After I kissed the stone wall of the pub, I turned around and imagined a horse cart as it clattered up a slight hill on a cobble stoned street in 1879. A driver was at the reins and five young girls tear-stained faces stared back at their parents. Their deep guttural cries pierced the foggy morning air. Patrick a wiry red-haired man and Mary a stalwart woman with long brown hair (my great grandparents) stood embracing each other in tears.
I felt like an intruder watching this scene, feeling their pain. Seeing my grandmother with her red hair and little girl eyes, the youngest one, crying in the cart, was like looking into the sad painful eyes of my father.
Mary said, Oh, God, I’ll never see them again. She put her face into Patrick’s chest with heart wrenching sobs. Patrick had tears streaming down his face. As the wagon disappeared into the fog, Mary slid to the ground holding Patrick’s leg in deep distress.
Patrick said, “God protect them.”
Thus began the journey of my ten year old Grandmother and her four sisters to Chicago via a “coffin ship” from Galway to Montreal and then by train to Chicago. They would never see their parents again.
When I did the historical research for this screenplay, I was shocked to find out that the English Lords shipped thousands of pounds of Wheat, barley, meat etc. every day from Ireland, while two million died and as many emigrated all over the world.
In fact, the population of Ireland is still lower than it was then. I discovered that the common [English] nursery rhyme “This old Man” depicted all the ways the Irish were abused. A “Paddy Wacking“ was beating up an Irishman.“
“This ole man he played one, he played knick-knack on my thumb, with a knick-knack Paddy-wack, give your dog a bone. This ole man went rolling home.”
My relatives came from the most Gaelic/Catholic region of Ireland and were treated the harshest. If you wanted work at a workhouse, you needed to get baptized Anglican and not speak Gaelic.
My grandmother and three of her sisters entered the slums of Chicago and faced the same discrimination they faced by the English. “No Irish need Apply.” One was sick and taken off the ship to a hospital on an Island in the St. Lawrence Bay when the Health Inspector checked the ship in Canada. Three of the remaining sisters were forced into prostitution by trickery. One became a maid at the home of a “white lace curtain” Irish family.
These gritty women all eventually landed on their feet, except my Grandmother who had two bastard children from a rich pharmacist who had a family a few blocks away. She was supported by my father after the end of her fourth marriage.
These grim facts were what immigrants faced then and still do now. Leaving loved ones to save your children. Being taken advantage of for cheap labor. Being demonized by others for your differences. My grandparents were from Ireland, Scotland, Germany and Sweden.
I sponsored two immigrant families from Laos and a couple of artists from Russia into the country. They have raised families and become American Citizens. It’s what our country was built on.
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