Bad Bridget

Bad Bridget examines the lives of Irish immigrant women labeled as criminals or morally suspect in North America between roughly 1850 and the early 1900s.

Farrell and McCormick use court records, newspapers, and archival material to recover the complex circumstances—poverty, discrimination, labor exploitation, and survival strategies—that produced those criminalized narratives.

The book argues that many so-called 'Bad Bridgets' were driven by structural hardship rather than inherent immorality, revealing the gendered and ethnic biases of contemporary legal and social systems.

Through detailed case studies, the authors restore individual humanity to women often reduced to stereotypes in historical accounts.

The work also highlights how these marginalized stories were omitted as Irish communities later achieved upward mobility and respectability.