Blogs

In February 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed and women who were over 30 years of age, owned property, or were married to a rate-payer were finally allowed to participate fully in the democratic process. Although women were still not on equal terms with men (who could vote from the age of 21 years), the breakthrough had been made.

Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu (24 August, 1814 – 7 February, 1873) was a newspaper publisher and writer who is best remembered for his classic ghost stories. Born at 45 Lower Dominick Street in Dublin, his family were a mix of Huguenot, English and Irish ancestry.

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of World War 1 Armistice. From working in munitions factories, V.A.D. nursing, supporting the war effort through charitable works, and leading the anti-conscription movement, World War 1 led to a multitude of different experiences for Irish women. Here we read from some archival sources from Dublin City Library and Archive to highlight four Irish women whose lives were impacted by the First World War in very different ways.The four women featured are Anna Haslam, Nora Guilfoyle (pictured right), Monica Roberts and Maeve Cavanagh.Watch Women's Voices 1914 -1918 playlist:Or just listen:Part of a new exhibition by Dublin City Archives entitled “Doing their bit” Irish Women and the First World War. This exhibition draws on the collections of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association Archive and other material held at Dublin City Library and Archive and considers the legacy of World War 1 on the role of women in Irish Society. The exhibition is display at Dublin City Library and Archive until the end of April 2018.The exhibition is developed by Dublin City Archives and Dublin City Council Historian-in Residence Scheme and is funded by Dublin City Council Decade of Commemorations.

The Conscription Crisis – After Russia’s withdrawal from the First World War, Germany started an offensive on the western front in March 1918. The British Government subsequently introduced the Military Services Act in April 1918, extending conscription to every Irish male between the ages of 18 and 50. Most strands of Irish life vigorously opposed conscription, leading to a retreat from the British authorities some months later.Na Fianna article by Countess Markieviecz – January 1916 Digital.libraries.dublincity.ie History Document of the MonthEvery month the Dublin City Council Historians in Residence will be highlighting a document from Dublin City Public Libraries and Archives Digital Repository.  An image of the selected document will be on display in branch libraries during the month.Historians in Residence are available to meet groups and schools, give talks, walks etc, run history book clubs and advise on historical research.

Strolling around the centre of St. Stephens Green, amongst the flowers, swans, tourists and lunchtime-time sandwich eaters, stands an unassuming seat which you might easily pass-by without noticing. Going in for a closer look, the curious onlooker will note that this bench is dedicated to one Anna and Thomas Haslam for their tireless work campaigning for equal rights for women. The seat, made from Kilkenny Limestone, was erected in 1923, five years after women over 30 received the vote in Britain and Ireland and a year after all men and women in the Irish Free State constitution over 21 could vote. Collection: Dublin City Gallery The Hugh LaneThe Haslams' work in the later part of the nineteenth century is a great example of the overlapping campaign for social reform that many of those involved in the suffrage movement were also a part of.Both Anna and Thomas were Quakers (members of The Society of Friends), a Christian sect first introduced into Ireland in 1654. Their fundamental belief was in equality between men and women and they were predominantly known for their help with the poor and their support for the anti-slavery campaign, prison reform and temperance.Ann Maria Fischer was born in April 1829 to a middle-class Quaker family in Youghal, County Cork. She was educated in Quaker boarding schools in Newtown (Waterford) and Newgate (York, England). In 1845 she returned from York to work with her parents in the soup kitchens organised by the Society of Friends Anna for the relief of the Great Famine. From her family kitchen in Youghal, Anna and her sister Deborah started up a workshop teaching young girls to knit and crotchet. Anna organised the sale of their work and the business began to flourish, ultimately employed over 100 young women in the area. After a number of successful years trading, the nuns of the Presentation Convent eventually took over and introduced lace-making which later established Youghal’s renowned lace industry.In 1853, when working at a teaching position in Ackworth School in Yorkshire, Anna met fellow teacher and Irish Quaker Thomas Haslam, who was originally from Mountmellick in County Laois. Thomas shared Anna’s belief in equality for women, and after returning to Ireland they married in 1854 in Cork. The Haslam’s left teaching and moved to Dublin when Thomas obtained a position as an accountant at Jameson, Pim & Co. Brewery, in Aughrim Street. They were extremely close and devoted to each other, which friends often referring to their marriage as idyllic. They moved to Rathmines in 1862, and in 1866 Thomas suffered ill health which was to afflict him the rest of his life. He was unable to work, so Anna became the breadwinner, running a small stationary business from their home at 125 Leinster Rd., Rathmines for the next forty years.Credit: National Archives of IrelandThe first campaign the Haslams were involved in was around better education for women; Anna had been among the reformers let by Anne Jellicoe, in the founding of the Irish Society for Training and Employment of Educated Women in 1861 and in 1866 the establishment of Alexandra College for the Higher Education of Women. Alexandra College was the first college in Ireland to provide university-type education for women and then in 1873 Alexandra High School for Girls. Anna also contributed to the Intermediate Education Act of 1879, which enabled girls to sit public school examinations, and the Royal University Act of 1879, which permitted women to study for degrees in the Royal University. Credit: Dublin City Library and ArchivesDespite his illness, Thomas continued to contribute to the campaign for women’s rights. In 1874 he published The Women’s Advocate, the first of three Irish suffrage pamphlets and the first to be published in Ireland supporting women’s suffrage. They contained invaluable information and practical advice on the organisation of suffrage activism and as well as debating in favour of the vote for women.In 1876, the first Irish suffrage society was founded by Anna and Thomas, called the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association. Anna became secretary, a position she held for thirty-seven years. The DWSA sought reform for any discrimination against women, either on a legal or social level, and regularly sent petitions to the House of Commons and lobbied Irish MPs.In 1864, 1866 and 1869 parliament passed the Contagious Diseases Acts, where women suspected of prostitution living in garrison towns in Britain and Ireland were subject to compulsory checks for venereal disease. If they were found to be infected they could be forcibly detainment in a lock hospital for up to one year. Many felt the Acts were discriminative against women and maintained a sexual double standard. Anna and Isabella Tod, a prominent feminist from Belfast, were involved in the campaign to repeal the Acts from the beginning. Anna campaigned tirelessly, speaking at public meetings in Dublin and Belfast and lobbying Irish MPs. The long campaigned ended in 1886 when the acts were at last repealed, but Anna later wrote it set the suffrage campaign back by ten years as they were all so absorbed in it.Another success came in 1896 as the Women Poor Law Guardians Act was passed in Ireland. Poor Law Guardians were elected by magistrates and ratepayers, in Ireland women could vote but not be elected as Guardians unlike the rest of Britain. In 1897 there were thirteen women Poor Law Guardians, which increased to twenty-two the following year, opening the doors for women in local government. Anna and the DWSA continued to lobby Irish MPs and in 1898 the Local Government (Ireland) Act extended the local government vote to all women over thirty who satisfied the residential qualifications, and entitled them to be elected as local councillors. Thomas continued to work alongside Anna, publishing, Women’s Suffrage from a Masculine Standpoint, in 1904.The DWSA grew and extended beyond Dublin, becoming the Irishwomen’s Suffrage and Local Government Association (IWSLGA) in 1901. The turn of the twentieth century saw a more militant approach of which Anna disapproved. In 1908 two members of the IWSLGA, Margaret Cousins and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, frustrated by the limitations of the group established the Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL), an organisation prepared to break the law if necessary.The exclusion of women’s suffrage from the Home Rule Bill of 1912 brought further feelings of frustration and betrayal for many in the women’s movement. Some resorted to more drastic militant action by damaging government buildings such as the GPO and Dublin Castle. Those found guilty were given a prison sentence and some began hunger strike campaigns in prison. Anna disapproved of such methods in an open letter the Irish Citizen, (founded in 1912 by the Sheehy-Skeffingtons).The outbreak of the First World War brought a lapse in the activism of many in the suffrage movement, as many groups concentrating on contributing to the war effort. In 1916, at the age of ninety, Thomas Haslam published his last pamphlet, Some Last Words on Women’s Suffrage, he died a year later and didn’t live to see the Representation of the People Act brought into legislation in February 1918. This act finally gave women over the age of thirty, who met a property qualification, the right to vote in general elections.At the age of ninety, Anna voted at the Irish general election in December 1918. Despite their political differences, women from all organisations cheered her on the way to the polling booth, and presented her with a bouquet of flowers in suffrage colours.Anna died in 1922, just after the Irish Free State granted full suffrage to all adults over twenty-one. Her work, along with that of her husband’s, to campaigns for social reform and equality for women spanned decades of change in Irish and global society and she whose legacy is carried on my the successor of the IWSLGA, the National Women’s Council of Ireland. Maeve Casserly, Historian-in-Residence, Dublin City Council Additional Photo Credit:Bench: Flickr Commons William Murphy Further Reading (available from your local library!)Smashing Times, Rosemary Cullen OwenIrish Women and the Vote: Becoming Citizens, Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward (eds.)Rise up, Women! Diane Atkinson

Doing their bit: Irish women and the First World War is a new exhibition in Dublin City Library and Archive in Pearse Street. The exhibition centres on the impact that the First World War had on the lives of Irish women and the new opportunities that opened up for them.

During the First World War, an estimated 200,000 Irish joined the British forces, a fact that did not sit well with the republican movement. Some dismissed the volunteers as mercenaries or misfits, while others took a more considered view. Maeve Kavanagh, born in South Frederick Street in 1878, was a noted republican poet and she often used her pen to take aim at men who volunteered for the British army. In her 1914 collection of poetry Sheaves of Revolt, she described the brutality and horror of war and its aftermath to dissuade Irishmen from volunteering:So hurry up and take the ‘bob’The Butcher cannot wait,The German guns are talking,At a most terrific rate.And if you should crawl back,Minus arm or minus leg,You’ll get leave to roam your cityTo sell matches – or to beg.Maeve’s brother, Ernest, was a talented cartoonist and his work was published in various republican and leftist newspapers: Irish Worker, Fianna and Irish Freedom. One of his most celebrated cartoons lampooned the recruiting rally held at the Mansion House on 25th September 1914, see image below (click to enlarge). The rally was addressed by both British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith and John Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. At the meeting, Redmond repeated his call, made at Woodenbridge in Wicklow a few days earlier, for Irish recruits to join the British forces, while Asquith promised an Irish brigade or army corps.  Kavanagh published his impressions of the Mansion House rally in the Irish Worker in early October 1914, characterising Redmond as ‘Judas Empire Redmond…recruiting sergeant at the packed Mansion House meeting’ and Asquith as ‘ ‘Erbert ‘Enry’, who lied about German atrocities on the continent. He also drew unflattering portraits of the Dublin Metropolitan Police and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, standing guard over the meeting. Ernest, a clerk at the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU,) was shot dead by British troops on the steps of Liberty Hall during the Rising, while Maeve went on to be exceptionally active in the Gaelic League, Citizen’s Army and Cumann na mBan. Both Sheaves of Revolt and Ernest’s cartoons are available to view in Dublin City Library and Archives. Despite opposition from nationalists, Irish recruitment into the British forces continued throughout the war, both into the traditional Irish regiments and into the other branches of service. The war memorial at Islandbridge quotes a figure of 49,500 Irish dead, which represents all those who died in Irish regiments; it is estimated that 35,000 of this total were Irish-born. Papers, artefacts and other items belonging to Irish participants in the First World War can be found in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association Archive at Dublin City Library and Archives. Search or browse Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association Archive online at Digital Repository Ireland.Bernard Kelly, Historian in Residence, Dublin City Library and Archive.

Dublin City Archives marked the centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 with a series of lunchtime talks at Dublin City Hall. The talks curated by Francis Devine examined Ireland's political and cultural reaction to the Revolution. Here you can listen back to two talks from the series.

Every day, thousands of people travel on the Red Line Luas from Tallaght or City West on their journeys to the city centre.  What many may not realise is that the Luas follows the former Main Line of the Grand Canal – now filled in as a Linear Park from Davitt Road to the Basin Lane end of St. James’s Hospital.

Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards founded the Dublin Gate Theatre in 1928 and this year its 90th anniversary will be marked with seminars, exhibitions and publications. It is worth remembering however that the duo had to share the Gate Theatre building with Longford Productions, on a rotating six-month basis.