We first encountered Marion Canning when we came across letters from her father in the Clemency Records held in the New York State Archives in Albany. Four handwritten letters from Thomas Canning in Mohill, County Leitrim, to New York City authorities, pleaded for mercy to be extended to his imprisoned daughter. It is a fascinating vignette showing how an Irish-born detective rumbled an Irish-born thief in a country thousands of miles from home. Irish emigrants sail to the US during the Great Famine, 1850. Photograph: Illustrated London News/Getty Dr Meg Foster is at Newnham College, Cambridge and is the author of Boundary Crossers: the hidden history of Australia's other bushrangers.

One of the main ones is a really sad one about a woman called Catherine O'Donnell in Boston, who is unmarried, had a baby. Sher thinks the father of the baby is going to come and join her but he doesn't. We hope that bringing to light untold stories of Bad Bridget's shows the diverse experiences Irish girls and women had in North America." Behind that caricature, however, lies the unsettling truth that many Irish female emigrants drank because of separation, grief, and personal tragedy. The project also seeks to uncover the types of criminal activity in which Irish women were involved, from drunkenness to murder. Our research has revealed that Irish-born migrants feature frequently in registers relating to prisons, houses of correction and houses of industry. We consider if Irish women deviated from societal norms to a greater extent than other ethnic groups and if the reactions of the authorities were guided by ethnic prejudices.It's whether or not she drowns the baby or she leaves the baby and then it drowns but she ends up being arrested for murder. She tells these really sad stories really beautifully as well as the funny ones. Read More Related Articles We hope that visitors to the exhibition, come away with more understanding of how tough it can be to be a migrant, to leave your home, to be away from family, friends and support networks. That this might influence the way migrants today are viewed.” Many of the women also faced charges of ‘stargazing’, a euphemistic term for sex workers who operated in the open air. The historians have launched a five-part podcast series titled Bad Bridgets and are working on a book based on five years of research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The actor Siobhán McSweeney, who plays Sister Michael in Derry Girls, joined the podcast. The focus on marginalised subjects paired with such dynamic design marks an exciting departure for the museum.

Echoing this journey, the temporary exhibition begins in Ireland, then takes the arduous trip across the sea, and ends in the cities of New York, Boston and Toronto. What differentiated 19th-century Irish emigration to the US from that of other countries was the number of young females who sailed, often unaccompanied, to new lives there. A really interesting read! 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 District Attourney looks at her case and realises that the police man who arrested her was on holiday when the trial happened. He basically said 'this whole story is a bit dodgy'. I don't think this man really believed him [her accuser] at the time. It's overturned and she is freed even though she served 19 months."The female equivalent of “Paddy”, the stereotypical Bridget was “often portrayed as this big, heavy-set woman, rolling pin in her hand, her face has those sort of simian features, often quite brutal, often very animal-like, as if she’s nearly subhuman, she hasn’t quite evolved properly, she’s coarse, she’s ignorant,” says Farrell. There’s also a sense of isolation – you have groups of Irish girls and women being arrested together for drunkenness because that’s their social group, there’s safety in numbers.

Yet she still ended up in court defending herself, was found guilty and was sent to prison for seven years. It is likely that her status as a young immigrant involved in the sex industry went against her. There was Laura Wilson, the “chameleonic burglar” – identified by the smell of her cigarette smoke and her trademark rum – who broke into people’s houses and left dressed in their clothes. A rich and complex alternative feminist history that allows us to consider women beyond their typically defined roles as mothers or martyrs.’ Business PostOpened in April last year and inspired by a research project of the same name, Bad Bridget interprets the lives of women who left Ireland between 1838 and 1918 and were drawn to North America by the promise of economic opportunity. Join Elaine & Leanne in conversation with Róisín Ingle as they uncover the untold stories of generations of Irish female immigrants to the USA that history chose to forget.

Marion had much in common with other Irish female emigrants; she left home alone and at a young age and found herself in a huge city without any support networks. Some Irish girls and women were able to find jobs and build lives for themselves in North America, but others instead turned to crime. Farrell says: “We can see it can be really dangerous not to know these stories.” The story of these Bridgets, she says, “is part of that wider story of women who were on the margins, or women who were deviant, or criminal.

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She was one of the lead researchers on the groundbreaking report by UU and Queen’s into mother and baby homes and Magdalene laundries in Northern Ireland, published in 2021, which led subsequently to a pledge that a public inquiry would be held into the institutions. The gallery stands in stark contrast to the more traditional permanent displays at the Ulster American Folk Park in Omagh, Northern Ireland. And we tell lots of Bad Bridget stories along the way! The fascinating individual cases reveal the lived realities and experiences for Irish girls and women who left Ireland for the ‘new world’. Between 1860 and 1881, at least 5,260 Irish women were imprisoned in Toronto – almost double the combined number of Canadian, English and Scottish women jailed during that time. More than a third of the 12,514 women admitted to Boston’s House of Correction from 1882 to 1915 were Irish, but the Irish were just 17% of the city’s population.