Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ There has been a Gaol situated in Aylesbury since 1810. 

The present prison was built in 1847as part of the early Victorian minor prison reforms and became an adult women’s jail in 1890 changing to becoming a girl’s borstal for a time in 1930. It is its time as a women’s prison which is of interest to us and, in particular one inmate.

Constance Gore Booth was born in Buckingham Gate, London, England on 4th February 1868. She was the eldest daughter of Sir Henry Gore Booth of Lissadell County Sligo into a life of luxury and was part of the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy. The Gore Booths were large landowners and considered, by the standards of the day, one of the better ones handing out free food during the famine of 1879. As Constance grew up, she was to rebel against this lifestyle of privilege later following her younger sister, Eva’s, radicalism into the suffragist movement becoming a politician and revolutionary socialist and supporter of Irish independence from Britain and later joining the labour and trade union movement. She was very impressed by union leader James Connolly and his style of Marxism. She was the first woman to be elected to the Westminster Parliament in 1918, and the second female Minister in Europe as a member of the first Dail Eireann 1919. She was the only female minister in Ireland, a position in history which lasted sixty years until 1979 and the elevation to a cabinet post of Maire Geoghan-Quinn. She did not take her seat in Westminster in common with Sinn Fein policies and also due to the fact she was in prison, this time Holloway for anti-conscription activities.

In 1900 she married a Polish Count, Casmir Markievicz which afforded her the title Countess. The marriage produced one child, Maeve Alys. Constance (Countess) Markievicz would become an indelible name in Irish history and was certainly a story of riches to rags! In 1909 she read a newspaper article on the subject of the formation of Boys Brigades and Boy Scouts by the Viceroy, an extension of Baden Powel’s British Boy Scouts, and decided this was not acceptable for Irish youths. Bulmer Hobson was already working on the formation of an Irish Scouts movement which would become known as Na Fianna Eireann and which would eventually become essentially the youth wing of the Republican Movement. Constance Markievicz was instrumental along with Bulmer Hobson in developing this organisation. In fact, she developed it into a little bit more than a simple scouts movements involving the young men in weaponry training and revolutionary Irish politics educating in history and how the English then the British had oppressed Ireland for centuries.

In 1913 the Dublin Lockout began when the owner of the Irish Independent newspaper, William Martin Murphy, laid staff off for no other reason than they belonged to the Irish Transport and General Workers Union led by Jim Larkin and his first Lieutenant James Connolly. This led to the tram drivers of the Dublin United Tramways Company, also owned by Murphy, withdrawing their labour in support of the Irish Independent despatch department workers. Murphy demanded all his employees who were members of this militant syndicalist trade union leave immediately and other employees give a written undertaking never to join it. The workers refused and the 1913/14 Dublin Lockout began in August of 1913. Other companies around the city, on Murphy’s advice or, perhaps more apt, orders, began locking their employees out of their place of work. 

The dispute was long and bitter and Constance could be regularly found in the soup kitchens at Liberty Hall serving up bread and soup to the locked out and striking workers. A far cry from the diamond tiara and silk dresses world she was accustomed to. Out of the lockout the Irish Citizen Army, initially just known as the Citizen Army was born, formed in the first place as a worker’s defence force. Constance was one of the founder members and in 1914 when the lockout came to an end the army was reorganised and an Army Council was formed. She was on this first council, which James Connolly was not, he joined a little later in the year taking over the command of the organisation when Jim Larkin left for the USA. The Irish Citizen Army practiced gender equality and many women including Rose Hacket, Dr Kathleen Lynn, Helena Molony, Constance Markievicz and Connolly’s Secretary, Winifred Carney and many others were active volunteers of the ICA. James Connolly had ideas for the ICA developing it from a workers' defence force, its initial role, into a revolutionary armed force, arguably the first Red Army in Western Europe of the twentieth century.

The Irish Citizen Army, Constance and the women included, took part in the 1916 Easter Rising and she held the rank of Lieutenant serving under Commandant Michael Mallin and Captain Christy Poole at the Stephens Green Garrison. When the rebellion ended after one week of fighting Constance was sentenced to death which was commuted due to her gender - and, perhaps, family background - to life in prison (there is no evidence of family intervention). She was then moved from Kilmainham Gaol to Mountjoy and then across the water to Aylesbury Gaol. This was a whole new and terrifying experience and many weaker hearted inmates went mad. On the inside of every cell door was painted in great detail a huge life like eye, perfect to the last eyelash. It had the pupil removed or put on a slide so the warders on the outside could look in at the prisoners giving the eye extra authenticity. This was purposely done to cause maximum psychological damage to the prisoners, all women. This ever-watchful eye was perfect to the last detail and was a twenty-four-hour sentry! Once locked up at night the only company the prisoner had was the ever-watchful eye, not even a pencil and paper were allowed. Her sister, Eva, constantly badgered the Home Office who finally relented on the pencil and paper (possibly also due to family pressure from the powerful Gore Booth family). They allowed her a pencil and paper for drawing as Constance was a keen artist once showing great promise in this field. It is difficult to imagine what psychological damage the presence of the creepy eye twenty-four hours per day had on the prisoners, which must have been terrifying during the night as warders used this already authentic symbol as literally their eyes into the cells. The door must have taken on a different appearance with an eye of its own!

On 17th June 1917 Constance was released from Aylesbury and was welcomed back in Ireland by her sister Eva, Dr Kathleen Lynn, Helena Molony, Esther Roper and Marie Perloz. In the same year, 1917, Thomas Ashe died of cold, force feeding while on hunger strike becoming the first Irish political prisoner to die while on protest of the twentieth century. In attendance at his funeral were the proscribed uniforms of the Irish Citizen Army and Irish Volunteers. Constance was present in her Citizen Army uniform. 

In 1918 the British Government introduced a Bill which, if passed, would empower them to introduce conscription into Ireland. As a sweetener the British Government proposed to introduce yet another Home Rule Bill. Field-Marshal Lord French was appointed viceroy and was clear about his task. “Home Rule will be offered and declined”, he commented to Lord Riddell, “then Home Rule will be enforced, if they leave me alone, I can do what is necessary”. The whole of nationalist Ireland was opposed to conscription and a twenty-four-hour strike was called bringing the whole country to a standstill, with the exception of Belfast. Lord French’s sister was a militant feminist and republican, Charlotte Despard who voiced her views against conscription loudly on the streets. An embarrassment to the Viceroy, no doubt, as he was to Charlotte. Constance Markievicz was involved heavily in the anti-conscription campaign, which would result in her in prison once again, this time Holloway.

In November 1918 the British Government called a General Election one which Sinn Fein were to stand. The party was in a strong position helped, in no small way, by the British threat to introduce conscription in Ireland. Sinn Fein won 73 of the 105 seats for Ireland, decimating the Nationalist Party almost out of existence. Constance Markievicz, as we know, was elected and made Minister for Labour in the First Dail, not recognised by the Crown. She was also elected to the Westminster Parliament, the first woman to be so, and despite been in prison would not have taken her seat, no elected Sinn Fein members whether in gaol or not would take their seats in Westminster. For years many British historians continued with the myth that Nancy Aster was the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament which is not true. She was the first woman to take her seat in the British Parliament, something the British in recent decades now accept though rarely mention who the first woman to be elected to the assembly was!

In January 1919 on the same day as the First Dail met, 21st January, the Irish War of Independence began. Constance fought in this war as did many of the Irish Citizen Army, even though the organisation's Commandant, James O’Neil, refused to involve the army as an organisation. They fought under the overall republican command in Dublin of Oscar Traynor while maintaining their autonomy as ICA, and not IRA, Volunteers. The war ended on 11th July 1921 and on 6th December of that year a treaty was signed with Britain. This treaty was seen by many as a betrayal, Constance being one, and a terrible Civil War ensued. On 10th January 1922 Constance Markievicz ceased to be Minister of Labour having held the post since 1919. She took the anti-Treaty side in this war stating on refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the British Monarch: “How could I face Jim Connolly and Paddy Pearse in the hereafter if I did” referring to taking the oath.

During the Civil War Constance lead the Irish Citizen Army volunteers, that was those who involved themselves which though sizable was not the entire army, in Moran’s Hotel. She was not re-elected in the 1922 election but was elected again in the 1923 election held after the Civil War ended. The election took place on 27th August 1923 and Constance Markievicz was elected for the Dublin South constituency, refusing to take her seat in the Dail. In November 1923 she was arrested and again imprisoned by the Free Staters, She and others went on hunger strike and were released within a month.

Constance Markievicz died on 15th July 1927 aged 59, five weeks after being elected as a Fianna Fail candidate in the election of that year. Her body lay in state in the Rotunda having been refused permission by the Free State authorities to use the City Hall or the Mansion House. Her funeral procession was huge as thousands lined the streets; the official organisations marched: Sinn Fein, Fianna Eireann, Inghinidhe na Eireann (Daughters of Erin) Cumann na mBann, ITGWU, Fianna Fail and the Irish Citizen Army. Constance was buried at Glasnevin dressed in her Citizen Army uniform. Despite being a founder member of Fianna Fail with de Valera, a conundrum for another day, she never left the Irish Citizen Army as her burial in full uniform testifies.

Constance’s life was certainly one of riches to rags, giving up the social world of diamond tiaras and silk dresses for the soup kitchens of Liberty Hall and the battle field of the Easter Rising.

It is often thought by some that Constance died in poverty but this may not be strictly true as some reports say her sister, Eva who died a year earlier, left her £4,000. If this is the case she still would have died a lot poorer than she would have done had she not left the life of her birth, but better off than the working classes of Ireland whose cause she championed, and if it is not the case and she did die in absolute poverty, which is unlikely, it is again a tribute to the woman who gave up so much to help so many. (A Descriptive History of the Irish Citizen Army: Kevin Morley P101).
 
There are those today who cast Constance Markievicz as a spoilt little rich girl who rebelled against her parents and their lifestyle. This I do not subscribe to. If it had been a case of helping out in the soup kitchens for a couple of days then returning to her luxury lifestyle after the lockout then yes, perhaps this would have been the case. But she went much further than this and was there for the duration of the lockout, joined the Irish Citizen Army, even before James Connolly did, took part in the Easter Rising risking her own life, spent time in the psychological mind-bending Aylesbury Gaol, with the sinister eye as a constant guard. 

On her release she continued defying the British authorities with street orations, even when she was banned from a venue she would turn up. She took part in the War of Independence and on the anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War. These were not the actions of a malcontent rich kid out to upset her parents. Her sister, Eva, shared many of her views and in fact, despite being younger, paved the way with her own militancy which Constance followed and surpassed. 

What may be of note is in the earlier days Constance joined the Suffragist movement, not the Suffragettes! Could there have been a reason for this, perhaps she was putting her toe in the water of radicalism before taking the full plunge? People cannot help the environment they are born into, what they can do is take responsibility for their actions later in life. In more modern times the former British Labour MP, Anthony Wedgewood Benn was born into a life of luxury and a peerage. He dropped the peerage and the life of luxury and became one of the most outspoken MPs on Labour's left wing calling himself by the simplified version of his name, Tony Benn. 

Constance Markievicz (nee Gore Booth) could have been the chosen girl of the social world had she wished but rejected this out of hand. So, to me, those who cast these aspersions about her being a spoilt little malcontent rich kid are been unfair and they are, in my view wrong. The cause of the Irish working-class, despite not being one of them, meant a lot more to Constance Markievicz than getting up her parent’s noses, that is for sure.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist

The Countess Of Aylesbury

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ There has been a Gaol situated in Aylesbury since 1810. 

The present prison was built in 1847as part of the early Victorian minor prison reforms and became an adult women’s jail in 1890 changing to becoming a girl’s borstal for a time in 1930. It is its time as a women’s prison which is of interest to us and, in particular one inmate.

Constance Gore Booth was born in Buckingham Gate, London, England on 4th February 1868. She was the eldest daughter of Sir Henry Gore Booth of Lissadell County Sligo into a life of luxury and was part of the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy. The Gore Booths were large landowners and considered, by the standards of the day, one of the better ones handing out free food during the famine of 1879. As Constance grew up, she was to rebel against this lifestyle of privilege later following her younger sister, Eva’s, radicalism into the suffragist movement becoming a politician and revolutionary socialist and supporter of Irish independence from Britain and later joining the labour and trade union movement. She was very impressed by union leader James Connolly and his style of Marxism. She was the first woman to be elected to the Westminster Parliament in 1918, and the second female Minister in Europe as a member of the first Dail Eireann 1919. She was the only female minister in Ireland, a position in history which lasted sixty years until 1979 and the elevation to a cabinet post of Maire Geoghan-Quinn. She did not take her seat in Westminster in common with Sinn Fein policies and also due to the fact she was in prison, this time Holloway for anti-conscription activities.

In 1900 she married a Polish Count, Casmir Markievicz which afforded her the title Countess. The marriage produced one child, Maeve Alys. Constance (Countess) Markievicz would become an indelible name in Irish history and was certainly a story of riches to rags! In 1909 she read a newspaper article on the subject of the formation of Boys Brigades and Boy Scouts by the Viceroy, an extension of Baden Powel’s British Boy Scouts, and decided this was not acceptable for Irish youths. Bulmer Hobson was already working on the formation of an Irish Scouts movement which would become known as Na Fianna Eireann and which would eventually become essentially the youth wing of the Republican Movement. Constance Markievicz was instrumental along with Bulmer Hobson in developing this organisation. In fact, she developed it into a little bit more than a simple scouts movements involving the young men in weaponry training and revolutionary Irish politics educating in history and how the English then the British had oppressed Ireland for centuries.

In 1913 the Dublin Lockout began when the owner of the Irish Independent newspaper, William Martin Murphy, laid staff off for no other reason than they belonged to the Irish Transport and General Workers Union led by Jim Larkin and his first Lieutenant James Connolly. This led to the tram drivers of the Dublin United Tramways Company, also owned by Murphy, withdrawing their labour in support of the Irish Independent despatch department workers. Murphy demanded all his employees who were members of this militant syndicalist trade union leave immediately and other employees give a written undertaking never to join it. The workers refused and the 1913/14 Dublin Lockout began in August of 1913. Other companies around the city, on Murphy’s advice or, perhaps more apt, orders, began locking their employees out of their place of work. 

The dispute was long and bitter and Constance could be regularly found in the soup kitchens at Liberty Hall serving up bread and soup to the locked out and striking workers. A far cry from the diamond tiara and silk dresses world she was accustomed to. Out of the lockout the Irish Citizen Army, initially just known as the Citizen Army was born, formed in the first place as a worker’s defence force. Constance was one of the founder members and in 1914 when the lockout came to an end the army was reorganised and an Army Council was formed. She was on this first council, which James Connolly was not, he joined a little later in the year taking over the command of the organisation when Jim Larkin left for the USA. The Irish Citizen Army practiced gender equality and many women including Rose Hacket, Dr Kathleen Lynn, Helena Molony, Constance Markievicz and Connolly’s Secretary, Winifred Carney and many others were active volunteers of the ICA. James Connolly had ideas for the ICA developing it from a workers' defence force, its initial role, into a revolutionary armed force, arguably the first Red Army in Western Europe of the twentieth century.

The Irish Citizen Army, Constance and the women included, took part in the 1916 Easter Rising and she held the rank of Lieutenant serving under Commandant Michael Mallin and Captain Christy Poole at the Stephens Green Garrison. When the rebellion ended after one week of fighting Constance was sentenced to death which was commuted due to her gender - and, perhaps, family background - to life in prison (there is no evidence of family intervention). She was then moved from Kilmainham Gaol to Mountjoy and then across the water to Aylesbury Gaol. This was a whole new and terrifying experience and many weaker hearted inmates went mad. On the inside of every cell door was painted in great detail a huge life like eye, perfect to the last eyelash. It had the pupil removed or put on a slide so the warders on the outside could look in at the prisoners giving the eye extra authenticity. This was purposely done to cause maximum psychological damage to the prisoners, all women. This ever-watchful eye was perfect to the last detail and was a twenty-four-hour sentry! Once locked up at night the only company the prisoner had was the ever-watchful eye, not even a pencil and paper were allowed. Her sister, Eva, constantly badgered the Home Office who finally relented on the pencil and paper (possibly also due to family pressure from the powerful Gore Booth family). They allowed her a pencil and paper for drawing as Constance was a keen artist once showing great promise in this field. It is difficult to imagine what psychological damage the presence of the creepy eye twenty-four hours per day had on the prisoners, which must have been terrifying during the night as warders used this already authentic symbol as literally their eyes into the cells. The door must have taken on a different appearance with an eye of its own!

On 17th June 1917 Constance was released from Aylesbury and was welcomed back in Ireland by her sister Eva, Dr Kathleen Lynn, Helena Molony, Esther Roper and Marie Perloz. In the same year, 1917, Thomas Ashe died of cold, force feeding while on hunger strike becoming the first Irish political prisoner to die while on protest of the twentieth century. In attendance at his funeral were the proscribed uniforms of the Irish Citizen Army and Irish Volunteers. Constance was present in her Citizen Army uniform. 

In 1918 the British Government introduced a Bill which, if passed, would empower them to introduce conscription into Ireland. As a sweetener the British Government proposed to introduce yet another Home Rule Bill. Field-Marshal Lord French was appointed viceroy and was clear about his task. “Home Rule will be offered and declined”, he commented to Lord Riddell, “then Home Rule will be enforced, if they leave me alone, I can do what is necessary”. The whole of nationalist Ireland was opposed to conscription and a twenty-four-hour strike was called bringing the whole country to a standstill, with the exception of Belfast. Lord French’s sister was a militant feminist and republican, Charlotte Despard who voiced her views against conscription loudly on the streets. An embarrassment to the Viceroy, no doubt, as he was to Charlotte. Constance Markievicz was involved heavily in the anti-conscription campaign, which would result in her in prison once again, this time Holloway.

In November 1918 the British Government called a General Election one which Sinn Fein were to stand. The party was in a strong position helped, in no small way, by the British threat to introduce conscription in Ireland. Sinn Fein won 73 of the 105 seats for Ireland, decimating the Nationalist Party almost out of existence. Constance Markievicz, as we know, was elected and made Minister for Labour in the First Dail, not recognised by the Crown. She was also elected to the Westminster Parliament, the first woman to be so, and despite been in prison would not have taken her seat, no elected Sinn Fein members whether in gaol or not would take their seats in Westminster. For years many British historians continued with the myth that Nancy Aster was the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament which is not true. She was the first woman to take her seat in the British Parliament, something the British in recent decades now accept though rarely mention who the first woman to be elected to the assembly was!

In January 1919 on the same day as the First Dail met, 21st January, the Irish War of Independence began. Constance fought in this war as did many of the Irish Citizen Army, even though the organisation's Commandant, James O’Neil, refused to involve the army as an organisation. They fought under the overall republican command in Dublin of Oscar Traynor while maintaining their autonomy as ICA, and not IRA, Volunteers. The war ended on 11th July 1921 and on 6th December of that year a treaty was signed with Britain. This treaty was seen by many as a betrayal, Constance being one, and a terrible Civil War ensued. On 10th January 1922 Constance Markievicz ceased to be Minister of Labour having held the post since 1919. She took the anti-Treaty side in this war stating on refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the British Monarch: “How could I face Jim Connolly and Paddy Pearse in the hereafter if I did” referring to taking the oath.

During the Civil War Constance lead the Irish Citizen Army volunteers, that was those who involved themselves which though sizable was not the entire army, in Moran’s Hotel. She was not re-elected in the 1922 election but was elected again in the 1923 election held after the Civil War ended. The election took place on 27th August 1923 and Constance Markievicz was elected for the Dublin South constituency, refusing to take her seat in the Dail. In November 1923 she was arrested and again imprisoned by the Free Staters, She and others went on hunger strike and were released within a month.

Constance Markievicz died on 15th July 1927 aged 59, five weeks after being elected as a Fianna Fail candidate in the election of that year. Her body lay in state in the Rotunda having been refused permission by the Free State authorities to use the City Hall or the Mansion House. Her funeral procession was huge as thousands lined the streets; the official organisations marched: Sinn Fein, Fianna Eireann, Inghinidhe na Eireann (Daughters of Erin) Cumann na mBann, ITGWU, Fianna Fail and the Irish Citizen Army. Constance was buried at Glasnevin dressed in her Citizen Army uniform. Despite being a founder member of Fianna Fail with de Valera, a conundrum for another day, she never left the Irish Citizen Army as her burial in full uniform testifies.

Constance’s life was certainly one of riches to rags, giving up the social world of diamond tiaras and silk dresses for the soup kitchens of Liberty Hall and the battle field of the Easter Rising.

It is often thought by some that Constance died in poverty but this may not be strictly true as some reports say her sister, Eva who died a year earlier, left her £4,000. If this is the case she still would have died a lot poorer than she would have done had she not left the life of her birth, but better off than the working classes of Ireland whose cause she championed, and if it is not the case and she did die in absolute poverty, which is unlikely, it is again a tribute to the woman who gave up so much to help so many. (A Descriptive History of the Irish Citizen Army: Kevin Morley P101).
 
There are those today who cast Constance Markievicz as a spoilt little rich girl who rebelled against her parents and their lifestyle. This I do not subscribe to. If it had been a case of helping out in the soup kitchens for a couple of days then returning to her luxury lifestyle after the lockout then yes, perhaps this would have been the case. But she went much further than this and was there for the duration of the lockout, joined the Irish Citizen Army, even before James Connolly did, took part in the Easter Rising risking her own life, spent time in the psychological mind-bending Aylesbury Gaol, with the sinister eye as a constant guard. 

On her release she continued defying the British authorities with street orations, even when she was banned from a venue she would turn up. She took part in the War of Independence and on the anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War. These were not the actions of a malcontent rich kid out to upset her parents. Her sister, Eva, shared many of her views and in fact, despite being younger, paved the way with her own militancy which Constance followed and surpassed. 

What may be of note is in the earlier days Constance joined the Suffragist movement, not the Suffragettes! Could there have been a reason for this, perhaps she was putting her toe in the water of radicalism before taking the full plunge? People cannot help the environment they are born into, what they can do is take responsibility for their actions later in life. In more modern times the former British Labour MP, Anthony Wedgewood Benn was born into a life of luxury and a peerage. He dropped the peerage and the life of luxury and became one of the most outspoken MPs on Labour's left wing calling himself by the simplified version of his name, Tony Benn. 

Constance Markievicz (nee Gore Booth) could have been the chosen girl of the social world had she wished but rejected this out of hand. So, to me, those who cast these aspersions about her being a spoilt little malcontent rich kid are been unfair and they are, in my view wrong. The cause of the Irish working-class, despite not being one of them, meant a lot more to Constance Markievicz than getting up her parent’s noses, that is for sure.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent 
Socialist Republican and Marxist

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