After the potato famine in Ireland, the Irish were willing to work for low wages in a new english-speaking country like England. Since many Irish "seasonal migrants" were desperate for London's resource and agricultural sustenance, the British government later became dependant on them for producing cheap labor. As time went on, the Irish remained working as cheap laborors for the benefit of London's economic good.

To understand the state in which the Irish and other poor people lived in, we must mention the effects of the system they lived in known as capitalism. Capitalism is a type of economic system that was first introduced by Adam Smith, a philosopher and economist. The capitalistic system works where individuals are able to pursue their own status within a larger economic network of public services. Moreover, land and capital are privately owned by individuals. This method of a working economy originated from Europe and used dominantly by the British during the 19th century and later spreading to countries worldwide.

Industrial work in London during the 19th century generally consisted of factory labor. These workers were both adults and children who worked for long hours at a singular activity receiving low wages. There was a large gap between the skilled and unskilled laborers within the separate economic classes. Beneath the impoverished working class lived the "underclass" who were often ignored and believed to be inherently incapable of rising above their status. They were known as the "sunken people".

Adam Smith was a British philosopher who studied the nature of capitalism. Smith¹s Wealth of Nations explains that capital works best without government interference, a laissez-faire economy. Wealth of Nations represents "the first serious attempt in the history of economic thought to divorce the study of political economy from the related fields of political science, ethics and jurisprudence."