Migrant Religious Groups

Abstract

As a world city, Victorian London was a magnet for migrants, including Italians, Germans, French, and Greeks. The two most numerous migrant groups were Eastern European Jews and Irish Roman Catholics, whose arrival challenged and changed their small host communities. Both host communities had to respond to the material and spiritual needs of relatively large numbers of poor migrants whose numbers in limited localities and unknown languages and customs aroused a degree of hostility and fear that they would disadvantage existing poor communities in those districts. The leaders of both communities adopted somewhat similar strategies to prevent ‘leakage’ of members from their respective faith groups in the face of militant Protestant mission activity, and to enculturate them as British citizens, playing a part in civic life, while not compromising the distinctiveness of their faith and its practice.