Tag Archives: equality

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Mary Anne Mamie Cadden

Mary Anne “Mamie” Cadden is one of the more polarizing figures in Irish history. She shines a light on the brutal realities faced by countless women when reproductive choice is is not merely restricted but actively criminalized. Her tale also reveals the deep cost of working in the shadows for a society that outwardly condemns your services while quietly depending on them.


Mamie Cadden was born in America but her Irish parents moved their growing family back to County Mayo and raised them on a farm. Mamie loved the farm but did not want to spend her life there so when she got older she sold her portion of the land to get the schooling she needed to become a licensed midwife in 1926. She excelled in her craft but it was her extra curricular services that would both define her legacy and seal her fate. Mamie worked hard, providing full reproductive healthcare for women who had nowhere else to go. She offered maternity care, arranged adoptions and fostering services, but she also helped women with unwanted pregnancies by providing illegal abortions. Women traveled from across Ireland, seeking care that the official medical system could not and would not provide. Cadden built a thriving word of mouth practice that served multitudes of women and she prospered because of it. She dined at the city’s finest restaurants, went out socializing and dancing, drove a bright red car, and lived as though she had every right to this prosperity, because she believed she did. She rejected the shame and secrecy that Catholic Ireland demanded from someone like her, and this loud flamboyance cost her. She was arrested and jailed multiple times, These stints in jail resulted in Cadden losing her license but whenever she got released, she carried on. Irish women from all walks of life continued to find their way to her door until 1956.

Everything changed when one of her patients, Helen O’Reilly, died. Multiple deaths had been connected to Cadden but police could never tie them directly to her until Helen passed. Helen’s death could not be swept under the rug (like others allegedly were) and it was directly tied to Nurse Cadden so suddenly, the crucial care she had given became her downfall.

The police made an example out of her and prosecuted her fully. She was the first and only person in Ireland to face capital punishment for a maternal death resulting from an abortion, despite the fact that such deaths occurred regularly before and after her time. The polite society that secretly needed her then publicly shunned her and the papers sensationalized the “backstreet abortionist” as a murderess. “Nurse Cadden” became shorthand for something sinister but that framing obscures what she actually was: a woman filling a void that church and state had created but refused to address.

Mamie Cadden’s death sentence was later commuted to life in prison but that life ended suddenly just a few short years later. She began serving her time in Mountjoy Prison, but was eventually moved to the Criminal Lunatic Asylum in Dublin where she died of a heart attack on this day in 1959.

Cadden’s story is not a cautionary tale about the dangers of abortion. It is evidence of what happens when legal, accessible reproductive healthcare is withheld from women. When we call her a “backstreet abortionist,” we are borrowing the vocabulary of the people who criminalized this care in the first place and it is used as a historical reference only. In truth, Mamie was a convenient scapegoat for a system that preferred to punish people (mostly women) rather than examine its own structural failures. Women who were facing unwanted pregnancies or dangerous births had almost no legal options at that time (don’t get me started on the laundries) and the official medical system, constrained by law and Catholic doctrine, could not help them. Mamie Cadden could, and she did. In the end, she was neither a demon or an angel. She was a woman who recognized a need, had the skills to meet it, and operated in the gaps left by official medicine. Her story is not really about her own choices; it is about the systems that forbid choices, thereby forcing women into dangerous situations and then criminalizing the people who try to help them.

Contraception was outlawed in Ireland until 1979. Abortion was illegal until 2018 when voters repealed Ireland’s Eighth Amendment and changed reproductive healthcare on the island even more. The services that once made Cadden a criminal are now legal and accessible. That shift did not happen because Irish society woke up one morning with different values. It happened because Irish women had suffered for long enough and would no longer tolerate the silence, travel, and secrecy around this topic. It happened because enough people finally recognized that criminalizing reproductive healthcare creates more harm than it prevents.

Mamie Cadden understood this when she opened her practice 100 years ago and her story should serve as a vital reminder that nothing will ever eliminate the demand for abortion services. She reminds us that laws against abortion only push these services underground, often with tragic consequences. This is especially important to remember in this day and age when women all around the world are actually losing this crucial option. Women need safe abortion care and Mamie Cadden and Helen O’Reilly both remind us that only tragedy follows when that choice is taken away.

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The Mighty Margaret Skinnider

When you listen to or read accounts (including my own) of Margaret Skinnider’s life it’s immediately clear that she was a fighter and a warrior. She was brave and devoted to Irish freedom. She was gravely wounded in the Easter Rising but somehow survived her injuries to continue fighting for Ireland, for recognition and pensions for women, and for Irish workers for the next five decades or so. Her fierceness has inspired many and we’ve all rushed to applaud Skinnider’s fighting spirit, using it to highlight and recognize the important (and often atypical) roles that Irish women played throughout history.

It’s pretty common knowledge that Margaret Skinnider was a teacher, a revolutionary, a union boss, a devoted suffragist, a deadly sniper, a commanding officer, an explosives expert, a smuggler and so much more. We’re used to seeing her as a dedicated, cross-dressing, sharp shooting freedom fighter so it might be a little jarring to hear one of her best friends say that Skinnider was love and kindness incarnate and that she was gentle. Sure she was a soldier who spent most of her life fighting for one cause or another but she was also full of empathy and love, kindness and compassion – and many of the historical narratives (including my own) overlook those aspects of Skinnider’s life.

This is part of a bigger problem. In our rush to make sure that women are counted among the heroes of history, we often highlight only the fiercest and more traditionally “male” aspects of them. We tell tales of how they outsmarted others and how they aggressively fought for something and proved themselves worthy of remembrance and praise. We often ignore their traditionally “feminine” sides in favor of a glorious and heroic tale. The famous photo of Margaret dressed as a boy with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth is a perfect example of that. We remind people that that she was a female sniper and one of only two women who wore a soldier’s uniform during the Easter Rising, and we set her apart from the hundreds of other women who were there in their Easter skirts and dresses. There were many other brave women on active duty and they each brought their own fighting spirit and individual set of skills…some of them even saved Skinnider’s life after she’d been shot multiple times. These women are just as worthy of remembrance whether we know their names and stories yet or not, even if they had more traditional roles. Margaret’s exciting and unusual tale has become more popular in recent years but in telling it we’ve done her a disservice. We’ve all celebrated her deeds but most of us ignored the other aspects of her life. It’s less common knowledge that Skinnider was as gentle, loyal and loving as she was aggressive. She lived a long life full of love, music and long lasting friendships. Her favorite song about Ireland was a somewhat sappy love song called The Jackets Green. She was a lesbian in a committed and life long relationship in an era when that was not only frowned upon, but illegal. Mary McAuliffe’s newish book about Margaret Skinnider uncovers that love story and much more. It is an overdue biography that focuses on Skinnider’s life as a whole, rather than highlighting one or two of her legendary acts. It gives our inspiring hero her entire life back, long after she passed away.

Which brings us to the point, dear readers. On this day in 1971, the mighty Margaret Skinnider threw off this mortal coil. She is buried in the Republican 1916 plot at Glasnevin Cemetery, where she rests next to many of her dearest friends and comrades. To remember her today, why not listen to this interview with Mary McAuliffe where she talks about some of the lesser known aspects of Skinnider’s life or you can listen to Margaret tell her own story of Easter week right here. If you’re like me and you still haven’t been able to break up with the written word, you can find Skinnider’s own 1917 propaganda masterpiece, Doing My Bit For Ireland in various places on the web and in bookstores throughout Ireland. While you’re at it keep an eye out for Margaret Skinnider by Mary McAuliffe as well.

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Read This

I’m just popping on for a minute to link to an amazing article that was written a year ago, but I found only recently.  I’ve been struggling with a post that is similar for a few years, but this one says it more succinctly (and with less of a frustrated and horrified tone) than I have been able to. It’s worth a read no matter what side of the puddle you’re on regardless of when it was written, given that right-wing bigotry is still spreading throughout the world. Well done Ms. Markey.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO IRISH AMERICA?!?

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Anne Devlin

There are many, many women in Irish history who never get the recognition they deserve for their contributions to it. Anne Devlin may be the most egregious example of that. Her strength and dedication to the Irish cause was truly like no other.

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Fantasy Island

Everyone has that place in their head. One place that they’ve fallen in love with whether or not they’ve ever been there. One place that serves as a goal or a dream and becomes a fantasy location where everything would suddenly be perfect. Many never reach that imagined place or if they do, they quickly find that the perceived nirvana in their head doesn’t match the reality in any way. We often romanticize or fantasize about other places because after all, the grass is always greener on the other side.

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The Choice

On May 25th, 2018, Ireland will have the chance to repeal the Eighth Amendment of its constitution in a referendum. This amendment was adopted in 1983 and it asserted that a fetus had the same rights as the woman who carried it. It’s no surprise that this law came into existance, since Ireland was still pretty synonymous with the Catholic faith when the Amendment was passed and while it allowed for pregnancy termination if the life of the mother was shown to be at risk, it made proving that exception more difficult. It also didn’t allow for the mental health of the mother – only the physical. The Eighth strengthened penalties for seeking an abortion both in Ireland and abroad and it ensured that community groups and organizations could not legally help women who wished to explore those options. It took decades of hard work to rectify the latter circumstances but abortion in Ireland was and is still illegal.

This is not to say that women (and girls) don’t get abortions. Recent statistics estimate that more than 150,000 Irish women have had abortions since the eighties. About a dozen have them every day – either by traveling to the U.K. where abortion is legal, by using the outlawed Plan B pill, or getting an illegal (and sometimes unsafe) abortion in Ireland itself.  These women risk a prison sentence of up to fourteen years if they are caught having an abortion on the island, but they do it anyway and that is really the only point that should matter in the upcoming referendum on whether the Eighth should be repealed or not.

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The mighty Margaret Skinnider

On the third day of Ireland’s Easter Rising, a woman got off her bicycle at St. Stephen’s Green and delivered the message she’d been hiding to the rebel leaders inside. Then she took off her skirts, put on a homemade uniform, picked up a rifle and headed to the roof of the building to take her turn as a deadly sniper. In between shots, Margaret Skinnider formed a plan for a bombing mission that would make the area safer for her comrades and fellow rebels.

Attempting to execute that plan nearly killed her when Ms. Skinnider was shot three times on this day in 1916. Her grave wounds earned her the distinction of being the only woman who was so seriously wounded in the rebellion and it cemented her place in Irish history. You cannot have a project that involves women in the Easter Rising without including Margaret’s near death experience so today belongs to her.

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The garden shot

On the second day of the Easter Rising, Kathleen Clarke fretted and wandered around the house, wondering how her husband Tom was doing. He was one of the leaders of the insurrection and was in the General Post Office headquarters with the other commanders, miles away from his wife. Kathleen had been asked to stay out of the fight by her husband who was counting on her to keep their business going, their family healthy, and if necessary, to protect his legacy when the Rising was over. She couldn’t do any of that if she took part in the battle and was arrested or hurt – so as unbearable as it must have been for her, she stayed at home.

Miraculously, the Clarke home wasn’t raided or attacked in any way on the first night of the rebellion. Kathleen spent a restless night in her home and then headed out to the garden in the morning to distract herself from what was happening around her. Planting and tending the garden was one of her favorite hobbies. April 25th, 1916, was a warm day and the ground was parched so she took a can of water with her when she started planting. Kathleen had just put it on the ground when she heard a hissing sound and her instincts kicked in. She ducked and remained still for quite some time. When she finally got up, she looked around to see what had made the sound. The bucket she had been holding seconds before had two bullet holes in it and the water was seeping onto the ground.

The Clarke house was not in the thick of the fighting but there were a lot of bullets flying throughout Dublin that week. In theory one of them could have randomly gone through the backyard at precisely that moment…but many (including the lady herself) think that Kathleen Clarke was deliberately targeted because of her husband’s actions and her own support for a free Ireland. She never found out whether she had been purposely fired on or not – but her own brush with death over Easter week did not stop her from accomplishing all of the plans she and her husband had made before it began. She immediately started a fund for the dependents of Volunteers and she kept her own family afloat, even after the English executed her husband for his role in the Rising. Easter Week cost her a child, a husband, and nearly her own life but she refused to let these losses cripple her and she never wavered in her support and her own fight for a free and independent Ireland.

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International Women’s Day 2018

As a realistic and somewhat pessimistic woman I tend to stay away from international days of anything. One day of focus is not enough to change anything or even learn much of any given subject. That said, as a woman in the male-dominated world of history and a citizen in a country that is regressing horribly I feel like not mentioning International Women’s Day would be a terrible mistake.

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PapalGate

It was the tear heard around the world. In one split (ahem) second Sinead O’Connor defiantly threw her figurative middle fingers in the air, lost a record amount of fans, and got banned from Saturday Night Live with her protest of the Catholic church. Many of the flock still haven’t forgiven her even now, twenty-five years later.

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