Comely Maidens Dancing at the Cross Roads - Lipstick, Powder & Politics

goose2005 wrote: »

She's not. I'd imagine there are at least a dozen men who did more, risked more but are remembered less. Ditto for Con Markiewicz

I have often tried to understand the massive change in public opinion & a lot of it was down to her intelligient use of PR and she put forward a very simple message here in her own words.

" Throughout that day and the next my husband actively interested himself in preventing looting. He was instrumental in saving several shops ; he posted civic guards, and enlisted the help of many civilians and priests. He pleaded with the crowds and persuaded them to return to their homes. But by Tuesday evening the crowds were getting out of hand. Everyone feared the worst. My husband called a meeting for that evening to organise a civic police. We met at 5.30 and had tea. I went home by a roundabout route, for I was anxious about my seven-year-old boy. I never saw my husband again.

She took her campaign to the House of Commons thru her Home Rule Connections & there was a massive change. She doorsteped the US President ffs.

Feminism may have been a hard sell in 1913 see this newscutting

The Skeffy gang appears to have had an unusually lively time of it last Saturday in the Phoenix Park. Apparently the window-breaking of the Skeffy gang induced an extra large audience to the Suffer pitch in the Phoenix on Saturday. It appears by all accounts to have been a humorously hostile audience. Skeffy, the only male, apparently, of the gang present, came in for some banter and hustling from the crowd. There were cries of 'cut his whiskers off' ... 'the breeches should be taken off him and a skirt put on.'
The Leader, 22 June 1913.

But Hanna had learned well & with a wealth of experience behind her & her pitch was flawless.

Here was the message from the Military

http://www.theeasterrising.eu/050_PublicationsEnglish/Publivcations%20English.htm

except they used these tactics with civilians and she exposed this and the behaviour of the ascendency.

It must have been very hard for her as she genuinely loved the guy and they were not Volunteers. She also cared for the other victims and their relatives. Her son Owen contracted diptheria and was hospitalised for 3 or 4 months too.

Even today her grasp of media handling is impressive and her campaigning was sustained and focused.

O'Donovan Rossa & Michael Davitt rated these two as more effective and practical than their brother.

The Ladies Land League Sisters themselves Anna & Fanny Parnell.

Anna & Fanny Parnell

Anna, photographed by Henry O'Shea, Limerick (c. 1878). Fanny, in ‘mid-western' costume (1878)
The Parnell sisters are exemplars of two distinct and typical streams of female action in the nineteenth century. Fanny excelled in the traditional field of philanthropic and fund-raising activities, and as a ‘poetess’, all considered suitable occupations for middle class ladies, while Anna was far more radical and militant than was conventionally acceptable. While both were convinced of the need for women to play an active role in the political sphere, it was Anna who would blaze a trail for those who were not prepared to accept boundaries between male and female modes of action.

Early influences

It is hard to identify where Fanny and Anna Parnell found the inspiration for their shared political life. Their father, John, and his family belonged to the Protestant Anglo-Irish landed gentry—Fanny was to speak of being ‘brought up amongst Anglo-Irish Tories...with my mind filled with bluest Tory principles’. Their grandfather, William, had, however, been an exception to the norm, writing novels and pamphlets attacking English injustice against Irish Catholics, and, as MP for Wicklow from 1817 to 1820, he supported Catholic Emancipation. Anna wrote of his ‘courageous fidelity to principle’ and his courage in standing alone in the society of his day, both qualities which were to re-emerge in Anna herself, but his influence, if any, was indirect, as he died before the sisters were born.
The children spent their early life at Avondale, the family estate in County Wicklow. They were allowed to roam widely, and although Wicklow was not badly hit by the Famine and the Parnells were reasonably good landlords, the girls must have heard horrific tales of the suffering elsewhere in the country. Anna wrote later that ‘even to persons who were not in existence when they occurred, the horrors of those years had a vividness almost as great as actual experiences of them could produce’, and Fanny’s descriptions in poetry and prose of the results of eviction echo accounts from the Famine years. The Parnell children’s formal education was minimal, but they had access to the family library, and Fanny, according to her brother, John Howard, had a literary bent from an early age, and ‘knew every book in the library’. He also claimed that she showed her patriotism young, always insisting, when playing toy soldiers with Charles, that her soldiers, not his, should be the Irish army.
When John Parnell died in 1859 the girls moved to Dublin with their mother, Delia. It has been suggested that it was Delia, American-born, from an influential, highly politicised Boston family, who was the source of the anti-British, republican ideas of the young Parnells. She certainly is documented as expressing strong anti-English attitudes, and American politics were discussed in the household, but Delia was first and foremost a socialite, not a political thinker, and there is little evidence that she had any direct influence on her children’s political attitudes. However, her passion for entertaining meant that the sisters met a wide range of people of different political persuasions. Although firmly anchored in Castle society, Delia invited a variety of guests to her social gatherings, and was rumoured to have Fenian sympathies, and to have helped American Fenian prisoners to escape after the 1865 arrests. She is known, too, to have received regularly a large number of newspapers, American, English and Irish, and Fanny and Anna read avidly. Fanny is documented, again by her brother, as being at this stage an ‘arch rebel’, and already a ‘blue-stocking poetess’—she published her poems in the Fenian paper, the Irish People, from the age of fifteen. Anna was a good painter, and she, too, wrote poetry. Both sisters were to continue to use these talents in their later lives, Fanny in her public life, Anna after she had withdrawn in disillusionment from the political field and was living as a recluse in Cornwall. Delia’s lack of interest in her children’s education, combined with her American background, allowed her daughters more independence than was usual for well brought up young women in Europe. Dubliners were shocked to see the Parnell girls in the streets unaccompanied—and there is an echo of this even in Anna’s Land League days, when Katherine Tynan expressed surprise that Anna was not afraid to walk home from meetings after midnight unaccompanied.

Paris and London

In 1865, when Fanny was seventeen and Anna thirteen, the family moved to Paris to live with Delia’s rich brother, on the Champs Elysées. It was time to find Fanny a husband, and the girls were soon integrated into the wealthy, expatriate American society to which Delia felt she belonged. Fanny appeared to enjoy it fully, and she even took part briefly in the London ‘season’ in 1868. There are reports of her being pretty, sociable and lively, and she was expected to make a good marriage.
Their mother, Delia Tudor Stewart Parnell (1864).
She must, however, still have been an ‘arch-rebel’, as on one of her visits to Dublin she attended the trial of O’Donovan Rossa. John Howard accompanied her: ‘Fanny could hardly restrain her tears and I think pictured herself as the next occupant of the dock’. She must also have been less enamoured of the social whirl than appeared. In 1873, needing money after the crash of her uncle’s fortunes, she wrote articles for the expatriate newspaper, the American Register, describing the social scene. Entertaining and light-hearted in character—’Hints to a Young Lady on Marriage’, ‘Evil Speaking’, ‘Reflections of a Wallflower’—they were also a scathing indictment of what she saw as a cynical marriage market. In fact, neither Fanny nor Anna were to marry.
Little is known about Anna’s reactions to Paris society, but an account of her attitudes when living in Wicklow gives a clear indication of how she must have viewed it. The writer talks of her ‘febrile energy’, and tells the story of how she came to reject her closest friends in Avondale, daughters of a local miller, because of their acceptance of traditional attitudes towards women—’the mental inferiority to which women were condemned by ecclesiastical authority was accepted as a matter of course by the miller’s pleasant daughters, but it galled Miss Anna and chilled her sympathy for them’. As soon as Anna reached an age when she could begin to make independent decisions about her life, a clear divergence in the attitudes of the two sisters towards conventional society began to appear. Fanny remained within the society she despised, criticising it only in her writing. Anna rejected it entirely and moved away. In 1870 she left her mother and sister in Paris and returned to Dublin to lead a separate life as an art student.
Fanny and Delia were still in Paris when the Franco-Prussian war broke out. They promptly joined the American Ladies’ Committee, and became active not only in the traditional caring field of preparing bandages and nursing the wounded, but also in fund-raising, setting up a hospital and organising the purchasing and storing of supplies. It was an active commitment, calling for stamina and good organisational skills, but in a conventional sphere, and typical of the mainstream of women’s active philanthropic work in the nineteenth century.
In 1874 Delia’s brother died, and she and Fanny left Paris to return to the family estate in New Jersey, where Fanny’s political career was to begin. Both sisters were still highly politicised, and the ideal of a free Ireland was to remain constant for both of them throughout their lives, although expressed in diverging ways. Anna moved to London in 1875, to continue her art studies. In the same year her brother, Charles, became MP for Meath and went to Westminster. Anna spent much time in the Ladies’ Gallery listening to debates, and later chronicled the period in an entertaining but biting pamphlet, How They Do in the House of Commons; Notes from the Ladies’ Cage.

The sisters in America

The sisters came together again in 1879, when Anna moved to America to join Fanny in raising funds for famine relief and organising Charles’s first American tour. Their efficiency was praised by many of their colleagues, including Michael Davitt, who called Fanny ‘a practical as well as a poetical reformer’. However, the sisters were not equally impressed by the men. Both Fanny and Anna were highly critical of the inefficiency of the Land League offices in Dublin, where their (male) colleagues frequently failed to acknowledge American donations, and were even thought to be directing funds to the wrong recipients. Both sisters also criticised the organisers of Charles’s tour, particularly John Dillon, for inefficiency. Tim Healy wrote home with apprehension of Anna’s biting comments: ‘I would not like to repeat Miss Parnell’s comments on Dillon...I shall be the next victim if anything goes wrong’. Whereas Anna was considered difficult and abrasive by her male colleagues, Fanny does not seem to have acquired this image—she continued to be seen as ‘feminine’, and obviously posed no serious threat to their confidence. Photographs taken in 1878 (p37) show the contrast between the sisters at this period. Fanny, is making the most of her femininity. She has been photographed in a fashionable ‘mid-western’ outfit, wearing a large and flattering hat and in an appealing,, not to say coy, pose. Anna, in Plate 2, is making no concessions to the photographer. She is wearing an everyday walking costume, has taken off her very ordinary hat, and her body language is defensive, suggesting that she is only in the studio under sufferance. No wonder the two women were perceived so differently.
During this year the sisters not only organised the Land League offices in New York, but wrote ceaselessly to the papers in support of the League, their brother and his party. Fanny also continued to publish patriotic verse, full of emotional and often violent nationalist fervour. Anna’s letters and pamphlets, written in an analytical, ironic and apparently dispassionate style, reveal an aspect of her character that was completely missing in Fanny’s, an awareness and bitter resentment of the universal perception of women as inferior beings, and of the low status of middle-class women within their families.

Fanny and the American Ladies’ Land League


Charles Stewart Parnell (Sean Sexton)
In 1880 Anna moved back to Ireland. Fanny, still in America, continued her fund-raising activities, and, hoping that by mobilising the women of the Irish community a ‘much needed stimulus would be given to the men’, she founded the American Ladies’ Land League. And it was she who, in a letter to The Nation on 1 January 1881, first made the suggestion that the women of Ireland should form a similar league, which would be able to take over the struggle if the men were arrested and sent to prison—though it seems likely that her idea of its role would have been closer to that of the male Land Leaguers, the traditional raising and distribution of funds and the support of those in distress, than to the Ladies’ Land League as her sister was to envisage it.
It was nevertheless still as a poet that she was best known. Her patriotic verse, anti-British in the extreme, was being published not only in America and Ireland but throughout the Irish expatriate world and she was fast becoming a cult figure, to the extent that lockets containing her hair could be found on sale in Ireland. The propaganda success of her poetry was such that at the trial of Charles Parnell and the other leaders in 1881 her ‘Hold the Harvest’ (below) was quoted as evidence that the League was inciting the populace to violence. Despite the violence of her poetry, however, with its apparent call to arms and the blood sacrifice, Fanny herself was in favour of moral rather than physical force and was a supporter of Home Rule.

Anna and the Ladies’ Land League

Anna was less moderate. In 1881 Charles and the other Irish Leaguers, realising that imprisonment was imminent, took Fanny’s advice and invited Anna to set up a Ladies’ Land League. They intended the ladies to perform a holding operation until they were released, and were more than a little disconcerted when Anna and her team proceeded to struggle single-mindedly to accomplish the aims which the men had already begun to consider unachievable. Anna used the talent for organisation that she and Fanny had already shown in America to re-organise the inefficient central office in Dublin. Like Fanny in America, she set up branches nation-wide.


Here, however, the resemblance ended. Anna’s League was not merely a fund-raising organisation but a militant force. She trained rural women to come out of their homes and play an active role in withholding rent, boycotting, and resisting eviction. When resistance failed she organised the provision of temporary housing and support for those evicted. She also provided support for Land League prisoners and their families. The women of the League faced hostility on all sides, from government forces, the church, the press, and probably, indeed, from most of their contemporaries, but Michael Davitt was to say in The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland (1904): ‘Everything recommended, attempted, or done in the way of defeating the ordinary law and asserting the unwritten law of the League...was more systematically carried out under the direction of the ladies’ executive than by its predecessor’. But their success had its disadvantages. Anna’s methods were exceedingly expensive and funds were running low. Rural violence had increased to such an extent that the British government began to panic. Irish politicians began to see the activities of the women as a danger to their long-term plans. Finally, as part of the Kilmainham Treaty, Charles Parnell agreed to do away with the League. In 1882 it was dissolved. Anna never again had any communication with her brother.
The Royal Irish Constabulary dispersing a meeting of the Ladies' Land League. (Illustrated London News, 24 December 1881)

In the same year, Fanny died of a heart attack. Her death coincided with the running down of the League and Anna was shattered, suffered a breakdown, and is thought to have attempted suicide. She retreated to England and spent the rest of her life in Cornwall, living in poverty under an assumed name, emerging only occasionally to give political support to Inghinidhe na hÉireann, and once, in 1907, to speak for a Sinn Féin candidate in a by-election. In 1904 she wrote her own account of what happened in 1881-1882, The Tale of a Great Sham, expressing her bitterness against the hypocrisy of the male Leaguers, who had encouraged the women to take on a job they, the men, had already decided was impossible. However, she was by now a marginalised figure and could not find a publisher for her work—the manuscript was lost for many years and not published until 1986. Anna became increasingly disillusioned, unhappy and reclusive. She died in a swimming accident in Cornwall in 1911, but because of her assumed name her death went unnoticed.

http://www.historyireland.com/volumes/volume7/issue1/features/?id=204

A few more bits

1852-1911 [Catherine Maria Anna Mercer]; b. Avondale, Co. Wicklow, 13 May; d. 20 Sept., Ilfracombe, Devon; 10th of 11 children to John Henry Parnell (d.1859) and Delia Tudor Parnell, his American wife; s. to Charles Stewart Parnell; organised Ladies’ Land League, 1881; resisted attempts by Chief Sec. W. E. Foster to suppress the League under legislation addressed to prostitution;
distributed £60,000 in relief; disbanded at request of Charles Stewart Parnell, who distrusted her politically; Old Tales and New (Dublin: Sealy, Bryers & Co. 1905), in verse; also wrote The Tale of a Great Sham, published in 1986, ed. Dana Hearne (see als Maeve Cavanagh, supra); drowned Ilfracombe under circumstances suggesting suicide, 20 Sept. [No ODNB entry.] DIB DIH B]FDA[/B


[In this letter, it appears that she held up Viceroy Lord Spencer in order to expostulate with him, by seizing his horse’s bridle while he rode with an armed escort through Westmoreland St.; on this incident, see also also Katherine Tynan, Twenty-five years, reminiscences (London 1913), ‘Miss Parnell was the stuff of which heroines are made, perhpas she alone of us. And what soft, gentle stuff it was! ... One would have said she was masculine if she had not been so feminine. The small pale face, strangely attractive, was very sensitive, somewhat nervous. Varying expressions flitted over it, troubling it for a second being passing. Her hair was very soft and fine, a sure index of a sensitive nature.’ (pp.82-83).

http://www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/p/Parnell_AC/life.htm

I dont want to concentrate on womens rights but Anna Haslam & her husband Tom- I knew their grandson.

The fundamental thing that many people forget is that womens rights were invented by a Cork Woman.

The Haslams are an untypical, fascinating couple and Quinlan alone does a good deed by bringing needed biography into the story of their place in the early women's rights movement. When Thomas Haslam married Anna Fisher in a civil ceremony in 1854, he had already left behind structured Quaker fellowship, was disowned by his Monthly Meeting in London, and as a result put his new bride outside of the Religious Society of Friends; as a consequence of their civil marriage, she too was expelled from the Society. They never rejoined or attended meetings again, but nevertheless enjoyed close and continuous ties with Friends. Eleven years after their betrothal, Thomas suffered a breakdown in health and was apparently never able to work again. Anna maintained a "stationery and toy warehouse," and this sustained the Dublin couple. Anna worked and became active in improving the life and rights of women in Ireland and England, and Thomas labored too in this endeavor as a writer and speaker. Except for a week in the nuptial bed, for the remaining 60 years of their happy marriage they maintained a celibate relationship, having early determined that they were not financially secure enough to raise children.
Abstinence was a theme of Thomas' early pamphlets on marriage and reproduction, both of which also recommended versions of the "rhythm method" of birth control. Feminists believed that men ought to learn sexual restraint and considered artificial contraception an impediment to suppressing a husband's sexual advances. His suggestion attempted to strike a middle ground: his birth-control method required male restraint and was also an instrument for social improvement. He wrote earnest polemical but constructive pieces—pamphlets, books, broadsides, speeches—on Irish social issues, birth control, sexual temperance, parental duties, prostitution, women's suffrage, and proper linguistic etiquette. Throughout his literary career he was an aid to Anna's feminist activities, traveling with her for the cause of women's suffrage and writing tracts in support of the causes they embraced. But it is Anna Haslam who comes across as the prime mover behind their social campaigns.
Anna Haslam was an active and founding member of numerous suffrage and union organizations, and she was an active participant in social, suffrage, and union associations in the UK and internationally. She promoted women's education, helped establish centers of learning for women, and was successful at getting women's candidacy for local elections. Her efforts, with Thomas, for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts seemed to her to absorb attention away from the long campaign for suffrage, but it helped develop skills she and her co-workers would use often in later efforts to even the playing field for women and men. She was involved for most of her life in these issues, beginning at least as early as 1861 and lasting until her death in 1922, at the age of 93. Thomas was also active until his death five years earlier. Only Anna lived to see Irish women receive the vote, in 1918.


http://www.newquaker.com/reviews/haslam.htm

For those who want to look more into it here are some links

http://www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/DWSA/DWSA_AH.pdf

http://www.woodfield-press.com/acrobat/activist1.pdf

If you are on Stephens Green take time to look for these

Women commemorated in St Stephen's Green, Dublin

Seat in honour of
Anna & Thomas Haslam
Constance Markievicz
Sculptor Seamus Murphy
Seat in honour of Louie Bennett;
also commemorates Helen Chenevix

Probably the most famous women soldiers of the American Civil War

Jennie Hodgers

Private
December 25, 1843 - October 10, 1915



There are over 400 documented cases of women disguising themselves as men and fighting as soldiers on both sides during the Civil War. The case of Jennie Hodgers is one of the most famous, because she continued to live as a man after the war and was not discovered until a couple of years before her death.
Related Battles

• Mansfield
• Vicksburg
• Kennesaw Mountain
• Jonesborough
• Nashville

Hodgers was born on December 25, 1843 in Clogherhead, County Louth, Ireland. Not much is known about her early life, as the only account available was given by Hodgers when she was suffering from dementia in 1913.
This much is certain—on August 6, 1862, Hodgers, a resident of Belvidere, Illinois, enlisted in the 95th Illinois Infantry under the name Albert Cashier. Although she was the shortest soldier in the regiment, and kept mostly to herself, Hodgers was accepted as “one of the boys” and considered to be a good soldier.
Hodgers’ regiment was part of the Army of the Tennessee and fought in over 40 engagements, including the siege of Vicksburg, the Battle of Nashville, the Red River Campaign, and the battles at Kennesaw Mountain and Jonesborough, Georgia. There is an account of Hodgers being captured and escaping by overpowering a prison guard, but no further details of this event exist.
Hodgers served a full three year enlistment with her regiment until they were all mustered out on August 17, 1865 after losing a total of 289 soldiers to death and disease.
After the war, Hodgers returned to Illinois where she settled in Saunemin. She continued to masquerade as a man, and held many different jobs, including farmhand, church janitor, cemetery worker, and street lamplighter. Hodgers even voted in elections (at the time, women did not have the right to vote) and collected a veteran’s pension.
In November of 1910, Hodgers was hit by a car and broke her leg, and her secret was discovered. The local hospital agreed not to divulge her true gender, and she was sent to the Soldiers and Sailors Home in Quincy, Illinois to recover. Hodgers remained a resident of the Home until March of 1913, when due to the onset of dementia, she was sent to a state hospital for the insane. Attendants there discovered her sex and forced her to wear a dress. The press got a hold of the story and soon everyone knew that Private Albert Cashier had been a woman in disguise.
Many of her former comrades, although initially surprised at this revelation, were supportive of Hodgers, and protested her treatment at the state hospital. When Hodgers died on October 10, 1915, she was buried in her full uniform and given a tombstone inscribed with her male identity and military service. In the 1970s, a second tombstone, with the name Jennie Hodgers, was placed next to the original grave.

http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/jennie-hodgers.html

If you are discussing advances in nursing and hospital administration in the 19th Century Irish Nuns were the business.

They probably learned how to deal with diseases such as cholera and typhoid with the famine.

So move over Florrie and lets here it for Mother Francis Bridgeman from Kinsale. Florence Nightingale and the Charge of the Light Brigade are the two main points that come to mind when talking about the Crimean War. One for it medical advancements in caring for the wounded soldiers away from the battle field, enabling more lives to be saved and the other a charge of madness or valour.
The Irish participated in this historical event, they were there in very heat of it’s battles and they are represented in the sombre task of caring for the wounded, the people of Carlow can add a few names of its own son and daughters to the event.
The Canon that guards the steps of Carlow Town Court house is there by good reason, it was awarded to the Town for the contributions that were made by the County in the effort of winning the war. However not all that went to Crimean War fought for the Colours some went there on what could be called the worlds first humanitarian missions.
The Irish Sister of Mercy
In autumn 1854, press reports from the Times’ war correspondent highlighted gross deficiencies in British military hospitals dealing with the sick and wounded of the Crimean War, prompting the War Office to appeal for respectable women to nurse the wounded. Three types of woman answered the War Office call – philanthropic ladies, paid nurses and religious sisters, both Catholic and Anglican. Among this latter group were 15 Mercy nuns from various convents in Ireland and England - all under the control of the mother superior of the Convent of Mercy, Kinsale, Co Cork (Mother Mary Francis Bridgeman). By Siobhan Horgan Ryan PhD B.A. R.G.N
Why did the Mercy nuns volunteer to nurse in the Crimean War? Primarily, according to surviving diaries, it was carried out as part of their mission to aid the less fortunate of society – especially given the high number of Irish soldiers in the British Army during the 19th century. The Mercy sisters had had experience of home nursing in the houses of the poor since the first European cholera epidemic in 1832.
Gradually this work expanded and, by the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, the sisters had gained much valuable domiciliary nursing expertise and had laid plans to open hospitals in Dublin and Cork. The Crimean War allowed these women to apply the nursing skills they had acquired and to gain public recognition for their nursing care. Although much of the work was necessarily surgical, nevertheless there was a very high incidence of infectious disease, such as cholera and typhus, with which the nuns were already very familiar. A second consideration was political – to showcase the benefits of Catholicism. Despite the removal of the last vestiges of the Penal Laws with Catholic Emancipation, nevertheless a suspicion remained in the establishment mind about the motives of the Catholic hierarchy. The Catholic Bishop of Southwark, London urged the Mercy sisters in Bermondsey to volunteer and also contacted the Irish hierarchy, who in turn encouraged Irish convents of Mercy to participate in the endeavour. One dissenting voice was that of the Bishop of Galway who refused permission to travel for four nuns who had volunteered from the convents at Galway and Westport and they were forced to remain in Ireland
The first contingent of volunteers was made up of Nightingale herself, some paid nurses, some Anglican sisters and two groups of Catholic nuns – one group from the Convent of Mercy at Bermondsey. Meanwhile, the second contingent had departed from London, including Mother Bridgeman’s group which comprised eleven nuns from Irish Convents, 3 from Liverpool and 1 from Chelsea. (See list above). The Irish nuns met up at St Catherine’s where there was a delay of 3 weeks while various administrative problems were sorted out. They then travelled together to London and were joined by the sisters from Liverpool and Chelsea.
All the nuns kept a diary of their time away but only three survive – those written by Mother M. Francis Bridgeman of Kinsale, Sister M. Aloysius Doyle of Carlow and Sister M. Joseph Croke of Charleville. Mother Bridgeman’s party of 15 sisters left London on 2nd December 1854 with 9 ‘ladies’ and 23 paid nurses under the superintendence of Mary Stanley. They travelled via Paris and Marseilles, where they boarded a ship bound for Turkey. When they arrived at Constantinople a message was sent to Scutari but Nightingale replied that the War Office had made a mistake and she had neither work nor accommodation for more nurses and nuns. Something of a stand-off ensued, with the ladies and nurses staying in accommodation belonging to the British Ambassador and the nuns staying with French Sisters of Charity, in their convent nearby. Eventually Moore negotiated a compromise between Nightingale and Bridgeman where Nightingale agreed to accept five nuns to work at the Barrack Hospital, Scutari, on the understanding that Bridgeman was free to withdraw them at any time. These five replaced the Norwood Sisters who had been sent home. This left the remaining 10 nuns and Stanley’s group to cool their heels until placements could be found for them. One of the sticking points in the negotiations had been the issue of control – Nightingale wanted all the Mercy nuns at Scutari to be led by Mother Clare Moore of the Bermondsey convent but this was rejected outright by Bridgeman who insisted that she and she alone had the responsibility for them, as it had been entrusted to her personally by their respective mothers superior. This point was eventually accepted by Nightingale, who agreed that all 15 should remain under the control of Bridgeman, irrespective of their location. Eventually a deal was worked out whereby the ten unemployed sisters would be sent to nurse in hospitals at Koulali hospitals, further up the coast. The remaining five sisters were given a choice to either remain at Scutari Barrack Hospital, where Florence Nightingale was based, or transfer to Scutari General Hospital. They opted to transfer and on 25th January 1855 Sisters M Elizabeth Hersey, M Clare Keane, M Paula Rice, M Winifred Sprey and M Agnes Whitty moved to the General Hospital.
Two days later the remaining 10 went to Koulali. When they arrived there they found that conditions there were even worse than at Scutari. There was nowhere to cook special diets for the patients and the wards were dirty – ‘disorder, filth and wretchedness’ and had to be scrubbed before patients could be admitted. For the first few days the nuns at Koulali were split between the Barrack and the General hospitals – 5 to each along with some secular ladies. On 2nd February Bridgeman took charge of the General hospital, under the nominal superintendence of Miss Amy Hutton, one of the ladies of the Stanley party who had ceded nursing responsibility to Bridgeman, and all the sisters of the Koulali group were transferred there, where they remained until the following October.
Each ward had a nun, a secular lady, two paid nurses and orderlies. The ladies had more difficulties in adjusting than the nuns who, during their novitiate, had received instruction in the art of nursing. The ladies, on the other hand, usually had only the experience of nursing a sick relative at home although a few had received some instruction in St John’s House Training Institution for Nurses in London, set up in 1848 to train Anglican nurses in the art of home nursing for the poor.
Relations between Bridgeman and Nightingale remained cool. The two clashed continuously over nursing duties and control of the nuns. Nightingale insisted that nursing care should be restricted to patients suffering from battle wounds, as those suffering from diarrhoea, fevers and infectious disease merely needed rest.
The nuns had had years of experience in nursing infectious patients, including cholera, and had a completely different view of what constituted nursing care. Also, Nightingale’s system excluded certain duties that the nuns felt were part of nursing responsibilities, such as night duty (‘watching’); administration of medicines, stimulants and food; and superintending the preparation and cooking of ‘extras’ or special diets. According to Bridgeman, before the sisters went home Florence Nightingale visited her and took notes on their system of nursing , ‘Miss Nightingale took notes of our manner of nursing which Revd Mother explained to her as she hoped someone might profit of it.’ Nightingale subsequently published a book on ‘Nursing Notes’ which, it has been argued, borrowed significantly from the ‘careful nursing’ system carried out by the Sisters of Mercy. Cholera was a major killer during the war and erupted in waves of epidemics. In the early stages of an epidemic all cases were fatal then the disease gradually lost its power until it would fizzle out a few months later, only to be replaced with typhus. This pattern occurred over and over again. According to the diaries left by the nuns, these cholera patients were all filthy and shocked on admission – not helped by having been transported 300 miles across the Black Sea in crowded ships. The first job was to clean them and then give drinks of hot wine and feed them with an easily digestible porridge of sago and arrowroot. Then hot packs and poultices were applied and some army doctors tried out the new chloroform treatment but, especially in the early stages of an epidemic, most cases proved fatal irrespective of what treatment was given. The dead were buried in canvas sheets and blankets, as there weren’t enough coffins to go round.
The sisters themselves weren’t immune from illness, two were sent home that summer due to ill health. Another difficult condition to treat was frostbite which, according to Sr Aloysius Doyle of Carlow, was even worse than battle wounds. The soldiers had not been provided with warm clothing and their uniforms were too flimsy for the Crimean winter, consequently many were admitted to hospital suffering from frostbite. These poor men had to have their clothes and boots cut off, often with digits stuck to them, and then poultices containing oil were gently applied to the extremities. On the following day any diseased flesh was removed and poultices reapplied. This regime continued as long as necessary until healing occurred.
Not only were there problems between Bridgman and Nightingale, there were also difficulties between the 2 groups of Mercy sisters and their leaders – Mothers Bridgeman and Moore. These two ladies had different agendas – Moore, as superior of the first Catholic convent founded in England since the Reformation, was anxious to avoid accusations of proselytising. Bridgeman felt she was being too accommodating to the Protestants and was disturbed that Moore had placed herself in a subservient position in relation to a secular lady, and a Protestant one to boot! She also felt that Nightingale deliberately drove a wedge between the two sets of Mercy nuns. Bridgeman did not trust Nightingale and took care to ally herself with Inspector-General Sir John Hall, Principal Medical Officer of the Crimean Force, who also disliked Nightingale.
By October 1855 admissions at Koulali had dropped off, as new hospitals had been opened in the Crimea itself, and the hospital was about to be transferred to Sardinian control. Bridgeman used this opportunity to distance herself and her group both geographically and professionally from Nightingale. In a private arrangement with Sir John Hall, Bridgeman brought her entire group of 10 sisters and 2 lay sisters to Balaclava on 7th October 1855, to take over a hospital previously under Nightingale’s superintendence but which she had been manoeuvred into relinquishing earlier that month, after the ladies who had been in charge transferred [on their own initiative] to other hospitals.
In Balaclava the sisters were housed in a one-roomed wooden hut up a steep hill containing 3 beds and 2 chairs for 15 sisters, tin plates and cups, a stove, kettle tin can and sweeping brush. Despite the poor living conditions there they were happy to be rid of the ‘seculars’ – the term they used for both ladies and paid nurses. Each sister was in charge of 2 wards, with approx 14 patients and 2 orderlies in each, and they ran a rota of night duty, by which 2 sisters stayed up at night and went around the various hospital buildings together. This was strictly controlled – night nursing was only undertaken on the express, written instruction of the attending doctor.
The Sisters also took turns at acting as housekeeper – one week at a time, despite having a lay sister whose specific job it was to look after the domestic arrangements of the nuns. Nightingale had many problems with the purveyor general and Bridgeman took advantage of this and fostered his friendship, as she had also done with Sir John Hall. This resulted in, inter alia, provision of better accommodation for the Sisters in Balaclava where extra communicating huts were built on stone foundations to provide dormitory space and a chapel. The stone foundations were important as there was an infestation of rats in the area and wooden foundations proved no barrier to these unwelcome guests. A fresh outbreak of cholera coincided with the sisters’ move across the Black Sea, once again all cases were fatal in the early stages of the epidemic. One of the Liverpool nuns, Sr M Winifred Sprey – a lay sister, died of cholera on 20th October 1855, a week after arriving in Balaclava. Once again, a typhus epidemic broke out, in January 1856, as cholera was diminishing. Sr M Elizabeth Butler died of typhus on Sunday 23rd February 1856, aged between 50 and 60 years. Irish by birth, she had entered Baggot Street Convent in 1838 and transferred to Liverpool in 1845.
When Nightingale discovered how she had been duped she wrote to the War Office and insisted on being reinstated as superintendent of Balaclava. Bridgeman responded by writing to General Storks outlining the history of their relations and insisting that Nightingale had initially refused the nuns’ services entirely, then had reluctantly agreed to accept 5 to work in Scutari on the understanding that Bridgeman was free to withdraw them at any time and that Nightingale had disclaimed all responsibility over the remaining 10 sisters, who were subsequently employed at Koulali but not, Bridgeman maintained, under Nightingale’s control.
Following pressure from friends at home, Nightingale regained control of the General Hospital at Balaclava, whereupon Bridgeman decided to bring her group home, citing the decreased need for their services due to falling admissions as well as the imminent declaration of peace. Peace was formally declared on 2nd April 1856 and the sisters sailed for England on the 12th, via Constantinople, Malta and Gibraltar. They arrived in England on 8th May and rested in London before journeying back to their respective convents.
In her report to her superiors Bridgeman said that the sisters were well suited to nursing in military hospitals, by virtue of their vows, class and morality, but counselled that they should never again come under the superintendence of a secular lady, especially a Protestant one, and that she herself was ‘tired and disgusted with following and untangling Miss Nightingale’s intricate webs.’
However, Florence Nightingale may not have been her only problem. The nuns had demonstrated obedience, calmness and order throughout their time away – in part due to their vow of obedience to Bridgeman, as representative of their home superiors. Nevertheless, Bridgeman hints at some discord between nuns of different convents when she says that in future such endeavours would be better confined to nuns from one convent. However, the façade of unity was maintained in front of all - not only for the good of religion but also to promote the moral superiority of the Irish over the English nuns. Conclusion The Crimean War was the first public manifestation of the Mercy system of nursing, where care was delivered by a distinct, cohesive, obedient, morally unassailable, well managed, socially superior group of women who were experienced in the nursing care of infectious disease and used to privation.
As such it was a success the Irish nuns concentrated on the provision of hospitals and taking over responsibility of nursing departments in workhouses. The Sisters arrived back in Ireland in 1856 and within a few years the congregation had established hospitals in Dublin and Cork and had begun nursing in workhouse infirmaries. The Mercy Hospital, Cork was opened in 1857, followed four years later by the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Dublin. Mercy nuns began working in workhouse hospitals in the early 1860s and by 1873 there were 26 nuns employed in 8 workhouse hospitals, of which 23 were from the Mercy order. In addition, some hospitals originally set up by Protestants later had their nursing departments administered by Mercy nuns, including Dublin’s Charitable Infirmary and Cork’s South Infirmary. Sr M Aloysius Doyle (of Carlow) died at Gort convent, Co Galway in 1908, aged 94. She was the last survivor of Bridgeman’s group and had been awarded the Royal Red Cross in 1897. She could not receive it in person from Queen Victoria at the ceremony in Windsor, due to ill health, and so it was sent on to her.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irlcar2/Sisters_of_Mercy_1.htm

You did have professional women suffragettes

Edith Colwill, who lived on Ailesbury Road, gave her profession in the census as ‘suffragette’. The Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association had been established in 1876 by a Quaker feminist, Anna Haslam, and later evolved into the Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association, driven by both nationalists and unionists. In 1908, the nationalist Irish Women’s Franchise League was co-founded by Hanna Sheehy Skeffington. In 1911 Louie Bennett of founded the Irish Women’s Suffrage Federation, as a co-ordinating body for the dozen or more societies active across the country. Many Irish feminists refused to co-operate with the 1911 census, as a protest against their lack of the vote.
Hanna Sheehy Skeffington with Mrs Pearse c.1921. Skeffington was a co-founder of the Irish Women's Franchise League in 1908.

I have tried to find some on-line resourses on Kate Tyrell - an Arklow shipowner and businesswoman.

I hate to say it but Kate Tyrell as a ship owner was about as scandolous as my aunt the farmer and keeping the name of a family business going was not very unusual.

What interests me about her is that following independence hers was the first official use of the tri-colour in Liverpool.

The type of cargo she handled included gunpowder and explosives from a factory in Arklow. Wooden hulled vessels were more suitable and safer for this. So she knew her business.

Kate Tyrrell (1863-1921)
One of the most renowned female Mariners in history, Kate Tyrrell is
synonymous with seafaring in Arklow. Male dominated, Kate Tyrrell rebelled
against the structures of the shipping world and won.

Born into the Arklow shipping family of the 'Tyrrell's she became the owner
of the "Denbighshire Lass" the first schooner to fly the Irish tri-colour in
the 1920's.
Often navigating the ship herself this extraordinary woman took control of
the shipping world. She was scandalised by society for insisting on keeping
her maiden name after marriage.

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/IRL-WICKLOW/2003-04/1050625370

Kate Tyrrell from Arklow was an expert mariner when her father bought her a schooner in 1885 but when he died a year later she found that a woman owner or skipper could not operate a ship.

As managing owner of the ship, Kate took the decision to let Laurence Brennan put his name down as owner, but she determined that she would not rest until every piece of paper relating to the Denbighshire Lass named her as owner. It would take her until 1914.

John Mahon, Kate Tyrrell: lady mariner, Dublin, 1995, p.34.

http://www.scoilnet.ie/womeninhistory/content/unit3/EducationAndTraining.html

Her husband Laurence was a chilled out guy and supported her efforts.

As I understand it the whole of the shipping establishment was Llyods who operate the shipping register and insurance business.

Now there were lots of Kates around the country who inherited and operated family businesses and shops etc and fathers of daughters who wanted them to take over businesses because they saw their potential.

You also had companies like Guinesses etc who did not employ catholic's as white collar workers into the 1950's. Even some hotels who would not take black guests into the 1960's.

So we have to be careful about looking at feminism and the operation of an elite sectarian & class ridden society.

Now I am not taking from Kates achievements and do admire her just I question the way her story is being taught .

A Wimbleton Singles Champion and Hall of Famer no less.

They both died tragically young & Lena from TB

LENA RICE (1866-1907)

In 1890, Lena Rice from Co Tipperary became the only Irishwoman to win the Women’s Singles at Wimbledon. The sixth of seven children, Helena Bertha Grace Rice grew up in Marlhill, a Georgian mansion in the Golden Vale between New Inn and Cahir. Her father, Spring Rice, died when she was young and the family tumbled into near destitution.[xiii] However, the young Rice siblings played tennis at home and, in the 1880s, Lena became an active member at Caher Tennis Club. In May 1889, she caught the public’s imagination when narrowly beaten in the Irish Championships at the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club by Blanche Bingley - five times Wimbledon Champion - in the semi-final. She took revenge in the Mixed Doubles when, partnered by Willoby Hamilton, she won the Mixed Doubles title, beating Bingley and Henry Stone in the final. Later that year, Lena travelled to Wimbledon where she reached the final to play Blanche Bingley. After almost two hours on Centre Court the Irishwoman had three match points to become the Wimbledon Champion of 1889. Her nerve failed and Bingley won the next three games and the match. Some might recall a similar encounter in the women's final at Wimbledon in 2005 when Lindsay Davenport had a match point against Venus Williams but went on to lose. With her confidence in tatters, Lena returned to Ireland where she lost in the Irish championships. However, on 4th July 1890, she was back in Centre Court for another Women’s Final. She wore a full length dress with long sleeves, bustles, corsets and long petticoats, along with an ankle-length floral- skirt and a blouse tightly clinched to her waist. In the final game of the match, the 24-year-old Tipperary girl sent strawberries spilling across Wimbledon when she leaped into the air to smash the ball over the net. This jump not only introducing the forehand smash into tennis but also made Lena the first Irish woman to win Wimbledon. She retired from the sport soon after and became a recluse in Tipperary where she died in June 1907, aged 41, after a long and painful battle against tuberculosis. The Wimbledon champion is buried in New Inn.
MABEL ESMONDE CAHILL (1863-1905)

The only Irish person to make the prestigious International Tennis Hall of Fame is Mabel Esmonde Cahill, one of twelve children born to Kilkenny barrister Michael Netterville Cahill and his second wife, Eliza. They lived at Ballyconra House, Ballyraggett, Co. Kilkenny. Mabel was a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Roscrea when her father died in 1877. His will reveals that Mabel’s mother had ‘shamefully deserted’ him. By 1877, at least three of Mabel’s brothers were living in California which may have prompted her entry into the 1891 US Open. The sprightly right-hander from Ballyraggett defeated Franklin D Roosevelt’s cousin, Ellen Roosevelt, to win the tournament. In fact, she won the singles, doubles and mixed titles at the US Open in both 1891 and 1892, and was the first player ever to win three titles in a single year at any of the four ‘Grand Slam’ events. In 1891 the lawn tennis champion published a ‘dainty love tale’ called ‘Her Playthings, Men’. Little is known of her latter years and she is believed to have died aged 43 in 1905.

http://www.turtlebunbury.com/history/history_irish/history_irish_tennis.htm



Lena displaying some ankle



Mabel -probably a Size 0

And you can read Mabel's Novel " Her Playthings Men" on-line

http://www.archive.org/stream/herplaythingsmen00cahiiala#page/n9/mode/2up

Another Irish Woman makes good.

[SIZE=+3]Belinda Mulrooney[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]The Richest Woman in the Klondike[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-2]Belinda Mulrooney[/SIZE] [SIZE=-2]on the Chilkoot Pass Trail in mid April 1897.[/SIZE] [SIZE=-2]Photograph courtesy[/SIZE] [SIZE=-2]of Alaska State Library,[/SIZE] [SIZE=-2]Winter & Pond,[/SIZE] [SIZE=-2]PCA 87-682[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-0]Belinda Mulrooney was a favorite subject of newspaper and magazine writers. Scribner's Magazine called her the "richest woman in the Klondike." In an interview she gave in 1962, Mulrooney said that reporters paid attention to her because "the truth is there wasn't enough to write about those long winters in Dawson." Reporters, she claims, wrote about her with such compliments because she fed and housed them while they were up in the gold fields. "Give us a room, Belinda," she noted they would say, "a few good meals and credit at the bar. Take it out in write-ups. We'll write a real story about you."[/SIZE] [SIZE=-0]Of all the legends associated with Belinda Mulrooney, (and there are many), one that typifies her bravado and self-assurance was oft told by the woman herself. According to Mulrooney, when she finally reached Dawson and the gold fields after months of hard travel, she tossed her very last coin, a 25-cent piece, into the Yukon River for luck. She was 26 years old.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-0]Belinda had more than just luck on her side -- she was determined to become a success. Mulrooney, the daughter of a Pennsylvania miner, had left home when at 21. She displayed her entrepreneurial bent from the very beginning. She ran a sandwich stand in Chicago during the Colombian Exposition. From Chicago she moved to San Francisco where she ran an ice-cream parlor. When the parlor burned down, she got a job working as a stewardess for the Pacific Coast Steamship Company.[/SIZE]
There had been gold strikes in Alaska and the Yukon before August 1896. These smaller strikes had attracted those who had paid attention. An earlier strike in Juneau, Alaska, encouraged Mulrooney to head north in 1896. While there, she worked in a small clothing store. When Mulrooney heard about the fabulous new gold strike in the Klondike, she did not waste any time. Thinking ahead, she theorized that it would be the niceties, and not the necessities of life that would bring a fortune in the remote and barren gold fields. She left for the Klondike with may of the necessities other stampeders were bringing, but with items few had the time, money or will to carry - silk underwear, bolts of cotton cloth and hot water bottles. She chose well--and made six times her cost back in profits. Mulrooney used that money to open a restaurant in Dawson, charging between $1.50 - $4.50 for a meal.

Belinda soon turned her attention to the gold fields themselves. Instead of trying to dig gold out of the ground, she mined the miners. Catering to the crowds in the gold fields, 15 to 30 miles away from Dawson, Mulrooney built a two-story roadhouse at the junction of the two most profitable creeks--Bonanza and El Dorado. Her Grand Forks Hotel and restaurant was an immediate success. Always one to recognize opportunity, Belinda ordered that sweepings from the floors be run through a sluice--bringing her as much as $100 a day from the gold dust that fell from miner's pockets and clothing. In addition to the traditional profits from the hotel and restaurant, Mulrooney was able to profit from information gathered from miners sitting around talking about the digs. By the end of the year, she owned five mining claims either outright, or in partnership.

[SIZE=-2]A small town, also known as Grand Forks, sprang up around Mulrooney's Hotel.[/SIZE] [SIZE=-2]Photograph courtesy of: Special Collection Division, University of Washington Libraries, Child 3[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-2]Mulrooney's Fair View Hotel was the most prominent building of its time in Dawson.[/SIZE] [SIZE=-2]Photograph courtesy of the Special Collection Division, University of Washington Libraries, Larss & Duclos[/SIZE]
With the success of the Grand Forks Hotel, Mulrooney was able to buy a spot of land in Dawson on the corner of Princess Street and First Avenue. She sold the Grand Forks Hotel for $24,000 and put her profits into creating the most impressive building in Dawson. Only the best would be good enough for Mulrooney's new hotel. Everything had to be ordered from Skagway or Seattle. Freighting such exquisite goods over the passes or up the Yukon River and into Dawson in 1898 was an achievement in itself. Mulrooney ordered cut glass chandeliers, silver and china linens and even brass bedsteads for her rooms. On July 27, 1898, the Fair View Hotel opened to enthusiastic and impressive reviews. The three-story hotel held thirty guest rooms and a restaurant.
Among those who visited the hotel in its first days were Mary Hitchcock and Edith Van Dorn, who were "doing" the Klondike as tourists. Hitchcock included a description of the Fair View in her book, "Two Women in the Klondike." Mulrooney worked hard to ensure the success of the Fair View Hotel and maintain it in grand style.
She traveled down the Yukon River to Skagway to purchase the highest quality provisions and furnishings available for her showpiece. In 1899, she even sailed down to Seattle to select plate glass windows, lumber and a steam heating apparatus for the building.
Appreciating her keen business sense, a local bank chose Mulrooney to run the Gold Run Mining Company, then deeply in the red. She pulled the company into the black in 18 months.

[SIZE=-2]Interior of Fair View Hotel[/SIZE] [SIZE=-2]Photograph courtesy of: Special Collection Division, University of Washington Libraries, Larss & Duclos 22[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-2]"Count" Carbonneau[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-2]and Belinda.[/SIZE] [SIZE=-2]Photograph from the[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-2]Seattle Times[/SIZE]
By the end of the century, Belinda Mulrooney's hotels and mines had brought her a considerable fortune. They also brought her to the attention of Charles Eugene Carbonneau, a French-Canadian by birth, he claimed to be a French aristocrat. "Count" Carbonneau, as he was known in Dawson, had gone north as a champaign salesman. Unkind tongues claimed he was only a barber from Montreal. Whatever his original circumstances, Carbonneau achieved moderate success in Dawson as a mine owner and promoter. Belinda had worked with "Count" Carbonneau on occasion in Dawson and the two were drawn to each other. Their marriage in Dawson on October 1, 1900, was the social event of the season. The pair traveled to Paris, wintering there and returning to Dawson in the summers. But, not all was well with the couple and in the summer of 1903, Belinda returned to Dawson alone. Two years later, Charles, still living in Paris, was charged with embezzlement and fraud. By 1906, Belinda, fed up with her artificial count, divorced him. These were rough years for Belinda, aside from the strains of her disintegrating marriage, she had been sued by owners of the Gold Run Mine for improperly letting lays on mining properties. In addition, the bank holding the mine's mortgage sued her for the debt.
Understandably tired of Dawson by this time, she decided to try and build back her fortune in the gold fields near Fairbanks, Alaska in 1904. Mulrooney set up the Dome City Bank in Fairbanks. Her touch was still golden and she made a second fortune. She took her money and moved to eastern Washington state. Even though she was no longer even an artificial countess, Mulrooney wanted to live in style. She moved to eastern Washington and built herself a castle near Yakima, living there with her siblings until the late 1920s. When her fortune was depleted, Mulrooney was forced to rent out the castle. She spent the rest of her life in Seattle, where she gave interviews from time to time, talking about her life during the gold rush. She died in Seattle in 1967 at 95 years of age.


http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/gold/belinda.html

CDfm wrote: »

And here is a story of a very practical Kerrywoman



http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/hangwomen.html

Lady Betty is reputed to have made charcoal drawings of her clients .

Edit - a bit more detail



Sir William Wilde mentioned her in his book

As is the case with many legendary figures, it is hard to separate fact from fiction in the story of Lady Betty. However, we can be sure that she existed. Sir William Wilde, father of Oscar Wilde, wrote about her in his book Ireland: Her Wit, Peculiarities and Popular Superstitions.

Lady Betty was famous as a cruel hangwoman who worked in Roscommon Jail in the eighteenth century. According to Sir William Wilde, she drew a sketch of each of her victims on the walls of her dwelling with a burnt stick.

This colour tinted photo was taken by John Valentine of the Old Jail, Roscommon. The jail was built in around 1740 and still occupies a prominent position in the town centre. The facade is all that is left today, and a modern extension now houses the Stone Court Shopping Centre. Roscommon Jail had the dubious distinction of having a female executioner in the person of Lady Betty. She herself was a criminal who had murdered her son, and had her sentence withdrawn on condition that she carried out her gruesome task without pay. She lived in Roscommon Jail for her own safety.

Lady Betty's story is very sad. It is likely she was born in Kerry. Her husband and children died except for one son. She and her son were evicted from their home and finally settled in Roscommon town. They were very poor. Lady Betty's son left home at a young age to escape his mother's harsh temper.

One night, a well-dressed man arrived at her cabin and asked for lodgings for the night. While he slept, she killed him for a sum of money he had on his person. Looking through his papers, Lady Betty discovered the young man she had killed was her son.

She was sentenced to be hanged in Roscommon Jail, along with various others, including sheep stealers and Whiteboys. On the planned day of execution, the hangman was ill. Lady Betty offered to take his place if her life was spared. This gained her instant notoriety.

Lady Betty lived in Roscommon Jail for many years and carried out countless executions there. She also carried out floggings in the street. The Lord Lieutenant officially lifted her death sentence in 1802 in recognition of the fact that she had executed many United Irishmen. She died in 1807.

http://crimetalk.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pastpunishment&action=display&thread=32

Here is a selection of women who met their ends at the end of a rope or worse


Darkie Kelly

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=66681333&postcount=9


Mary Reilly & others

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=68893583&postcount=60

Two Bridgets

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=68981256&postcount=61

Female Executed and Lucy Sly

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=69000045&postcount=64

redpanther wrote: »

CFfm, I am sure there were many women farmers in Ireland slaving away over the years but I can assure you the farms were not in their names back in Kate Tyrells time. It was not unusual for women to do all the work but they did not have assets in their names!Get your facts right.

I mentioned my aunt who inherited the farm from her uncle was single and never married.She died last year and owned her own farm. I do not know what happened in other families.

Agricultural land was subject to regulation and lots of farmers were quite poor. Farm sizes were small and people left Ireland because it was poor and not rich.

http://ocillin.com/Tenure/regulation.html

Rural populations dropped and the number of farms dropped. Accelerating in recent years.

http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclare/profile/ccdb/the_economy_of_clare/agriculture_and_rural_sector.htm

In Kate Tyrells time you had the Land Commision and Congested Districts Board. You had the purchase and redistribution of tenanted land.

Are you aware that in certain areas of Ireland in 1900 you had 10 to 20 % of the rural populatuion living in mud huts. People emigrated to escape grinding poverty and the very poor could not afford to go.

http://digilib.bc.edu/reserves/en933/howe/en93316.pdf

Farmers were not wealthy.

So if you are really sure of your facts you will provide references so we can discuss it factually.