BIOGRAPHY: Unlikely Rebels: The Gifford Girls and the Fight for Irish FreedomBy Anne Clare Mercier Press, 319pp. €16.99
WHILE WE KNOW that support for, and activism in, Irish nationalism often ran in families, it is unusual to find a large family divided along gender lines on the issues. The Gifford sisters – Sidney, Nellie, Grace, Kate, Muriel, and Ada – were six of the 12 children of Frederick Gifford and his wife, Isabella Burton.
As was the custom of the time in a mixed marriage, the boys were baptised Catholics and expected to follow their father’s religion, while the girls were baptised Protestants. However, their mother, Isabella, a formidable and domineering woman with apparently little interest in babies, raised all of the children as Protestant. The boys retained their Protestantism while the girls, except for Kate, converted to Catholicism, perhaps as part of their rebellion against the values of their mother.
While their parents and brothers remained unionist in their politics, the girls turned to nationalism and republicanism. The family were of the wealthy professional class (their father was a solicitor), and they lived in a large house on Palmerston Road in Rathmines.
The best known of the girls was Grace, who married the doomed 1916 leader Joseph Mary Plunkett hours before his execution at Kilmainham Gaol. Muriel had married another signatory to the 1916 Proclamation, Thomas MacDonagh, in 1912. An active member of Inghinidhe na hÉireann and a supporter of women’s suffrage, Muriel died in a drowning accident in 1917.
Another sister, Sidney, who wrote under the pen name John Brennan, was a relatively well-known journalist and later broadcaster. Kate, the best educated of the girls, was a graduate of the Royal University of Ireland and had a particular talent for languages. Nellie, who had taught cookery, was the only sister active during the Rising and was in charge of feeding the personnel in the Royal College of Surgeons garrison. She was imprisoned in Mountjoy and Kilmainham for a few weeks after the Rising. Ada became an artist and emigrated to the US, where she seems to have been active for a while in the Irish Ireland movement.
Grace had also been active in nationalist and suffrage causes and worked as an artist, having trained at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and at the Slade in London. Plunkett’s family disapproved of the marriage, and there was a deal of animosity between her and the family. It was alleged that Grace had a miscarriage after the execution of her husband, while residing with the Plunkett family. The author dismisses this, stating that her sister-in -law, Geraldine Plunkett, the source of the story, held a great deal of animosity towards Grace. Marie O’Neill, who has published a biography of Grace, appears to accept that she was pregnant when she married. Grace became involved in a prolonged battle with the Plunkett family over Joseph’s last will; the case was eventually settled, out of court, in 1935, with a payment of £700 to Grace. She remained relatively poor for the rest of her life and died in 1955.
Sidney was active in Inghinidhe na hÉireann and supported women’s suffrage. She published in the nationalist press and went to the United States in 1914 to extend her career in journalism. She, too, worked with Irish-Americans in Clan na Gael. She returned to Ireland in 1922, immersed herself in politics and wrote for a number of newspapers. She became involved in broadcasting and made a precarious living from her journalism for the remainder of her life.
Anne Clare bases her book on the Gifford sisters on family papers and a diary kept by Grace that was given to the author. No reference is made to previous works on Grace and Sidney Gifford by Marie O’Neill and Alan Hayes, respectively. The book is uncritical, and there is little hint of the difficult personalities of the sisters, particularly Sidney, as depicted in a brief memoir by the writer Gifford Lewis. It is not clear why the sisters embraced nationalism and Catholicism, or what their political aspirations for the new Ireland were. It is readable, however, and a good introduction to the sisters for those who want to know about “rebel” Irish women.
Maria Luddy is professor of modern Irish history at the University of Warwick
