Professor Linda Connolly (Respondent

Respondent

Professor Linda Connolly, Maynooth University Ethical Commemoration, Women, Violence and the Irish Revolution, 1919-23

Professor Linda Connolly

An tOllamh Linda Connolly

As Ireland approaches the centennial commemoration of the Civil War and violent foundation of the new Irish State in 1922, we might ask – who will be remembered? In the aftermath of recent inquiries into Magdalen Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes, Irish society has in recent years become more acutely aware of the troubled and troubling place that women have occupied in Irish culture and history.

The late poet Eavan Boland has vividly described how, as a young poet, she began to see a huge rift in Ireland between ‘the past’ and ‘history.’ As time went on, she said, it was apparent to her that the past was a place of whispers and shadows and vanishings, and that history was a story of heroes.1 The gulf that has existed between the established history (that of ‘heroes’) and women’s (‘hidden’) history in Irish studies was reflected in a gender hierarchy that was successfully institutionalized in the postrevolutionary State, and still persists. In Irish universities, for instance, women still occupy far less senior academic positions (over eighty per cent of the professoriate in Irish history departments are men) and only thirty seven women have been elected to the current Dáil, out of one hundred and sixty seats.2 The aim of this paper is to explore the ethical imperative of posing, in a moment of centennial commemoration, some of the more difficult, hidden and troubling questions about women’s experience of war and revolution,

1 J.P. O’Malley, “The myth and memory of Eavan Boland’s latest poems,” Irish Examiner, 11th January 2014. 2 For a discussion see: Linda Connolly, “Introduction,” in Linda Connolly (ed.), Women and the Irish Revolution: Feminism, Activism, Violence (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2020), pp.1-14.

in the period encompassing the Irish War of Independence, Partition, and the Civil War and its aftermath. Françoise Thébaud suggests that developing gender-based approaches “changes and complicates our understanding of war, both of particular wars and of the general phenomenon of war.”3 Developing a greater understanding of the process of exiting from war, private life in wartime and genderbased and sexual violence, for instance, has the potential to enhance and further expand the scope of Irish revolutionary studies more inclusively understood.4 In agreement with Boland, retrieving the hidden, sometimes all-but-erased, stories of women’s lives can powerfully revise our sense of the past.5 Gender-based violence, including sexual violence, during wartime is, however, a complicated and sensitive question both in the past and present. Discussing issues often considered taboo, stigmatised or unpalatable can be particularly challenging in countries where tradition and religion play an important role in everyday life. Other considerations arise. For many women, it was more important to conceal such violence in order to protect their reputation and future life chances or safety (for fear of reprisal, for instance) rather than to report or reveal it. Nonetheless, shying away from discussing these issues in Ireland’s revolutionary past or erasing them is not an ethical option either in the context of truthful remembering and historical accountability.6 Individual women themselves, during and after the revolution, clearly inscribed in public archives with consent their stories of war, trauma and violence – and their quests for accountability and justice. Exploring and engaging with these sources is critical if an inclusive and more complete interpretation of the nature and outcome of the Irish Revolution is to be provided, in a moment of national commemoration and State led remembrance. The narrative of the revolution as a chronology of great men and male militarism, with women presumed to have played a very subsidiary role, was the predominant framework in Irish historical writing for much of the last century. Nonetheless, pioneering feminist scholars, four decades ago, began to independently demonstrate how women in Ireland’s revolution were activists who could not be considered mere victims, stooges or protected bystanders, steered by male political leaders, heroes or militants. Women, it is clear, actively shaped the Irish Revolution while they were also profoundly impacted by it. The women’s movement, one of the most important social movements in the history of Irish society, was also a constant and critical presence in both the revolutionary period and in post-revolutionary Ireland.7 Ongoing campaigns for women’s social and political rights after votes for women was partially achieved in 1918 continued. A number of laws and measures subsequently introduced by the new State, and which limited women’s social and political rights in key domains, were opposed and challenged by feminist activists for several decades.

Women’s role as combatants and militants in republican and labour causes has achieved more recognition in modern Irish history in recent decades as a consequence of early publications in the field. New research continues to extensively draw and build upon this work. Women were clearly crucial as republican activists and combatants during both the War of Independence and the Civil War but not in any uniform way. For example, although the internecine Irish Civil War is described as a ‘brother against brother’ conflict, it also had a ‘sister against sister’ dimension, with pro- and anti-Treaty Cumann na mBan forces coming into conflict with one another as the revolution progressed. Likewise, it was the women representatives who were notably recalcitrant on the anti-Treaty side in the Dáil debates in 1921-22.

3 Françoise Thébaud, “Understanding twentieth-century wars through women and gender: forty years of historiography,” Clio: Women, Gender, History, 39 (2014): https://journals.openedition.org/cliowgh/538 4 See Connolly, “Introduction.” 5 Eavan Boland, The Historians (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2021). 6 For a longer discussion, see Linda Connolly, “Honest Commemoration: Reconciling Women’s Troubled and Troubling History in Centennial Ireland,” in Oona Frawley (ed.), Women and the Decade of Commemorations (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2021), pp.300-314. See also: Linda Connolly, “Sexual Violence and the Irish Revolution: an Inconvenient Truth,” History Ireland, November–December (2019): pp.34-38; Linda Connolly, “Sexual Violence: a Dark Secret of War of Independence and Civil War,” Irish Times, 10th January 2019.

7 I discuss the role of the women’s movement during and after the period of revolution in more detail, in my book: Linda Connolly, The Irish Women’s Movement (London and New York: Macmillan Palgrave and Dublin: Lilliput, 2003).

The tension in prioritising feminist and/or nationalist objectives during the revolution was a constant challenge and ongoing source of contention among female activists despite their evident solidarities.

What Svetlana Alexievich has termed ‘the unwomanly face of war’ is a complex issue, however.8 In a different vein, over twenty years ago, the Irish sociologist Professor Louise Ryan published an early, ground-breaking article in Feminist Review on the completely unspoken about violence and terror women experienced in the War of Independence, including cropping women’s hair and sexual violence.9 The hidden and targeted violence that women are known to have experienced in other armed conflicts has only recently been acknowledged by historians despite being written about in Irish feminist sociology and in international war studies, over two decades ago. Margaret Macmillan retraces how in many contexts women civilians have feared “a particular fate in war.” An example of how rape was weaponised in the Algerian War of Independence is cited: “‘You are allowed to rape,’ said the French commando leader to his men in Algeria during its war of independence, ‘just do it discreetly’.”10 A violent, and invariably traumatic, internal civil war cast a long shadow after the Irish State was established in 1922. Yet public analysis and acknowledgement of several aspects of the trauma experienced in such a divisive conflict was met with silence for decades. As the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, stated at the commemoration of the first Dáil in 2019: “Let us not look with any trepidation towards the commemorations of the coming years, lest we be tempted to avert our gaze, take refuge in evasion, or seek to ignore the difficult questions they shall raise for us all.”11 A key but difficult question arising in this moment of national remembrance is – if violence cuts to the very heart of the State’s foundation, how and in what ways is this gendered? And why was violence that women experienced marginalised, minimised or negated in official histories of this period for such a long time? In 2016, I established the Women and the Irish Revolution project to address these questions further.12 A wide range of archival sources (including newspapers, military archives, trial documents and personal papers) have been accessed, collated and mined, employing documentary research methods. Several cases of gender-based and sexual violence in the Irish Revolution 1919-23 have been presented and published to-date.13 Any contention that serious sexual and genderbased violence did not happen in Ireland’s revolution has been challenged in this project by comprehensively dissecting and merging the evidence contained in women’s own personal testimonies recorded in trials, compensation claims, pension applications, personal letters, witness statements and in medical documents recording the undeniable type of injuries inflicted. Hair cutting was a particularly common assault targeted at women on all sides and many cases in several counties in Ireland, conducted both by crown forces and republicans during the War of Independence, in particular, are identified. Newspaper reports and other archives document such incidents extensively, including the Military Services Pensions Collection, Royal Irish Constabulary reports, British Army reports and Bureau of Military History Witness Statements.

8 Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War (London: Penguin Classics, 1985). 9 Louise Ryan, “Drunken Tans: Representations of Sex and Violence in the Anglo-Irish War, 1919–21,” Feminist Review, 66 (2000): pp.73–92. 10 Margaret Macmillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (London: Profile Books, 2021), p.190. 11 See: https://president.ie/en/diary/details/president-gives-keynote-address-at-the-centenary-commemoration-of-the-1st-dail/ speeches 12 Early, detailed papers and research findings from my research on the sexual and gender-based violence women experienced in the Irish Revolution were publicly presented and/or recorded at various events from 2016 on (for example, at the UCC Decade of Centenaries Lecture Series and the John Hewitt Summer School in 2016 and the West Cork History Festival in 2018). I was awarded an Irish Research Council, New Foundations Decade of Centenaries, grant in 2017 to complete the Women and the Irish Revolution project. 13 For a detailed account and summary of some of the research completed, see: Linda Connolly, “Towards a Further Understanding of the Sexual and Gender-based Violence Women Experienced in the Irish Revolution,” in Linda Connolly (ed.), Women and the Irish Revolution: Feminism, Activism, Violence (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2020), pp.103-128. A new book/monograph based on this project is also forthcoming.

Women who forged friendly or intimate relationships by what was termed ‘keeping company’ with British combatants or Royal Irish Constabulary members were notably sexually policed, humiliated, intimidated and punished by republicans. Evidence of any close relationships with crown forces generated military and security concerns. Passing on information to the enemy directly or inadvertently could undermine republican activities and cause real danger. Assisting or supporting the crown forces through the provision of supplies, accommodation and other services was likewise not tolerated. Sexual policing (the social control of women’s intimate relationships, choices and movements) was also a common motivation for hair cutting. A romantic relationship with the wrong man could be treacherous for a woman and also her companion. The Irish Times reported on 11th May 1921 that a police report stated that the IRA cropped the hair of Rose Anne Logue, aged 23 years, a teacher from Falcarragh, Co. Donegal. She was walking near her home on 24th April 1921 when she was seized by armed and masked men who cut off her hair and warned her that they would murder her if she remained on friendly terms with the police. Miss Logue had laid a wreath on the grave of a constable who had been murdered in the neighbourhood. Women’s hair was typically cropped, clipped or shaved by groups of several masked men, in such incidents, in a secluded or domestic space. Another assault was reported in the Donegal Democrat on the 11th of September 1920. At Ballyshannon Quarter Sessions, Ellen Gillen claimed compensation for the cutting of her hair by armed and masked men. Ellen was taken away from the house she was staying in for associating with the police. When she returned, her hair was closely cropped and she was marked on the face and mouth and in a state of nervousness. The Irish Times also reported on 29th April 1921 that Miss Susan Sullivan, who was assaulted by a large body of “Sinn Feiners” on April 23rd, was “…still receiving medical attention as a consequence of the ill-treatment she received at Kenmare, Co. Kerry. She was dragged from her aunt’s house and marched through the streets in a torchlight procession before having her hair cut off… and was found in a dazed condition after the outrage.” Shots were fired in her direction which did not hit her. Miss O’Sullivan had been previously observed exchanging “a few words” with a party of police in the village. Crown forces also conducted hair cutting extensively, typically during aggressive and frightening night raids on houses. Cumann na mBan activists, such as Kathleen Clarke’s sister Agnes Daly in Limerick and Margaret (Peg) Broderick-Nicholson in Galway, were targeted and subjected to this humiliating practice.14 Many more cases, involving varying degrees of force and violence targeted at women, have been collated and published in the Women and the Irish Revolution project.15 Members of the crown forces were also targeted for ‘keeping company’ with Irish women considered disloyal and deviant. One such case was reported in the Irish Examiner on 19th June 1920: “Startling Incident at Castletownroche. Ladies Hair Cut Off. Officers Motor Bicycle and Cab Burned. Our Mitchelstown correspondent wires: News has just reached Mitchelstown of a startling incident at Castletownroche, Co. Cork, where two respectable young ladies were attacked and their hair cut off, because it is alleged, they entertained at their own home two military officers. The military officers were also attacked by about 16 masked men who made them temporarily prisoners and burned their mode of conveyance, viz. a motor bicycle and side car. It is alleged that before burning the motor bicycle and side-car the attackers threw the hair shorn from the heads of the young ladies into the side car.” The degree of organisation involved in mobilizing such large groups of (often masked) men to police and assail women in such a strategic manner, and in so many different places in this period, is very apparent. Female sexuality – or ‘a girl’s offence’ – could evoke real danger and violence. The Irish Times reported on May 27th 1921 the house of John Neill, Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford, was attacked by a number of armed men. Shots were fired for nearly an hour. Mr. Neill’s daughter had been engaged to a constable named Booth who was murdered near Ballinalea on the 20th of May. On the day of the attack, she had attended the funeral of Constable Booth and placed a wreath on his grave. Women, however, also resisted or intervened during armed assaults including on their companions.

14 Margaret M. Broderick Nicholson, BMH WS1682. 15 See Connolly, Women and the Irish Revolution.

The Belfast Newsletter on the 28th December 1920 reported that a girl was killed in Limerick while she tried to save a policeman’s life: “Dublin Castle reports that on Saturday night four men accosted Constable Richardson in the street in Limerick and took his revolver by force. One of the men fired at him, but a girl named Elizabeth Scales, aged 22, with whom the constable was walking, rushed between him and the man with the revolver, and received a bullet through the breast. She died instantly.” In Dublin, it was also reported in the Evening Echo on 18th December 1920 that a woman grappled with an armed assailant to try to prevent the shooting on Henry Street of District Inspector Philip J. O’Sullivan. The Inspector was assassinated while walking with his fiancée, Miss Moore, who reportedly “grappled pluckily” with one of the gunmen after the first shot was fired. Inspector O’Sullivan, who was employed in the office of the InspectorGeneral of the Royal Irish Constabulary at Dublin Castle, had been in the known habit of meeting Miss Moore, at about 6pm, after she left work. One of the assailants reportedly approached the couple and said “Hello, are you ready?”, produced a revolver, and fired at point-blank range. Miss Moore courageously seized his wrist, clung to it, and prevented him from firing again, but the second gunman fired a second bullet at the fallen man. Miss Moore bent over her lover, rendering what assistance she could. She was in a state of great distress and appeared completely dazed by the horror of her experience. A few minutes later, it was reported, a lorry full of Auxiliary Police arrived and the body was taken to Jervis Street Hospital. Miss Moore accompanied the remains of her lover who was only 22 years old, and was the son of a Mr. F. O’Sullivan, solicitor, of Kinsale, Co. Cork. Inspector O’Sullivan, himself, was a qualified solicitor and during World War I had served in the Royal Naval Division. Crown forces were also threatened with reprisals for conducting hair cutting on Irish women. A written card was found when armed police raided a Sinn Féin hall in Killorglin according to the Freemans Journal on 27th September 1920. The card issued a warning if any further bobbing of hair occurred in the district on their part. Such assaults, conducted during raids, as well as the parallel and more amorous activity of ‘keeping company’ or courting women, were treated with mutual contempt by republicans. Reprisals for republicans cutting the hair of women can likewise be identified. The Irish Times reported on 26th October 1920 that: “Following the cutting of a girl’s hair in Ballinasloe two Sinn Féiners were taken from their beds by armed men. One of them had his hair cut off with a horse-clipper and the other man is missing.” As we engage with the Machnamh 100 theme of reflection and ethical recall, including by considering the history and legacy of Partition, we must also fully consider how women experienced life altering violence and trauma in Ulster in this period. For example, a member of Cumann na mBan (the women’s republican organisation formed in 1914) in Dromore, Co. Tyrone, a shopkeeper Eileen O’Doherty, made various applications for a pension/allowance under the Army Pensions Acts in respect of a gunshot wound (which resulted in the fracture of both legs) suffered on the night of 21st November 1920. Her pension application contains letters from her doctor outlining the catastrophic nature of her injuries inflicted when she was shot by B-Specials while standing at her front door.16 Eileen claimed she was permanently disabled as a result and unable to work. In an interview, she poignantly states that the wound she got had ‘finished’ her. The pension she applied for in light of her unstinting service to the cause of Irish independence and injuries suffered was declined. The designation ‘hero’ or economic provision for injuries inflicted was not extended to such women.

Newspaper reports on other documented violence experienced by women in Belfast are likewise horrific. On 2nd June 1922, the Irish Times reported “Fire. Diabolical Outrage in Belfast. Four More Deaths. The total number of deaths in Belfast yesterday was four and thirty two people were injured, including seven of whom are suffering from burns. An inhuman outrage was committed at night when men called at a house pouring inflammable liquid over a woman and set it on fire. She was seriously burned.” Shock and nervousness are constantly mentioned in such reports including in relation to forced hair cutting and other assaults across several counties throughout this period. The psychological impact of experiencing and witnessing violence is documented in numerous sources.

The Women and the Irish Revolution project has also demonstrated that cases of wartime sexual violence, including ‘gang’ or multiple perpetrator rape, are evident in different sources. Previously it was presumed this was not a feature of the Irish Revolution. A notable exception, however, examined by Robert Lynch in 2010, involved a vicious sexual assault in Dromintee, South Armagh in June 1922. This incident preceded the ‘Altnaveigh massacre,’ in which six protestant civilians were killed in one of the most controversial IRA actions of the revolution. According to Lynch, on the night in question B-Special forces intended to kill Unah McGuill’s husband James, who they believed had been involved in the shooting of a comrade, Thomas Sheridan, in the area a week earlier on 6th June. When eight special constables arrived at the McGuill premises (a public house) just after midnight on 14th June, however, they found that he had gone ‘on the run.’17 Other members of the family were at home including Unah, her mother, her two small children, a female servant and a friend of the family. After the special constables wrecked the pub, Unah was then subjected to a savage gang rape and violent attack by three members of the group. The ordeal ended only when the other women broke into the room. Mrs. McGuill was heavily pregnant at the time. A doctor in Newry recorded severe injuries and cuts to her body including a fractured skull from repeated kicks to her head. Mary McKnight, the servant in the house, also suffered a serious sexual assault and a savage beating that night. The attack on these women was embroiled in the overall cycle of violence in the region – women’s lives, bodies and sexuality were also targeted, transgressed and severely injured in the ongoing conflict. The compensation claims for the loss of lives in Altnaveigh, documented in the newspapers in November 1922, demonstrate the subsequent horror inflicted on other women.18 Mrs. Isabella Heslip of Lisdrumliske witnessed her husband John Heslip, and son Robert, being shot in front of her by the IRA at the entrance to their yard. Elizabeth Crozier and her husband were also shot dead in front of their young family. Interlinked trauma on both and all sides therefore lives on a hundred years later and these atrocities are still raw and remembered on the hills, farms and lanes of the Irish border counties and in other communities impacted by transgressive violence in this period. More than a dozen properties were also destroyed in this border area in this episode. Protestant and catholic women, in this instance, were both severely harmed by transgressive violence and aggression. The Women and Irish Society project has documented and outlined at least nine cases of rape or ‘gang’ rape in the Civil War. Two of those include the widely condemned, horrific gang rape of Mrs. Eileen Mary Warburton Biggs in Dromineer, Co. Tipperary, by four local members of the IRA on 16th June 1922, and an attack on Margaret Doherty, a member of Cumann na mBan, at Currinara in Foxford, by three National Army soldiers on 27th May 1923. Eileen’s experience is documented in detail in an Irish Grant’s Commission compensation claim.19 In Maggie Doherty’s case, a pension application made by her mother Catherine stated she had been raped by National Army forces and included medical evidence and submissions by doctors, religious leaders and members of her community. Eileen Biggs and Maggie Doherty clearly never recovered from the ordeal they experienced. Both of these women died in ‘mental homes’ or psychiatric institutions – Maggie, in Castlebar in 1928, and Eileen in St. Patrick’s, Dublin in 1950. Maggie is laid to rest under the shadow of the Ox Mountains in Co. Mayo and in recent years I located Eileen in an unmarked grave in Mount Jerome cemetery in Dublin, buried with her sister Hilda V. Robinson. Commemoration and remembrance that the intergenerational families and associates of such women often engage in, outside of official State programmes, is a reminder of the possibility and power of local acts and healing gestures. The power of finding and opening closed archives documenting such women’s experience of the revolution cannot be underestimated either.

17 Robert Lynch, “Explaining the Altnaveigh Massacre,” Éire-Ireland, 45, 3 (2010): pp.184-210. 18 See “Night of Terror,” Irish Times, 18th November 1922. 19 Mrs. E.M.W. Biggs, Irish Grants Commission, National Archives [London], CO 762/4/8. Other such claims related to assaults of women in the archives include: Thomas John Day Atkinson and Mrs. Cicely Helen Burrington Atkinson, CO 762/32/26; Mrs. Norah Slattery, CO 762/154/20; Mrs. Margaret Fox, CO 762/17/22. See Connolly, “Towards a Further Understanding of the Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Women Experienced in the Irish Revolution,” for a review of the literature in the field.

The detailed file on the Court of Inquiry held in what was the Ballina workhouse on the 18th of July 1923, concerning the rape of Maggie Doherty, was retrieved in the course of my research in the Irish Military Archives in November 2019 and made available to the Doherty family.20 All of these cases are examples of the subaltern, hidden history of women impacted by the violence of the revolution, which received no official acknowledgement in the decades after the State was formed but which firmly remained in the collective memory of their families and communities. Women severely injured by sexual assaults were not killed in combat but they could and did in some cases ultimately die from the trauma or severe injuries, psychological and physical, caused. Others shouldered the burden of this trauma throughout their life. Gang rape is particularly violent and causes serious injuries. The damage inflicted is plain to see in the sources retrieved and examined in both these cases. The sense of injustice felt by such women and their families and the lack of accountability for such revolutionary violence is also apparent in evocative first-hand accounts.

While women clearly experienced threat and danger throughout this period they also sought justice and prosecution or compensation including with the support of communities outraged by revolutionary violence. Other cases of gender-based violence, such as the Greetiagh robbery and Tankardstown assault case in Co. Meath, were pursued through the courts. The Meath Chronicle reported on the 16th of September 1922 that during the early hours a raid was made by armed and masked men on the licensed premises of Mrs. Elizabeth Finegan, who proclaimed themselves to be “Irregulars.” A very detailed report in the Meath Chronicle on 13th January 1923 records a large crowd in attendance at a special court held in Kells. On the 7th of October 1922, Dr Gavin, stated he examined Mary Doyle, a seventeen year old servant in the employment of Mrs. Elizabeth Finegan, Tankardstown. He gave evidence to the “packed” court which was then cleared to allow for the testimony of Mary Doyle. Mrs. Finegan had encouraged Mary to report a rape and second attempted sexual assault by two members of the raiding party (who were brothers). A trial subsequently was heard in Trim Circuit Court where the jury elected that there was not enough evidence to prove the identity of the four men who broke into the premises. The subsequent charge of rape against two of the men did not proceed in the court as a consequence and they were released from Mountjoy. Bridget Carolan, likewise age seventeen, appeared in a documented public court case in Longford town in September 1923. She was allegedly subjected to an indecent assault reported to be perpetrated by two senior National Army officers in the Officer’s mess, when she was visiting a prisoner in Longford barracks. The two officers in question were also acquitted in this case.

Far less women than men died in combat in the Irish Revolution. Nonetheless, it is still important to record female fatalities that did occur. The individual stories of thirteen women killed in County Cork during the War of Independence, for instance, have been recently recovered by Andy Bielenberg.21 Mary Hall, who worked in Cork city, was killed in crossfire in the Upton train ambush on 15th February 1921 on the way home to visit her parents in Castletownbere, Co. Cork. She was their only child. Other women were killed in different circumstances. Kate Maher died on 21st December 1920, after she was found with a head injury and other documented injuries that suggest sexual assault occurred. She had been in the company of members of the Lancashire regiment in Dundrum, Co. Tipperary.22

20 Margaret Doherty, DP2100. For further discussion of this case, see: See Connolly, “Sexual Violence and the Irish Revolution,” pp.34-38; and Connolly, “Sexual Violence in the Irish Civil War: A Forgotten War Crime?” The court of inquiry held to investigate the rape of Maggie Doherty is recorded in: ‘Discipline – Charge against Lieuts. Waters, Benson and Mulholland, Ballina’, Military Archives, Dublin, A/11837. My thanks to the family of Margaret Doherty for opening this file, which is the subject of a forthcoming publication. 21 Andy Bielenberg, “Female Fatalities in County Cork during the Irish War of Independence and the Case of Mrs. Lindsay,” in Linda Connolly (ed.), Women and the Irish Revolution: Feminism, Activism, Violence (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2020), pp.164-182. 22 “Death of Kate Maher, 22 December 1920, Dundrum, County Tipperary,” National Archives, Kew: WO 35/155B/4.

A small number of conflict-related murders of women or disappearances in this period are also in evidence including on the border and more research is needed. Another woman from near Casteltownbere, Bridget Noble, was abducted on 4th March 1921 and subsequently killed and disappeared by the IRA for allegedly providing information to members of the RIC (her hair was shorn as a prior warning).23 Mary Lindsay, a protestant from Coachford, Co. Cork, and Kate Carroll, a catholic from Aughanameena, Scotstown, Co. Monaghan, in the border region, both suffered a similar fate for allegedly intercepting or providing information to crown forces.24 These incidents occurred across the established religious and class lines in Irish society at this time. Another Military Service Pension file relates to Kate Connolly’s unsuccessful application under the Army Pensions Acts in respect of the death of her daughter Mary (Minnie) Connolly, who died from gunshot wounds on 23rd July 1922 at Edenappa, Jonesboro, Co. Armagh.25 Her death certificate noted that the cause of death was “bullet wounds...inflicted by members of his Majesty’s forces”. The applicant claimed that the deceased was on her way home from supplying milk and provisions to members of the IRA at the Ravensdale camp, Co. Louth when she was shot by British forces. One of the two Moore girls who was with Minnie, Margaret Moore, was also killed in the incident. No provisions under the Army Pensions Acts to consider the claim was awarded.

Conclusion

Women in Ireland’s revolution clearly experienced a broad spectrum of transgressive violence that is documented and recorded in surviving evidences – it is in plain sight when excavated. The long term impact of the bodily and psychological trauma and injury caused is apparent in detailed sources that contain the personal testimonies and stories of individual women. Similar experiences of sexual and gender-based violence are also evident in more recent periods, including during the period of ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland (1968-1998). In a 2016 article, Susan McKay recalled that in December 1982, the Irish National Liberation Army bombed a bar during a disco at Ballykelly, killing seventeen people.26 Eleven of the dead were British soldiers, the primary target. However, what perhaps received less attention at the time was the fact that some of the others killed were young local women referred to as ‘consorts,’ who were associating with the soldiers. Five of the civilians killed were young women, three of them teenagers. One of the women killed was celebrating her engagement to one of the soldiers who survived the incident. In the 1970s republican paramilitaries also forcibly cut hair and tarred and feathered women deemed soldier ‘dolls’. Reference to these issues can also be found in Seamus Heaney’s powerful 1975 poem, Punishment, which speaks to the punishment of women during the conflict in Northern Ireland. The poem describes a woman who was unearthed from the bogs. She had a noose around her neck, a blindfold around her eyes and her head was shaved. During the middle ages, denuding a woman of what was considered her most seductive feature (her hair), which had biblical origins, was a punishment for adultery and an act of desexualisation. Hair cutting was also implemented and reintroduced in twentieth century wars to target female sexuality. The poem ends with what is understood to be a direct reference to sexual violence in armed conflict as – “…the exact and tribal, intimate revenge.”27 The punishments inflicted and the language of ‘consorts,’ ‘collaborators’ and ‘dolls’ is not that different to the gendered assumptions about women in the Irish Revolution who engaged in ‘keeping company’ with members of the crown forces. The IRA appear to have expended a great deal of energy policing female sexuality in the War of Independence. During the revolution, products like tar, dirty motor oil and paint were also doused over women considered disloyal, dangerous and of loose morals.

23 Bielenberg, “Female Fatalities in County Cork,” p.163. 24 The killing of Kate Carroll by the IRA is documented in a detailed Court of Inquiry Report on 8th September 1921. “Death of Kate Carroll or Catherine Carroll, 17th April, 1921, Scotstown, County Monaghan.” National Archives, Kew: WO 35/147B/5. 25 Mary (Minnie) Connolly, DP122. 26 Susan McKay, “Soldier Dolls in Belfast,” London Review of Books, 21st April 2016: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n08/susanmckay/diary 27 Seamus Heaney, “Punishment,” in North (London: Faber and Faber, 1975).

The same method was employed by National Army soldiers in a brutal attack on two sisters, Flossie and Jessie McCarthy, who were also severely beaten and assaulted in what became known as the Kenmare incident in June 1922. The nascent Executive of the Irish State was fully aware of such attacks at the time but failed to prosecute perpetrators. Both the Kenmare and Maggie Doherty cases were also examined by the Army Inquiry Committee in 1924.28 Power, gender and sexuality are intertwined in all violent wars and conflicts with women’s bodies targeted to varying degrees. However large or small the scale of gender-based violence is, in a given conflict, the consequences for individual women are profound and often stigmatizing. As Margaret Macmillan observes: “Women who have been raped not only have to live with their injuries, both psychological and physical, but often also bear the additional burden of being shunned by their own communities… ”29 Because women are often seen as the progenitors of the nation, societies can react savagely to any hint that they might be willing to consort with the enemy. In France after the Liberation, for instance, thousands of women were also publicly shamed and had their hair shaved for ‘consorting’ sexually with the enemy. In many other contexts and wars, such as the Greek and Spanish Civil Wars, women’s heads have been shaved. ‘Hair taking’ by States is an established weapon of war aimed to humiliate, control, degrade and desexualize enemy women. Women may have died in smaller numbers than men in the Irish Revolution but life altering injuries were experienced. Naming and recovering the lost experience of women impacted by the violence of the revolution is in itself an act of ethical retrieval. The revolution did not just terminate in 1922, however. Sociologically, its impact was felt long after. Communal memory of violence is long and often deep. Broken hearts, nervous breakdowns, mental illness, disability, institutionalisation in asylums, emigration, loss of job opportunities, family members and livelihoods, and pregnancy loss, all feature prominently in the postrevolutionary, personal testimonies of activist and civilian women. The documented experience of some women, such as, Maggie Doherty, Eileen Biggs, Mary Doyle, Bridget Carolan, Unah McGuill, Mary McKnight, Isabella Heslip, Elizabeth Crozier, Mary Lindsay, Bridget Noble, Kate Maher, Kate Carroll, Elizabeth Scales, Minnie Connolly, Margaret Moore, Eileen O’Doherty and others, represent an interconnected account of what happened to women from different social and religious backgrounds, both during and after Ireland’s revolution. But, how many other women’s stories both of hidden injuries and of survival remain unknown? As Sandra Greene asks, what of things not said, the stories, the statements made only in whispers behind closed doors, away from the eyes and ears of officials and family?30 Ireland has now entered the final stages of a decade of centenaries that has prompted several new, important questions about women’s role and experience in the revolution. What was known as ‘the violence’ of the revolution clearly masked another violence which had largely been experienced in silence and secrecy. However, it remains to be seen: will the official commemoration of the Civil War in 2022-23 find a way to ethically remember, understand and mutually honour these women, as an act of retrieval, one hundred years later? Or will the commemoration of the final stages of the revolution reproduce the gender hierarchy and power dynamic in Irish history that negated, diminished and excluded these women’s experience and contribution, in the first place?

28 For a more lengthy discussion and review of the literature on the Kenmare incident, see Connolly, “Sexual Violence in the Irish Civil War.”

29 Macmillan, War, p.192. 30 Sandra E. Greene, “Whispers and Silences: Explorations in African Oral History,” Africa Today, 50, 2 (Autumn – Winter, 2003): pp.41-53

“I” Company Auxiliaries, under Platoon Commander C.E. Vickers (beside driver), at Amiens Street station, now Connolly Station, Dublin, 1920. Póilíní Cúnta, Complacht “I”, faoin gCeannasaí Buíne C.E. Vickers (taobh leis an tiománaí), ag stáisiún Shráid Amiens, a dtugtar Stáisiún Uí Chonghaile anois air, Baile Átha Cliath, 1920.

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National Library of Ireland www.nli.ie Ref: HOGW 41