“On the other hand the accused is a woman…”: Women and the Death Penalty in Post-Independence Ireland

Abstract

Hannah Flynn was sentenced to death on February 27, 1924. She had been convicted of the murder of Margaret O'Sullivan, her former employer. Hannah worked for Margaret and her husband Daniel as a domestic servant, an arrangement that ended with bad feeling on both sides when Hannah was dismissed. On Easter Sunday, April 1, 1923, while Daniel was at church, Hannah returned to her former place of work, and killed 50-year-old Margaret with a hatchet. At her trial, the jury strongly recommended her to mercy, and sentence of death was subsequently commuted to penal servitude for life. Hannah spent almost two decades in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, from where she was conditionally released on October 23, 1942 to the Good Shepherd Magdalen Laundry in Limerick. Although there is no precise date available for Hannah's eventual release from there, it is known that “a considerable time later,” and at a very advanced age, she was released from the laundry to a hospital, where she died. The case of Hannah Flynn, and the use of the Good Shepherd Laundry, represents an explicitly gendered example of the death penalty regime in Ireland following Independence in 1922, particularly the double-edged sword of mercy as it was experienced by condemned women.

‘A Poor Prospect Indeed’: The State’s Disavowal of Child Abuse Victims in Youth Custody, 1960–1990

“…But: (a) most historic custodial abuses could be defined as crimes in the laws of the time; (b) various other factors meant they were ignored or defined away at the time, even by their victims, and (c) many of the latter are still alive and have received no redress. Considering the force of these points, we concur with others (e.g., [34,95,96]) that to suppress our moral emotions and refrain entirely from judgment would be unethical, colluding in the deflection of responsibility from those to whom it properly belongs.…”

Pastoral penality in 1970s Ireland: Addressing the pains of imprisonment

“…This was benign inclusivity for men who could be recovered to the traditional and acceptable settings of the family, the workplace and community. For convicted women, their double deviance often incurred a harsher patrician response, such as indefinite coercive confinement (Black, 2018). There was also the risk of unbridled discretion being more punitive, where people deemed bad simply would never be considered for release (Department of Justice, 1984a)—though this is an enduring problem of even the most regulated and bureaucratic parole systems and not limited to pastoral informality.…”

The Pathologisation of Women Who Kill: Three Cases from Ireland

“…There is evidence that women convicted of murder in this period in Ireland were considered first as women, and only secondly as murderers. 139 This is in stark contrast to the view of male violence from the late nineteenth century, which Martin Wiener cited as a focus for concern which conflicted with new models of masculinity. 140 In Ireland, the link between dangerousness and insanity was forged in the Dangerous Lunatics legislation of the nineteenth century.…”

“…144 This hierarchy of essential attributes meant that women were viewed as less dangerous than men who killed. 145 From the three case studies, it is evident that the women were viewed as 'difficult' rather than dangerous. In terms of 'perceptions of dangerousness', Prior found that patients in Dundrum who had previously been in prison were considered particularly troublesome.…”