As is characteristic of most immigrant communities in their early years of settlement, the Irish congregated in one area of Wolverhampton. Drawn by the cheap housing, a community formed in the alleyways off Stafford Street and Canal Street.
The area became synonymous with poverty, over-crowding and filth, the most unsanitary area was Carribee Island, described in 1849 by the Wolverhampton Chronicle as an open gutter occupied by the "lowest class of Irish". In 1843 the Report to The Commissioners on the Employment of Children described one hovel in which a man, his wife and child, and a donkey all slept in the same room with a common dunghill at one end of the room.
Disease thrived in these unhygienic conditions, earning the area the nickname ‘fever nest’. The narrow streets did not have sewers or drains, human and animal waste flowed freely down the street. The of 1843 discovered eight cases of typhus fever in just one house in Carribee Island.
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