Bridget Murphy: The Girl Who Left Ireland at Sixteen
Last week, I was chatting with a Green Room member about our visit last year to the Tenement Museum in New York City. Along the way, she suggested that a visit to The Merchants House Museum (also in the city) is also worth a visit, as they have a focus on the lives of the Irish domestic servants who worked in that house. So, I immediately looked up more - and the referenced New York census of 1855 showing the occupants of the Merchant's House Museum - which was a family home at the time .
The listed occupants of the house in 1855 included one Bridget Murphy, aged 19.
Let me tell you about Bridget. In that 1855 New York State census, she appears as a domestic servant for the Tredwell family and she was just sixteen when she arrived in 1852. In her story, you may recognise that of your own ancestors.
A Journey Begins
So, let's picture Bridget around 1851 in Ireland. She would have been fourteen or fifteen when her family made a momentous decision for the young girl. The Famine was still a raw memory, and younger daughters had few options: remain at home as unpaid labour, enter a convent (which required a dowry), or emigrate.
A steerage fare in the early 1850s typically ran somewhere the equivalent of fifteen and twenty-five dollars, depending on the ship and season. So, families pooled resources, sold a cow or a bit of land, or more often relied on money from older siblings already in America. Before the journey, Bridget probably had an address in her pocket - a cousin or neighbour who’d gone before and written home about life in the big city. These letters must have created a magnetic pull strong enough to overcome the feeling of leaving behind everything familiar.
Bridget in Service
By 1855, Bridget had probably worked in service for three years. In the 1855 census, she was one of four women in the Tredwell household: Ann Clark (from England) as well as Mary James and Mary Smith (both also from Ireland).
Their days were relentless. They were the first to rise, lighting fires before the family stirred. Hauling water up stairs and ashes down, scrubbing and washing and ironing. Most domestic servants lived “in” and were subject to strict rules about visitors, curfews, and conduct. After the household retired, Bridget might mend her own clothes by candlelight.
Although her wages were meagre, typically three or four dollars per month, she had no costs for food, heat, or lodging - and so every penny could be saved or sent home. It is estimated that between 1850 and 1900, Irish emigrants sent about 260 million dollars back to Ireland, much of it from young women like Bridget. This flow of money back to Ireland paid rent, kept farms afloat, provided passage for younger siblings, or created dowries for sisters who stayed behind.
The Weight of Being a “Bridget”
Over time, the name Bridget itself became a slur - a shorthand for Irish maids in American newspapers and cartoons. “Bridget” (or “Biddy”) was often mocked in caricatures as awkward and ignorant, sometimes untrustworthy. In an 1895 letter to the New York Times, a correspondent complained that Irish servants were “the dirtiest and most grossly ignorant people.”
And yet by 1900, around seventy per cent of Irish-born working women in American cities were domestic servants. It is guessed that they dominated this work because they held the opposite qualities of those outlined above - as well as and ability to endure what others might not: long hours, heavy labour, rigid rules, and constant scrutiny.
What We May Never Know
The 1855 census doesn’t tell us if Bridget married or remained in service. I had a look at some later census records and discovered a few Bridgets in Manhattan who fit here profile, so I would need some more research time. I wonder if she learned to read and write, or if she paid someone to write her letters home? Did she feel that “awful lonesomeness” that one young Irish domestic described - the isolation of living in a house full of people but sharing none of their joys.
But the facts do tell us this: Bridget Murphy was brave. At sixteen, she crossed an ocean to take on work that was backbreaking and under-appreciated. She did it for family, for survival, for possibility. And she succeeded — because by 1900, an estimated nineteen per cent of the daughters of these Irish domestic servants worked in service. The rest moved into teaching, clerical work, nursing, and other occupations at some of the highest rates of any immigrant group. Their mothers had taken a chance - and bought them that opportunity.
Remembering Bridget
So, if you find a US census entry with just a name and the words “domestic servant” beside it, remember: you are looking at the foundation stones of the Irish-American community. These women sent money home that kept families alive, brought siblings across the ocean, and built futures for their families that they could scarcely imagine for themselves.
Every Irish-American family owes a debt of thanks and gratitude to women like Bridget Murphy, who left Ireland at sixteen with a sense of hope for a better life.
If you have domestic servants in your own family tree, do feel free to HIT REPLY now and share their names. Let’s honour them together by speaking their names aloud.
That’s it for this week.
Slán for now,
Mike.
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