Reply #13: Partially true

[Warpy]

but the shanty Irish were the potato Irish, people who had barely survived the trip to America in aptly named "coffin ships" and badly scarred by all that they had seen during the famine. Most were illiterate.

The lace curtain Irish had been a cut above them, not dependent on a plot of potatoes and more likely to have come from the merchant or professional classes. Shantytown was a very temporary condition for them, as they were generally educated and literate enough to improve their conditions quickly. But yes, those lace curtains were seen as pretentious by the rest of shantytown.

My own family came over in the 1880s, long after the potato famine was over.