Name: Countess Constance Markievicz
Date and Place of Birth: Countess Constance Georgina Markievicz was born at 7 Buckingham Gate, London, on 4th February 1868 a family of the Protestant Ascendancy. In 1887 she was presented at court to Queen Victoria and was called ‘the new Irish beauty’. She was a fine horsewoman, and an excellent shot. She was stirred into action, having listened to William Butler Yeats, who was a frequent guest at Lissadell. Yeats captivated her with his stories of Irish myths and folklore and his passionate political ideas.
Parents and Siblings: Her father, the philanthropist Henry Gore-Booth, was also an Arctic explorer and a landlord in the west of Ireland. He was married to Georgina May Hill, of Tickhill Castle, York. Constance was the eldest of three daughters and two sons. Her sister, Eva Gore-Booth later became a campaigner for women’s suffrage.
Education: Constance was educated by a governess at Lissadell, Co. Sligo In 1893 she moved to London to study at the Slade School of Art. In 1898 she moved to Paris where she continued to study art at the Julian School. While there she met and later married fellow artist and Count Casimir Dunin-Markievicz They returned to Sligo where their daughter Maeve was born in 1901.
What makes them Special: Constance Markievicz was a female political activist way ahead of her time. She decided to join the Suffragettes who were fighting for women’s rights. Around this time she joined the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, a cause she was to remain devoted to throughout her life.
In 1908 she joined Sinn Féin and Maud Gonne’s women group, Inghinidhe na hÉireann (Daughters of Ireland). She also became a regular contributor to Bean na hÉireann (Women of Ireland), Ireland’s first women’s nationalist journal and the United Irishman. At the suggestion of Bulmer Hobson, she founded Na Fianna Éireann (1909), an organisation for boys, who were taught to drill and use arms for participation in a war of liberation. In 1915 she helped organise and train the Irish Citizen’s Army. She was 2nd in command to Michael Mallon and active in a fighting capacity throughout the week. She was the only woman to be court martialled. On 4th May 1916, she was found guilty but death by being shot was commuted to penal servitude for life. She only served 13 months in jail. She was leader of Cumann na mBan. Under the general amnesty of 1917, Markievicz was released and immediately became a convert to Catholicism—she claimed to have experienced an epiphany during the rising. In August 1917 she was made a freeman of Sligo. She was made honorary president of the Irish Women Workers’s Union.
What Effect he / she had on the World: Markievicz became the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament, but in accordance with Sinn Féin policy she did not take her seat. She refused to take the oath of allegiance to the King.
She was a member of the first Dáil Éireann, which met on the 21 January 1919, and was appointed Minister for Labour. She was arrested in the summer of 1919 for making a seditious speech, and was sentenced to four months’ hard labour. After being arrested again in 1920 she received a sentence of two years’ hard labour. She was bitterly opposed to the Anglo Irish Treaty in 1921 which established the Irish Free State within the British Commonwealth, and supported the Anti – Treaty forces in the Civil War. She toured America in 1922 to enlist support for the Republican cause. In the general election of 1923 she was elected as Sinn Féin abstentionist TD for Dublin City South. When de Valera formed Fianna Fáil in 1926 Markievicz became a member. During the general election of 1927 she conducted her own campaign and was re-elected to the Dáil. For some years her health was failing, and she died in a public ward in Sir Patrick Dun’s Hospital, Dublin on 15 July 1927.
The working-class people of Dublin lined the streets of Dublin for her funeral. Eamonn de Valera was one of the pall-bearers. She is commemorated by a limestone bust in St. Stephen’s Green, by a plaque in St. Ultan’s Hospital and by the Yeats’s poem ‘In memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz’. She is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Co. Dublin.
Adjectives Used to Describe Them: Compassion for poor, worked tirelessly to provide food for Dublin Lockout in 1913. Well educated and passionate about freedom. A woman ahead of her time in Ireland. www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8SZs55xygU