One of the main ones is a really sad one about a woman called Catherine O'Donnell in Boston, who is unmarried, had a baby. Sher thinks the father of the baby is going to come and join her but he doesn't. Individually, the stories are dramatic and vivid, full of the kind of lurid detail that made the related Bad Bridget podcast so popular…The emigration story we mostly tell ourselves is a bright, shiny one to which Bad Bridget now adds invaluable corrective shading… [It} will certainly change how we understand that story, and allow us to tell it with more nuance and complexity, and truth.’ Irish Times

Their book, Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women, offers a rare social history; that of the women who became sex workers, thieves, barflys, kidnappers, and even serial killers. We have career criminals who are involved in department store theft, or Elizabeth Dillon, who’s robbing people left, right and centre at funerals. These are women who are making a very deliberate decision.”One of the offerings of this exhibition is the installation of smells which gives visitors the opportunity to experience history in a unique way. Tasha Marks, scent designer and founder of AVM Curiosities, said: “Having access to the quality research behind Bad Bridget was a fantastic source of inspiration. When I read the reports of people’s experiences of the overcrowded tenements in New York I could almost smell them. We have been working on this for four or five years and the podcast has come out of the research that we have been doing." As long as there was a drop of Irish blood left in her body she would drink it [alcohol],” the Toronto Globe reported. She wouldn’t stop until the sods of the valley covered her, the paper said.

Thomas Canning’s correspondence with the Governor of New York prompted the District Attorney to look again at Marion’s case. When he did so, he realised that there was no real evidence against her. Women and girls sometimes told their migration story on admission to prison. 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.' Honora Rogan 'Came to America three years ago – sister paid her passage – came to earn money to support mother in Ireland'. Emigration as a way to avoid the potential stigma and shame associated with a pregnancy outside marriage points to harsh societal attitudes in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland. Elaine and I have been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council on the project bad Bridget. It looks at criminal and deviant Irish women in North America. We looked at New York, Boston and Toronto between 1888 and 1918. What they found about the lives of women who emigrated to New York, Boston, and Canada in the 19th and early 20th century was entirely unexpected.

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That is one of the many strengths of Bad Bridget. As well as charting the stories of the Irish women who ended up in police stations, in court, and in prison, it locates their experiences in the broader context of changing social attitudes and, indeed, police methods. FeaturingSiobhán McSweeney, who plays Sister Michael in Derry Girls,the podcast episodes look at different aspects of life for Irish women who emigrated to North America in the 1800s and through to the early twentiethcentury, including alcohol, poverty, and sex work. Thomas’s desperation is evident: he wrote on that occasion of his hope that the judge might release her ‘and thereby give peace to her disconsolate and broken-hearted parents.’ In his second letter a few weeks later, he pleaded with the New York State Governor to grant Marion’s freedom. During this period, more than five and a half million migrants departed Ireland for North America. A desire to demonstrate that those who left poverty in Ireland successfully climbed the social ladder in the “new world” have swept stories of criminal women like Lizzie Halliday under the carpet. I think the senses can break down boundaries, making collections more accessible and enticing. Scent is closely linked to memory so it has the power to create a longer lasting impression that goes beyond the gallery walls.”

It’s incredible,” says Farrell. “In every kind of institution we’re looking at there are huge numbers of Irish, but it’s a very specific time period. It’s in the 1850s, 1860s you see Irish women really outnumbering other nationalities…they are there in huge numbers but go 50 years later and they’re not. Given this, and Thomas Canning’s promises to take his daughter home, Marion was pardoned and released from prison. She had served 18 months of her seven-year sentence.Marion Canning’s life in New York could not have been more different to that in Ireland. Prior to her arrest, she lived in Mulberry Street, which formed part of Five Points in New York City. This area was notorious for gangs and violence, overcrowding and dreadful living conditions. The final episode features those few Irish women who were convicted of murder, one of whom, Lizzie Halliday from County Antrim, who was dubbed 'the worst woman on earth' for her crimes.

The emigration story we mostly tell ourselves is a bright, shiny one to which Bad Bridget now adds invaluable corrective shading. Its haul of previously underused primary source material will certainly change how we understand that story, and allow us to tell it with more nuance and complexity, and truth. Queer and trans women are not mentioned in the exhibit. Given the difficulty so many face in accessing gender-affirming care, abortion care and immigration services in Northern Ireland and across the UK, these would have been topics that visitors would find meaningful. A scent sample station recreates the smells of a seaside carnival Photo by Darren Kidd/Presseye Visitor views A new five-episode podcast series exploring the history and stories of criminal and deviant Irish women in North America from 1838 – 1918 has been launched by Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University. This book contains some great analysis of the social and individual forces that sometimes motivated these crimes, from poverty and mistreatment to material gain and revenge.

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These are the women they collectively dub Bad Bridget, and they deserve to have their experiences showcased as part of the Irish emigration story. With a saturated colour palette and a focus on poor emigrant women who often found themselves on the wrong side of the law, Bad Bridget lets visitors know loud and clear she is not like other exhibitions. Some were likely of criminal bent and possibly would have been on bad terms with the law, had they stayed in Ireland. For most others, dismissal from a job or failure to find one in America exposed them to immediate and dire need. In an environment without any economic safety net or the support network of extended family, on top of what might have been a traumatic wrench from home, the line between upstanding competent and deviant reprobate may have proved surprisingly porous.