6 February 1918 - Women in Britain and Ireland gained the right to vote in General Elections for the first time on this day. The Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed into Law by the Westminster Parliament. It gave women over the age of 30 the right to vote and all men over the age of 21. The law said that women over the age of 30 who occupied a house (or were married to someone who did) could now vote.

This meant 8.5 million women now had their say over who was in Parliament - about 2 in every 5 women in the UK. It also said that all men over the age of 21 could vote - regardless of whether or not they owned property - and men in the armed forces could vote from the age of 19. The number of men who could now vote went from 8 million to 21 million. This was a legislative Revolution as it meant that any future Parliament would have a very different profile than the current or previous ones.

The campaign to extend the Franchise to women had been a long and arduous one over many years with women protesting and been sent to prison and even dying to achieve electoral equality with menfolk at the polls. The Suffragettes were led by Emmeline Pankhurst who from 1905 led a militant campaign to change the law. In Ireland too women campaigned holding meetings, smashing windows and generally making a nuisance of themselves to draw attention to their cause. But the various groups here found no sympathy from either John Redmond the Irish Nationalist Leader or Sir Edward Carson the Irish Unionist Leader.

Nevertheless when the ‘Khaki Election’ of December 1918 came round the only woman to win a seat as a Member of Parliament was  the Irish Revolutionary Countess Markievicz who amongst other things was a vocal supporter of the Suffragette Movement. However as an Irish Republican she refused to take her seat in the Westminster Parliament and pledged her allegiance to Dáil Éireann in Dublin instead. Britain had to wait until 1919 for its for its first female MP - one Lady Astor - who was born and raised in the USA!

Curious to note that while women in the United Kingdom had to wait until 1928 for the franchise to be fully extended to all women over the age of 21 in the Irish Free State this discrimination between the sexes was abolished in 1922 putting the Irish State well ahead of the British one in a woman’s Right to Vote.

5‭ ‬February‭ ‬1820:‭ ‬The death of William Drennan, United Irishman, on this day. He was born in Belfast in 1754 and educated locally and at Edinburgh University where he graduated as a Medical Doctor in 1778. He returned home and practised in Belfast, Newry and later moved to Dublin in the fateful year of 1789. He became interested in Politics and Poetry. His family background was Presbyterian but he personally was a non conformist. But he was proud to be the son of a Presbyterian Minister all the same:

I am the son of an honest man‭; ‬a minister of that gospel which breathes peace and goodwill among men; a Protestant Dissenting minister, in the town of Belfast; who[se] spirit I am accustomed to look up, in every trying situation, as my mediator and intercessor with Heaven.

Drennan came to National attention when in‭ ‬1784 and 1785 his Letters of Orellana, an Irish Helot were published. These were the earliest expressions of his support for radical constitutional reform, Catholic Emancipation and civil rights.

However as political events both at home and abroad hotted up in the early‭ 1790’s he dabbled deeper into the burning issues of the day. Along with Theobald Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell he was instrumental in the foundation of the United Irishmen, at the time an open body with strictly legal aims and methods. It is generally considered that Drennan was the guiding hand in the initial philosophical basis of the new body. He had proposed even before it was established that any such organisation should be:

A benevolent conspiracy—a plot for the people—no Whig Club—no party title—the Brotherhood its name—the rights of man and the greatest happiness of the greatest number its end—its general end,‭ real independence to Ireland and republicanism its particular purpose—its business, every means to accomplish these ends as speedily as the prejudices and bigotry of the land we live in would permit.

In‭ ‬1795 he wrote his poem ‘Erin’ which is credited with the first use of the term ‘the Emerald Isle’ to describe Ireland:

Nor one feeling of vengeance presume to defile 

The cause,‭ or the men, of the Emerald Isle.

Drennan was not of a sanguinary turn of mind and he recoiled from the prospect of Revolution to bring about the overthrow of the British Regime.‭ Notwithstanding this withdrawal in  the year 1794 he was charged with Sedition and narrowly escaped conviction. 

At first he wished to address the Court and make a highly charged political statement but his lawyer talked him out of it. If he had done so it was generally considered he would have convinced his accusers of his guilt in their eyes. 

But his days of danger were now over and as his active political life receded he used his pen to attack Tyranny.‭ ‬His poem The Wake of William Orr in 1797 stirred passions that were to foment further opposition towards Orr’s executioners and the Government that paid them. However he kept well clear of the terrible events of‭ 1798.

In‭ 1800 he married an English Lady, Sarah Swanwick, and spent some years in the north of England moving in the Literary and Social circles there. In 1807 he gave up Medicine and returned to Belfast. He founded and edited the radical Belfast Monthly Magazine and was a leading supporter of the Belfast Academical Institution, a doomed attempt to bring to Belfast both secondary and higher level education, open to pupils from both sides of the religious divide.

He died on‭ 5 February 1820 and was buried in Clifton Street burial-ground in Belfast. His coffin was borne to the grave by three Catholics and three Protestants.

 

 

4 February 1974: The M62 Coach bombing on this day: Eleven people - including eight British soldiers and two young children - were killed, and 12 seriously injured, when the coach they were travelling in was blown up by an IRA bomb in England.

The private coach was carrying more than 50 people and making its way from Manchester, along the M62, towards a British army base in Catterick, North Yorkshire, when an explosive device in the rear of the vehicle detonated. The explosion happened just after midnight on the eastbound carriageway between Chain Bar, near Bradford and Drightlington, south of Leeds. It could be heard over an area of several miles and scattered bodies for 250 yards along the road.

The coach was carrying soldiers and their families who had been on a weekend break; some of the servicemen were travelling to RAF Leeming, near Darlington. A family of four - Cpl Clifford Haughton, his wife Linda, who were both 23, and their two sons, Lee, five, and Robert, three - were among the dead.

An Englishwoman Judith Ward was convicted of this attack and spent 18 years in prison as a result. At the time of her trial Ward's father, Thomas, had said earlier he did not believe his daughter was capable of such "brutal and callous acts". Her brother, Tommy, said none of the family thought Judith had ever been in the IRA. "We don't think she was so heavily involved. There has been a lot of romancing," he said.

That was a point echoed in court by Ward's solicitor, Andrew Rankin QC, who highlighted many improbabilities in her confessions. They included having been married to an IRA man and having borne a child by another.

Her conviction was always suspect but it took 18 years before it was overturned in 1992 and she was released from captivity. It was one of a series of convictions in the British Courts in the 1970s that were seen by many as 'miscarriages of justice' and that further marred Anglo Irish relations at that time.

The real killers were never caught.

 

3‭ ‬February‭ ‬1919:‭ ‬Eamon De Valera escaped with two other prisoners from Lincoln Jail in England on this day.‭ ‬They did this with the aid of a copy of the master key and the assistance of Michael Collins on the outside directing operations.‭ ‬De Valera companions were Sean McGarry and Sean Milroy who was put to the task and drew a cartoon of a drunk man trying to fit a large key into a tiny keyhole on what appeared to be a harmless Christmas card. [above]  The proof-readers were duped: the image sent to their associates was, in fact, a copy of the impression taken by de Valera. Thus Collins knew how the prisoners intended to make their break for Freedom.

‭ ‬A skeleton key had been fashioned  by Dev which he had secured from the Prison Chaplain who had carelessly left down his set of keys so that it was possible to make an imprint onto a lump of wax made from old alter candles. After many trials and errors that produced copies but not any that would fit the prison locks a fellow Republican prisoner Peter De Loughry (who was an expert locksmith) asked that a blank key and a file be smuggled in and he would fashion a key inside the prison from Dev’s lumpen imprint. All he needed was the instruments he had asked for which were sent into the jail in the time honoured way - concealed in a cake!

On the day appointed the three prisoners put their plan of escape into action and made their way through various locked internal doors until they reached the outer one.‭ ‬Here it had been arranged that Michael Collins would use his copy to open the door from the street outside.‭ But disaster struck as Collins broke his in the lock and the end stuck in the keyhole. He hoarsely whispered into the men behind the door what had happened. Beside him stood Harry Boland aghast at the turn of events. The situation was now very desperate as it could only be a matter of time before the alarm was raised and a point of no return had already been reached. But Dev displayed his customary coolness and pushed his own key into the hole and by good grace pushed out Collins broken nub and turned the key to Freedom. A quick embrace and a sigh of relief was all there was time for as the men made their way across the fields and into a waiting Taxi that got them away and back to Ireland. 

''Lincoln Christ Hospital School was a military hospital at the time and the prisoners had to bluff their way past some convalescing soldiers who were courting with some of the nurses outside the hospital.

The escapees hurried down Wragby Road to the Adam and Eve pub where a taxi driver was waiting (unaware of who his passengers were). They were driven to Worksop where another helper had a taxi booked to take them to Sheffield, and ultimately to a safe house in Manchester.''

Éamon de Valera’s Escape from Lincoln Prison | Visit Lincoln Blog

This escape was a great Coup for the Irish Republican Movement and as a result the men were able to return to Ireland incognito and escape capture by the British. It enabled De Valera to replace Cathal Brugha as President of Dáil Éireann and to organise his journey onwards to the USA where he as President  was to drum up a huge level of support for the ‘Cause’ back home.

They are the only men to have ever successfully escaped from Lincoln Jail.

 

3 February 1917: Count George Noble Plunkett [above with his wife Mary] won the north Roscommon bye election on this day. . It was dubbed “The Election of the Snows” due to the inclement weather prevalent at the time. Its candidate Count George Noble Plunkett took the seat by defeating the candidate of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was the father of Joseph Mary Plunkett who had been shot by the British for being one of the Leaders of the Easter Rising in1916.

It was a contest between three candidates: Thomas Devine who sought to retain the seat for the Irish Parliamentary Party; Count George Noble Plunkett and the local newspaper owner and editor Jasper Tully of the Roscommon Herald who ran as an independent. All three candidates have professed themselves to be confident of success. Count Plunkett was elected with 3,022 votes to Devine’s 1,708 and Tully’s 687.

Amid scenes of jubilation Count Plunkett  announced that his policy regarding Westminster was one of abstentionism and said:

My place henceforth will be beside you in your own country, for it is in Ireland, that the battle of Irish liberty will be fought. I recognise no parliament in existence, as having a right over the people of Ireland, just as I deny the right of England to an inch of the soil of Ireland. I do not think I will go further than the old house in College Green to represent you. I am sent by Ireland to represent you in Ireland; to stand by you and to win Ireland’s freedom upon her own soil.

His daughter Geraldine, in her posthumously published memoir, remembered: “He was not a member of Sinn Féin, but a separatist supported by a combination of separatists and almost all advanced Nationalist opinion.”

His election sent a clear message that the days of popular support for the old Irish Parliamentary Party were effectively over and a new political movement was abroad - one that would not send its representatives to London but seek to establish an Irish Parliament in Dublin - free from British Rule. 

 

2 February 1815: Daniel O'Connell killed John D'Esterre in a duel at Bishopscourt, near Naas Co Kildare. The encounter came about after D’Esterre [a provision merchant and a member of Dublin Corporation] believed he had been insulted by O’Connell.

The cause of the duel was a political speech made by O’Connell to the Catholic Board on 22nd January, 1815 in which he described the ascendancy-managed Dublin Corporation as beggarly and refusing to apologise for his criticism of Dublin Corporation's neglect of Catholics, . D’Esterre, at the time nearing bankruptcy took this as a personal insult and sent O’Connell a letter demanding a withdrawal of the statement. When this letter went unanswered, he sent a second letter which O’Connell responded to, asking D’Esterre if he wanted to challenge him, why hadn’t he yet done so. D’Esterre set out to provoke O’Connell into a challenge, and at one stage ventured out onto the streets of Dublin looking for him, horsewhip in hand only to be forced into seeking refuge in a sympathetic home, such was the crowd that began to follow him around.

D’Esterre was a man whose luck seemed to have run out. He was facing a disastrous bankruptcy, his marriage was on the rocks if not already over. His wife was pregnant with his second child. He may also have been a victim of circumstances. While it was he who took exception to O’Connell’s remark of “beggarly” on January 24th in relation to Dublin Corporation (in retaliation for its earlier anti-Catholic resolution) and sent his challenge to a man who could not refuse as his personal courage was being publicly questioned of late years.

A duel was thus arranged to settle the matter. The appointed time on the day set was at 3.30 p.m. O’Connell arrived at three and seemed to be most calm and collected, but fell on his backside as he crossed a ditch onto the “pitch”. Undeterred he, and more so his seconds, prepared professionally. D’Esterre arrived at 4pm. It took 40 minutes or so to decide the means, etc. i.e., a case of pistols each, ten paces apart, to fire according to his judgement at the drop of a handkerchief Their last exchange of words meant there was going to be no back-down.

D’Esterre then very honourably stated that he had no animosity towards Catholics whatsoever. At the signal he moved and fired first but missed very badly, his shot falling short. It’s possible this was deliberate as he was an ex Officer in the Royal Marines and a crack shot by all accounts. He may have expected O’Connell to reciprocate in kind. But it was not to be and almost instantly O’Connell (who seems to have been no mean shot himself) fired and hit his target. D’Esterre instantly collapsed shot through the lower spine. Still alive he was carried away clinging to life. In two days he was dead having bled to death.

O’Connell returned in a triumphal cavalcade back to Dublin where his deed earned him respect as a man not be trifled with in Public Life. But O’Connell soon had regrets and he set up a pension for his dead opponent’s daughter and later went to great efforts to conduct legal business for the widow of D’Esterre.

 

1 February‭ 523/25: The Feast Day of Saint Brigid/ Naomh Bhríde aka Féile Brígíd on this day. Or as the Irish Annals are fond of stating ‘according to some’.

1‭ February 525 AD: Saint Brighit, virgin, Abbess of Cill Dara, died. It was to her Cill Dara was first granted, and by her it was founded. Brighit was she who never turned her mind or attention from the Lord for the space of one hour, but was constantly meditating and thinking of him in her heart and mind, as is evident in her own Life, and in the Life of St. Brenainn, Bishop of Cluain Fearta. She spent her time diligently serving the Lord, performing wonders and miracles, healing every disease and every malady, as her Life relates, until she resigned her spirit to heaven, the first day of the month of February; and her body was interred at Dun, in the same tomb with Patrick, with honour and veneration.

Annals of the Four Masters

Though according to another account the key dates in her Life were as follows:

Birth of St.‭ Brigid, on a Wednesday, the 8th of the February moon; on a Sunday –

Wednesday,‭ the 18th, she received the veil, with eight virgins; Wednesday, the 28th, she rested.

Chronicon Scotorum‭ 539 AD

Whatever the true story of Brigid’s Life we are capable of putting together the outlines of her story.‭ ‬She was born to a mother called Brocca, a Christian from Britain who was not married to but subservient to Dubhthach, a Gaelic Chieftain and the father of Brigid. Her place of birth was at Faughart in what is now north Co Louth. Whether Brocca was merely an attractive slave girl or a trophy mistress taken on a raid is an open question but its possible that Brigid did not know her father well while a child and was more or less raised by her Mother. Her name Brigid was taken from that of a Celtic Goddess and this considered Deity was apparently worshipped in her Father’s Household. This female deity was the goddess of fire, whose manifestations were song, craftsmanship, and poetry, which the Irish considered the flame of knowledge.

As she grew to womanhood she showed signs of piety and generosity to those less fortunate than herself.‭ While the date is not quite certain she was perhaps took the veil in around 468 AD and was received into Holy Orders by Saint Mel. If this be true she might have already have been a devotee of Brigid and as the daughter of a powerful man who was won over to Christianity she would have been a important convert to the Church.

She is believed to have founded her first convent in Clara,‭ County Offaly, other ones followed after her fame grew. But it was to be in Kildare that her major foundation would emerge. Her father seems to have had his base around here and have used his local influence to secure her a good site, perhaps on the locus of an earlier Shrine to Goddess herself. Around 470 she founded Kildare Abbey, a double monastery, for nuns and monks, on the plains of Cill-Dara, "the church of the oak", her cell being made under a large oak tree.

‭As Abbess of this sacred place she wielded considerable power. Known as the ‘Mary of the Gael’ and the ‘Fiery Arrow’ she became famous for her great spiritual powers over men and women and the animals that she encountered. She was also reputed to have powerful gifts of divination and the ability to impose herself on the powers of Nature. Perhaps in a throwback to her earlier devotion she maintained a Sacred Flame at her abbey of Kildare that was never allowed to go out. 

We are not quite sure of the exact year of Brigit's settlement here‭; but it probably occurred about 485, when she was thirty years of age. Hard by the church she also built a dwelling for herself and her community. We are told in the Irish Life of St. Brigit that this first house was built of wood like the houses of the people in general; and the little church under the oak was probably of wood also, like most churches of the time. As the number of applicants for admission continued to increase, both church and dwelling had to be enlarged from time to time; and the wood was replaced by stone and mortar. Such was the respect in which the good abbess was held, that visitors came from all parts of the country to see her and ask her advice and blessing: and many of them settled down in the place, so that a town gradually grew up near the convent, which was the beginning of the town of Kildare.

From‭ ‘The Wonders of Ireland’ by P. W. Joyce, 1911

But eventually St Brigid went the way of all flesh and on her death her mortal remains were buried beside the High Alter of her beloved Church in Kildare.‭ Years later when the Viking Raids moved inwards her remains were dug up and moved to Downpatrick and eventually interred along with those of Saints Patrick and Columba (Columcille). Alas we now know not their exact place of burial but it is believed they may be buried underneath or adjacent to Downpatrick Cathedral.

In Down,‭ three saints one grave do fill,

Patrick,‭ Brigid and Columcille

After her death the‭ 1st February became known in Ireland as Féile Brígíd and it replaced the old Celtic Festival of Imbolc that celebrated the beginnings of Springtime. For nearly 1,500 years the eve of her day was marked throughout the Country but especially in Leinster with the St Brigid’s Cross, a reworking of the more traditional one and possibly based on an even more ancient design.

Numerous‭ ‘Lives’ were written about her of which we know the following:

The first of them is contained in a hymn in very ancient Irish,‭ written by St. Broegan Claen, abbot of Rosturk, in Ossory, on “The Titles and Miracles of the Saint.”

The second‭ Life is by Cogitosus. It is in Latin prose. Most probably he was a monk of the monastery of Kildare that was under the rule of St. Brigid in ancient times, for he describes, in great detail, the architecture, ornaments, and arrangements of the church.

The third‭ Life is by St. Ultan, ‬of Ardbraccan, in Meath, the same who induced St. Breogan to write the metrical Life already mentioned.

The‭ 4th Life is by Anmchad, Latinized Animosus: it is in Latin metre. Who this Anmchad was — whether he was Bishop of Kildare and died in 980, or another — we have not sufficient grounds for saying with anything like certainty. The work seems to be that of one well acquainted with Kildare and its surroundings, and is more detailed than the others already mentioned.sh Army claimed that its

The‭ 5th Life is the work of Laurence of Durham, a Benedictine monk, who lived about the year 1100.

Lastly,‭ there is the Life by St. Caelan, a monk of Iniscealtra, in the Shannon, near Scariff. It is in Latin hexameters. It was discovered by an Irish Benedictine in the library of the mother-house of the Order, at Monte Cassino. The author lived in the first half of the eighth century.

Saint Brigid of Kildare By the Rev.‭ ‬Denis Murphy S.J.