Joyce Sholdice, who has died aged 82, was well known in Galway in the late 1960s as a doughty champion of Travellers' rights. Corporation attempts to house the city's small number of Traveller families were attended by violent protests and illegal evictions.
She was greatly significant in the development of human rights in Ireland, her well-attended funeral this week was told.
Because of her courageous campaigning and understanding of the Travellers, in the early 1970s she was appointed as a salaried government adviser on their rights. She became National Co-ordinator for Traveller Affairs. She was involved with a movement that included Victor Bewley and Father Tom Feeley in Dublin, and Paul Donovan in Galway.
Throughout her life she showed a talent for painting and had a lively interest in spirituality, especially alternatives to the doctrinal side of her own Church of Ireland.
Her anger at the Traveller issue was stirred one day in the hairdresser's when she read in a newspaper that a baby of a Traveller family had died of hypothermia shortly after leaving hospital for an abject roadside home. There was only hay to keep the child warm. It was Christmastime.
Sholdice immediately brought the article to the mayor of Galway and asked what he was going to do for "the Travelling people" as she preferred to call them. Dissatisfied with the answer, she soon became involved with the Galway Itinerants Settlements Committee, to help this desperately poor minority.
The term "itinerant" was soon dropped in favour of "Travelling people" in the title of a local organisation where Sholdice was a strong driving force.
A new word was coined in the agitation that followed: "Rahoonery". In Rahoon, the corporation had proposed a serviced halting site for Travellers, controversially near a cemetery. Settled people, including farmers, held large protests during which sticks and stones were thrown. There were also violent protests at flats where Travellers were temporarily housed. Gardaí were sometimes accused of standing by. Later cheap housing or "tigeens" were built for Travellers.
Mary Maher of The Irish Times recalls a remarkable, small, lively woman "incapable of being patronising" who befriended Traveller women in their homes over a cup of tea. Sholdice was against sudden housing of Travellers and warned against creating ghettos.
At the time, the Travellers' infant mortality rate was double that of the settled community. Diseases wracked Travellers. But the movement for their rights was opposed by a cocktail of the powerful, poor people chasing insufficient housing, and farmers. Rahoon had been a farming area.
Bishop Michael Browne became involved in the controversy when he offered land for six tigeens as temporary accommodation. It was in the grounds of his residence in fashionable Taylor's Hill.
But Sholdice's activities brought conflict with the conservative bishop, who once told her that - as a Protestant - she had no right getting involved in the affairs of "these Roman Catholic people". Her husband, Alan, met Browne and "instructed the good bishop otherwise", the Rev Ted Ardis told mourners.
Publicity of the insults, physical threats, and anger from settled interests brought pressure - from Guinness's, for which Alan was area manager - to stop her campaign. Sholdice proved well able for criticism, even from her own class.
Born in Cloughjordan, Co Tipperary, she was the daughter of Eleanor and the Rev John Hobson, headmistress and headmaster of Cork Grammar School. She graduated from TCD with honours French and English, also learning painting at the Crawford Gallery. After marrying Alan in 1944 there were happy family holidays in Kinsale.
In 1958 the family moved to Dublin, where study groups in Rathfarnham parish developed her interest in comparative religions, spirituality and "the meaning of life". In recent years this brought her to meetings introducing "the Knowledge" of the Indian teacher, Maharaj ji.
She enjoyed the Mothers' Union and in Galway - where the family moved in 1963 - she took up painting again, with the Oranmore Artists Group. She formed many friendships and was warm, witty, and very frank company. She loved singing harmony. A favourite was the Beatles' Yesterday.
Joyce Sholdice died peacefully in hospital after living for several years at Brabazon House, Dublin. She is survived by her sister, Irene Benson, and brother, John; sons, David and Neil; and grandsons, Ben and Garrett.
Marjorie Joyce Sholdice: born June 2nd, 1921; died November 9th, 2003