Podcast Corner: O'Shaughnessy's series shines a light in some fascinating corners
Catherine Crean from Dublin was arrested for helping Allied airmen in Brussels. Picture: Courtesy of Archives de l'Etat en Belgique (State Archives, Belgium)
The from the has been running since September, with the host and Opinions Editor shining a light on interesting stories throughout the week.
It’s been a tumultuous year of news already, with episodes in the opening couple of weeks in January looking at ‘AI girlfriends’ with Eoghan Cleary from the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute and the tragic death in childbirth of Laura Liston, the 36-year-old who died in June 2022 after giving birth to a baby boy at her home near Croom, Co Limerick, under the HSE homebirth service.
The news cycle moves fast but over the festive period — we know, it feels like a long time ago by now — the show featured a miniseries with Clodagh Finn on her weekly column .
Over six episodes ranging from 18 minutes to just under 30, O’Shaughnessy and Finn shine a light on some extraordinary women throughout Irish history who deserve to be household names.
The opening episode is on Grizelda Steevens who, in the 18th century, almost single-handedly set up Ireland’s first public hospital using an inheritance from her twin brother. Yet she is dogged by her supposed ‘pig snout’ — a trope Finn links to Donald Trump’s “Quiet, piggy” remark to a female reporter, and to the wider 18th-century habit of “pig-faced” women across Europe.
The story of Catherine Crean in the second episode is an aside at the beginning but sounds like a Hollywood blockbuster-in-waiting. Crean, originally from Moore St, joined the Belgian resistance during the Second World War aged in her sixties, helping Allied airmen escape.
Eventually captured, she was sent to Ravensbrueck concentration camp, where she died. Her story is remembered through a poignant account by her friend, the only recently deceased (at age 102) Belgian resistance fighter Andre Dumont.
On one of Catherine’s last days, weakened and dying, she asked her friend to comb her hair, but the friend was too weak herself — a moment Dumont later recalled with deep sorrow. The episode itself, however, is focused on Maureen O’Sullivan, who was born in Rathmines and parachuted into occupied France in 1944.
The story only gets wilder from there. And while O’Sullivan may not be well-known in Ireland, a new resistance museum is due to open in France during the summer which will feature her story.
The rest of the Irishwoman’s Diary miniseries focuses on Oonah Keogh, the first female member of the Dublin Stock Exchange; Sarah and Amelia Curran, ‘sisters at the heart of European culture’; Carmel Snow, who edited for 25 years; and May McGee, who fought to make contraception legal in Ireland.
The stories are terrific and Finn’s enthusiasm is a delight — as she quips at one point: “There’s breaking news in the past.”
