It began as a trawl through the dusty archives for an academic project about female migrants in Canada and the US through two historical subjects for research for research.
The subjects are, after all, Flotsam people from the Irish Diaspora Whose existence has always been recorded, let alone remembered.
They were poor women and girls who fell on the wrong side of the Law and lived and died in the pits, footnotes of New York, Boston and Toronto in the 19th century.
But the two academics who mine the police, court and prison archives for the hidden world of female crime is a term, a hit book, a Hollywood book.
The Margot Robbie Company announced this week that these stories will be a part of the STAR Daisy Edgar-Jones and will be directed by Rich Peppart, who made a trip to the film.
“It’s a new world for us,” said Elaine Farrell, who introduced Queen’s University Belfast. “The number of messages and emails we’ve had from people saying it’s amazing and great news – It’s great.”
His colleague Leanne McCormick, of ULSTER University, welcomed the move to the screen. “It’s hard to hand over your baby, something we’ve been working on for a long time, but at the same time it’s very gratifying to see how people have something we do and something different.”
The film deals with Edgar-Jones, who made his name in normal people, and Emilia Jones, who starred in Coda, who accused the abusive father, poverty and hunger. In New York they enter the shadowy world of “bad bridgets” – sex workers, thieves, drunkards and murderers.
Peppiatt and his producer knee Tirney used the book of historians: Bad Bridge, Distory Dignant Company, and will collaborate with the company of IrboLie people, Luckychap.
Oscar-Winning director James Kate Hawley will act in the film, which will begin shooting in Ireland and Northern Ireland next year.
“I’d like to think there was a lot of influence on the film, but I don’t think so,” Farermell said. “It’s surprising because you get your set ideas as historians, we think about things in certain ways. So there’s a bit of a go.”
McCormick says they have faith in Peppiatt, a former tabloid reporter marlanded for the knee, his semi-autobiographical film about the rap trio of that name. “We’ll leave the film up to Rich. He’s the expert and he has amazing ideas so we’ll wait to see how it turns out.”
The original academic project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, unpicked the conventional narrative that female Irish emigrants were domestic servants, cooks, wives and mothers with reputations for diligence and rectitude.
In the 1860s, Irish people made up a quarter of New York’s population but Irish Men made up half of the prison population in men’s and women’s prisons. A survey of 1,238 foreign-born sex workers in the city found that 706, more than half, were Irish.
Research has uncovered no stories of individuals, such as Ellen Price, who was described as appearing in a Toronto court in 1865 “drunk as usual, with a burning red feather in her hat”. Leaving prison, he launched a choir in Dublin’s Rocky Road.
Margaret Brown, a pickpocket known as Old Mother Hubbard, tried to escape from a Chicago jail in 1877 by tying beds together but tripped and fell injured. Lizzie Halliday, who was from County Anrim, was convicted of several murders and became the first woman to die by electric shock in New York, but the punishment started with insanity.
Fans of the book and Podcast, which launched its second season, will appreciate learning about this part of the Distam experience in Ireland. “Not all wives and mothers or nuns or teachers. There is a little dark side. I don’t want to meet women but I want us to see their strong characters and their opposition.”
Historians hope that aspects of their “favorite bridgets” will end up on screen but in the meantime they will continue to research and teach. “The talk of the premieres and all that is interesting but we still have to do our jobs during the day,” McCormick said. However, Glitz can make them dream, Farermell joked. “That’s our main concern, you know, what we’re going to wear for the red carpet.”