The Sins of Margaret Rohan Schroeder Thompson

When we caught up with Peg of Old in Season 4, she’d been living with her brother, Eamonn, working at a brokerage house on Wall Street and going by her maiden name, Rohan. If nothing else, ever since Margaret stole an expensive unmentionable from Madame Jeunet and set out to seduce Nucky Thompson with Irish soda bread, her morals or lack thereof have sparked considerable debate.

Nonetheless, Margaret has been portrayed as a practicing Catholic. Surely not the world’s most saintly, but one with the best of intentions. We have seen Margaret going off to confession a couple of times. But we have probably seen more of her sins then the priest has heard.

In one confession, she did cop to her sexual attraction to Owen Sleater while she was living in sin with Nucky Thompson. She had already rationalized her consent to be Nucky’s mistress since he would provide for her and her children. But when it came to Owen, well, she didn’t avoid the “near occasion of sin” one darned bit. She hopped into the sack with Owen when it suited her, and blew him off when it didn’t. Even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to rekindle their affair, she needed him so she had no qualms about taking him away from Katy and deciding to uproot her kids and run off with him, just to get away from Nucky’s world, knowing the whole time that Owen was working for her husband! And she gave not a thought to the pain she was causing Katy. Neither did Owen.

Well before the Owen affair, when Margaret fornicated with Nucky, she used Lysol to prevent any unwanted pregnancy. She did not want to have a bastard. Not her fault. She had to do both. Margaret lied to Nucky about her financial needs in order to be able to sock away a nest egg for the time when Nucky grew tired of her or vice versa, since she soon became disenchanted with him. She had good reasons besides not finding him to be a very satisfying lover. He often stayed out all night and made no explanations. She wanted to be a full and equal partner, in the business sense but Nucky wasn’t having it, even after she went to great lengths to save his skinny arse. Then she found out from the love-struck psycho prohi, Nelson Van Alden, that Nucky was behind the demise of her children’s father, Hans Schroeder. She even left Nucky then but after learning that he had lost a child or because she feared her cake’s poverty predictions, she went back.

After locating and visiting her brother and sisters in Brooklyn, Margaret was particularly disheartened when she was rejected by her brother, Eamonn, who correctly deduced that she was still the same little slut and thief that left Ireland with a bellyful and the money meant for his passage. Margaret reminded him that if she had stayed, her life would have been over once the Magdalens got their hands on her. She then went home and gave in to her desire for Owen.

When her daughter, Emily, contracted polio, a guilt-stricken Margaret felt it was the wrath of God. She set out to redeem her soul by giving her jewelry and all the money she stole from Nucky to the church. Then she married Nucky with her one-time lover and his girlfriend as witnesses. Soon after the vows were exchanged, in church no less, Margaret signed over Nucky’s land to the church. Then she went about doing good works at the hospital and set up a course to teach the ladies of Atlantic City about their reproductive systems. She agreed to help one desperate lady get a diaphragm and also ordered one for herself, since by then, she had rekindled her romance with Owen. Before she got the diaphragm, however, she had unprotected sex with Owen. Pregnant and desperate to escape Nucky’s violent world, she agreed to run off with Owen, telling him about the little bun in the oven right before he went off to bump off Joe Masseria. That didn’t work out well at all — not for Owen, who was sent back dead in a box. Not for Nucky whose first inkling of his wife’s infidelity came when he saw her cradling her dead lover’s head, and she blamed him for Owen’s death; and not for Margaret’s children, who were carted off to Brooklyn the next day. No more maids, Teddy!

Margaret then aborted Owen’s baby, a sin that would automatically excommunicate her from receiving the sacraments until such time as she made a good confession and received absolution. Canon Law 2350 (1917) stated that anyone who successfully aborted a living human fetus, including the mother, was automatically excommunicated. Margaret would indeed know that she was not in a state of grace, but would she have the nerve the confess this sin in good faith? Well, we don’t know. We don’t even know how she managed to get back in Eamonn’s good graces.

All we know now is that Margaret has once again made a deal with the devil who appeared in the form of Arnold Rothstein and, for her reward, she is going to get a rent-free apartment for 5 years, in a good neighborhood with rooms for the children.