Croíthe Radacacha: TG4 documentary looks at some of the female couples of the independence struggle
A scene from Croíthe Radacacha (Radical Hearts), on TG4 on Wednesday.
Kathleen Lynn was born near Killala, Co Mayo in 1874. She was exceptional for her time, as she qualified as a doctor before the turn of the last century, when not many women did so. She was also a militant revolutionary, a captain in the Irish Citizen Army. She was stationed in Dublin’s City Hall during the 1916 Rising.
When members of the British army stormed City Hall and forced her to surrender on Easter Monday evening, she was asked to identify herself. She said she was a doctor. The British commanding officer presumed she was there in a stereotypically female, caring role. Lynn quickly corrected him, adding that she was also captain of her outpost, forsaking the opportunity to evade imprisonment so she could properly identify as a military officer.
Lynn, along with her partner Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, is one of the women featured in Croíthe Radacacha, a fascinating documentary about the hidden stories behind eight lesbian couples during Ireland’s revolutionary years. The other couples include the crack sniper Margaret Skinnider and Nora O’Keeffe; Eva Gore Booth, younger sister of Countess Markievicz, and Esther Roper; Helena Molony and Eveleen O’Brien; Elizabeth O' Farrell, the nurse who surrendered on behalf of the 1916 rebels outside the GPO, and Julia Grenan; and Kathleen O’Brennan and Marie Equi. Although their lives climaxed a century ago, their concerns haven’t aged.
“It surprised how contemporary a lot of these women felt and how we could relate to them now,” says Ciara Hyland, director of Croíthe Radacacha. “They were this revolutionary generation of radical women who were so concerned with quality. They were passionate about making their society better, and addressing issues of inequality in society.
“They campaigned for women’s equality, reproductive rights, better housing, better working conditions, better social conditions. We have a radical activist generation of young people coming up now in Ireland. Their concerns are similar. The battles fought and what they wanted to change feel so relatable," added the Cork-based director.
“Women like Eva Gore Booth and Esther Roper in their journal Urania argued for the abolishment of gender. They said there should be no masculine and feminine gender, that it should be up to people to decide for themselves what they want to be. They discussed trans rights. This a hundred years ago. It’s super contemporary.”
The couples lived during an extraordinary moment in Irish history when it seemed everything was up for grabs – notably women’s rights, and workers’ rights, which came to a head during the Dublin 1913 Lockout. The air was light with a cultural nationalist revival, which fed into the militant nationalism that led to the Easter Rising, a moment of beautiful madness for the women. “We were walking with Ireland into the sun,” said Molony.
The aspirations of the 1916 Rising rebels, captured in the Easter Proclamation which strove for equality for all “Irishmen and Irishwomen”, so everyone would be “cherished” equally, came to nothing, however. Instead it was a return to the kitchen for women in the 1937 Constitution, which bore heavily the fingerprints of Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and soon-to-be Archbishop John Charles McQuaid.
The documentary brings to light – from a mix of detective work and hypothesis – the lesbian nature of the couples’ relationships. There are accounts of whole adult lives lived together; “affectionate kisses” exchanged between Lynn and ffrench-Mullen the night before one of their birthdays, and of the pair sharing breakfast in bed together; O' Farrell and Grenan were buried in the same plot in Glasnevin Cemetery; Brennan was in a relationship with the openly gay American radical Equi, who adopted a child, and was spied on by the FBI, which led to a three-year imprisonment.
“The documentary addresses [whether or not the couples were truly in lesbian relationships with each other] head-on and very well," says Mary McAuliffe, historian and UCD’s Director of Gender Studies. “I take all of the evidence in the round. I look at all the sources I possibly can, both as regards the individual women and as couples, and then make an analysis. They don't tell us. They don't use the word ‘lesbian’ or ‘queer’, but, for instance, with Kathleen Lynn and Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, there's evidence in a diary that Rosamund Jacob kept where she at one time was having a conversation with Hanna Sheehy Skeffington about sex.
“It was after 1916 so [her husband] Francis is dead, and Hanna said she was ‘delighted to be done with all that’. Rosamund felt she was in love with some guy, but then maybe she thought ‘she might be like Dr Lynn and Madeleine and have no use for men at all’. She's saying this in the context of a conversation about sex. That can mean nothing other than these two women were in a relationship together.
“You take all of the material and, as a professional historian, and the others as well who contribute to the documentary, you make your analysis. The analysis is, I would argue, that these are same sex couples.”
Elaine Mai and indie rock band Pillow Queens enlisted enthusiastically in the project, providing tracks, as they both passionately believe in inclusivity. The documentary also features original music by composer Darren Sheehan. It makes for a stirring film. Hyland says three or four contributors were moved to tears during their interviews. Queer people, who were missing from documented Irish history in the last century, have been brought in from the shadows.
“The idea of having these women in history books is really important for the gay community,” says Hyland. “Several contributors talked about growing up and thinking that being gay or lesbian was a foreign thing – that it didn't exist in Ireland. It was very lonely to grow up and feel so different and not have these role models. Now these women are being put back into the history books. The idea that queer people have always been part of Irish history and that they were really foundational to the founding of modern Ireland is a big thing for LGBTQ+ people.”
- Croíthe Radacacha (Radical Hearts) will screen on TG4, Wednesday, December 6, 9.30pm
The recorded history of gay Ireland dates back 1,500 years to the age of mythology. “Homosexuality in Ireland,” as Brian Lacey, a contributor to Croíthe Radacacha, remarks, “is as Irish as the Irish language itself.”
Gay Irish history, however, was kept secret for centuries. Ireland in the twentieth century was a homophobic and conservative country, influenced by the legacy of Victorian mores and the Catholic Church’s stifling rule. Male homosexuality in Ireland was a criminal offence, dating back to a British parliament bill from 1861, and it wasn’t decriminalised until 1993. Curiously, lesbianism was never criminalised, but it was stigmatised.
“It's all to do with living in a patriarchal society where female sexuality was seen as reproductive and marital,” says Mary McAuliffe, historian and UCD’s Director of Gender Studies. “It wasn't so much about sexuality, it was about male and female, about the binary. Male sexuality was criminalised because of anxieties around men behaving like women. Female sexuality was seen as passive, so it was not a threat to society and it wasn’t really believed women could actually have sex together.”
