You're listening to the mens rea podcast and this is the story of the notorious Nurse Cat. Oh, Patrick Caden and Mary McLaughlin were both from rural county Mayo and had emigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1890s where they met and married.

Patrick worked down the mines in Scranton, which were low-paid jobs by

American standards, but were sought after for poor Irish immigrants. He was 27, and she was 28 when they married and settled down in New Street, Scranton. They had their first child on the 27th of October 1891 and named her Mary Anne but she soon became known by her pet name

Mamie. Two years later in 1893 they had another little girl who died in infancy. This death hit the couple hard and

when Patrick's father died in 1895 the couple decided to move back to Mayo to

work the family farm. This was a rapidly changing

Ireland that they moved back to particularly for rural farmers who were engaged in a

battle against absentee landlords in England, and alongside that the Irish independence movement was steadily gaining traction.

By 1911, Patrick Caden was able to buy a small holding that their family had settled on.

They were no longer tenants, but owner-occupiers.

They lived in a large farmhouse, and with the money they had saved from living and working in America

They opened a grocery in part of the house and were able to extend the building and add an extra

Outhouse which meant that they could house horses, poultry and cows.

In total the couple had five children who survived childhood.

Mamie was followed by Michael Joe in 1897. Ellen was born in 1897, Ellen was born in 1899, Theresa 1900, and Eliza was born in 1906.

They were slightly better off than normal small farmers and also had a reasonably small family by standards of the time.

It wasn't all easy though. There were very poor years for farming at that time in the area. Something near to the famine hit

Mayo in 1897. The kids were all sent to school and they all learned to read and write. They spoke Irish and English fluently. They were a religious

family, Catholic, like literally everyone else that they knew. Mamie, like her siblings, attended the local national school at La Hardane and was noted as being

bright and studious as well as highly strong and strong-willed. She loved learning and didn't leave school until she was 15, which is quite

remarkable given where she lived and her background. Mamie had no chance of inheriting the

family farm, but when her father had purchased it from the Earl of Arran and the Land Commission in 1911, one and a half acres were bought solely in Mamie's name.

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