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Although written as fiction, Children of the Dead End is Patrick MacGill’s autobiography. Starting with an account of his childhood in Donegal, Ireland, at the end of the nineteenth century, the story moves to Scotland, where, living as a tramp, then working as a gang laborer, and for some years as a navvy at Kinlochleven near Fort William, Dermod Flynn (as he calls himself) begins to discover himself as a writer.

Peopled with extraordinary characters, suffused with humor, and yet unflinching in its portrayal of the near slavery of the poor in Scotland and Ireland, Children of the Dead End sold 50,000 copies a year in the 1920s. It was as influential in its way as the work of social investigators such as Rowntree in bringing about change in British and Irish attitudes toward poverty and destitution.

Born in Donegal in 1890 and sold into servitude by his parents, Patrick MacGill ran away when young to Scotland, working for years as a farm laborer and a navvy. Early literary talent got him a job as a journalist on the Daily Express, where he produced his first great novel on the Irish Immigrant experience: Children of the Dead End. A year later, in 1915, his second bestseller, The Rat-Pit, followed. Service in the war resulted in a number of substantial works including The Great Push and post war he continued to write, although only Moleskin Joe attained the fame of his first two books. In 1930 he emigrated to the U.S. where he died in poverty in 1963.