The Cooper's Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary (review)

In 1895 in rural County Tipperary, Ireland, Bridget Cleary was burned to death by her husband, Michael. Her death came after several days of torture at the hands of her husband and other relatives who believed a fairy spirit had possessed her body. Given the sensational nature of her death and the intriguing motives offered, the case drew international attention. To many British observers, the case confirmed suspicions about the backwardness of the Irish. For Irish Nationalists the case was a concern because it undermined the argument that the Irish were ready for Home Rule. Neighbors of the Clearys were indignant at the shame being heaped on their village.

Using court records and newspapers, Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates have reconstructed the events of the case and attempted to put them in a wider context. Their thesis is that what might have been an obscure case was deliberately used by the British press and authorities to humiliate the Catholic Church and Nationalist politicians. They also argue that its prominence reflected the widespread contemporary belief in the fairy world: “had not so many people in Ballyvadlea, Dublin, New York, London and around the world believed in fairies, an ambitious prosecutor would not have used the incident to promote his career, Unionist politicians would not have exploited a woman’s death to influence the election, and we would never have written this book.” (p.393) The arguments are not altogether convincing. There is no reason to believe the prominence of the case was the result of a government conspiracy. A man roasting his wife in the family fireplace because he thinks she’s possessed by fairies is, by definition, a good story. Nor does one have to believe in fairies to find the story interesting or to appreciate its sensational aspects. At his trial, Michael Cleary was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter—hardly the outcome needed to advance anyone’s career. The authors conclude that the simultaneous occurrence of the trial, the Parliamentary election and the Archbishop’s Silver Jubilee in July 1895, makes it possible to “understand from a new perspective, how Ireland suffered, how she struggled, and what she faced in her fight to win her freedom.”(p.392) But, there is more of coincidence than deliberate linkage in the three events, and the suffering and struggling in the Cleary case were Bridget’s not Ireland’s.

To support their argument the authors devote an enormous amount of space to a very detailed, albeit often inaccurate, account of the political and religious circumstances of late nineteenth century Ireland. The authors often use pre-famine sources to describe Irish society in the 1890s, which leads to some gross distortions. To support the thesis that the trial was used by the British authorities they take a very simplistic view in which the good and noble Irish peasants are all struggling against the evil “English colonial government.” In order to sustain this argument, they imply that the prosecution of Michael Cleary was an act of persecution designed by English authorities to discredit the Catholic Church. This case is difficult to sustain since the presiding judge was a Liberal Irish Catholic and the authors produce no direct evidence of any government plan to use the trial. In fact, as they report, the central authorities ordered an end to questions about the fairies and insisted that the prosecution focus on Cleary’s culpability rather than his motive. Their repeated insistence that the trial was held in an English court is dubious in that the judge and jurors were Irish, the setting was Clonmel and the verdict seems to have coincided with community opinion. The accused were jeered and hooted as they marched to the courthouse and angry neighbors burned out relatives of Bridget’s who had taken part in the crime.

In the absence of evidence to support their conspiracy theory, Hoff and Yeates impute motives to various characters...