Josephine McNeill, Irish diplomat, dies in Dublin on November 19, 1969. She is the first Irish female diplomat appointed to represent Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity.
McNeill is born Josephine Ahearne on March 31, 1895, in Fermoy, County Cork, the daughter of shopkeeper and hotelier, James Ahearne, and his wife Ellen Ahearne (née O’Brien). She attends the Loretto Convent, Fermoy, and goes on to graduate from University College Dublin (UCD) with a BA, H.Dip.Ed. in French and German. With this she begins a teaching career, at St. Louis’ Convent, Kiltimagh, at the Ursuline Convent, Thurles, and at Scoil Íde. Scoil Íde, the female counterpart to St. Enda’s School, had been established by her friend, Louise Gavan Duffy. She is fluent in the Irish language and takes an active part in the cultural elements of the Irish independence movement, such as literature and music. She is a member of Cumann na mBan, serving as a member of the executive committee in 1921.
After the death of her husband in 1938, McNeill becomes the honorary secretary of the council of the Friends of the National Collections, as well as serving as chair of the executive committee of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association until 1950. As a member of the Department of External Affairs advisory committee on cultural relations, she writes on economic, social and cultural issues. She represents Ireland at the UNESCO general assembly in Paris in 1949.
McNeill is an active member of Clann na Poblachta from its foundation in 1946. She is appointed the minister to the Netherlands in 1950 by Seán MacBride, making her the first Irish female diplomat to represent the Republic of Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity. This appointment is not well received by diplomats in the Department of External Affairs. Her reports from The Hague focus on the issues the Netherlands faces with decolonisation. In 1955, she becomes the minister to Sweden, going on to hold the joint appointment to Austria and Switzerland from 1956 to 1960, after which she retires. While serving in Switzerland she puts aside the resentment she feels towards Éamon de Valera based on how he had treated her husband, to sit with him during a convalescence while de Valera recovers from an eye operation.
McNeill is an amateur pianist and collects paintings and porcelains. In 1933, she publishes the Irish language book, Finnsgéalta ó India.
She is born Leslie Mary Price in Dublin on January 9, 1893, to Michael and Mary Price. Her father is a blacksmith, and she is one of six children. She wants to be a teacher and by 1911 has become a Monitress, a common way for girls to get into the teaching profession. Two of her brothers are involved in the Irish Volunteers and she is a member of Cumann na mBan. In advance of the Easter Rising, with the confusion over orders and lack of information, she states that she “did not question anything” as, with all that was happening, there are often odd events in her house. But they all wait for the mobilisation orders for the Rising.
De Barra’s role during the republican rebellion in Ireland, Easter 1916, is to act as a courier carrying messages and ammunition between the main headquarters in the General Post Office (GPO) and other posts. She does her role well during the Rising and gains the respect of many Irish Republicans. On the orders of Seán Mac Diarmada, one of the principal leaders of the rising, she and fellow Cumann na mBan member Bríd Dixon are promoted in the field and treated as officers. She later admits that the job was stressful. She is stationed both in the GPO and in the Hibernian Bank. It is while she is in the bank that she comes closest to death, standing beside Captain Thomas Weafer while he is shot. Another soldier who goes to his aid is also shot. She barely has time to grab Captain Weafer before he dies. She is the person sent to fetch a priest for the dying and wounded soldiers on the Thursday. By Friday evening, she is in the GPO and is with the group evacuated with Louise Gavan Duffy. Once they reach the hospital on Jervis Street, she parts company from Duffy and heads to Jacob’s factory to see how the rebels are getting on there. She is also arrested and held in Broadstone Station but quickly released.
By 1918, de Barra represents West Cork in the Cumann na mBan convention and becomes a member of the executive committee. She leaves her teaching career to focus fully on the organisation required by the republican movement in 1918. She travels the country by train and by bicycle to get women to join the local branches of the Cumann and take part in the activities needed by the movement. She is tasked by the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) General Headquarters to set up specific lines of communication between Dublin and the Provincial commands. Within the year the organisation has grown from 17 to over 600 branches. She is Director of the organisation during the period up to the end of the war.
De Barra marries Tom Barry on August 22, 1921, in Cork during the Truce period in the lead up to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. At the wedding are men who later end up on opposite sides. Both Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins are guests. Her husband is staunchly Anti-Treaty even though he has been friends with Collins. Although her husband is a staunch republican and a major figure in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War, while she is serving in the GPO in Dublin during the rising, he is in Mesopotamia serving in the British Army in World War I.
In later years de Barra is central to the Irish Red Cross. Initially she gets involved by organising the care of children orphaned by World War II. She represents the Irish Red Cross at conferences in Toronto, Oslo, Monaco, New Delhi, Geneva, Vienna, The Hague, Athens, Istanbul and Prague. She and her husband handle refugees from Czechoslovakia and Poland. Through the Red Cross she is able to ascertain the status of Irish held by the Spanish during the Spanish Civil War, as officially Ireland remains neutral and cannot get involved. She is Chairman of the Irish Red Cross from 1950 to 1973.
De Barra is instrumental in the setting up of the Voluntary Health Insurance organisation in the late 1950s. In 1962, with the Red Cross she launches the “Freedom from hunger” campaign in Ireland which later becomes the organisation Gorta. She serves as chairman of Gorta also.
In 1956, a memorial to 1916 is unveiled in Limerick. It is designed by Albert Power and the commemoration of the Rising is held in May 1956 and the monument is unveiled by de Barra. In 1963 she is awarded an honorary degree from University College Dublin (UCD) along with Éamon de Valera and others.
In 1971, de Barra is part of a series to look back on the events leading to Irish Independence and her story is broadcast by Raidió Teilifís Eireann. In 1979 she wins the Henry Dunant Medal which is the highest award of the Red Cross Movement.
De Barra and her husband live on St. Patrick’s Street in Cork from the 1940s until his death in 1980. She dies in Cork on April 9, 1984, and is buried with her husband in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery. She is remembered today in the Leslie Bean de Barra Trophy awarded for the Cork Area Carer of the Year.
Duffy is born in Nice, France, on July 17, 1884, the daughter of the Irish nationalist Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, one of the founders of The Nation and his third wife, Louise (née Hall) from Cheshire, England. Her mother dies when she is four. She is then raised in Nice by her Australian half-sisters from her father’s second marriage. It is a well-to-do and culturally vibrant home where she is exposed to political figures and ideas.
Duffy’s first visit to Ireland is in 1903, at the age of 18, when her father dies and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery. This is when she first hears Irish spoken. She finds a grammar book in a bookshop and becomes curious. Her father was not an Irish speaker, though her grandmother in the early 1800s was likely fluent.
Duffy spends the years between 1903 and 1907 between France and England. She takes courses through Cusack’s College in London so that she can matriculate.
Duffy decides to continue her studies in Dublin but cannot afford to move until she receives a small inheritance from her grandmother on the Hall side of the family. Once in Ireland in 1907, at the age of 23, she begins her university studies, taking arts. She lives in the Women’s College, Dominican Convent, as women are not allowed to attend lectures in the Royal University of Ireland. She goes occasionally to the Gaeltacht to learn Irish. Graduating in 1911 with a Bachelor of Arts from University College Dublin (UCD), she is one of the first women to do so.
Given the lack of teachers, even without a full qualification, Duffy then teaches in Patrick Pearse‘s St. Ita’s school for girls in Ranelagh. She studies with the Dominicans again in Eccles Street, gaining a Teaching Diploma from Cambridge University.
A supporter of women’s suffrage, Duffy speaks at a mass meeting in Dublin in 1912 in favour of having the Home Rule bill include a section to grant women the vote. She also joins the Irish republican women’s paramilitary organisation Cumann na mBan, as a founding member in April 1914, serving on the provisional committee with Mary Colum, as a co-secretary.
Duffy is aware that being a suffragist and a nationalist are not necessarily the same thing, realising her involvement in Cumann na mBan is in support of nationalism. When St. Ita’s closes due to funding problems in 1912, she takes the opportunity to complete her qualifications. After receiving her Cambridge teacher’s diploma in 1913, she returns to UCD to study for a Master of Arts degree.
Duffy is in fact working on her master’s thesis during the Easter break in 1916 when the rumour comes to her that the Rising has begun in Dublin city centre. She walks to the Rebel headquarters in the GPO where she tells Pearse, one of the leaders, that she does not agree with the violent uprising.
Duffy spends all of Easter week working in the GPO kitchens with other volunteers like Desmond FitzGerald and a couple of captured British soldiers, ensuring the volunteers are cared for. The women in the GPO are given the opportunity to leave under the protection of the Red Cross on the Thursday as the shelling of the building has caused fires, but almost all of them refuse. In the end, she is among the second group of the people to leave the GPO on the Friday, tunnelling through the walls of the buildings to avoid coming under fire.
Duffy’s group makes it to Jervis Street Hospital where they spend the night. The next day, Saturday, Pearse formally surrenders. She heads for Jacob’s Biscuit Factory, another volunteer position, on the morning after the surrender, to see what is happening. There she finds a holdout of volunteers who are unaware of the surrender or that the fighting is over.
After 1916 Duffy is elected to the Cumann na mBan’s executive and in 1918 is one of the signatories to a petition for self-determination for Ireland which is presented to President Woodrow Wilson by Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington. During her time in the GPO, she had collected names of the volunteers and promised to take messages to their families. This possibly influences her in being involved in the National Aid Association and Volunteers Dependants Fund. In the aftermath of the rebellion there are 64 known dead among the volunteers, while 3,430 men and 79 women are arrested. Families need support. These organisations are able to arrange funding from the United States.
In 1917, Duffy co-founds and runs Scoil Bhríde, as a secondary school for girls in Dublin through the medium of Gaelic. It is still in operation as a primary school. Her co-founder is Annie McHugh, who later marries Ernest Blythe. The end of the Rising leads to the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). During this time, she is mostly focused on the school. However, it is raided by the military and Duffy later admits it is in fact used for rebel meetings and to safeguard documents. In October 1920, the Irish leader Michael Collins meets Archbishop Patrick Clune there in secret. In an effort to support the nationwide boycott of the police, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), in 1920, she has a leaflet sent to all branches of Cumann na mBan which states in part that the RIC are the “eyes and ears of the enemy. Let those eyes and ears know no friendship.”
The war ends with the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. The result is the Irish Civil War which lasts until 1923. Duffy is a supporter of the Treaty, which her brother had signed, and as such she leaves Cumann na mBan and joins Cumann na Saoirse, in which she is instrumental in founding as an Irish republican women’s organisation which supports the Pro-Treaty side.
Once the civil war is over, Duffy leaves the political arena and returns to education. She especially needs to focus on funding in the early years of the school. She works with UCD’s Department of Education from 1926, once Scoil Bhríde is recognised as a teacher training school. She publishes educational documents like School Studies in The Appreciation of Art with Elizabeth Aughney and published by UCD in 1932.
Until her retirement, Duffy also lectures on the teaching of French. She retires as principal in 1944.
Recognising the importance of her first-hand experience and with a good political understanding, Duffy records her memories of the events in which she has taken part. In 1949, she gives an account of her life in relation to nationalist activities to the Bureau of Military History. She is involved in a Radio Éireann broadcast in 1956 about the women in the Rising. In 1962, she takes part in the RTÉ TV program Self Portrait broadcast on March 20, 1962. In March 1966 she gives a lecture in UCD to mark the 50th anniversary of the Rising which is published in The Easter rising, 1916, and University College Dublin (1966).
Duffy dies, unmarried, on October 12, 1969, aged 85, and is interred in the family plot in Glasnevin Cemetery.
In 2014, An Post issues a stamp to commemorate the centenary of the founding of Cumann na mBan. In 2016, for the centenary, a documentary is produced, discussing seven of the women, including Duffy, who were involved in the Easter Rising.
Josephine McNeill, Irish diplomat, is born on March 31, 1895, in Fermoy, County Cork. She is the first Irish female diplomat appointed to represent Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity.
McNeill is born Josephine Ahearne, the daughter of shopkeeper and hotelier, James Ahearne, and his wife Ellen Ahearne (née O’Brien). She attends the Loretto Convent, Fermoy, and goes on to graduate from University College Dublin (UCD) with a BA, H.Dip.Ed. in French and German. With this she begins a teaching career, at St. Louis’ Convent, Kiltimagh, at the Ursuline Convent, Thurles, and at Scoil Íde. Scoil Íde, the female counterpart to St. Enda’s School, had been established by her friend, Louise Gavan Duffy. She is fluent in the Irish language and takes an active part in the cultural elements of the Irish independence movement, such as literature and music. She is a member of Cumann na mBan, serving as a member of the executive committee in 1921.
After the death of her husband in 1938, McNeill becomes the honorary secretary of the council of the Friends of the National Collections, as well as serving as chair of the executive committee of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association until 1950. As a member of the Department of External Affairs advisory committee on cultural relations, she writes on economic, social and cultural issues. She represents Ireland at the UNESCO general assembly in Paris in 1949.
McNeill is an active member of Clann na Poblachta from its foundation in 1946. She is appointed the minister to the Netherlands in 1950 by Seán MacBride, making her the first Irish female diplomat to represent the Republic of Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity. This appointment is not well received by diplomats in the Department of External Affairs. Her reports from The Hague focus on the issues the Netherlands faces with decolonisation. In 1955, she becomes the minister to Sweden, going on to hold the joint appointment to Austria and Switzerland from 1956 to 1960, after which she retires. While serving in Switzerland she puts aside the resentment she feels towards Éamon de Valera based on how he had treated her husband, to sit with him during a convalescence while de Valera recovers from an eye operation.
McNeill is an amateur pianist and collects paintings and porcelains. In 1933, she publishes the Irish language book, Finnsgéalta ó India.
Mary Colum (née Maguire), literary critic and author, is born in Collooney, County Sligo on June 14, 1884, the daughter of Charles Maguire and Catherine Gunning. She is the author of several books, including the autobiographical Life and the Dream (1947), and From These Roots: The Ideas that Have Made Modern Literature (1937), a collection of her criticism.
Maguire’s mother dies in 1895, leaving her to be reared by her grandmother, Catherine, in Ballysadare, County Sligo. She attends boarding school in St. Louis’ Convent in Monaghan, County Monaghan.
Educated at Royal University of Ireland Maguire is founder of the Twilight Literary Society which leads her to meet William Butler Yeats. She regularly attends the Abbey Theatre and is a frequent visitor amongst the salons, readings and debates there. After graduation in 1909 she teaches with Louise Gavan Duffy at St. Ita’s, a companion school to Patrick Pearse‘s St. Enda’s School. She is active with Thomas MacDonagh and others in national and cultural causes and co-founds The Irish Review (1911–14) with David Houston, MacDonagh and others. She, along with her husband, Padraic Colum, whom she marries in July 1912, edit the magazine for some months of its four-year run. She is encouraged by Yeats to specialise in French literary criticism and to translate Paul Claudel.
Colum associates with James Joyce in Paris and discourages him from duping enquirers about the origins of the interior monologue in the example of Édouard Dujardin. She accepts Joyce’s very ill daughter, Lucia, for a week in their Paris flat at the height of her “hebephrenic” attack, while herself preparing for an operation in May 1932. She serves as the literary editor of The Forum magazine from 1933–1941 and commences teaching comparative literature with Padraic at Columbia University in 1941.
She rebuts Oliver St. John Gogarty‘s intemperate remarks about Joyce in The Saturday Review of Literature in 1941.
Colum’s publications become increasingly sparse in the 1950s as her arthritis and neuralgia grow more and more severe. She dies in New York City on October 22, 1957. At the time of her death, she is working on Our Friend James Joyce with her husband, each writing various chapters. It is assembled posthumously by Padraic Colum and is published by Doubleday on August 22, 1958.
seamus dubhghaill 