Leanne McCormick and Elaine Farrell

Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not a good place to be a woman. Among the wave of emigrants from Ireland to North America were many young women. Some lived lives of quiet industry and piety. Others quickly found themselves in trouble. Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick, creators of the celebrated 'Bad Bridget' podcast, have unearthed a world in which Irish women in America actually outnumbered Irish men in prison, in which you could get locked up for 'stubbornness', and in which a serial killer called Lizzie Halliday was described by the New York Times as 'the worst woman on earth'. From sex workers and thieves to kidnappers and killers, these ‘Bad Bridgets’ are young women who went from the frying pan of their impoverished homeland to the fire of vast North American cities.