Since the 1970s, Mary O’Dowd has been casting light on areas of Irish history which have been obscured. Her current research project, looking at marriage in Ireland from 1660 to 1925, is a shining example.
But, as she says, when she came to Queen’s in 1978, much of Irish history as a whole was unexplored in the educational curriculum.
‘I think there were two courses in Irish history and most of the students hadn’t done any Irish history before. You would have imagined that all the Catholic grammar or secondary schools might have been teaching it but many were not.’
It was after Irish history was ‘up and running’ at the University that she began to get interested in women’s history. She went on to become a founding member of the Women’s History Association of Ireland and later served as President of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History. She has written widely on this theme, including a history of women in Ireland between 1500 and 1800, published in 2005.
She is now Professor of Gender History. She says, ‘Marriage seemed like a good theme to follow, looking at the experience of men as well as women.’
The research project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and she co-directs it with a colleague of long standing, Professor Maria Luddy of Warwick University. The time frame begins with the Restoration of Charles II as King of Ireland and ends with the prohibition of divorce in the Irish Free State. It will conclude with the publication of a book.
She says, ‘We’re looking at trends, but we want this to be a readable book and we’re very keen to tell the stories of individuals as well. We’re also creating a website for those stories.’ And she teaches the subject to her students.
She says, ‘There has been very little research"We’ve been allowed to see material that few researchers have looked at before." undertaken in this whole area before and for a very good reason. The Public Records Office in Dublin was destroyed by fire in 1922 and many of the sorts of documents we use for social history were burnt. So we had two researchers searching archives throughout Ireland for records relating to marriage. They looked, for example, at church records, both Protestant and Catholic. But the Catholic Church is now quite sensitive about letting people look at their archives. So some dioceses refused access. Most, however, did not and we were allowed to see a lot of material that few, if any, researchers have looked at before.’
The research has turned up some interesting new perspectives on marriage in the past. Divorce was rare and difficult to get, but couples made their own separation arrangements. ‘We explore, for example, notices placed in the Belfast Newsletter from the 1760s by men saying they’re separated from their wives and are no longer responsible for their debts. In one case the wife ran off with a wandering schoolmaster. In another it was with a cobbler who came to visit.’ Bigamy was also surprisingly common.
She says, ‘A certain amount has already been written about marriage in the aristocracy so we are focussing on the middle and lower classes. One of the main themes that emerges is that the law on marriage was very lax up until at least the 1850s. Before then, most people got married in their own home. No witnesses were necessary and you could get married in secret. It’s not until the middle of the 19th century that the State introduces laws, saying you had to marry in a church and you had to have banns announcing it in advance. Even then the civil law was not compulsory for couples marrying in a Catholic church.
‘We go through the whole process – the law, courtship, seduction, abduction and elopements, relations between husband and wife, problems in the marriage, adultery, how you get a divorce or separation.
‘We look at mixed marriages, the attitudes of the Catholic Church and its relationship with the State, the Presbyterian Church and the problems it had in getting marriages recognised. Class is another significant theme. There were differences in attitudes between the larger tenant farming families and the landless labourers with little material wealth to invest in dowries for their daughters.
‘This is a huge and important part of Irish history.’
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