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Motivation for Change in Ireland
Nursing Clio is honored to have a guest blogger today – the wonderful Helen McBride. Helen recently graduated with her MA in History and Gender & Women Studies in May 2012 from the University of...
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Fallen Women Forgiven: Enda Kenny and the Magdalene Laundries
Prompted by the UN Committee against Torture in 2011 to set up an inquiry, the Irish government has released a report on State collusion with the Catholic Church in the treatment of girls and women in...
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Slane Girl, In Solidarity
Last Saturday at an Eminem concert at Slane Castle, outside Dublin, Ireland, a 17-year-old woman was photographed performing oral sex on two males. Unsurprisingly, these photos went viral on Twitter,...
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Abortion in Ireland: The More Things Change…
Last month, a handful of Irish women and men left Dublin on a unique bus tour. For two days, they traveled the country giving information on abortion pills — which are currently illegal in Ireland — to...
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Tea Kettles and Turpitudes: Abortion and Material Culture in Irish History
In 1932, a Donegal woman was brought up on criminal charges after she attempted miscarriage by consuming both pills as well as a ubiquitous item in early twentieth-century households: a bottle of...
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“For Poor or Rich”: Handywomen and Traditional Birth in Ireland
On Achill Island, Ireland, an untrained woman was prosecuted for acting as a midwife in 1932. In her defense, she argued that she intervened only in an emergency “to save the mother and child.” Here,...
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“The Torture Began”: Symphysiotomy and Obstetric Violence in Modern Ireland
“They just took me into the ward and put me on the bed and told me they were going to do some little job … ‘you’ll be very sore, and your legs will be tied together,’ [said the doctor]. And by God,...
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Irish Abortion Trails and Informal Care Networks: Facilitating Continuities...
Women from the north and south of Ireland have travelled to England to access abortion services since the advent of the British Abortion Act in 1967 (and before this as single expectant mothers.)1...
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The Girl and the Grotto: Remembering and Forgetting in Irish History
Walking home from school on a frigid day in January 1984, two Irish boys came across a shocking scene: in a grotto at the local Catholic Church, alongside a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, lay the...
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The First Communion Dress: Fashion, Faith, and the Feminization of Catholic...
In late 2012 the Irish Times and National Museum of Ireland selected the Roman Catholic First Communion dress as one of the most important 100 objects in Ireland’s history. A girl’s dress thus took its...
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“A Basic Issue of Women’s Liberation”: The Feminist Campaign to Legalize...
On May 22, 1971, forty-seven members of the Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM) boarded the 8am train from Dublin to Belfast. Their aim was to purchase contraceptives in the north, where...
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Male Jealousy & Questions of Sexual Honor: A Look at Historical Cases of...
At present in Ireland, a Domestic Violence Bill is rumbling its way through the Irish parliament, a welcome albeit overdue development. Louise Crowley has noted that failures to enshrine domestic...
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“I Would Rather Have My Own Mind”: The Medicalization of Women’s Behavior in...
When he brought her to the asylum, twenty-four-year old Katie’s father was asked to describe what behaviors or actions had marked her “attack.” He noted, first, that she suffered from “some uterine...
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Women, Prayer, and Household Authority in Irish History
Traveling through Ireland in 1909, writer Robert Lynd described “a strange crying—almost a lamentation” that one might hear “on some evenings, if you are in a Catholic house in the most Irish parts of...
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Explicit: Censorship, Sexology, and Sexuality in Independent Ireland
When the Irish Free State created the Censorship of Publications Board in 1929, they were arguably asserting their independence.1 By taking control of information, and defining standards of morality...
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A Referendum – and A Path Toward Reproductive Justice for Ireland?
Citizens of the Republic of Ireland will vote on a referendum on May 25, 2018 to potentially overturn the state’s notoriously harsh anti-abortion laws.1 This moment is being characterized as a defining...
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“What Must That Sound Like?”: The Trauma of Family Separation
On June 22, 2018, US Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California’s 33rd District, stood on the floor of the House of Representatives to demand action regarding the children in “Tender Age”...
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Murder and Motherhood in 1950s Ireland: The Trial of Abortionist Mamie Cadden
On the evening of April 17, 1956, thirty-three-year-old Helen O. visited nurse Mamie Cadden at 17 Hume Street, Dublin, for what she likely thought would be a routine, if illegal, abortion.1 Helen O.’s...
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Shame and Shearing: The Politics of Women’s Hair in Independence-Era Ireland
The mother pleaded with them and asked them if they had daughters or sisters of their own. Without answering they closed the door. The girl collapsed on her knees, and a beautiful head of long hair...
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Death, Danger, and Decadence in 1920s Dublin: The Murder of Honor Bright
After the body of twenty-five-year-old Dublin woman Lizzie O’Neill, also known as “Honor Bright,” was found in June 1925, Irish newspapers jumped on the sensational story. The case had everything that...
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