Mamie Cadden
| Mammiue Cadden | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 27, 1891 Scranton, Pennsylvania |
| Died | April 20, 1959 (aged 67) Dublin, Ireland |
| Known for | Providing abortions |
Mary Anne "Mamie" Cadden (27 October 1891 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA – 20 April 1959 in Dublin, Ireland) was an Irish midwife, backstreet abortionist and convicted murderer.
Cadden was born in America to Irish parents from County Mayo, the eldest of seven children, five of whom survived infancy. The family returned to Ireland in 1895 after Mamie's father inherited his father's farm. In 1925, she moved to Dublin to train as a midwife at the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin. In 1931 she purchased a property in Rathmines and ran it as her own maternity nursing home. This was a common practice among midwives at the time, the profession then being one that operated independently of nursing and medicine.
As well as delivering babies, where necessary with the attendance of a doctor, Mamie Cadden also passed on unwanted babies to an informal fostering service, which placed them with families who received payment for caring for the child. She also criminally procured abortions — both medical (using preparations such as ergot) and surgical (by injecting a solution). In Ireland, abortion is still an illegal act. "Nurse Cadden's" activities were an open secret and many women wanted to use her services. Her nursing home in Rathmines came to an end in 1939 when she was sentenced to a year's hard labour in Mountjoy Prison for abandoning a new-born baby on the side of the road in County Meath. She had to sell the property to pay her legal fees.
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