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Máıre
Aoıfe Comerford (1893 - 1982)
Irish Republican, Member of
Cumann na mBan and Sinn Fein,
Free State POW, Journalist and
Author
A
remarkable woman who was both a participant in and witness to Irish
Republican history from 1916 to her death in 1982. Remarkable also
in that she remained faithful throughout her life to the 1916
Proclamation of the Irish Republic. The promise of that
Proclamation, a sovereign Irish Republic founded on the principles
of inclusiveness and equality was what she fought for during the
revolutionary years (1916 - 1923) and throughout her life.
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 Childhood
Maire
Comerford was born Mary Eva Comerford, to James Charles Comerford
and Eva May Comerford (nee Esmonde) on June 29, 1893, in Ardavon
House in Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow. She was the eldest of four children,
including two girls and two boys.
Maire's
father, James was a member of the Catholic gentry, a self-sufficient
segment of the Catholic population who were either business
owners, members of the professions or ranking members of the British
military establishment. They generally did not depend on land
ownership or land use for their livelihood. His family owned and
operated a flour and corn mill in Rathdrum within sight of their
residence. The Comerford family's lineage goes back to the 12th
century in Staffordshire, England
Maire’s
mother, Eva, was the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Esmonde
who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his role in the Crimean War.
Thomas's younger brother, John Esmonde of Ballynastragh, Gorey, Co
Wexford, was the liberal party MP for Waterford from 1852 through
876. Eva was three times tennis champion of Ireland.
Ardavon
House where Maire was born close to Avondale House where
Anna Cathrine Parnell,
Frances Isabella (Fanny) Parnell and
Charles Stewart Parnell were born. Avondale House was also where
their mother Delia Tudor Stewart Parnell lived alone the last years
of her life and where she passed away resulting from burns from a
house fire.
James
Comerford and Charles Stewart Parnell, who were both born in the
1840s, were political allies and close friend who hunted and played
cricket together. James was also Parnell's election agent.
Education
Maire
and her siblings received their early education from home-school
tutors. In 1904, Maire and her siblings were sent to the to Our
Lady's Bower in Athlone, a boarding school for boys and girls. She
was removed from the Bower when her mother found out that she was
taught Irish and Irish history and sent to another convent school
more in line with her mother's British upbringing.
When
Maire was thirteen, her father died after a long illness. By then
his milling business had essentially failed as a result of her
father’s refusal to bleach the flour the mill produced. After her
mother settled her affairs, she moved back to her family in Wexford.
She settled on a farm owned by her mother's family, the Esmonde's.
Shortly afterwards, Maire was sent to another convent school in
Farnborough in England.
It
Farnborough she was taught English history, including the glorious
exploits of the British Empire to the delight of her mother who
considered herself a noble daughter of the British Empire. While in
Farnborough she visited the House of Commons in London with her
uncle, Sir Thomas Esmonde MP to listen to the ongoing debate on Hone
Rule for Ireland. The tenor of the debate convinced Maire that the
British had no genuine interest in
Home Rule for Ireland, the only
reason they were debating the issue was because Irish MP's who held
the balance of power in the House of Commons forced the issue. It
was another sobering realization for Maire in her transformation
from a scion of Dublin Castle loyalists to a diehard lifelong Irish
Republican.
In
September of 1912, Maire was sent to a secretarial school in London
to learn the skills she would need to work for the government,
preferable in the foreign service. The school was run by a staunch
Unionists from Co. Meath who used the writings and speeches of
Edward Carson, an Irish Unionists politician to practice on in
her shorthand classes. It was within that same timeframe that Máire
first became fully aware of the political situation in Ireland. Her
cousin, Maude Mansfield, gave her a copy of Contemporary Ireland
written by Paul Debois that started her on her journey through Irish
history. By the time she returned to Ireland in 1915, she was well
versed in the untold story of Ireland under British rule.
Exposure
to Revolutionary Ireland
On her
return to Ireland, Maire settled in Wexford where she became
involved in the co-operative movement led by the Irish social
reformer,
Horace Plunkett, and promoted by
George William Russell
(aka Æ). The co-operative movement objective was the creation of new
businesses in the countryside, a first step in the spawning of a
social revolution. The co-operate movement was not an end unto
itself, it was a critical component of the Irish cultural revival
afoot in Ireland at that time. She also joined the Society of United
Irishwomen, an advocacy to advance social and educational
opportunities for women and to raise the standard of living in rural
Ireland. In 1835, the Society changed its name to the Irish
Countrywomen's Association. At the onset of the WWI, she became
involved in helping provide help to Belgium refugees.
Maire's
plans to help her mother’s run a private school in Courtown, Co.
Wexford were cut short by the Easter Rising of 1916.
At the
onset of the Rising that started on April 24, Maire was in Dublin
visiting her cousin in Rathgar. On Easter Monday while walking down
Grafton St. she watched a detachment of Volunteers march on by.
Some hours later after having lunch with a friend in Blackrock she
was unable to find a tram back to the city. What she found instead
were groups of people talking about fighting going on in the city.
That was when she realized that she was in the middle of the Easter
Rising, a pivotal event in Irish history and also for her. Unable to
find a tram she walked back to the city alongside the tram lines.
Later, on her way to Rathgar she was routed around Stephens Green
where she met and chatted
Irish Volunteers occupying the green. She
returned to the city on Tuesday and Wednesday to see if she could
join the
Stephens Green garrison. On Thursday access to the city
was blocked by British soldiers.
Back in
Wexford after the Rising, Maire joined with other women to collect
money for the dependents of Volunteers killed or imprisoned. Later
on, Maire realized that because of her family background many of
those who donated to the cause did not exactly know what the cause
was. Later that year she joined the
Gaelic League. She also joined
the Wexford branch of Sinn Féin in 1916 and Cumann na mBan in 1917.
Maire
traveled back and forth to Dublin on a regular basis on business for
Cumann na mBan and Sinn Fein. During one of these visits, she met
Thomas Ashe and
Terance MacSwiney
at a ceile in the Mansion House a
few months before both of them died on hunger strike.
Joining the Republican Movement
After
relocating to Dublin in 1918 where she continued her work for Cumann
na mBan and Sinn Fein. She also took a position as secretary to
Alice Stopford Green who was an Irish
Nationalist and historian.
Stopford Green home id Stephens Green
was a meeting place for leading writers and politicians of that time
including Home Rule advocates, Republican activists and future Free
Staters. Maire was present at gatherings attended by Douglas Hyde,
George Russell (AE), James Stephens, Horace Plunkett, George Gavan
Duffy,
Erskine Childers, Michael Collins and
Mary Spring-Rice
and a
host of other notables.
Eventually Maire’s working relationship with Stopford Green broke
down owing to political differences, Stopford Green being a staunch
Nationalist and Home Rule supporter and Comerford, a diehard
Republican and Sinn Fein activist ---irreconcilable differences.
One of
her assignments while working for Stopford Green was with the Irish
White Cross (IWC). The IWC was established in 1921 to distribute
funds raised in the United States to provide relief to those
affected in Ireland by the War of Independence
Although her contribution to the
General Election of 1918 and the subsequent
War of Independence were minor according to her own account, she
nonetheless campaigned for Sinn Fein in the runup to the 1918
General Election. She was present at the first meeting of
Dail
Eireann in the Mansion House in Dublin to hear the names of the
sixty nine Sinn Fein TDs elected being called and to witness the
ratification of the Declaration of the Irish Republic. Of the sixty
nine Sinn Fein candidates elected, only twenty seven were present at
the Mansion House, most the others were in were in English prisons
while eight or were on the run.
During the War of Independence, Maire
travelled the country organizing
Cumann na mBan branches and
carrying dispatches for the IRA's Fourth Northern Division, and
reporting on movements of the British army and on Black and Tan
atrocities.
Maire took a more active role in the
Treaty War aka Civil War that took place from June 1922 to May 1923.
She attended the Treaty debates and opposed the terms agreed to on
the grounds that any agreement should be based on the 1916
Proclamation of the Irish Republic. During the
bombardment of the
Four Courts in Dublin in June 1922 she carried dispatches between
the anti-treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) forces in the Four
Courts and the IRA's Dublin brigade. After the battle of Dublin,
she became a courier for the IRA tasked with carrying messages to
and from IRA units in various parts of the country.
In
January of 1923, Maire was arrested as the result of an unsuccessful
attempt to kidnap W. T. Cosgrave and condition his release on the
cessation of
IRA prisoner s executions. Cosgrave was the President
of the Free State who was engaged in an execution spree that
resulted in the execution of seventy seven IRA prisoners many of
whom were executed trial without any form of judicial trial.
As a
prisoner in Mountjoy jail she refused to recognize the legitimacy of
the Free State. She also staged a protest against overcrowding and
as a result was transferred the criminal section and given a
sentence of three months hard labor. Undaunted, she went on hunger
strike and after that was shot in the leg by a Free State soldier
for waving to fellow prisoners,
Next,
she was transferred to the North Dublin Union from where she escaped
in May 1923. After her recapture the following month she went on
another hunger. After three weeks on hunger strike, she was
released from Kilmainham jail on a stretcher and taken to a nursing
home for recovery. By August of 1923 she had sufficiently recovered
to be able to campaign in Cork for Sinn Fein in the 1923 general
election. She was again arrested in Fermoy but was released shortly
afterwards.
In October of 1923 Maire was sent to
the United States on a speaking tour by deValera to raise funds for
IRA prisoners in Free State jails. On her arrival she was met by
Linda Kearns who had arrived earlier. Both Maire and Linda
reported to
Seán Ó Ceallaigh (Sceilg) who the official representative of the
Irish Republic in the United States. For the subsequent nine months
she toured cities on the east coast including New York, Boston,
Washington, Chicago. Detroit and a host on smaller cities and towns
in between. By then most of contributors to the cause if Irish
Freedom believed that Irish Free State had prevailed and that the
matter was settled. Although they contributed for the prisoner’s
sake, the overall effort was all for naught.
Post Treaty War aka Civil War
On her return to Ireland, Comerford
settled in Wexford, where she ran a poultry farm, which provided her
with enough money to eke out a very meagre living. With few
opportunities to travel to Dublin, she became isolated from her
political associates there. She managed to attend the 1926 Sinn Féin
Ard-Fheis, representing Leinster, and for the first time found
herself on the executive. In that year she received a nine-month
jail sentence for her attempt to influence juries in republican
trials.
Máire Comerford split with de Valera
when he took his supporters into the Dail in 1927. In 1926 he had
established the Fianna Fail party, which drew off a number of Cumann
na mBan supporters and weakened it after that. From then on, she was
a member of what was generally seen as a group that was unwilling to
compromise in terms of everyday politics and on constitutional
matters.
Despite their political differences,
Máire joined the staff of de Valera’s newspaper, The Irish Press in
1935. In subsequent years she paid off the debt she had accumulated
while farming in Wexford. She worked for newspaper six days a week
for about 30 years as a reporter and editor the women’s page.
In 1941 Maire severed her formal links
with the republican movement in response to the court martial of Stephen
Hayes who was accused by the IRA of being a spy for the Free
State. In subsequent years she remained politically active through
her involvement with the
Anti-Partition League, a political organization based in Northern
Ireland which campaigned for a united
Ireland from 1945 to 1958.
Later Life and Death
She retired in 1960 to concentrate on
compiling information on the republican movement, and in 1969
published The First Dáil. In 1967 Maire worked with
the
Georgian Society on
the restoration of the Tailors'
Hall in Dublin, which had housed Wolfe
Tone's nascent republican parliament in the 1790s, with the
.In the 1970s and up to her death she
supported the Provisional
Irish Republican Army war in Northern
Ireland, in particular its hunger
strike campaign. In 1976 she was fined £10 for her attending
Sinn Féin rally in Dublin. That same year she was interviewed for
the 'Curious Journey' television documentary with other survivors of
the 1914-23 period. These interviews were later published as a book
titled Curious Journey. An Oral History of Ireland's Unfinished
Revolution (1982)
She died 15 December 1982 at her home
in Sandyford, Dublin, and is buried at Mount St Benedict, near Gorey,
Co. Wexford. Her unpublished memoirs and other papers are held
in UCD archives. |
