Bridget Robbins 1834-1880

It is snowing outside, giving me the perfect excuse to spend time at my desk exploring the lives of my ancestors.  I am currently focusing on my maternal grandmother's father's family - the Timmons and Robbins, including my great grandparents Bridget Robbins and Patrick Timmons  who came to Dundee in the 1840s, probably as a consequence of the Great Famine. However their lives on arrival to Dundee were far from easy. 

Today I pay tribute to Bridget Robbins : 

You call me an old termagent 
But I am not old
I am but 44
I came here but a child
I married at 18
Had my first at 19
and then 9 more
I have buried 4.


Bridget was perhaps the most troubled of all my great-great-grandmothers. She was born in Ireland, in Count Offaly, and moved to Dundee in her teens. She married a fellow migrant from County Offaly, Patrick Timmons, when she was 18.  Bridget and Patrick had 10 children, four who died in infancy (stoppage of water 5 days, weakened from birth 4.5 months, consumption 12 months and inflammation of bowels 6.5 months) and another in his early 20s of typhoid fever.  Two of her sons, including my great grandfather Joseph Timmons were sent to reformatory schools as youths; Joesph for stealing plums from a garden which seems unduly harsh. 

Bridget herself was no stranger to the courts with several appearances in the district courts for being disorderly, being described in the press on one occasion as an “old termagant”. She was 44 at the time and died only two years later in 1880 of phthisis or TB.