Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women

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In 2021, the project was awarded an AHRC Follow-on Funding for a collaboration with National Museums NI to set up an exhibition at the Ulster American Folk Park which explores the Bad Bridget themes. 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. At the heart of this riveting book, though, there are insightful glimpses into the lives of Irish women who were criminalised for trying to survive. Elaine Farrell (Author) Elaine Farrell is a Reader in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen's University Belfast, and co-creator with Leanne McCormick of the Bad Bridget project. These olfactive additions represent an exciting new direction for Omagh’s Ulster American Folk Park, giving visitors the opportunity to experience history in a unique and intimate way.

An eye-opening look at the lives of Irish women who left Ireland to seek a better life, often with tragic results.

This podcast is a nostalgic trip through the early days of the internet in Ireland when podcasting emerged.

I have posted images of New Geneva to my new WhatsApp and Telegram channels WhatsApp Irish History ChannelTelegram Irish History Channel Key sources Whatmore, R. Our 'Bad Bridget' exhibition tells the stories of thousands of women who left Ireland for North America between 1838 and 1918, many of which found themselves in trouble and struggling to survive. An expert on Irish involvement in the US Civil War, Damian explains what Andersonville was and why conditions were so bad. Leanne: That life for many women in Ireland and in North America was hard, that they often travelled alone, were very young and may have never left their small village before. There is a free postage option at checkout if you are housebound/shielding, on low income, or need help with postage costs for any other reason.The show starts however with the bizarre story of a 19th century Irish conman who played a role in getting the church off the ground in the 1830s.

The emigration story we mostly tell ourselves is a bright, shiny one to which Bad Bridget now adds invaluable corrective shading.The answer is the complexities of Irish identity, our relationship with Catholicism and scandals surrounding the 19th century Mormon practice of polygamy. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe. As fascinating as all the facts and figures were, it did make the flow feel a little rigid and ever so slightly lacking in the narrative flair which would make these women’s stories come to life a little bit more (Fin Dwyer often does an excellent job with this particular challenge on the Irish History Podcast!