Orla Barry’s feature on the Irish diaspora of the 1950s and 1960s (18 June) began with the members of a Hammersmith, west London singing club belting their way through a number about “digging for gold in the streets”. In fact this punctilious exercise in oral history was not about the labourers who headed to England to resurface its roads but the women – nearly half a million according to one estimate – who accompanied them, here in the days when a ticket on the boat from Rosslare to Fishguard cost all of one pound three shillings and fourpence.Those reminiscing had a variety of explan­ations for their departure, ranging from an unfocused yearning for adventure to a general dissatisfaction with life back home (“I’ll go with you,” one con