Frances Finnegan

Life
[fam. “Frankie”] b. England; ed York Univ. (grad. in Modern History, 1967); D.Phil on the Irish community in Victorian York (1979), based on a detailed survey of the Census Enumerators' Notebooks and other primary sources; appt. Research Fellow at York; appt. Lecturer in Social History at the Waterford Institute of Technology, 1979, and settled in Piltown, nr. Carrick-on-Suir; conducted pioneering research on women, poverty, prostitution, and Magdalene Laundries; issued a study of Dorothea Herbert (c.1767-1829), with a rep. of a lost poem as Introspections: The Poetry and Private World of Dorothea Herbert (2011); spent much time in Venice; d. 4 June 2022; bur. in Piltown; survived by two daughters and three grandsons.

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Works

Social studies

with E. M. Sigsworth, Poverty and Social Policy: An Historical Study of Batley (York UP 1976).
Poverty and Prostitution, Victorian Prostitutes in York (Cambridge UP 1979; reiss. 2006.)
Poverty and Prejudice: Irish Immigrants in York 1840-1875 (Cork UP 1982).
Penance or Perish, Magdalen Asylums in Ireland. (Piltown, Co. Kilkenny: Congrave Press 2001; and Oxford UP 2004).

Biography & Criticism

Introspections the Poetry & Private World of Dorothea Herbert (Piltown, Co. Kilkenny: Congrave Press 2011), 335pp., ill. [incorp. “Poetical Eccentricities of an Oddity”, and “Journal Notes” [being a continuation of her Retrospections].

See also Retrospections of Dorothea Herbert 1770-1806, ed. Gerard Howe (London: 1929-30; rep. Dublin: TownHouse 1988; pb. 2004).

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