WEBVTT - Constance Markievicz 0:00:01.160 --> 0:00:04.120 Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from how 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:14.240 Stuff Works dot Com. Hello and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:18.040 I'm Tracy the Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. Back 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:21.840 in and also as our most recent Saturday classic, we 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:24.959 did an episode on the Easter Rising, that was an 0:00:25.120 --> 0:00:28.880 armed rebellion that struck Ireland in nineteen sixteen, and in 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:32.080 that episode we made a couple of brief mentions of 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:36.120 Constance Markavitch, and I made an aside that she was 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:38.640 one of the most fascinating characters that I learned about 0:00:38.680 --> 0:00:40.640 while we're searching that episode, and that if I had 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:43.720 found out about her earlier, the episode might have been 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:48.159 all about her of about the Easter Rising in general. 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:51.160 So she's been on my short list ever since then, 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:53.800 which probably gives you a sense of how long my 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:56.360 short list is, since that was two years ago and 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:59.040 we are just now getting around to it. We've also 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:01.760 gotten a few were quests for a show on her recently, 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:03.480 so I thought it was finally time for her to 0:01:03.720 --> 0:01:06.200 make it up to the top of that list. There 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:11.040 was a lot of conflict in Ireland during this period 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:16.040 of history, and uh Constance Markevitch was involved in a 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:18.840 lot of it, so we're not going to get back 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:22.480 into the details of the Easter rising again. That is 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.080 why we had it as our most recent Saturday Classic 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:27.360 for maybe folks who are newer to the show or 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:29.720 don't really remember, so that is easy to find in 0:01:29.760 --> 0:01:33.200 the archive um for that part of the story. But 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:35.560 there's a lot more to talk about, so we're not 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:38.600 going to get into the Easter rizing so much today. 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:43.840 Constance Markovitch was born Constance Georgine Gore Booth on February 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:48.120 four eight. Her father was Henry Gore Booth and her 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:52.279 mother was Georgina may Hill. Constance was their oldest child, 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:54.400 and she was born in a townhouse that the family 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:58.320 kept near Buckingham Palace in London. She'd eventually have four 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:01.760 younger siblings that she was always closest to her sister, Ava, 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:05.680 who was two years younger. Constance grew up and was 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:09.760 educated at Lisadel House. Although her mother was from Yorkshire 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:12.680 on her father's side, the family had lived in this 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.400 part of Ireland since sixty one. That was when Paul 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:18.760 Gore was made a baronet and granted part of the 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:22.720 land that would become Lizadella state. The house itself that 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:25.240 she was raised in was a lot newer than that, 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.079 though it was only about thirty years old when Constance 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:31.520 was born. This was a forty eight room country house 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:35.600 decorated with paintings by the old masters, and there the 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:40.080 young Constance was educated by governesses and tutors. She was 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:44.160 described as a happy child, high spirited, and excellent on horseback. 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:47.800 Her father made repeated expeditions to the Arctic, almost as 0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:50.560 a hobby, and he seemed to raise his oldest daughter 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:54.200 with the same eye for adventure. She was also tomboyish 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:56.359 and she didn't like most of the activities that were 0:02:56.360 --> 0:02:59.799 considered feminine. She did like to draw into sketch and 0:02:59.880 --> 0:03:02.040 she was considered to be quite good at it, and 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:04.600 she got older, she also learned to shoot, and she 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:09.120 developed a fondness for playing pranks on people. This is 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:12.839 a very affluent family. Constants and her family were part 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:15.720 of the Protestant Ascendancy, and this is a term that 0:03:15.800 --> 0:03:19.000 was coined in the eighteenth century to describe the domination 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:23.520 of majority Catholic Ireland by a Protestant and mostly English minority. 0:03:24.040 --> 0:03:27.760 It was also used to describe the members of the 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:31.359 Protestant aristocracy that were part of this domination as well. 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:34.520 So even though this term came into use in the 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:38.560 eighteenth century, the practices involved with it went back much farther. 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:42.800 They were largely associated with Oliver Cromwell's conquest of Ireland 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:45.839 and with the period following the Glorious Revolution in six 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:51.640 eight the Protestant ascendancy turned former Irish Catholic landowners into 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:56.240 tenant farmers working for Protestant landlords, many of whom were English, 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:59.920 and generations later these landlords were not viewed as proper 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:04.960 really Irish and were instead described as Anglo Irish constance. 0:04:05.000 --> 0:04:08.360 As father had at least a thousand families as tenants, 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.360 although some of his tenants managed huge acreages that they 0:04:12.400 --> 0:04:16.280 subdivided and then least to other tenants, So he had 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:19.880 these direct tenants and then sort of an indirect pool 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:22.560 of tenants that some of his tenants were managing. A 0:04:22.640 --> 0:04:25.680 lot of this property was adjoining Lisadel, but some of 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:29.320 it was in Manchester. To be clear, this entire system 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:33.080 of Protestant landowners managing land that had previously been owned 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:37.560 by Irish Catholics directly was exploitive and unjust, and it 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:41.520 contributed to a lot of problems in Irish history, but 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:45.040 as landlords went, Henry gore Booth had a reputation for 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:50.880 being fair and reasonable. Many Protestant landlords were basically absentee landlords, 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:54.120 but the gore Booth family was in residence at Lisadel 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:57.479 for at least part of every year. Henry gore Booth 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:00.279 also charged lower rents than the market value you and 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:03.600 he ran the whole enterprise in a very organized, thoroughly 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:08.599 documented way, with orderly, up to date bookkeeping. If this 0:05:08.640 --> 0:05:13.279 seems like a really low bar kind of is, but 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:17.000 it's also indicative of like how messed up this whole 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:19.440 system was. That like that was the blar that made 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:23.120 a person just be seen as a good landlord. He 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:26.760 also did seem to treat his tenants pretty compassionately, if 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:31.039 also paternalistically. In the late eighteen seventies, just a couple 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:34.440 of decades after the Great Famine in Ireland, heavy rains 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:38.440 crossed widespread crop failures, and for a lot of Irish 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:41.320 tenants this meant going to a workhouse and losing their 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:45.320 homes and their land. Many of Henry gore Booth's tenants 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:48.400 still wound up in workhouses, but he arranged for them 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:52.120 to go to one that he personally oversaw without having 0:05:52.160 --> 0:05:55.120 to forfeit their lands or their homes to do it. 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:57.520 So it's still a bad situation, but not as bad 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:00.360 as it could have been. The rest of the family 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:04.040 was part of this approach as well. During this same time, 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.719 Lady gore Booths, Constance and the older children set up 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:10.960 a food distribution system for the tenants, and they arranged 0:06:11.040 --> 0:06:13.880 delivery of straw to homes where there weren't any beds. 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:18.000 Both Constance and Ava tried to be benevolently helpful, and 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.160 apparently they were genuine enough about it that they really 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.640 endeared themselves to the tenants, who they referred to as 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:29.360 country people. In eighteen eighty six, when Constance turned eighteen, 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.279 she spent six months in Italy with a governess before 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:36.000 making her formal debut. She was presented to Queen Victoria 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:39.240 as a debutante on March seventeenth, eighteen eighty seven, which 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:43.120 was during the Queen's Golden Jubilee. Year. After her debut, 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.640 Constant spent several seasons in London, where she was always 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.640 described as the life of the party. Although she was popular, 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:54.200 her behavior wasn't considered very ladylike. While the other young 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:57.800 women in London tended to be coy and demure, Constance 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:01.400 was vivacious and direct. Those pranks that she liked to 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:04.359 play on people could also be kind of mocking and 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.880 mean spirited, which may have turned off some suitors. She 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:11.520 could also be very daring. One night, she actually jumped 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:14.160 out of her carriage to physically get in between two 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:16.800 men who were fighting on the street, calling for other 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:19.480 passers by to come help her break up the bit. 0:07:20.520 --> 0:07:24.440 In one oft repeated story from this time in Consences Life, 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.600 one night, a male guest at Lisadel was making a 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:30.720 number of unwanted advances toward her, and then he was 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.760 seated next to her at dinner. While they were eating, 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:36.680 he put his hand on her knee, and her response 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:39.440 was to pick it up, hold it up for everyone 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:42.560 to see, and exclaim, just look what I have found 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:47.720 in my lap. That's a pretty good story. By the 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:51.520 time she turned twenty five, tensions were high between Constants 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.040 and her parents. She was basically a spinster at that point, 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:57.480 and she was seen as an annoyance and a burden 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:01.080 as they were all increasingly at with each other. At home, 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.560 Constance started asking to go away to art school, and 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:07.440 she spent more time on art than socializing during her 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:12.400 eighteen season in London. They finally gave her permission to 0:08:12.480 --> 0:08:15.080 go to the Slade School in London, which we will 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:25.120 get to. After a quick sponsor break, Constant started studying 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:27.920 art at the Slade School in London in eighteen ninety three. 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:30.880 She still spent a lot of time back home in Slago, 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:35.280 but just being able to have some measure of independence 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:38.000 helped to ease some of the tension between her and 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:41.960 her parents. Constance and her sister Ava started socializing with 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:45.880 lots of artists and writers, including William Butler Yates, who 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.360 had ongoing connections with the gore Booth family and with 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:52.160 the part of Ireland that they were living in. In 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:57.200 eight Constance, Ava and their sister Mabel became focused on 0:08:57.200 --> 0:09:00.959 the issue of women's suffrage. Together they started a Votes 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:05.280 for Women organization in County Sligo, with Constance serving as president, 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:10.000 Ava as secretary, and Mabel as treasurer. And a speech 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:13.040 at one of their meetings, Constance posed the question of why, 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:16.800 if women were so incompetent, had there been no enormous 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:22.000 uprising against Queen Victoria. She also argued against organizations having 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:26.000 separate auxiliary units just for women, because doing so set 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:31.160 up women as a separate class from men. In Constance 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:33.920 continued her study of art by moving to Paris to 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:37.560 study at a studio run by Rodolph Julienne. She was 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.800 at this point completely dedicated to this study, even wearing 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:44.360 a wedding ring to symbolize that she was married to art. 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:47.920 But not long after arriving in Paris, she met Polish 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:53.560 playwright and artist Count Kasimir Markovic. Constance and Kasimir were 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:57.360 immediately taken with each other. He was tall and handsome 0:09:57.400 --> 0:10:00.280 and six years younger than she was. He was also 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:04.160 a very good painter. He was, being from Poland, very 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:06.440 unlike most of the people that she had known in 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:10.040 her life. He was also married, although his wife died 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:12.400 in eighteen ninety nine, just a few weeks after he 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:16.360 and Constance met. By the time Kasimir's wife died, he 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:19.960 and Constance were already quite close. They had a passionate 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:22.839 romance that involved lots of bicycling and at one point 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:26.920 a duel that Kasimir fought to defend Constance's honor after 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:30.760 someone insulted her at a costume ball. On September twenty 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:35.680 nine hundred, they got married. Constance's younger sister, Mabel, who 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.839 had been engaged for years, also got married not long after, 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:42.440 suggesting that the family was traditional enough to insist that 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:46.440 the oldest daughter get married before the younger ones. Although 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:50.480 Kasimir styled himself as a count, it is not completely 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:54.600 clear whether he actually was one if he did have 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:56.959 some kind of title, he did not have a lot 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:00.040 of money, and even though Constance came from quite a 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.480 lot of money, her father had died in January of 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:06.200 nineteen hundred and virtually the entire estate was settled on 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:10.240 her brother. So as the newlywed couple divided their time 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:14.120 among Paris, Lisadel, and the Markovic family estates in Poland, 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:16.960 they mostly did it with the financial help of the family. 0:11:17.640 --> 0:11:21.800 On November nineteen o one, they had a daughter named Mayev. 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:25.840 In nineteen o three, the Markovic family moved to a 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:28.160 home in wrath Guar, which was at the time its 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:32.120 own village but today is a suburb of Dublin. Constance's 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:34.400 mother had secured the house for them and was also 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:39.000 largely raising young mave Stanislaus the count's son by his 0:11:39.080 --> 0:11:41.920 first marriage, moved into the wrath Car home and may 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:46.040 have visited from time to time. While living in Ireland, 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:49.520 Constance and Casimir started spending more and more time among 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:53.640 artistic and literary circles, and they joined an art society 0:11:53.720 --> 0:11:57.360 with William Butler, Yates and George A. E. Russell, and 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:02.559 Constance became increasingly interested in Irish nationalism. She met maud Gonne, 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.959 who was the founder of the Irish nationalist women's organization 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:10.800 Daughters of Ireland, and started becoming involved in other nationalist organizations. 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:17.000 At first, Constance's involvement in Irish nationalism was viewed with suspicion. 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:19.720 It didn't make a lot of sense that the oldest 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:22.760 daughter of an ascendancy family would take the side of 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:26.520 Irish nationalists at all. After all, she was part of 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.839 a minority ruling class that was almost the exact opposite 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:34.080 of the idea of a free, independent Ireland. Aside from Ava, 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.200 her relatives didn't approve of the connections she was making, 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:42.000 and those connections suspected she was really a spy. She 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.040 stuck with it, though, even as she and Kasimir started 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:48.160 to drift apart. When they met They had both had 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:52.359 a tremendous passion for art and common and now Constance's 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:57.000 passion was becoming Irish nationalism and fighting for a free Ireland. 0:12:57.040 --> 0:12:59.440 And this was a passion that Kasimir just didn't share. 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:03.600 You wouldn't necessarily think he would share it. He was 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:08.160 not Irish. Earlier in their marriage, Constance had styled herself 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.080 as a countess because she had married a count, but 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.280 as they grew apart, she started calling herself madam, which 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.679 was a fashionable thing to do among women in the movement. 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:22.400 In the early nineteen hundreds, there were several different nationalists 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:26.600 and separatist organizations operating in Ireland who wanted Ireland to 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:30.400 be independent from the British Empire. In nineteen o five, 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:35.200 Arthur Griffith established shin Fayne meaning We Ourselves or Ourselves Alone, 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:40.280 which absorbed some of these organizations. Constance began attending shin 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:43.200 Fayne meetings in nineteen o eight, and she joined its 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:47.080 council in nineteen o nine. Also in nineteen o nine, 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:50.840 she co founded Nafena Aaron also known as just the Fienna, 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:55.520 which was an Irish nationalist scouting organization for boys. Part 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.760 of its purpose was paramilitary. They were training boys and 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:03.040 marksmanship and drill and basically preparing them to join nationalists 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:06.360 and Republican militia as they got older. A lot of 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:09.520 these boys were living in extreme poverty and thinking that 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:13.200 a country life would help them. Constance least a large 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:17.680 country house and basically operated it as a commune for them. 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:20.760 Sometimes the Fenna was known to pick fights with some 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:25.120 of the more affluent Anglo Irish boys and more wealthy neighborhoods, 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:29.800 which was something that Constance tacitly allowed. Throughout all of this, 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:34.440 Constance also became more serious about feminism, but she didn't 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:38.160 see this issue as separate from Irish nationalism. From her 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.160 point of view, it would do no good for women 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:42.480 to have the right to vote if Ireland did not 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:45.640 have its own parliament to represent them. And it wasn't 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:47.720 just about having the right to vote because that was 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:50.680 the right men had. Every person who had the right 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:53.320 to vote needed to be making an active and positive 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:57.480 contribution to the society they were living in. So she 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:01.400 thought Ireland needed to be its own free nation, and 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:05.440 that a free Ireland also needed to incorporate equal rights 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:09.200 for women as its core identity. As a nation. She 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.560 also felt that a free Ireland needed to be free 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.720 of the kinds of wealth disparities that she had personally 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:19.880 benefited from for her whole life. So in reality, Constance's 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:24.880 political views united feminism, socialism, and Irish nationalism all into 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:29.920 one package. And in this work Constance gave speeches she 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.640 wrote and edited for a feminist journal. In nineteen ten, 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:36.840 she demonstrated against a visit of King George the Fifth 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:40.400 and Queen Mary, avoiding arrest herself but having to bail 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:42.960 out one of her friends and later testify that she, 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:45.840 not the man on trial, was the one who had 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:48.840 burned a flag in protest. This, by the way, did 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:51.120 not sway the court, and the man in question went 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:54.560 to prison. In nineteen twelve, Constants and some of her 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:57.920 friends started serving Irish stew to school children, both to 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:00.600 feed them because they were living in poverty, and also 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.560 to draw attention to the fact that a law that 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:07.480 was allowing local authorities to provide school lunches had been 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:11.320 written not to include Ireland, where a disproportionate number of 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:15.120 school children were living in poverty. She did similar work 0:16:15.200 --> 0:16:18.760 during the nineteen thirteen Dublin lockout. This was a massive 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:22.320 labor dispute in which companies responded to growing efforts to 0:16:22.440 --> 0:16:27.160 unionize by locking employees out of their jobs. This dispute 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:30.400 started at the Dublin United Tramway Company and then spread 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:34.760 out through other industries. Eventually, about twenty thousand workers in 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:37.720 Dublin had been locked out of their jobs, and violent 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:42.600 clashes between workers and police were ongoing. Constance Markovich and 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:46.360 Delia Larkin, who was the sister of labor organizer James Larkin, 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:49.520 ran a soup kitchen during this lockout that fed about 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:54.880 three thousand people a day. By August thirteen, James Larkin 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:58.280 was a wanted man. He stayed at the Markovitch home 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:01.240 on August that year here and then the next day 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.880 Constance and some others helps to smuggle him past police 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:07.879 presence so that he could make a promised public appearance. 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:11.880 That appearance did not last long, though, He got onto 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.760 a balcony at the Imperial Hotel, where police promptly spotted 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:19.480 him and arrested him. When Larkin was being escorted to 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:22.639 a police car, Constance went to tell him goodbye and 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.399 good luck, and a police officer struck her in the 0:17:25.440 --> 0:17:29.600 face with the baton. This sparked a melee between police 0:17:29.680 --> 0:17:32.280 and workers in which two men were killed with police 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:36.000 batons and more than four hundred people, including both workers 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:39.720 and police, were injured. This incident became one of several 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:44.920 days in history known as Bloody Sunday. Anytime somebody sends 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:46.960 us a message asking if we will do a podcast 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:49.720 on Bloody Sunday, I have to ask which one? There 0:17:49.760 --> 0:17:51.560 are so many that there are in fact two in 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:56.640 this episode. The Doublin Lockout is often cited as one 0:17:56.680 --> 0:18:00.000 of the precursors to the nineteen sixteen Easter Rising, which 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:08.920 we're going to touch on after a sponsor break. Constance 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:12.159 Markovitch continued her work with the Soup Kitchen during the 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:16.040 remainder of the Dublin Lockout, which ended unsuccessfully, at least 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:19.040 from the workers point of view in nineteen fourteen. Basically 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:22.120 at that point everyone was returning for work having gotten 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:25.520 none of the improvements that they were trying to campaign for. 0:18:26.560 --> 0:18:30.240 By then, her marriage to Casimir Markovitch was basically over. 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:34.000 Their split was amicable, though, and he left Ireland in 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:37.200 nineteen thirteen to take a position as a war correspondent. 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:42.399 Tensions in Ireland were continuing to escalate. The Government of 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:46.720 Ireland Act was given Royal assent on September eighteenth, nineteen fourteen, 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:49.840 which was intended to give Ireland home rule within the 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:53.680 United Kingdom, but on the same day the Suspensary Act 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:57.440 of nineteen fourteen delayed the Government of Ireland Act from 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:00.080 being put into effect because of World War One, and 0:19:00.760 --> 0:19:04.520 no one in Ireland was happy with this situation. Unionists 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:07.520 who wanted to remain part of Great Britain objected to 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:10.440 the Government of Ireland Act in general, as did the 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:14.399 Radical Republicans who wanted Ireland to be independent, and the 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:17.200 Moderate faction, who were happy for Ireland to be part 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:19.480 of the UK as long as they had home rule, 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:22.960 were angry that the Government of Ireland Act had been delayed. 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:28.240 This conflict, which I mean this had been building for years, 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.600 eventually led to the nineteen sixteen Easter Rising, which was 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:36.200 an armed uprising against British rule in Ireland. Our previous 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:40.800 episode has more detail on the rising itself. Constance Markovitch 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:44.639 joined the Irish Citizen Army and acted as a liaison 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.040 officer during the Easter Rising. She also acted as a 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:51.560 sniper and when she was finally arrested, she famously kissed 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:55.800 her pistol before surrendering it. Markovitch was one of many 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:58.199 women who took part in the Easter Rising, but she 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.200 was the only one who was court mark shold. Afterward, 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:03.480 she was kept in a cell by herself, and while 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:06.560 she was awaiting sentence, she and all the other prisoners 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:09.680 could hear the executions of those who had been sentenced 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.000 to death being carried out every morning. In the end, 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:15.600 she was found guilty and sentenced to death, but her 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:19.040 sentence was commuted to life in prison with hard labor 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:22.120 on account of her gender. When she was given the news, 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:27.000 she said she'd wish they'd had the decency to shoot her. Eventually, 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:29.960 she was moved to Mountjoy Jail, where she could no 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:34.040 longer hear her compatriots being executed every morning, and where 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.520 her family could visit her. When her sister brought her 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:39.919 the news that James Connolly, who was one of the 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.640 most prominent figures in the rising, somebody she had been 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:46.520 working with for a long time, had been executed, Constance asked, 0:20:46.760 --> 0:20:50.480 why didn't they let me die with my friends. Authorities 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:53.399 were worried that Constance would develop a following if she 0:20:53.480 --> 0:20:56.320 was kept in a prison in Ireland, so she was 0:20:56.359 --> 0:20:58.760 transferred to a prison in England, where she was placed 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:02.120 in the General Prison pop Relation. She and the other 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:06.000 incarcerated women were housed in squalor, only allowed to write 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:08.639 one letter a month, and fed barely enough to keep 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:14.440 them alive. While in prison, she converted to Catholicism. Most 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:17.520 of the surviving participants in the Easter Rising were released 0:21:17.520 --> 0:21:20.879 from prison in the spring of nineteen seventeen. Constance was 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:24.199 released on June eighteenth of that year. She returned to 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:27.920 Dublin to a hero's welcome and was formally received into 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:31.160 the Catholic Church a week later, though she was being 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:34.720 treated as a celebrity. Markovic picked right up where she 0:21:34.760 --> 0:21:38.440 had left off. She continued to be involved in numerous organizations, 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:42.320 including being president of kumin Aman, chief scout of the Fiena, 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:45.760 a major of the Irish Citizen Army, on and on. 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.199 She was also elected to the Shenfean Executive Council and 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:53.880 soon she and other members were back in prison, partly 0:21:53.920 --> 0:21:57.280 because of anti conscription activities. Again this was during World 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:00.520 War One, and partly because the British government just didn't 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:03.080 think it was possible to both fight World War One 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.800 and fight Irish nationalists at the same time, so they 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:10.320 imprisoned all the movements leaders. This time, though she was 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:12.960 treated as a political prisoner rather than being in the 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:17.159 general prison population. A general election was called in the 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:20.400 United Kingdom immediately after the end of World War One. 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:25.200 It was held on December fourteenth, nineteen eighteen. Shin Fayn 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:28.760 ran Constance Markovic as its candidate for the St Patrick 0:22:28.840 --> 0:22:32.720 division of Dublin. She won by a wide margin, defeating 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:35.840 an incumbent of twenty six years and becoming the first 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:39.040 woman to be elected as a member of Parliament. She 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:42.800 was at the time in prison. In spite of half 0:22:42.880 --> 0:22:46.480 of its candidates being incarcerated at the time, seventy three 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:50.000 members of shin Fain were elected in nineteen eighteen. They 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:54.200 defeated candidates from the Irish Parliamentary Party in almost all 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:58.080 of Ireland. This was a huge upset. Those who were free, 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:01.800 which was a portion of them were not in prison 0:23:01.840 --> 0:23:05.160 at the time, didn't take their their seats in Westminster, 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:09.359 though in Parliament convened. Instead, they formed the First Doyle, 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:13.560 which was basically a parliament for the Irish Republic. Amon 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:16.360 de Valera, who had been a leader in the Easter Rising, 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:19.720 had been spared execution because he was an American citizen, 0:23:20.080 --> 0:23:23.640 meaning that he wasn't guilty of treason. He was elected 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:26.159 president of the Doyle and he made Markovic, who is 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:30.000 still in prison, his Minister of Labor. She was finally 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:33.560 released from prison in March of nineteen nineteen. She and 0:23:34.520 --> 0:23:37.080 the other She and the other members of the movement 0:23:37.119 --> 0:23:40.359 who were imprisoned were basically released out of the fear 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:44.280 of the ongoing flu pandemic. Officials were worried that if 0:23:44.320 --> 0:23:47.479 they contracted influenza and died in prison, they would all 0:23:47.520 --> 0:23:51.760 become martyrs. By this point, guerrilla warfare had been underway 0:23:51.800 --> 0:23:54.920 for months and what became known as the Irish War 0:23:54.960 --> 0:23:58.960 of Independence or the Anglo Irish War. As Minister of 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:03.399 Labor cons since kept strict security procedures, instituted a labor 0:24:03.440 --> 0:24:07.159 court to resolve disputes, and basically tried to mediate between 0:24:07.200 --> 0:24:10.640