Irish women at the Old Bailey : Society’s view of Irish female perpetrators at the Old Bailey 1674-1900

The Irish immigrants have been an important part of London throughout the centuries. Their presence can be found from the 17th century and onwards. Initially occupied as seasonal workers in agrarian fields the Irish later found alternative ways of supporting themselves as the Industrial Revolution transformed the whole of England. Despite their vital importance to the construction of what was to be known as "the modern Babylon" the Irish have been victims of both social prejudice and maltreatment. Some historians have imposed a comparison between the Irish in England and the African slaves in the United States. They have viewed the Irish with the spectacles of modern racism and in their presumptions created an unfair image of the relationship of the British and the Irish as the European equivalent of that of the African slaves and the American slave owners. Not content with superimposing the image of "the racist Englishman" solely on the 19th century, scholars such as L. P Curtis and R. N. Lebow have sought to explain any questionable act committed by the British as a sign of xenophobia towards their Celtic neighbours, whether it be Cromwell’s Irish Campaign in 1649 or the lack of British aid during the Great Famine in Ireland in the 1840s. This essay sets out to examine how Irish women were perceived at the Old Bailey Session House in London. Women have always received verdicts of a more lenient character than their male counterparts. It is therefore plausible to suppose that, if Cutis and Lebow are correct in their assumptions, Irish women should receive harsher verdicts and a higher frequency of those committed than those acquitted of crimes in comparison with their British counterparts, which simply is not the case