Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington

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Johanna Mary [Hanna] Sheehy-Skeffington, [née Johanna Mary Sheehy] (May 24, 1877 — April 20, 1946) was a suffragette and Irish nationalist.

Hanna Sheehy was born in Kanturk, County Cork, Ireland, the eldest daughter of David Sheehy, Irish Parliamentary Party Westminster MP, who was also the brother of Father Eugene Sheehy, a priest who educated Éamon de Valera in Limerick and Elizabeth McCoy. One of her sisters, Mary, married the writer and politician Thomas Kettle. Another sister, Kathleen, who married Frank O'Brien, was the mother of Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Hanna's father was MP for South Galway and the family moved to Drumcondra, Dublin in 1887. He remained loyal to the British government throughout her numerous subsequent imprisonments, which caused a rift between him and his daughter.

Hanna Sheehy (or Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, as she was known after marrying Francis Skeffington) is remembered as an Irish feminist who, along with her husband and James Cousins founded the Irish Women's Franchise League in 1908 with the aim of obtain women's voting rights.

Sheehy was also a founding member of the Irish Women's Workers' Union as well as an author whose works deeply opposed British imperialism in Ireland. Her son, Owen Sheehy-Skeffington became a politician and Irish Senator.

[edit] Sheehy's Life

Sheehy was educated at Dominican Convent, Eccles Street where she was a prize-winning pupil. She then enrolled at St Mary's University College, a third level college for women established by the Dominicans in 1893. Women were not allowed to attend lectures at either University College Dublin or the University of Dublin. She sat her examinations at Royal University of Ireland (later University College, Dublin) where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1899 and a Master of Arts Degree, with first-class honours in 1902. This led to a career as a teacher in Eccles Street and an examiner in the Intermediate Certificate examination.

Sheehy married in 1903, becoming Sheehy-Skeffington and in 1908 founded the Irish Women's Franchise League, a group aiming for women's voting rights. She lost her teaching job in 1913 when she was arrested and put in prison for three months after throwing stones at Dublin Castle. Whilst in jail she started a hunger strike but was released under the Prisoner's Temporary Discharge of Ill Health Act and was soon rearrested.

In 1916 Sheehy's husband, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, was shot dead during the Easter Rising on the orders of a British army officer, Captain J C Bowen-Colthurst. Bowen-Colthurst, following court martial in June 1916, was sent temporarily to a Canadian hospital after being adjudged insane in the aftermath of the Rising, but he was released with a pension to settle in Canada.

Sheehy refused any kind of compensation for her husband's death, and soon afterwards she travelled to the United States to publicise the political situation in Ireland. She published British Militarism as I Have Known It, which was banned in the United Kingdom until after the First World War. Upon her return to Britain she was once again imprisoned, this time in Holloway prison. After being released Sheehy supported the anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War.

During the 1930s she was assistant editor of An Phoblacht, a Sinn Féin newspaper. During this period she was arrested once more for breaking the Northern Ireland Exclusion Order.

She died, aged 68, in Dublin and is buried there in Glasnevin Cemetery.