Set in the post-independence period, this book is a study of women who were prosecuted by the Irish justice system for lethal crimes, namely murder and infanticide, and who were sentenced to death.  Drawing on wide-ranging research conducted for her PhD, Lynsey Black brings these women to life and explores not only the crimes committed, but also who they were and what were the circumstances, both personal and societal, that motivated them to take a life.

292 women and girls were prosecuted for murder in Ireland between 1922 and 1962.  Black observes that this cannot be considered a true figure – many cases of infanticide for example went undetected – but ‘the sample does reflect the picture of women and murder as glimpsed through the machinery of criminal justice’ (p. 2). Ultimately, only 22 of the 292 women were convicted of murder and therefore subject to a mandatory death sentence.  Through a detailed examination of these cases, Black explores the ‘contours of women and lethal violence in Ireland from 1922-1964’ (p. 2).  She examines the nature of female lethal violence, one that she argues is ‘qualitatively different’ to men’s – women are less likely to kill and when they do, they tend to do so within their own families, most typically children or partners.

A justice system is reflective of the society it represents and ‘the death penalty, and even imprisonment, were considered unfitting for women in these decades’ (p. 40).  Following a peak in the 1920s, Black observes a downward trend in female death sentences – ‘the judicial killing of women was an obscene prospect for many in government’ (p. 40).   This led to the curious phenomena whereby hundreds of women were prosecuted for murder and sentenced to death by a state which had no intention of executing them.  Since the foundation of the state, only one woman, Annie Walsh, was executed.  Black considers the rationale for mercy expressed by those involved – juries, judges, the Department of Justice, and the public.  She concludes that Walsh’s case was complicated by the notion of ‘double deviance’ – ‘women are punished more severely because they have contravened both the law and their gender’ (p. 47).  While it was unthinkable to execute a woman for infanticide, Walsh had murdered her husband.

Black maintains that paternalistic ideology lies behind the de facto exemption of women from hanging and argues that such ideology was deeply embedded in post-colonial Ireland.  She further argues that while paternalism saved many from the gallows, ‘it condemned others to lives of confinement’ (p. 69) in the various carceral institutions available – prison, mental hospitals, magdalen convents.  Against a background of falling prison numbers, women were being confined in these sites, ‘creating a shadow and deeply gendered punishment regime’ (p. 40).  Significantly, there was also a class dimension as women before the courts on charges of murder were almost all from the labouring classes.

Post-conviction, insanity or ‘weakmindedness’ were often offered as mitigating factors in death sentence cases.  Yet many women had held jobs and led independent lives prior to their conviction suggesting that an insanity plea was used as a device to have the sentence commuted.  Black argues that ‘Informal assumptions of ‘weak-mindedness’ and of biologically provoked mental disturbance, coloured attempts to explain women’s actions’ (p.98).  She further claims that ‘these were highly gendered and classed understandings of mental capacity’, which located women ‘within their reproductive capabilities, within their class positions and within their families’ (p. 98).  

As Black explains, ‘Ireland was, and remains, a highly discretionary sentencing regime’ and a mandatory death sentence for murder was handed down to only 22 women (p. 106).  Black shows that women convicted of non-capital offences, such as manslaughter or concealment of birth, were mostly sentenced to a period of detention in a religious institution.  This was viewed by the judiciary as a more lenient sentence than that of imprisonment – viewed as giving the convicted women ‘a chance’ (p. 114).  Single women who married the father of their now dead child were effectively released into his custody, and those who were married when convicted were less likely to be committed to religious institutions (p. 115).  Other mitigating factors included, ironically, motherhood and the prospect of suitable employment.

While examples of women’s voices within the justice system are few, Black’s work offers insight from the female convicts’ perspective, and petitions written by these women from prison reveal personal details not available elsewhere in the official record.  These petitions also give personality to the women and reveal anger and frustration at their situation.  For those women who were reprieved, their experience was different to that of a man.  Where pre-1922 convict women would have been assisted to emigrate, post-1922 this was abandoned in favour of release to religious institutions, especially for those women viewed as unsuitable for release back into the community.  While these numbers were small, this practice was indicative of a wider reliance on these institutions as carceral sites for ‘difficult’ women.

This book explores attitudes to womanhood, motherhood, and sexuality, and their impact on women’s experience of the court system.  Black concludes that Irish society ‘lived under overwhelming taboos in relation to sex and sexuality in the decades post-independence’ (p. 196).  And it is against this backdrop that women charged with murder of an infant, usually their own, must be considered.  They were deemed shameful, and society was not tolerant of either the illegitimate child or its mother. ’Gender instantly assumes greater salience in attempts to understand lethal violence when the perpetrator is a woman’ (p. 274), and Black’s forensic analysis of court records, Department of Justice files, and newspaper reports support this. Gender and Punishment in Ireland is a welcome addition to a growing body of research into women and crime, expands our understanding of how women experienced justice post-independence, and is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand female violent crime in the 20^th century Ireland.

---

Susan Byrne is a final-year IRC funded PhD candidate at the Department of History, Trinity College Dublin.  Her research examines women’s experience of the Free State justice system, 1922-1937 and how gender impacted their experience as victims or perpetrators.