Clodagh Finn: Stamp of approval for the pioneering Thekla Beere

This exceptional woman and trailblazing civil servant deserves to be back in circulation

Thekla Beere. Photo: Dept of Justice

THEKLA BEERE was mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in three successive elections — in 1976, 1983, and 1990.

It is a pity she didn’t run, at least once, because then the contribution of this exceptional woman, moderniser, trailblazing public servant and founder of An Óige, might be better known.

She was the first woman to head a government department, appointed as secretary of the new Department of Transport and Power in 1959. By then, she was accustomed to being the only woman in a roomful of men. 

At Trinity College, she was the only woman in her law class when she graduated with first-class honours in 1923.

Four years later, she was again the only woman in her class, so to speak; this time as a first-class passenger sailing from Boston to Ireland returning home after spending two formative years in the United States. 

She later recalled her time in Jazz Age America and spoke of learning the Charleston and the Black Bottom, and even dancing the tango on Broadway. 

That was the exciting social side of two years’ study and travel during which she met US president Calvin Coolidge. 

She was less than impressed. In a letter home, she wrote: “Cal is the most wizened, miserable looking specimen you can imagine — without a spark of life or animation. He lived up to his reputation for silence. Our conversation was brief — and uninteresting.”

That joyful snippet is included in Dr Anna Bryson’s fascinating biography No Coward Soul, which traces Thekla Beere’s adventures across north America after winning the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial scholarship in 1925.

She had joined the Irish civil service the year before, entering as a temporary Grade III woman clerk, “a very lowly form of life” she later said of the position. She was promoted within six weeks, though, and soon afterwards was on her way to America on an unpaid career break. 

It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She joined more than 1,000 students from 66 nations and travelled extensively.

Dr Bryson offers this enlightening summary: “She heard the anti-fascist campaigner, Salvemini, take on Mussolini; sat in the US senate while the Prohibition Act was being debated; and in San Francisco witnessed one of the first lie detector machines in operation.”

As well as meeting the US president, she also met the US attorney general and was much more impressed by him.

There were job offers, too, and she might well have stayed in the US; another talented emigrant lost to us but, instead, she was deeply committed to an emerging Ireland.

“My determination had always been that I was going to live and work in Ireland. I formed that determination in my childhood before I went to school,” she said.

She spent that childhood in Westmeath and later Longford and Meath. 

Born in 1901, her father, a Church of Ireland vicar, Rev Francis Beere, chose her unusual Christian name, apparently inspired by his studies of Greek at Trinity College, according to Dr Bryson.

Thekla Beere, however, had a difficult and lonely start in life. Her early years were marked by chronic ill health and she was schooled at home by her mother Lucie, a rewarding, though isolating, experience. Her only sibling, Joy, arrived in 1906 and by the time Thekla was 14 she was well enough to attend Alexandra College in Dublin.

She was a natural scholar, winning prizes and accolades at second and third level. It wasn’t easy, though, as money was tight. During her college years, Thekla supplemented the money she got from her father by teaching French, dressmaking, and working as housemistress at Alexandra College.

The latter made for a punishing daily routine. “It involved rising at 6.30am, supervising breakfast, taking students for a walk, monitoring study, ordering books and music, filing lost property, and organising plays,” she told Frances O’Rourke in an interview in 1975. In exchange, she got board and a laundry allowance of half a crown per week.

Double-jobbing continued to be a feature of her life. In the 1930s, her civil service job was not enough to support her and her widowed mother, so she took a job lecturing in statistics in the B Comm module at Trinity College Dublin. 

Breaking the mould

In doing so, she shattered another glass ceiling by becoming the first female lecturer in statistics in Ireland.

She was also something of a mould-breaker in the early civil service. As a woman and a protestant, she was in the minority. She later said she strongly believed protestants had received a fair deal in the new Free State, although the same could not be said for women.

Back in circulation: Thekla Beere stamp

In the 1930s, Mary Sheehy Kettle, sister of Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, said: “Women from their entry [into the civil service] until they reach the ages of 45 or 50 are looked upon as if they are loitering with the intent to commit a felony — the felony in this case being marriage.”

Thekla later mused that the service just wasn’t sure what to do with women: “They hadn’t any women at that level ... and so they just weren’t sure they ought to promote me.”

Nevertheless, by the time she was promoted she was, to quote Dr Bryson, acknowledged as an “expert on shipping, railways and labour issues”, as well as being a skilful negotiator and manager.

Mind you, another three decades would pass before a second woman was appointed head of a government department.

Now, at least, Thekla Beere is back in the limelight with the issue next week of An Post stamps celebrating four women in public life. The other three are first female president of Ireland Mary Robinson, Free State senator Jennie Wyse Power, and first woman chief justice Susan Denham.

Chair of the Philatelic Advisory Committee, Felix M Larkin, thinks the selection embraces all aspects of the concept of ‘public life’.

The historian and former public servant said: "I think the honourees are accordingly very well chosen. We were happy to recommend them.”

Each of the women are distinguished in other ways, as well as being emblematic of women’s achievements in public life."

Here we are, almost out of space, and I haven’t yet mentioned Beere’s lasting contribution as founder and president of An Óige and, perhaps most importantly, her role as first chair of the Commission on the Status of Women which looked at ending the marriage bar and introducing equal pay and maternity leave.

The Beere Report, published in 1972, was a real watershed in Irish women’s rights.

Speaking in the Senate at the time, Mary Robinson said she “regarded this report as the most important social document in recent Irish history”.

It’s fitting, then, that Mary Robinson should feature alongside Thekla in the forthcoming stamp series. Unlike the former president, the might-have-been president Thekla Beere has fallen from public consciousness. How wonderful to see her back in circulation.