Dr Lynsey Black has appeared on ‘Talking History’, the popular Newstalk show, to discuss the centenary of the execution of Annie Walsh – the only woman executed in independent Ireland – and the history of capital punishment. Lynsey joined Professor James Kelly of DCU, Professor Kevin Rockett of TCD, and filmmaker and composer Matthew Rockett, who has made a short film about the Walsh case, ‘The Girl from Fedamore’. Talking History is hosted by Professor Patrick Geoghegan of Trinity College Dublin.
Dr Black spoke about the gendered nature of capital punishment in Ireland and the paternalistic treatment experienced by condemned women, evident both in their reprieves and their subsequent confinement in Magdalen laundries.
Lynsey is an associate professor in the School of Law and Criminology. She is currently PI on the Research Ireland-funded Starting Laureate ‘Contested Space: Penal Nationalism and the Northern Ireland Border’. She published Gender and Punishment in Ireland: Women, Murder and the Death Penalty, 1922-64 with Manchester University Press in 2022.
‘Talking History’ aired on Sunday 9th March on Newstalk and you can listen back here.