In an attic office on Belfast’s University Square, Prof Elaine Farrell’s phone beeps with messages about her book being made into a Hollywood movie. The academic has just finished four hours’ teaching 19th century crime and punishment to Queen’s University students. She waves online to Prof Leanne McCormick, her co-author from Ulster University, who is at home in Coleraine sitting in front of an old map of New York.
It is days since Variety broke the story that Daisy Edgar-Jones will lead the cast in a film based on the historians’ acclaimed book about the forgotten lives of Irish emigrant women jailed in the US and Canada during the 1800s.
Bad Bridget began as a research project a decade ago. The pair laugh recalling the day they kept typing the name into a university computer because, McCormick says, they were “really worried it was somebody’s porn name”. The project grew into a podcast and a book called Bridget: Crime, Mayhem, and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women.
A fortnight ago they discovered Australian actor and producer Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap company will produce the film. Rich Peppiatt, who wrote and directed the Kneecap movie, will direct, with shooting due to begin in the North as well as in locations in the Republic next spring. Emilia Jones has also been cast.
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“At the moment it feels a bit surreal,” says Farrell. “People are messaging me from home in Sligo and my parents are forwarding messages that people have sent, saying this is huge. Because we have been involved in this for so long, we’re always thinking: ‘is this really happening?’”
Despite seeing the script and realising “it might happen” (Peppiatt wrote the screenplay a year ago when he and Belfast producer Trevor Birney optioned the rights to the book), the academics were stunned to learn of LuckyChap’s involvement.
“We were really, really excited to hear that was happening, particularly because of the ethos around LuckyChap – the fact that they very much focus on female stories and female story tellers. We loved Barbie,” says McComick.
“The idea that maybe Margot Robbie knew about Bad Bridget and that Bad Bridget had made it past her lips … ”
The film centres on two sisters who flee their abusive father and cross the Atlantic on a famine ship to seek a new life in 19th century New York. Its working title is Bad Bridgets.
Farrell and McCormick say they are glad the characters are fictional because they “feel quite close” to the women they have researched.
“We’ve been with them for several years. We gone through files; we might have held paper that they have also held; we traipsed through graveyards,” says Farrell.
They have just finished their second season of the Bad Bridget podcast, so the “timing is good”, she says.
“Rich knows film and I think we have to trust what he is doing.”
They admit that they will find it hard to hand over creative control.
“We have seen some scripts so we have an idea of what is going to happen. One of the ways in which it is easier to for us to let go is that this is a fictionalised version,” says McCormick. “But there’s a lot of versions of Bad Bridgets.”
The story of emigration wasn’t about what great men did in America and all those men who became presidents. There is this whole story that nobody was really talking about
— Prof Elaine Farrell
Murder, theft and prostitution are explored in some of the lives of the 200 women featured in the book; women, that “history chose to forget”, say the authors. Poverty and alcoholism were often factors in the crimes. By 1862, Irish women made up 86 per cent of New York’s prison population.
There were others who chose to be career criminals, and Farrell points to their “ingenuity”. She singles out Laura Wilson, the “chameleonic burglar” who broke into people’s houses and left dressed in their clothes.
“She’s a big favourite of ours with her ‘signature scent of rum and cigarette smoke’,” she says, laughing.
But so too is Marian Canning, who McCormick “shoehorns into every lecture they deliver”; the 19-year-old sex worker from Leitrim was sentenced to seven years in a New York prison after being falsely accused of stealing $3 from Richard Bronkbank for her services in 1891.
Canning’s father sent a bank draft pledging she would never enter the US again.
[ Bad Bridgets: The murderers, thieves and prostitutes among Irish emigrant womenOpens in new window ]
“I still remember the moment finding her pardon record and it had letters in it from her father. He wrote to the governor of New York and judge about trying to get her released. I’d never seen letters like that before, it felt like this is what a parent would write,” says McCormick. “And I love a happy ending.”
The “real thrill” for the historians is bringing the lives of these women to a bigger audience through film. They feel that a stigma remains about women’s history.
“It’s not ‘big boy’ history,” says Farrell. “But these are really important stories. The story of emigration wasn’t about what great men did in America and all those men who became presidents. There is this whole story that nobody was really talking about.”
McCormick agrees. She points to the map behind her.
“I am at home with an old map of New York; from my eye line I can always see and picture the Bad Bridgets. So it’s wonderful that someone has been inspired by what you’ve found in the archives and can take it to a completely different realm – and hopefully bring it to lots of people who can enjoy it and learn something about Irish women’s history.”
