From Prison to Citizenship: Mary Bourke-Dowling, Suffragette and Republican

14 December marks 100 years since the first general election in which Irish women were able to vote. To celebrate this significant event, Kilmainham Gaol Museum will present an exhibition on Mary Bourke Dowling, a forgotten hero of the Irish suffragette movement. In November 1911 she was among several hundred suffragettes arrested in London for smashing windows across the city. She threw stones at the windows of the British War Office and was tried at Bow Street Police Court where she was sentenced to five days imprisonment in Holloway Gaol. She and the other suffragettes said that such destruction was the only form of protest available to them.

Mary Bourke-Dowling later joined the republican women’s organisation Cumann na mBan and took the Anti-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War. She spent over six months imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol and the North Dublin Union in 1923. As a member of the Prisoners’ Council, Bourke-Dowling drew on her experiences as a suffragette and advised her fellow prisoners on how best to resist the authorities.

The exhibition centres on a scrapbook Mary created to preserve mementoes and documents relating to her imprisonment in both Holloway and Kilmainham Gaols. It includes a letter from her brother addressed to ‘Miss Bourke-Dowling, Suffragette, Bow Street Police Station, London’ and instructions she received from the protest organisers in which they advised the women attending the demonstration "... not to bring more money than is absolutely necessary, nor to wear any jewellery, furs, nor to carry umbrellas". This is the first time that this remarkable scrapbook has been on display to the public. Other items include a watercolour she painted during the Civil War showing one of her fellow female republican prisoners sitting in the Invincibles’ Yard of Kilmainham Gaol, as well as her Detention Order from 1923 signed by Richard Mulcahy, Minister for Defence.

'From Prison to Citizenship: Mary Bourke-Dowling, Suffragette and Republican' will be launched with a special tour of Kilmainham Gaol concentrating on women political activists led by the curator of the exhibition, Aoife Torpey, on Saturday, 8 December at 1.15pm. The tour is free but places must be reserved at kilmainhamgaol@opw.ie The exhibition runs at Kilmainham Gaol Museum until Sunday, 7 April 2019 and admission is free.

ENDS

For further information, please contact OPW Client Services and Communications Unit at opwcsc@opw.ie

Follow us on Twitter @opwireland

Find us on Facebook @opwireland

For further information and high res images, please contact Aoife Torpey, Kilmainham Gaol Museum at 01 453 5984 or aoife.torpey@opw.ie

LISTINGS INFORMATION:

Location: Kilmainham Gaol, Inchicore Road, Dublin 8, D08 T2X5

Event: ‘From Prison to Citizenship: Mary Bourke-Dowling, Suffragette and Republican’

Dates: 8 December 2018 to 7 April 2019

Times: Daily 9.30am – 5.30pm (last admission 5pm)

Admission: FREE – Reservations to kilmainhamgaol@opw.ie