Horror of seeing brother die on hunger strike hardened Mary MacSwiney against Treaty

Mary MacSwiney's most famous speech was fuelled by the memory of her brother's last days

Mary MacSwiney. Picture: Cork City and County Archives

Mary MacSwiney stood up to speak on the Treaty at 4.25 pm on 21 December 1921. 

Concluding at ‘exactly 7 o’clock’. MacSwiney had spoken, as the Irish Independent journalist Padraig de Burca noted, for precisely the same length of time as the five Plenipotentiaries had taken with their combined speeches’.