Bad Bridget in Boston, 1838-1918

Between 1838 and 1918, more than five and a half million migrants departed Ireland for North America. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, females outnumbered males in the passenger lists. These Irish women were predominantly unmarried, relatively young, and from rural backgrounds. Their experiences would be as diverse as their personalities and aspirations. This paper will focus on the experiences of women in Boston, based on the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project ‘Bad Bridget’. It will use quantitative and qualitative evidence to demonstrate how deviant Irish female migrants affected social relations in the cities and how attitudes towards such women and mass migration from Ireland generally changed across the period from 1838 to 1918.

Using evidence gleaned from prison registers, this paper will reveal that Irish women were regularly arrested and imprisoned on charges ranging from drunkenness or disorderly conduct to violence. It is apparent from a close examination of the records that Irish women of all ages are overrepresented and that many were tried and imprisoned alongside other Irish migrants. The papers will thus consider the ways that discrimination against Irish women manifested itself in courts and in prisons. In the years after the Great Famine, the daily influx of new arrivals from Ireland impacted the social, economic, political and cultural make-up of Boston. Using minute books and newspapers, this paper will demonstrate the reaction of middle-class Catholics to the daily arrivals. It will be complemented by Leanne McCormick’s exploration of similar themes in Toronto.