In 1904, Annie Dorey filed for separation from her husband Patrick Dorey, a farmer in county Meath, Ireland. The couple had married the previous year, after three weeks of courtship, and had one child. In her deposition, Annie detailed the almost constant brutality that she lived with since she moved into the house where her husband and his brother Lawrence, a bachelor, lived. Her husband began to quarrel with her within a few days of marriage and then told her to leave, so she wrote to her mother who came and removed her from the house. She lived with her mother for twelve days, before the parish priest intervened. She then wrote to her husband who came to collect her. Her deposition detailed that ‘although he had a spring trap which he might have brought, he brought a car for her, in order, as he said to humiliate her.’ Before he left with her, he insisted on getting a £5 dowry, or fortune as it was styled in Ireland, despite the fact he had never discussed this with her previously. She then went to her husband’s house where she lived until the following year. During her time with him, he was constantly violent, abusive and threatened her life if she attempted to answer him. On one occasion, he tried to strangle her in bed and put his knee to her throat.

On another, during a night in February 1904, her husband and his brother shared a bottle of whisky and she became afraid they were going to kill her. At 5am, her husband seized her by the throat, struck her violently with his fist and swore he would hang for her. At 830am he again violently assaulted her and told her if she was not up, dressed and preparing his breakfast in five minutes, he would kick her and her child out of bed. She told him that ‘if she had her rights she should have the doctor to see her’, but notwithstanding that she was ill she got up. The allusion she makes here is that she was in bed shortly after her confinement, which made his behavior all the more unacceptable. While she made breakfast, he made a kick at her, but hit a chair which broke. His brother Lawrence came and told him to ‘take her around over there where there was nothing to break and give it to her.’ Lawrence then said he would go for a doctor and swear that she was mad, so she could be put in an asylum. Annie sent a telegram to her mother, who came that day and took her away. Annie’s story did not finish here however. She sued her husband for alimony and was granted £2 a week by the judge. Her husband, being reluctant to pay, left the country and went to Australia to live with another brother. She then sued his estate for the money and he was made bankrupt. He had £1300 in the bank and the court decreed that she was entitled to half. Lawrence, the brother who shared the farm with the couple, received the other half. It is not clear what happened to the farm, but it may well be that the £1300 in the bank had came from the sale of the farm, which would explain why Lawrence was entitled to a half share.

Annie’s story, tragic but not particularly unique, highlights the numerous ways that historians encounter space within a single narrative. Annie is seen entering and leaving her husband’s household, each time passively. Although not explicitly discussed, she would have been given in marriage by a parent and when violence occurs she is taken away by her mother; on her return, she is collected by her husband, and on leaving again, she is removed once more by her mother. She is also seen to travel through space on a cart – a movement she reads as an act of humiliation. Within the household, she is frequently attacked while in bed, a space that symbolically represented intimacy and unity within marriage. On leaving the bedroom and entering the kitchen, frequently the only public room in Irish farmhouses and as such a place where space was often contested, she met more violence. In the kitchen, the use of space became a family issue. Annie’s attempt to use that space legitimately is contested by her husband and denied by her brother in law, who seeks to remove her from it entirely, moving her to another space, the asylum, where her rights as a human being would be denied entirely.

After she left her marital home, her husband emigrated, a movement through space that was a central part of the Irish experience in the nineteenth century, affecting those that remained at home as well as those that left. Patrick discovered that the physical removal of his wife from his house did not remove her claim to it, as manifested in her court-ordered alimony. She was physically absent, but present in her claim to the household’s resources. In order to escape her presence, Patrick chose to move to Australia, a space which for many represented new beginnings. After he left, Annie turned her claim for support from her husband to the farm, a space which in Ireland was integrally related to family and identity, revealed in the land disputes that were a central part of Irish history. Yet, she was not the only person with a claim to the land. Her brother-in-law had an equal claim, highlighting that contests over space within the kitchen could reflect much larger disputes over family resources, and furthermore, that space in Irish farming families was not negotiated between man and wife alone.

Thinking about the way that space shapes and is shaped by human actors is an increasingly popular method for analysing historical events. Katie Barclay sits in her office at Queen’s University Belfast, a space that represents her social position, occupation and acceptance within the academic world. She looks out of the window at the sunny weather and people playing in the park, and wonders what her transition to a new sunnier space would imply.