Letter to the Editor: Broderick campaigns timely today
I am writing with reference to Brian P Murphy’s letter ‘Albina Broderick’s compelling story’ ( , April 21).
While he correctly emphasises Broderick’s republican credentials and her Church of Ireland background, I feel that even to this day, many historians have ignored her wider radical social vision.
She was a leading advocate for public health reform, which occasionally brought her into conflict with the edicts of the Dáil.
At one stage, Brodrick briefly resigned her seat on Kerry County Council in protest over the Dáil’s decision to drastically reduce the number of workhouses.
insisting that such a hospital was necessary in Kerry to care for “the children haunted by tuberculosis, the women tortured in childbirth, the men struck low before their time”, and asked: “[H]as your wife bled to death in childbirth for want of help?”.
She also advocated for a public program of health education on the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and their treatment. She showed tremendous courage in attempting to lift the blanket of silence which surrounded this issue, and chaired the National Council of Nurses Committee on the subject.
She also highlighted the need for trade union representation for the nursing profession.
In 1907, Broderick joined the Society for State Registration of Trained Nurses who campaigned for parity with doctors and demanded “the title ‘nurse’ be used only by certified nurses from identified training schools duly registered as such”.
She was the only prominent nurse leader at this time in Ireland to advocate unionisation of the nursing profession, declaring: “It is full time that we nurses should awake out of sleep and take our rightful place amongst the workers of the world in fraternal organisation”.
Eventually the union was established as a sub- section of the Irish Women Workers’ Union.
The historian Margaret Ward has noted that until recent years, the contribution of women such as Broderick in influencing political events in Ireland during the early 20th century “remained hidden within historical records … (and) has at times been deliberately played down and not just simply undervalued”.
Broderick’s campaign for health reform and support for those employed in the nursing profession is as relevant today during the present health emergency as it was during her own time.
