WHO doctor freed in Mali
EMIGRANT IRISH HORRIFIED THE UNITED STATES
A WORLD Health Organisation employee was released in northern Mali after being abducted by unidentified assailants.
Dr. Mahamadou Diawara was freed Thursday afternoon.
Abdoulaye Cisse, communication officer for the WHO, said: “We are conducting the formalities to bring him back.”
Diawara was abducted last month after working with the WHO to provide medical care to remote communities.
A NEW book opens the case files on Ireland’s Bad Bridgets – the wild Irish women who scandalised America.
Historians Leanne McCormick and Elaine Farrell’s Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem, and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women uncovers shocking tales of murder, kidnap and prostitution.
It explores the lives of Irish emigrant women who became notorious in Boston and New York.
McCormick, a senior history lecturer at the North’s Ulster University. told The Irish Daily Star: “We weren’t prepared for the material we found about Irish women in arrest records and archives.
“It doesn’t end well when we ignore history, and we need to look at all aspects of it.
“We must recognise emigration was complicated and difficult. For some people, emigrating was lifechanging; for others, it was lonely.’
‘There is a rosy glow around Irish American immigrant women — they made money, raised families, rose to success. Many did — but there were women in prisons and committing crimes as well.”
Here are three “Bad Bridgets” who shocked American society in the past 150 years.
ROSIE QUINN
Rosie emigrated from Ireland around 1900, and in 1902 worked at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in Manhattan. She left work for a few weeks in the autumn before returning without explanation. On December 11, she was arrested and charged with the murder of her three-year-old daughter.
A baby’s body had been found in Central Park Lake and traced back to Rosie.
During the trial, Rosie explained that as an “unmarried mother” she had been desperate, and had felt she had nothing to live for.
She claimed she intended to throw both herself and the baby into the lake, but the baby slipped from her arms, and she fled the scene.
In April 1903, presiding Justice Francis Scott, along with the jury, found Rosie guilty of second-degree murder and jailed her for life. She promptly fainted.
She was transferred to the Auburn Women’s Prison in upstate New York.
But many felt sympathy for Rosie. One journalist wrote to New York’s governor, Benjamin Barker Odell Jr., saying: “My heart is so burdened for that poor ignorant Irish girl, alone in a strange country, deserted by lovers and friends.’
Staff at the Fifth Avenue Hotel appealed to their employer, Charles Furlong. He created a petition to commute Rosie’s sentence.
That December, Rosie was released from prison by special order of Governor Odell.
On leaving the site of her incarceration, Rosie said: “Thank God I’m free.”