Dublin ceremony to honour 'fearless' Mayo born suffragette

A NEW headstone at the grave of a Mayo born Irish suffragette and feminist, Meg Connery will be unveiled in Mount Jerome Cemetery in Dublin next Friday.

Margaret Knight Connery, better known as Meg Connery was born in Ayle outside Westport in 1881 and was a prominent and tireless advocate of women’s voting rights, through public speaking, lobbying, protesting and publishing articles in a variety of publications, especially in the Irish Citizen.

While she was very prominent in the Irish struggle for voting equality for women, her final years were difficult, blighted by failing health and poverty and she was largely forgotten in her native land.

However, in recent years her legacy has been revived and the Meg Connery Commemoration Committee located her unmarked grave which is the final resting place of Meg and her husband Con following her death in 1958.

Following the discovery of the grave, the committee fundraised extensively to erect a headstone on her grave in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Harolds Cross, Dublin 6.

Ceremony

A short ceremony of remembrance will take place on Friday, April 5 in the Victorian Chapel in Mount Jerome, followed by the unveiling of the newly installed headstone.

Micheál Casey, a native of Aughagower and Secretary of the Meg Connery Commemoration Committee said members of the public are welcome to attend the ceremony and celebrate the life of a 'fearless woman'.

“I believe this event is an opportunity to 'right a wrong' in reviving the neglected memory of this fearless woman, and reminding today's generation of how hard the vote was, and the lasting value of the cause she pursued,” he said.

The unveiling will be done by Dr Micheline Sheehy Skeffington, the renowned botanist, academic, and grand-daughter of Meg Connery's great lifelong friend and ally, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, founder of the Irish Women's Franchise League.

The event will begin in the Mount Jerome Victorian Chapel at 10am and move to the graveside immediately afterwards.

Born in 1881, the third eldest of nine children, her father John C Knight was from nearby Killawalla and her mother was Bridget Kelly, who ran a pub and the local post office. Her father was involved in local politics and her brother Frank joined the local IRA during the War of Independence and Civil War.

Sadly, Meg had no surviving children and most of her family emigrated apart from a brother and a sister who did not marry.

At least 15 descendants of Meg's siblings will be travelling from the USA for this event, led by her grand-nephew Vince King, a West Virginia attorney, who has organised a week-long programme of visits and events for the visiting party.

Disrupter

Described as a born organiser. Meg was a leading figure in the Irish Women's Franchise League and a believer in the use of physical force to pursue votes for women.

A disrupter of political meetings, she disrupted public appearances of political heavy weights of the time such as Winston Churchill, Edward Carson and John Redmond and also broke windows in the London War Office, in the Customs House and Dublin Castle in well-planned symbolic acts of defiance.

Meg Connery staging a protest in front of prominent politicians Edward Carson (right) and Andrew Bonar Law

She underwent periods of imprisonment for each of these actions, but this turbulent part of her activist life also included two hunger strikes, beatings, ridicule, and humiliation, in her relentless pursuit of voting equality for women.

Meg Connery was acquainted with Constance Markievicz, Maud Gonne, Pádraig Pearse, James Connolly, Jim Larkin, George Bernard Shaw, and Douglas Hyde, who visited her in prison.

She married Limerick man John Patrick 'Con' Connery in 1909 and lived in Dublin where Con worked in the Civil Service. They did not have any children and Meg died in Dublin Deansgrange Hospital in 1958.