jayneladybright: Constance Markievicz“The story of this beautiful, headstrong girl belongs to
jayneladybright: Constance Markievicz“The story of this beautiful, headstrong girl belongs to the pages of romantic fiction. Born to power and privilege she rode fast horses over her father’s thousands of acres. Presented at the court of Queen Victoria she was adopted as the darling of the Dublin Castle social set. Tiring of the social round she turned to conspiracy and war. Adopting the mantle of the revolutionary she was condemned to death; reprieved she became a national heroine.Her social conscience developed early. Contrasting the lifestyle of the privileged circles of the Ascendancy, in which her family moved, with those of their impoverished tenants Constance wrote: ‘…Hidden away among rocks on the bleak mountain sides, or soaking in the slime and ooze of the boglands, or beside the Atlantic shore where the grass is blasted yellow by the salt west wind, you find the dispossessed people of the old Gaelic race in their miserable cabins.’All her life Constance Markievicz was passionately devoted to women’s suffrage.[…] She joined James Connolly’s Citizen Army. Gaining a reputation as ‘The Rebel Countess’ she founded na Fianna Eireann, the national boy scout movement who were eventually to play a major part in the Irish rebellion.On the morning of Easter Monday 1916, clad in green uniform and carrying a Mauser automatic pistol, Countess Markievicz marched at the head of a small column of Citizen Army men to St. Stephens Green. During the battle that followed she served so bravely and fearlessly alongside her male comrades that her courage became a watchword and her name a legend.Following the surrender she was sentenced to death along with the other leaders of the rebellion. The British fearing a worldwide reaction if they executed a woman commuted her sentence to penal servitude for life. Released from Aylesbury jail in England following the general amnesty of 1917 she returned to Sligo to a rapturous welcome. During this visit she was awarded the Freedom of the City.[…] On April 1 […] following her appointment to the First Irish Dail as Secretary for Labour she achieved the distinction of becoming the first woman Cabinet Minister in the world.[…] Having dispensed her possessions to the poor of Dublin she died penniless in an open ward in a public hospital on July 15 1927. She was 59 years old. Although her contribution to the cherished dream of a free Ireland was immeasurable, a hostile Freestate Government refused her the recognition of a State funeral.” -- source link