Peruse her biography:

You can learn more about these years in the excellent monograph:
Educating Emily

The Younger Years (1856-1869)

Emily's aunts were notorious soiled doves before they vowed to mend their ways. Unfortunately, their rehabilitation was short lived as they all soon fell back into lives of sexual deviancy and addiction.

Michael’s mounting success as an inventor sustained a comfortable existence for Molly, her mother, and Emily during her younger years. Inspired by the opiate bongs favoured by the Himalayan Sherpas with whom Michael made a failed and near-fatal Everest ascent in 1852, the "particulate breathing apparatus" proved more popular among the privileged classes of counties Clare and Limerick than his "introspection wheel" had been among the nouveau riche of Westminster. In fact, the "party brat" (by which the device became affectionately known) became so ubiquitous that it was considered one of the primary factors responsible for a dramatic increase in cannabis use witnessed throughout Ireland during the late 1850s and early 1860s. (1)   

As word of Michael’s infamy as the inventor of the party brat, and his subsequent fortune, spread to the red-light districts of east London, three of Molly’s four sisters (2), Chelsea, Hope and Mary, returned to Ireland in a desperate attempt to redeem themselves in the eyes of their now wealthy brother. Fortunately for the three Flannigan girls, Michael’s brilliance as an inventor was equaled by his soft-heartedness, forgiving nature and naivete. He welcomed all three sisters into his home only to see them regress shortly thereafter back to a lifestyle of sexual deviancy and addiction – now entirely subsidized at his expense.

The unexpected arrival of Chelsea, Hope and Mary took a particularly harsh toll on Molly, who was already suffering with a prolonged case of post-partum depression following the birth of Emily. While Michael resigned himself to his sisters’ increasingly scandalous behaviour by distracting himself with his latest inventions(3), Molly was prone to lashing out at her siblings with a ferocity nearly rivaling that of her late husband. On one occasion, having walked in on a roily orgy involving all three of her sisters and a toothless groundskeeper named ‘Wily Willy’ in a garden shack, Molly was observed by a local clergyman pursuing her sisters "barefoot and wailing like a banshee" down a cobble-stone street with hedging shears. The shocked clergyman engaged in the chase to ensure no ill-harm would befall Molly or her sisters. When he finally caught up with the Flannigans, Hope and Mary had spent their entire energy disarming Molly from her shears. But he was too late to prevent Chelsea from receiving an extraordinarily well-hung fence wedgie that ultimately resulted in a hysterectomy.

It was within this milieu that Emily’s formative years were lived. As well, she grew up in the posthumous shadow of her father, whose legacy of savagery, alcohol dependence and war heroics was assimilated into her consciousness through the stories endlessly retold by her heart-broken mother. Molly’s inability to let go of the past seemed to envelop the young Emily like a shroud. As a result, Emily became prone at a very early age to "outbursts," as Molly called them, often expressed through a twisted combination of violence and creativity. One incident, at age five, which foreshadowed a disturbing pattern of behaviour in the years to follow, involved an satanic design Emily painted on a neighbor’s house using the bodily fluids of the same neighbor’s Persian cats. One week after her 13th birthday, following a series of particularly horrific "outbursts" that left the community "sickened, shocked and appalled" according to local newspaper reports, the Flannigan clan was run out of Ennis by a hissing mob of feline-rights activists.

Near penniless, thanks to the irrepressible debauchery of his aunts and Emily’s increasingly frequent counseling sessions with a sympathetic but very expensive physician who dabbled in psychiatry, Michael had a new plan for his dysfunctional extended family. He’d heard about land being given away in the far western reaches of British North America and he dreamed of making a fresh start. "Surely," he wrote in the opening entry of a diary dated October 13, 1869, "there must be some demand for locationists. I can only hope and pray."

"Scholarship" by Foothills

 Next: The Delicate Years

Notes:

1.  This little known fact is well documented by the world’s first known demographer, Charles "Chuckles" Pratt, in his commentary on the social evils of 19^th century Irish society, Cannabis Shenanigans. (back)

2.  Catherine, the fourth sister, had earlier given up her life of prostitution to repent as a nun at the Worcestershire Convent and Buggy Wash in Liverpool. (back)

3.  Michel’s most infamous invention saw its genesis at this time – the "strainer deal" as he called it. The small kitchen utensil, made primarily of wire mesh, was designed to separate pulp from the juice of tasty citrus spheres. The strainer deal held promise to be Michael’s most lucrative creation, but the idea was stolen by J.C. Walton (whose great great grandson would later found Walmart in the United States) who manufactured a cheaply produced knock-off called ‘The Sieve’ before Michael could obtain a patent. This setback was the beginning of the end of Michael’s career as an inventor. He never got past the bitterness of watching the "dastardly" Walton profit from his strainer deal. Michael temporarily abandoned tinkering with gadgets to try his hand at locationism. (back)