One of the most important donations of historical manuscripts made to the National Library in recent years is the collection known as the Sheehy Skeffington Papers. This donation was made by Mrs AndrΘe Sheehy Skeffington, and comprises more than 20,000 documents, including all the papers of Francis and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, as well as some relating to their ancestors and many to their descendants, in particular Owen Sheehy Skeffington, who was AndrΘe's husband. The bulk of the papers, however, refer to Hanna and Francis, and belong to the period 1890-1946.
Hanna and Francis Sheehy Skeffington are unusual figures, in that they were exponents of generally liberal ideologies which we seldom associate with early 20th-century Ireland. Their friend, James Joyce, fled the provincialism and conformism of Dublin for less stifling cities, but Hanna and Francis stayed at home and did their level best to change "the old sow that eats her farrow", a project which led to frustration and tragedy, as well as some great successes.
They met while they were students, he at University College, Dublin, Hanna at St Mary's University College for women in Merrion Square (women were not then admitted to lectures at UCD, although they were allowed to take its examinations). The couple married in 1903.
From their college years, they were protesters. In particular, they were active campaigners in the cause of women's suffrage. In 1908, the movement most associated with them, the Irish Women's Franchise League (IWFL), was founded by Hanna (who became its first secretary), Margaret Cousins and others. In 1912, Francis, with James Cousins, founded the newspaper, the Irish Citizen, the organ of the IWFL, which Francis edited until his death.
Hanna was imprisoned on two occasions for her activities on behalf of women's suffrage, in 1912 and 1913. She went on hunger strike both times and was released after about a week's imprisonment (in 1913, under the terms of the notorious "Cat and Mouse" act).
After the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Francis became increasingly involved with pacifism. In 1915, he was arrested and imprisoned, charged with making statements likely to prejudice recruitment into His Majesty's Forces. He went on hunger strike and was released after a short time, under the "Cat and Mouse Act".
Hanna was sympathetic to the pacifist cause and was also a republican and supported the 1916 Rising. Francis, however, was opposed to all forms of violence and deplored the Rising. It is bitterly ironic, therefore, that he became one of its early victims. As he was walking home on the Tuesday after Easter 1916, having been in the city centre attempting to stop the looting of shops by Dubliners, he was arrested and shortly afterwards shot by a British army officer, Captain Bowen-Colthurst, at Portobello Barracks in Rathmines.
For Hanna, the loss of her husband was an appalling shock. She was left alone, with little means, the mother of a small boy, Owen. But she reacted to this calamity with the courage and energy that were the hallmarks of her character. She continued to work on behalf of the campaign for women's suffrage, which finally saw some success in February 1918, when women over the age of 30 were given the vote in the United Kingdom.
In November 1918, the British parliament permitted women to run for election and to sit in the House of Commons. In 1922, after the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish government granted the vote to all women in the Free State over the age of 21.
Hanna's republicanism strengthened after 1916, partly due to resentment about Francis's fate and partly because the republican movement was, in its early days, sympathetic to the women's movement (as the Irish Parliamentary Party, for instance, was not). In 1918, Hanna joined Sinn FΘin, and in 1920 she successfully contested the local government elections and became a member of Dublin Corporation.
In 1926, when the Fianna Fβil party was founded, Hanna was on its first executive council. Throughout her life, she continued to be politically active and to champion the cause of women's rights - rights that had not been in question during the struggle for independence, but which were gradually eroded as the Irish Free State developed. In 1927, for instance, the Cosgrave government removed women's right to sit on juries; in 1932, married women were barred from holding permanent positions as teachers or civil servants; in 1934, contraceptives were banned; in 1935, the Conditions of Employment Bill, introduced by Seβn Lemass, gave the government power to set limits on the number of women working in any branch of industry; and in 1936, articles 41 and 45 of de Valera's draft constitution referred to the "inadequate strength" of women and stated that they should not be required to do work that would cause them "to neglect their duties in the home".
In 1943, Hanna ran in the general election as a representative of the Women's Social and Progressive League, which had decided to contest the election in the absence of any support for women's rights from the main political parties. She was unsuccessful. She died three years later.
The Sheehy Skeffington papers, consisting of correspondence, essays, articles, stories and some plays, as well as photographs, handbills, pamphlets, newspaper cuttings and other ephemera, provide a full record of Hanna and Francis's lives and careers. There is much material referring to the political and social issues with which they were involved, such as pacifism, the anti-war campaign, anti-vivisectionism and trade unionism.
Above all, the women's movement is well-documented. Material from the Irish Women's Franchise League, the Irish Women's Reform League, the Irish Women's Suffrage Federation, the Votes for Women Fellowship and the Women's Freedom League form an important part of the collection. There are also letters from many of the leading lights of the women's movement in Ireland and Britain, including Mary Hayden, Maude Joynt, Alice Park, Rosamund Jacob, the Pankhursts, Emmeline Pethwick-Lawrence and Florence Underwood.
New discoveries about Hanna have come to light, thanks to these papers. It was not previously known, for example, that she had tried her hand at creative writing. Drafts of short stories, including one interesting piece entitled MΦre Veronique's Jam Tarts, testify to her interest in writing fiction.
It is, of course, as political documents that the papers are chiefly valuable. However, they also have a human dimension, providing a record of the Sheehy Skeffingtons' personal and domestic lives. Hanna's relationships with members of her own large family (the Sheehys), with Francis and the Skeffingtons, with her son Owen, and with a large network of friends in Ireland, the US and other countries, can be explored in the manuscripts. The notes flying to and fro, making and breaking engagements for tea parties, "at homes", meetings, lectures, concerts, plays and holidays in places such as Skerries, tell the story of a Dublin middle-class way of life with customs and mores that have long ceased to exist. Worries about lazy domestic servants, excessive rents, mislaid laundry and lost umbrellas mingle with concerns about Votes for Women and the sovereignty of Ireland.
All in all, the collection provides us with a rounded picture of two politically active and personally fascinating people. The Sheehy Skeffingtons were cosmopolitan, creators in their day of a class which in Ireland always seems marginalised, undernourished and on the verge of extinction: an intelligentsia. They were, in the best Socratic sense, gadflies in the hide of the State, people brave enough to question accepted values.
The papers are a rare and inspiring record of a personal journey through modern Irish history in its stormy adolescent phase. A breath of the creative oxygen which they must have generated in huge refreshing gusts during their lifetimes still lingers - the perfume of hope in the yellowing pages of their manuscripts.
Eil∅s N∅ Dhuibhne is an assistant keeper in the National Library. The Sheehy Skeffington Papers are accessible to the public by contacting the library's Department of Manuscripts