Gunrunners and frontline fighters: The women of the 1916 Rising

300 women participated in Ireland’s

1916 Easter Rising.

Perhaps the best known is Countess Constance Markievicz, who fought for the duration in Stephen’s Green and who famously advised her fellow female fighters "Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver."

Then there was Elizabeth O’Farrell, the nurse who delivered Padraig Pearse’s note to surrender to the British forces, whose story has much deservedly been resurrected in the past few years.

But there are many more extraordinary stories of women who bravely aided and fought in the Rising. From gunrunners to frontline fighters to those charged with rebuilding in the wake of the rebellion, here are a few of their profiles in courage.

On the front lines

The role of women in front-line combat is one that's been historically over‐ looked. Relegated to providers of med‐ ical aid and other kinds of support, it's only fairly recently that stories of some pretty incredible women are getting the credit they've long been due. Armed and prepared to die for what they believed in, women like Margaret Skinnider, Winifred Carney and Kathleen Clarke were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to see Ireland free.

Margaret Skinnider

A Scottish schoolteacher, Margaret Skinnider left her home for Dublin with the intention of joining the fight for Irish freedom. She ended up staying with Countess Markievicz - as did many re‐ bels who had no other place to stay in the city - and would write one of the most telling passages about the horrible conditions she saw in the poorest sec‐ tions of Dublin.

She wrote, “I do not believe there is a worse street in the world than Ash Street. It lies in a hollow where sewage and refuse falls; it is not paved and is full of holes. One might think that it had been under shell fire. The fallen houses look like corpses, the others like cripples leaning upon crutches. These houses are symbolic of the downfall of Ireland. They were built by rich Irishmen for their homes. Today they are tenements for the poorest Irish people - the poor among the ruins of grandeur.” Skinnider was recruited first to infiltrate the Beggar's Bush barracks and to col‐ lect valuable reconnaissance for those who would later be tasked with destroy‐ ing it. Even though she didn't know why the recon was needed at the time, she proved to be so good at what she did that she was taken to meet James Con‐ nolly and was trusted not only with act‐ ing as an escort to members of his family but to collect, transport and dis‐ tribute explosives.

Handling explosives was something she'd done before - she'd made the trip from Scotland to Dublin with some in her hat, staying on the deck of her ferry and away from any heat or electricity that might accidentally detonate them. 2

Standing directly behind Padraig Pearse, Elizabeth O'Farrell.

During the Easter Rising, she was based out of St. Stephen's Green and tasked with being a bicycle messenger and scout - which meant that she spent much of the time dodging bullets. By Tuesday, she traded being in the crosshairs of sniper fire for a rifle of her own and set up on the roof of the College of Surgeons to act as the Rising's own sniper - quite successfully. That still wasn't enough, and by the next day, she was an integral part in planning and ex‐ ecuting the bombing of Shelbourne Ho‐ tel, along with the bombing of houses along Harcourt Street to cut off British access routes to the College. Skinnider was shot three times during the attempt and spent the next three days in the College and under heavy fire. Eventually returning to Scotland for a short time she, like many others, ulti‐ mately ended up heading to America to gain support for the Irish.

Her fight was far from over on another front, too, and when she applied for a pension in 1925, she was denied despite her well-documented military service. It was argued that military service made her a soldier, and only men could be sol‐ diers, so she wasn't eligible. After a legal battle finally ended with her receiving her pension in 1938, it only started to change the way that the role of women in the Rising would be remembered. IrishCentral History

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Winifred Carney

Originally born in County Down, Winifred Carney and her family moved to Belfast when she was little and still a child. She was still living in Belfast years later when James Connolly requested she head to Dublin to join the Easter Rising. She did - armed with two of the most dangerous tools of the trade: her type‐ writer and a revolver.

Carney was no stranger to the fight for Irish freedom, with the area of Belfast the family settled in long known for its history of rioting and conflict. The Catholic Carney met Connolly in 1912 when he was based out of Belfast and working with the Textile Workers Union (and offered her a secretarial post). She became close friends with his daughter and with his family, and not long after she joined the Citizens Army she be‐ came his confidante and personal secre‐ tary.

Given the moniker ' The Typist with the Webley', Carney was stationed alongside Connolly in his Easter Rising headquar‐ ters at the General Post Office. In charge of writing up orders and dis‐ patches, she would record his last or‐ ders after his wounding, and be arrested along with the others sent to Kilmain‐ ham. She would spend eight months in jail, but her story certainly didn't end there.

Remaining active in political circles, in union debates, and as an anti-treaty protester, Carney was working with the

Northern Ireland Labor Party in 1924. There she met - and eventually married - one of the most unlikely men. George McBride was a Protestant and a former soldier for the British, and their mar‐ riage meant that they were both aban‐ doned by the people they had fought alongside - on both sides. Outcasts from their respective social circles, they en‐ ded up moving to Belfast, joining up with the socialist movement, and remaining happily married until Carney's death 15 years later. Carney was buried in Mill‐ town Cemetery, and because of her marriage, her family refused to put a marker on her grave. One was finally erected by the National Graves Associa‐ tion.

Born in Limerick in 1878, Kathleen Daly became Kathleen Clarke when she mar‐ ried Nationalist Thomas Clarke, not long after he had been released from prison for his insurgent activities. After spend‐ ing some time in New York they re‐ turned to Dublin in 1907 to join the front lines of the Irish Republican Brother‐ hood (IRB). The Clarkes set up a tobac‐ conist shop, which became a front for IRB meetings and for the planning of the Easter Rising. In 1914, she was one of a dozen founding members of Cumann na mBan, and within only a handful of mon‐ ths, their numbers had risen into the hundreds. Disagreements on whether or not to follow through with the plans for the Easter Rising split the organization (and the Irish Volunteers) with Clarke and her husband firmly on the side of a rebellion.

From the start, contingency plans were put in place should the Easter Rising fail - and Kathleen Clarke was an integral part of those back-up plans. Should the IRB fall, it was going to be up to her to rebuild - and she did. Her brother and husband were both among those ar‐ rested and ultimately executed for their part in the Rising, and afterward, Kath‐ leen joined forces with Michael Collins to reestablish the IRB and become one of the driving forces behind Sinn Fein. With the secrecy of the utmost impor‐ tance, there were only a handful of peo‐ ple entrusted with all the information that would be needed to rebuild should all the leaders of the IRB be captured, killed or executed - she was one such person. Because of the information she had, she wasn't allowed to take part in the fighting but was still arrested be‐ cause of her connections with the IRB. Visiting her husband one last time in jail before his execution, she didn't tell him that she was pregnant - she would trag‐ ically lose the baby not long after. But Clarke had been tasked with re‐ building, and by 1917 she was a member of Sinn Fein's Executive Committee. She would also establish the Irish Volunteers' Dependents' Fund, which provided finan‐ cial support to the widows and children left behind after the Easter Rising. Clarke was also behind the tricolor rib‐ bon campaign; while World War I saw many people wearing Union Jack rib‐ bons, she created a surge of Irish pride with the replacement of the British flag on the jackets of the people. There's no doubt that the events of East‐ er Week in 1916 changed Irish history forever. Soldiers and civilians alike pick‐ ed up their weapons as men, women, and children showed that they were willing to give their lives for Irish free‐ dom. One of the biggest challenges wasn't just finding people willing to fight, but arming them - and that task fell to a handful of people who were risking their lives before the first shot was even fired.

Helena Molony

By the time of the Easter Rising, Helena Molony was already a well-known ac‐ tress who took her politics to the stage. A part of the Abbey Theatre, she was an incredibly outspoken proponent of Na‐ tionalist ideals, putting them on the stage where she could reach countless people. Stuck in France at the beginning of World War I, and her involvement with the Abbey Theatre earned her an‐ other gig - helping with the organization of the theater troop into a military divi‐ sion of the Irish Citizen Army, all at the request of James Connolly.

Her work in the theater meant that she was pretty much expected to travel all across Europe, and when it came to weapons smuggling, that was a huge bonus. In the first days of 1916, the re‐ bels were concentrating on arming their

men (and women). Molony was instru‐ mental in that, even being sent to Lon‐ don on a trip to requisition some firear‐ ms. Those guns were simply carried in her suitcase, which they hoped wouldn't be searched by British officials who would have no reason to suspect a the‐ ater actress was a gun runner. Not only was she not searched, but a polite British Army recruit was kind enough to carry her bags to the ferry for her. The days leading up to the Rising were filled with cooking and other prep work, but when the time came, Molony donned a rather smart tweed outfit (likely from a theater costume department), then grabbed a gun and joined the group that stormed Dublin Castle. The assault failed - because of nothing more than a split-second hesitation, which she would later say was the instant that the armed volunteers truly realized what they were in the middle of doing - but Molony and her contingent retreated to City Hall, which she soon left to run for reinforce‐ ments. When she returned their com‐ mander, Sean Connolly, was killed by sniper fire, and the group remained un‐ der fire throughout the night. As British troops advanced on the tenuous strong‐ hold, and the mostly unarmed group surrendered, the prisoners were dealt with amidst the assumption that the women were only present as nurses and medical support, not as the front-line combatants that they were. Ultimately, they were eventually transferred to Kil‐ mainham.

Released in December of 1916, Molony continued to travel, recruit, and continue to be targeted by those who didn't agree with her. A part of the Trades and Labour Council into the 1960s, she re‐ mained a stalwart campaigner for trade unions and the rights of workers, and for the equal treatment of women in the new Ireland.

Molly Osgood

The events of Easter week, 1916 would change Irish history forever, but not all monumental events happened in those few days. The fight for Irish freedom had started months earlier, and without the crew of the Asgard, the rebels would have had only a relative handful of guns to arm themselves with.

The ship was designed by one of Eu‐ rope's finest naval architects, and it was commissioned as a wedding gift for the daughter of Boston physician (and de‐ veloper of rabies antibodies) Dr. Hamil‐ ton Osgood. Molly Osgood was marrying a somewhat eccentric writer - and na‐ tionalist - named Erskine Childers. Childers, son of an English father and an Irish mother was English-educated and fought in the Boer Wars, years that shaped his opinion of British imperialism forever afterward.

His young wife, Molly, (who walked with two canes after a childhood incident left her with broken hips), shared his love of the sea. They settled in London but spent considerable time on the ocean, throwing their support in with the Irish Volunteers by 1913 - ten years after Er‐ skine became a household name with the release of his spy thriller “The Riddle of the Sands” and after he toured southern Ireland. That tour saw him come to the realization that some of the same problems he'd already seen with British colonialism were happening in Ireland, too - and something needed to be done.

By 1914, they were at the head of a small group that was financing the pur‐ chase of 1,500 Mauser rifles and 49,000 rounds of ammunition from the German-based company Moritz Magnus der Jungere, to be delivered into the hands of the rebels that would make their mark on history that Easter week. The British government had been on the lookout for just such a shipment, know‐ ing that it was bound to come in re‐ sponse to the 35,000 rifles that had just been moved into Ulster. The Childers spread the rumor that guns were going to be moved into Ireland on fishing trawlers, and while the British scrambled to intercept these innocent ships, the Childers set out from the Welsh coast. Their crew included Mary Spring Rice and another ship, Kelpie, with Conor O'Brien and sister Kitty man‐ ning the helm.

Nine days after they disembarked, they met up with the German tug Gladiator, well into Belgian waters. There were so many crates that it took five hours to transfer the cargo, and dodging storms on the way back, Kelpie and Asgard docked at Howth Harbour soon after - where hundreds of members of the Irish Volunteers were waiting, including founder Michael O'Rahilly. Phone lines and communications had already been severed, lookouts were scattered throughout the area in strategic loca‐ tions, and the guns were passed into the hands of the rebels.

When news of the landing and the dis‐ tribution of guns reached British ears, police were dispatched. As the newly armed volunteers disappeared, civilians threw rotten fruit at the police force - who opened fire in a skirmish that be‐ came known as the Bachelor's Walk Massacre. All told, the trip to arm the Volunteers had taken about three weeks, and was detailed by Mary Spring Rice in logs and diaries that describe the per‐ ilous journey from start to finish. Erskine Childers would ultimately suffer much the same fate as many of the leaders of the Easter Rising, but not for several years. In 1922, he was arrested and charged over the possession of a gun, which had been given to him by Michael Collins. Even though he was of‐ fered a reprieve if he re-thought where his loyalties lay, he refused and was ex‐ ecuted on November 24, 1922. H/T Stories from1 916, Richmond Bar‐ racks. ie, Easter 1916. ie, RTE *Originally from Attica, NewYork, Debra Kelly is a freelance writer and journalist who has seen most of the US during her travels. Ready for something new, she's now living in the wild hills of Conn em ara with her husband and plenty ofanimals. She is a frequent contributor to Urban Ghosts, List verse and Knowledge nuts. *Originally published in 2016, updated inMarch2024.