Abstract
This article examines the later life experiences of women who participated in the revolutionary period in Cork city and county who did not go on to marry. Many within this cohort of Cork female activists experienced poverty, ill health, economic dependency and loneliness in the aftermath of the revolutionary period. Their unmarried status left these women particularly vulnerable in a patriarchal state structured—legally, economically and culturally—on an essentialist view of the married, childbearing woman. The invisibility of adult dependency in Ireland was summed up in the 1926 Census of Population report: ‘no account is taken in this inquiry of adults who may be supported out of the household income’. Mary Daly notes the ‘high proportion of the population working within a family economy which had little reliance on money incomes and waged employment’. This may, as she states, ‘have reduced the numbers exposed to the blunt instrument of unemployment’ in the context of the 1930s depression. However, the emotional and psychological effects of economic dependency have not been considered in any depth. The lack of statutory benefits for lower-class single women who were unable to access paid employment and who did not have the requisite social insurance stamps meant that they faced a vista of poverty and dependency on charity and family members. The latter were often begrudging and indisposed to assume the financial burdens of those who they often deemed economically ‘unproductive’. This article argues that, in so many cases, financial dependency resulted in the loss of agency and autonomy for unmarried women.
Discussing the new Irish state established in 1922, Anne Dolan writes that it ‘has become harder just to admire the bricks and mortar the more that becomes known about the types of threadbare life inside’ (Dolan 2018, p. 323). This article examines the later life experiences of women who participated in the revolutionary period in Cork city and county and who did not go on to marry through the lens of applications for pensions made under the Military Service Pensions Acts, 1934 and 19491. Following the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, a number of schemes were introduced at the governmental level to compensate those who had been involved in the campaigns of the revolutionary period or those who had been bereaved or wounded (Coleman 2017, pp. 916–17). The most significant of these measures was the legislation that allowed for the award of a pension to those who had given service in various republican organisations2. Cumann na mBan was designated such an organisation under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934. Applicants had to meet the strict criteria delineated under the Acts and interpreted by the Military Service Pensions Board (MSPB). They also had to provide corroborating evidence of service by referees. The Military Service Pensions Collection (MSPC) facilitates the historian to move beyond a focus on the lives of middle-class unmarried women, who, like Rosamond Jacob and Dorothy Macardle, left diaries and other written testimony (Lane 2010, 2019, 2025). In Spiritual Wounds, Síobhra Aiken examines the legacy of the Irish Civil War, 1922–1923, with a focus on how the enduring trauma was encoded in literary works: fiction, plays and memoirs (Aiken 2022). None of the women examined for this article left testimony beyond the letters they addressed to the Military Service Pensions Board or various politicians. Many within the Cork cohort of unmarried female activists who applied for a Military Service Pension experienced poverty, ill health, economic dependency and loneliness in the aftermath of the revolutionary period. Many lived the type of ‘threadbare life’ that Dolan refers to and, in so many ways, encapsulate the ‘bleakness’ that can be found within the MSPC (Dolan 2023, p. 16).
There has been attention paid to unmarried women in Britain, particularly in the context of the ‘surplus’ generation, whose opportunity to marry was significantly lessened due to the death of nearly three-quarters of a million soldiers during the First World War. However, there has been limited analysis in the Irish context, despite the number of unmarried women at all ages in 1926 being twice that of 1841. Furthermore, it must be considered that the census area in 1926 was 26 and not 32 counties as in 1841. The number of unmarried women in Ireland in 1926 was 50% greater than in England and three times greater than in the US (National Census of Ireland 1934, Census of Population, General Report, 1926, pp. 78–79). In their discussion of singleness, Bell and Yans identify unmarried women who, in certain circumstances, exercised ‘great power and authority over themselves and their surroundings’ (Bell and Yans 2007, p. 1). However, as Katherine Holden writes, the ‘unmarried state is generally viewed as a stage or stages in the lifecycle preceding or following marriage, with never-married people seen as exceptions to the norm’ (Holden 2007, p. 1). It is unlikely that any of the unmarried women in this Cork cohort chose singleness. The assumption that women, once they reached adulthood, would marry was embedded in the culture and legislation of the Irish Free State. Their unmarried status left these women particularly vulnerable in a patriarchal state structured—legally, economically and culturally—on an essentialist view of the married, childbearing woman.
The Census of Population, General Report pertaining to Ireland in 1926 stated that ‘the latest statistics indicate that one out of every four women who remain in this country never marry’ (National Census of Ireland 1934, Census of Population, General Report, 1926, p. 143). The invisibility of adult dependency in Ireland was summed up in the report: ‘no account is taken in this inquiry of adults who may be supported out of the household income’ (National Census of Ireland 1934, Census of Population, General Report, 1926, p. 79). Mary Daly notes the ‘high proportion of the population working within a family economy which had little reliance on money incomes and waged employment’. This may, as she states, ‘have reduced the numbers exposed to the blunt instrument of unemployment’ in the context of the 1930s economic depression (Daly 2011, p. 35). In 1932, the Vice-Chairman of the South Cork Board of Public Assistance, Philip Monahan, stated that individuals could not rely on public assistance for relief of poverty, declaring that ‘they must rely on their friends and relatives to help them out of their difficulties’ (Lucey 2015, p. 67). However, the emotional and psychological effects of economic dependency have not been considered in any depth in the case of single women. The lack of statutory benefits for lower-class single women who were unable to access paid employment and who did not have the requisite social insurance stamps meant that they faced a vista of poverty and dependency on charity and family members. Married siblings were often begrudging and indisposed to assume the financial burdens of those whom they often deemed economically ‘unproductive’. Single women belonged neither to the nuclear nor to the stem family structure. Instead, they were a component within an extended family configuration and registered very low down in the context of claims on resources. While there is some understanding in the historiography of the post-famine Irish family of the subservient position of adult children vis-à-vis parental authority, there has been limited discussion of the position experienced by unmarried individuals reliant for shelter and sustenance on siblings or nieces and nephews (Murphy 2022, p. 16).
Financial dependency resulted in the loss of agency and autonomy for unmarried women. It rendered them supplicants both within their immediate family environments and in their dealings with the MSPB. The letters that these women wrote to the latter board, the forms they filled, their pleading with politicians—all contained within their pension files—can be viewed as forms of ego-documents, a phrase coined by the Dutch historian Jacques Presser in the mid-twentieth century. He wrote,
While the women who made applications to the MSPB may not have directly intended to reveal information about their revolutionary afterlives, the files illuminate the lived experience of individuals after 1923. Often asides on an application form or letter, these ego statements allow the historian to chart—albeit through an examination of partial disclosures—the trajectories of individual lives. Interpreting these seemingly official applications, the historian must be alert to textual cadences, tone and language. Historians must decode the promise of a prayer for those to whom the appeal was made and interpret attempts to encourage male activists to remember their part in shared republican service contributed decades previously. The lack of punctuation in a letter written by an applicant indicates limited education but it can also reveal—sometimes simultaneously—a need to rapidly get down on paper the individual woman’s sense of frustration. Such letters illuminate an individual feeling of betrayal as—from her perspective—an obdurate officialdom refused to accept that which was, to her, self-explanatory—the extent of her service in bringing the independent Irish state into being. On 6 October 1941, Mary Cotter, Fermoy branch Cumann na mBan, having been deemed not to ‘qualify’ under the Military Service Pensions Act, 1934, retorted, ‘I qualified when there was work to be done and qualified when arrested at Rathcormac and kept …under a gun for hours and my bicycle taken from me and qualified again when arrested in Watergrasshill’3.I have been working over the years with all sorts of historical sources, and I have isolated one specific type, which I called ego-document: autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, letters and so on, in short all written sources, in which we meet a man more clearly, more personally, than in other sources, and who thus becomes to us instead of a ‘nameless human’—whatever that might be—a distinctive ego.(Quoted in Baggerman and Dekker 2018, pp. 91–92)
Rather than merely official documents, the MSPC files have the potential to reveal a type of cosmos—in this case, the realities of living in an Ireland that privileged the married woman over the unmarried. What is universal in these applications is the increasingly constricted nature of the afterlives of this cohort of women. Describing their early republican activism, many viewed themselves as part of a collective idealistic campaign for Irish freedom, dangerous but also exciting in the perception of a shared purpose and goal—in the sense of service and participation. For so many within the Cork cohort, their later lives were, by contrast, studies in quiet desperation and confusion. These were women who had, in many cases, significantly contributed to the establishment of the new Irish State. This article seeks to restore their visibility: to identify them, to name them and to rescue them from their status as ‘unproductive’ deadweight existing on the margins of the families created by married siblings or other relatives. Their very act of their writing to the MSPB draws attention to a set of distinct lived experiences in the post-revolutionary Irish State.
Cumann na mBan was established on 2 April 1914 in Wynn’s Hotel, Dublin, as an auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers. Just over two months later, on 8 June, the Cork branch was launched, with Mary MacSwiney elected as President (Lane 2025, pp. 14–15). Cork did not rise in Easter 1916. In the words of Cumann na mBan member Peg Duggan, ‘… it did not fall to our lot in Cork to join in the fight’4. However, during the War of Independence and the Civil War, women in Cork city and county were fully immersed in republican activism in a diversity of roles. In the city itself, they were centrally involved in the street theatre of an increasingly visible republicanism and the creation of a counter-state. In her account of Cumann na mBan, Lil Conlon repeatedly referred to the wearing of Sinn Féin badges by men and women across the county (Conlon n.d., p. 35). On 15 April 1917, male and female members of Sinn Féin held a demonstration at the National Monument on the Grand Parade following mass in St Peter and Paul’s church in memory of those who had died in 1916. The RIC intervened and ordered the attendees to disperse. The result was as follows:
In 1943, Nora Martin wrote a reference for Eileen Barry, Craobh Poblachta na hÉireann branch, Cumann na mBan, referring to the ‘clock-work attendance of large numbers of members … at Jail Gates, Executions, Railways, Funerals, Protest Meetings, etc.’6. Such diverse activism was dangerous and often resulted in loss of employment and/or imprisonment. In the period 1917–1923, Cork was ‘by far the most violent county of Ireland’ (Hart 1998, p. 50). John Borgonovo wrote that the people living in the city grew accustomed to street ambushes, prison escapes, shootings of suspected prison informers, executions of IRA prisoners and arson and assassination reprisals carried out by Crown forces (Borgonovo 2006, p. 1). The Cork politician Liam de Róiste wrote in his diary of raids across the city on 11 May 1919, stating that police and soldiers ‘routed people out of bed, locked them into one room while searching other rooms, showed no respect for age or sex’7. He continued to record instances of raiding and violence throughout the War of Independence and Civil War8. Women were centrally immersed in such a political landscape. In her reference for Ellen Carroll, Cork branch, Cumann na mBan, Martin summed up the fraught and dangerous nature of female activism in the county in pursuit of republican independence:Loud bursts of alternative cheering and hissing, led by the female section, added a little commotion to the scene, and individual attacks by the young women on policemen, some of whom were knocked down, was followed by the order for the drawing of batons to clear the streets…5
Keeping vigil night after night knowing yourself to be the guardian of some soldiers [sic] life, waiting the creepy crawl of the armoured car and the rush of the soldiers from the lorries and the rat-tat on your door is a nerve-wracking experience but this continued over months and years and is indeed an ordeal. Dodging through lanes and alleys with the gun that you know is intended to be used for the killing of an enemy never thinking of your own danger…9
In their revolutionary afterlives, many of the cohort of unmarried Cork women—as women regardless of marital status across the country—expressed the sense that they had given service during the ‘prime of life’10. Many articulated incredulity that this labour was later disregarded, devalued and elided. Margaret O’Callaghan, St Finbarr’s branch, Cumann na mBan, declared that her ‘service from start to finish couldn’t be better’, before adding, ‘I am un-married and have no one to help me’.11 Others were defiant. In 1942, Kate O’Donovan told the Minister for Defence to ‘spare his regrets for somebody else, as regret is of no avail to me’12. Nora Martin drew attention to the gender bias of the Board, a reflection of the wider patriarchal Irish society:
Other Cork activists also expressed frustration. Nora O’Donoghue wrote, ‘all over the country there are women who done their bit and when, as I, sought some little recompense were ignored by those whom they helped in the struggle and later assisted in putting them into office’14.Lawyers and civil servants, no matter how sympathetic, can never visualize the feelings of those women during the period 19[16] to 1924, In justice to them, one woman at least should be on that advisory Board13.
The reduction in the worth and importance of female republican labour came into relief when women applied for pensions under the Military Service Pension Acts from 1934. Most of these women had only an inchoate, if any, understanding of the structural inequalities that underpinned the Military Service Pensions legislation. Prescribed gender roles and masculinised ideas around what constituted active military service informed official responses to the applications of women, often rendering their service lesser15. A rare few recognised the inherent discrimination of the pension application process as it pertained to women. Annie Walsh, sister-in-law of the Cork Lord Mayor, Tomas MacCurtain, murdered by the RIC in 1920, perceptively wrote,
The insightful response of Sheila Wallace was rare, underscoring as she did the often invisible nature of women’s contribution to the republican cause. Together with her sister Nora, Wallace kept a shop on Brunswick Street between two central city arteries: the Grand Parade and the South Main Street. This pivotal location meant that the premises became ‘a rallying ground for city & co. men … and the natural selection as a carrying house for despatches.’ Sean O’Hegarty, IRA Brigade O/C, described the Wallace sisters as ‘the right stuff’17. Yet the trust placed in the two women by the leadership of the Cork No. 1 Brigade and the highly charged intelligence work that they performed had limited value when it came to assessing pensions. Wallace wrote, ‘your board did not do me justice, The work which we did during the whole period could never be repaid’18.You gentlemen, see everything from the man’s point of view—you are all men on the Board—but did it never strike you that there is also the woman’s?16
For a significant number of this cohort of Cork women, involvement in republican activism changed the trajectories of their lives and not for the better. The historian R. F. Foster notes the differing impulses that emerged in the aftermath of the decade 1913–1923, remarking on the ‘disillusionment’ that prevailed in many cases. He enumerates the questions that individuals asked of themselves and of the wider society: ‘Did we do that? How did it happen? How did we end up here?’ (Foster 2015, p. xx). For many single women in the Cork cohort, the latter question—how did we end up here?—was asked in relation to the poverty and economic dependency they experienced in their later lives when placed next to the service they believed that they had contributed—republican labour that was dangerous and often full-time. Marriage was no automatic protection for women against poverty and hardship in independent Ireland. However, unmarried women were particularly vulnerable in a state that legislated on the basis that all women existed within the domestic paradigm. Women’s relationship with the new state established in 1922 was defined as domestic. Access of Irish women to paid employment and full rights as citizens was increasingly restricted in the 1920s and 1930s through legislation heavily influenced by Catholic social teaching (See Beaumont 2018). The female marriage bar that existed in the civil service on the establishment of the state was maintained and extended to national school teachers in 1932 (see Foley 2022). In the debate on the Conditions of Employment Bill in 1935, Dorothy Macardle noted the bitter ‘competition for employment that existed in Ireland’ and stated that, because women were ‘economically and politically still more or less at the mercy of men’, they were exploited in industry: women were ‘paid lower wages and forced by poverty to accept them’19. The Irish Free State placed a premium on the idea of a male breadwinner wage; men should be facilitated to earn a sufficient income to allow them to maintain a wife and family. This economic priority and the lack of equal pay for equal work impacted heavily on women who did not marry.
Poverty due to unemployment or inadequate wages was encoded on the bodies of many single women who applied for a Special Allowance as they presented with malnutrition and other related illnesses. These means-tested allowances were introduced in 1943 for those with 1916 service who were, as the Minister for Defence, Oscar Traynor, stated, ‘incapable of self-support either by reason of age or permanent infirmity of mind or body’20. In 1946, eligibility was extended to all veterans (Coleman 2017, p. 928). The introduction of this allowance came at a time when the cohort of women discussed here began to age and were increasingly vulnerable to poverty and ill health. On receiving a Special Allowance, Mary MacCarthy, Crosspound Knockavilla branch, Cumann na mBan, 1st Battalion, 3rd Cork Brigade, penned a two line letter: ‘Thank you so much Im [sic] very grateful. I was often hungry lately’21. Nellie Knowles, Lisgoold Company, 4th Battalion, 1st Cork Brigade, eked out a living as a nurse to private patients. In 1954, aged 53 and living alone, she was unable to work due to ill health. She found it ‘hard to keep going’. Examined by a MSPB medical officer, she was described as ‘of prematurely aged appearance’ and ‘undernourished’22. The medical report on Ellen Hurley, Rosscarbery branch, Cumann na mBan, stated that her ‘diet has been grossly deficient. It appears to have consisted of a few potatoes (daily) tea and bread and butter. Never eats meat. Occasionally an egg. No vegetables’23. Hurley died aged 66 of pernicious anaemia and myocardial degeneration24. In 1948, Mary Kate O’Leary, Fermoy branch, Cumann na mBan, wrote to ask for something to be done in her case ‘as sometime ago you stated that anyone having a service medal would not starve well I am almost starving’. That same year, MSPB medical officer Dr J.C. Saunders emphasised O’Leary’s appalling living conditions: ‘I have gone into her social conditions and am forced to the conclusion that she has been existing at bare subsistence level (that is of semi-starvation)’. O’ Leary wrote, ‘I have no one belonging to me’25.
So many women expressed a belief that they had been forgotten by an Irish State that they had helped to establish. Ellen Donovan, attached to the Behagh Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Cork Brigade, wrote, ‘I have sacrificed my whole career on behalf of the movement … opportunities at the time were offered but I did not avail of same. I was unfortunately for myself too national minded at the time’26. She noted that she had been ‘invited’ on a number of occasions to go to America to join her sister, who ‘had a good position there’. Declining such opportunities to ‘give all to the National cause’, she was, she wrote in 1942, ‘left penniless to eke out an existence as best I may’. She could not ‘understand’, she declared, ‘how the Referee has found that I am not a paerson [sic] to whom the Act applies’27. Donovan had, indeed, made reference to being ‘penniless’ as early as 1934, when she first applied for a Military Service Pension—an indicator of how protracted engagement with the MSPB was for many women as they faced bureaucratic delays and the repeated rejection of claims that they believed to be fully justified28. Donovan’s family home was the headquarters of the 3rd Cork Battalion and it was raided ‘several times’. Taking the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War, she did dispatch and scouting work, as well as caring for wounded IRA men29. She described the family home during the revolutionary period as ‘more like a Military Barrack than a farm house’ and claimed that she suffered ‘shocks’ leading to ‘nervous debility’. ‘Unable to work’, she had, as she wrote in 1935, no visible means of support but depended on the kindness of a few friends, a gloomy outlook for me’. By 1943, she was dependent on charity from a Catholic hostel30. What she wanted was that the government ‘give me some recompense to enable me to live in frugal comfort for the rest of my life’31. She was particularly anxious that she would ‘have a sufficient sum to cover her burial expenses in West Cork’32. Donovan noted in a letter to the Minister for Defence that her sister was buried with her parents, ascribing the former’s death during the War of Independence to a raid on her home by ‘brutal and intoxicated’ members of the British military. She delineated how she was saving money to ensure that she could be buried with her dead relatives, noting small amounts of money received from her brother and niece on their various trips back to Ireland from America33. Despite such savings, Donovan was, by 1956, relying on ‘my burial expenses to keep me’. In another letter to the Minister for Defence, she referred to experiencing a nervous breakdown ‘after the Black and Tan trouble’, leading to the loss of sight in one eye. She concluded the letter declaring ‘God’s Holy Will be done’34.
Donovan did not receive a Military Service Pension, although she did receive a Special Allowance in later life—a testament to the poverty she experienced. Any employment she had throughout her life was transitory and low-paying. Her death certificate listed her as a retired insurance agent, with social welfare reports adding the detail that she worked as a ‘collector’ for St Ann’s Hostel, Father Matthew Quay, Cork. This would most likely have been poorly paid work on commission. The social welfare officer estimated that she ceased this employment due to ill health in ‘about 1946’, at which point she began to receive a Home Assistance benefit35. Her file shows that she, like many women within the cohort, changed address repeatedly; transient living was also a signifier of economic hardship. Before she went into St Mary’s Home in Montenotte, she lived at a number of different places across Cork city. One such address was c/o Mrs O’Brien, 40 Washington Street, Cork. The latter may have been a relative, but it is more likely in this case that the address signified lodger status. In the 1911 census, 40 Great George’s Street, as it was known then, was designated as a 12-room shop; Thomas O’Connor, the head of the household, was listed as a pharmacist36. In the 1926 census, it was listed as a draper’s shop37. The large-scale nature of the premises would suggest that it was utilised as a lodging house in a later period. Indeed, in a letter to the MSPB, Donovan referred to the cost of renting a room. She was, she wrote, unemployed and ‘trying to support myself’38. As Ruth MacManus poses in her article on lodgers in Dublin in the early twentieth century, ‘what options were available to those who were adult, single and of limited means? What happened to individuals who, due to sheer poverty, were unable to set up their own households’ (MacManus 2018, p. 25). Elaine Abelson notes that, in 1930s America, many contemporaries viewed ‘single women living alone in furnished rooms’ as homeless (Abelson 2007, p. 222).
Irish society in the decades after independence venerated home and family. Women’s role was enshrined within the home under article 41.2 of the 1937 constitution. Yet many cohorts were condemned to uncertainty and transience—to living in a space that was not a home by the discourse of the period. Single women were one such vulnerable group. Ellen Cotter, Carrigtwohill branch of Cumann na mBan, had ‘no home of her own’39. In 1954, Ciss Hennessy, H Company, 4 Battalion, 1 Cork Brigade, Cumann na mBan, wrote to the MSPB, ‘I am trying to keep going here I and haven’t any thing all I have is gone now living on my own and no one to give me anything’40. On 11 February 1950, Katie O’Mahony, Knockvilla branch, Cumann na mBan, wrote to the Department of Defence, ‘I havent [sic] house or home and am only tempry [sic] under another mans [sic] house’41. The lack of autonomy experienced by single women in the early to mid-twentieth century was summed up by Katie O’Mahony’s brother-in-law, who made clear to the MSPB that ‘there was no obligation on him to support applict’. Living in his house, she had to ‘buy her own provisions’42. Enquiring about the delay in her Special Allowance in 1952, she stated that she could not ‘live without the payment’. She had, she declared, no access to credit43. When Peg Healy, Bandon Cumann na mBan, received a Special Allowance, her sister and brother-in-law ‘demanded a contribution from claimant towards lodgings’. By 1961, she was living ‘alone in lodgings’ in Cork44.
Marie Coleman notes that the financial dependency in later life of many revolutionary women on a Military Service Pension and/or a Special Allowance was due to ‘the absence of a state-sponsored social insurance system in Ireland at the time’. From the 1920s, Home Assistance became the ‘normal’ means of relieving poverty and was defined as ‘relief given in money, food or “articles of absolute necessity”’ (Lucey 2015, pp. 41, 45). Donnacha Seán Lucey states that Home Assistance policies as administered in Cork in the 1920s ‘were framed by poor economic circumstances and a local welfare regime which favoured economic retrenchment’ (Lucey 2015, p. 61). The Unemployment Assistance Act, 1933, stipulated that a ‘spinster’ had to have fifty-two contributions in the previous four years45. Many women in this cohort were ineligible for benefits under the Act. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was an expectation that women would not engage in paid labour. They were supported at home until they married, contributing to the family economy in the form of unpaid labour. Josie Hickey, 3rd Battalion, H. Company, 4th Cork Brigade, wrote, ‘I have been working in my home since I left school’46. Alice Bailey was ‘[n]ever employed except on father’s farm’47. This left women in a precarious economic position in later life if they did not achieve marital status. The women in this study were never independent, as were many of the women in Abelson’s study of homeless unmarried women in America during the Great Depression era in the 1930s (Abelson 2007, p. 220). ‘Never worked for wages’ is a phrase that appears repeatedly in the applications for Special Allowances submitted to the MSPB by single women48. In 1952, ‘a limited form of social insurance was introduced in the Social Welfare Act, but even then it excluded about half of the working population who were self-employed’. Improvements in social welfare provision did not come about until the 1960s and 1970s, when many such veterans were dead (Coleman 2017, p. 927).
The domestic paradigm of woman as wife and mother that was dominant in the Irish Free State created structures and assumptions that omitted consideration of the unmarried woman. There was continuity in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in rural Ireland, of marriage and inheritance patterns established after the famine (Kenny 2000, p. 183). The typical Irish rural family as it developed in the post-famine period delineated the roles of, and opportunities for, siblings. Non-inheriting siblings who did not marry and remained on the farm ‘waiting’ were often reduced to ‘subservience’ and ‘condemned … to celibacy’ (Earner-Byrne 2018, pp. 641–42). At some point, indeed, for many, there was no longer any waiting, just resignation to dependency on grudging relatives. Access to education beyond the basic level was limited for lower-class female veterans. A note on the summary of evidence with respect to Hannah Barrett, Kilbrittain Cumann na mBan, stated, ‘Applicant, when questioned on the discrepancy between her Application Form and the Statement, which she handed in, said she had not much education’49. Indeed, some within the Cork group of unmarried women noted that they jettisoned education in a desire to contribute full-time republican service or to take up responsibilities within a parental home fractured by the campaigns of the revolutionary period. Elizabeth Murphy, H Company, Skehanore, 7th Battalion, 3rd Cork Brigade, described how she had to remain at home to look after her mother, who suffered strain when her two brothers were on the run from Crown forces during the War of Independence:
Ellen Buckley, who attended school in Macroom Convent, wrote that she ‘gave up much of the time I should have spent in studying to carrying despatches, etc., for the I.R.A., and so I lost my Matriculation Examination in September 1923, failing in one subject only’51.I had to give up attending school which I intended to continue and nurse my mother thereby upsetting my future career in life. I am now without a position as I was unable to qualify for anything owing to what I have stated50.
Many single women lived with married siblings. Elizabeth Cotter, Ballymacoda, Co. Cork, helped in her brother’s household in return for ‘maintenance, clothing and pocket money’52. A Garda report into the circumstances of Nora Casey in 1951 revealed a case of poverty and the indignity of dependence on family members. As a woman, Casey’s expected life trajectory was to marry and be maintained within the home by her husband. Casey alleged the onset of a permanent illness contracted while tending to IRA men in the family home in 1921. She was a member of the Macroom branch of Cumann na mBan, attached to the 7th Battalion, 1st Cork Brigade during the War of Independence. Her republican work, she alleged, ‘incapacitated me from earning my living’. The ‘disease left a mark’ and prevented her from emigrating to America53. Her sister stated that she had intended to train as a nurse before her ‘breakdown’. Casey became a Ward of Court under a High Court Order, 17 July 1951. Like so many single women who applied for a Special Allowance, Casey had ‘never worked for wages’. She received ‘free maintenance & support’ from her brother Michael. The Social Welfare officer emphasised that she had ‘no legal right to the same’. Her brother betrayed his irritation with his responsibility for his sibling, writing tetchily to the Department of Defence in 1959 that he had not received ‘the last cheque for maintenance which was due a few months ago. The woman who cares for her has me annoyed for the past few weeks asking for the money to pay Nora’s milk bill’s etc.’.54
The Garda report on Nora Casey underscored the patriarchal nature of inheritance patterns in Ireland in the period. She had no claim on her father’s property and assets, unlike her male siblings55. Casey died aged 64 in Macroom District Hospital. Designated a spinster, her occupation was listed as a domestic56. In 1963, Mary Doyle, Kilpatrick Cumann na mBan, had ‘never worked for wages’ and was maintained by her brother. Her father died intestate in 1915. When her brother James married, she and her other sister signed over their share of the farm in Bandon to him. He was insistent that they had not ‘any right now in the place’57. In 1952, Doyle declared that she didn’t ‘want to be a burden on my Brother if you don’t give me a pension that I can live on I will go to the Co home’58. This reference to the county home is loaded with connotations of the hated workhouses established under the Poor Law (Ireland) Act, 1838. When the old regime was dismantled in 1923, workhouses were redesignated as county homes. Despite the more ‘benign’ nomenclature, these were institutions associated with poverty and the lack of familial support for individuals who could not maintain themselves (Earner-Byrne 2017, p. 28). In 1960, Doyle’s brother sold the farm and went to live with another brother, Jeremiah. This left her without a home, and she was forced to go to Cork city to live with her sister Nora, who made clear that she was not able to support her.
Similar to Mary Doyle, Frances Hinshon, Dromina Cumann na mBan, and her sister signed over their share of the family farm to their brother when their father died intestate60. Mary Ellen Cadogan, Baltimore Cumann na mBan, was ‘never employed outside own holding’. That holding was left in her mother’s will to her brother. In 1949, Cadogan, who spent seven months interned during the Civil War and endured a hunger strike, lived with her brother, sister and a cousin. The Social Welfare report noted that, while her lodgings were ‘free’, she had no legal rights61.Applt states that she was entitled to nothing and received nothing from her brother James out of proceedings of sale of his farm, and she states hence forward she will have neither lodgings nor maintenance because the sister with whom she will live in Cork is not in a position to provide either59.
In so many of the MSPC files pertaining to single women in Cork, siblings and other relatives expressed a sense that such family members were an economic burden. In 1953, Julia Kelleher, aged 52, who gave revolutionary service with the 3rd Cork Brigade in Ballinadee, Upton and surrounding areas, was living with her brother, who asked for her pension claim to be reconsidered: ‘I hope now you will do something for her, as she is a great burden to me’62. He referred to her as ‘staying’ with him; she was not living with him. Julia’s brother followed up with the MSPB six months later, writing tersely, ‘[y]ou said to remind you if were not hearing anything. So this is the reminder’63. One can sense his frustration at being responsible for maintaining his sister. By 1958, Julia Kelleher was living with her sister Ellen, who ran a public house in Bandon on a lease from the Beamish and Crawford Brewery. Ellen also sold ‘small household commodities’ from the premises. A social welfare report from that year stated that Julia had ‘no occupation’ and that she assisted her sister with housework in return for board and lodgings. The report noted the poor trade done by the pub and that Ellen’s maintenance of her sister ‘provides a hardship’64. In considering the irritation—often outright annoyance—expressed by individuals at being responsible for the economic support of siblings who did not contribute a wage, one does have to consider the stagnant Irish economy in the decades after independence. The largest county in Ireland, with a population of 3,392,104 in 1911, Cork, at the city level, underwent a progressive economic decline from the early nineteenth century65. De-industrialisation in the city resulted in the accumulation of large numbers of unskilled workers (Dineen 2022, p. 14). There were high rates of poverty and notorious slums (Dwyer 2012, p. 91). The Cork politician and diarist Liam de Róiste outlined the continued fiscal and commercial stagnation that prevailed in Cork in the 1920s, a reflection of the wider national economic climate: ‘poverty, unemployment, and … misery for the people who have to live on weekly wages. The outlook for the general mass of the people is not cheery’66. The fiscal conservatism of the Cumann na nGaedheal governments of the 1920s was in part due to the high number of compensation claims made for damage to businesses and property during the campaigns of the revolutionary period. The effects of the economic decline consequent on the Wall Street crash of 1929 were worsened in Ireland by the Economic War, 1932–1938, between Ireland and Britain, sparked by de Valera’s refusal to hand over land annuity payments to the latter (Dolan 2018, p. 328). In such an economic climate, support for those within the nuclear family unit was seen by many as the priority, with single siblings viewed as superfluous and a burden.
During the revolutionary period, Julia Kelleher claimed that her name was used as a ‘covering address’ for the Brigade O/C, that she had carried dispatches, carried out intelligence work and, on one occasion, carried a revolver. She described herself as a member of the ‘Medical Unit Irish Republican Army’. She asserted that she had done scouting duties for the IRA on the morning of the Crossbarry ambush on 19 March 1921, while members of the IRA involved retreated to her home for medical care67. Discussing the ambush in Guerilla Days in Ireland, Tom Barry declared that it was ‘no easy matter to manoeuvre, conceal, billet and feed a Flying Colum of that strength over a long period and in an area that was then holding down at least five thousand British troops’ (Barry 1981, p. 102). In the 1950s, reliant on family members for maintenance, Kelleher was described as ‘mentally weak’ and in need of ‘constant supervision’68. In her unsuccessful application for a Military Service Pension, she stated that the family home was raided on a number of occasions and that she ‘got a few shocks’, impacting her health. While she referred to physical effects, notably the weakening of her heart, it is quite likely that what she experienced also impacted her mental health69. She ‘had not done any kind of work since adolescence’70. In 1959, the MSPB recognised that Kelleher was not even able to provide housework in return for board and lodgings and that she should be not be assessed ‘with earned maintenance’71. Kelleher died in 1966 at the Bandon Cottage Hospital. Her death certificate listed her as a retired housekeeper72.
Financial dependency resulted in a loss of agency and autonomy for unmarried women—what Lindsey Earner Byrne describes as the denial of ‘the status of full social adulthood’ (Earner-Byrne 2018, p. 663). Many within the Cork cohort of single women examined found themselves moving between the homes of different married siblings as they moved into old age. Lena O’Riordan, Toames Branch Cumann na mBan, 7th Battalion, 1st Cork Brigade, lived with her parents. On their death, she shuttled between the homes of her brother in Macroom and her sister in Cork city73. Applying for a Special Allowance, she wrote of her sister, ‘I am intirely [sic] dependent on her & have no means of my own expect [sic] a Military Pension’74. The death of a sibling had the potential to make worse the already precarious economic position of many unmarried women. Mary O’Mahony’s income fell below the means test even when her Special Allowance was combined with the earnings of her brother, a testament to the subsistence nature of the household. When Christopher died in 1959, she ‘miss[ed] his wages very much’. Three years earlier, the MSPB medical officer described O’Mahony, Carrignavar Company, 5th Battalion, 1st Cork Brigade, as ‘literally skin and bone. … It is most unlikely that the malnutrition can be remedied’75.
Unmarried women who engaged in paid employment found it harder to obtain positions as they aged. Nora O’Donoghue wrote, ‘In further support of my application I wish to state that I find it very difficult to obtain a suitable position, younger girls getting the preference’76. Susanna Walsh stated that she ‘left a good position in Spain in order to help the movement during the years from 1913 to 1923’77. In later life, she attempted to eke out a living giving Spanish classes ‘to a few pupils’ and making artificial flowers. She was, the social welfare officer declared, ‘in poor circumstances’78. Susanna’s sister, Annie, worked in Saxone Shoes on the Grand Parade in Cork city until her ‘collapse’ in November 1929. Applying to the MSPB, she wrote, ‘if I were able to earn my living in any way I should not make this application’. She had, she declared, ‘no intention to seek a pension or reward for having served my country’. Her brother-in law, Tomas MacCurtain, had ‘died in her arms’ in 1920. By 1937, she was ‘absolutely penniless’. Under medical attention, she found ‘the increased cost of medicines and living in general very difficult to cope with’. At this point, her pension claim had been before the MSPB since April 1935.79
While there are a diversity of personal histories of post-revolutionary life evident in the files of the MSPC, it is obvious that a significant number of individuals sought a pension to alleviate poverty. This is particularly evident in an examination of the files of Cork applicants who did not go on to marry. The received thinking at the governmental and official levels in the Irish Free State and into the early decades of the Irish Republic was that women were supported in marriage by their husbands, underpinned by an economic commitment to the male breadwinner wage. This domestic paradigm of woman as wife and married mother created economic structures and assumptions that omitted consideration of the needs of unmarried females. There was a cultural and official expectation that unmarried women who did not, or could not, engage in paid labour would be supported by family. The resolution of claims and appeals with the MSPB was a protracted process, resulting in disappointment and despair for so many of the cohort of single women in Cork in the process exposing the psychological impacts of poverty and economic dependency. Nora O’Donoghue highlighted the bureaucracy of the pension application process and objected to ‘being turned down via a “circular letter”’ after her contributions to the national cause80. Accessing relief from poverty through the MSPB was often the only option for many claimants. Catherine O’Hara’s sister bluntly summed up the situation when she wrote to the Department of Defence: ‘I wish to inform you that my sister Catherine O’Hara who was staying with me and in recipet [sic] of an IRA pension don’t need that pension any more as she is dead’81. Economic vulnerability was augmented in the case of unmarried women because they were not part of the ‘normal’ familial unit as enshrined in the 1937 constitution and because they were often viewed as an economic burden by their married siblings. A member of the Lyre Branch of Cumann na mBan attached to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Cork Brigade, Julia Cahalane’s sense of disillusionment with the lack of any recognition of her service was palpable: ‘… I am writing this on Christmas Eve and I remember a Christmas Eve when I had a visit from a lorry load of British Military who put me up against the wall’. She was not, she declared, ‘turned down in my own mind because I did what was expected of me and someday I will get recognition’. Yet the reality for Cahalane was that she had ‘no way of being only dependent on a brother’s earning who I live with’82.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Data Availability Statement
No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.
Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflict of interest.
Notes
| 1 | The pension files of 1065 women who applied to the Military Service Pensions Board from an address in Cork were examined to isolate single women. A further 61 files were consulted from women who gave service in Cork but applied to the MSPB from an address outside the county. Of these, 359 women were determined as single. Of that cohort, 96 women received a Special Allowance or Wound Pension. |
| 2 | The Military Service Pensions Acts, 1924, 1934, 1949. The Army Pensions Acts, 1923 and 1932, allowed for an award to be made based on wounding or bereavement. |
| 3 | Letter to [the MSPB] from Mary Cotter, Mary Cotter, MSP34REF59484, IMA. |
| 4 | Peg Duggan, Appeal, 28 June 1950, Peg Duggan MSP34REF10072, IMA. For a discussion on the failure of Cork to rise in 1916, see Lane, Mary MacSwiney, chap. 2. |
| 5 | Cork Examiner, 16 April 1917. |
| 6 | Letter to the MSPB from Nora Martin, 4 January 1943, Eileen Barry, MSP34REF52674, IMA. |
| 7 | Liam de Róiste Diary, 11 May 1919, CCCA. |
| 8 | See, for example, Liam de Róiste Diary, 4 December 1919, 21 February 1920, CCCA. |
| 9 | Letter to Mr Flinn, MSPB, from Nora Martin, 12 October 1942, Ellen Carroll, MSP34REF39909, IMA. |
| 10 | Letter to the Office of the Referee from Margaret O’Sullivan, 18 August 1943, Margaret O’Sullivan, MSP34REF58214, IMA. |
| 11 | Letter to [the MSPB] from Margaret O’Callaghan, 30 December 1946, Margaret O’Callaghan, DP15994, IMA. |
| 12 | Letter to Secretary [Department of Defence?] from Kate O’Donovan, 8 October 1942. Kate Ann O’Donovan, 34SP56873, IMA. |
| 13 | Letter to Mr Flinn from Nora Martin, 12 October 1942, Ellen Carroll, MSP34REF39909, IMA. |
| 14 | Letter to Dear Sir from Nora O’Donoghue, 19 June 1942, Nora O’Donoghue, 34SP31240, IMA. |
| 15 | For a discussion of the structural inequalities of Military Service Pensions legislation from 1924 and the impact on female veterans’ later lives, see Hayley Brabazon, ‘Making and Unmaking Veterans: Women and the Afterlives of the Irish Revolution’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, DCU, 2026. |
| 16 | Annie Walsh, statement, received 6 September 1945, Annie Walsh, 34REF5979, IMA. |
| 17 | Sheila Wallace, Application for a Military Service Pension, 6 December 1935; Sheila Wallace, 34REF29324, IMA. |
| 18 | Letter to the MSPB from Sheila Wallace, 20 November 1937, Sheila Wallace, 34REF29324, IMA. |
| 19 | Letter to editor, Irish Press, from Dorothy Macardle, 13 May 1935. |
| 20 | Oscar Traynor, ‘Army Pensions Bill, 1943—Second Stage’, Dáil Éireann Debates, 4 March 1943. |
| 21 | Letter to the Department of Defence from Mary MacCarthy, 4 October 1956, Mary MacCarthy, DP18513 IMA. |
| 22 | Letter to the Department of Defence from Nellie Knowles, 10 September 1954; Medical Report, 9 August 1954, Nellie Knowles, DP24822, IMA. |
| 23 | Medical Report, 9 February 1948, Ellen Hurley, DP4590, IMA. |
| 24 | Ellen Hurley, Death Certificate, 19 February 1951. https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/files/civil/deaths_returns/deaths_1951/04508/4185370.pdf, accessed on 14 May 2026. |
| 25 | Letter to [the Department of Defence] from Mary Kate O’Leary; Medical Report, 27 September 1948, Mary Kate O’Leary, DP16137, IMA. |
| 26 | Letter to the Department of Defence from Ellen Donovan, 13 April 1943, Ellen Donovan, 34SP57988, IMA. |
| 27 | Letter to the MSPB from Ellen Donovan, 9 July 1942, MSPC, Ellen Donovan, MSP34REF57076, IMA. |
| 28 | Letter to the MSPB from Ellen Donovan, 18 May 1934, Ellen Donovan, 34SP57988, IMA. |
| 29 | Letter to [the MSPB] from John Murphy, O/C 3 Battalion, 3rd Cork Brigade, 17 October 1938, Ellen Donovan, MSP34REF57076, IMA. |
| 30 | Letter to the MSPB from Ellen Donovan, 18 May 1934; letter to the MSPB from Ellen Donovan, 31 October 1935; letter to the MSPB from Ellen Donovan, 31 April 1943, Ellen Donovan, 34SP57988, IMA. |
| 31 | Letter to the MSPB from Ellen Donovan, 9 July 1942, Ellen Donovan, MSP34REF57076, IMA. |
| 32 | Memorandum from Social Welfare Officer, Cork, to Department of Defence, 28 January 1956, Ellen Donovan, DP17422, IMA. |
| 33 | Letter to the Minister for Defence from Ellen Donovan, 15 February 1956, Ellen Donovan, DP17422, IMA. |
| 34 | Letter to the Minister for Defence from Ellen Donovan, 9 February 1956, Ellen Donovan, DP17422, IMA. |
| 35 | Ellen Donovan, Death Certificate, 14 October 1965, https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/files/civil/deaths_returns/deaths_1965/04234/4084720.pdf, accessed on 21 May 2026; Social Wel-fare Report, 15 December 1955; note from Social Welfare Officer, 27 September 1950, Ellen Donovan, DP17422, IMA. |
| 36 | https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai001875973/; https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/reels/nai001875977/, accessed on 1 March 2026. |
| 37 | |
| 38 | Letter to the MSPB from Ellen Donovan, 2 November 1948, Ellen Donovan, DP17433, IMA. |
| 39 | Social Welfare Report, 24 February 1956, Ellen Cotter, DP27582, IMA. |
| 40 | Letter to Mr Corry from Ciss Hennessy, 22 November 1954, Ciss Hennessy, 49SP1350, IMA. |
| 41 | Letter to the Department of Defence from Katie O’Mahony, 11 February 1950, Katie O’Mahony, DP15532, IMA. |
| 42 | Memorandum, 26 April 1948, Katie O’Mahony, DP15532, IMA. |
| 43 | Letters to [the MSPB] from Katie O’Mahoney, 4 February 1952, 13 February 1952, Katie O’Mahony, DP15532, IMA. |
| 44 | Social Welfare Reports, 17 January 1950, 11 December 1961, Peg Healy, DP17806, IMA. |
| 45 | https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1933/act/46/enacted/en/print#sec4, accessed on 20 March 2026. |
| 46 | Josie Hickey, Department of Defence Questionnaire, 8 February 1939, Josie Hickey, MSP34REF57862, IMA. |
| 47 | Letter to Social Welfare Officer, Mitchelstown, from Department of Defence, 27 May 1948, Alice Bailey, DP16012, IMA. |
| 48 | See, for example, Social Welfare Report, 24 August 1967, Hannah Buckley, DP21747, IMA. |
| 49 | Hannah Barrett, Summary of Evidence, 21 July 1943, Hannah Barrett, 34E8489, IMA. |
| 50 | Elizabeth Murphy, Application for a Military Service Pension, 19 December 1935, Elizabeth Murphy, MSP34REF27688, IMA. |
| 51 | Ellen Buckley, Application for a Military Service Pension, 5 December 1935, Ellen Buckley, MSP34REF34139, IMA. |
| 52 | Social Welfare Report, 29 March 1961, Elizabeth Cotter, DP32661, IMA. |
| 53 | Letters to MSPB from Nora Casey, 26 July [1940], 7 October 1940, Nora Casey 34REF29416, IMA. |
| 54 | Letter to MSPB from Joanna née Casey, 7 January 1953; letter to the Registrar, Office of Wards of Court, from the Department of Defence, 25 October 1961; Social Welfare Report, 21 August 1960; letter to the Department of Defence from Michael Casey, 3 March 1959. Nora Casey, DP19252, IMA. |
| 55 | Garda report [5] February 1951, Nora Casey, DP19252, IMA. |
| 56 | Nora Casey, Death Certificate, 6 October 1962, https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/files/civil/deaths_returns/deaths_1962/04292/4105467.pdf, accessed on 14 May 2026. |
| 57 | Department of Defence Memorandum, 19 January 1952, Mary Doyle, DP20099, IMA. |
| 58 | Social Welfare Report, 4 May 1963; letter to MSPB from Mary Doyle, 25 June 1952, Mary Doyle, DP20099, IMA. |
| 59 | Social Welfare Report, 7 May, 1960, Mary Doyle, DP20099, IMA. |
| 60 | Social Welfare Report, 30 October 1950, Frances Hinshon, DP19357, IMA. |
| 61 | Social Welfare Report, 29 July 1957, Sarah O’Donovan, DP28533; Mary E. Cadogan, sworn Statement, 2 January 1940; Social Welfare Report, 12 August 1949, Mary E. Cadogan, DP17418, IMA. |
| 62 | Letter to the Department of Defence from E Kelleher, 15 September 1953, Julia Kelleher, 34SP28962, IMA. |
| 63 | Letter to the Minister for Defence from E Kelleher, 13 April 1953, Julia Kelleher, 34SP28962. IMA. |
| 64 | Social Welfare Report, 21 November 1958, Julia Kelleher, DP30542, IMA. |
| 65 | https://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/exhibition/cork/main.html, accessed on 5 June 2026. |
| 66 | Liam de Róiste Diary, 24 July 1923, CCCA. |
| 67 | Julia Kelleher, Application for Military Service Pension, 30 December 1935, Julia Kelleher MSP34REF28427, IMA. |
| 68 | see Note 64 above. |
| 69 | Appeal Petition by Julia Kelleher, [1953], Julia Kelleher, MSP34REF28427, IMA. |
| 70 | Letter from Dr Callanan, Bandon, to [MSPB], 3 October 1958, Julia Kelleher DP30542, IMA. |
| 71 | Note to Social Welfare Officer, Bandon, from [the MSPB], 6 February 1959, Julia Kelleher DP30542, IMA. |
| 72 | Note, 14 October 1966 on Award Certificate, 20 March 1962, Julia Kelleher, DP30542, IMA; Julia Kelleher, Death Certificate, 28 September 1966, https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/files/civil/deaths_returns/deaths_1966/04219/4079352.pdf, accessed on 14 May 2026. |
| 73 | Letter to Department of Defence from Lena O’Riordan, 4 October 1962, Lena O’Riordan, DP21056, IMA. |
| 74 | Letter to Department of Defence from Lena O’Riordan, 22 August 1957, Lena O’Riordan, DP21056, IMA. |
| 75 | Letter to Department of Defence from Mary O’Mahoney, 1 May 1959; Medical Report, 9 March 1956, Mary O’Mahoney, DP26096, IMA. |
| 76 | Letter to the Office of the Referee from Nora O’Donoghue, 12 October 1942, Nora O’Donoghue, MSP34REF31413, IMA. |
| 77 | Susanna Walsh, Statement, 19 November 1945, Susanna Walsh, MSP34REF55532, IMA. |
| 78 | Social Welfare Report, 6 May 1950, Annie Walsh, DP9206, IMA. |
| 79 | Annie Walsh, Pension Application, 26 April 1935; Statement from Mary Hegarty, Eileen Ahern, Mairghead Lucey, 19 March 1938; letter to Frank Aiken from F.J. Daly, 15 April 1937; letters to the MSPB from Annie Walsh, 6 February 1941, 21 November 1941, Annie Walsh, MSP34REF5979, IMA. |
| 80 | Letter to A Chara from Nora O’Donoghue, 19 May 1942, Nora O’Donoghue, 34SP31240, IMA. |
| 81 | Letter to the Department of Defence from Mary Cullinane, 21 October 1955, Mary Cullinane, MSP34REF57489, IMA. |
| 82 | Letter to MSPB from Julia Cahalane, 24 December 1945, 34SP58282. |
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