Burned Alive: The Burning of Bridget Cleary
Irish History Podcast
Fin Dwyer
4.7 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 22 March 2023
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1895 Bridget Cleary was a confident independent woman in a rapidly changing Ireland. This brought her into conflict with dark and sinister figures in her own community.
After being labelled a 'changeling' (a fairy who had taken the place of the real person) Bridget was tortured in a brutal ritual. This podcast, based in an original episode released in 2016, explores Cleary's life and why those closest to her ultimately murdered her.
The book mentioned in the show is The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story by Angela Bourke
Sound By Kate Dunlea
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Irish History Podcast. My name is Fender Weir and this is the story |
| 0:14.1 | of Bridget Cleary. As part of Women's History Month we looked at the story of Alice Morton's |
| 0:19.6 | divorce case and the whole issue of criminal conversation trials in the last episode. |
| 0:25.0 | This week I want to look at a very different aspect of women's history in the story of Bridget |
| 0:29.2 | Cleary. Cleary is often labelled as the last which burned in Ireland but this is a |
| 0:35.2 | cross simplification about what happened to this woman in 1895. The story about here happened |
| 0:43.0 | just over 125 years ago which in many ways makes it all the more unbelievable. I originally made |
| 0:50.4 | an episode on Bridget's life that was number 85 all the way back in 2016. Now seven years later |
| 0:57.7 | I took a re-listened to it and I decided that it would be worth rewriting parts of the episode |
| 1:02.4 | and doing a whole new re-record. Bridget's story is fascinating it reveals some of the challenges |
| 1:08.5 | Irish women faced in the later 19th century while a new century approached society also stood |
| 1:15.5 | at a crossroads offering women new opportunities but as you're about to hear older, often deadly |
| 1:22.2 | traditions died hard. In terms of sources used in this episode along with the usual newspaper |
| 1:28.6 | articles, archival sources I want to also say that I found the book The Burning of Bridget Cleary |
| 1:34.0 | by Angela Burke really great. I'll put a link to that in the show notes if you want to find out |
| 1:38.6 | more about the case I would recommend Angela Burke's book. Sound on the episode is by Kate Dunley. |
| 1:45.6 | By the 1890s Irish communities formed major populations across the English-speaking world |
| 1:56.7 | in Australia, America and Canada not to mention Britain, millions who couldn't afford to return |
| 2:02.4 | home never forgot about the country of their birth and paid a keen interest to events taking |
| 2:07.7 | place back in Ireland. In a world without the internet, television or even radio the only source |
| 2:14.5 | of information were newspapers and these were the closest thing you could guess to up to date news. |
| 2:20.7 | While these had once been months behind events taking place back in Ireland, |
... |
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