'The Thrill of having this treasure trove of history turned to horror when I read the twist Brigid's life had taken'

LACY FEWER could have never imagined what she would unearth when she was given a mailbag of unopened letters belonging to a family member on a trip to the states in 1993.

What started as jovial correspondence between Brigid - who had left Ireland for the American dream, and her first cousin, Molly who remained in the homeland of Wexford - soon turned to something more sinister when Lacy realised the tragic turn Brigid's life had taken.

In the book, fiercely independent and passionate Brigid feels hindered by her family and the strict society of her small Irish town in the early 1900s. Brigid and her cousin Molly, who is more like a sister, dream of a new life in the seemingly unlimited land of opportunity they call Yankeeland—America.

Brigid gets her chance when she emigrates with her husband Ben and her brother James, while Molly stays in Ireland. But when Brigid’s quest to have a child leads her to seek unconventional help, her mental stability is questioned. She is soon caught up in a patriarchal medical establishment she has little power to fight. The new life in America Brigid dreamed about takes a drastic turn. Decades later Brigid’s grandniece discovers a sack full of letters between the two cousins. She unravels the story and vows to tell the tale of what really happened to Brigid.

A tale of hope and love meets the stigma around mental health, the mistreatment of women by a men-led medical system and oppression of women in a society where their voices often struggle to be heard, Yankeeland explores topics that are as relative today as they were then.

“I was traveling back through the States and I was given two black mail bags of my grand aunt's estate,” remembers Lacy.

“My father's aunt had emigrated from Wexford to America in the early 1900s and what I uncovered as I spent 12 hours on a basement floor in a house in Boston going through these bags were letters explaining that this grand aunt, who we never knew, had been locked up for over 30 years in an institution in California,” she added.

“I remember sitting on the basement floor and time stood still.

“What started out as such excitement because I couldn't believe that I was being given this treasure trove, and as a lover of history and the thrill of piecing it all together turned to horror when I realised the twist Brigid's life had taken.

“I remember sitting there and I cried and I cried.

“I genuinely believed that I was the one who was meant to find these letters and that I probably had the voice and the strength of character to be able to tell the story and bring it to the world. And I firmly believe that Brigid, at some level, wanted the story to be told.”

Brigid and Molly who lived next door to each other both fantasised about escaping the mundane life in rural Ireland for an exciting adventure Stateside as the Ratoath author explains:

“They were absolutely inseparable and you could see this in the early letters. Molly's letters in Ireland were all about, ‘Oh, Brigid, we both had the dream and I'm still here in the village and you got away’. But as I went through the letters, they became more sporadic. They became more bitter, from Molly to Brigid, like, you know, ‘you're over there living the dream, you don't care about us anymore’. And whereas Brigid was locked up and nobody ever knew.”

Heartbreakingly, Brigid's letters to Molly from the institution she was residing in were never posted and Brigid never received the letters Molly had sent to her cherished cousin.

“I read letters that Brigid had written from the hospital and I discovered that through my research they were given to the next of kin because the hospitals believed in those days that both the patients writing letters and the patients receiving letters, were often offensive to one another so none of those letters were ever posted,” said Lacy.

“I could tell from Brigid's writing that she was manic and as I began to do my research, I discovered that Brigid had a sister who also was incarcerated in St Senan's Hospital in Enniscorthy. She first went in in 1911 for a short period, and then she was admitted in 1918 and she died seven days later of acute mania at 27.

“As I was doing my research in the onset of the internet, it never left me the question of who fared out better? The sister that stayed in Ireland and died or the other sister who went to America and lived but was locked up for most of her adult life.”

“And the truth of her existence was never known until 1993 when I uncovered those letters.”

Lacy describes Brigid as “a confident and powerful character” who dreamed of spreading her wings and going to the land of opportunity in America.

“Brigid's family ran a shop so they had access to magazines so they would have had a taste for what the world outside their village was like,” she said.

“Brigid was quite a strong and confident person,” added the author. And they were affluent so it isn't your typical immigrant story where they're leaving poverty. They traveled first class in 1908.

“Brigid wanted to follow her dream and the glitz and glam of America. She had married three weeks prior to her leaving. Molly stayed at home in the village and married and has three children while Brigid left and never had a family. In the early 1900s when they were writing, the letters were so full of excitement, and there was loads of chatter about the excitement Brigid was experiencing in the different cities she lived in, writing back to Molly in Ireland.

“Molly, at this stage, was having children and then the humdrum life became so boring. Even in one of her letters, she says, all I have to look forward to is the mission that is on here at present!

“Molly was left in the village in Ireland, Brigid was off living her dream. However, nobody ever knew until 1993 that that dream was far from what people thought it was.”

Brigid's mental health began to deteriorate due to in part to her difficulties in having a family according to Lacy who said;.

“At the time Brigid was trying to have a child, a woman's value was completely wrapped up bearing children. Brigid had a number of miscarriages and that took a strain on her mental health and then she became obsessed and she begins to imagine that she's pregnant. There's a key character, her doctor, who her husband goes to for advice and the doctor is only too happy to give that advice, he is not a nice character. And having read medical journals of the time, women were completely dismissed.

“They believed that educated women tended to have a lot more mental health issues. So Brigid's husband was going to the doctor, seeking his advice, and then he lost patience with her and her desire to have a child and the mental toll that it was taking on Brigid.”

In an interesting side note, Brigid was incarcerated in the same institution as Marilyn Monroe's mother, Gladys Pearl Baker and among the pile of unopened mail, Lacy found a number of postcards of the iconic movie star.

“It was only when I did my research that I realised that Marilyn Monroe's mother and Brigid spent maybe 18 years in the very same institution in Norwalk State Hospital in LA. I thought it was really interesting that Brigid kept these postcards and I often wonder if Marilyn's mother had given them to her. Brigid must have followed her journey with such interest having known her mother. While they were incarcerated they would have most likely slept in the same dormitories, experienced similar treatment therapies and had plenty of time for talking with each other.”

Lacy says that she is passionate about highlighting the themes explored in the book including the oppression of women and mental health.

“Women were so cruelly misunderstood and Brigid was a strong character, I could tell that from her early correspondence she was a go-getter. She was well educated, she was affluent but unimaginably let down by society.

“I'm so happy to be able to share the story that she was never able to and give her the respect and tribute she deserves.”