1. How Do We Know?
2. Miserable Homes
3. Why Was There Trouble?
4. Why History?

Free-Standing Activities:

5. Famine
6. Different Views

Requirements

Programme-Specific Activities

1. Review programme.
2. Review relevant section of programme + additional source material.
3. Review relevant section of programme + additional source material.
4. Review programme.

Free-Standing Activities

5. Website http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~jdana/history/famine.html + additional sources.
6. Sources provided.

Answers

(These are very briefly provided: able students may well do more.)

Programme-Specific Activities

Activity 1

Activity 2

Requires references to slums, poorly built tenements, over-crowding, living in one or two rooms, lack of furniture, lack of light and heat, lack of safe water supplies or proper sewers: dirt and polluted food and water brought dreadful diseases, eg: typhus and cholera.

Activity 3

Answers should deal with:

• Irish as competitors for work
• Irish as strike-breakers
• well-to-do dislike of Irish radicals
• Irish seen as violent (clashes of Protestant and Catholic)
• Irish seen as clannish (own churches, football clubs, schools)
• Irish Catholics altered Protestant - Catholic balance in Scotland
• some Church of Scotland alarm at state help for Catholic schools.

Activity 4

Knowledge of Irish migrational history is needed to understand: Celtic's use of green; Celtic and Hibernian football clubs; the Orange Order in Scotland; the rivalry of Rangers and Celtic; the names of many Glasgow families; the size of the Catholic Church in Scotland; the presence of Catholic state-funded schools.

Free-Standing Activities

Activity 5

Fuller information is provided in the Background section.

Activity 6

(a) Source 1 denounces Irish as damaging pay of Scots or putting Scots out of work. Irish migrants live in great squalor and deal in spirits, dragging down the Scots they influence. Source 2 sees Irish as decent and respectable and, if they do deteriorate, it is because Scots have dragged them down.

(b) They are about different places and at different dates. One is a newspaper that maybe aims to stir trouble, the other is a witness at a very serious enquiry.

Activities

Programme-Specific Activities

Activity 1 - How Do We Know?

Use the programme for this activity.

Many different types of historical sources have been used in this programme. What are they? What is the special value of each of them? Do any of them raise any problems or difficulties?

Set out a chart using the headings below. You may need to view the programme again in order to do this. You should find at least six different source types.

• Type of Source (eg census)
• Value of Source (eg It gives detailed accurate figures.)
• Problems With Source (eg It only happens every ten years.)

(25 minutes)

Activity 2 - Miserable Homes

Use the programme and any books available.

Describe the kinds of homes in Scotland in which the Irish immigrants had to settle (Write two or three paragraphs. Mention the buildings, the furnishings, the health risks, the atmosphere.)

(About 20 minutes)

Activity 3 - Why Was There Trouble?

Use the programme and any books available.

Explain why some Scots were hostile to Irish immigrants.

(Write two or three paragraphs. Mention worries about work and about religious beliefs.)

(About 20 minutes)

Activity 4 - Why History?

Use the programme for this activity.

You meet an irritating person who insists that there is no point in studying the past. How would you respond to this, using the programme's topic, to show that there are aspects of life in Scotland today that can only be properly understood through knowledge of the past?

(About 10 minutes)

Activity 5 - Famine

Use the website: http://www.vms.utexas.educ/~jdana/history/famine.html

or appropriate available books. There is a great deal to discover here! Write a story for a newspaper of the time. Imagine you are a reporter who has been sent to gather evidence to tell your readers about the terrible suffering caused by the potato famine. Your newspaper has decided to collect money from its readers to help relieve some of the suffering. (Notice how often modern reporters use the story of a person or family to win sympathy.)

(About 25 minutes)

Activity 6 - Different Views

The two sources below both describe Irish people in Scotland. Write as much as possible to explain:

• (a) In what ways the two sources differ about the Irish in Scotland.
• (b) What possible reasons might explain why they differ.

Source 1

The first source comes from a newspaper of 1840 called 'The Ayr Advertiser'. The writer says of the Irish in Ayrshire:

'by their great numbers they have either lessened the pay (of Scots) or totally deprived thousands of the working people of Scotland (of work). There can be no doubt that their contact with the Scotch has not been for the benefit of latter. In the county of Ayr these facts are brought home by the wretched appearance of once comfortable localities and by the great increase in spirit dealers.'

Source 2

The second source is from a parliamentary enquiry of 1836. The witness was a Glasgow cotton manufacturer:

'When the Irish first come over here, both the parent and the children are in general very decent and respectable: after they have been here some time they remain respectable but are deteriorating. The change is produced by mixing with the lowest dregs of our working population.'

(about 20 minutes)