Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington

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Hanna Sheehy (May 26, 1877 — April 20, 1946) was born in Kanturk, County Cork, Ireland, a daughter of David Sheehy, Irish Parliamentary Party Westminster MP, who was also the brother of Father Eugene Sheehy, a priest who educated Eamon de Valera in Limerick.

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, cousin of Conor Cruise O'Brien, became a politician and Irish Senator.

Sheehy's Life

Sheehy was educated at the Royal University of Ireland (later University College, Dublin) where she received a Master of Arts Degree. Sheehy married in this period, 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.

Sheehy's father, David Sheehy, former Irish Parliamentary Party MP, remained loyal to the British government throughout her numerous imprisonments, which caused a rift between him and his daughter.

In 1916 Sheehy's husband, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, was shot dead during the Easter Rising on the orders of a British army officer, Colonel Bowen-Colthurst. Bowen-Colthurst 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 of Great Britain and Ireland 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.