The Pull of the Plough and The Stars

A brand new novel from Irish born writer Emma Donoghue has been fast-tracked for publication because of the COVID-19 crisis. There are strong parallels between the subject of her latest offering, a historical novel called The Pull of the Stars, and the events of today. “I started The Pull of the Stars last year to coincide with centenary of 1918 Spanish flu and I had just finished it when Covid hit, so it couldn’t be stranger,” she told RTE presenter Miriam O’Callaghan during an interview on RTE Radio 1 on May 3. “I didn’t think you would be trying to sell anything in this climate but the publisher said now is time to bring it out if we wait until next year everyone might be sick of the subject,” she added. “But one thing I like about this book is its all about nurses and doctors and the incredible people who get up every morning and walk into danger day after day when most of us are huddling away from it.” The Pull of the Stars is set in the maternity ward of a fictional Dublin hospital in 1918 at the height of the Great Flu and is a story about finding light in darkness according to its author. The promotional blurb describes it thus: “Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders — Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.” Donoghue describes it as a largely fictional novel but two important aspects of it are true to life. The medical material described in the book is well researched and verified by experts, but perhaps even more importantly the character of Dr Kathleen Lynn is based on her historical figure. “I’m casting her as a doctor brought in temporarily and most of the hospital staff are going “who’s that weirdo?”, with the police after her as a member of the SF executive, and they would have seen her as a complete trouble maker in that she was a suffragette and socialist wanting to make a better world and she clashed with the hierarchy, they saw her as an interfering Protestant”. Donoghue said she was an advanced public health figure who campaigned against TB and malnutrition but she was also a Sinn Fein leader in the 1916 Rising. “She also set up the children’s hospital St Ultan’s (in Charlemont Street, near the Grand Canal) at a time when most hospitals wouldn’t take in the children of the poor. So her career intersects the Womens Movement, the Labour Movement, the Republican Movement and wanted a state that would cherish all our children equally. “She’s an extraordinary figure and I’ve been very interested in the new campaign to have the new children’s hospital (in Dublin) named after her, I couldn’t imagine a better way to name it.” The RTE presenter asked her why she chose to set a story about the Spanish Flu, a worldwide pandemic that claimed 2 to 3% of the world’s population - in Dublin. If most people at the time wondered what “those eejits” were doing in the 1916 Rising a few years later, they were voting for Sinn Fein. “There was an astonishing cultural shift in those years and via Kathleen Lynn I decided to look at it in terms of injustice, this Ireland they had was clearly an unjust country where the slum life in Dublin was described as the Calcutta of Europe. The maternal and child death rates in Ireland at the time, Ireland was really struggling by any measures. I could quite imagine idealists like Kathleen Lynn even though I’m a doctor I have to turn to the gun to make some difference to my poor country.” The author highlighted the invaluable role played by medics then and now. “We can very actively treat things now we can analyse a virus but they didn’t know what a virus

Above: Dr Kathleen Lynn. Right: Her election ad

was they were all looking for a bacterium,” she added. “They were mostly treating the flu with whiskey. They were just fumbling around in the dark and the one thing that all doctors admitted was that only good nursing brought people through in the 1918 Flu, enough nursing that people’s own immune systems could fight it off, so its a good pandemic to write about in that they were so powerless but they tried so hard and the sheer gallantry of the nurses and the doctors.” Donoghue - who now lives in Canada but visits Ireland regularly - writes across many genres and has been published in more than forty languages. Her 2016 book The Wonder has a similar theme. She was inspired to write it after studying about fifty cases of ‘fasting girls’ over the centuries. The story is about an English nurse sent to the Irish Midlands in 1859 to watch a little girl whose parents claim is living without food. The Pull of the Stars is due out in July 2020.

Dr. Kathleen Lynn was living at 9 Belgrave Road, Rathmines when she filled out the 1911 Census. The Central Statistics Office in Ireland published this profile of the fascinating and courageous character. Kathleen Lynn came from a comfortable background and she qualified as a doctor. Born in Mayo, she dedicated her life to the suffragette movement, social justice and national liberation. In 1904 she became a GP practising from 9 Belgrave Road, Rathmines. The dreadful conditions in which her patients lived and died had a deep impact on her, especially the very high infant mortality rate. She became involved in the women’s suffrage movement, making friends with other Irish feminists such as Countess Markievicz, Maud Gonne McBride, Madeleine Ffrench Mullen and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, with whom she remained life-long friends. During the 1913 Lock-Out she ran a soup kitchen with Countess Markievicz, (a distant cousin), and gave freely of her time and energy to provide medical services to the sick during this struggle. Dr. Lynn held the rank of Captain in the Irish Citizen Army (I.C.A.), and in her capacity as the Chief Medical Officer, she organised the collection of medical supplies and gave lessons in first aid. She played a prominent role in the hostilities of Easter week. James Connolly chose Kathleen Lynn to carry The Plough and the Stars, (the official Flag of I.C.A.), from Liberty Hall to the GPO because she was a woman, a doctor, a protestant and a suffragette and she embodied the type of Republic Connolly envisaged - egalitarian, non-sectarian and one based on gender-equality. Dr. Lynn served in City Hall during the Easter Rising to attend the wounded. After the shooting of Seán Connolly she acted as Senior Officer and presented the surrender when ordered to do so. She was imprisoned in Ship Street and then Kilmainham Gaol, sharing a cell with Madeleine Ffrench Mullen and Helena Molony, until she was sent to prison in England. She was allowed take up medical duties instead of being incarcerated as there was a scarcity of doctors due to World War I. She returned to Ireland in 1918 but went “on the run” but was arrested towards the end of the year. She was sentenced to be deported but was allowed to stay as there was an influenza outbreak and doctors were very scarce. She and her friends acquired an old derelict house at 37, Charlemont Street. The women of the Irish Citizen Army cleaned it up and Countess Markievicz and Countess Plunkett brought bedding. In this house they treated patients suffering from flu using vaccines which Kathleen obtained. Among those treated were Michael Stains and Caitlín, the wife of Cathal Brugha. Once the epidemic was over, Kathleen Lynn and Madeleine Ffrench Mullen founded St. Ultan’s Hospital in 1919 in the same premises and this was the first hospital for the treatment of infants in Dublin. Dr. Lynn was elected to the Dáil in the 1923 elections but did not take her seat. She died in 1955 and was buried in Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin with full military honours. Rebel with a Cause