Christened as William O’Brien, Ó Briain is born at 10 Church Street, North Wall, Dublin, on September 16, 1888, the seventh child of Arthur O’Brien, clerk, and Mary O’Brien (née Christie), who is from County Meath. He takes an interest in the Irish language from an early age and begins learning Irish by himself from a grammar book, as it is not encouraged by his teachers at the Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School nor spoken by his parents. While still at the O’Connell School, he starts using the Irish version of his name. He also attends meetings of the Gaelic League, then attends University College Dublin (UCD) on a scholarship, where he studies French, English and Irish, receiving a BA (1909) and an MA (1910).
UCD decides to start awarding one annual scholarship for overseas travel in 1911, and Ó Briain wins the first one, using it to visit Germany and study under Kuno Meyer and Rudolf Thurneysen. After three years, he returns home, where he rejoins the Gaelic League and begins teaching French at UCD. He also joins the Irish Volunteers then, the following year, Seán T. O’Kelly convinces him to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
Around this time, Ó Briain joins Sinn Féin, and he stands unsuccessfully for the party in Mid Armagh at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, taking 5,689 votes. His campaign leads, indirectly, to his arrest and three months in jail in Belfast. In 1920, following his release, he is appointed a judge in the then-illegal republican court system in Galway, and visits both France and Italy to try to source weapons for the Irish Republican Army (IRA). In November 1920, he is arrested in the UCG dining room by Black and Tans, and is imprisoned for thirteen months, first in Galway and then in the Curragh camp in County Kildare, thereby missing the conclusion of the Irish War of Independence. By the time he is released, the Anglo-Irish Treaty has been signed. He supports the treaty and takes no further part in militant activity.
In the newly independent Ireland, Ó Briain remains a professor at Galway. He also stands in the 1925 Seanad election, although he is not successful. He is the founding secretary of the Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe theatre, also acting in many of its productions, and spends much time translating works from English and the Romance languages into Irish. He stands to become president of UCG in 1945, but is not elected, and in the 1940s and 1950s is best known for his many appearances on television and radio.
From his retirement in 1959, Ó Briain lives in Dublin. In 1974, the National University of Ireland (NUI) confers an honorary doctorate on him. He dies on August 12, 1974, at St. Gabriel’s Hospital, Cabinteely, County Dublin. His funeral to Glasnevin Cemetery is almost a state occasion, with a huge attendance of public figures, and a military firing party at the graveside, where the oration is given by Micheál Mac Líammóir and a lesson is read by Siobhán McKenna. For days after his death, the newspapers carry tributes to his many-sided career and personality. On the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, Proinsias Mac Aonghusa and Art Ó Beoláin write commemorative articles in Feasta.
On September 1, 1921, Ó Briain marries Helen Lawlor, of Dublin, who dies two years before him. The couple’s only child is Eibhlín Ní Bhriain, who is a journalist for The Irish Times and other periodicals.
Ffrench-Mullen is born on December 30, 1880, in Malta, where her father, St. Lawrence ffrench-Mullen, a Royal Navy surgeon, is stationed. She has two brothers, St. Lawrence Patrick Joseph (1890–1891) and Douglas (1893–1943).
Ffrench-Mullen’s interest in politics starts young. Her father is a committed Parnellite and their Dundrum home is a campaign headquarters. She is a radical feminist and republican during her life. Like many others of the time, she regards it as a woman’s right to vote. She joins the suffrage movement, and meets women with a similar worldview and values. The women’s suffrage movement is included in the Movements of Extremists reports of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. Ffrench-Mullen goes on to join Inghinidhe na hÉireann, a radical nationalist women’s group founded by Maud Gonne in 1900. The organisation develops into Cumann na mBan in 1913. Suffragist values are central to Cumann na mBan’s goal of standing side-by-side with men in the fight for the Irish Republic. Some members see this as women regaining the rights that had belonged to them in pre-invasion Gaelic civilisation. She is on the socialist wing of the moment, holding to the ideals of universal social equality of the syndicalist James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army (ICA).
During the 1916 Easter Rising, ffrench-Mullen serves as a lieutenant in the Irish Citizen Army. She sees action with the St. Stephen’s Green and Royal College of Surgeons garrison. In St. Stephen’s Green she is in command of the 15 Citizen Army women who set up a medical station and field kitchen. While occupying St. Stephen’s Green, she and her comrades come under sustained heavy fire from the Shelbourne Hotel and buildings on the north side of the Green. After the surrender of the College of Surgeons garrison, ffrench-Mullen is one of the 77 women who had fought in the Rising who are imprisoned, among them her life partner Kathleen Lynn. While in captivity ffrench Mullen is moved three times, spending time in Richmond Barracks, Kilmainham Gaol and Mountjoy Prison. She is released on June 5, 1916.
Ffrench-Mullen meets Kathleen Lynn through Inghinidhe na h-Éireann. In 1915, she moves into Lynn’s home in Belgrave Road, Rathmines, where they live together for thirty years, until ffrench-Mullen’s death in 1944.
Ffrench-Mullen records in her prison diary in 1916 that she can face prison without fear once Lynn (whom she refers to as “the Doctor”) and she are together. Katherine Lynch of the Women’s Studies Centre at University College Dublin (UCD) describes them as partners, calling them part of a network of lesbians living in Dublin—which includes Helena Molony, Louie Bennett and Elizabeth O’Farrell—who meet through the suffrage movement and later become involved with the national and trade union movement. These women are featured, along with Eva Gore-Booth and others, in a 2023 TG4 documentary about “the radical queer women at the very heart of the Irish Revolution”: Croíthe Radacacha (Radical Hearts).
In 1919, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen and Kathleen Lynn establish Saint Ultan’s Children’s Hospital, also known as Teach Ultan, which is a female-run hospital for infants at 37 Charlemont Street, Dublin. The hospital focuses on children’s health and wellbeing, an area that is perceived at the time as women’s concern. In the aftermath of World War I many health problems have arisen including a rise in venereal diseases such as syphilis, carried from soldiers returning home from war. Many of Ireland’s infants of the time suffer from congenital syphilis (inherited disease from mother at birth), and this is a driving factor in the opening of St Ultan’s hospital. Tuberculosis is endemic in Ireland during its time as a British colony. Against steadfast opposition by the State and the Catholic Church, Lynn and ffrench-Mullen establish a vaccination project, vaccinating thousands of impoverished children who would have died of tuberculosis without their vaccines. Their success leads to the foundation of Ireland’s BCG vaccine programme, which has vaccinated all babies since the 1950s.
Ffrench-Mullen dies at the age of 63 in a Dublin nursing home on May 26, 1944. She is interred with her parents as well as her younger brothers (whom she outlives) in the ffrench-Mullen family plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. Her funeral takes place on the same day as the 1944 Irish general election.
In a letter to his family written on April 30, 1916, Thomas MacDonagh recalls “I was astonished to receive by a messenger from P.H. Pearse, Commandant General of the Army of the Irish Republic, an order to surrender unconditionality to the British General. I did not obey the order as it came from a prisoner. I as then in supreme command of the Irish Army, consulted with my second in command and decided to confirm the order. I knew that it would involve my death and the deaths of other leaders. I hoped that it would save many true men among our followers, good lives for Ireland. God grant it has done so and God approve our deed. For my self I have no regret. The one bitterness that death has for me is the separation it brings from my beloved wife Muriel, and my beloved children, Donagh and Barbara. My country will then treat them as wards, I hope. I have devoted myself too much to National work and too little to the making of money to leave them a competence. God help them and support them, and give them a happy and prosperous life. Never was there a better, truer, purer woman than my wife Muriel, or more adorable children than Don and Barbara. It breaks my heart that I shall never see my children again, but I have not wept or murmured. I counted the cost of this and am ready to pay it. Muriel has been sent for here. I do not know if she can come. She may have no one to take the children while she is coming. If she does.”
MacDonagh and Pearse are contemporaries of one another: poets, progressive educators, Gaelic revivalists. They are men who gird for battle “with a revolver in one hand and a copy of Sophocles in the other.” Each man commands a unit of Irish Volunteers during the Easter Rising, which takes place the week of April 24-30,1916. MacDonagh occupies Jacob’s biscuit factory and Pearse the General Post Office (GPO), from which he issues the surrender at the end of the week.
McDonagh and Pearse are signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a document issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army at the beginning of the Easter Rising, proclaiming Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom. The reading of the proclamation by Pearse outside the General Post Office (GPO) on Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), Dublin‘s main thoroughfare, marks the beginning of the Rising.
Pearse’s and MacDonagh’s signatures on the Proclamation are a fatal endorsement for them and for each of the other five men to lend it their signatures. After being court-martialed, both Pearse and MacDonagh, along with Thomas Clarke, are executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin on May 3, 1916, the first of the rebels to be executed.
(Pictured: Thomas McDonagh (left) and Patrick Pearse)
Gwynn is educated at St. Columba’s College, Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin. In 1896 he heads the list of Foundation Scholars in Classics at TCD. In 1898 he graduates Bachelor of Arts, gaining a “first of firsts” with gold medals in Classics and Modern Literature.
In 1900, along with his brother Edward Gwynn and others, Gwynn founds the Social Services (Tenements) Company to provide housing for poor families in Dublin. He subsequently spends many periods working with the poor in Dublin’s slums. He is instrumental in founding the Trinity Mission, which serves slum dwellers in Belfast, and is for many years actively involved in the Dublin University Fukien Mission (later the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission), eventually becoming its chairman and president.
He is ordained deacon in 1906, achieving full priesthood two years later. He is the only one of Rev. John Gwynn’s sons to be ordained, and he never serves in a parish. That same year, he proceeds to MA and is elected a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.
In 1907 Gwynn is appointed Lecturer in Divinity and Tutor. He remains Lecturer in Divinity until 1919 and continues as Tutor until 1937. He is appointed Chaplain of TCD in 1911, retaining that post until 1919.
In January 1909 he is appointed Acting Warden of his old school, St. Columba’s College, which is facing a major financial crisis. He keeps the institution afloat until a new warden is appointed.
Horrified by the brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) toward strikers during the lockout in 1913, Gwynn becomes a prominent advocate of the workers’ cause and joins the Industrial Peace Committee. On November 12, 1913, when the committee is barred from holding its meeting at the Mansion House, he invites the members to his college rooms at No. 40, New Square. It is this meeting that leads to the foundation of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). In their history of Trinity College McDowell and Webb observe, “Gwynn’s support for the ‘army’ concept was based simply on the idea that military-style discipline would keep unemployed men fit and give them self-respect. ‘Sancta simplicitas!'”
In 1914 Gwynn marries Dr. Eileen Gertrude Glenn, a rector’s daughter from Pomeroy, County Tyrone. They have six children.
In 1916 Gwynn is appointed Professor of Biblical Greek, a post he holds for forty years (1916-56). During those four decades, he holds a number of other, often overlapping, academic appointments at the university, including Professor of Hebrew (1920-37), Registrar (1941), Vice-Provost (1941-43), Senior Lecturer (1944-50), and Senior Tutor (1950-56). In 1937 he is co-opted to Senior Fellowship. He is made an honorary fellow in 1958.
When the Dublin University Fabian Society is formed. Gwynn becomes one of its vice-presidents.
Like several of his brothers, Gwynn is a fine cricket player, in his youth captaining both his school XI and the Dublin University XI. A right-handed batsman and right-arm slow bowler, he plays once for the Ireland cricket team in 1901. He also plays four first-class matches for Dublin University in 1895. He retains a lifelong interest in the sport, and John V. Luce portrays him as President of the Dublin University Cricket Club, with his “tall rangy figure … a familiar sight at matches in College Park.”
Gwynn is tall and athletic, but in later life suffers from deafness. To aid his hearing he carries a large ear trumpet with him and this, together with his height and glowing white hair, makes him an impressive and instantly recognizable figure around Trinity College. In character, he is patient, kind and wise, but at the same time resolute and tough. His nephew-in-law, the late Archbishop of Armagh, George Simms, remarks that his “gentle humility inspired trust and drew confidences, his stubborn integrity brought surprises for those who mistook charity for easy-going indifference,” and spoke of his “Athanasian courage.”
Gwynn dies in Dublin at the age of 85 on June 25, 1962. He is buried in Whitechurch churchyard.
Connolly travels to Russia on several occasions in 1920 and 1921 and forms a close association with Vladimir Lenin and is hugely influenced by the Soviet leader. He is a delegate to the Second Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) as a delegate of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in June 1920. It is here he meets Lenin at just 19 years of age following an introduction from journalistJohn Reed. According to Connolly, Lenin speaks English with a Rathmines accent which he acquired from his Irish tutor.
Connolly helps form and becomes President of the first Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) in October 1921. He is editor of the CPI newspaper, The Workers’ Republic. He opposes the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty between the representatives of the Irish Republic and the British state, and fights in the Irish Civil War on the anti-treaty side. The CPI is the first Irish political party to oppose the Treaty and urges the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to adopt socialist policies to defeat the new Irish Free State government. The CPI is dissolved in 1924 by the Comintern but in 1926, Connolly helps set up a second Marxist party, the Irish Workers’ Party. He is the party leader and editor of its journal, The Hammer and Plough. This party too is dissolved in 1927.
Connolly enters a semi-retirement between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, but in the late 1960s, he begins a comeback. He is elected as party chairman in 1971 and holds this position until 1978. During his time as chairman, he oversees the expulsion of the Socialist Labour Alliance in 1971, some of whose members go on to form the Socialist Workers Network (SWN), which in turn eventually establishes People Before Profit (PBP).
In 1921, Connolly marries Jessica Maidment, a socialist activist in England and chartered accountant, who from 1928 works for Russian Oil Products in Dublin. She dies in 1930 from blood poisoning arising from an operation. He is survived by his second wife, Peggy, whom he marries in 1937, sons, and daughters. His recreations include chess and bridge; highly adept at both, he learns the former from Seán Mac Diarmada as prisoners after the Easter rising and is international bridge correspondent for the Irish Independent.
(Pictured: Roddy Connolly during an interview conducted for the RTÉ Television project “Portraits 1916” on January 9, 1966)
Christened as William O’Brien, the seventh child of Arthur O’Brien, clerk, and Mary O’Brien (née Christie), who is from County Meath, Ó Briain takes an interest in the Irish language from an early age and begins learning Irish by himself from a grammar book, as it is not encouraged by his teachers at the Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School nor spoken by his parents. While still at the O’Connell School, he starts using the Irish version of his name. He also attends meetings of the Gaelic League, then attends University College Dublin (UCD) on a scholarship, where he studies French, English and Irish, receiving a BA (1909) and an MA (1910).
UCD decides to start awarding one annual scholarship for overseas travel in 1911, and Ó Briain wins the first one, using it to visit Germany and study under Kuno Meyer and Rudolf Thurneysen. After three years, he returns home, where he rejoins the Gaelic League and begins teaching French at UCD. He also joins the Irish Volunteers then, the following year, Seán T. O’Kelly convinces him to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB).
Around this time, Ó Briain joins Sinn Féin, and he stands unsuccessfully for the party in Mid Armagh at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland, taking 5,689 votes. His campaign leads, indirectly, to his arrest and three months in jail in Belfast. In 1920, following his release, he is appointed a judge in the then-illegal republican court system in Galway, and visits both France and Italy to try to source weapons for the Irish Republican Army (IRA). In November 1920, he is arrested in the UCG dining room by Black and Tans, and is imprisoned for thirteen months, first in Galway and then in the Curragh camp in County Kildare, thereby missing the conclusion of the Irish War of Independence. By the time he is released, the Anglo-Irish Treaty has been signed. He supports the treaty and takes no further part in militant activity.
In the newly independent Ireland, Ó Briain remains a professor at Galway. He also stands in the 1925 Seanad election, although he is not successful. He is the founding secretary of the Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe theatre, also acting in many of its productions, and spends much time translating works from English and the Romance languages into Irish. He stands to become president of UCG in 1945, but is not elected, and in the 1940s and 1950s is best known for his many appearances on television and radio.
From his retirement in 1959, Ó Briain lives in Dublin. In 1974, the National University of Ireland (NUI) confers an honorary doctorate on him. He dies on August 12, 1974, at St. Gabriel’s Hospital, Cabinteely, County Dublin. His funeral to Glasnevin Cemetery is almost a state occasion, with a huge attendance of public figures, and a military firing party at the graveside, where the oration is given by Micheál Mac Líammóir and a lesson is read by Siobhán McKenna. For days after his death, the newspapers carry tributes to his many-sided career and personality. On the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, Proinsias Mac Aonghusa and Art Ó Beoláin write commemorative articles in Feasta.
On September 1, 1921, Ó Briain marries Helen Lawlor, of Dublin, who dies two years before him. The couple’s only child is Eibhlín Ní Bhriain, who is a journalist for The Irish Times and other periodicals.
Funded by public subscription, the arch is designed by John Howard Pentland and built by Henry Laverty and Sons. Thomas Drew consults on the design and construction.
The proportions of the structure are said to be modelled on the Arch of Titus in Rome. It is approximately 8.5 m (28 ft.) wide and 10 m (33 ft.) high. The internal dimensions of the arch are 5.6 m high and approximately 3.7 m wide (18 by 12 ft.). The main structure of the arch is granite, with the inscriptions carried out in limestone and a bronze adornment on the front of the arch.
The arch is commissioned to commemorate the four battalions (two regular and two militia) of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers that served in the Second Boer War. The names of 222 dead are inscribed on the underside of the arch.
The construction of the arch coincides with a time of political and social change in Ireland, and the colonial and imperial background to the dedication are anathema to a burgeoning nationalist movement – who label the structure “Traitor’s Gate.” Though damaged in a crossfire between the Irish Citizen Army and British forces during the 1916 Easter Rising, the arch remains “one of the few colonialist monuments in Dublin not blown up” in Ireland’s post-independence history.
Engraved on the western face of the monument is the Latin text, Fortissimis suis militibus hoc monumentum Eblana dedicavit MCMVII, “To its strongest soldiers, Dublin dedicates this monument, 1907.” (Eblana is a name that appears on Ptolemy‘s 2nd century AD map of Ireland, traditionally taken as a Latin name for Dublin, although it more likely refers to a site further north, around Loughshinny.) Six battlefields are inscribed on the arch:
Hackett is born into a working-class family in Dublin on July 25, 1893, the daughter of John Hackett, a hairdresser, and Roseanna Dunne. According to the 1901 census, she is living with her widowed mother and five other family members in a tenement building on Bolton Street in Dublin. The available documents suggest that her father dies when she is still very young. She joins the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) when it is established in 1909 by James Larkin, which marks the beginning of her lifelong activity in trade unionism. By 1911 she is living with her family in a cottage on Old Abbey Street, and her mother has remarried to Patrick Gray.
Hackett fights for many decades for the rights of workers. Through her affiliation and work with the ITGWU, the IWWU and the Irish Citizen Army, she helps carve out and secure modern-day working conditions. Her career begins as a packer in a paper store, then becoming a messenger for Jacob’s biscuits. At that time the working conditions in the factory are poor.
On August 22, 1911, Hackett helps organise the withdrawal of women’s labour in Jacob’s factory to support their male colleagues who are already on strike. With the women’s help, the men secure better working conditions and a pay rise. Two weeks later, at the age of eighteen, she co-founds the IWWU with Delia Larkin. During the 1913 lock-out she helps mobilise the Jacob’s workers to come out in solidarity with other workers. They, in turn, are locked out by their own employers. This does not stop her work to help others, and she, along with several of her IWWU colleagues, set up soup kitchens in Liberty Hall to help feed the strikers. However, in 1914 her Jacob’s employers sack her over her role in the lock-out.
Hackett begins work as a clerk in the printshop in Liberty Hall, and it is here she becomes involved with the Irish Citizen Army. She is involved in preparations for the 1916 Rising, working in a union shop, helping with printers, and making first-aid kits and knap-sacks.
If other members of the ITGWU were looking for James Connolly, Hackett aids in bringing them to him. She “worked as canvasser and traveler and was called on to carry out many confidential jobs.”
Hackett takes up first aid training provided by Dr. Kathleen Lynn for six months before the Rising and attends night marches organised by the Irish Citizen Army. According to her own account, she says, “A week before Easter, I took part in the ceremony of hoisting the challenge flag over Hall.” Like other girls and women who are involved in the Rising, she carries messages and guns and prepares uniforms and food for Irish Republican Army (IRA) members “and sometimes risky work.”
Three weeks before the Easter Rising, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) raid a shop where Hackett is working. She is alone when they come, and they are looking for a copy of “Gael.” She says to them, “wait until I get the head” and she calls for Connolly. The police are stopped by Connolly and Helena Molony who are armed, and Hackett immediately hides everything, so that when the police come back, they cannot get anything.
Through her experience of working in the printshop, Hackett helps to print the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. She is in the printing room in Liberty Hall as a trusted messenger in 1916 when the Proclamation is printed, and it is the first time she is allowed in. Three men are there when she enters the room and one comes over to her, shakes her hand and congratulates her. It makes her very proud, especially since no one else is allowed to get in. She subsequently tells family members of handing it still wet to James Connolly before it is read by Patrick Pearse outside the entrance to the General Post Office (GPO).
Hackett is an active member of the Irish Citizen Army. On Easter Tuesday, under the command of Constance Markievicz, she takes part in the 1916 Rising and is located in the area of St. Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. This position is heavily attacked with guns, short of first aid and “looked like a death trap.” However, after moving from an initially overlooked position in St. Stephen’s Green, it is one of the last positions to surrender. In the Royal College, as a first-aid practitioner, she is allowed entry to the lecture room sanctioned to the Red Cross only. Another first-aider, Aider Nora O’Daily, later reports that during those days, “I have a very kind remembrance of Little Rosie Hackett of the Citizen Army, always cheerful and always willing; to see her face about the place was a tonic itself.”
After surrendering, the rebels are taken to Dublin Castle. Hackett is imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol for ten days.
In 1917, on the anniversary of Connolly’s death, Hackett, together with Helena Molony, Jennie Shanahan and Brigid Davis, print and hang a poster detailing the anniversary. After the first poster displayed by the ITGWU members is taken down by the police, they work to ensure that their poster will stay on Liberty Hall much longer by staying on top of the roof to defend it. They barricade the door using a ton of coal and nails on the windows. The poster is hanging there until 6:00 p.m. and thousands of people can see it.
After the Rising, Hackett returns to the IWWU which, at its strongest, organises over 70,000 women. After the 1945 laundry strike, they win an extra week of paid holidays for the workers. She attends many important labour union events such as the opening of the new Liberty Hall on May 2, 1965, and Arbour Hill memorial services. Until her retirement, she runs the trade union shops resulting in over five decades of active participation in the Irish trades union movement work to improve conditions for Irish workers. In 1970 she is awarded a gold medal for fifty years of ITGWU membership.
In the 1970s, Walter McFarlane, then branch secretary of the ITGWU, awards an honorary badge for Hackett’s fifty years contribution to the union.
Hackett never marries and lives in Fairview, Dublin, with her brother Tommy until her death on May 4, 1976. She is buried at St. Paul’s plot in Glasnevin Cemetery next to her mother and stepfather. At her burial, she is honoured with a military salute and her coffin is covered with the Irish flag. After her passing, her legacy is remembered in the union’s newspaper, a tale of the strife of Hackett together with the rest of Dublin’s working class, for which she fought to change.
In May 2014, the Rosie Hackett Bridge is officially opened by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. The Hackett Bridge Campaign began in October 2012, led by three women Angelina Cox, an active member of Labour Youth, Jeni Gartland and Lisa Connell. The final shortlist of contending names for the new bridge were Rosie Hackett, Kathleen Mills, Willie Bermingham, Bram Stoker and Frank Duff.
In April 2015, a plaque is unveiled on Foley Street by the North Inner City Folklore Project to commemorate the women of the Irish Citizen Army. The plaque lists Hackett as a member of the St. Stephen’s Green/College of Surgeons garrison during the 1916 Easter Rising.
Ryan attributes to Pearse the saying “[G]ive me a hundred men and I will free Ireland!” He becomes part of a group of former students lodging in St. Enda’s while they go to university who join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). They meet in a safe house at Rathfarnham in 1911. The men take the tram from Rathfarnham to Nelson’s Pillar in central Dublin. Pearse once told his friend, “Let them talk! I am the most dangerous revolutionary of the whole lot of them!” In 1911, the Dungannon Clubs revive the Volunteers Militia movement. These clubs are not initially successful in Dublin but are more so in Belfast amongst nationalists. One of the northern members is the Dubliner Oscar Traynor, in his youth a professional footballer with Belfast Celtic F.C., later a war hero and later again a politician and Minister for Posts and Telegraphs.
Eoin MacNeill is appointed leader of the Irish Volunteers. Ryan writes that Pearse, a risk-taker and idealist, tells him MacNeill is “too tactful.” MacNeill is prepared to entertain the Irish Parliamentary Party with negotiations. Ryan quotes Pearse as saying, “[MacNeill] has the reputation of being tactful, but his tact consists in bowing to the will of the Redmondites every time. He never makes a fight except when they assail his personal honour, when he bridles up at once… very delicate position… he is weak, hopelessly weak.”
Pearse tells Ryan that MacNeill is “a Grattan come to life again.” Henry Grattan is a constitutional orator and MP in the Protestant-only 18th-century Irish House of Commons, but one of those who fiercely opposes the notorious Acts of Union 1800, secured by massive bribery (which is then repaid out of Irish taxes), making Ireland part of the United Kingdom. Moreover, MacNeill is an “inconclusive ditherer.” He wants the Irish Volunteers to be apolitical.
The Easter Rising is preceded by the revelation of the “Castle Document,” a plan by the British government to arrest the leaders of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army and other radicals. Ryan claims that this document, presented to MacNeill on the Wednesday before the Rising and said to have been stolen from high-ranking British staff in Dublin Castle, is a forgery. Some claim that it is concocted by Joseph Plunkett with the implicit approval of Catholic Archbishop Cullen of Dublin, a sympathiser with Dublin Castle and Redmond’s war stratagem. “Forgery is a strong word,” Ryan says, “but that in its final form the document was a forgery no doubt can exist whatever.” Modern interpretation from Charles Townshend has judged the document to be genuine, and the opinion attributed to the Archbishop’s Palace as circumstantial. Grace Gifford, Plunkett’s widow, says that she was with Plunkett when he deciphered it at Larkfield House. Prior to his execution, Seán Mac Diarmada is met by a priest, and makes the assumptive response that it is a fraudulent document.
Ryan fights through the Easter Rising from April 24, 1916, in the General Post Office (GPO) under murderous artillery fire and describes the battle vividly in his witness statement to the Bureau of Military History. He describes the garrison retreating to Moore Street and quotes Pearse’s sculptor brother Willie Pearse, who is executed a few days later, as saying “Connolly has been asked out to negotiate. They have decided to go to save the men from slaughter, for slaughter it is.”
Ryan fights in the Irish War of Independence and afterwards writes about his experiences. However, the Irish Civil War which follows from June 1922 to April 1923 repels him. He cannot accept that Irishmen would fight Irishmen.
Ryan marries Sarah Hartley in 1933. In 1939 they return to Ireland, where he edits the Torch, a Labour paper. Finding his views at odds with the Labour Party‘s official line, publication ceases in 1944. He and his wife then move to Swords in north County Dublin, where they operate a poultry farm.
Rosanna “Rosie” Hackett, Irish insurgent and trade union leader, is born into a working-class family in Dublin on July 25, 1893. She is a founder-member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union (IWWU) and supports strikers during the 1913 Dublin lock-out. She later becomes a member of the Irish Citizen Army and is involved in the 1916 Easter Rising. In the 1970s, the labour movement awards her a gold medal for decades of service, and in 2014 a Dublin city bridge is named in her memory.
Hackett is the daughter of John Hackett, a hairdresser, and Roseanna Dunne. According to the 1901 census, she is living with her widowed mother and five other family members in a tenement building on Bolton Street in Dublin. The available documents suggest that her father dies when she is still very young. She joins the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) when it is established in 1909 by James Larkin, which marks the beginning of her lifelong activity in trade unionism. By 1911 she is living with her family in a cottage on Old Abbey Street, and her mother has remarried to Patrick Gray.
Hackett fights for many decades for the rights of workers. Through her affiliation and work with the ITGWU, the IWWU and the Irish Citizen Army, she helps carve out and secure modern-day working conditions. Her career begins as a packer in a paper store, then becoming a messenger for Jacob’s biscuits. At that time the working conditions in the factory are poor.
On August 22, 1911, Hackett helps organise the withdrawal of women’s labour in Jacob’s factory to support their male colleagues who are already on strike. With the women’s help, the men secure better working conditions and a pay rise. Two weeks later, at the age of eighteen, she co-founds the IWWU with Delia Larkin. During the 1913 lock-out she helps mobilise the Jacob’s workers to come out in solidarity with other workers. They, in turn, are locked out by their own employers. This does not stop her work to help others, and she, along with several of her IWWU colleagues, set up soup kitchens in Liberty Hall to help feed the strikers. However, in 1914 her Jacob’s employers sack her over her role in the lock-out.
Hackett begins work as a clerk in the printshop in Liberty Hall, and it is here she becomes involved with the Irish Citizen Army. She is involved in preparations for the 1916 Rising, working in a union shop, helping with printers, and making first-aid kits and knap-sacks.
If other members of the ITGWU were looking for James Connolly, Hackett aids in bringing them to him. She “worked as canvasser and traveller and was called on to carry out many confidential jobs.”
Hackett takes up first aid training provided by Dr. Kathleen Lynn for six months before the Rising and attends night marches organised by the Irish Citizen Army. According to her own account, she says, “A week before Easter, I took part in the ceremony of hoisting the challenge flag over Hall.” Like other girls and women who are involved in the Rising, she carries messages and guns and prepares uniforms and food for Irish Republican Army (IRA) members “and sometimes risky work.”
Three weeks before the Easter Rising, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) raid a shop where Hackett is working. She is alone when they come, and they are looking for a copy of “Gael.” She says to them, “wait until I get the head” and she calls for Connolly. The police are stopped by Connolly and Helena Molony who are armed, and Hackett immediately hides everything, so that when the police come back, they cannot get anything.
Through her experience of working in the printshop, Hackett helps to print the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. She is in the printing room in Liberty Hall as a trusted messenger in 1916 when the Proclamation is printed, and it is the first time she is allowed in. Three men are there when she enters the room and one comes over to her, shakes her hand and congratulates her. It makes her very proud, especially since no one else is allowed to get in. She subsequently tells family members of handing it still wet to James Connolly before it is read by Patrick Pearse outside the entrance to the General Post Office (GPO).
Hackett is an active member of the Irish Citizen Army. On Easter Tuesday, under the command of Constance Markievicz, she takes part in the 1916 Rising and is located in the area of St. Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. This position is heavily attacked with guns, short of first aid and “looked like a death trap.” However, after moving from an initially overlooked position in St. Stephen’s Green, it is one of the last positions to surrender. In the Royal College, as a first-aid practitioner, she is allowed entry to the lecture room sanctioned to the Red Cross only. Another first-aider, Aider Nora O’Daily, later reports that during those days, “I have a very kind remembrance of Little Rosie Hackett of the Citizen Army, always cheerful and always willing; to see her face about the place was a tonic itself.”
After surrendering, the rebels are taken to Dublin Castle. Hackett is imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol for ten days.
In 1917, on the anniversary of Connolly’s death, Hackett, together with Helena Molony, Jennie Shanahan and Brigid Davis, print and hang a poster detailing the anniversary. After the first poster displayed by the ITGWU members is taken down by the police, they work to ensure that their poster will stay on Liberty Hall much longer by staying on top of the roof to defend it. They barricade the door using a ton of coal and nails on the windows. The poster is hanging there until 6:00 p.m. and thousands of people can see it.
After the Rising, Hackett returns to the IWWU which, at its strongest, organises over 70,000 women. After the 1945 laundry strike, they win an extra week of paid holidays for the workers. She attends many important labour union events such as the opening of the new Liberty Hall on May 2, 1965, and Arbour Hill memorial services. Until her retirement, she runs the trade union shops resulting in over five decades of active participation in the Irish trades union movement work to improve conditions for Irish workers. In 1970 she is awarded a gold medal for fifty years of ITGWU membership.
In the 1970s, Walter McFarlane, then branch secretary of the ITGWU, awards an honorary badge for Hackett’s fifty years contribution to the union.
Hackett never marries and lives in Fairview, Dublin, with her brother Tommy until her death on July 4, 1976. She is buried at St. Paul’s plot in Glasnevin Cemetery next to her mother and stepfather. At her burial, she is honoured with a military salute and her coffin is covered with the Irish flag. After her passing, her legacy is remembered in the union’s newspaper, a tale of the strife of Hackett together with the rest of Dublin’s working class, for which she fought to change.
In May 2014, the Rosie Hackett Bridge is officially opened by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. The Hackett Bridge Campaign began in October 2012, led by three women Angelina Cox, an active member of Labour Youth, Jeni Gartland and Lisa Connell. The final shortlist of contending names for the new bridge were Rosie Hackett, Kathleen Mills, Willie Bermingham, Bram Stoker and Frank Duff.
In April 2015, a plaque is unveiled on Foley Street by the North Inner City Folklore Project to commemorate the women of the Irish Citizen Army. The plaque lists Hackett as a member of the St. Stephens Green/College of Surgeons garrison during the 1916 Easter Rising.
seamus dubhghaill 