2-888-778 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Embankment, Waterloo Docks, Liverpool, 1850. Emigrants leaving Britain for the colonies: United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia or New Zealand. The average annual emigration from the United Kingdom between 1825 and 1850 was 91,407. 'The principal emigrants are Irish peasants and labourers...Since the fatal years of the potato famine and the cholera, the annual numbers of emigrants have gone on increasing, until they have become so great as to suggest the idea, and almost justify the belief, of a gradual depopulation of Ireland'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.