Looking beyond O’Farrelly

HISTORY Lecture series begins with focus on Cavan women involved in the movement for independence

The involvement of Cavan women in the struggle for independence extends well beyond Agnes O’Farrelly, and the true extent of their contribution is only becoming clear in recent years. These are some of the points that Dr Sinéad McCoole of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, will stress in her talk this Thursday on Cavan Women in the Campaign of Independence.

This reporter admits to only knowing of one Republican Cavan woman from that era, and Dr McCoole correctly predicts it’s Agnes O’Farrelly. It’s for good reason why the Raffony native springs to mind, as she was a giant of her era. To pick just a couple of highlights from O’Farrelly’s epic past - she presided at the inaugural meeting of Cumann na mBan (1914) and was a member of the committee of women which tried to negotiate with the IRA leaders to avoid civil war in 1922.

“When we talk about Cavan women who made a contribution, she’s somebody who’s making a contribution on an academic level, on a sporting level, on Gaelic language through her work in Donegal, on the development of industry - so she is somebody who has a status as it were. I would expect she would be the Cavan woman who would come to mind.”

Appropriately O’Farrelly will feature in Thursday’s online talk, however Dr McCoole observes that there were hundreds of Cavan women active in the struggle. Actually, when Dr McCoole thinks of Cavan Republican women, the first to come to her mind isn’t O’Farrelly, but rather Claire McDermott (nee Brady) from Tullyco, towards Cootehill. She came across her name two decades ago while researching the anti-Treaty women who were interned in Kilmainham Gaol in the ‘20s. In those days much of the information was gleaned from ‘autograph books’ - where internees signed books for each other as keepsakes, thus compiling unofficial registers. However official sources have now provided much richer information on the topic.

Risking their lives

“The release over the ‘Decade of the Centenaries’ of the military pension records has really transformed our understanding of women’s involvement,” says Dr Sinéad McCoole, whose research has resulted in a trio of books ‘Guns & Chiffon’ and ‘No Ordinary Women’ and ‘Mná 1916’, and another on the way in 2021.

“I felt I knew this area really well and then all of a sudden [from the pension records] you get this massive explosion of content - with the women speaking back to you in their own voices! And you go ‘Oh my God they were doing far more - there were far more women involved, far more women risking their lives, and staying under the radar’.”

While only a few would have fired weapons, women volunteers were dismissively, and misleadingly referred to - by their male comrades writing accounts at the time - as “secretaries” and “administrators”.

“What’s coming out of the pension records is, while you have women who were passing on messages, we are now having the women who were actually finding that information - they were involved in the espionage, and involved in generating that information.”

Dr McCoole also cites Countess Markievicz’s quote about Cumann na mBan: ‘It says a great deal for their cleverness that so few of them were ever caught, and many of the best girls were never even suspected.’

“So there were very few women arrested during the War of Independence,” remarks Dr McCoole. “The number given in contemporary documents is fifty. The pension records and military records are throwing up a huge number of women who were actually out on the field.”

Verification

Securing a military pension was quite arduous. In addition to completing application forms detailing your service, additional information could be sought in follow-up interviews (“if you are lucky enough”). Then the applicant’s claims had to be verified - typically by men. With the air still pungent from the bitter civil war, this wasn’t always easy: “The problem was, people had emigrated; people were still opposed to the government and wouldn’t give their verification; they also didn’t know where they were - it was really hard to find the men who they had met before - one or two of the women said, ‘I operated a safe house but I didn’t know who they were - I just knew their first names and in some cases they gave me assumed names.’ So they then can’t prove what she had done.”

Dr McCoole “had known” Cavan woman Claire Brady through the sparse details revealed in her work on the Kilmainham internees. Official records, only freely available in recent years, revealed Claire’s married name was McDermott, enabling Dr McCoole to wipe the dust off her untold backstory.

While Claire Brady was in the Cumann na mBan fold, she reported directly to the IRA. Identified in Cavan by the authorities as actively involved during the War of Independence, she had to flee for the relative anonymity of Dublin.

“She ends up going to Dublin and working for Áine Ceannt [widow of 1916 leader Éamonn] and goes into the centre of Dublin espionage to assist them,” explains Dr McCoole.

Claire represented Cavan at a Cumann na mBan convention, but even with her obvious status, a decade after the first military pensions were allocated she still struggled to get her claims verified.

“She actually gets a letter from Margaret Pearse - this is the sister of Patrick Pearse who is at this time a senator,” explains Sinéad.

“She [Pearse] uses the term, she ‘can vouch for her’. She talks about this family - they were obliged to give up their business in Kingscourt, and now are hoping to get work in Dublin. Then she says there’s ‘poor hope’ because it’s 1936... She says to please push forward her pension claim as even that would save them from starvation.”

Mistaken belief

Whilst savouring these morsels in Claire’s life, Dr McCoole is eager to learn more.

“She is an interesting character, but I’m not able to find, let’s say an image of her on the web or anything more of the substance of her life, except what survived in the pension records.”

This goes too for the other Cavan women who will feature in Thursday’s talk alongside Agnes O’Farrelly and Claire Brady, namely: Maggie Corr (later Mrs O’Reilly) from Leggaginney, Ballinagh; Nora FitzPatrick (Late Mrs Brady) from Ballinagh; Kate McMahon (later Mrs Hillard) mother of Colm Hillard TD; Bridget (also known as Delia) Clarke (later Mrs Conlon) Virginia; Miss Mary Cunningham who later lived on Cavan Road, Cootehill (attached to South Monaghan during the War of Independence); Julia Keegan (later Mrs Sheil) Gowna; and Margaret Halton (later Mrs Connolly) Loughduff.

While today many people might mistakenly believe, like the British authorities, and those administering the military pension claims, that women played only a minor role, their former comrades didn’t underestimate them when the majority of Cumann na mBan opposed the Treaty.

“When it came to the civil war there was a mass arrest of over 700 women held because the men who had worked and been with them in this period of time knew exactly what they had been up to,” said Dr McCoole.

Dr McCoole would appeal to anyone with images or more information on any of the women involved in the independence movement to make contact: Sinead.mccoole@chg.gov.ie 085 8775 706.

Dr Sinéad McCoole delivers the first talk of the ‘Centenary Lecture Series’, organised by Cavan Library Services on Thursday, September 17 at 7.30pm. Log onto: www.cavanlibrary.ie