Hear about the woman who murdered her neighbour and put her in a trunk to steal her house, the wife who suspected her husband of having an affair, and the Irish serial killer who was the first women in America to be sentenced to death by the electric chair. This podcast is a nostalgic trip through the early days of the internet in Ireland when podcasting emerged. Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick, in conversation with Kathy Clugston, talk about their bestselling book and tell the strange, funny, and often moving stories of these Bad Bridgets, young women who left their impoverished homeland and ended up as sex workers, thieves, kidnappers and killers. By the age of 30, another Irish migrant Delia Jones had been in the Boston courts at least 12 times for drunkenness and selling sex.

Lots of fascinating info, some seriously brazen chicks, and plenty of sad too, including the rash of child murders among highly impoverished women who chose death for their kids over the poor house. The project also seeks to uncover the types of criminal activity in which Irish women were involved, from drunkenness to murder. They reveal the social forces that bred this mayhem through stories that are strange, sometimes funny and often moving. A lively, entertaining, if also at times incredibly sobering read, Bad Bridget provides a richly evocative account of the experiences of Irish female emigrants who found themselves on the wrong side of the law in nineteenth-century North America.We want to tell these stories in an accessible and exciting way and for visitors to come away with a wider understanding of life for many women at home in Ireland and their emigration experience. You can get Alan's book 'Mining Irish-American Lives Western Communities from 1849 to 1920' here https://upcolorado. I had no idea that Irish women made up such a high proportion of New York, Boston and Toronto’s incarcerated populations in the 19th and early 20th centuries, not to mention the breadth of crimes of which they were convicted. The fascinating individual cases reveal the lived realities and experiences for Irish girls and women who left Ireland for the ‘new world’.

We are responsible for ensuring that Northern Ireland’s significant collection is developed, cared for, and accessible to the widest possible audience. Listen to how the discrimination and prejudice experienced by the Irish over 150 years ago has similar echoes in today’s society. We’ve been working with the brilliant National Museums NI on this exhibition since then so it’s very exciting to see it come to fruition now!I wanted to find out how extensive this was, who the women were, and the types of crimes they had committed. He saw the possible collaborations with the Ulster American Folk Park and put us in touch with Dave Tosh who introduced us to Liam Corry and Victoria Millar.

This began a 40 day saga…Check out pictures of wreck the Samson on new channelsWhatsApp Irish History ChannelTelegram Irish History ChannelSupport the show at: www.Dr Elaine Farrell is a Reader in Irish Social History at Queen’s University Belfast, specialising in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland. I’m particularly interested in crime, gender, and lived realities in 19 th-century Ireland, and these are the topics that I’ve published on.