Sheehy-Skeffington, Hanna, 1877-1946

Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington was born on May 24, 1877, in County Cork, Ireland to parents David Sheehy and Elizabeth "Bessie" McCoy. Her father was an Irish Parliamentary Party Member of Parliament. She married Francis Skeffington in 1903, and had a son, Owen, in 1909. As supporters of women’s rights, the Sheehy-Skeffingtons co-founded the Irish Women’s Franchise League, a militant suffrage organization, in 1908. Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington was also one of the founding members of the Irish Women’s Workers Union. She wrote for the Irish Citizen, a paper she started with Francis.

In 1912, Sheehy-Skeffington was arrested for throwing rocks at Dublin Castle’s windows in a protest for women’s rights, and was imprisoned again in 1913 for protesting against Conservative Party leaders. During the 1916 Easter Rising, her husband Francis, a pacifist with no ties to the rebels, was arrested while attempting to stop looting and was executed by a firing squad without a trial. Sheehy-Skeffington published a pamphlet, “British Militarism As I Have Known It,” in 1917, which detailed her husband’s murder and the aftermath. Until 1918, she toured the United States, giving lectures on her story.

In 1937, Sheehy-Skeffington became a founding member of the Women's Social and Progressive League, because of her dissatisfaction with parts of the new Irish Constitution relating to women. In 1943, she ran unsuccessfully for the Dáil Éireann with the Women’s Social and Progressive League. She died on April 20, 1946.