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The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story

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This book is titled "The Burning of Bridget Cleary," and does recount the infamous case in 1895 Ireland where the cooper's wife falls ill and disappers, later to be found burned to death by husband and family. While this book does recount the crime itself in gruesome detail, it is not a book about crime. We must not forget the blurb on the back flap of the jacket to the book "About the Author." Ms. Bourke is a senior lecturer on Irish oral tradition and Irish Literature. This book is about the changing culture in Ireland during this time and how that produced the burning of Bridget Cleary. Namely, this changing culture is the conflict of traditional Irish oral culture and the English (and other western) rational culture defined by the written word. The treasure in this book is the author's cultural commentary and how this conflict sculpts those involved in this specific crime, and by extension, the modern Irishman and woman of the time. Using the Bridget Cleary case, Bourke provides insight into the larger cultural crisis occuring at the turn of the last century. The outcome of this case was a step in the process of reconciling the two world views to create the modern Irish culture and identity.

This book will be mediocre if you are interested in the details of the criminal case and criminal analysis, the latter of which is mostly lacking. However, if you are interested in the wider picture of Irish identity, history of daily living in Irish or other cultures, or the history of thought and worldviews, this book provides a wonderful microcosm and is well worth your time to check out.

I don't usually read non-fiction (unless it is biography) but a friend recently gave me this book and it looked intriguing. In March 1895, in County Tipperary, Ireland, a sick wife, Bridget Cleary, was burned to death by her husband, aunt and four cousins, who then buried her body in a makeshift grave. This book, written by Angela Bourke, an expert in Irish oral tradition, details what probably caused those close to her to suspect that Bridget Cleary was a changeling and also what happened to her husband, Michael, in the aftermath of her burning.

According to Michael Cleary and the other relatives responsible for Bridget's death, Bridget Cleary became ill with bronchitis and was then abducted by fairies who left behind only a changeling. This came after Michael Cleary had sought genuine medical help for his wife, then, convinced that Bridget had "gone with the fairies," conspired with a fairy doctor instead.

Bridget Cleary, at 26, was definitely not the average 19th century peasant wife. She was more independent that most women of her time, both in her outlook and in her finances (she was a successful dressmaker), she was more educated, she was quite attractive and she spoke her mind. But probably most damning, at least in Bridget's day, was the fact that although she had been married for eight years, she was childless.

To put it all in a nutshell, Bourke, who originally began this book as a part of her doctoral dissertation, believes that Bridget was simply too "strong-willed" to fit in with 19th century Tipperary society. The local traditions condoned the burning of witches and fairies and so, what better way to "control" Bridget than to burn her? Just get her out of the way.

I can buy the reasoning above. Small, patriarchal, clannish villages were certainly not above taking matters into their own hands, and fairy lore has always been part and parcel of Irish history, but Bourke lost my vote of confidence when she went on to suggest that Bridget Cleary had had an affair with her neighbor, Michael Simpson. While there is evidence to suggest that Bridget Cleary would have been intelligent enough and talented enough and independent enough and out-spoken enough to pose a threat to her small community, there is absolutely no evidence (at least none presented by Bourke) to suggest that Cleary had an affair with Simpson. (Bourke suggests that Bridget found Simpson "more attractive" than her own husband. I contend that a woman as intelligent as Bridget Cleary apparently was, would not have committed adultery on such shallow grounds.) What the "Simpson affair" does do, however, is absolve Michael Cleary of much of the blame for Bridget's death.

Whether Bridget Cleary had an affair of not, Bourke comes to the conclusion that Michael Cleary felt completely justified in the burning of his wife. The British, however, were not convinced and neither am I. By all accounts, Bridget was tortured and Bourke's recounting of this torture provide some of the most vivid writing in what is essentially a very dry and prosaic book. Michael Cleary, by the way, was found guilty of murder and received a 20-year sentence.

As long as Bourke remains focused on Bridget Cleary, this book is rather compelling reading. It is when she veers off and begins to talk about Anglo-Irish politics, home rule and the Marquess of Queensberry that she become quite tedious. A PhD dissertation is one thing; a compelling book of non-fiction is another. I think Bourke made the mistake of attempting to combine the two and it simply didn't make for a very good combination.

The Cleary case was a widely-publicized one and Bourke gives in to the rather fanciful idea that it even helped to defeat home rule for Ireland. After all, writes Bourke, a population as given to superstition and folklore as the Irish could certainly not be allowed to govern itself. To bolster her argument, Bourke notes that the libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry (who had accused Oscar Wilde of homosexuality), was going on in London at the same time as Michael Cleary was being accused of murder in County Tipperary. The Irish, Bourke points out, were seen, in the light of these two cases, as superstitious savages who were homosexual as well. I can't buy this argument for the defeat of home rule just as I can't buy the argument that Bridget Cleary had had an affair with Michael Simpson. Both "reasons" are too "pat," too convenient. And Bourke simply doesn't explore the other side of the coin. I have no doubt that Bourke attempted to be precise and factual, however. "The Burning of Bridget Cleary" includes 25 pages of notes taken from court transcripts, newspaper accounts and prison records.

This book is titled, "The Burning of Bridget Cleary," and Bridget's story does make for some very interesting reading. The details of Irish peasant life and the fairy culture that was so ingrained in late 19th century Ireland are interesting and do help us to understand Bridget and her community. But when the book goes off on political and social tangents, it simply loses its focus and, I suspect, loses most of its readers. I wanted to read a compelling book about a mysterious "real-life" crime, not a treatise on Anglo-Irish politics. Had it been a political book I wanted, I would have chosen one far more comprehensive.

Bridget Cleary was undoubtedly a woman who deserved to live, a woman who could have contributed much to her community. Her death was a tragedy and it deserves a sensitive and meaningful exploration. As I said above, as long as Bourke stuck to the subject of Bridget Cleary, this book was good reading matter. It is when she lost her focus and veered off into politics and social mores that the book became so much less than it could have been.

Bridget Cleary was a fascinating woman and her murder deserves further investigation and remembrance. I just wouldn't recommend this book as a vehicle of either.

THE BURNING OF BRIDGET CLEARY catches the eye immediately with its eerie (hardcover) illustration of a ghostly woman floating in midair superimposed over a man's stern, shadowy face. Lovers of all things Irish will find this horrifying true story of the life and death of Bridget Cleary of County Tipperary particularly disturbing, set as it is in the bucolic Irish countryside of the late 19th Century.

Visitors to Ireland will be aware of what author Angela Bourke calls "townlands." An inexact term, it describes rural places that are not on any map. Certainly not towns, nor even villages or hamlets, these places consist of a few adjacent farmsteads and perhaps a freestanding house or two, set off from other such places by fields, and perhaps by a large boulder carved with the name of the place. Populated by only a few families, who living cheek-by-jowl for hundreds of years are interlinked but independent, such places exist "there but not there," a reality which has informed the Irish mind and character for generations.

Ms. Bourke, a lecturer in Irish history, uses the death of Bridget Cleary as a paradigm for cultural change and disruption. Bridget Cleary died in 1895 because the "modern" Social Darwinist linearly organized, scientific, English-speaking and aggressively concrete universe of the late Victorian era butted heads with the "traditional" non-linear, symbological Gaelic-speaking world it was supplanting.

At first glance, Bridget and Michael Cleary would seem to have been thoroughly "modern." Both Michael and Bridget were educated and literate. She was a trained dressmaker who owned her own Singer machine. He was a tradesman, a cooper, who worked in a large commercial brewery. For their time and place they were affluent. They lived in the newest and most modern house in Ballyvadlea, a place in the south riding of County Tipperary.

There were a few disquieting elements in their lives. They were childless after six years of marriage, the focus of much stigma in staunchly Catholic Ireland at the time. They were close friends with William Simpson, the despised local "Emergencyman" or landlord's agent, a Protestant. Ballyvadlea, though only a few miles from the modernized town of Fethard, still had a percentage of primarily Irish-speaking inhabitants amongst its small population.

Bridget was contemporaneously described as "very pretty" (the local collective memory nowadays describes her as "sexy"), and stylish (she made her own fashionable clothes and wore gold earrings). She was also described as "stubborn" and "headstrong," probably a difficult and somewhat vain young woman. These traits could not have endeared her to the people of Ballyvadlea, mostly her rustic relatives, among whom she had grown up. There were also backbiting whispers that the attractive, engaging Bridget might have been having an affair with the handsome, dandified William Simpson, a rumor which, even if untrue, would have caused outrage in their spouses, both of whom were older.

In March 1895, Bridget caught a cold which soon developed into a serious respiratory infection. The odds are that today's modern medicine would have stopped the illness in it's tracks. Antibiotics not having been discovered, the Clearys were forced to rely on an assortment of patent medicines, and sought the aid of the local Health Service Doctor, a notorious drunk, who did not come when called.

In the interim, the untreated Bridget became more and more "demanding" and "excitable." This is understandable, considering that any minor illness could become a life-threatening condition very easily in that time and place. Bridget was no doubt frightened at the possibility that she might die. Unfortunately, Michael Cleary's father passed away suddenly at this point, adding to the overall level of tension in the house.

The five days the doctor stayed away allowed Bridget's illness to run rampant. Finally arriving, he prescribed some medication and went on his way. When Bridget did not improve, Michael revisited the doctor, a confrontation which ended in a shouting match. Disgusted, Michael chose to visit the local "quack doctor" (traditional herbalists were so called because of their association with farmyards). When the quack visited Bridget, whom he knew well, he reacted to her appearance and behavior by saying, "That's not Bridgie!" a comment which soon convinced the locals that the woman in the sickbed was not Michael Cleary's wife but a fairy changeling.

Bridget Cleary's "treatment" then degenerated into a kind of exorcism, which involved forcing her to ingest various foul decoctions of herbs, dousing her with unspeakable liquids, subjecting her to ongoing verbal and physical abuse, the drawing and twisting of her body, and the infliction of pain by various methods in order to drive away the changeling. In the end, her husband immolated her.

The contemporary press leaped on the lurid tale of "The Tipperary Witch Burning" with as much interest as the story would excite today on any media network. Bridget's death made headlines throughout the world. Ms. Bourke argues convincingly that the horrified reaction of the Great British public to the "primitive" mentality demonstrated by Michael Cleary (and by extension in the British mind, all the Irish) was a major element in defeating the Ireland Home Rule bill then before Parliament.

Bourke is also convincing in demonstrating that the burning of Bridget Cleary had more than just political ramifications. It was a pyrrhic victory of the timeless and magical world of ancient Irish traditions over the regimented modern world of the emerging twentienth century. It was specifically a patriarchial act: The men of that traditional world acted to punish a young woman who had stepped beyond the invisible but very real bounds that constrained females in their culture. It is telling that the people of Ballyvadlea let the British authorities themselves bury Bridget, a lifelong neighbor and relation.

Now remembered mostly in a Tipperary children's rhyme, THE BURNING OF BRIDGET CLEARY is a fascinating look at a world in the midst of transition.

The murder-by-torture of the cooper's wife Bridget Cleary at the hands of her husband and family members, who thought she was a fairy changeling, would seem to be almost entirely resistant to narratorial ineptitude. The 1895 incident in rural Tipperary seems to distill all of the fin-de-siecle British Empire's obsession with darkness and horror at the margins of its own civilization, and the story in and of itself should make a rattling good read. Angela Bourke, however, seems utterly incapable of telling a good story: there is little narrative logic to her recounting of events and background historical materials, and she repeatedly refuses to make transitions between the micro-history of Cleary's death and the surrounding wider issues of the day. As a result, the fascinating implications of the murder and its aftermath (with respect to gender, nationality, sex and even race) are often ineptly presented, and the story itself becomes dull and uninvolving.

In early March 1895 in Tipperary, Ireland, twenty-six-year-old Bridget Cleary catches a nasty cold and is bed ridden from her illness. Not to long after becoming ill, Bridget disappears without a trace. Most of the townsfolk in this isolated, rural village believe that the fairies claimed Bridget as one of their own. The few that did not believe that felt that something possessed Bridget's body and that the real Bridget would soon reappear.

Amidst all this superstition, the real Bridget lies in a grave, having been burned to death by her husband, Michael and nine of his friends and neighbors. All ten of them strongly felt a demon had taken control of Bridget's body. Michael is arrested for killing his wife and ultimately sentenced to twenty years in prison.

THE BURNING OF BRIDGET CLEARY is an excellent taut recounting of a real event that shook Europe towards the end of the nineteenth century. Spin doctors in England and Ireland used the brutal murder and the superstitious beliefs of the co-conspirators to political advantage in the debate over a free Ireland. Showing a deft touch for historiography, author Angela Bourke provides a nineteenth century look into why a village killed one of their own and how that seemingly remote case impacted twentieth century events in Ireland and England. This non-fictional book is worth reading by fans of historical novels as well as those readers who enjoy a real chronicled event.

Harriet Klausner

Having more recently taken to reading works of non fiction, I figured this would be a worthy read. True crime, folklore, and Irish history all come together in a tale from the end of the 1800's. The story centers around Bridget Cleary, a middle class wife of cooper Michael Cleary. She takes ill and with the help of some locals her husband becomes convinced that she has been abducted by fairies and what he sees is a changling and not his wife. The "cure" for her predicament in the eyes of Irish folklore is nothing short of torture and her husband eventually kills her by setting her on fire.

Ms Bourke does an outstanding job of relaying the legends of the fairies in Ireland at the time. She also convincingly shows how Michael Cleary may have been acting out of rage rather than superstition. She goes on to detail the arrest and trial of Michael as well as many members of Bridget's own family who aided Michael in his fairy cure. The events of the crime were used by the English as fodder for their criticism of the Irish and the Irish desire for self rule.

Whereas Ms. Bourke is commended for her attention to detail it is also the reason that the book has some slower spots. She at times painstakingly details the setup of the policing in Ireland as well as political movements that were pertinent to the story. She goes well beyond what is necessary to provide the reader with information. While it does not severely damage the book as a whole, it does hamper the overall presentation of certain chapters.

This book is a worthy read for anyone interested in Irish Folklore, Irish History, or even those who enjoy True Crime but are tired of the same old stories.

I took up my own interest in this case while researching the Theodore Durrant murders of San Francisco. The dates of the Durrant and Cleary cases overlap, and sometimes Durrant researchers will mention it. Additionally, I attended school at Rockwell College in County Tipperary, so the location also peaked my interest. Ms. Bourke does a very nice job of telling and documenting this story. Her latter accomplishment is especially appreciated by other writers like myself who often want to compare the characteristics of separate cases. I think what the reader will get most out of this one is an insight into how powerful folk magic beliefs have been in Ireland. Even when I was in Ireland in 1963, at the age of fifteen, I noticed it was quite common for people to believe in the fairies. In fact, most of my relatives and their neighbors spent far more time talking about the fairies than Jesus, Mary, or Joseph. I had been raised in San Francisco, where my own familiarity with the subject only came from seeing the Walt Disney movie Darby O'Gill and the Little people (Incredibly good by the way), but what villagers told me about the fairies didn't seem so unbelievable at all. When people gather together in any kind of isolation, they tend to generate and support beliefs which would seem preposterous to outsiders, and those of you who have never experienced anything like that will find this book worth reading. I also like the way it's put together. The colors and artwork used for the cover hint of the serious research within. And there are enough maps and photographs here as well; so if I was vacationing in Ireland I would certainly be tempted to see where this all happened.

England had a policy for the people of Ireland, their first colony: keep 'em as poor, illiterate and ignorant as possible: that'll keep 'em docile. That's as may be, but every people needs a world view. So the people of Ireland grafted onto their hard-held Catholicism another, more ancient, supernatural belief system, involving fairies and their ways. Nor were these the charming, cuddlesome fairies of "Finian's Rainbow,"either. "The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story," by Angela Bourke, an expert on Irish oral tradition, provides the best exposition I have ever read of these belief systems.

Among the peasantry, there were many who believed fairies to be not just mischievous, but actually malign."Fairies," says Bourke,"are normally invisible, but they are there. They live in the air, under the earth, and in water, and they may be just a little smaller than humans, or so tiny that a grazing cow blows hundreds of them away with every breath....Fairies are not human, but they resemble humans and live lives parallel to theirs, with some significant differences: they keep cows, and sell them at fairs; they enjoy whiskey and music; they like gold, milk, and tobacco, but hate iron, fire, salt, and the Christian religion.... "Almost any death,"she adds,"other than a gentle and gradual departure in old age, is open to interpretation as the work of fairies."

Fairies kidnapped people, and left behind "changelings." When an infant failed to thrive, or a person suddenly became inexplicably ill, and failed to get better with the usual prescriptions, those were changeling situations.

Some remnants of these beliefs linger today:we call a sudden paralysis caused by cerebral hemorrhage a stroke, from the Irish words for this phenomenon, "poc si," "fairy stroke." And a quack doctor: that's a shaman steeped in treatments for illnesses caused by fairies.

Unfortunately, the uusual prescription to cure these fairy situations was fire. Bourke quotes from a book on Irish folklore written by William Wilde, Oscar's father. "'About a year ago a man in the county of Kerry roasted his child to death, under the impression that it was a fairy. He was not brought to trial, as the Crown prosecutor mercifully looked on him as insane.'"

Bourke continues,"several other accounts can be found in nineteenth-century newspapers and police reports of suspected child-changelings in Ireland being placed on red-hot shovels, drowned, or otherwise mistreated or killed. Only eleven years before Bridget Cleary's death, the Daily Telegraph of May 19,1884 reported a case less than 15 miles away...."

"Ellen Cushion and Anastatia Rourke were arrested at Clonmel on Saturday charged with cruelly illtreating a child three years old, named Philip Dillon. The prisoners were taken before the mayor, when evidence was given showing that the neighbours fancied that the boy, who had not the use of his limbs, was a changeling left by the fairies in exchange for their original child. When the mother was absent the prisoners entered her house and placed the lad naked on a hot shovel under the impression that this would break the charm."

In March, 1895, 26-year old Bridget Cleary fell ill, then disappeared from her cottage in rural Tipperary. At first, those who knew her best insisted she had just gone away for a time, but her body was soon discovered in a shallow grave. She had been burned to death by her husband, a cooper/ farm laborer, and several others. The case was a sensation in England and Ireland, and proved very helpful to the Conservative party in the parliamentary debate over Irish home rule:it confirmed lingering popular fears about the savage Irish peasantry.

Bridget had been resented by her husband and neighbors for quite some time. She was pretty, clever, assertive, flirtatious, and, worst of all, a modern sort of woman. She was a dressmaker/milliner who owned her own sewing machine: consequently she was more skilled and better off than most of the people around her. She was certainly better dressed than many, and was the only woman around to own-- and wear-- gold earrings. Furthermore she kept poultry, and Irish husbands of the time just hated it when their wives did that. The chickens were rough on the cottages' thatched roofs. And, by long tradition, any money an Irishwoman made in the care of poultry was her own, not to be shared with her husband.

When Bridget was first taken ill, her husband did try hard to get the help of a real, trained doctor, but doctors weren't interested in peasant women. Therefore, her husband went to the fairy doctors, who prescribed the treatment that was to have such tragic results. Bridget's husband and nearly a dozen others stood trial for this crime, were found guilty, and sentenced to jail terms. Not so the quacks.

Unfortunately, this is a difficult story to tell, a narrative involving nearly a dozen people, and Bourke is not as well-equipped to tell it as she is to explain the world in which this could have happened. In addition, most of the conspirators/defendants have, you should pardon the expression, really commonplace Irish names. Put this book down on Monday, pick it up again on Wedsnesday, you'll have a real hard time remembering all those Kennedys. But if you are interested in Irish history, or women's history, you may find it worth the effort.

This is the first time I have seen the term that titles these comments. The other term that may be a bit too specific is Cultural Biography, but as this book does not focus on a individual, is perhaps less accurate. Any readers looking for sensationalized tabloid nonsense should look elsewhere for this is a scholarly work that uses the death of Mrs. Cleary as a centerpiece around which is built the history of the time, the politics of The Home Rule Bill, as well as the entire culture surrounding Fairy belief. This is about why this death took place and how varied and complex were the factors that made the event possible. This is a serious study of a late nineteenth century event, so while there are pictures, you will find none that exploit the victim. This again is another indicator of the serious nature of the work as opposed to prurient trash.

Ms. Angela Bourke did a remarkable job of communicating an event that done with less skill would have been miserable. The Author had to make sense of a Catholic Priest performing a Mass during this crime, and then behavior that most would consider bizarre that bracketed the clerical visits. She shares the significance of earthen structures as old as 1500 years that to this day play a role in Irish Life. As micro implies if an issue was raised it was explained in detail. Religion versus Superstition, the use of certain words and phrases during trial proceedings that were meant to link The Irish with the, "savages", of Africa so as to raise the question in the newspapers for months as to the Irish peoples ability, their fitness for Home Rule was debated.

There are also some fascinating background pieces that include Oscar Wilde, and the Marquess of Queensberry. How their legal fisticuffs (pun intended) were relevant again to Home Rule, and the case that is the subject of this book. The book is exceedingly well written, meticulously documented, and is a tribute to the craft of writing good History. I hope Ms. Bourke pens many more.

Great read!

Angela Bourke has given the world a meticulously researched, exhaustively detailed account of an event in Irish history that illuminated the state of Irish society at that time.

Bourke takes the event of Bridget Cleary's awful death and the circumstances surrounding it and connects it with folk beliefs in Ireland and prevailing political and social climates of the time. Subjects as diverse as the English attitude towards the Irish, women's relatively independent position in Irish society, and the role of mythology in Irish life are explored in brilliant detail. This book is a pleasure to read for those truly interested in Irish culture, and introduces a number of excellent insights and historical tidbits. (My favorite was learning where the term 'hen' in reference to women came from.)

A must read for those interested in Irish studies, as well as those involved in womens studies. If you are looking for a prurient murder story this isn't it-it is much richer.

An interesting note to take is the difference between the Irish and American editions-the Irish cover features a picture of the house the murder took place in, and the man who committed it. The American cover has a beautiful young woman in a revealing nightgown...