1. Mary Anne "Mamie" Cadden was an American-born Irish midwife, backstreet abortionist, and convicted murderer.
24 Facts About Mamie Cadden
1. 2.
Mamie Cadden was born 27 October 1891 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Irish parents Patrick and Mary Cadden.
3.
In 1956, Mamie Cadden was charged and convicted for the murder of 33-year-old Helen O'Reilly.
4.
Mamie Cadden was born Mary Anne Caden on 27 October 1891 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Patrick and Mary Caden, and was the eldest of seven children, five of whom survived infancy.
5.
Patrick and Mary Mamie Cadden had met in America, where Patrick worked as a miner.
6.
Mamie Cadden's parents settled down, purchased a small family farm, and opened a grocery store on their land.
7.
Mamie Cadden spent much of her early life on this farm, and continued to live there until she was 33 years old.
8.
Once many years had passed, Mamie Cadden realized she did not want to spend the rest of her life on the farm with her next youngest brother.
9.
Mamie Cadden had always taken an interest in midwifery, and in 1925, shortly after her sister Theresa's death, Cadden sold her portion of her land to her father to finance her midwifery certification course.
10.
Mamie Cadden moved to Dublin to train as a midwife at the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, and completed a six-month course, qualifying as a midwife on 10 December 1926.
11.
Mamie Cadden first worked in the Alverno maternity nursing home on Portland Row in Dublin from 1927 to 1929.
12.
Mamie Cadden's work became quite large, and her business outgrew her facilities.
13.
At St Maelruin, Mamie Cadden gave help for health issues, pregnancies, illegal abortions, and foster care operations for unwanted children born.
14.
Mamie Cadden operated a fostering service, which placed children with families who received payment for caring for the child.
15.
In 1939, Mamie Cadden was sentenced to a year's hard labour in Mountjoy Prison for abandoning and exposing a new-born baby on the side of the road in County Meath.
16.
When she was in prison, Mamie Cadden was forced to sell St Maelruin as she faced a financial crisis from the legal stresses of her arrest.
17.
The Gardai was able to trace the mother, who admitted consulting Mamie Cadden following a failed attempt at self-abortion.
18.
Once out of prison, Mamie Cadden resumed her illegal activities in rented premises despite having been removed as a registered midwife.
19.
Mamie Cadden provided miscellaneous medical treatments such as supposed cures for constipation and dandruff, and marketed herself as 'Nurse Cadden'.
20.
Mamie Cadden fell foul of the law again in 1945 when a pregnant girl who went to Cadden for an abortion denounced her, after being declared septic.
21.
The girl claimed that Mamie Cadden had inserted the laminaria tents which were found in her cervix.
22.
Mamie Cadden was tried under the Offences against the Person Act 1861.
23.
When her body was found on the pavement in Hume Street, Mamie Cadden was arrested and tried for murder.
24.
Mamie Cadden was sentenced to death by hanging in 1956, but this was commuted to life imprisonment after public appeals for clemency and due to the unintentional nature of Helen O'Reilly's death.