Join Books.org — it's free

Immigration & Emigration - Canada, Immigration & Emigration - History, Great Britain - General & Miscellaneous History, United States History - General & Miscellaneous, Immigration & Emigration - United States - History, Immigration & Emigration - Great B
Going to America by Terry Coleman β€” book cover

Going to America

by Terry Coleman
Write a review
Log in to track your reading progress.

Overview

This is the grim story of the British and Irish immigrantswho came to America during the middle of the nineteenth century. Much the largest contingent was Irish, and it was above all the departure of the Irish to America, diseased, half-starved, bewildered, cheated and cheating, which made the emigrant way across the Atlantic as degrading as the convict route to the South Seas, and almost as cruel as the Middle Passage of the slave ships.

Confronting the immigrants at every turn were inescapable horrors. Ship owners packed their holds like slavers; brokers misrepresented and overcharged; runners stole when they couldn't cheat; customs officials took bribes to ignore overcrowding. And when the immigrants arrived the swindling didn't stop. They were fleeced by lodging-house keepers, separated from their possessions, and sold fraudulent railroad or canal boat tickets-in short, the whole, cruel apparatus of immigration was turned against them.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

New York Times

Terry Coleman tells this unpleasant story with wit and grace, and it is filled with artful, touching portraits of heroes and villains.

Times London

This momentous movement, so heroic in retrospect, so shabby at the time, has now found its perfect chronicler: Terry Coleman.

Book Details

Published
June 1, 1987
Publisher
Genealogical Publishing Co Inc.,U.S.
Pages
317
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780806311890

More by Terry Coleman

Similar books