A journalist for the South London Press on 26th October 1867 wrote –
“A Correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette has been visiting the Curragh Camp in County Kildare, and in a series of letters has told all about the Curragh Wren”
But this is not a wildlife blog, nor one with sweet and lovely nature filled connotations, it is one that shows the oldest profession in the world in action and how women supplying the needs of men were still seen as lowest of the low.
During the first half of the 19th Century, Ireland went through a lot, the largest crisis of all was in all likelihood the Great Famine between 1845 to 1852. Millions left Ireland and it is estimated over a million died from hunger, leaving many orphans and young women with no where to go and no means to pay for accommodation or food. One constant however (and I am not going to get political here) was the presence of British military forces in the country, and from around 1856, the Curragh Camp near Kildare was made permanent.
Just outside the base was a secondary camp, but those living there did not have plush bunks to sleep in, nor roofs over their head, they lived in dug out hollows in the group protected by no more than bushes and hedgerows, and this is why they were known as the wrens of the Curragh. Their role was that of prostitution, and to service the military men nearby. Some of the women had followed soldiers from other parts of the country, in the belief that they were “in love” or sometimes purely because they had been seduced and fallen pregnant as a result. Many of the women had been forced to start selling their body for sex due to the famine a few years earlier and have no other means to earn money.
A poem was published in English newspapers in 1867, entitled “The life and death of Curragh Wren”, sadly I cannot find the author but it starts like this
It was on a merry time, when Curragh Wren was young, so neatly as she danced, and so sweetly as she sung
Private Crossbelts won her with his coat of red, he doffed his cap to Jenny, and this to her he said
My dearest Jenny Wren, if you will be but mine, you shall eat nice Curragh pie, and drink nice Curragh wine.
The verse goes on to say how Jenny followed her Private, even though he obviously had only wanted her for one thing and she ends up in the Curragh, turns to whiskey to satiate her and subsequently dies.
These women were ostracised by everyone who should have been there to help them, the Church, the community and even the workhouse. There are stories of priests attacking women from the Curragh who ventured into town and cutting their hair off to identify to all who they were, men from the nearby town thinking it “sport” to burn down their nests and destroy their possessions and Soldiers descending on their home to gang rape the women. Many locals felt that the wrens wreaked of moral corruption and what was worse, their existence was being funded by the tax payer’s money – as it was army wages that paid them.
It was not a pleasant nor easy existence in any sense of the word, but it was a community. Whilst you could not necessarily trust the women curled up next to you – she could be a convict, an alcoholic, a vagrant or anyone else deemed unworthy of respect – they cared for each other, they shared their earnings, they shared their food and they shared childcare.
Yes, children lived there too, many of these women were single mothers who felt it a positive thing if their child did not survive.
I hasten to add, it was not unusual for sex workers to ply their trade and follow army camps around, but the way that these women lived is what makes it so unique and also, so tragic.