Bad Bridget
Script error: No such module "Draft topics". Script error: No such module "AfC topic". Bad Bridget is a term coined by two historians based in Belfast, Queen's University Belfast's Dr. Elaine Farrell,[1] and Ulster University's Dr. Leanne McCormick,[2][3] to describe the women from the island of Ireland who were convicted of crimes abroad between 1838 and 1918.
The "bridgets" have been the subject of a podcast, exhibition and non-fiction book by Farrell and McCormick.
Background[edit]
Originally, both scholars were undergoing relatively similar different research regarding the same type of person (19th century Irish women in America). After the two of them got into a conversation, they realised that they were both doing similar research, eventually deciding to join forces.
Eventually they came up with the idea of the project Bad Bridget which looks at the criminal activity of Irish women in the 19th century. They are specifically looking at criminal Irish women in Boston, New York and Toronto.[4] They chose the name Bridget because at the time it was a very common name for Irish women in the 19th century[5]. It was also the derogatory term for Irish women who worked as servants in American homes . Contemporary newspaper cartoons frequently depicted Bridgets as sub-human, apish and inferior.[6]. Under Irish culture, the name Bridget, derived from that of St Brigid evoked purity and virtue.[7]. While under Northern American mass culture of 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the stereotype of the "blundering, drunken, quick-tempered and uncivilised 'Bridget'".[7]
History[edit]
The project started when both researchers discovered 19th and early 20th century records suggesting Irish women outnumbered Irish men in prison in sertain regions.[8]
Many of the Irish emigrants hoped for a fresh start and a happy life, but unfortunately for many of the women this was not the case. Being a sex worker was tied a lot with this too, a lot of the women when arriving in America had no money or no family. Some may have been planning to meet family when they arrived but due to the long journey and lack of communication it was often that they never got to. This led people to having no choice but to become prostitutes and work in brothels to have somewhere to sleep and get paid.[9][10][11][12][13]
Notable women such as Lizzie Halliday have been featured by the project.[14]
Timeline[edit]
2020, Podcast[edit]
This is a five-episode podcast channel that tells the story of Irish immigrant woman whose American dream turned into a nightmare. Each episode takes around 22-34 minutes. The channel was released in December 2020, and can be accessed on Apple podcast and Spotify.[15][16]
- Episode 1: Poverity[17]
This episode tells us how many young Irish girls and women, travelled unaccompanied to North America with a hope of raising their standard of living, and anticipations from parents especially mothers that obtain emigrant remittances back home.[9][11]
- Episode 2: The sex workers[18]
Many Irish girls crossing Atlantic working as prostitutes and sent money back home. However, their families probably do not know their immoral lifestyle may pose some hazard to their family reputation.
- Episode 3: The unmarried mothers[19]
Tragic stories happen to those emigrant girls and women unmarried and pregnant, after they were tricked and find themselves helpless. As Luddy noted in 'An agenda for women's history in Ireland, 1500–1900', 'Abortion, infanticide and abandonment were the methods most commonly used by women to get rid of unwanted children.[20]
- Episode 4: The demon drink[21]
The Irish have a long story with alcohol. This episode will introduce women who had broken the law being drunk.
- Episode 5: The murderers[22]
There are three most fascinating and interesting cases in this audio. A neighbor was murdered by a girl and then stole the house. A wife who suspects her husband sexually active with another woman. An Irish serial killer, Lizzie Halliday who was the first woman to be sentenced to death by electric chair in the United States.[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]
2022, Exhibition[edit]
The Bad Bridget Exhibition opened at the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh on 15 April 2022.[31]
Elaine and Leanne have been developing ideas for the exhibition since 2019 and in 2021, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Follow-on-Funding was secured to implement the project.[32][33]
The project, displaying over 150 objects, words, images, objects, smells and sounds,[34][35] involved National Museums NI staff and objects and some from the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.
2023, Book[edit]
After nearly 10 years of researching and writing, Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women was published by Penguin Sandycove on 26 January, 2023.[36][37]
Impact[edit]
The project has been praised by historians Jennifer Redmond,[38] Mary McAuliffe[39][40] and has been described as "fascinating" by reviews in both the Sunday Independent and The Irish Times.[41][42] Clodagh Finn of the Irish Examiner described it as "important",[43] and broadcaster Ryan Tubridy felt that it would enrich any bookshelf.[43]
References[edit]
- ↑ "Elaine Farrell". Queen's University Belfast. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
- ↑ "Leanne McCormick". www.ulster.ac.uk. 2021-11-21. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
- ↑ Bad Bridget (2023) Bad Bridget: Criminal and deviant Irish women in North America, 1838-1918 [medium]. Available at: https://badbridget.wordpress.com (accessed 6 November 2023
- ↑ "Finding Bad Bridget | Ulster American Folk Park". www.ulsteramericanfolkpark.org. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
- ↑ "What's in a name? Why are girls not called Brigid any more?". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
- ↑ "Irish maids in New York were subject to a racist slur in the 19th century". IrishCentral.com. 2023-10-02. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Farrell, E. & McCormick, L. 2023, Bad Bridget: crime, mayhem and the lives of Irish emigrant women, Sandycove, Dublin
- ↑ McCormick, Leanne (2023-04-04). "'Irish women made up 86pc of the prison population in New York in 1862 – they actually outnumbered Irish men'". Independent.ie. Retrieved 2023-11-10.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Inglis, T (1987). Moral monopoly: the Catholic Church in modern Irish society. Gill and Macmillan. Search this book on
- ↑ Lynch-Brennan, M (2009). The Irish Bridget: Irish immigrant women in domestic service in America, 1840-1930, 1st edn. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. Search this book on
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Ryan, L. (January 2003). "Moving spaces and changing places: Irish women's memories of emigration to Britain in the 1930s". Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 29 (1): 67–82. doi:10.1080/1369183032000076722. Unknown parameter
|s2cid=ignored (help) - ↑ Travers, P. (1995). O'Sullivan, P, ed. Irish Women and Irish Migration. Leicester: Leicester University Press. 'There was nothing there for me": Irish female emigration, 1922–71 pages 146–67. Search this book on
- ↑ Katzman, David M. (1978). Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Search this book on
- ↑ "Bridget Uncovering the secret lives of Ireland's emigrant women". TheJournal.ie. January 30, 2023. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
- ↑ Queen's University Belfast (December 2020) BRIDGET PODCAST [medium]. Available at: https://www.qub.ac.uk/Research/podcasts/bad-bridget/ (accessed 2 November 2023).
- ↑ Queen's University Belfast (December 2020) BRIDGET PODCAST [medium]. Available at: https://open.spotify.com/show/3no7maP7QJzM0buVOzRL3k (accessed 11 November 2023).
- ↑ Queen's University Belfast (December 2020) BRIDGET PODCAST [medium]. Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bad-bridget-episode-1-poverty/id1542804827?i=1000532948146 (accessed 11 November 2023)
- ↑ Queen's University Belfast (December 2020) BRIDGET PODCAST [medium]. Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bad-bridget-episode-2-the-sex-workers/id1542804827?i=1000532948367 (accessed 11 November 2023)
- ↑ Queen's University Belfast (December 2020) BRIDGET PODCAST [medium]. Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-3-the-unmarried-mothers/id1542804827?i=1000532948449 (accessed 11 November 2023)
- ↑ Margaret MacCurtain, Mary O'Dowd and Maria Luddy, 'An agenda for women's history in Ireland, 1500–1900' in I.H.S., xxviii, no. 109 (May 1992),pp1-3
- ↑ Queen's University Belfast (December 2020) BRIDGET PODCAST [medium]. Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-4-the-demon-drink/id1542804827?i=1000532948427 (accessed 11 November 2023)
- ↑ Queen's University Belfast (December 2020) BRIDGET PODCAST [medium]. Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bad-bridget-episode-5-the-murderers/id1542804827?i=1000532948487 (accessed 11 November 2023)
- ↑ Harold Schechter, Psycho USA: Famous American Killers You Never Heard Of, Random House Publishing Group – 2012, page 58 (born 1859) ISBN 978-0345524478
- ↑ Conway, John (August 11, 2014). "A Short History Of Serial Killer Lizzie Brown Halliday". newyorkhistoryblog.org.
- ↑ Serial Killer Lizzie Halliday, (excerpts from several contemporaneous newspapers and publications) Archived September 23, 2015, at the Wayback Machine unknownmisandry.blogspot.com
- ↑ Telfer, Tori (2017). Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. p. 62. ISBN 978-0062433732.
- ↑ James D. Livingston, Arsenic and Clam Chowder: Murder in Gilded Age New York, SUNY Press – 2012, pg 64 ISBN 9781438431796
- ↑ LIZZIE HALLIDAY, MURDERESS, DIES IN ASYLUM, Middletown Times-Press from Middletown, New York, Friday, June 28, 1918
- ↑ Telfer, Tori (2017). Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. p. 83.
- ↑ Owen, Kevin - "Killing Time in the Catskills" (2019 - Moonlight Press) ISBN 9781071087497
- ↑ Ulster American Folk Park, Bad Bridget [medium]. Available at: https://www.ulsteramericanfolkpark.org/whats-on/bad-bridget (accessed 11 November 2023).
- ↑ Ulster American Folk Park, FINDING BAD BRIDGET [medium]. Available at: https://www.ulsteramericanfolkpark.org/stories/finding-bad-bridget (accessed 11 November 2023).
- ↑ National Museums NI, BAD BRIDGET [medium]. Available at: https://www.nationalmuseumsni.org/postgraduate-research-bad-bridget (accessed 11 November 2023).
- ↑ Ulster American Folk Park, REIMAGINING BAD BRIDGET [medium]. Available at: https://www.ulsteramericanfolkpark.org/stories/reimagining-bad-bridget (accessed 11 November 2023).
- ↑ Ulster American Folk Park, STORYTELLING THROUGH SCENT [medium]. Available at: https://www.ulsteramericanfolkpark.org/stories/storytelling-through-scent (accessed 11 November 2023).
- ↑ Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women. Penguin. 26 January 2023. ISBN 9781844885824. Search this book on
- ↑ "Sandycove | Penguin General". Penguin.co.uk. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
- ↑ Redmond, J. (2018). Moving Histories Irish Women's Emigration to Britain from Independence to Republic. Liverpool University Press.
Women's experiences remain peripheral or ignored completely in many general accounts of migration and the Irish diaspora ... 'the Irish' is still used to describe research that is solely focused on male migrants without it being explicitly acknowledged as such.
Search this book on
- ↑ "University College Dublin Press". UCD Press. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
We owe these women their histories back, we owe these women to lift the veil of silence that has lain upon their experiences and we owe these women a rewriting back into the history books
- ↑ Farrell, E.; McCormick, L.; Redmond, J. (2022). "Exploring the ordinary: migration, sexuality and crime, and the progression of the 'Agenda'in Irish women's history, 1850s–1950s". Irish Historical Studies. 46 (170): 338–355. doi:10.1017/ihs.2022.47.
- ↑ "Bad Bridget Authors To Give Dorothy Macardle Humanities Lecture". DkIT.ie.
- ↑ "IrishCentral's Book of the Month: "Bad Bridget" by Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick". IrishCentral.com. 2023-02-01. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
- ↑ 43.0 43.1 McCabe, Donard. "Bad Bridget authors to give lecture on local heroine Dorothy Macardle at Dundalk IT". DundalkDemocrat.ie. Retrieved 2023-11-12.
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