Just a week after our November talk on Wednesday the 28th, we will have our December talk on the 5th of December. This is a topic very close to our hearts in the Society, and we are extremely excited to be able to bring this speaker to our local area.
Hanna Sheehy Skeffington was Ireland’s leading suffragette one hundred years ago. Together with her husband Francis, she founded and edited the newspaper The Irish Citizen, which gave a voice to those who campaigned for a more equal and fairer Ireland. She founded the Irish Women’s Franchise League, which was the group responsible for smashing Dublin windows to raise awareness about the campaign for votes for women. Along with Anna Haslam, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington can claim the most credit for accomplishing female suffrage eventually in 1918.
You can read an article about her amazing life online here. That article calls Hanna a ‘Munster woman’ because incidentally, Hanna spent much of her childhood in Loughmore, Co. Tipperary, which is why we are so delighted to host this talk in Ballina. Hanna wrote:
My earliest memories are of an old mill in County Tipperary between Templemore and Thurles. My father owned it, having spent a lot in installing machinery. We had a bakery also and shops in Templemore and Thurles. There was always the smell of newly baked bread and the delight of the old mill race by the Suir where we used to bathe; of the orchard where black cherries grew; of the grove behind the mill, of the doves that came after the grain.”
Micheline Sheehy Skeffington is Hanna and Francis Sheehy Skeffington’s granddaughter and has given many illustrated talks throughout Ireland about her feminist, socialist, nationalist, pacifist grandparents. She took early retirement as a lecturer in plant ecology in NUI Galway and won a gender discrimination against her employer in 2014. In 2017, she went to the USA following in Hanna’s footsteps 100 years on. Hanna’s epic journey took her to 21 states in 18 months to tell of Francis’ murder by a British army officer and to win support for Irish independence.
We will see you on the evening of WEDNESDAY 5TH DECEMBER at 7.30pm in the Oak Room of the Lakeside Hotel. The Lakeside Hotel are providing our Society with this venue for free, and we thank them for this sponsorship. If you want to thank them for this, why not pop in for your lunch or dinner!
Entry to our December lecture is FREE as usual, and everyone of all ages and levels of interest is welcome.
Help us promote this event by clicking ‘Going’ on the Facebook event here, or sharing this blogpost, or even by putting up a poster for us – you can print out one from this link. See you there!
Killaloe-Ballina
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