle. In the chapter ‘SCOTTISH, IRISH, AND WELSH LONDON’ written by Charlotte
O’Conor Eccles, it is narrated how Irish people have their own “literary, athletic, political, and social
institutions”20. O’Conor describes a twentieth-century polished London, which clearly contrasts to
early nineteenth-century representations of the city and Irish Immigrants. In the account the Irish
appear as a tightknit community, nevertheless still subject to British racial discrimination; for
instance, Medical Diplomas acquired in Ireland were not considered valid in England. From this
account, the living conditions of the Irish immigrants in London seemed to have improved, the

17 L. P. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons & Celts: A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian England, (Bridgeport UP, 1968), p.65.
18Elizabeth C. Gaskell, North and South. E-book ed., Project Gutenberg, 2003, Accessed 17 Nov. 2016. org/pdf/ecgns10.pdf, p. 135.
19 Gaskell, p.249.
20 Charlotte O’Conor Eccles in Gorge Sims, Living London, (London: Cassell and Company Limited, 1902), p.270.
4
process of integration into the British society was still moving slowly. The purpose of Sims’ book,
despite its definition as social investigation, seems to have the objective of highlighting positively the
life of the immigrants without addressing problematic questions about their integration or living
conditions. This guide to immigrants’ London reassures English middle-class citizens about the
peaceful situation of interracial cohabitation within the city. Surprisingly, Even though Charlotte
O’Conor Eccles, Irish-born writer, journalist and translator, wrote the chapter, she did not give a
personal commentary on the Irish-situation, limiting herself to provide an objective description. Her
almost indifference to the Irish population of London stresses the silencing process actuated by the
Victorians in order to deal as little as possible with the Irish problem and Celtic integration within
British society.

The Idea that Irish literature missed development was an idea that was introduced by Arnold’s
publication On the Study of Celtic literature. Referring back to Arnold’s study of Celtic literature
conducted in the 1860s, in the very introduction of the book, he claims, "the Celts [...] are to be
meliorated”21. Even though Ireland was perceived as a proud country, its refusal to speak the Saxon
language was considered by Arnold an obstacle to civilization. In addition, he continues by saying
that modern civilization is a legitimate and necessary process that is doomed to happen, and that
eventually, the inhabitants of these islands will become an English-speaking homogenous unity.22
Later, he claims that Irishmen pretensions of creating a social and political counter power to Britain
are "hopelessly vain!"23 . This impossibility of creating a counter-narrative finds a correspondence
also in literature. Rachel Bromwich affirms, “[Arnold] was uncompromising in his attitude to the
Celtic tradition as something which was dead and belonged solely to the past” 24. Due to the
mainstream biased Victorian depiction of the Irishmen, the Celts struggled to counter represent
themselves through the means available to them. Even the handful of Irish writers and journalist who
migrated to Britain opted for an English classical education or self-education like in the case of
Charlotte O’Conor and Bernard Shaw. The individuals’ subsequent compliance with the British
standards of writing, behaviour, faith, thoughts and culture resulted in the failure of the creation of an
Irish counter-narrative, which addressed Irish immigration issues and represented Celts fairly.
Perhaps the rejection of their own roots and attachment to the homeland facilitated their acceptance
and integration into the British society, while at the same time it became an obstruction to the
development of an independent Irish discourse. Of course, Irish migrants were a variegated and
dynamic mass belonging to the low and middle class, in other words, they were “emigrants of hope

21 Matthew Arnold, On the Study of Celtic Literature, (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1867), p. ix.
22 Arnold, p.12.
23 Arnold, p.14.
24 Rachel Bromwich, Matthew Arnold and Celtic Literature: A Retrospect 1865-1965, (OUP, 1965), p.32.

5
as well as despair”25. Some representation of Irish migrants can be found in the Universal News, a
newspaper run by both Irish and English Catholics, or The Harp, which was as well an Irish
newspaper published in England. These attempts to self-representation perused by the Irish
population in the press were however not greatly successful. For instance, Irish journalists were often
accused of inaccuracy and omission; their articles were subject to censorship by the local authorities
as well as the Protestant church. Furthermore, Irish newspaper articles were discredited by the British
readership due to the alleged relationship between political movements and writers. For these reasons,
these journalists were consequently forced to use pseudonyms or publish articles anonymously26.

Another difficulty rising in the process of creating a new literature based on immigrants’
representation is associated with the Irish oral literature tradition, which has been present in Ireland
for centuries. Folk tradition in Ireland was common property and all participants relied on spoken
Irish27. The oral tradition did encompass prose, poetry, superstitions, sayings and many other genres
of folklore and was the most familiar form known to the majority of the Irish population. However,
on the English soil, Celtic poetry and documents of ancient Irish literature were received with a
feeling of repulsion and incompatibility and therefore could not be used as means of representation.
Furthermore, given the fact that many Celtic immigrants spoke only Gaelic or had only the knowledge
of spoken English slowed down the process of producing a written testimonial of the Irish experience
of migration. On the other hand, the main concern of Irish immigrants was working and making
enough money to sustain the family or pay debts in the home country or again earn enough to be able
to return home. For these reasons, the time and means to produce a counter-discourse in opposition
to the strong one already formed in the Victorian literary, political and social scene could be
understated as a hard task. Moreover, the lack of education among the Irish immigrants’ population
in England, made them rely on educated English-born individuals to whom they could narrate their
life accounts. Testimonials coming from the immigrants’ working class were relatively few but not
completely absent. The main devices the Irish used to have their voice heard was through
autobiographies and pauper letters. Paupers’ letters were letters addressed to Parish Officials, which
encompassed a ‘complex (deliberate or accidental) mix of apology, deferential rhetoric, demands,
statements of rights, threats, and personal histories’28. This last aspect concerning personal history
and poor individual’s self-portrayal is what make these letters so relevant even though their audience
was restricted to Parish Officials. The retrieval of these artefacts today is quite hard because during

25 Anthony McNicholas, Politics, Religion and the Press: Irish Journalism in Mid-Victorian England, (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), p.13.
26 McNicholas, p.20.
27 Donna Wong, ‘Literature and the Oral Tradition’ in The Cambridge History of Irish Literature, Volume 2 – 1890-200, ed. by

Margaret Kelleher and Philip O'Leary, ( Cambridge University Press, 2006), p.636.
28 Steven King, ‘ ‘‘Stop This Overwhelming Torment of Destiny’’: Negotiating Financial Aid at Times of Sickness under the English Old

Poor Law, 1800–1840’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 79, Is.2,(Summer, 2005), (228-260), p.239.
6
the years “Documents have been weeded, lost, burned or decayed beyond legibility” 29.
Notwithstanding, Irish immigrants autobiographies usually described a history of personal
achievement as well as humans’ life experiences within a difficult context. Even though Tomkins’
claims “What these various accounts share, though, is the voluntary impulse in their production – the
authors were not forced to write but chose to do so”30. This statement cannot be applied to every case.
The majority of the accounts given by Irish immigrants of low social classes could be accurate as
well as inaccurate since the high number of illiterates prevented the subjects from validating
personally their own words but had instead to rely on some third party good word. One of these
ambiguous and yet important narration, as well as short autobiography, is Ellen O’Neill’s testimonial,
Extraordinary Confessions of a Female Pickpocket, which tells the life of Ellen, the English-born
daughter of two Irish Immigrants.

Ellen O’Neill’s testimonial can be considered quite extraordinary in light of what she uncovers in
the narration of her life about the world of petty crimes happening in Victorian cities. Ellen O’Neill
was of Irish origins as her married name suggests as well as the journalist statement about her: “The
girl first examined was a young, well-grown young Irish woman”31. More precisely, she was born in
Stockport from a couple of Irish immigrants. Her parents did not fulfil the Victorian stereotype of the
typical Irish since she defines them as “sober and industrious”32, furthermore she continues by
describing her father as a shy skilled shoemaker, in opposition to the figure of the loud, violent,
unskilled and ignorant Paddy. According to Harris argument, “Relatively skilled artisans were less
likely to be temporary migrants”33, Ellen’s father who was a skilled artisan, made England his
permanent home. Her parents, despite the public claim that Irish immigrants left their children
running wild on the streets34, sent Ellen to a Roman Catholic School for almost three years, and
afterwards was always employed in respectable professions until the age of fifteen. Firstly, she
worked as a factory worker, then as a maid and lastly as capmaker apprentice. Afterwards, however,
her older brother Richard introduced her to the art of picking pockets. During her career as a
pickpocket, she travelled extensively in the North and West of England, tracing a map from the places
she mentions in her narration, the reader can mentally picture the numerous counties she has crossed,
such as Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and
Lancashire. She moved from place to place by thieving and spending the stolen money on
transportation and lodging. O’Neil considers the best places for her trade fairs, marketplaces and

29 Alannah Tomkins, ‘I mak Bould to Wrigt’: First-Person Narratives in the History of Poverty in England, c. 1750–1900, History
Compass, Vol. 9, Is. 5 (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2011), p. 365.
30 Tomkins, p.366.
31 Ellen O’Neill, Extraordinary Confessions of a Female Pickpocket (Preston: J. Drummond, 1850), p.3.
32 O’Neill, p.4.
33 Harris, p. 143.
34 Harris, p. 155.

7
train station. Apparently, she compliments herself by saying that despite the “great many people”35
doing the same job as her, she was very good. Furthermore, from her narrations, the readers learn that
very often people employed in mills worked as spinners in the morning and went thieving in the
afternoon in agreement with the factory overseer, who had also a share in the gathered goods. O’Neill
suggests that if factory girls were wearing nice articles of clothing then it meant they had another
profession in the streets; nonetheless, she remains vague whether the profession headed towards
thieving or prostitution. On the same note, Henry Mayhew underlines the dress code of the
‘mobsman’, the thief, pointing out that this kind of individual “usually dresses in the same elaborated
style of fashion of a Jew on a Sunday”36. Furthermore, O’Neill describes how some people were
hired to pick pockets on somebody else’s behalf , for instance, “Ketty kept a ‘picking up’ woman –
that is one who commits robberies in the streets, Ketty coming up at the right moment to screen or
rescue her”37. Thieves in the Victorian city became a constant presence, a real social issue; even in
The Popular Guide of London and Suburbs, George Frederik Pardon warns his readers to look after
watches, chains, wallets and any possessions contained in pockets as well as gives the advice to be
particularly careful in crowded places38.

Even though Ellen O’Neill’s passage from respectable employment to street work was partially a
spontaneous choice, it seems, from her tale, that she is not remorseful for her lifestyle and appears as
if she has no plan of changing it. Many people at the time opted for this trade either willingly or
forcibly by a third party, since there were plenty of benefits: high income, certainly depending on the
subject’s skilfulness, a traveller’s life and freedom from the oppressive environment of the factories.
However, the downsides consisted in the possibility of a few months in jail or transportation or
corporal punishment such as whipping and flogging. The jail was not an unknown place for O’Neill,
in fact, her ‘free testimonial’ or report of interrogation, to use the journalist’s own words, takes place
in the Preston House of Correction. It appears that the main reason why the story is the product of a
collaboration is the lack of O’Neill’s education, which she herself expresses in the narration,
“Although I was three years at school I never learned to read”39. However, the fact that her story was
dictated to a journalist of the Daily News in the presence of a priest, Reverend John Clay, does not
ensure the accuracy of the account as the journalist claims, nor the willingness of her testimonial.
Moreover, in June 1852 Reverend John Clay shared his thoughts on Pickpockets:

35 O’Neill, p.6.
36 Henry Mayhew in Michelle Higgs, A Visitor’s Guide to Victorian England, (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2014), p.11.
37 O’Neill, p.11.
38 Higgs, p.10.
39 O’Neill, p.8.

8
 In North Lancashire we have very few trained juvenile criminals who commit
crimes as a means of support, they come to us now from Liverpool by
Railway; pickpockets and so forth… Liverpool, Manchester and Bolton have
a large staff of trained thieves, any boy who shows an inclination towards
thieving does not stay in a small town like Preston or Lancaster but goes to
Liverpool or Manchester40.

His presence at the time of O’Neill’s testimonial and his knowledge about the Victorian world of
crimes due to his position in the correction facility could have influenced the subject’s recounting of
facts. Again, the Reverend could have helped address the interrogation in order to obtain determined
information. In addition, from the text, it is possible to learn that Ellen was a religious girl of strong
morals even though she committed petty crimes for a living: she attended a Catholic school as well
as refused to live with a man out of wedlock. In this case, the presence of the priest could have also
altered her account in the sense that she might have avoided some details about her life that could
have encountered a moral judgement, for instance, the topic of sexual activity. On the other hand, the
Journalist could have used her religiosity and morality as a device in order to make her accusations
about the suspicious happenings involving the factory overseers more valid. The presence of
patriarchal figures in the collaboration of O’Neill’s narrative cannot but make the reader wonder
whether the transcript of her testimonial is truthful or it serves a determined purpose since O’Neil
herself was unable to read and therefore validate the text. However, her account could be truthful and
accurate on the base of the specific places and people she names such as Ann Modruff, Ann Rogers,
Agnes Rowley as well as gives private details such as her brother’s friend, now her husband, who
wanted to live with her without being married. The fact that she discloses so many details and
information about her experience and the crimes committed in the Victorian cities regardless of the
consequences, which could affect the people she names and knows, could be because she has been
sentenced to transportation and will, therefore, be leaving the country shortly to an oversea
destination.

The fact that there is always a male presence in the text, in this case, manifested through the gazes
of the Reverend and the anonymous journalist, serves as narrative boundary, in the sense that it puts
a restriction on O’Neill’s variety of topics which she might have omitted due to the patriarchal ruling
in Victorian time. Ellen O’Neill narrative persona comes across with the characteristic traits of the
Celt developed by Renan and Matthew Arnold namely “sensitive, spiritual, feminine, imaginative,
poetic, passionate, impractical”41. To give an example, Ellen is depicted as very perceptive, the first

40 John Clay in Jeannie Duckworth, Fagin's Children: Criminal Children in Victorian England, (London: A&C Black, 2002), p.45.
41 Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), p.26.
9
time she stole from a woman and she saw her crying she started crying as well; she is very feminine,
in fact, she is described as a young well-grown woman that men find attractive. Broadening the idea
of gender applied on literature and race, Elaine Sisson reformulates Arnold’s claim that the Celtic is
aligned with the feminine by saying that “Studies of female iconography suggest that Ireland is
gendered as a female in order to make certain points about the nature of Irishness” 42. Against the
feeble, delicate and feminine figure of the Celt was opposed the Anglo-Saxon ideal of manliness,
characterized by power, identity, rationality and autonomy; to summarize masculinity was considered
as the intrinsic element that constituted the British individual. Murray, however, suggests that ‘Anglo-
Saxon manliness’ is used as a response to specific social or political problems43. The female
connotation of Irish writing and imaginary could be added as one of the reasons why Celtic literature
found resistance in the British masculine and patriarchal society.

In conclusion, during the nineteenth century, England was invaded by a flood of immigrants
looking for work, a high percentage came from Ireland especially after the 1840s famine, since their
only two options were “migrate or starve”44. This high influx of relatively foreign people resulted in
a media reaction, which targeted the immigrants casting them off as ‘the Others’, despite their
whiteness, closeness to England and provenience from a British colony. The Irish migrants suffered
the most the Victorian literary, political and social attach. Newspapers dealt with the Irish problem
and used the rising ideal held as standard of the Irish character, namely violent, impulsive, abusive of
alcohol, backward and ignorant to highlight crimes committed by the Celtic immigrants, although
proportionately inferior in numbers to the ones committed by the Victorian home citizens,
consequently casting a negative light on them. Satirical magazines as well unloaded the Victorian
anxieties onto the Irish, depicting them offensively and again perpetuating the negative and
generalized stereotype of the Irish Individual. Numerous nineteenth-century novels addressed the
Irish question, despite the fact that they aimed at raising awareness and promoting sympathy towards
the Irish immigrants, yet placed these latter in a position of racial inferiority. Due to this anti-Celtic
sentiment, further enforced by the English literary and political discourse, the Irish Immigrants
struggled to create and find a place inside the British media for their own narrative discourse of self-
depiction in opposition to the English mainstream one. The spaces they found to have their voices
heard were mainly Irish run newspapers in England, letters of correspondence to relatives back home,
testimonials, pauper’s letters and a few published autobiographies. Another aspect that hindered the
process of diffusion of the Irish migrants’ counter-narrative was the restricted public they had among

42 Elaine Sisson, Pearse’s Patriots: St. Enda’s and the Cult of Boyhood, (Dublin: Four Court’s Press, 2004), p.12.
43 Brian H. Murray,(2013), ‘H.M. Stanley, David Livingstone, and the Staging of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Manliness’, Scottish Geographical
Journal, Vol. 129, Is. 3-04,(150-163), p.150.
44 Harris, p. xv.

10
Victorian readers. Furthermore, the number of Irish immigrants who were actively engaged in the
process of establishing a new and truer image of the Celtic population were relatively smaller to the
English individuals engaged in the creation of the anti-Irish master narrative. Moreover, the majority
of migrants coming from Ireland had a different priority, working, and therefore endured for long the
discrimination and social marginalization actuated by the English as well as the offensive satirical
cartoons, which mercilessly portrayed them as dehumanized being, effeminate individuals, ignorant
peasants and violent drunkards. Ellen O’Neill’s testimonial, Confession of a female Pickpocket, does
not endorse the Victorian stereotype of the Irishman. She depicts her Irish immigrant parents as
hardworking, sober and respectable people who even attended to her education by sending her to a
paying religious school for several years. She comes across as a girl of morals despite her profession
as a pickpocket, which was, however, a free willing choice and not a forced one. She seems to prefer
a free life in the open-air to an enclosed life in a mill or workshop despite the respectability that comes
with it. From her narration, the reader perceives both the direct critique concerning the Manchester
mills overseers and their thieving as well as a more indirect one concerning the general condition of
hardship common to the factory workers’ life. The fact that she prefers to be a pickpocket instead of
becoming an artisan or a mill worker comments negatively on the British society and its politics
concerning low-class working conditions. Perhaps O’Neill jail sentence to transportation will not
serve as the intended punishment but instead, will serve as a ticket to freedom. A new life in another
country far away from Britain eventually making her become a permanent migrant. Even though
O’Neill’s story is part of the bigger Irish discourse functioning as a counter-narrative to the Victorian
representation of Irish immigrants, it does not succeed in breaking the deeply rooted anti-Celtic
feeling present in the English society. Despite the Irish efforts in creating a brand new representation
of themselves through the means available to them at the time, the English prejudiced depiction of
the Celts remains the master narrative of nineteenth-century Britain.

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