Leanne: I had been working on a British Academy funded project that looked at Irish women and charity in New York and when chatting to Elaine found out that she was working on Irish women in Boston. 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. Elaine: We filmed a Bad Bridget documentary taster at the Ulster Folk Museum with Moya Neeson (Morrow Communications) in the summer of 2019.

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. When this enormous sea crane ship crashed into the Irish coast, it's owners got more than they bargained for. Elaine Farrell, ‘ A most diabolical deed’: infanticide and Irish society, 1850-1900(Manchester, 2013).

I will warn you this book delves into heavy topics such as infanticide, murder, sexual assault, thievery and alcoholism but these stories shed light on the lives of the women who up to now had rarely had their stories told before hand.

Stories of the women and girls who left Ireland, often alone, often very young to make a new life in North America. The Irish have a long association with alcohol and in this podcast we look at what happened to those Irish women who got into trouble with alcohol abroad. So, after lots of talking about it we came up with the idea of Bad Bridget which looked at criminal Irish women in Boston, New York and Toronto. An eye-opening look at the lives of Irish women who left Ireland to seek a better life, often with tragic results. By giving a voice to these Irish women history has neglected, Farrell and McCormick disrupt the romanticised narrative of Irish immigration to North America that is prominent in popular culture today.Telling the untold stories of generations of Irish women who saw their American Dream become a nightmare. Bad Bridget represents the beginning of a new experience here for our visitors with our collaboration focusing on new sensory elements. Those who drank to drown their sorrows, the mothers who neglected their children, and groups of women whose drinking on the streets brought them to court. 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. com/site/patrickhenrymcguire2 is an excellent resource on the Irish born Mormon Patrick McGuireIrish Mormons- Reconciling identity in Global Mormonism by Hazel O’Brien is analysis of contemporary Mormonism.

Leanne: We had been filming at the Ulster Folk Museum in August 2019 with Moya Neeson from Morrow Communications who introduced us to Colin Catney and told him about the project.

Biography: 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. Beginning back in the California Goldrush of the 1850s, tens of thousands of Irish immigrants ventured into the American West. Bad Bridget does an amazing job in taking many, sometimes clinical, sources of information and turning them into fascinating and thrilling stories of equally fascinating women. 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.

Katherine May thoughtfully shows us how to come through these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our winters and summers are the ebb and flow of life. Elizabeth Mullaney explained that she and her husband, a farm labourer from Swinford, County Mayo, saved enough money to send their eight children to the United States 'one by one.These include Annie Young a woman who lived in grinding poverty, the sex workers Maud Merrill and Marion Canning and the somewhat unbelievable Ellen Nagle a child prosecuted for being stubborn! This podcast is a nostalgic trip through the early days of the internet in Ireland when podcasting emerged. You can get Alan's book 'Mining Irish-American Lives Western Communities from 1849 to 1920' here https://upcolorado.