Irish emigrants didn't restrict themselves to America. Many of them simply crossed the Irish channel to Great Britain. Others traveled to the opposite side of the globe to settle in Australia and New Zealand.

British Isles

After the United States, England and Scotland were the top destinations for Irish emigrants. The trip was shorter and cheaper, so it was both easier to get there and easier to get back. The Irish went there in great numbers to pursue jobs in the textile mills, coal mines, and other businesses of the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. They primarily went to the industrial cities, like London and Liverpool. The total Irish population in England — including both immigrants and their children born in England — numbered as much as 1.5 million people by the late nineteenth century.

Like America, England offered jobs. Unlike America, however, it did not offer much social mobility. English society had strong class lines, and elements of old anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudices still operated. Irish immigrants usually lived in large city slums. They rarely exercised much political power, and they generally remained in low-level jobs. This situation did not begin to improve until the early twentieth century.

The Land Down Under

Irish people had been settling in Australia unintentionally for decades before large-scale emigration began — Australia was Great Britain's biggest prison, and many Irish were sentenced to life there. Their crimes often seem paltry compared to such a major punishment. For the offense of stealing clothes or threatening a landlord, an individual could be sentenced to exile on the other side of the Earth for the rest of his or her life — a sentence known as “transportation.” Occasionally, family members left behind in Ireland managed to join their loved one in Australia, but usually a man or woman who left was gone for good.

Ironically, criminals transported to Australia were sometimes much better off than the poorer immigrants who voluntarily chose to sail away from Ireland. Prison ships were subject to much stricter standards than commercial ones (which often weren't subject to any), and all ships carried a doctor onboard to minister to the prisoners. The convicts were fed and clothed. Men and women traveled on separate ships, and women often brought their children along with them. Australia itself was a land of immense opportunity; convicts who were deemed harmless found numerous jobs available to them, and many of them became quite prosperous.

Relatively few Irish intentionally emigrated to Australia or New Zealand, largely because the long journey was four times more expensive than passage to the United States, but those who went found a vast and sparsely populated land. They encountered some of the old English prejudices, but in a land where most of the people had arrived as prisoners, being Irish or Catholic was not a serious impediment to social advancement. Many Irish immigrants soon became wealthy through farming and wool production.