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This plan shows the size of Hull's emigrant waiting room
© Courtesy of Hull City Council
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A piece of Britain that shall forever remain foreign |
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Migration history
In Europe, from where most of the migrants had originated, few of those buildings associated with this important aspect of world history have survived. In Britain and Ireland, countries that sourced a large amount of North America’s immigrant populations, the docks at Liverpool, Glasgow, Southampton and London have been stripped of the physical structures connected with their migrant connection.
Hull's docks, a reminder of the city's transmigratory role
© Courtesy of Ian Britton, freefoto.com |
Lodging houses have (with the exception of one at Southampton and one in Hull) all disappeared. Even the railway stations that once served the emigrants’ cross-country rail requirements at London’s Waterloo, Liverpool’s Lime Street, Glasgow’s Queens Street, and Southampton Central all have modern uses with modern adaptations that have sanitised these British sites of the physical reminders that they once served the migrants en route to new lives on the other side of the world.
Yet despite the destruction or sanitising of sites connected with immigration and emigration, one noticeable exception has survived. Though unimposing and recently converted into a public house for the benefit of the local football team’s supporters, the purpose-built emigrant waiting room at Hull’s Paragon Railway Station and the separate railway platform that has survived to its rear are unique reminders of Britain’s important role in the business of European transmigration, between 1871 and 1914.
During this age of mass migration, though many Europeans sailed to America, Canada, South America, South Africa or Australasia direct from their native homelands, the majority sailed via Germany or Britain. For those travelling through Britain, estimated at four million people between 1836 and 1914, this indirect mode of migration involved arrival at an east coast port of arrival, and departure via one of Britain’s leading west coast ports. This journey necessitated travel along Britain’s railway network. Prior to the construction of the Emigrant Waiting Room and its separate railway platform (damningly numbered 13 by station authorities), Hull’s impressive Paragon Railway station served as an important facilitator of European emigrants.
Words: Nicholas J. Evans
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