BRIDGET CLEARY
Murdered in 1895 IN BALLYVADLEA Just Another Little Murder
The Burning of Bridget Cleary Part 1
The Burning of Bridget Cleary Part 2
The Burning of Bridget Cleary Part 3
The Burning of Bridget Cleary Part 4
In her book, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, Angela Bourke leaves no stone unturned as she recreates the chilling assault on Bridget in March 1995 in Ballyvadlea, Tipperary. In 2007 I made my second visit to the cottage in which 26-year-old Bridget was knocked to her kitchen floor by her husband Michael and set alight with paraffin oil. I remain unconvinced that Cleary was a victim of the fairy lore about with Bourke writes.
Bridget, claimed her husband, ‘was away with the fairies’ and that the concoction of milk and herbs given to him by Dinny Gahan (Ganey) was for the sole purpose of expunging those fairies. All had gone horribly wrong when Bridget refused to swallow a piece of bread. In an instant, with her father, her aunt and her cousins only metres away Bridget Cleary was attacked and set alight.
As James Ramage had done to his estranged wife, Julie, in Melbourne Australia in 2003, Michael Cleary not only killed his wife, he buried her in a dirt grave. Deep beneath Cleary’s words and actions lay the same misogyny and sense of ownership that drove Ramage and the man who stabbed my 25-year-old sister to death in 1987. In every courtroom a woman killed by an estranged partner is said to have been 'away with the fairies’. Recalcitrant, infuriatingly provocative and unfaithful; this is the narrative that courts entertain about these women.
So, whilst there were men – John Dunne and the ‘herb doctor’ Dinny Gahan among them, who might have genuinely believed Bridget was away with the fairies - was her menacing husband talking the same language as them? And even if the fairy lore men were acting with good, if ill-informed intent, is it unreasonable to think that 'being away with the fairies' was a myth fashioned to deal with recalcitrant women?
Just as witches were burned at the stake so too was Bridget Cleary struck down by patriarchal orthodoxy. Was she having an affair with the ‘emergency’ man, Willie Simpson? Was her illness the consequence of the miscarriage of a child fathered by another man? Was Michael Cleary engaging in an act of revenge for her recalcitrance when all went awry? Was he engaged in an act of poisoning, which Bridget grasped and resisted that night?
On a mild December day in 2007, 70-year-old Patrick Power mesmerised Limerick Councillor John Gallahue and your correspondent as he recounted the stories, he’d heard. In a picturesque thatched cottage up the road from the Cleary house, he walked us through the murder.
His grandmother, he said, had come across the limping John Dunne as she returned from Drangan Church on Saturday 17 March, the morning after the killing. In Power's home it was said Cleary might well have been poisoning his wife and that she had indeed suffered a miscarriage. Dunne, who physically restrained Bridget the night before she was killed, played a major role in the fairy myth. He had walked with Cleary to Drangan Church on the morning after the killing and told Father Ryan what had happened.
At the trial the priest would not divulge what Dunne had said. Paddy Power believes the priest did however tell the police what he'd heard in confession. Although Dunne wasn’t at the house on the night of the killing, he was sent to gaol. He lies with his mother Ellen in Cloneen graveyard. So too do the Gahans. Dinny Gahan, who created the herb concoction, was charged but released before the trial.
Bridget, claimed her husband, ‘was away with the fairies’ and that the concoction of milk and herbs given to him by Dinny Gahan (Ganey) was for the sole purpose of expunging those fairies. All had gone horribly wrong when Bridget refused to swallow a piece of bread. In an instant, with her father, her aunt and her cousins only metres away Bridget Cleary was attacked and set alight.
As James Ramage had done to his estranged wife, Julie, in Melbourne Australia in 2003, Michael Cleary not only killed his wife, he buried her in a dirt grave. Deep beneath Cleary’s words and actions lay the same misogyny and sense of ownership that drove Ramage and the man who stabbed my 25-year-old sister to death in 1987. In every courtroom a woman killed by an estranged partner is said to have been 'away with the fairies’. Recalcitrant, infuriatingly provocative and unfaithful; this is the narrative that courts entertain about these women.
So, whilst there were men – John Dunne and the ‘herb doctor’ Dinny Gahan among them, who might have genuinely believed Bridget was away with the fairies - was her menacing husband talking the same language as them? And even if the fairy lore men were acting with good, if ill-informed intent, is it unreasonable to think that 'being away with the fairies' was a myth fashioned to deal with recalcitrant women?
Just as witches were burned at the stake so too was Bridget Cleary struck down by patriarchal orthodoxy. Was she having an affair with the ‘emergency’ man, Willie Simpson? Was her illness the consequence of the miscarriage of a child fathered by another man? Was Michael Cleary engaging in an act of revenge for her recalcitrance when all went awry? Was he engaged in an act of poisoning, which Bridget grasped and resisted that night?
On a mild December day in 2007, 70-year-old Patrick Power mesmerised Limerick Councillor John Gallahue and your correspondent as he recounted the stories, he’d heard. In a picturesque thatched cottage up the road from the Cleary house, he walked us through the murder.
His grandmother, he said, had come across the limping John Dunne as she returned from Drangan Church on Saturday 17 March, the morning after the killing. In Power's home it was said Cleary might well have been poisoning his wife and that she had indeed suffered a miscarriage. Dunne, who physically restrained Bridget the night before she was killed, played a major role in the fairy myth. He had walked with Cleary to Drangan Church on the morning after the killing and told Father Ryan what had happened.
At the trial the priest would not divulge what Dunne had said. Paddy Power believes the priest did however tell the police what he'd heard in confession. Although Dunne wasn’t at the house on the night of the killing, he was sent to gaol. He lies with his mother Ellen in Cloneen graveyard. So too do the Gahans. Dinny Gahan, who created the herb concoction, was charged but released before the trial.
The outhouse where Bridget's body was laid out for the inquest.
Paddy Power tells his story about Bridget Cleary
John Dunne's grave. Buried with his mother Ellen.