Author Archives: Emma Clarke

Love Letters 1916-1923

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St. Valentine’s Day is widely celebrated on 14 February each year with e-cards and gifts of roses and chocolates, often ordered on the internet. Within this context, love letters, sent by ordinary post, might seem old-fashioned and nostalgic. In 1916, however, love letters were sometimes one of the only ways of expressing feelings to loved ones, especially those at a distance.

The Letters of 1916-1923 project contains the written words and the forgotten words of ordinary people during during this extraordinary time in Irish history. Love letters are part of this picture too. For the day that’s in it, we have chosen some LOVE(ly) highlights from the collection.

 

Postcard from Thomas Murphy to his sister Anna Murphy

Postcard from Thomas Murphy to his sister Anna Murphy, 11 February 1916

Michael and Susan Gorman
Michael and Susan Gorman

Michael Gorman and Susan Fitzgerald came from very different backgrounds. He spent his early years with ten siblings, in a large thatched cottage on the family farm of Ballinalug on the northern slopes of the Slieve Bloom Mountains near Clara Hill. She grew up on the other side of the mountains, in a large house called Raheenahone, near Stradbally.

What made their relationship so special was the fact that she was Church of Ireland Protestant and he was Catholic. As a consequence, neither family wanted the other, and Michael and Sue had to spend half a decade meeting in secret and exchanging letters in what was a love affair that would last all their lives.

Click here to read more of Michael’s and Susan’s story

 

Letter from May Fay to James Finn,14 February 1916

James Finn and May Fay's wedding photograph
James Finn and May Fay’s wedding photograph, image courtesy of Tessa Finn

This letter comes from a series written between James Finn and his fiancée Mary (May) Fay. They became engaged in January 1916 and married in June. He lived in Dublin, she in Westmeath. At 39 years of age, he was 20 years her senior. He had become acquainted with her during his regular visits to his relative Mrs Mary Seery, her neighbour. Throughout the correspondence, their relationship develops from their first somewhat tentative letters.

 

Tessa Finn is one of the individual (as opposed to institutional) contributors to the Letters of 1916. She shared this collection of letters between her grandparents, which she describes as “a document of their love and their time.”

 

As Tessa writes: “These letters between James Finn and May Fay, most of them written in 1916, are part of my family’s inheritance, lovingly treasured by my grandmother, May. She had every reason to cling on to these reminders of the love of her life, my grandfather James Finn. They were married not quite six years when he died leaving her, twenty-five years old and seven months pregnant with their fourth child. They are a document of their love and their time.”

– Tessa Finn, Letters – May & James: A Private love in a Revolutionary Year – 1916

Click here to read, or get involved and transcribe more Love Letters.

 

 

Women’s Suffrage in the Letters 1916-1923 collection

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2018 marked 100 years since Irish women over the age of 30 were granted the right to vote. The Letters 1916-1923 collection contains correspondence relating to the struggle for increased women’s rights and we have chosen some interesting highlights from the collection.

Sheehy Skeffington Papers

Hanna Sheehy Skeffington The largest selection of Letters 1916-1923 relating to women’s suffrage is from the National Library of Ireland‘s Sheehy Skeffington Papers. Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (1877-1946), suffragette, nationalist, language teacher, was the founder of the Irish Women’s Franchise League and a founding member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union. She was active during the 1916 Rising – she brought food to the Volunteers in the G.P.O. and the College of Surgeons. She was married to Francis Sheehy-Skeffington (1878-1916) who was summarily executed on 26 April 1916. Four days passed before she found out what had happened to her husband and it wasn’t until almost two weeks later that the full details of his execution emerged. In 1916, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington was organising a concert to raise funds for The Irish Citizen newspaper. There is a series of postcards and letters relating to the concert – just search for Hanna Sheehy Skeffington on the Letters 1916-1923 site to read them.
This special guest podcast episode was recorded by Letters 1916 interns, Emily Blackburn and Madison Ganson, from Beloit College, Wisconsin. The episode focuses on Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, the Irish Citizen newspaper, and the pursuit of Irish labour rights.

Activism

Military Archives of Ireland
© Military Archives of Ireland

Eva Gore-Booth was a poet, trade unionist, suffragist, and an active social campaigner, mostly on women’s issues. She was a contributor to the Irish literary revival from the late 1890s. She was active in the campaign for a reprieve of her sister, Constance Markievicz’s death sentence for her participation in the Easter Rising and for the improvement of her prison conditions.

In this letter to Helena Molony (1883-1967), Eva Gore-Booth enquires about Molony and the rules regarding letters and visitors and refers to her sister, Constance as well as other female prisoners, Dr Kathleen Lynn and Madeleine French-Mullen.

My sister says man never made a wall but God threw a gap in it as an old woman used to say at home

Women’s Health

The Letters 1916-1923 collection includes a large number of letters from the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland Archives. From 1910 until 1954 Thomas Percy Kirkpatrick (1869-1954) served as the registrar for the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. He also served as the general secretary of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland. Kirkpatrick took a particular interest in what were then termed venereal diseases (now sexually transmitted diseases). To encourage his patients to attend, he held a clinic for women at Steevens’ hospital at a discreet early morning hour to facilitate anonymity.

Read more about Thomas Kirkpatrick in this blog post by Harriet Wheelock.

RCPI Archives
© RCPI Archives

This letter from the RCPI Archives was written by Ishbel Maria Gordon (1857-1939) and is written on ‘Women’s National Health Association of Ireland’ headed paper. Gordon was a philanthropist and Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair. In 1893 she was elected president of the nascent International Congress of Women, a federation of women’s organisations. In this role (1893–9 and 1904–36) she played a major part in building up its international network (and rebuilding it after the first world war). She was also president of the Women’s Liberal Federation, 1901–6, which eventually split over her support for women’s suffrage.

There are many more letters in the Letters 1916-1923 which are related to the struggle for women’s rights and women’s issues in the 1916-1923 period. Visit our website to find more.

Letters 1916 – 1923 & RCPI: Culture Night 2017

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Join us as we team up with the RCPI Heritage Centre on Culture Night to create an evening of activities relating to Ireland’s revolutionary period.

The event will take place in the beautiful Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) building on Kildare Street and will include talks, demonstrations, interactive exhibitions, augmented reality and live readings over a 5 hour period.

Key information about the event:

Date:

22 September 2017

Time:

5pm – 10pm (drop in any time!)

Address:

Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI), 6 Kildare St, Dublin 2

Schedule of talks

5.20 – 5.30 Damien Burke: ‘The Jesuits in 1917’
5.30 – 5.40 Jennifer Redmond: ‘Women’s experiences of 1916’
5.40 – 5.50 Dominic Price: ‘The importance of historical sources in inspiring a
cross-curricular approach for involving students in history’

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6.20 – 6.30 Paul Huddie: ‘The Nursing Branch of the military charity, the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association’
6.30 – 6.40 Mary McAuliffe: ‘Revolutionary Women, Politics and Propaganda, 1917-1918’
6.40 – 6.50 Blair Halliday: ‘The shooting of my Mother on Easter Monday 1916’

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Letters 1916 – 1923 Launch

7.00 – 7.10 Professor Susan Schreibman: ‘Letters 1916 – 1923: The Birth of a Nation’
7.10 – 7.20 Robert Doyle: ‘Discovering a treasure trove – Eamonn Ó Modhráin’s letters’
7.20 – 7.30 LAUNCH: Professor Linda Connolly

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8.10 – 8.20 Joseph Peter Quinn: ‘Irish-born soldiers who served in the American Expeditionary Forces during WW1’
8.20 – 8.30 Tessa Finn: ‘May Fay and James Finn’s love letters from 1916’
8.30 – 8.40 Tom Burke: ‘Poppy / Armistice Day in Dublin, ten years after
Passchendaele.’
8.40 – 8.50 Ida Milne: ‘Letters from gaol: the ‘German’ plot internees and the
1918-19 flu’

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9.20 – 9.30 Brian Hughes: ‘The Truce period, July 1921–c.June 1922’
9.30 – 9.40 Billy Campbell: ‘The Truce and its consequences’
9.40 – 9.50 Andrea Martin: ‘The significance of Letters 1916 – 1923 for individual and
collective identity 100 years later’

 

Culture Night is an annual event that celebrates culture, creativity and the arts. This year, it will take place on Friday 22nd September 2017. On Culture Night, arts and cultural organisations and venues of all shapes and sizes, including the National Cultural Institutions, extend their opening hours to allow for increased access to the public. Special and unique events and workshops are specifically programmed at participating locations and everything is available free of charge.