Podcast Corner: Bad Bridget gives a glimpse at the lives of 'deviant' Irish women
Siobhan McSweeney narrates the Bad Bridget podcast.
Ireland's output of history podcasts is world class - from social history podcast Three Castles Burning, about the stories of the streets and buildings around Dublin city; to the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin of the Irish History Podcast; to the six-part Stardust series from The Journal. Considering history is seen as less essential in the school syllabus in recent years, it seems ironic that it's never been more accessible.
One podcast to instantly add to the list is Bad Bridget, created by Ulster academics Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick. A five-part series that concluded just before Christmas, it seeks to go behind the traditional emigrant success story to tell the hidden tales of women that history has chosen to forget, according to Derry Girls star Siobhan McSweeney, whose narration pops up throughout the episodes.
What is a Bad Bridget? McCormick explains the title is what they decided to call Irish women considered criminal or deviant in North America, from 1838 to the end of the First World War. After a quick Google to make sure it wasn't the name of an Irish porn star, the podcast title was decided.
The stories they choose to tell are occasionally funny, with an undercurrent of pathos, and rarely hopeful.
Take 19-year-old Marianne Canning in episode two, 'The Sex Workers', who is propositioned by a man for "a night's racket" in New York City that ends with him accusing her of stealing a $5 note and his watch and her defending herself at a subsequent trial where she is found guilty and sentenced to seven years in jail. The conclusion of her story is worth sticking around to hear at the end of the episode.
'The Unmarried Mothers' makes for rather harrowing listening in light of the mother and baby homes report last week. We are told of 'baby farms', where women seek payment to take babies off lone and destitute young mothers' hands. 'The Demon Drink' is a bit lighter, the highlight a reading of a New York Times court article, 'An Amusing Female Inebriate', by McSweeney, featuring a court appearance by one Maggie Smith. She tells the judge she has "the asthma" so must drink, adding that she ain't a woman but rather a girl, "27 years old", a defence that's met with a ripple of laughter.
The listener can hear the glee in the historians' voices on finding certain records that shine new light on some of the tales, as well as their sorrow at the fates that befell so many. Their enthusiasm is as infectious as the series is riveting.
