As legalized abortion in Northern Ireland draws ever closer, researchers have explored harrowing stories of single pregnant Irish women who fled to America during the Famine and the years following it. They examined a number of cases where single women fled persecution in Ireland in order to give birth in the USA.
Last modified on Thu 14 Jan 2021 10.24 EST
The millions of Irish girls and women who emigrated to North America in the 19th and early 20th centuries tend to be remembered, if at all, as domestic servants, cooks, wives and mothers.
A reputation for diligence and rectitude cast them as the unsung heroes of a diaspora that went on to conquer US business and politics.
But it turns out there is an untold chapter in the Irish emigrant experience, because many girls and women were in fact sex workers, thieves and drunkards, even killers, and they filled the prisons of Boston, New York and Toronto.
Dark history of Ireland s bad Bridgets : From a murderess to the mother who drowned her baby, podcast reveals how women who crossed the Atlantic in the 1800s for the American dream found lives of crime and poverty
Stories of Irish girls and women who emigrated to North America in the 19th and early 20th centuries and fell into crime are told in new podcast Bad Bridgets
Challenges prevailing view they were all wholesome mothers, maids and cooks
Prostitute Maude Merrill was killed by her uncle after she moved into a brothel
Mary Farmer was sentenced to death after murdering her neighbour Sarah