Louisa May Alcott called for a boycott on hiring Irish Immigrant Women as servants

[PatYoung]

In 1874 Louisa May Alcott started her own "No Irish Need Apply" campaign to boycott hiring Irish woman as servants. Yup.
https://thereconstructionera.com/when-louisa-may-alcott-endorsed-no-irish-need-apply/

 

[5fish]

In 1874 Louisa May Alcott

She was a Unitarian... http://uudb.org/articles/louisamayalcott.html ... I also want to note in her Little Women book the family in it was Unitarian...

Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832-March 6, 1888), best known as the author of Little Women, was an advocate of abolition, women's rights, and temperance. Her stories, novels, and poems helped to support the Alcott family, and most have now been republished, widening her reputation beyond that of children's author and bringing fresh critical notice to her work.

Louisa was the second daughter of Bronson Alcott and Abigail May, who met while Abigail was visiting her brother, Samuel J. May, minister of the Unitarian church in Brooklyn, Connecticut. Abigail fell for the tall, handsome young schoolteacher with radical ideas. Her family feared—rightly—that Bronson had little notion of how to support a family, but the young people were not to be deterred. They were married on May 23, 1830, at King's Chapel, Boston, where the May family were members.

On March 1, 1888, Louisa visited her father for the last time."I am going up," he said. "Come with me." "Oh, I wish I could," she replied. Bronson Alcott died on March 4, and Louisa May Alcott on March 6. She was buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord. Her grave bears a Civil War veteran's marker.

Some say she was part of this movement...

Alcott's parents were a part of the 19th century transcendentalist movement, a popular religious movement. Their religious and political beliefs deeply inspired Alcott as child. Her father, Bronson Alcott, was a popular educator who believed that children should enjoy learning.

But...

When Louisa was ten the family, now under the influence of Bronson Alcott's English friends Charles Lane and Henry Wright, moved to Harvard, Massachusetts. On a hillside farm they planned to establish a model community, Fruitlands, making use of no animal products or labor except, as Abigail Alcott observed, for that of women. She and her small daughters struggled to keep household and farm going while the men went about the countryside philosophizing. In a few months quarrels erupted, and winter weather saw the end of the experiment. The only lasting product of Fruitlands was Louisa's reminiscence,"Transcendental Wild Oats."

 

[Matt McKeon]

In 1874 Louisa May Alcott started her own "No Irish Need Apply" campaign to boycott hiring Irish woman as servants. Yup.
https://thereconstructionera.com/when-louisa-may-alcott-endorsed-no-irish-need-apply/

Read the article, very interesting!

You mention that Alcott used the term Biddies,short for Bridget,as a generic term for Irish domestics. As I noted in the comments there, Lizzie Borden had a generic name for housemaids,"Maggie"the name she used with any Irish maid.

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

In 1874 Louisa May Alcott started her own "No Irish Need Apply" campaign to boycott hiring Irish woman as servants. Yup.
https://thereconstructionera.com/when-louisa-may-alcott-endorsed-no-irish-need-apply/

Very disappointing that someone who beleivex in equal rights for woman thought Irish people are somehow inferior to English people even though English men have been mixing DNA with Irish woman for a good while. Meaning genetically not much difference between the two.
Kirk's Raiders

 

[PatYoung]

Read the article, very interesting!

You mention that Alcott used the term Biddies,short for Bridget,as a generic term for Irish domestics. As I noted in the comments there, Lizzie Borden had a generic name for housemaids,"Maggie"the name she used with any Irish maid.

It is an odd thing to deny members of an ethnic group their individual identities by calling them all by the same name.

 

[PatYoung]

Very disappointing that someone who beleivex in equal rights for woman thought Irish people are somehow inferior to English people even though English men have been mixing DNA with Irish woman for a good while. Meaning genetically not much difference between the two.
Kirk's Raiders

And let's remember that these were working women.

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

It is an odd thing to deny members of an ethnic group their individual identities by calling them all by the same name.

Not really it's rather common. "Fritz" "Johnnie" Mr. Charlie" "Miss.Anne " the list
goes on . It's easier to kill folks if one can dehumanize them. I remember when Santa Monica Police used to nick name black men "Willie's". Nothing strange about it.
Kirk's Raiders

 

[5fish]

If you know the Unitarian Church, you would know it was a leading force in the anti slavery movement... The Unitarian Church was in the for front civil rights movement. It is odd Alcott was open with her bigotry with religious background...

 

[Matt McKeon]

It is an odd thing to deny members of an ethnic group their individual identities by calling them all by the same name.

True enough, paddy. And although the Bordens were an odd family, not in this apparently.

 

[5fish]

Here another article with the full text of her article...

The last advert he found dated from 1919.

Search Hogan’s full database of all NINA ads found here.

Here is the Louisa May Alcott article in full:

https://www.thejournal.ie/louis-may-alcott-no-irish-need-apply-2271995-Aug2015/

 

[5fish]

Miss Alcott wrote pulp fiction books under a male name... she wrote quite a few books under A. M. Barnard name...

The shining morality of Little Women may have made Louisa May Alcott famous, yet under a male nom-de-plume, its author preferred to write much darker stories about manipulative heroines, sex and power, writes Eleanor Halls

Louisa May Alcott (A.M. Barnard)
Best known for her seminal tale "Little Women", Louisa May Alcott, spent much of her early career writing under the nom de plume A. M. Barnard.
Featuring feisty women who did not conform to the ideal of the 19th century female, her early novels "A Long Fatal Love Chase" and "Pauline's Passion and Punishment" were hidden beneath an ambiguous pseudonym, giving Alcott the artistic license to explore different conceptions of the fairer sex without fear of disapproval.
This darker literary alter ego confronted racier themes, and was discovered more than 50 years after Alcott's death by book dealer Leona Rostenberg in 1942. Letters between the author and a Boston publisher in 1855 and 1856 read, "We would like more stories from you ... and if you prefer you may use the pseudonym of A.M. Barnard or any other man's name if you will."

Before writing Little Women, Alcott wrote Gothic pulp fiction under the nom de plume A.M. Barnard. Continuing her amusing penchant for alliteration, she wrote books and plays called Perilous Play and Pauline’s Passion and Punishment to make easy money. These sensational, melodramatic works are strikingly different than the more wholesome, righteous vibe she captured in Little Women, and she didn’t advertise her former writing as her own after Little Women became popular.

https://www.fictiondb.com/author/am-barnard~322574.htm

 

[5fish]

In 1874 Louisa May Alcott started her own "No Irish Need Apply" campaign to boycott hiring Irish woman as servants. Yup.

Read the article, very interesting!

I like to point out something. I searched the world wide web and found no other bigotry written by her. This article is so blatantly racist by her it should have shown up in her personal letters and I have found no evidence of it. I think the article may be a form of 19th-century catfishing. Maybe, Ms. Alcott was trying to make a point about the treatment of Irish domestic working but the point got lost because of the paper edited her story. I am surprised because social justice is a big part of the Unitarian church. She had her roots and tries to the Unitarian church. She was so open about her bigotry and it is not found anywhere else in her writings like journals and letters... There should be a way to find who her servants were ...

 

[5fish]

Look at this short story... do you think she truly dislikes the Irish... https://muse.jhu.edu/article/580675/summary

Here a blog summary of the story: https://theracetoread.wordpress.com/2015/11/30/her-contraband-diversity-and-louisa-may-alcott/

• Louisa May Alcott’s “My Contraband” and Discourse on Contraband Slaves in Popular Print Culture
• Fiona McWilliam (bio)

In May 1861, three field-hands belonging to a Rebel officer, Colonel Mallory, escaped to Union lines at Fortress Monroe, Virginia. After interrogating the men, General Benjamin Butler took in the escaped slaves and when their master demanded their return, Butler refused. According to Edward L. Pierce’s November 1861 article in the Atlantic Monthly, “The Contrabands at Fortress Monroe,” the three men stated their master was “taking them to Carolina to be employed in military operations there.”1 Pierce continues, stating that since Butler had no instructions nor was there any precedent in this matter, “an analogy drawn from international law was applied. Under that law, contraband goods, which are directly auxiliary to military operations, cannot in time of war be imported by neutrals into an enemy’s country, and may be seized as lawful prize when the attempt is made so to import them.”2 And so these three men found themselves transformed from “slave” to “contraband of war” and were put to work in Butler’s camp. The number of contrabands did not remain at three; though as if a “mysterious spiritual telegraph” contacted them, writes Pierce, more and more slaves fled to “the freedom fort” until, at one point, Butler found himself in command of over nine-hundred contrabands.3 Fortress Monroe of course was not an isolated instance, and as the Civil War dragged on, more and more slaves would escape to Union lines, ushering in a new era in America’s history.

Almost two years after Pierce’s report, the Atlantic Monthly published another, albeit fictional, account of contraband slaves in its November 1863 issue, Louisa May Alcott’s “The Brothers” (later published as “My Contraband”).4 The story is a first-person [End Page 51] account of Union nurse Faith Dane and her mixed-race contraband servant, Bob (later renamed “Robert”). Nurse Dane and Robert work together to care for a special patient, a sick Confederate captain who has been separated from the rest of the hospital’s patients. In a shocking turn of events, the narrator reveals that the Rebel captain is actually Robert’s half-brother—and that Robert plans to kill him for kidnapping and raping Robert’s wife, Lucy. Nurse Dane is able, though, to successfully sway Robert from murder; indeed by the story’s end he is transformed into a bona fide hero after fighting—and dying—in the Battle of Fort Wagner. Yet at the same time the story is explicitly subversive in its attention to interracial desire—that is, Nurse Dane’s attraction to Robert, whom she claims is “hers” several times over throughout the story. Dane cannot come to terms with the warring identities Robert embodies; she is drawn to Robert the “man” but is repelled, if not repulsed, by Robert the slave.

Extant criticism on Alcott’s story has examined dynamics of race and gender via Robert’s mixed-race status as well as Alcott’s depiction of interracial desire. This essay seeks to contribute to the existing critical conversation surrounding “My Contraband” by examining two intersecting points: the political and public debate surrounding contraband slaves and the ways in which this debate manifested itself in Northern media. Read in the context of this debate, Alcott’s “My Contraband” becomes both a response to portrayals of contraband slaves and indicative of the very same racial anxieties embedded in these (oftentimes racist) renderings. Although Alcott’s portrayal of Robert is far from the many explicitly racist depictions of contrabands found in Northern media, Robert’s limited interiority and perhaps most tellingly, his inability to envision his own future, speaks to the story’s uncertain conclusion as to where African Americans fit in American society. As Alice Fahs remarks, “popular war literature reveals that a discussion of the meanings of the war occurred across a much wider range of representations than is usually thought to be the case”; studying these wartime writings and illustrations, then, “forces us to expand our ideas of the cultural meanings of the war.”5 Turning to popular depictions of contrabands not only

 

[Matt McKeon]

I like to point out something. I searched the world wide web and found no other bigotry written by her. This article is so blatantly racist by her it should have shown up in her personal letters and I have found no evidence of it. I think the article may be a form of 19th-century catfishing. Maybe, Ms. Alcott was trying to make a point about the treatment of Irish domestic working but the point got lost because of the paper edited her story. I am surprised because social justice is a big part of the Unitarian church. She had her roots and tries to the Unitarian church. She was so open about her bigotry and it is not found anywhere else in her writings like journals and letters... There should be a way to find who her servants were ...

That's an interesting idea.

 

[PatYoung]

I like to point out something. I searched the world wide web and found no other bigotry written by her. This article is so blatantly racist by her it should have shown up in her personal letters and I have found no evidence of it. I think the article may be a form of 19th-century catfishing. Maybe, Ms. Alcott was trying to make a point about the treatment of Irish domestic working but the point got lost because of the paper edited her story. I am surprised because social justice is a big part of the Unitarian church. She had her roots and tries to the Unitarian church. She was so open about her bigotry and it is not found anywhere else in her writings like journals and letters... There should be a way to find who her servants were ...

When I first read it, I thought it might be satire attacking bigotry, but the few secondary sources that reference it do not give any clue that it is.

 

[5fish]

That's an interesting idea.

When I first read it, I thought it might be satire attacking bigotry, but the few secondary sources that reference it do not give any clue that it is.

I found this blogger read the following book... https://louisamayalcottismypassion.com/2010/11/30/from-hillside-to-thoreau-to-irish-immigrants/

I just finished the section in Louisa May Alcott A Personal Biography by Susan Cheever about the 3-1/2 years the Alcott Family spent at Hillside (must make a point of touring Hillside, now known as the Wayside, next summer). Cheever spent a couple of pages on Thoreau and how Louisa felt about him and it made me want to read Walden again. I couldn’t imagine how I could fit in yet another book between reading this biography and Gone With the Wind (the most fun I’ve had since reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).

She mentions a chapter about Irish immigrants... Abba Alcott is the mom... not the sister...

Next, I started Chapter 4 of Cheever’s book and read an interesting paragraph about the Irish immigrants that Abba Alcott served in her role as one of the first social workers in a mission for the poor in Boston.

I found a smoking gun? ... her mom... She did social work for them and found jobs for the Irish... She did not like the Irish attitude towards Free Blacks. BUT!

The link to a book to page 150 and 151 ... talks about Irish and LMA... her writings in her works only use 19th Irish stereotypes...

https://books.google.com/books?id=s...sa May Alcott and the Irish of boston&f=false

 

[O' Be Joyful]

her works only use 19th Irish stereotypes...

little woman?

 

[5fish]

little woman?

Need to read those pages there a note about "little women" but goggle book has said I have used up my free time to access anymore...

 

[O' Be Joyful]

Need to read those pages there a note about "little women" but goggle book has said I have used up my free time to access anymore...

I was being sarcastic.

 

[5fish]

I was being sarcastic.

Well, thanks ... There I found this for you if you did not read those two pages...

In latter life, Louisa would call for wives to put out “No Irish Need Apply” signs against Irish domestics. Even worse, the youngest sister in Little Women, when a teacher takes away her valued collection of limes, is doubly vexed that the cast-offs wound up in the hands of Irish boys and girls, who Louisa refers to as her sworn enemies. Unfortunately, Louisa would not recall the generosity of the poor when she was in a position to be generous herself.