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Jingwen Hou Mary Macswiney Mary Macswiney(27 March 1872-8

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Jingwen Hou Mary Macswiney Mary Macswiney(27 March 1872-8 Jingwen Hou Mary MacSwiney Mary MacSwiney(27 March 1872-8 March 1942) was born in London, the child of an English mother and Irish father. At the age of six, she went back to Ireland and received education in Cork where her father started a snuff and tobacco factory. However, the business failed, and her father decided to emigrate to Australia. Her mother opened a corner shop to raise the family. When MacSwiney was twenty, receiving a loan from the Students' Aid Society, she was able to study for a degree in teaching at the University of Cambridge. Then, she taught in a convent school in England and began a one-year novitiate. In 1904, the death of her mother led her back to Cork to take care of the whole family and took a teaching post at a convent school named St Angela's. Mary MacSwiney was first publicly involved in politics because of woman suffrages. She became a committee member of Munster Women's Franchise League (MWFL) after she attended the first meeting. "She viewed suffrage as an end in itself and was not concerned with the wider feminist aims of the suffrage campaign" (Maria Luddy, MacSwiney, Mary Margaret). Furthermore, MacSwiney was against militancy in the suffrage movement, and her nationalist views often irritated other members. Her younger brother, Terence MacSwiney, who influenced her a lot, became one of the founders of a Cork branch of the Irish Volunteers in 1914. After that, she founded a Cumann na mBan branch, became its national vice-president, and officially resigned from MWFL. In a public debate with suffragists, MacSwiney defended nationalism over suffrage beliefs, in the pages of the suffrage paper the Irish Citizen. In Easter week 1916, Mary was sent back to Cork to deliver a message to Sean O'Hegarty and witnessed the Easter Rising. One of the volunteers arrested was Terence. Also, she got captured by RIC and dismissed from her teaching job at St Angela's for her republican activities. Later, she started her school called St Ita's. In 1916, Mary's sister Annie and her founded Scoil lte, which was an Irish- Ireland school at Cork and a sister school to St Enda's based by Patrick Pearse. The next year, she was elected the national executive of Cumann na mBan. During her years participating in politics, her younger brother Terence and she were closely connected. When he ran for the election of first Dáil Éireann in 1918, Mary campaigned for him. During Terence's fatal hunger strike after imprisonment in 1920, she supported him publicly. However, in October, Terence MacSwiney died after 73 days of hunger strike, and his death propelled Mary to national prominence. In December 1920, she traveled to the United States with Annie and Terence's wife Muriel, making a coast-to-coast propaganda tour for seven months. While in America, she also gave interviews and raised funds for Ireland. In 1921, since she became the dáil of Cork, she came back to Ireland to take up the seat. "It was her contributions in opposition to the proposed settlement in the treaty debates that made her name as an uncompromising Irish republican" (Brain Murphy, MacSwiney, Mary). She made the longest speech of the treaty debates, which lasted two hours and forty minutes, to defend against pro-treaty TDs. However, although her drastic remarks attracted the public's attention, the results showed that most people voted to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the compromise brought by Eamon de Valera, Document No.2. In June 1922, Mary was elected the third Dáil but didn't take it due to the outbreak of civil war. She tried to retain Dáil in 1923, but since she refused to obey the oath of allegiance, she didn't take up the seat. As a republic and an opponent to the Irish Free State, MacSwiney was arrested some times and always began hunger strike so that she would be released. In 1927, though defeated in Dáil election, Mary was still the vice-president of Sinn Féin and Cumann na mBan. In 1933, she withdrew from Cumanna na mBan and formed Mná na Poblachta (Women of the Republic). The next year, she resigned from Sinn Féin for its allowance for its members to accept IRA war pensions. Mary's body condition began to get worse in 1938, and on 8 March 1942, she died at her home. "Mary MacSwiney was widely represented as the Free State's gorgon republican" (Brain Murphy, MacSwiney, Mary). Still, she was many other figures. She was a suffragist as well as a nationalist. She was also among the first leading women in the Free State's politics as well as progressive Irish-Ireland educationists. Her contributions, whether or not to the republic, could never be told entirely. Sources Consulted: Brain Murphy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://dib.cambridge.org/quicksearch.do Matthews, Ann. Renegades: Irish republican women 1900-1922. Mercier Press Ltd, 2010. Maria Luddy, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004, https://doi-org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/10.1093/ref:odnb/48530 Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_MacSwiney.
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