Life
1877-1946; dg. David Sheehy, MP; wife of Francis Skeffington [becoming
Sheehy-Skeffington]; feminist and suffragette; b. Loughmore, Co. Tipperary;
ed. Royal University; fnd., with Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, Irish Women’s
Franchise League, with aim of getting women’s voting rights included
in Third Home Rule Bill, 1908; imprisoned for breaking windows at exclusion
of women from the Bill, 1912; close to James Connolly and Constance Markievicz;
carried messages in 1916 Rising; refused compensation for murder of her
husband; extended lecture tour in America, Dec. 1916; supported Sinn Féin
and served as asst. ed. of An Phoblacht; met President Wilson,
Jan. 1918; arrested and imprisoned with Maud Gonne and others, 1918; hunger-strike
lead to her release; executive committee of Sinn Féin; judge in Dáil courts;
supported Republicans in civil war as member of Women’s Prisoners’
Defence League; revisited America; visited Russia, 1929; arrested in Newry
and imprisoned one month in N. Ireland, 1933; fnd. Women’s Social
and Progressive league. DIH
Works
British Militarism as I Have Known It (Kerryman 1946); ‘The Women’s
Movement - Ireland’, in The Irish Review (July 1912).
[ top ]
Criticism
Leah Levenson and Jerry H. Natterstad, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffinton: Irish
Feminist (Syracuse UP 1986).
Maria Luddy, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington [Life and Times Ser., No. 5: Historical Association of Ireland] (Dundalk: Dundalgan Press 1995), 71pp.
Margaret Ward, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: Suffragist and Sinn Féiner (Dublin: Attic Press 1996), 329pp. [pb. 1997].
Margaret Ward, ‘Nationalism, Pacificism, Internationalism: Louie Bennett, Hanna-Sheehy Skeffington and the Problems of "Defining Feminism"’, in Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland, ed. Anthony Bradley and Maryann Gialanella Valiulis (Massachusetts UP 1997) [q.pp.].
Margaret Ward, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: A Life (Cork UP/Attic 1997), 392pp.
Conor Cruise-O'Brien , ‘My Time at Trinity College’, The Recorder: Journal of the Irish American Historical Society, 13, 1 (Spring 2000), pp.7-37.
Conor Cruise O’Brien, Ancestral Voices, Religion and Nationalism in Ireland (Dublin: Poolbeg 1994), chiefly in connection with her s espousal of the role of Republican widow after 1916 and her active part in fomenting the Plough and the Stars riot in Dublin, Feb. 1926.
C. L. Innes, ‘"A Voice in Directing the Affairs of Ireland", L’Irlande libre, The Shan VanVocht, and Bean na h-Éireann’, in Paul Hyland & Neil Sammells, eds., Irish Writing, Subversion and Exile (London: Macmillan 1991), pp.146-58. Chk. full scale biography in America, 1986.
Sean O’Casey, Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well (London:
Macmillan 1949) [Chap., ‘Temple Entered’], p.188).
Bernard Adams, Denis Johnston: A Life (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2002) [on The Treaty with the Barbarians, a provocatively-titled play by Gordon Campbell]: ‘The occasion was attended by the high priestesses of Irish nationalism, Maud Gonne, who brought along supporters - including Hanna Sheehy Skeffington - ready to create trouble if the temple were defiled. However, the play proved disappointingly unpolitical and no opportunities for protest presented themselves.’
[ top ]
Notes
Re O’Casey: The Plough and the Stars riot was fomented
by Hanna Sheehy Skeffington on the first [var. fourth] night, followed
by a public debate with her in which O’Casey fumbled for his notes
– events causing him to leave Ireland for London, 1926. On that occasion
she accused him of insulting ‘the Ireland that remembers with tear
dimmed eyes all that Easter week stands for’, to which he replied
that ‘some of the men cannot even get a job’, and that Mrs Skeffington
[‘]appears to be blind and deaf to all the things which are happening
around her’ (1926; q. source.)
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)