Irish by John Burrowes

Author:John Burrowes [John Burrowes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
Published: 2011-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

He went on to note that two men had died and one went insane and had to be sent back to his own country.

Westhofen observed that the main problem the men had to endure as a result of working below sea level ‘appears to be that of severe pains in the joints and muscles of the arms and legs’. He was also to note that further diagnosis showed the disease to be the result of hard work and considerable sweating under high air pressure, probably causing small globules of air to make their way through the skin, where they remained. When the workmen returned to ordinary atmospheric pressure the air globules expanded, causing the most agonising of pains in their joints, elbows, shoulders, knee caps and other places. The only relief from the severe pain was when the men returned to work in the high-pressure chambers, which was why many of those affected spent the greater part of their time off back inside them, only coming out again when absolutely obliged to do so. Westhofen concluded that ‘various researches were made by members of the medical staff in the endeavour to give relief or obtain a cure but so far not with any degree of success’.

Despite his observations about the Irish navvies’ fondness for their drink, when he further commented on the workforce as a whole, Westhofen said that despite his comments about the Irishmen’s lifestyle, they were mostly ‘very hard workers and very conscientious and reliable men’.

Thousands of Irish navvies fanned out from Glasgow to provide labour for the major building projects taking place all over Scotland, one of them being the quayside at Broomielaw – unused but still solidly standing today – right in the heart of the city, where future generations of navvies would be able to disembark from their ships, saving them the hike in from peripheral harbours which reached out from the burgeoning city all the way down the river to Greenock. Not that the Broomielaw was the only harbour which required their muscle – thousands of other Irishmen had already worked on the ports and docksides at Ardrossan, Ayr, Arbroath, Aberdeen, Portpatrick, Leith and Stranraer.

The digging of the canals was one of the first of the major projects which required the tenacity and muscle power of the Irish, demanding the biggest workforce ever assembled in the country, made up of navvies from England and the Highlands as well as Ireland. They were to dig 140 miles of inland waterways so that ships could travel from Edinburgh to Glasgow, from Fort William to Inverness, and haul coal hewn by English brothers of the pick and shovel from the rich black seams in Lanarkshire. It was a truly gigantic project, involving considerably more than merely digging mile after mile of the biggest ditch (8 feet deep and 56 feet wide) ever excavated in Scotland. Quarries had to be opened up to obtain the mountains of stone required, kilns had to be built to make bricks, new

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