A plaque to Irish revolutionary and humanitarian Madeleine ffrench-Mullen will be unveiled by Dublin City Council on Saturday.
Ffrench-Mullen was the daughter of a Royal Navy surgeon who was a strong Parnellite and she inherited her father’s nationalism and social radicalism.
She became a labour activist, a member of Maud Gonne‘s Daughters of Ireland (Inghinidhe na hÉireann) and also a member of the Irish Citizen Army.
In 1914 she met her lover Dr Kathleen Lynn, a medical doctor from Co Mayo. Lynn was the daughter of a Church of Ireland rector.
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They were radical Irish nationalists despite coming from middle-class Protestant backgrounds.
During the Easter Rising, ffrench-Mullen provided first-aid to Irish Citizen Army volunteers injured in the fighting.
She and Lynn were jailed for their parts in the Rising and shared a cell in Kilmainham Gaol.
[ 1916: Diary of rebel doctor Kathleen LynnOpens in new window ]
They lived together at 9 Belgrave Road, Rathmines from 1915 to ffrench-Mullen’s death in 1944. It was not unusual in those times for unmarried women to live together and most people then considered them to be friends rather than lovers.
The couple are best known for founding St Ultan’s Children’s Hospital in Charlemont Street in April 1919.
They opened the hospital for infants with £100 and two cots.
Dublin’s infant mortality rate was abnormally high for a city of its size. Of 11,000 babies born in 1913, 660 died before their first birthday.
Unsanitary conditions and a lack of ventilation in the city’s many tenement dwellings caused the deaths of many young children and diseases that can now be cured easily spread quickly in the overcrowded conditions.
The original hospital closed in 1984 and was replaced by a medical clinic, which in turn was sold to the Dalata hotel group in 2014.
Ffrench-Mullen has been somewhat overshadowed in death by her partner-in-life Lynn. There has been many calls for the new national children’s hospital to be named after Lynn.
Dublin City Council will unveil a plaque to ffrench-Mullen at her childhood home of 63 Moyne Road, Ranelagh on Saturday at 11am.
The unveiling will be conducted by the Lord Mayor of Dublin Cllr Emma Blain. Historian Sinéad McCoole will give a talk, actor Olwen Fouéré will read from her diary and musician Natalie Ní Chasaide will perform a piece of music.
