WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Constance Markievicz 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:06.320 Hello, and Happy Saturday. Constance Markovitch was born a hundred 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:09.800 and fifty five years ago on February four, eight sixty eight. 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:13.039 She was an Irish political activist and the first woman 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:15.840 elected to the British Parliament and played a role in 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:20.320 the Easter Rising of nineteen sixteen. When we originally aired 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.360 this episode, we've re aired our prior episode on the 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:27.160 Easter Rising as a Saturday Classics shortly beforehand. We are 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:29.880 not doing that this time around, since at least so far, 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.360 we haven't really been repeating Saturday Classics, but just for 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:35.680 folks who are interested in more on that part of 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.000 her story, it is still in our feed. It originally 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:43.320 aired on April. This episode originally aired on March nineteen 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:50.920 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class a 0:00:51.000 --> 0:01:01.400 production of I Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to the podcast. 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:05.160 I'm Tracy be Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. Back 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:08.959 in and also as our most recent Saturday Classic, we 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.160 did an episode on the Easter Rising, that was an 0:01:12.240 --> 0:01:16.000 armed rebellion that struck Ireland in nineteen sixteen, and in 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:19.240 that episode we made a couple of brief mentions of 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:23.240 Constance Markavitch, and I made an aside that she was 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:25.800 one of the most fascinating characters that I learned about 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:27.760 while we're searching that episode, and that if I had 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:30.840 found out about her earlier, the episode might have been 0:01:30.880 --> 0:01:35.280 all about her of about the Easter Rising in general. 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:38.280 So she's been on my short list ever since then, 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:40.960 which probably gives you a sense of how long my 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:43.520 short list is, since that was two years ago and 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:46.240 we are just now getting around to it. We've also 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:48.880 gotten a few requests for a show on her recently, 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:50.640 so I thought it was finally time for her to 0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:53.320 make it up to the top of that list. There 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:58.160 was a lot of conflict in Ireland during this period 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:03.440 of history, and Constance Markovitch was involved in a lot 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:06.280 of it. So we're not going to get back into 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:09.839 the details of the Easter Rising again. That is why 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.680 we had it as our most recent Saturday Classic for 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:14.760 maybe folks who are newer to the show or don't 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:16.960 really remember, so that is easy to find in the 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:20.680 archive um for that part of the story, but there's 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:22.800 a lot more to talk about, so we're not going 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:26.960 to get into the Easter Rizing so much today. Constance 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:32.440 Markovitch was born Constance Georgine gore Booth on February four eight. 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:35.800 Her father was Henry gore Booth and her mother was 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.760 Georgina may Hill. Constance was their oldest child, and she 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.120 was born in a townhouse that the family kept near 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:46.360 Buckingham Palace in London. She'd eventually have four younger siblings, 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:49.160 so she was always closest to her sister Ava, who 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:53.400 was two years younger. Constance grew up and was educated 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:57.120 at Lisadell House. Although her mother was from Yorkshire. On 0:02:57.200 --> 0:03:00.160 her father's side, the family had lived in this of 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:04.080 Ireland since sixty one. That was when Paul Gore was 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:06.320 made a baronet and granted part of the land that 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:10.320 would become Lisadella State. The house itself that she was 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:12.880 raised in was a lot newer than that, though it 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:15.720 was only about thirty years old when Constance was born. 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.440 This was a forty eight room country house decorated with 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:23.600 paintings by the old masters, and there the young Constance 0:03:23.760 --> 0:03:27.880 was educated by governesses and tutors. She was described as 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:32.079 a happy child, high spirited, and excellent on horseback. Her 0:03:32.120 --> 0:03:35.800 father made repeated expeditions to the Arctic, almost as a hobby, 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:37.960 and he seemed to raise his oldest daughter with the 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:41.560 same eye for adventure. She was also tomboyish, and she 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.520 didn't like most of the activities that were considered feminine. 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:47.280 She did like to draw into sketch, and she was 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:49.960 considered to be quite good at it, and she got older, 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:52.760 she also learned to shoot, and she developed a fondness 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:58.120 for playing pranks on people. This is a very affluent family. 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:01.760 Constance and her family were part of the Protestant Ascendancy, 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:03.600 and this was a term that was coined in the 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:08.040 eighteenth century to describe the domination of majority Catholic Ireland 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:11.720 by a Protestant and mostly English minority. It was also 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:16.400 used to describe the members of the Protestant aristocracy that 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:19.760 were part of this domination as well. So even though 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:22.680 this term came into use in the eighteenth century, the 0:04:22.760 --> 0:04:26.440 practices involved with it went back much farther. They were 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.520 largely associated with Oliver Cromwell's conquest of Ireland and with 0:04:30.560 --> 0:04:34.760 the period following the Glorious Revolution in six eight The 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:39.760 Protestant Ascendancy turned former Irish Catholic landowners into tenant farmers 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.960 working for Protestant landlords, many of whom were English, and 0:04:44.000 --> 0:04:47.960 generations later these landlords were not viewed as properly Irish 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:53.200 and were instead described as Anglo Irish. Constance's father had 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:56.360 at least a thousand families as tenants, although some of 0:04:56.400 --> 0:05:00.560 his tenants managed huge acreages that they subdi bided and 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.400 then least two other tenants, so he had these direct 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:07.520 tenants and then sort of an indirect pool of tenants 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:10.120 that some of his tenants are managing. A lot of 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:13.039 this property was adjoining Litadel, but some of it was 0:05:13.080 --> 0:05:17.240 in Manchester. To be clear, this entire system of Protestant 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:20.800 landowners managing land that had previously been owned by Irish 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:25.440 Catholics directly was exploited and unjust, and it contributed to 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:29.760 a lot of problems in Irish history. But as landlords went, 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:33.960 Henry gore Booth had a reputation for being fair and reasonable. 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:38.680 Many Protestant landlords were basically absentee landlords, but the gore 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.800 Booth family was in residence at Lisadel for at least 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:45.839 part of every year. Henry gore Booth also charged lower 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:48.160 rents than the market value, and he ran the whole 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:52.400 enterprise in a very organized thoroughly documented way with orderly, 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:56.640 up to date bookkeeping. If this seems like a really 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:01.800 low bar kind of is is, but it's also indicative 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:05.120 of like how messed up this whole system was. That 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:07.599 like that was the blar that made a person just 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:11.119 be seen as a good landlord. He also did seem 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:16.159 to treat his tenants pretty compassionately, if also paternalistically. In 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:19.120 the late eighteen seventies, just a couple of decades after 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:24.279 the Great Famine in Ireland, heavy rains crossed widespread crop failures, 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:26.799 and for a lot of Irish tenants this meant going 0:06:26.839 --> 0:06:29.600 to a workhouse and losing their homes and their land. 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:34.240 Many of Henry gore Booth's tenants still wound up in workhouses, 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:36.440 but he arranged for them to go to one that 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:41.000 he personally oversaw without having to forfeit their lands or 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:43.680 their homes to do it. So still a bad situation, 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:46.520 but not as bad as it could have been. The 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:49.320 rest of the family was part of this approach as well. 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:53.680 During this same time, Lady gore Booths, Constance and the 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:57.400 older children set up a food distribution system for the tenants, 0:06:57.440 --> 0:06:59.919 and they arranged delivery of straw to homes where they 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.800 weren't any beds. Both Constance and Eva tried to be 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:07.280 benevolently helpful, and apparently they were genuine enough about it 0:07:07.560 --> 0:07:10.320 that they really endeared themselves to the tenants, who they 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:15.120 referred to as country people. In eighteen eighty six, when 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:18.440 Constance turned eighteen, she spent six months in Italy with 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:22.200 a governess before making her formal debut. She was presented 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:25.400 to Queen Victoria as a debutante on March seventeenth, eighteen 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:28.360 eighty seven, which was during the Queen's Golden Jubilee. Year 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:33.120 After her debut, Constant spent several seasons in London, where 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:35.920 she was always described as the life of the party. 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:40.200 Although she was popular, her behavior wasn't considered very ladylike. 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:42.760 While the other young women in London tended to be 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:47.960 coy and demure, Constance was vivacious and direct. Those pranks 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:50.480 that she liked to play on people could also be 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:53.200 kind of mocking and mean spirited, which may have turned 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:57.440 off some suitors. She could also be very daring. One night, 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:00.520 she actually jumped out of her carriage to physically get 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:02.800 in between two men who were fighting on the street, 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:05.880 calling for other passers by to come help her break 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:10.120 up the fight. In one oft repeated story from this 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.520 time in Constances life, one night a male guest at 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:17.160 Lisadel was making a number of unwanted advances toward her, 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:19.280 and then he was seated next to her at dinner. 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:22.400 While they were eating, he put his hand on her 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:25.440 knee and her response was to pick it up, hold 0:08:25.480 --> 0:08:28.800 it up for everyone to see, and exclaim, just look 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.959 what I have found in my lap. That's a pretty 0:08:32.960 --> 0:08:37.160 good story. By the time she turned twenty five, tensions 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:40.800 were high between Constants and her parents. She was basically 0:08:40.960 --> 0:08:43.120 a spinster at that point, and she was seen as 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:46.800 an annoyance and a burden as they were all increasingly 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:50.000 at odds with each other at home. Constance started asking 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.360 to go away to art school, and she spent more 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:56.679 time on art than socializing during her eight season in London. 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:00.600 They finally gave her permission to go to the Slade 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.000 School in London, which we will get to After a 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:15.240 quick sponsor break, Constant started studying art at the Slade 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:18.400 School in London in eightee. She still spent a lot 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:22.040 of time back home in Sligo, but just being able 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.600 to have some measure of independence helped to ease some 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:29.000 of the tension between her and her parents. Constance and 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:32.960 her sister Ava started socializing with lots of artists and writers, 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:36.840 including William Butler Yates, who had ongoing connections with the 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:39.600 gore Booth family and with the part of Ireland that 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:44.640 they were living in. In Constance, Ava and their sister 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:48.960 Mabel became focused on the issue of women's suffrage. Together 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:52.440 they started a Votes for Women organization in County Sligo, 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:56.640 with Constance serving as president, Ava as secretary, and Mabel 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.959 as treasurer. And a speech at one of their meeting 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:04.199 Constants posed the question of why, if women were so incompetent, 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:08.600 had there been no enormous uprising against Queen Victoria. She 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:13.760 also argued against organizations having separate auxiliary units just for women, 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:16.840 because doing so set up women as a separate class 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:21.800 from men. In eight Constance continued her study of art 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:24.400 by moving to Paris to study at a studio run 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.559 by Rodolph Julienne. She was at this point completely dedicated 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:31.760 to this study, even wearing a wedding ring to symbolize 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:35.200 that she was married to art. But not long after 0:10:35.320 --> 0:10:38.559 arriving in Paris, she met Polish playwright and artist Count 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:44.480 Casimir Markovic. Constance and Casimir were immediately taken with each other. 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:47.800 He was tall and handsome and six years younger than 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:51.360 she was. He was also a very good painter. He was, 0:10:51.800 --> 0:10:54.760 being from Poland, very unlike most of the people that 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:58.079 she had known in her life. He was also married, 0:10:58.160 --> 0:11:00.680 although his wife died in eight ninety nine, just a 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:03.960 few weeks after he and Constance met. By the time 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:07.520 Kasimir's wife died, he and Constance were already quite close. 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:11.160 They had a passionate romance that involved lots of bicycling 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:13.960 and at one point, a duel that Casimir fought to 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:18.160 defend Constance's honor after someone insulted her at a costume ball. 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:24.320 On September hundred, they got married. Constance's younger sister, Mabel, 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:27.360 who had been engaged for years, also got married not 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:30.960 long after, suggesting that the family was traditional enough to 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:34.240 insist that the oldest daughter get married before the younger ones. 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.920 Although Kasimir styled himself as a count, it is not 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:43.480 completely clear whether he actually was one. If he did 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:45.920 have some kind of title, he did not have a 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:49.040 lot of money, and even though Constance came from quite 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:51.559 a lot of money. Her father had died in January 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:55.280 of nineteen hundred and virtually the entire estate was settled 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:59.079 on her brother. So as the newlywed couple divided their 0:11:59.120 --> 0:12:02.640 time among pair riss Lisadel and the Markovic family estates 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:05.400 in Poland, they mostly did it with the financial help 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:09.679 of the family. On November nineteen o one, they had 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:13.840 a daughter named Mayev. In nineteen o three, the Markovic 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.480 family moved to a home in wrath Guar, which was 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:18.760 at the time its own village but today is a 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:22.720 suburb of Dublin. Constance's mother had secured the house for 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:27.160 them and was also largely raising young Mave. Stanislaus, the 0:12:27.240 --> 0:12:30.000 count's son by his first marriage, moved into the wrath 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:32.760 car home and may have visited from time to time. 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:37.560 While living in Ireland, Constance and Casimir started spending more 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:41.400 and more time among artistic and literary circles, and they 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:45.560 joined an art society with William Butler Yates and George A. E. Russell, 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:51.080 and Constance became increasingly interested in Irish nationalism. She met 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:54.079 Maud Gonne, who was the founder of the Irish Nationalist 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:58.080 Women's organization Daughters of Ireland, and started becoming involved in 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:04.880 other nationalist organizations. At first, Constance's involvement in Irish nationalism 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:07.800 was viewed with suspicion. It didn't make a lot of 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:11.040 sense that the oldest daughter of an ascendancy family would 0:13:11.040 --> 0:13:14.960 take the side of Irish nationalists at all. After all, 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:17.360 she was part of a minority ruling class that was 0:13:17.400 --> 0:13:20.320 almost the exact opposite of the idea of a free, 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:24.920 independent Ireland. Aside from Ava, her relatives didn't approve of 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.800 the connections she was making, and those connections suspected she 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:32.680 was really a spy. She stuck with it, though, even 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:36.360 as she and Kasimir started to drift apart. When they met, 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:39.720 they had both had a tremendous passion for art in common, 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:44.920 and now Constance's passion was becoming Irish nationalism and fighting 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:47.120 for a free Ireland. And this was a passion that 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:51.559 Kasimir just didn't share. You wouldn't necessarily think he would 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:55.520 share it, he was not Irish. Earlier in their marriage, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:58.839 Constance had styled herself as a countess because she had 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:02.040 married account but as they grew apart, she started calling 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:05.640 herself madam, which was a fashionable thing to do among 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:09.800 women in the movement. In the early nineteen hundreds, there 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:14.319 were several different nationalists and separatist organizations operating in Ireland 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.720 who wanted Ireland to be independent from the British Empire. 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:22.120 In nineteen o five, Arthur Griffith established shin Fayne meaning 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:26.920 We Ourselves or Ourselves Alone, which absorbed some of these organizations. 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:31.440 Constance began attending chin Fayn meetings in nineteen o eight 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:35.080 and she joined its council in nineteen o nine. Also 0:14:35.200 --> 0:14:38.760 in nineteen o nine, she co founded Nafenna Aaron also 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.000 known as just the Fienna, which was an Irish nationalist 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:46.560 scouting organization for boys. Part of its purpose was paramilitary. 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:49.840 They were training boys and marksmanship and drilling and basically 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:53.840 preparing them to join nationalist and republican militia as they 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.640 got older. A lot of these boys were living in 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:00.480 extreme poverty and thinking that a country life would help them. 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.560 Constance least a large country house and basically operated it 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:08.640 as a commune for them. Sometimes, the Fianna was known 0:15:08.680 --> 0:15:12.040 to pick fights with some of the more affluent Anglo 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:15.080 Irish boys and more wealthy neighborhoods, which was something that 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:20.600 Constance tacitly allowed. Throughout all of this, Constance also became 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:24.320 more serious about feminism, but she didn't see this issue 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:27.880 as separate from Irish nationalism. From her point of view, 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:29.640 it would do no good for women to have the 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:32.240 right to vote if Ireland did not have its own 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:35.520 parliament to represent them, and it wasn't just about having 0:15:35.560 --> 0:15:38.040 the right to vote, because that was the right men had. 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:40.760 Every person who had the right to vote needed to 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:44.360 be making an active and positive contribution to the society 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:48.160 they were living in. So she thought Ireland needed to 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:52.000 be its own free nation, and that a free Ireland 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:55.720 also needed to incorporate equal rights for women as its 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:59.560 core identity as a nation. She also felt that a 0:15:59.640 --> 0:16:02.480 free Ireland needed to be free of the kinds of 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:06.040 wealth disparities that she had personally benefited from for her 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:12.120 whole life. So in reality, Constance's political views united feminism, socialism, 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:16.200 and Irish nationalism all into one package. And in this 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:20.280 work Constance gave speeches she wrote and edited for a 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:24.880 feminist journal in En She demonstrated against a visit of 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.400 King George the Fifth and Queen Mary, avoiding arrest herself 0:16:28.760 --> 0:16:30.800 but having to bail out one of her friends and 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:34.360 later testify that she, not the man on trial, was 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:37.320 the one who had burned a flag in protest. This, 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:39.280 by the way, did not sway the court, and the 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:43.240 man in question went to prison. In nineteen twelve, Constants 0:16:43.240 --> 0:16:45.760 and some of her friends started serving Irish stew to 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:48.640 school children, both to feed them because they were living 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:51.480 in poverty, and also to draw attention to the fact 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:55.000 that a law that was allowing local authorities to provide 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:59.040 school lunches had been written not to include Ireland, where 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:02.400 a disproportioned a number of school children were living in poverty. 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:07.200 She did similar work during the nineteen Dublin lockout. This 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:10.520 was a massive labor dispute in which companies responded to 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:14.800 growing efforts to unionize by locking employees out of their jobs. 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:18.919 This dispute started at the Dublin United Tramway Company and 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:23.840 then spread out through other industries. Eventually, about twenty workers 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.359 in Dublin had been locked out of their jobs, and 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:31.480 violent clashes between workers and police were ongoing. Constance Markovich 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:34.720 and Delia Larkin, who was the sister of labor organizer 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:38.080 James Larkin, ran a soup kitchen during this lockout that 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:43.000 fed about three thousand people a day. By August thirteen, 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:46.600 James Larkin was a wanted man. He stayed at the 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:50.040 Markovitch home on August that year, and then the next 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:53.439 day Constance and some others helps to smuggle him past 0:17:53.600 --> 0:17:57.040 police presence so that he could make a promised public appearance. 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.080 That appearance did not last long. The he got onto 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.880 a balcony at the Imperial Hotel, where police promptly spotted 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:08.600 him and arrested him. When Larkin was being escorted to 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.800 a police car, Constance went to tell him goodbye and 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:14.560 good luck, and a police officer struck her in the 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:18.760 face with the baton. This sparked a melee between police 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:21.439 and workers in which two men were killed with police 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:25.160 batons and more than four hundred people, including both workers 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:28.840 and police, were injured. This incident became one of several 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:34.040 days in history known as Bloody Sunday. Anytime somebody sends 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:36.080 us a message asking if we will do a podcast 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:38.880 on Bloody Sunday, I have to ask which one. There 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:40.720 are so many that there are in fact two in 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:45.800 this episode. The Doublin Lockout is often cited as one 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:49.120 of the precursors to the nineteen sixteen Easter Rising, which 0:18:49.119 --> 0:19:00.520 we're going to touch on. After a sponsor break, Constance 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.720 Markovitch continued her work with the Soup Kitchen during the 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:07.680 remainder of the Dublin Lockout, which ended unsuccessfully at least 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.640 from the workers point of view, in nineteen fourteen. Basically 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:13.680 at that point everyone was returning for work having gotten 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:17.080 none of the improvements that they were trying to campaign for. 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:21.840 By then, her marriage to Casimir Markovitch was basically over. 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.600 Their split was amicable, though, and he left Ireland in 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:28.760 nineteen thirteen to take a position as a war correspondent. 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:33.960 Tensions in Ireland were continuing to escalate. The Government of 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:38.320 Ireland Act was given Royal assent on September eighteenth, nineteen fourteen, 0:19:38.480 --> 0:19:41.399 which was intended to give Ireland home rule within the 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:45.240 United Kingdom, but on the same day the Suspensary Act 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:49.000 of nineteen fourteen delayed the Government of Ireland Act from 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:52.399 being put into effect because of World War One. No 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:56.239 one in Ireland was happy with this situation. Unionists who 0:19:56.320 --> 0:19:59.199 wanted to remain part of Great Britain objected to the 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:02.479 Government of Land Act in general, as did the Radical 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:06.840 Republicans who wanted Ireland to be independent, and the moderate faction, 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:08.960 who were happy for Ireland to be part of the 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.120 UK as long as they had home rule, were angry 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:16.760 that the Government of Ireland Act had been delayed. This conflict, 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:20.439 which I mean this had been building for years, eventually 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:23.360 led to the nineteen sixteen Easter Rising, which was an 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:28.359 armed uprising against British rule in Ireland. Our previous episode 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:33.119 has more detail on the rising itself. Constance Markovitch joined 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.719 the Irish Citizen Army and acted as a liaison officer 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:40.240 during the Easter Rising. She also acted as a sniper, 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:43.280 and when she was finally arrested, she famously kissed her 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:47.680 pistol before surrendering it. Markovitch was one of many women 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:50.000 who took part in the Easter Rising, but she was 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:53.240 the only one who was court martialed. Afterward, she was 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:55.280 kept in a cell by herself, and while she was 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:59.000 awaiting sentence, she and all the other prisoners could hear 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:01.680 the executions of those who had been sentenced to death 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:05.040 being carried out every morning. In the end, she was 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:07.760 found guilty and sentenced to death, but her sentence was 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:11.119 commuted to life in prison with hard labor on account 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:13.919 of her gender. When she was given the news, she 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:18.600 said she'd wish they'd had the decency to shoot her. Eventually, 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:21.520 she was moved to Mountjoy Jail, where she could no 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:25.600 longer hear her compatriots being executed every morning, and where 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:29.080 her family could visit her. When her sister brought her 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:31.480 the news that James Connolly, who was one of the 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:34.199 most prominent figures in the Rising, somebody she had been 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:38.080 working with for a long time, had been executed, Constance asked, 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:42.040 why didn't they let me die with my friends. Authorities 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:45.000 were worried that Constance would develop a following if she 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:47.879 was kept in a prison in Ireland, so she was 0:21:47.920 --> 0:21:50.320 transferred to a prison in England, where she was placed 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:54.400 in the general prison population. She and the other incarcerated 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:57.760 women were housed in squalor, only allowed to write one 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:00.880 letter a month, and fed barely enough to keep them alive. 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:06.760 While imprisoned, she converted to Catholicism. Most of the surviving 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:09.720 participants in the Easter Rising were released from prison in 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:13.399 the spring of nineteen seventeen. Constance was released on June 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:16.720 eighteenth of that year. She returned to Dublin to a 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:20.240 hero's welcome and was formally received into the Catholic Church 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:24.159 a week later. Though she was being treated as a celebrity. 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:27.560 Markovic picked right up where she had left off. She 0:22:27.600 --> 0:22:31.240 continued to be involved in numerous organizations, including being president 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:34.720 of kuman Aman, chief scout of the Fiena, a major 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:38.760 of the Irish Citizen Army, on and on. She was 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:42.320 also elected to the Shenfean Executive Council and soon she 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:46.000 and other members were back in prison, partly because of 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:49.280 anti conscription activities. Again this was during World War One, 0:22:49.760 --> 0:22:52.359 and partly because the British government just didn't think it 0:22:52.440 --> 0:22:55.480 was possible to both fight World War One and fight 0:22:55.640 --> 0:22:59.040 Irish nationalists at the same time, so they imprisoned all 0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:02.359 the movements leaders. This time, though, she was treated as 0:23:02.400 --> 0:23:05.919 a political prisoner rather than being in the general prison population. 0:23:06.880 --> 0:23:10.280 A general election was called in the United Kingdom immediately 0:23:10.320 --> 0:23:13.200 after the end of World War One. It was held 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:18.400 on December fourteenth, nineteen eighteen. Shin Fayn ran Constance Markovic 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:21.320 as its candidate for the St Patrick division of Dublin. 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:25.119 She won by a wide margin, defeating an incumbent of 0:23:25.160 --> 0:23:27.919 twenty six years and becoming the first woman to be 0:23:27.960 --> 0:23:31.199 elected as a member of Parliament. She was at the 0:23:31.240 --> 0:23:35.439 time in prison. In spite of half of its candidates 0:23:35.440 --> 0:23:38.920 being incarcerated at the time, seventy three members of shin 0:23:39.040 --> 0:23:42.880 Fain were elected in nineteen eighteen. They defeated candidates from 0:23:42.920 --> 0:23:46.679 the Irish Parliamentary Party in almost all of Ireland. This 0:23:46.760 --> 0:23:50.840 was a huge upset. Those who were free, which was 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:53.840 the portion of them were not in prison at the time, 0:23:54.160 --> 0:23:58.920 didn't take their their seats in Westminster, though in Parliament convened. Instead, 0:23:59.200 --> 0:24:03.080 they formed the First Doyle, which was basically a parliament 0:24:03.160 --> 0:24:06.399 for the Irish Republic. Aimon de Valera, who had been 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:09.480 a leader in the Easter Rising, had been spared execution 0:24:09.600 --> 0:24:12.679 because he was an American citizen, meaning that he wasn't 0:24:12.680 --> 0:24:16.280 guilty of treason. He was elected President of the Doyle 0:24:16.359 --> 0:24:18.800 and he made Markovic, who is still in prison, his 0:24:18.880 --> 0:24:22.600