Women's Voices 1914 - 1918
Published on 22nd March 2024
Anna Haslam was born in Youghal in 1829 and was an ardent campaigner for social justice during her long life. She founded the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association in 1876 and was a leading figure in the fight to win the right to vote. While living in Rathgar in 1914, she founded the Irish Women’s Patrols, a group of women who walked a beat around the inner-city centre between the hours of 8.30 and 11pm, supported by the Dublin Metropolitan Police. The Patrols were designed to prevent immorality, as it was feared that ‘Separation Women’ – wives and other dependants of soldiers in receipt of Separation Allowance – were fuelling a rise in licentiousness, but they also aimed to introduce women into the police force. Accounts from IWP members during the war showed that, despite the rosy image presented to outsiders, life in the city could be bleak and hard for Dublin’s inhabitants.
Nora Guilfoyle (nee Hynes) married career military man Michael Guilfoyle in Cork in 1903. They settled in London, England and had two children Ellen and Willie. Michael was discharged from the army in 1913, but when World War 1 broke out in August 1914, he re-enlisted with 7th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and served in Gallipoli and Salonika. On the 4th of October, whilst serving in Salonika, Michael Guilfoyle was wounded by either a ricochet bullet or a piece of shrapnel. For five days he lay in the Casualty Clearing Station and the 9th of October 1916, he died. The following letter was written by his wife Nora Guilfoyle to the Army Inspection Department and forms part of the RDFA/ Guilfoyle Collection held at Dublin City Library and Archive. The widow Nora and her two young children eventually returned to Ireland and settled in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary.
Monica Roberts came from an affluent family in Stillorgan, south Dublin, and was 24 when the First World War broke out in August 1914. Along with a group of like-minded friends, she founded ‘The Band of Helpers to the Soldiers’ with the aim of sending home comforts, such as sweets, gloves, tobacco, writing paper and watches to the men at the front. Included in each parcel was a letter from Monica or one of the Band of Helpers, and Monica engaged in long correspondences with several soldiers and airmen. The recipients of the parcels were predominantly members of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, as well as some in the Royal Flying Corps and prisoners of war in German captivity. The Monica Roberts collection, now part of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association archive held at Dublin City Library and Archive, contains many excellent examples of First World War era postcards, including several of rarer and more expensive hand-embroidered examples. However, the collection is made up almost exclusively of replies from service personnel, and only contains one letter written by Monica herself - read here by Seána Kerslake.
Read our blog: Doing their bit: Irish women and the First World War
Women's Voices 1914 - 1918
Maeve Cavanagh was born in South Frederick Street in Dublin City Centre in 1878. Cavanagh was an extremely active member of all branches of the nationalist movement; she was a member of the Gaelic League, Cumann na mBan and Irish Citizen Army.
She was stridently opposed to the enlistment of Irishmen into the British forces and this is forcibly expressed in her book of poetry Sheaves of Revolt which was published in 1914. England's Difficulty - Ireland's Opportunity is one of the many anti-British poems in the publication. Cavanagh’s aspiration was to make the ordinary working people of Dublin more politically aware.
In her 1914 poetry collection Sheaves of Revolt, she describes the brutality and horror of war and its aftermath:
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 city
To sell matches – or to beg.
Maeve’s brother Ernest was a cartoonist and his anti-war work featured in Irish Worker, Fianna, and Irish Freedom. He was shot dead by British troops on the steps of Liberty Hall during the Rising.
James Connolly called her, “the poetess of the revolution”, and published one of her poems in The Workers’ Republic. She also wrote a play about the Rising, “The Test: a play of 1916”, and was active in trying to secure a reprieve for Roger Casement. Her work is held in the National Library of Ireland.
Eastertide, 1916 by Maeve Cavanagh
The warring nations mazéd heard
The slogan cry of Eire ring,
And they who in her fain hope shared
Exultant watched her gallant spring-
The wolf-dog stood at bay once more,
And heard unmoved the Lion’s roar.
The hours were told - her time had come -
At noontide on an April day,
She bore the Truth - and Lie struck dumb
In all her glorious, deathless way.
Ere to his couch the sun sank down
Her flag flew over Dublin town.
And Connaught o’er broad Shannon ‘s tide,
Her noble challenge swiftly sends,
True as of yore from Slaney’s side
Brave Wexford’s thrilling answer wends -
And history stoops to write to-day
The fairest page she’ll pen for aye.
What tho our fairest, dearest fall?
We shall not grudge the awful price
To-day we stand in freedom’s hall,
And Freely make our sacrifice.
We’ve seen our Goddess face to face
All times cannot this hour efface.
Written on the hoisting of the Irish Republican Flag over the GPO - Dublin, 24 April 1916