{"product_id":"bridgets-hanging","title":"Bridget's Hanging","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn August 30, 1867, on a New Jersey gallows, convicted murderer Bridget Durgan was hanged before a crowd of over five hundred men, women, and children who behaved as though they were attending a carnival. She remained suspended until the cheering crowd was satisfied that justice had been done. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eBut had it? In \u003ci\u003eBridget's Hanging\u003c\/i\u003e, Sheila Duane looks carefully at the evidence and concludes that justice was not done: Bridget was tried, condemned, and executed for a murder she didn't commit. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eInstead, she was guilty of being poor, illiterate, Irish Catholic, an immigrant, and not beautiful, all of which were loathed in nineteenth-century America. Tried by a media not unlike today's and condemned by mob mentality, Bridget and her sensationalized story eclipsed the murder victim herself-Mary Coriell, for whom Bridget worked as a domestic-and a more likely suspect.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhile journalists at the time painted a picture of Bridget as monstrous, Duane looks with fresh eyes at a character who was intellectually childlike, who practiced a foreign religion, believed in unfamiliar superstitions, and who spoke with a brogue that was difficult for Americans to understand. \u003c\/p\u003e Both a well-documented study and an absorbing whodunit, \u003ci\u003eBridget's Hanging\u003c\/i\u003e dissects the case against Bridget Durgan and finds it wholly unconvincing. In doing so, Duane manages to find a little justice for Bridget at last.","brand":"None","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":46304233717970,"sku":"9781533349866","price":12.95,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0655\/8980\/5233\/files\/1_93b364a1-80e4-4b7d-bfeb-2341968577ec.jpg?v=1762833095","url":"https:\/\/www.indigo.ca\/products\/bridgets-hanging","provider":"Indigo","version":"1.0","type":"link"}