Roger Swift, Behaving Badly? Irish Migrants and Crime in the Victorian City

This inaugural lecture discusses the complex relationship between Irish migration to Britain in the nineteenth century and the incidence of crime in the British cities in which the migrants settled. In particular, indications of changes following the period after the Great Famine, when migration from Ireland was at its peak, are examined, using evidence from a number of British cities; and possible explanations for the differences between the reality of Irish criminality and British perceptions of it are reported and analysed.