1
16 Rathmine's Rd Nov. 23 1915
I shall manage the 7th all right if you don't expect
anything much. Would you like a bit of talk on
war women, women who have been victims or
of one and on other
Joan of Arc of course, Hannah
Snell, Mary O'Donnell etc. just a talk from memory -
not written. Or a talk on women in old fashioned
novels. We are moving this week 47 Windsor
Road, Ranelagh,is the new address M Hayden
2
Mrs. Sheehy Skeffington
Irish Womens Franchise League
Westmoreland Chambers
Westmoreland Street
Card from Mary Hayden (1862 - 1942) to Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (1877-1946) stating
that she will be able to manage running the next meeting and offering Hanna a number
of choices on the meeting's content.
Mary Hayden was a suffragette and historian. As one of the earliest women graduates
of the Royal University of Ireland she became the professor of modern Irish history
at University College Dublin in 1911. Although opposing militant protests as counterproductive,
she sought justice in the treatment of protesters. Involved in various suffrage groups,
in 1915 she and Mary Gwynn established another, the Irish Catholic Women’s Suffrage
Association, to attract more Catholic women to the movement. Throughout her life she
publicly advocated women’s rights, including demands for full citizenship in both
the 1922 and 1937 constitutions.
Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, 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 the widow of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington who was summarily executed
on 26 April 1916. She was active during the Rising, bringing food to the Volunteers
in the G.P.O. and the College of Surgeons. Four days passed before she found out what
had happened to her husband, Francis (1878-1916), and it wasn't until almost two weeks
later that the full details of his execution emerged.