Who is josephine bracken?

Answer 1

Marie Josephine Leopoldine Bracken (August 9, 1876 - March 15, 1902) was the fiancee of Philippine national hero, José Rizal. Some believed that she was married to Rizal, although no proof of a civil or church wedding has ever been found. Bracken was born in Hong Kong on August 9, 1876 to Irish parents, James Bracken, a corporal in the British Army, Elizabeth Jane McBride who married on May 3, 1868 in Belfast, Ireland. When her mother died shortly after childbirth, she was adopted by an American named George Taufer. Bracken met Rizal when the latter spent several months in Hong Kong in 1891-92. She later recommended that her blind adopted father see Rizal, who was a respected ophthalmologist. By this time, he was a political exile in Dapitan, on the Zamboanga Peninsula. Although Taufer's condition was beyond Rizal's help, Bracken fell in love with the physician. They were allegedly wed in a civil union,[1] unable to obtain Catholic Church sanction for the marriage. This created a series of minor crises for Rizal as the domestic help, as well as his sisters, who were there to make life more comfortable for him, suspected Bracken, a white woman, of being a Spanish spy. Some say they lived together in Dapitan. The day before his execution on charges of treason, rebellion and sedition by the Spanish colonial government, the Catholic Church claimed that Rizal had returned to his Catholic faith and was married in articulo mortis to Bracken in a religious ceremony, although there has never been proof that this event happened. After Rizal's death, Bracken joined the revolutionaries for a time. When called before the Spanish Governor-General, she was requested to leave the Philippines, which she did, then leaving for Hong Kong.