Mollie, her friends, teachers and family, Mrs. Mulvany and Mamie Quigley are all figments of my imagination (though Barnaby is based on a small and hilariously noisy Bichon Frise who lives very near my house in Marino, Dublin, and barks angrily at me every time I walk by).
Many events described in this book, however, really did take place. The account of the trial of the Irish Women’s Franchise League activists is based on the report that appeared in the IWFL magazine The Irish Citizen in July 1912. An English suffragette called Mary Leigh did throw a hatchet at Mr. Asquith’s carriage on the prime minister’s visit to Dublin (in a 1965 interview in the Radio Times, she claimed she just ‘put it’ in the carriage) and was involved in the attempt to set fire to a box in the Theatre Royal. She was sentenced, along with fellow English suffragette Gladys Evans, to five years’ penal servitude. Subsequently the two women became the only suffrage campaigners to be force-fed in Ireland. They were released from prison less than three months after their conviction.
My accounts of the yacht-based protest in Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire), the raid on the house on Nassau Street (including the confetti) and the meeting at Beresford Place the next day, are based closely on the accounts written at the time for The Irish Citizen, including a piece by one of the speakers who was nearly removed from the lorry by a gang of drunk women! In her piece she thanked the police, including an Inspector Campbell, for their protection and help. I decided to make Inspector Campbell the policeman who raided the Nassau Street house the day before. The newspaper headlines from that day that are quoted in the book are all real, and a young suffragette really was almost thrown in the river on Eden Quay by an angry crowd and was rescued by the police. I couldn’t find her name in any accounts, so I let the incident happen to poor Phyllis instead.
WHEN DID IRISH WOMEN GET THE VOTE?
The Representation of the People Act 1918 became law on 6 February 1918. It gave the vote to virtually all men over 21, and women over 30 who met certain requirements. In November 1918 an act was passed which enabled women to stand for parliament in the forthcoming elections.
The only woman to win a seat in parliament across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales in December 1918 was Constance Markievicz, who was elected by the people of south Dublin but who did not take her seat. In 1922, the new Irish Free State gave the vote to all women over 21, finally giving Irish women the same voting rights as Irish men.