This presentation is by Anne Twomey of the Shandon Are History Group and will take place in Dance Cork Firkin Crane on Thursday 27th July at 7.15 pm.
Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group.
Anne’s talk will be followed immediately by historian, Liz Gillis.
Some Background Notes.
The Blarney Street/Sundays Well district is a long established community on the north west of Cork City, bounded on the south by the River Lee and on the north by Blarney Street.
Three extraordinary women from this community who were born a little more than a kilometre from each other; sisters Lil and May Conlon who lived on Blarney Street and later at 92 Sundays Well Road and Margaret Buckley from 12 Winters Hill all contributed enormously to the Irish Revolution. Yet the advent of the Irish Civil War saw them take opposite sides in the savage political schism which followed. The subsequent lives of these women represent a local human microcosm of the bitter split among friends after the War of Independence and the different roads of life subsequently taken by each.
Anne Twomey will examine their journeys.
Margaret Buckley.
“If I were dealing with the Constitution I would have something to say about de Valera’s treating the women of the country as half-wits”
MARGARET BUCKLEY
Born on or around July 28th 1879, Margaret Goulding became a teacher and joined the various nationalist cultural organizations in Cork operating from An Dún, the cultural fulcrum (this building remains on Fr. Mathew Street, now stands sadly dilapidated) of the pre-revolutionary era in the early 1900s.
When she married Pat Buckley, who worked for the British Custom & Excise and Inland Revenue in Dublin, she left Cork in 1906. Pat Buckley died very young and Margaret became active as a union organiser in the Irish Women Workers Union, where she spent the next four decades. She joined Sinn Fein after the 1916 Rising and returned to Cork for a while to care for her dying father.
Margaret Buckley.
During the War of Independence, Margaret served in the Sinn Fein courts in Dublin. Like most Cumann Na mBan members, she opposed the Treaty. She was arrested and spent nine months in jail during the Civil War, when as officer commanding the women prisoners, she witnessed appalling brutality against women in the civil war jails of Kilmainham, Mountjoy and the North Dublin Union. She was eventually released from prison in October 1923.
Layer, in 1938 she published “The Jangle of the Keys” about her time in jail. Having spent time imprisoned in Mountjoy, her lively account of daily life in the North Dublin Union and Kilmainham jails, (republished by Sinn Fein in 2022) is at times tragic, brutal and depressing, yet her humanity, her humour and sense of fun along with her quiet solid leadership marks her out as a formidable, but fair woman who sailed a single minded path in life.
A tall woman with an impressive presence, Bean Uí Bhuachalla became a natural and respected leader. She continued working with Sinn Fein, eventually becoming its President from 1937 until 1950 and worked unceasingly in maintaining and consolidating what had by then become a very small, inward looking organisation.
Margaret’s approach was to keep active, to remain working in the trade union movement and in her political life, she was very efficient at the tasks and usual monotony of a political activist. Her greatest achievement was to ensure the very survival of the near moribund and divided Sinn Fein organisation during a difficult period in the 1940s. Eighty years later, with the Sinn Fein party, today on the verge of attaining political power both in the south and north of Ireland, perhaps the work and resilience of this revolutionary woman from Winter’s Hill in Cork may eventually be fully acknowledged, especially in her native city.
Margaret Buckley was listed as one of the plaintiffs in what has become known as the Sinn Fein funds case which meandered through the Irish courts during the 1940s. Sinn Fein had sought to recover approx. £22,000 (value in 1947) of funds held in trust which had been owned by Sinn Fein in 1922, prior to the Civil War. The case was lost as the court eventually decided that the reconstituted Sinn Fein of 1923 (post Civil War) was not a legal continuation of the 1922 pre Civil War, Sinn Fein. After legal fees and costs of the myriad of lawyers were paid out of the monies held, very little remained.
Throughout her life, Margaret remained very active in defence of social justice issues and exposing the poor working conditions and discrimination against women workers. Her blunt assessment of the 1937 Constitution was that it treated women as “half-wits” and in her ongoing and prolific writings as Margaret Lee and Maggie she severely criticised the treatment of women and worked to highlight the poor social conditions experienced by many ordinary people in the Republic.
Margaret died on 24th July 1962 and her wish was to be buried in St. Finbarr’s cemetery in Cork.
Lil and May Conlon.
May (Mary) was born on 26th April 1892, while Lil (Elizabeth) followed less than two years later on 29th March 1894. From an early age both sisters from a family of seven were very close and became active in nationalist circles in Cork. They were present in 1914 at the founding of Cork Cumann Na mBan (C Na mB) and later at the founding of the Shandon branch, which became one of the most active in Ireland. May, known as Bealtaine was appointed branch secretary and was described by her sister as having her finger “on the pulse of all national undertaking and activities throughout these tempestuous years.”
Lil Conlon (Left) and May Conlon (Right).
Unlike the wider national body, the C Na mB organisation in Cork voted to accept the Treaty, which had led to the foundation of the Irish Free State and campaigned actively in support of the Cork politicians who spoke in in favour of it. This split in Cork was particularly bitter and rancorous, with many of those women on opposite sides of the Civil War sadly remaining at loggerheads for the rest of their lives.
Lil and May always defended the women who took the pro-treaty side. Lil later worked as a civil servant in Dublin and was subsequently employed on the clerical staff at University College Cork, where her brother Sean taught Irish and served on the governing body of the college. Both continued to be active in Catholic Church support bodies, charity works and were firm supporters of the GAA in Cork.
Back in 2008, a phone call from a Conlon relation cleaning out the old family home in Sundays Well, to the Cork City Museum led to the discovery of a large cache of archives belonging to Lil Conlon, including leaflets, correspondence and the original drafts of her 1969 book, “Cumann Na mBan & the Woman of Ireland 1913-1925.”
She said that this book did not purport to be a history but “simply a pot-pourri of bitter sweet memories”.
This treasure trove of material is available to view online at
Having suffered from bad health for many years, May had passed away earlier in September 1946 aged just 54. Lil died at the North Infirmary Hospital on Thursday 27th October 1983 and both are buried in Kilcrea cemetery, near Ovens, County Cork.
On Saturday afternoon 29th July at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon, Patrick Murphy will speak about the split in Cork Nationalism in the early 1900s.
The emphasis for the past decade has been on the Revolutionary period 1913-1923 yet the story of constitutional nationalism and its unique and bitter conflict in pre revolutionary Cork is of interest.
William O’Brien MP. (Wikipedia).
In the present day, John Redmond Street and Great William O’Brien Street are busy thoroughfares located close together on the north side of Cork City, yet how many know about either Mr O’Brien or Mr Redmond or indeed how just over a century ago the vicious riots and violence which broke out between their passionate followers resulted in 90 admissions to the South Infirmary and North Infirmary (The present Maldron Hotel) hospitals on just one night in May 1910.
The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), whose MPs attended Westminster was forever riven with rows and dissension even as it sought Home Rule for Ireland. Later the All For Ireland League (AFIL) founded locally in 1910 and led by Mallow born William O’Brien succeeded in winning eight of the nine seats available in the House of Commons for Cork in the subsequent general and local elections. Largely now based in the county of Cork it acquired seats on many local authority councils, taking control of Cork County Council, and the Cork Corporation.
Cork city and county witnessed pitched violent battles in many villages and towns yet both factions professed a nationalist outlook in supporting Home Rule, both had significant working class support and both leaders had little time for trade unions or socialism. The AFIL urged cooperation between Catholic and Protestant through working together and mutual cooperation.
Then in 1914, Redmond and O’Brien advocated participation by their followers in the First World War as many of their volunteers went off to fight and die in the war, some young men and women stayed at home and began to work towards achieving an Irish Republic.
By 1918, the All for Ireland League was no more and the Irish Parliamentary Party was to follow soon afterwards.
Dr. Patrick Murphy was born in Cork and grew up in Ballyphehane. He attended Sullivan’s Quay school which he left at the age of 15 having failed the Inter Cert. His subsequent education was funded by the British taxpayer after he moved to England in 1984. He has a BA in social science, an MA in social history from the University of Nottingham and a PhD from the University of Liverpool with a thesis on the All for Ireland League.
Pat Murphy.
In 1993 he founded the Nottingham Irish Studies Group which runs courses for the local community in Irish history, Irish literature and the Irish language. He is also Chair of the Nottingham Irish Centre. His article ‘Class, Conflict and Conciliation: The All for Ireland League in Cork 1910-1918’ was published in Saothar 46, The Journal of the Irish Labour History Society (2021).
The Banshee’s Kiss: William O’Brien MP and the All For Ireland League in Cork 1910-1918.
Saturday 29th July at 3.15 pm at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon.
The Cork Mother Jones Committee is proud to present the 1954 documentary Salt of the Earth at this year’s Festival. It will be shown on Thursday 27th July 2023 at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon, beginning at 11:00 am.
Salt of the Earth is the story of a strike which is based on a 1951 strike in New Mexico.
Deemed “culturally significant” by the US Library of Congress,it is now preserved in the National Film Registry.
Source: Wikipedia.
On its release in 1954, the American Legion called for a nationwide boycott, it was denounced in the US House of Representatives, investigated by the FBI and the film set was attacked by vigilantes. As its writer Michael Wilson, director Herbert J Biberman and producer Paul Jarrico were all blacklisted in Hollywood in the McCarthy campaign against Communism, Salt of the Earth itself was also blacklisted and many cinemas refused to show it..
Due to financial constraints, a few professional actors such as Rosaura Revueltas as Esperanza Quintero (later deported to Mexico). Will Geer played the Sheriff, he was a socialist, a comrade of Woody Guthrie to whom he introduced Pete Seeger. (he is better known to Irish audiences as Grandpa in the Waltons). They were joined by miners from Local 890 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter workers. and their families in the cast. Juan Chacon who played Ramon Quintero was a union local official.
Rosaura Revueltas and Juan Chacon. Source: Wikipedia.
The blunt and austere realism of the strike is full on and direct in some emotional and powerful scenes. Crucially it embraces a unique feminist approach to union politics which was rare in the early 1950 cinema. The wives, family and widows of the miners rally to offer hope for the future of migrant workers.
The earlier efforts of Mother Jones to assist the Mexican trade unions and support the Mexican Revolution is especially relevant
In spite of production difficulties and the quality, this film remains long in one’s mind due to its honesty, its realism and the common human story of labour injustice it displays as the participants strive to tell the story of the union activists and the strike.
Even the biblical origins of its title, Salt of the Earth did not prevent its condemnation in some quarters as communist propaganda. Yet its message lives on as a brave political statement in opposition to the rampant McCarthyism which prevented progressive film making, culture and the arts in America. That it survives and endures almost 70 years later is testament to the everlasting story of workers organising to fight injustice.
Salt of the Earth will be shown on Thursday morning 27th July 2023 at 11:00 am at the Maldron Hotel, Shandon followed by a discussion. Running time 90 minutes.
She Carried Out All the Duties Given to Her in a Most Efficient Manner – Women in the Irish Revolution.”
As we approach the end of the Decade of Centenaries, Liz Gillis who is a prolific writer on the revolutionary years 1913-1923 will address the treatment of activist women during and after the period. Originally from Dublin’s Liberties, which she loves and promotes, Liz has highlighted the role of women during that era and has argued that they were fighting not just for freedom but also for real freedom with social justice at its very core.
Liz Gillis
From Cumann Na mBan to the labour based Irish Citizen Army and onwards to the “Invisible army” of the Irish Republican Army, many of the women were often the public face of the resistance as the men risked immediate death if exposed. Conversely with the arrival of the new State, the men became more prominent and conservative in the Church dominated post Civil War politics of the era, while many of the radical women were rendered powerless and became invisible for decades.
The 1916 Proclamation declaring an Irish Republic addressed to the people of Ireland (Ireland is described as “she”), is directed to “Irishmen and Irishwomen” and includes direct reference to Irish women in two later sections. The use of the pronoun “her” in reference to Ireland as feminine appears on ten occasions in the first two paragraphs of the Proclamation. The signatories certainly intended that Irish women should play an equal role in the Irish Republic.
Ms. Gillis’s book Women of the Irish Revolution, published in 2014, exposed the faces, achievements and sacrifices and treatment of hundreds of these invisible women who served in the engine rooms of the revolution. The book contains a unique set of photographs which provide a human face to many of those heroes for the first time. The publication along with others which highlighted the essential work of the women made an enormous contribution to the belated, if often grudging State acknowledgement in recent years of their pivotal importance during the period. The new Free State meted out cruel and harsher treatment to them than the British forces had attempted during the War of Independence and over subsequent decades failed to provide pensions to many of the women activists. Even today there is very little recognition of the contribution made by these women in for example public space names or monuments by national or local government.
Women of the Irish Revolution.
“They were the wives, mothers, sisters and girlfriends of the men who fought and died for Irish freedom and their story is one that needs to be told”
“Women of the Irish Revolution” Published by Mercier Press Cork 2014.
Liz is the author of several books and has championed the contribution of women for many years. She previously worked as a researcher for the RTE History Show and lectures at the Champlain College, Dublin. She has appeared in many RTE documentaries in relation to the revolutionary period and has recently authored The Hales Brothers and the Irish Revolution.
Liz will speak to the topic “She Carried Out All the Duties Given to Her in a Most Efficient Manner – Women in the Irish Revolution.”
Venue: Dance Cork Firkin Crane. Thursday evening 27th July 2023.
The Cork Mother Jones Committee is pleased to announce the dates for the 2023 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival.
Our 12th Annual festival will be held in and around Shandon in Cork City from Thursday 27th to Saturday 29th July 2023. All are welcome.
Thanks to our sponsors, the festival remains open to all free of charge. We are promising a very interesting selection of speakers and topics. Further announcements will appear regularly on this website and on the festival Facebook pages.
Hope to see you all and thanks to everyone for your support for this very unique festival.
Mother Jones in 1909 enjoying a chat with her friend, Terence B. Powderly, whose family was from Co. Meath, Ireland. (Illinois Labor History Society).
Terence V Powderly (1849-1924) started life as a 13 year old railroad worker where he worked as an apprentice in a machine shop. Born in Pennsylvania, Terence’s people were from Co Meath in Ireland.
Having joined the trade union movement, he became a moderate head of the Knights of Labor in 1879. This “Order” grew to having about three-quarters of a million members by the mid 1880s, but subsequently went into rapid decline due the growing radicalism and militancy of the new trade unions and the oppression of the growing industrial corporations which treated workers very badly.
Powderly, who originally lived in Scranton in Pennsylvania went on to hold a number of government posts until his death in 1924.
Mother Jones, although regarded as a radical became great friends with Terence and his wife Emma for several decades and stayed at their homes in Scranton and in Washington with them when visiting those cities.
On Saturday 11th February 2023, the 42nd Anniversary of the Stardust fire was commemorated at the site of the 1981 tragedy in the presence of a huge attendance of family members and relatives of the children who died. 48 children from the immediate area in Dublin lost their lives when the Stardust Night Club caught fire. Their families are awaiting the truth about what happened that night and are still seeking justice for their loved ones.
The Stardust Memorial Wall, which was unveiled by Charlie Bird on Saturday 11th February 2023 at the site of the 1981 fire.
The Dublin Fire Brigade Band played at the unveiling of the Stardust Monument. Several members of the Fire Brigade, who tried to save the children, also attended the ceremony. “The firefighters wept for they could not hide, their sorrow and anger for those left inside.”
Following an emotional gathering in the marquee located alongside the site, Charlie Bird unveiled the impressive memorial wall which displays the faces and names of the 48 people who died in the Stardust fire on Valentine’s Day in 1981. It is a powerful visual monument to the children who died that awful night.
Earlier, Antoinette Keegan of the Stardust Families Committee had introduced a series of inspiring talks, songs, and poetry in which the children who lost their lives were remembered. Their everlasting spirit was present among the flickering candles and thoughts of their dignified families and friends and all those who attended.
Large Crowd attend the Monument Unveilling.
Dublin Fire Brigade Pipe Band.
Describing the remarkable Stardust relatives as his heroes, Charlie Bird expressed optimism that this will be the year when Truth and Justice will prevail.
“I have said this many times in the past, if the Stardust tragedy had happened in the southside of Dublin, you would not have had to wait for over four decades for the truth of what happened”
The North Dublin Community Gospel Choir sang “What About Us“, “Tears Stream” and “Stand By Me‘ in an emotional tribute to the lost young people of that night.
The North Dublin Community Gospel Choir sings What about Us.
Christy Moore sang on video his once banned song “They Never Came Home“, which recounts the events of the Stardust Fire, commenting that:
“I never thought I’d be still singing it 40 years later still waiting for justice”
The Album cover, of Ordinary Man (1985) by Christy Moore which contained the banned track, “They Never Came Home”.
Jean Hegarty of the Derry Bloody Sunday Families and Trust mentioned that it took 38 years for their families in Derry to get justice, but stated that:
“We expected nothing from the British Government, but you had every right to expect more from your own government, our own government.”
Maurice McHugh, father of Caroline, read a poem “Remember Me” penned by Bernadette Ni Bheolain where the children make a plea from beyond their graves to remember them.
“Remember me, remember us as the scales of justice swing to and fro.”
The names of the 48 children who died in the Stardust Tragedy.
Claire Bird (left holding Tiger) with Maurice McHugh at the Stardust Memorial Wall.
As relatives of each of the children were presented with a photograph of their loved ones by Charlie Bird, there was a heavy sense of the shocking unfairness of the four decades of waiting for truth and justice. Yet there is also a growing sense of optimism, hope and expectation, as finally the relatives and families of the Stardust fire are about to be heard.
These families and survivors are now preparing their statements for the opening of the Inquests, which will commence on 19th April 2023.
We wish to thank Antoinette Keegan of the Stardust families for their kind invitation to the Cork Mother Jones Committee to attend the 42nd Commemoration for the Stardust victims. Antoinette was the recipient of the annual 2020 Spirit of Mother Jones Award, which is given to those special people, who have campaigned against injustice. Her two sisters, Mary and Martina died in the fire, and her parents, Christine and John Keegan led the Stardust families campaign in spite of many disappointments and setbacks to establish the truth of what happened on the night and to seek justice for their lost children.
Antoinette Keegan (right) with members of the Cork Mother Jones Committee, Ann Piggott, John Barimo and Richard T. Cooke at the 2023 Stardust Commemoration in Artane.
Members of the Cork Mother Jones Committee with Charlie Bird, who unveiled the Stardust Monument.
Pictured: Eithne and Gerard O’ Mahony of CMJC with Phyllis McHugh (centre) at the Stardust Memorial Wall. Phyllis and Maurice’s daughter, Caroline McHugh died in the Stardust Tragedy on the 14th February 1981.
On Wednesday, December 24th, Christmas Eve 1913, in Calumet, Michigan, seventy-three men, women, and children, mainly striking mine workers and their families, were crushed to death in a stampede in what became known as the Italian Hall Disaster.
At a crowded Christmas party organise for the children of copper miners, who had been on strike in the local mines since July 23rd of that year, someone shouted “fire” at the entrance to the hall. There was no fire!
Hundreds of people were in the second floor room at the Italian Hall enjoying the miners party. Toys were being distributed to the children by Santa. On hearing the shout from downstairs, there was a huge panic and a mass rush down a steep narrow stairs to the exit which caused multiple deaths, especially among the children.
Italian Hall: (Wikipedia) John William NaraThe Italian Hall today: (Wikipedia)
The strike had earlier been called by the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) seeking union recognition and an improvement in wages and working conditions. Mother Jones had visited Calumet in early August to show her support for the workers, before she became embroiled in the Colorado Coal Wars.
Mother Jones visits Calumet in August 1913. Courtesy of Jeremiah Mason of the National Park Service.
The Arrival of Mother Jones in Calumet in 1913. Courtesy of Jeremiah Mason of the National Park Service.
The mine owners in Copper Country refused to talk to the union members and the long and bitter strike continued until March 1914 in spite of this tragedy. Later investigations failed to reveal exactly who had wrongly called out “fire” which started the panic. Mother Jones blamed an anti union “law and order crowd” in the Calumet region for the false fire call which led to the deaths and repeatedly mentioned this dreadful tragedy in later speeches.
The sad and harrowing scenes in the town of Calumet on Christmas Day and over the 1913 Christmas period as the bodies of over 60 children were brought back to their homes left a lasting mark on witnesses. Photos from the time show lines of wooden white caskets. The Red Jacket Town Hall became a morgue, while the massive funeral procession down snow covered Fifth Street to Lakeview Cemetery was heart-breaking. Following several speeches from the strike leaders, the deceased were laid to rest in two mass grave sites.
The disaster at the Italian Hall was memorialised by singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie when in 1940 he wrote the “1913 Massacre”, in which he blamed the copper mines bosses of the Copper Country for the deaths.
“The piano played a slow final tune, And the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moon, The parents they cried and the miners they moaned, “See what your greed for money has done””
Candles are lit each Christmas Eve at the local park in Calumet, let us remember them too!
Our thanks to Jeremiah Mason of the National Parks Service, Lake Superior Management Centre at Keweenaw National Historical Park at Calumet.
Mother Jones died on 30th November 1930 at the age of ninety-three. Wednesday 30th November 2022 is the 92nd anniversary of her death.
Mother Jones Birthday Party May 1st, 1930. Photo courtesy of Saul Schniderman (Friday’s Labor Folklore).
Lillie May Burgess looking after Mother Jones. (Saul Schniderman, Friday’s Labor Folklore).
The Burgess family home where Mother Jones died. (Saul Schniderman, Friday’s Labor Folklore).
The Cork Examiner newspaper mentioned her death in its edition of Tuesday December 2nd 1930 under “Cork Centenarian Dies in U.S.A.“
Cork Examiner Report (2nd December 1930) of the death of Mother Jones.
The Examiner quoting a report from the “Evening News” stated that:
“Mother” Jones Mary Jones, one of the most picturesque figures that Ireland and America between them have ever produced, died during the weekend at Silver Springs, Maryland.“
Note: It recorded her birth as 1830, based on her autobiography which was incorrect.
“In her own way, Mother Jones is as important as Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jnr”
Jonah Winter, 2020. Mother JONES AND HER ARMY OF MILL CHILDREN sCHWARTZ & WADE BOOKS, nEW YORK
Cork Piper, Norman O’Rourke with a musical salute on 1st August 2012 at the Baptism Font where Mary Harris was baptised in Cork’s North Cathedral.
On the morning of 1st August 1837, she was baptised by Fr. John O’Mahony in the North Cathedral.
Her parents were Ellen Cotter and Richard Harris, and her sponsors were Ellen Leary and Richard Hennessy.
St. Mary’s Cathedral Baptism Register 1833- 1853.
Her sister Catherine was baptised in the Cathedral on the 29th March 1840, while brother William was baptised here on 28th February 1846.
(Our thanks to Anne Twomey, Bernard Spillane of the North Cathedral and Nora Hickey of Kinsale for her genealogy work.)
Register extracts from the Baptismal RegisterMary Harris – 3rd from top.Anne Twomey points to the then location of the baptismal font in the Cathedral of St. Mary & St. Anne – Nora Hickey looks on (right).
Historian Anne Twomey will address the treatment of some women during the Revolutionary years on Thursday evening, the 28th of July, at 8.00 pm at the Cork Dance Firkin Crane on the opening day of the 2022 Spirit of Mother Jones Festival. This forms part of our coverage of the Decade of Centenaries at festivals over the past few years.
Speaker, Anne Twomey, at the Festival launch with Cllr. Damien Boylan, Deputy Lord Mayor of Cork.
General background to the treatment of some women during 1916-1923 and afterwards by all sides in the conflict from the Cork Mother Jones Committee.
Starting in 1966, the fiftieth-anniversary celebrations of the 1916 to 1923 period almost ignored the role of the Citizen Army (ICA), rarely referred to the Civil War’s events and largely side-lined women’s contribution to the struggle. Observers at the time may have wondered why the 1916 Proclamation addressed to the people of Ireland’ IRISHMEN and IRISHWOMEN’ seemed to apply only to the Irish men.
1916 Proclamation
In 1966, it appears as if the women relatives of the men of 1916, were recognised and honoured. The actual women participants were largely ignored.
The conferring of honorary degrees on the nearest surviving relatives of the seven signatories of the 1916 Proclamation on the 14th of April 1966. (Source: Cuimhneachán 1916-1966),
Women veterans march in 1966.Charles Haughey plants a rose tree in Cloughjordan in 1966. Looking on is Muriel Redmond, grand-daughter of Thomas MacDonagh.
Rose McDermott, sister of Seán Mac Diarmada receiving an honorary Doctor of Laws in 1916, surrounded by President De Valera, Fr. O’Callaghan, and Sr. Mary Emanuel, and Sr. Mary Mercy. (Source: Cuimhneachán 1916-1966),
Fifty years later, in the current ‘Decade of Centenaries’, the essential contribution of women to the struggle for independence has been added to the narrative of the period.
May Dálaigh, a member of the Republican Daly family from Currans in Kerry speaking to Uinseann Mac Eoin in Survivors (Argenta Publications 1980), makes a very telling comment about the lack of practical assistance or appreciation the Cumann na mBan women received from the men during the war years. As May gave her honest opinion of different activists such as Frank Ryan, Sean Russell, and Peadar O’Donnell she says;
“Mick Price was the one I like best. Imagine he came all the way from the British Army in Egypt, like Tom Barry and Liam Mellows’ father to help us. But I liked him best because he was the only one that ever washed the ware for me”
Of further significance is the emergence from the silence and shadows of the war years of increasing evidence of the cruel and inhumane treatment of some women by all sides during the revolutionary years and in the new Irish Free State both during and long after the end of the Irish Civil War of 1922/23.
It can be argued that evidence of the participation of women was always to be found if one knew where to look and asked the right questions. However, as Sinead McCoole in “No Ordinary Women” discovered, many quiet, unassuming Aunt Bridies (Bridie Halpin) around the country existed. Their long-lost collections of personal materials in attics were found and revealed their vital and valuable contributions to the fight for Independence.
Additionally, the important work of Margaret Ward, Louise Ryan and Linda Connolly and many other academics and writers have highlighted and challenged the unacknowledged gender-based violence against women which occurred across the wars.
For every high-profile Countess Markieviez, Kathleen Clarke or Mary MacSwiney, there were also hundreds of nameless women involved. Some sacrificed their health and took huge personal risks to ensure the day-to-day functioning and operational integrity of the secret revolutionary infrastructure of the Irish Republican Army was protected, while challenging the British forces and demanding a real democratic republic. Kathleen Clarke, widow of Tom Clarke, one of the 1916 Proclamation seven signatures, while in Holloway Jail in London in 1918, detailed her inhumane treatment in the autobiography “Revolutionary Woman”.
Mrs. Clarke was born into the Daly family in Limerick city. Her brother Ned was executed after 1916, two sisters, Nora and Laura, were in the GPO, and the family was regularly harassed by the British Army.
During a raid in October 1920, her two sisters, Una and Carrie, were physically attacked by the British raiding party. Una was dragged into the street where her hair was cropped, and her hand was slashed with a razor. The terror, shock and subsequent trauma of brutal hair cropping inflicted on many women by the male protagonists on all sides left an insidious lifetime mark on women treated in such a degrading and dehumanising manner.
Yet later, during the Civil War, following another disruptive Free State army raid on her home in 1922, Kathleen sadly comments.
“Running through my mind was all I has suffered at the hands of the British, and now my own people were causing me more suffering, and it hurt more because they were my own”
Eithne Coyne described her treatment in Mountjoy Prison, in Survivors in 1921 before and after the Truce.
“It was fairly tough that time in the Joy, with only four hours of exercise, and a lock up at half past four………the food was very bad; a tiny piece of meat twice a week, and for the rest of the time a thin soup. They came to your door accompanied by one of the ordinary female prisoners carrying these rusty two-tier cans that never seemed quite clean, with a small one sitting on top, in which was your tea, soup, cocoa or whatever was being served”
EITHNE cOYNE “sURVIVORS”
Publications such as “Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times” detailed the arrest and imprisonment by British forces of seventeen-year-old Mary Bowles from Clogheen on the northside of Cork City in January 1921. Various reports suggest she was very badly treated. Regular raids took place by British forces, and their harsh treatment meted out to women in isolated farmhouses and homes all across the country, which were left wrecked or burned by the Black and Tans, went largely unreported at the time.
Kathleen Keyes McDonnell described a military raid on her family mill and home at Castlelack near Bandon.
“One morning towards the end of January 1920, police and military forced an entry by the back door before 7 a.m. One soldier put a bayonet to my forehead ordering me to get out of bed; another seized my arm and shook me roughly”
Tom Barry’s memory of the Crowley family in Kilbrittain, especially of Mrs. Crowley “sitting on a stool in the yard, gazing thoughtfully at the ruins of her blown up and burnt-out house” with members of her family dead or in prison, following a visit by the infamous British Essex Regiment, leaves no one in any doubt as to the brutal actions of the military during the War of Independence.
The kidnap and execution by the IRA of Mary Rawson, known as Mrs. Lindsay, following her betrayal of the planned Dripsey ambush, which resulted in the execution of five IRA men and the death from wounds of a sixth in February 1921, clearly declared that women were not immune to the ultimate penalty. This elderly woman’s long period of detention as a hostage and her eventual execution during March 1921 in Rylane, Co Cork was extensively documented by local historian Tim Sheehan in his book ‘Lady Hostage’ published in 1990.
Around the same time, 45-year-old Bridget Noble (Neill) was executed as a spy by the IRA at Ardgroom in West Cork. From the available accounts, both executions of Mary Lindsay and Brigid Noble were particularly gruesome. Their deaths were followed by a total veil of silence and the remains of both women have not been recovered.
In ‘A Hard Local War’, William Sheehan references the deaths of Nellie Carey and Essie Sheehan, whose crime was that they were accused of ‘going out’ with British soldiers and ex-soldiers.
In the course of her paper to the Irish Civil War National Conference in Cork in June 2022, Dr. Mary McAuliffe spoke of the violence inflicted on Bridget Carolan in Longford, Margaret’ Ciss” Doherty in Donegal, the Walsh sisters in Kerry and Margaret Doherty of Co Mayo by the National Army during 1922 and 1923. These were just a few of those women who suffered. The attack on Eileen Biggs in Dromineer, Co Tipperary, in June 1922 by anti-Treaty IRA men, who escaped justice, was one of the violent events reported in the media.
Diarmaid Ferriter’s recent publication on the Irish Civil War ‘Between Two Hells’, provides an account of some of the suffering of women during the period. He tells of Cork Cumann na mBan members Ellen Carroll who, as a result of her wartime activities, contracted TB in 1924 and young Johanna Cleary and Mary Carey who both died in 1924 as a result of an earlier Civil War hunger strike in Kilmainham Gaol.
Pension Discrimination Experienced by Women.
Ferriter refers to the efforts of their families and Cork activist Nora O’Brien (Martin), who had been arrested and imprisoned several times after 1916, to submit applications for small pension gratuities, which often failed due to mean-spirited pension adjudicators. What is striking about this is the indifference and bureaucratic cruelty of the State pension adjudication system, usually manned by former male comrades. They regularly and coldly refused to award even paltry payments to many women who had endured deprivations, trauma and bad health arising directly from their wartime activities.
Women could only apply for the lower levels of pension payments, a grade D or E pension, the highest levels (A, B and C) were reserved for active men only. Hundreds of women across the country were refused pensions based on narrow criteria as to what constituted ‘active service’. This unfair treatment continued for many decades as the women aged and needed assistance.
Efforts to obtain pensions often resulted in women who had risked their lives and liberty being subject to bureaucratic ritual humiliation by those men in charge of decision making. Cork activist Siobhán Creedon Lankford applied for a pension on 28th December 1935 based on her service as an Intelligence Officer with the Cork No 1 and 2 Brigades.
On 13th November 1941 Siobhán was notified of the granting of a Rank E pension calculated at three and a half years service although she had been active from the age of 22 to 29. She immediately appealed and sought a Rank D pension, which was denied. Siobhan received just £17.10s per annum by way of pension. Her story is fully documented by Éamon and Máirín Lankford in Appendix 1 of the 2020 edition of The Hope and the Sadness. It makes for sad reading indeed and reflects poorly on the attitude of the Military Pensions Board towards the role of women in the war years.
A headline in the Irish Independent newspaper of Monday 30th May 1921 declared “Daring Cork Exploit”. The news item gave a brief account of the escape of Dolly Burke from the Womens’ Prison in Sundays Well, Cork. Dolly Burke of Ballinure, Co. Tipperary was the first woman to break out of jail during the War of Independence.
After being sentenced to four months in Cork Jail for her activism, on the evening of 27th May 1921, some local Cork activists including Peg Lawlor of Blarney Street and Brian Martin helped her to escape. She was not arrested again.
From 1918 onwards, Dolly had set up and ran the IRA intelligence network in much of South Tipperary. She formed Cumann na mBan in the area and was harassed regularly by the British forces and her fiancé Tom Donovan was shot dead by them. Her brother Michael was on hunger strike in Cork prison, the same time as Terence MacSwiney. He was later wounded breaking out of Kilkenny Jail. They became the only brother and sister to escape from prisons during the War of Independence. Dolly maintained an arms dump near her home for the Republican side in the Civil War and later emigrated to the USA until 1934.
Yet when Dolly applied for her military pension in 1940, she was allowed only part service from 1920 and at the lowest E rank. Even a letter of support from Dan Breen did not budge the pension authorities.
Another prison escape involving women, took place on Halloween night in 1921 during the Truce, when Eithne Coyne, Linda Kearns, Mary Burke and May Keogh got over the walls of Mountjoy.
Women Fighting for Real Social Change!
Author Liz Gillis raises a fundamental point in her publication ‘Women of the Irish Revolution’ when she comments:
“Whereas the men were fighting for the Republic, the women while also fighting for that ideal, were additionally fighting for real change. They asked what exactly this Republic would mean for ordinary people, for the poorer parts of society”
In reality, a large number of the women revolutionaries were fighting for meaningful social change, and one is forced to question the ulterior motives and ideals of the increasingly comfortable male leaders of the new Irish State. Did the leadership desire any social change or movement towards social justice in light of their fierce hostility towards the women activists who had fought alongside them in the War of Independence?
Sinēad McCoole provides a list of some eighty-three women imprisoned after the 1916 Rising; at least twenty were from the socialist Irish Citizen Army (ICA), led by James Connolly, who were a very socially aware group. Ann Matthews lists twenty-eight members of the female auxiliary of the ICA who were “in action” in 1916 in her publication The Irish Citizen Army.
In all, over 70 women were coming and going to the General Post Office (GPO) at some point during Easter Week, while at least 270 women were directly involved around Dublin during the week of the Rising. These figures clearly demonstrate the high level of activity by women activists over that period.
No Ordinary Women also contains a further prisoner list of women held in Kilmainham Gaol, Mountjoy Jail and the North Dublin Union during and after the Civil War. The extensive records list five hundred and fifty names of Republican women interned and imprisoned during this period, many of whom were kept in terrible conditions. Many of the names and addresses of those women make for stark reading in that they remain largely unknown, although women had become increasingly visible in the Civil War. Almost forty of the incarcerated women on that list were from Cork; who were they? Do we know their life stories?
Incessant verbal and media attacks on women activists by the Free State leadership leading to the mass imprisonment, ill-treatment and detention for many months of Republican women commenced soon after the Civil War began. Hundreds of women from all over the country were arrested on a mass scale, something which even the British authorities were reluctant to attempt during the War of Independence. Eithne Coyne estimated that about forty women and girls in total, some of them as young as fifteen were incarcerated in prison by the British until the signing of the Treaty in December 1921, when they were released.
Some spent time on hunger strikes during this period and endured beatings and punishment. Several died soon afterwards due to illness and medical conditions arising at very young ages. Later following their release back into their families and communities, these traumatised women were often dismissed and described as simply “suffering from their nerves’.
The use of much of this violence was not accidental or down to rogue individuals. It appeared to form part of a systematic State policy intended to smash the resistance of the women, yet no one has been held accountable for the harsh treatment they endured while in custody. Few efforts were made to bring the elements of either the National Army or the Anti-Treaty forces responsible for the violence against women to justice. The policy of impunity permitting freedom from sanction enjoyed by those responsible created a de facto official immunity for male participants on all sides. In the absence of a truth and reconciliation commission, the cruel treatment of some women remains a stain on the birth of the State.
Wars are cruel and savage affairs where the normal rules of interaction, consideration, dignity and respect among some participants are lost. Passionate political views on both sides of the Civil War divide, when transformed into violent action, unleashed the dogs of war. This sundered the once solidly united Cumann na mBan and resulted in former friends and comrades becoming bitter enemies in the early years of the new State. The war cast a long shadow.
As the six female TDs rejected the Treaty along with the leadership of Cumann na mBan and most of their activists, one has to question if this opposition by the high-profile female revolutionaries, triggered the savage Free State hostility from the Pro-Treaty leaders to all Republican women activists? Was it due to this hostility that during March 1922 in Dail debates, both Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith, indulging in political opportunism, opposed the enfranchisement of women over 21 in the new Free State? In spite of their opposition, the Irish Free State Constitution enacted in June 1922 provided that all Irish citizens over the age of 21 were entitled to vote.
As a result, Ireland developed into a mean-spirited place for many women in the subsequent decades as the ruling political and exclusively male establishment, closely aligned with members of the Catholic Church hierarchy, ignored and actively discriminated against women in employment, health and education.
The Republican women were eventually released yet the State assault on the rights of women intensified. Withdrawal of employment rights of women by Irish governments began immediately. By 1924, an effective ‘Marriage Bar’ was imposed on women working in the civil service, later extended to the public sector such as the Post Office and even to private sector employers such as Guinness and Jacobs.
Under British rule a 1919 UK statute provided for most women to serve on juries, however by 1927, Minister for Justice Kevin O’ Higgins had excluded all women from “the horrors of criminal courts”. Under Eamon de Valera who came to power in 1932, divorce in Ireland was banned under the 1937 Irish Constitution, reflecting the socially conservative policies of the Catholic Church. Earlier in 1935, contraception was made illegal in Ireland.
Tens of thousands of women who broke the Church’s moral teaching were incarcerated in the Magdalen Laundries and in the Mother and Baby Homes. Thousands more emigrated quietly due to economic necessity and local social stigma, to Britain and the USA, and continued to do so until progressive women’s voices began to rise again in the 60s and 70s.
Among those who stayed on in the new Ireland of the 1920s such as Kathleen Lynn, Helena Molony, Rosie Hackett, Charlotte Despard, Madeleine Ffrench-Mullen, Elizabeth O’Farrell, Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, Delia Larkin, Margaret Buckley, Leslie Price, Dorothy Stopford Price, and Winifred Carney (the last woman to leave the burning GPO!), they and others were in the forefront of the subsequent efforts over the decades to bring about a more equal, fairer and compassionate society.
Hannah Sheehy-SkeffingtonThe Fight for Votes for Women.Dr. Kathleen Lynn and Madeleine Ffrench-MullenBiography of Dr. Kathleen Lynn
The Casualties of War.
Although women were regarded as non-combatants during the wars, it may come as a surprise that so many lost their lives, especially in Cork during the five-year war period. If the records of University College Cork’s Cork Fatality Index, which covers some of the period of the Decade of Centenaries are examined, one cannot but be horrified today at the general level of violence throughout Cork City and County. Of the eight hundred and twenty-seven who died in Cork from 1919 to 1923, twenty-five were women, including eleven who were killed during the Civil War.
Fatalities of women in Ireland during the Irish Civil War amounted to 65 deaths, accounting for 4.5% of the total fatalities. Research by the Irish Civil War Fatalities Project at University College Cork indicates that three women were combatants as members of Cumann Na mBan, the remaining sixty two were innocent civilians caught up in the general Civil War mayhem across the country .
Reading the accounts of the deaths in Cork, it is clear that the great majority were innocent victims of the fighting and general mayhem happening around them in Cork. The names of Albina Murphy aged 34, a member of the Irish Union of Distributive Workers, Madge Daly aged 24, Mollie Egan aged 24, shot in the neck; Kate Crowley; Lillie Gallagher, aged 8, killed by a bomb, May Hall, nineteen-year-old Josephine Scannell killed by a stray bullet while sewing and sitting by her window on Frenches Quay are probably unknown to most people.
The girls and women and others who died may be remembered only by their families today, yet they were the horrific casualties of the violent birth of our country and should not be forgotten. Their deaths should continue to remind everyone of the enormous price paid by many ordinary people during war.
To quote Cork woman Mary Elmes, speaking about World War Two on the cost of warfare:
“War is a terrible thing, which is never won. It’s always lost. Everybody loses.”
Sources and Further Reading.
Diarmuid Ferriter, Between Two Hells, The Irish Civil War (Profile Books 2022) Kathleen Clarke, Revolutionary Woman 1878-1972, An Autobiography (The O’Brien Press Ltd 1991) Cuimhneachán 1916-1966 Commemoration Booklet. Tim Sheehan, Lady Hostage Mrs. Lindsay (Cork 1990) Sinēad McCoole, No Ordinary Women (The O’Brien Press Ltd 2015) Liz Gillis, Women Of The Irish Revolution (The Mercier Press 2014) Shandon Area History Group, Ordinary Women In Extraordinary Times (2019) Louise Ryan, Drunken Tans: Representations of Sex and Violence in the Anglo- Irish War (1919-21). Feminist Review 2000. Dr Mary McAuliffe, ‘Violence and indiscipline? The treatment of ‘die-hard’ anti- treaty women by the National Army 1922-23. Irish Civil War National Conference. Ann Matthews, ‘The Irish Citizen Army’ (The Mercier Press 2014) Kathleen Keyes McDonnell, ‘There is a Bridge at Bandon’ (The Mercier Press 1972) Tom Barry, ‘Guerrilla Days in Ireland’ (The Irish Press 1949) William Sheehan, ‘A Hard Local War’ (The History Press 2011) Paddy Butler, ‘The extraordinary story of Mary Elmes, the Irish Oscar Schindler’ (Open Press 2017) Linda Connolly, Understanding violence against women in the Irish Revolution – a global context. RTE. Cork Fatality Index, University College Cork. Siobhán Lankford. The Hope and the Sadness (Celum Publishing of Cork 2020). First published by Tower Books 1980. Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh, Kathleen Lynn Irishwoman, Patriot, Doctor (Irish Academic Press 2011). Uinseann Mac Eoin, Survivors, Argenta Publications 1980, 20 Marlborough Road, Donnybrook, Dublin 4. Karen Minihane, Extraordinary, Ordinary Women: Untold Stories from the Founding of the State,
