Quote Originally Posted by Waterways View Post
There is a plaque on the gates of Clarence Dock. It states that 1.3 million Irish entered the port via those gates during the famine. Most immediately left via Waterloo Dock on the American packets or went to London and Manchester. Liverpool simply could not accommodate them all.
Liverpool and Philadelphia at Midcentury

Liverpool and Philadelphia played similar roles in their respective worlds.[23] Second in size and importance to the dominant metropolises of London and New York, they both enjoyed international prominence as major ports and commercial centers. Between 1831 and 1851 the borough of Liverpool's population jumped from 165,175 to 375,955. In the same two decades Philadelphia County's population more than kept pace, rising from 167,751 to 408,742.[24] Both cities, too, had large Irish populations dating from well before the potato famine. By midcentury nearly 72,000 Philadelphians (17.6 percent) and 84,000 Liverpudlians (22.3 percent) were Irish-born immigrants.[25] Philadelphia's population was otherwise more demographically diverse than its English counterpart, with nearly 50,000 (12 percent of the total population) non-Irish immigrants, including 22,750 (5.6 percent) Germans and 17,500 (4.3 percent) English natives. Over 10 percent of Liverpool's residents were non-Irish immigrants, but the vast majority of these were from neighboring Wales (20,262, 5.4 percent) and Scotland (14,059, 3.7 percent), with a mere 1.4 percent from other nations. Nearly 5 percent (19,761) of Philadelphians were African American, giving the city a racial diversity almost completely absent in Liverpool.[26]



Even in the mid 1800's almost a quarter of Liverpools population was of Irish decent, after the Famine this rose even further, just look in the phone book today for Proof!