Bridey Murphy

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

A little addition to the old (1985) column on Bridey Murphy, the past-life alter ego of Colorado housewife Virginia Tighe.

Bridie Murphy Corkell, who lived across the street from Virginia when the latter was a child in Chicago, appears in the U.S. censuses of 1920 and 1930.

• U.S. Census, April 1, 1930, State of Illinois, County of Cook, City of Chicago, enumeration district 1955, p. 19-A, family 428.
• U.S. Census, Jan. 1, 1920, State of Illinois, County of Cook, City of Chicago, enumeration district 1548, p. 12-B, family 331.

Bridie was born in Ireland in 1892, and immigrated to the U.S. in 1908. She was still apparently living in Chicago in 1949, when her husband Anthony Corkell (another Irish immigrant) died.

Virginia Tighe claimed she didn’t know Mrs. Corkell’s first name or maiden name. However, Bridie’s spinster sister Margaret Murphy, 42, was living with the Corkells in the 1930 census. Margaret was also born in Ireland, and immigrated in 1906.

“Bridey” or “Bridie” is pronounced “Briddy”, short for “Bridget”.

2

You sure about this? I’ve known a few Bridies of Irish origin, and they’ve all pronounced their name to rhyme with “tidy”.

3

Whoa, there’s something I never knew. I always read it as “BRIDE-y,” which made the whole dead-woman-reincarnated idea sound kind of creepy to me. (I don’t know why, the name “Bridey” just made it creepy, okay?)

It sounds like that’s how Virginia pronounced it as well (since it was originally thought that she said “Friday,” which sounds almost exactly like “Bridey” if you use the listed-first-in-my-American-Heritage-dictionary pronunciation “FRI-dee”) and I suspect that’s how most people would pronounce “Bridie” if they saw it written. Perhaps that’s evidence that she saw Mrs. Corkell’s maiden name of Bridie Murphy written down somewhere?

4

If she was originally Irish and her husband was Irish as well, she was certainly called “BRIDE-y” at home. That’s how the Irish pronounce that name.

“Briddy” just wouldn’t happen over here. The sound is too short. We tend to elongate the vast majority of sounds.

5

“Bride” is also one of the other names of Bridget, pronounced just like the woman-being-married.

“Biddy”, with a short i sound (adopted by the US to mean “inconsequential woman” as in “that old biddy!”), is another nickname for Bridget; perhaps that’s where the OP’s confusion lies?

6

I have heard Brigid and Bride both pronounced as “breed”, but understood that “Bridie” and “Bridey” were pronounced to rhyme with tidy. Not sure if Brigid is a variation of Bridget or if they’re two distinct names.

(None of this is undebatable, it’s just how I have always heard these names pronounced.)