Constance Markievicz

Early life

Markievicz was born Constance Georgine Gore-Booth on 4 February 1868 at 7 Buckingham Gate, London to Henry Gore-Booth (later Sir Henry Gore-Booth, 5th Baronet) and Georgina Mary Gore-Booth (née Hill, later Lady Georgina Gore-Booth). Markievicz's father was an Anglo-Irish arctic explorer and later landowner and landlord of Lissadell House, and her mother was British and founded the Lissadell School of needlework. Following the death of her paternal grandfather Sir Robert Gore-Booth, 4th Baronet in 1876, Markievicz's father became the 5th Baronet of Artarman and took over the running of the family estate.

The eldest of five siblings, Markievicz was the sister of the poet and labour activist Eva Gore-Booth. During the Irish Famine of 1879, Markievicz's father reinstated the Carney and Drumcliffe Relief Committees and provided free food donations to his tenants. Their father's example inspired in Gore-Booth and her younger sister, Eva, a deep concern for working people and the poor. The sisters were childhood friends of the poet W. B. Yeats, who frequently visited the family home Lissadell House, and were influenced by his artistic and political ideas. Yeats wrote a poem, "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz", in which he described the sisters as "two girls in silk kimono, both beautiful, one a gazelle", the gazelle being Eva, whom Yeats described as having "a gazelle-like beauty". Eva later became involved in the labour movement and women's suffrage in Great Britain, although initially Constance did not share her sister's ideals.

Gore-Booth wished to train as a painter, to her family's dismay; in 1892, she went to study at the Slade School of Art in London, where she lived at the Alexandra House for Art Pupils, Kensington Gore, founded five years before by Sir Francis Cook, a wealthy great-uncle of Maud Gonne. One of her contemporaries there was Blanche Georgiana Vulliamy. It was at this time that Gore-Booth first became politically active and joined the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). Later she moved to Paris and enrolled at the prestigious Académie Julian where she met her future husband, Casimir Markievicz (Kazimierz Markiewicz) an artist from a wealthy Polish landowning family in present-day Ukraine (then under the rule of the Russian Empire).

The Markieviczes (or Markiewiczes) settled in Dublin in 1903 and moved in artistic and literary circles, with Constance gaining a reputation as a landscape painter. In 1905, along with artists Sarah Purser, Nathaniel Hone, Walter Osborne and John Butler Yeats, she was instrumental in founding the United Arts Club, which was an attempt to bring together all those in Dublin with an artistic and literary bent. This group included the leading figures of the Gaelic League founded by the future first President of Ireland, Douglas Hyde. Although formally concerned only with the preservation of the Irish language and culture, the league brought together many patriots and future political leaders. Sarah Purser, whom the young Gore-Booth sisters first met in 1882, when she was commissioned to paint their portrait, hosted a regular salon where artists, writers and intellectuals on both sides of the nationalist divide gathered. At Purser's house, Markievicz met revolutionary patriots Michael Davitt, John O'Leary and Maud Gonne. In 1907, Markievicz rented a cottage in the countryside near Dublin. The previous tenant, the poet Padraic Colum, had left behind copies of The Peasant and Sinn Féin. These revolutionary journals promoted independence from British rule. Markievicz read them and was propelled into action.

Politics

In 1908, Markievicz became actively involved in nationalist politics in Ireland. She joined Sinn Féin and Inghinidhe na hÉireann ("Daughters of Ireland"), a revolutionary women's movement founded by the actress and activist Maud Gonne, muse of W. B. Yeats. Markievicz came directly to her first meeting from a function at Dublin Castle, the seat of British rule in Ireland, wearing a satin ball gown and a diamond tiara. This refreshing change from being "kowtowed"-to as a countess only made her more eager to join, she told her friend Helena Molony. She performed with Maud Gonne in several plays at the newly established Abbey Theatre, an institution that played an important part in the rise of cultural nationalism. In the same year, Markievicz played a dramatic role in the women's suffrage campaigners' tactic of opposing Winston Churchill during the 1908 Manchester North West by-election, flamboyantly appearing in the constituency driving an old-fashioned carriage drawn by four white horses to promote the suffragist cause. A male heckler asked her if she could cook a dinner, to which she responded, "Yes. Can you drive a coach and four?" Her sister Eva had moved to Manchester to live with fellow suffragist Esther Roper and they both campaigned against the anti-suffragist Churchill with her. Churchill lost the election to Conservative candidate William Joynson-Hicks, in part as a result of the suffragists' dedicated opposition.

In 1909 Markievicz founded Fianna Éireann, a nationalist scouting organisation that instructed teenage boys in scouting, in the style of Robert Baden-Powell's then-paramilitary Boy Scouts. At the Fianna's first meeting in Camden Street, Dublin, on 16 August 1909, she was almost expelled on the basis that women did not belong in a physical force movement. She had drawn in Bulmer Hobson, who had earlier founded a less successful boy scout group in Belfast. He supported her and she was elected to the committee. She was jailed for the first time in 1911 for speaking at an Irish Republican Brotherhood demonstration attended by 30,000 people, organised to protest against George V's visit to Ireland. During this protest, Markievicz handed out leaflets, erected great banners emblazoned "Dear land thou art not conquered yet", participated in stone-throwing at pictures of the King and Queen and attempted to burn the giant British flag taken from Leinster House, eventually succeeding, but then seeing James McArdle imprisoned for one month for the incident, despite Markievicz testifying in court that she was responsible. Her friend Helena Molony was arrested for her part in the stone-throwing and became the first woman in Ireland to be tried and imprisoned for a political act since the time of the Ladies' Land League.

Easter Rising

As a member of the Citizen Army, Markievicz took part in the 1916 Easter Rising. She was deeply inspired by the founder of the ICA, James Connolly. Markievicz designed the Citizen Army uniform and composed its anthem, based on the tune of a Polish song.

Markievicz fought in St Stephen's Green, where on the first morning —according to the only two pages surviving of the diary of an alleged witness — she shot a member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, Constable Lahiff, who subsequently died of his injuries. Other accounts place her at City Hall when the policeman was shot, only arriving at Stephen's Green later. It was long thought that she was second in command to Michael Mallin, but in fact it was Kit Poole who held that position. Markievicz supervised the setting-up of barricades on Easter Monday and was in the middle of the fighting all around Stephen's Green, wounding a British army sniper. Trenches were dug in the Green, sheltered by the front gate; however, after British machine gun and rifle fire from the rooftops of tall buildings on the north side of the Green including the Shelbourne Hotel, the Citizen Army troops withdrew to the Royal College of Surgeons on the west side of the Green.

The Stephen's Green garrison held out for six days, ending the engagement when the British brought them Pearse's surrender order. The British officer, Captain (later Major) de Courcy Wheeler, who accepted their surrender was married to Markievicz's first cousin, Selina Maude Beresford Knox.

They were taken to Dublin Castle and then to Kilmainham Gaol through what Matt Connolly described as "several groups of hostile people". There, she was the only one of 70 women prisoners who was put into solitary confinement. At her court-martial on 4 May 1916, Markievicz pleaded not guilty to "taking part in an armed rebellion...for the purpose of assisting the enemy," but pleaded guilty to having attempted "to cause disaffection among the civil population of His Majesty". Markievicz told the court, "I went out to fight for Ireland's freedom and it does not matter what happens to me. I did what I thought was right and I stand by it." She was sentenced to death, but the court recommended mercy "solely and only on account of her sex". The sentence was commuted to life in prison. When told of this, she said to her captors, "I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me".

Markievicz was transferred to Mountjoy Prison, Holloway Prison and then to Aylesbury Prison in England in July 1916. She was released from prison in 1917, along with others involved in the Rising, as the government in London granted a general amnesty for those who had participated in it. It was around this time that Markievicz, born into the Church of Ireland, converted to Catholicism.

First Dáil

Along with other leading Sinn Féin members, she was jailed again in 1918 for her part in the supposed German Plot. At the 1918 general election, Sinn Féin won 73 of the 105 seats in Ireland; Markievicz was elected as MP for Dublin St Patrick's, beating her opponent William Field with 66% of the vote. The results were called on 28 December 1918. This made her the first woman elected to the United Kingdom House of Commons. However, in line with Sinn Féin abstentionist policy, she did not take her seat in the House of Commons.

Markievicz was in Holloway prison when her colleagues assembled in Dublin at the first meeting of the First Dáil, the Parliament of the revolutionary Irish Republic. When her name was called, she was described, like many of those elected, as being "imprisoned by the foreign enemy" (fé ghlas ag Gallaibh). She was re-elected to the Second Dáil in the 1921 election.

Markievicz served as Minister for Labour from April 1919 to January 1922, in the Second Ministry and the Third Ministry of the Dáil. Holding cabinet rank from April to August 1919, she became both the first Irish female cabinet Minister and at the same time, only the second female government minister in Europe. No other woman was appointed to cabinet until 1979 when Máire Geoghegan-Quinn was appointed as Minister for the Gaeltacht for Fianna Fáil. Her Labour department was concerned with setting up Conciliation Boards, arbitrating labour disputes, surveying areas and establishing guidelines for wages and food prices.

Civil War and Fianna Fáil

Markievicz left the government in January 1922 along with Éamon de Valera and others in opposition to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. She worked actively for the Republican cause in the Irish Civil War, including directing the Citizen Army in the occupation of Moran's Hotel in Dublin. During the Battle of Dublin (28 June to 5 July 1922) she helped lead the anti-Treaty forces of the IRAs Dublin Brigade. Members of Cumann na mBan assisted the anti-treaty forces and carried dispatches between the occupied Four Courts buildings and the Dublin Brigade headquarters. After the civil war she toured the United States. She lost her seat in the 1922 general election but was returned at the 1923 general election, again for Dublin South. In common with other Republican candidates, she did not take her Dáil seat. She was arrested again in November 1923. In prison, she went on a hunger strike and, within a month, was released with other prisoners.

She left Sinn Féin and joined Fianna Fáil on its foundation in 1926, chairing the inaugural meeting of the new party in La Scala Theatre. In the June 1927 general election, she was re-elected to the 5th Dáil as a candidate for Fianna Fáil, which was pledged to take its seats in Dáil Éireann if the requirement to take the Oath of Allegiance were removed. Markievicz died on 15 July 1927. Following the assassination of Kevin O'Higgins and proposed changes in electoral law, Fianna Fáil altered its policy. Its TDs signed the Oath and took their seats in the Dáil on 12 August 1927, less than a month after her death. The party leader Éamon de Valera described the Oath as "an empty political formula".

Family life

Constance's husband, Casimir Markievicz, was known in Paris as Count Markievicz, a title that was the norm for large landowners in Poland at this time. When the Gore-Booth family enquired as to the validity of the title, they were informed through Pyotr Rachkovsky of the Russian Secret Police that he had taken the title "without right" and that there had never been a "Count Markievicz" in Poland. However, the Department of Genealogy in Saint Petersburg said that he was entitled to claim to be a member of the nobility. Markievicz was married, though separated, at the time they met; his wife died in 1899 and he and Gore-Booth married in London on 29 September 1900. She gave birth to their daughter, Maeve, at Lissadell in November 1901. The child was mainly raised by her Gore-Booth grandparents. Stanislas, Casimir's son from his first marriage, accompanied the couple to Ireland after their honeymoon visit to his homeland.

In 1913, Markievicz's husband moved back to Poland and never returned to live in Ireland. However, they did correspond and he was by her side when she died.

Death

Markievicz died at the age of 59 on 15 July 1927, of complications after two appendicitis operations, a dangerous surgery in the days before antibiotics. She had given away the last of her wealth. She died in a public ward "among the poor where she wanted to be". One of the doctors attending her was her revolutionary colleague Kathleen Lynn. Also at her bedside were Casimir and Stanislas Markievicz, Éamon de Valera and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington. Prior to her death, Esther Roper maintained a vigil at Constance's bed with Marie Perolz, Helena Molony, Kathleen Lynn and other friends. Refused a state funeral by the Free State government, she was laid out in the Rotunda, where she had spoken at so many political meetings. Thousands of Dubliners lined O'Connell Street and Parnell Square to pass by her body and pay their respects to 'Madame'. It took four hours for the beginning of the funeral, starting from the Rotunda, to reach the gates of Glasnevin Cemetery. Éamon de Valera gave the funeral oration, while Free State soldiers stood on guard to prevent the rifle salute that Michael Collins had called "the only speech which it is proper to make above the grave of a dead Fenian".

Her former Citizen Army colleague the playwright Seán O'Casey said of her: "One thing she had in abundance—physical courage; with that she was clothed as with a garment."

Tributes

In County Sligo Markievicz Road and Markievicz Park (the main GAA stadium in the county) both bear her name. In Dublin, the flat complex Countess Markiewicz House also bears her name.

In 2018, a portrait of Markievicz was donated by the Irish parliament to the British House of Commons to commemorate the Representation of the People Act 1918, under which, some women were allowed the right to vote for the first time in the United Kingdom.

In 2019, a Dublin City Council Commemorative Plaque was unveiled at Markievicz's former home in Dublin, Surrey House on Leinster Road in Rathmines.

In 2008, a Ukrainian village of Zhyvotivka, where Constance stayed with the Markievicz family in 1903, opened a room dedicated to the couple with the documents brought from Lissadel.