Iris Ashley Cummins, the first female engineer to graduate from University College Cork (UCC), dies in Dublin on April 30, 1968. She is also an international field hockey player.

Cummins is born on June 6, 1894, in Woodville, Glanmire, County Cork, to William Edward Ashley Cummins (1858–1923), professor of medicine at UCC, and Jane Constable Cummins (née Hall). Of her four sisters and six brothers, Geraldine is a renowned psychic and author, Jane serves as a squadron officer in the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) during World War II and becomes a medical doctor, Mary is a gynaecologist and fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI), and her brother Marshall is involved in setting up the first blood transfusion service in Cork.

Cummins begins to study at UCC in 1912. At that time, there are 78 women students out of the 420 students enrolled. She graduates with an engineering degree in 1915. During her time in engineering, she is editor of the Journal of the Engineering Society.

While she is in college, Cummins is on the Ireland field hockey team. She earns her first “cap” for hockey in 1914 and leads the college hockey team to victory in the Munster cup. The Irish hockey team tours the United States in 1925 with Cummins as the captain. With the team she goes to the White House at the invitation of Calvin Coolidge.

Cummins works for the Royal Arsenal with the munitions factory at Woolwich, London, and then the Vickers Limited factory at nearby Erith. She works in a shipyard in Scotland during World War I between 1915 and 1916 before returning to Cork. Initially, she finds it difficult to find work there.

In 1924, Cummins founds a private practice in the city and works there until 1927 at which time she is appointed to the Irish Land Commission in Dublin. She moves to Dublin and although she visits, she never returns to live in Cork. She retires from the Land Commission in 1954.

In 1927, Cummins becomes the first woman member of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland.

Cummins is a Council member of the Women’s Engineering Society, having joined at the organisation’s inception. In December 1919, she writes an encouraging article in the very first edition of the society’s journal, The Woman Engineer. Based on her own Irish university experience, it lays out the practicalities of studies as well as social interactions likely to be encountered by a woman thinking of training as a civil engineer. The following year, she has another article published, this time in the Practical Engineer magazine, entitled The Suitability of Women for the Engineering Industries.

Twenty years later, in 1940, Cummins writes a lively piece entitled Women Engineers Overseas – in Eire for The Woman Engineer journal on her experiences as one of the earliest women engineers in Ireland. In this article, she recounts a tale of encountering the “oldest Inhabitant” of a very rural area, a proud owner of two fine horses, who on discovering “you must be an engineer, so would ye mind mending the electric light in the mare’s stable?”

Cummins dies at the age of 73 in Dublin on April 30, 1968.

(Pictured: Detail from photo of the 1913-14 2nd Year Engineering Class at University College Cork (UCC University Archives, OCLA, UCC))