John O'Neill, Irish Bootmaker: A Biographical Approach to Quality of Life

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to present a structure for consideration of quality of life in the context of Irish emigration in the nineteenth century. The emigration experience is structured through a descriptive and analytic schema. The scope of emigration in the era addressed was considerable and constitutes an hegira whose scope in time and volume was enormous. Children and adults were involved, and they varied in background, destination, experience, and outcome as they sought to increase the quality of their lives. The experience across the life-span of an emigrant in the early nineteenth century, John O'Neill, is used as an example. His autobiography, ''Fifty Years Experience of an Irish Shoemaker in London'' (1869), provides an account of facing the vicissitudes of life in the first half of the nineteenth century.