Miss Mary: the Quiet Heroine! – The Story of Mary Elmes

Posted on May 10, 2019 by Admin

Mary Elmes (1908-2002)

Mary Elmes was born on 5th May 1908 at Cul Greine, 120 Blackrock Road in Cork. Edward Elmes, her father was originally from Waterford and her mother was Elizabeth Waters from Cork. The family ran a pharmacy at 4 Winthrop Street, in the heart of Cork city, were prosperous and lived in Ballintemple near Blackrock. The family had military connections and several relations served in the British Army abroad. Elizabeth Elmes was also friendly with Mary McSwiney having worked together in the Munster Women’s Franchise league. The family business premises appears to have been damaged in the burning of Cork by British soldiers on the night of 11^th December 1920.

Rochelle School around 1930

Mary Elmes attended Rochelle School, on the Old Blackrock Road, now closed and incorporated into Ashton School in Cork. In 1928 she enrolled at Trinity College, Dublin where Mary had an outstanding academic career. Top of her class, she was a scholar in 1931, was awarded a gold medal and gained a first-class degree in Modern Literature (French and Spanish).

In 1935, as a result of her academic achievements, Elmes was awarded a scholarship in International Studies to study at London School of Economics. This was followed with a certificate in International Studies as well as a further scholarship to continue her education in Geneva, Switzerland.

After the completion of her studies, in February 1937, Mary was invited by Sir George Young, a former British diplomat and journalist to join the University of London Ambulance Unit and was sent to a children’s hospital in Almeria in then civil war-torn Spain.

Mary Elmes at Almeria

She ran a children’s hospital in Murcia from May 1937, and worked for a period alongside Dorothy Morris a nurse from New Zealand. January 1938 saw her appointed as administrator to a Quaker established hospital in Alicante. She was not a Quaker herself.

The Quakers looked after victims on both sides of the civil war, however Mary’s work was mainly with Republican children and civilians. The hospital in Alicante came under aerial attack from the Fascist airforce with aircraft provided by Germany and Italy and had to be evacuated. In mid-1938, Mary moved inland to the mountains near Polop where they worked from an abandoned villa for the remainder of the year, caring for over 30 children.

By early 1939, as the Fascists, with superior resources defeated the Republican government and ground out victory, millions of Spanish became refugees in their own country. During the following months, some 500,000 defeated Republicans and their families fled to France.

Spanish children in Quaker run refugee camp, France

Mary eventually left Spain over the border to France in May 1939 and returned home to Cork where she stayed for a month, before volunteering to work in the Spanish refugee camps in the South of France. She worked out of Perpignan for the Quaker led International Relief organisations, distributing aid, supplies clothes and books.

World War 2 was declared on 2^nd September, placing the humanitarian effort in the South of France in jeopardy. Later on 22^nd June 1940, following the invasion of northern France and the fall of Paris, France became divided into the German occupied North and the collaborationist South under the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain.

The Vichy south was flooded this time by refugees from the north of France and again back in Perpignan, Mary found herself in the middle of a new humanitarian disaster. She was increasingly critical at the actions of the Vichy government towards Jews who were being rounded up and placed in concentration camps yet was also trying to prevent the expulsion of the humanitarian agencies, such as those run by the Quakers from the area.

Mary, known as “Miss Mary” to many refugees, worked tirelessly to bring aid to the Rivesaltes camp, local schools and other nearby facilities, where hunger and malnutrition was growing.

Relief organisations, including the Quakers, fearful of their fate, began attempting to get Jewish children out of the camps to America or into local respite homes where they might escape the Vichy authorities. The summer of 1942 saw the beginning of the systematic deportation of all Jews to extermination camps in Eastern Europe.

Clodagh Finn’s book

From August to October 1942, Mary Elmes, with assistance from some colleagues and others, rescued dozens of children from Riversaltes, taking them to safe houses or helping them flee the country altogether. Well aware that she was putting herself at risk, Elmes bravely hid many children in the boot of her car and drove them to safe destinations. She aided many others by securing documents, which allowed them to escape through the underground Resistance networks in Vichy France.

From November 1942 onwards, the Nazi grip of terror tightened. In February 1943, Elmes was arrested on suspicion of aiding the escape of Jews and was imprisoned in Toulouse, later being moved to the notorious Fresnes Prison run by the Gestapo near Paris, where she was incarcerated .She was finally released without charge on 23^rd July 1943. Her own children believe she may have been released after an intervention by Eduard Hempel, the German Ambassador in Dublin.

Paddy Butler’s book

Immediately returning to Perpignan, she continued her humanitarian work for the Quakers until June 1946. She married Roger Danjou and settled into a domestic lifestyle, raised two children, Caroline and Patrick and remained mostly silent about her extraordinary activities over the previous decade. After almost a decade of difficult relief works in two major wars and taking huge personal risks, she lived a quiet life. She refused the Legion d’ Honneur, offered by the French State. Her work still unknown and unrecognized, she died in France on 9^th March 2002 at the age of 93.

Eventually recognition came for her courageous humanitarian work and her efforts to save Jewish children from the Nazi genocide. On 13^th January 2013, she was recognized in the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations, at Yad Vashem in Israel. Later in February 2019, the Cork City Council voted to name the new pedestrian bridge across the River Lee as the Mary Elmes Bridge.

Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group will tell the story of Mary Elmes at the Firkin Theatre, Shandon on Thursday 1^st August at 7.30. All are welcome.

Sources:

A Time To Risk All by Clodagh Finn. Gill Books 2017

The Extraordinary Story of Mary Elmes…The Irish Oskar Schindler by Paddy Butler. Orpen Press 2017.

La Pasionaria – the story of Dolores Ibárruri

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Admin

On Friday 4^th August at 2.15, local historian, Anne Twomey will speak of the life of Dolores Ibárruri known as “La Pasionaria”, the Passion Flower. This talk forms part of an afternoon and evening of events devoted to an examination of the issues and lessons of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and events devoted to some of the Irish people who fought in the International Brigades.

Dolores Ibárruri was born into a mining family in Gallarta in the Basque country in Northern Spain in 1895. In a curious similarity to the early life personal tragedy of Mother Jones, Dolores trained as a dressmaker, poverty prevented her from becoming a teacher although she almost completed her studies. She married a miner, Julian Ruiz from Asturias in 1915. They had six children, five girls and a boy including triplets, however four of those died soon after birth, while her son Ruben died during the Second World War in the Soviet Union.

Monument in Glasgow — Monument to Dolores Ibarruri (La Pasionaria) in Glasgow by sculptor Arthur Dooley (Photo Ciaran Roarty via Wikimedia Commons)

Born a Catholic, she became a member of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) in 1921 and wrote extensively in miners’ newspapers. Becoming more prominent in the party she was known for her fiery and passionate speeches, which aroused great loyalty among her supporters. Dolores was elected from the Asturias to the Spanish parliament (the Cortes) in 1936.

She was centrally involved in many of the events leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War. Known as La Pasionaria (The Passion Flower) she oversaw the emergence of the Spanish Communist Party into a central role during the war. She was to the forefront in the struggles with the anarchists during the initial stages of the war. Fleeing Spain in 1939, she eventually arrived in the Soviet Union where she assisted with the war effort through the 40s. She lived in Moscow and was well regarded and close to the Soviet regime, including Stalin. Serving as General Secretary of the PCE for many years from 1942 to 1960, she stayed in the Soviet Union until 1977 and met all the major communist and socialist leaders across the world.

In the meantime Dolores was involved in establishing an underground resistance in Spain to Franco, which achieved little success in the initial decades due to much internal conflict and the total control of Spain by the Franco government. On her return to Spain, she was re-elected to Parliament but suffered from ill-health and retired from active politics. She died in November 1989, aged 93 years. (the same age as Mother Jones!)

She is best remembered publicly for her broadcast on Madrid Radio in November 1936, where in another echo of history she exhorted the defenders of the besieged city that “It is better to die on your feet than live for ever on your knees! They shall not pass!” “No Pasarán” became the battle-cry of Madrid and the besieged Republic. Later in October 1938, she delivered her passionate message of appreciation to the departing members of the International Brigades which is still much quoted.

The Revolutionary Women of Cork’s Northside 1916-1923

Posted on May 10, 2017 by Admin

On Wednesday evening, the 3^rd August, Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group will speak on the above topic at the 2017 Spirit of Mother Jones summer school.

The recent celebrations of the 1916 Rising were marked by an examination of the central role played by many women during the period of the Irish Revolution. In contrast to 1966, when little mention was made, publications such as “No Ordinary Women: Irish Females Activists in the Revolutionary Years 1900-1923” by Sinead McCoole and John Borgonovo in his “Dynamics of War and Revolution: Cork City, 1916-1918” made determined attempt to reveal the story of the contribution of women during this period.

The landmark exhibition by the Shandon Area History Group “Ordinary Women in Extraordinary times” at the St Peters Vision Centre in Cork in June 2016, concentrated on the activities of ten women in Cork whose roles lay largely hidden.

Through their efforts and others the full extent of the invisible yet essential infrastructure provided by women which supported the ongoing revolution from 1916 all over Ireland is being unveiled.

With Cork becoming the cockpit of the revolution from 1917 onwards, a number of extremely determined yet forgotten (or ignored) women constructed an impenetrable yet vital support network to the struggle for independence then taking place. Their pivotal and defiant actions, deemed almost irrelevant by history more concerned with the glory of the battle is slowly emerging into the consciousness of their communities.

Anne Twomey at a recent lecture where she detailed the tireless and heroic work of those revolutionary women remarked how “those that knew…..knew!” Now we need to know!

Memorial Window — Stained glass window at Our Lady of Lourdes church, Ballinlough, Cork in memory of Birdie Conway.

The Shandon Cumann Na mBan group after 1916 provides a touchstone for many of the women. At the centre of this group was Lil Conlon and her sisters. Lil was an indefatigable worker who performed many tasks during the troubled period and later penned a book Cumann Na mBan and the Women of Ireland 1913-1925 in which she posed the question “What did the women of Ireland do anyway?”

Lil Conlon book — Lil Conlon’s book on Cumann na mBan (published 1969)

Kate “Birdie” Conway, whose early career was as a professional operatic singer, later became a founder member in Cork of Cumann Na mBan and afterwards Shandon Branch president, played a huge role from 1914 to 1922. Her fundraising, her organising and support activities for prisoners’ dependents and in the cultural area were legendary. She arranged concerts, and often sang at them herself. “Birdie” Conway passed away on 21^st February 1936. Today she is remembered by a magnificent stain glass window in the entrance portal at the Ballinlough Church in Cork city.

In Clogheen, on the northern ridge of the city, Mary Bowles was arrested in January 1921 as she tried to hide a Lewis gun while local men escaped from an attempted ambush. She suffered dreadfully at the hands of her captors, and was imprisoned although just a very young teenage girl. She is remembered in a ballad “Mary Bowles… the Pride of Sweet Clogheen”

Across in Blackpool, Peg Duggan and her sisters Sarah and Annie, living at 49 Thomas Davis Street, operated an escape network for those on the run for years. Her flower shop on Parliament Street was a centre of Volunteer/IRA activity until closed by order of the British authorities. She was among the first on the scene of the murder of Lord Mayor Tomas MacCurtain in Blackpool on 20th March 1920 and she rendered first aid and comfort for his widow, children and the extended Walsh family throughout that terrifying night.

Emma Hourigan who lived nearby at 45 Maddens Buildings was very active, running intelligence, putting up posters, campaigning and organising. Yet six of her neighbours from Maddens Buildings consisting of just 76 houses were killed during World War 1. Historian Mark Cronin (Blackpool to the Front: A Cork Suburb and Ireland’s Great War 1914-1918) details how hundreds of young men from Blackpool and surrounds had fought in the British Army during the Great War and almost 70 never came home.

From this small Blackpool community one begins to appreciate the complexity of Irish life and history in a small urban village and the difficulties faced by Emma Hourigan and others who bravely took the republican road to freedom. By a sad irony the contributions of the women in the War of Independence and the men who went to fight for John Redmond to achieve Home Rule were virtually written out of Irish history.

In the very heart of Cork City in St Augustine Street stood the innocuous paper shop run by the Wallace sisters who were members of the Irish Citizen Army. This unpretentious premises was effectively the intelligence post office for the volunteers and the IRA for 5/6 years. Nora and Sheila Wallace’s heroic and invisible contribution to the revolution is only now surfacing from the shadows.

Margaret Lucey typed drafts of Principles of Freedom by Terence MacSwiney, while MacSwiney’s sisters Mary and Annie spent their entire lives working for the achievement of a Republic.

Young Kitty Daly was very active, she took part in the burning of Macroom Railway Station and was involved in the ambush of a British officer near the present St. John’s School.

Geraldine Sullivan (Neeson), was Muriel Murphy’s bridesmaid at her marriage to Terence MacSwiney on 9^th June 1917. She transported explosives on her person around the city. The transport of arms and explosives from place to place became normal for the more active women in 1920-1921.

In 5 Devonshire Street, Nora O’Sullivan was actively involved and bravely hid and carried weapons for volunteers, who were subject to constant searches. Sinead McCoole’s book contains a curious self-prophetic note made by Nora to her friend Kitty Coyle, while a prisoner in Kilmainham Gaol during the Civil War….

“Remember me is all I ask,
and if remembrance proves a task,
forget”
Nora O’Sullivan

Their unique stories will be told on Wednesday evening 3^rd August by Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group. The Group has made a major contribution to public history by researching and continuing to tell the story of these extraordinary women and others during the Irish Revolutionary period. The Cork Mother Jones Committee wishes to thank Anne Twomey and Maeve Higgins for their research on which this article is based. Photos courtesy of the Shandon Area History Group except where stated.

The Extraordinary Wallace Sisters

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Admin

The story of extraordinary Wallace Sisters will be told by Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group on Saturday 30^th July at 2.30pm at the Maldron Hotel.

Background to the role of the Wallace sisters.

Now a lifeless vehicular short cut, St. Augustine Street in Cork City is barely noticed by many people these days. A bleak, undistinguished street, it has in recent years become an alleyway located between the Queens Old Castle and McHugh House linking the Grand Parade to South Main Street. It was formerly known as Brunswick Street, which appears on the old street nameplate on the western side.

The street’s current dilapidated condition is in stark contrast to its busy nature in the early years of 1900s. In 1911, some ten shops, stores and houses and the back entrance to St Augustine’s Church lined the street.

Six of those houses were inhabited by a total of twenty seven people on census night 1911. Over at no 4, St Augustine Street, Sheila (Julia) Wallace then aged twenty one was described as “Head of Family”, while her sisters Hannah (29) and Norah (15) also occupied the upper rooms where a young seventeen year old lodger Norah Crean also resided.

Daughters of Jeremiah, an agricultural labourer and Mary Wallace of Barrahaurin, Donoughmore and from a family of eight children, the sisters had moved to the city at a young age and opened their little newspaper and cigarette business. The family had been evicted in the late 1800s and now lived in a small two roomed house on the farm of James Twomey, a local farmer in Barrahaurin. This eviction and the resulting traumatic impact on the large Wallace family being dumped on the side of the road, and its implications for the family must have contributed to the radical political views of Norah and Sheila Wallace, which later lead them to embrace the aims of the Irish Citizen Army.

One might be surprised to learn that many of the most famous names in the revolutionary Ireland 1915 to 1922 came and went with regularity through this street. For at number 13 Brunswick St (later 4 St. Augustine St.) was located the small shop of Sheila and Nora Wallace.

During the War of Independence these firm and engaging sisters went about their day to day shop keeping business as normal which provided a perfect cover for what became a vast beehive of revolutionary activity taking place in their shop.

Former Wallace shop — No.4 St. Augustine’s Street, Cork shortly before its demolition in the 1970s.

Located behind their small traditionally fronted tobacconist and newspaper shop with holy pictures and statues in the window and labour pamphlets on the shelves lay nothing less than the Head Quarters of the Cork No 1 Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). It was effectively the intelligence centre of the IRA where messages were efficiently received and delivered by a huge network of women and men…..in effect an IRA intelligence General Post Office!

Even more amazing is that this simple shop was located just 250 metres from the Royal Irish Constabulary barracks at Tuckey St and the second barracks at the Bridewell on the Coal Quay and yet remained undetected by the Crown forces for a long time.

James Connolly visited the Wallace sisters on his trip to Cork in January 1916, where he spoke later about military tactics at a meeting organised by Tadhg Barry over in the Grianán building in nearby Queens Street, now Fr. Mathew Street. Sheila and Nora were friendly with Constance Markievicz of the Irish Citizen Army (I.C.A) and both the sisters were active members of the Cork Branch of the I.C.A, which as the War of Independence gathered momentum gradually became absorbed into the I.R.A. The Cork Branch members used to meet in the Transport Workers Room in Merchants Quay where a rifle range had been established for practice by the Citizen Army.

An Grianán in Fr. Mathew Street, once the nerve centre of the revolutionary movement in Cork, today lies abandoned. James Connolly addressed a meeting here in January 1916.

University College Cork (UCC) historian and author John Borgonovo has recounted how the Wallace sisters organised a youth and women’s Citizen Army in Cork which lasted until 1921 and which took part in local parades involving the labour movement during the period. Labour organiser and socialist Cathal O’Shannon also took lodgings over their shop for a period while he worked in Cork.

One of the last actions of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás MacCurtain was to visit the Wallace shop late on Friday night 19^th March 1920. Florence O’ Donoghue, then head of intelligence in the I.R.A, later recounted how Tomás left the shop with the recently elected Alderman, Tadhg Barry about 11:00 pm that night on what was his final journey. Just a few hours later the Lord Mayor of Cork was murdered in his bed by the Royal Irish Constabulary (R.I.C) in the family quarters overhead his own shop at 40 Thomas Davis Street in Blackpool.

There is a family account how MacCurtain’s successor as the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, who was also a regular caller to the Wallace’s shop, went behind the counter and even sold a newspaper and a packet of cigarettes to a customer shortly before his arrest in August 1920. The Wallace sisters were busy at the particular time, taking dispatches around the city. Muriel MacSwiney, his wife, in her December 1951 deposition to the Bureau of Military History mentions how early on she became aware of “a little newspaper shop kept by the Misses Wallace, who were later connected to The Citizen Army”.

Sheila and Nora both worked in the shop and lived overhead at the time and the room to the rear of the shop was regularly used for Irish Volunteer and I.R.A. Brigade meetings. Sheila held the formal rank of Staff Officer as Brigade Communications officer, this was quite unique and she was possibly the only female officer of rank in the I.R.A.

She was awarded a pension of £55-16-8 under the Military Pension Act from October 1934 and her rank was confirmed. This rank is also inscribed on her gravestone in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery. Later on the shop was raided several times and was finally closed by order of the British Military dated 14th May 1921 and the sisters were ordered to be expelled from Cork City.

It reopened immediately after the Truce, indeed Liam Deasy then Adjutant of the First Southern Division recalled a jovial meeting at the premises on 12^th July 1921 with the officers of the First Cork Brigade and Tom Barry. As the sisters took the anti-treaty side in the Civil war, it was raided regularly by the Free State forces. Later on the sisters lived on the Old Youghal Road in Teach Shíle.

The years of “working in impossible conditions”, carrying despatches in all weathers and the associated stress took a heavy toll on the sisters. This was recorded in their military service pension applications in 1934. Sheila died on 14^th April 1944, on the Friday of Easter week. It was acknowledged by the Pensions Board that Nora who had developed tuberculosis in the 20s and spent some time in Switzerland, acquired her illness due to her exposure to all conditions of weather, wet and cold due to her intense activities, while acting as an intelligence agent. Nora traded on her own at the shop until 1960 and passed away on 17th September 1970.

The premises was later used as a bookmakers shop and afterwards as a dressmakers. The shop portrayed on a drawing by artist Brian Lawlor* in his book “Cork” appears to have been demolished sometime in the 1970s, during the clearance of the area for the reconstruction of the Queens Old Castle complex.

Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History group will give an account of the story of the Wallace Sisters on Saturday afternoon 30^th July at 2.30 in the Maldron Hotel. All welcome to attend and participate in the discussion afterwards.

The Shandon Area History group organised an unique exhibition entitled “Ordinary Women in Extraordinary Times” featuring remarkable women from the area and their contribution to the War of Independence at the St. Peter’s Church in North Main Street. in June 2016.

* Cork. Drawings by Brian Lawlor. Poems by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanán. Gallery Press, Dublin, Ireland 1977.

Update: October 2023:

A memorial plaque to Sheila and Nora Wallace was unveiled by their niece Bernadette Wallace at the national monument in Stuake, Donoughmore on Sunday 24th September 2023. The plaque and events were organised by the Donoughmore Historical Society and it included a talk by Anne Twomey of the Shandon Area History Group in the nearby community hall afterwards. There was a fine attendance in spite of heavy rain.

The Wallace sisters were natives of Kilcullen South in Donoughmore and when the family were evicted in the 1890s they had to move to the nearby townland of Barrachaurin. Later, the sisters moved to the nearby Cork City where they opened their small shop. The plaque commemorates the very vital role Sheila and Nora played during the War of Independence.

(our thanks to Donoughmore Diary)

The Spirit of Mother Jones Festival

Shandon, Cork City, Ireland

Tag Archives: Anne Twomey

Miss Mary: the Quiet Heroine! – The Story of Mary Elmes

La Pasionaria – the story of Dolores Ibárruri

The Revolutionary Women of Cork’s Northside 1916-1923

The Extraordinary Wallace Sisters