O'Gorman, Camila (1828-1848), figure of scandal, was the youngest daughter of Adolfo O'Gorman and his wife, Joaquina Ximénez Pinto (d.1852). Adolfo O'Gorman was the second son of Thomas O'Gorman and Anne Perichon de Vandeuil (b.1744), both born at the French colony of Mauritius. Thomas O'Gorman was related to Dr. Michael O'Gorman (1749-1819) of Ennis, Co. Clare, physician of the Spanish viceroyalty of the River Plate and founder of its school of medicine.

Camila O'Gorman grew up in the bosom of a traditional family, during the rule of Buenos Aires governor Juan Manuel de Rosas. In 1847, she met the Catholic priest Uladislao Gutiérrez, of Tucumán, who was assisting the parish priest at Socorro church of Buenos Aires. On 12 December 1847 O'Gorman and Gutiérrez eloped on horseback and found refuge in Corrientes province. Eight months later they were betrayed by Fr. Michael Gannon and brought back to Buenos Aires. Among others, Fr. Anthony Fahy and lawyer Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield "demanded an exemplary punishment of the wayward daughter that was also giving the industrious and well-regarded [Irish] community a bad name" (Julianello 2000). They were executed by a firing squad on 18 August 1848 in Santos Lugares, near Buenos Aires. Camila O'Gorman was twenty years old and was eight-months pregnant.

Edmundo Murray

References

- Bemberg, María Luisa, Camila (Buenos Aires, 1984), film with Susú Pecoraro, Imanol Arias and Héctor Alterio (1 hour 45 minutes). Nominated by the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1985.

- Coghlan, Eduardo A., Los Irlandeses en Argentina: su Actuación y Descendencia (Buenos Aires, 1987), 420.

- Julianello, Maria Teresa, The Scarlet Trinity: The Doomed Struggle of Camila O'Gorman against Family, Church and State in 19th-Century Buenos Aires (Cork: Irish Centre for Migration Studies, 2000).

- Luna, Félix (ed.), Camila O'Gorman (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2002).