Population
Manchester's population exploded as people moved from the surrounding countryside, and from other parts of the British Isles, into the city seeking new opportunities. Particularly large numbers also came from Ireland, especially after the Potato Famine of the 1840s. The Irish influence continues to this day and, every March Manchester plays host to a large St Patrick's Day parade. It is estimated that about 35% of the population of Manchester and Salford has at least some Irish ancestry.
Large numbers of (mostly Jewish) immigrants later came to Manchester from central and eastern Europe. The area, including Salford and Prestwich, today has a Jewish population of about 40,000. This is the largest Jewish community outside London by quite some way. To these groups may be added (in later years) Levantines (involved in the Egyptian cotton trade), Germans, and Italians. By the end of the nineteenth century, Manchester was a very cosmopolitan place.
Read more about this topic: History Of Manchester
Famous quotes containing the word population:
“We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most. The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It was a time of madness, the sort of mad-hysteria that always presages war. There seems to be nothing left but war—when any population in any sort of a nation gets violently angry, civilization falls down and religion forsakes its hold on the consciences of human kind in such times of public madness.”
—Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930)