The burning of Bridget Cleary
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Books › Social Science › General
ISBN: 0712665900 / Publisher: Pimlico, January 1999
The sensational story of the disappearance of a young woman from her home in rural Tipperary in 1895 and the discovery of her body in a shallow grave, burned and tortured. In this lurid incident, we witness the collision of town and country, of superstition and skepticism.
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In 1895 twenty-six-year-old Bridget Cleary disappeared from her house in rural Tipperary. At first, some said that the fairies had taken her into their stronghold in a nearby hill, from where she would emerge, riding a white horse. But then her badly burned body was found in a shallow grave. Her husband, father, aunt and four cousins were arrested and charged, while newspapers in nearby Clonmel, and then in Dublin, Cork, London and further afield attempted to make sense of what had happened.In this lurid and fascinating episode, set in the last decade of the nineteenth century, we witness the collision of town and country, of storytelling and science, of old and new. The torture and burning of Bridget Cleary caused a sensation in 1895 which continues to reverberate more than a hundred years later.
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