Dr Dorothy Price: The rebel doctor written out of our history

Dr Dorothy Price helped eradicate TB here, but her role as a medic to a West Cork flying column has been overlooked, writes Sharon Ní Chonchúir

STORIES can be hidden within stories. This is what Anne MacLellan discovered while researching the work of Dr Dorothy Price. She was a member of the wealthy Protestant ascendancy that had such an influence on the emerging Irish state. She was born in 1890 and raised in what her sister Edie described as: “the true Irish Protestant social and cultural tradition — attending church regularly and consorting only with other little Protestants. There were worries we would pick up the Irish brogue so our governesses came from England and children’s maids were French-speaking Swiss girls. We learned English rather than Irish history and grew up as devoted little West Britons.”

It was a privileged life — a life that prompted Anne MacLellan to write a book about this much-overlooked historical figure.