All language subtitles for Forgotten The Widows Of The Irish Revolution [2022] [1080p] EN

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In the aftermath of the 1916 Rising,

the British government
executed 16 men.

Seven of them left behind
wives and children,

many of them still very young.

And in the decade of centenaries,
much has been said about these men.

But how many of us know about

the women and children
that they left behind?

The women were Agnes Mallin,
the wife of Michael Mallin.

Lily Connolly,
the wife of James Connolly.

Grace Plunkett,
wife of Joseph Mary Plunkett.

Grace's sister, Muriel MacDonagh,
wife of Thomas MacDonagh.

Kathleen Clarke, wife of Tom Clarke.

Aine Ceannt, wife of Eamonn Ceannt.

And Maud Gonne,
the wife of Jon MacBride.

These seven women were from a variety

of class, ideological
and educational backgrounds

spanning the breadth of Irish society
at the time.

And yet, they had several things
in common.

They all lived through
the hell of Easter Week

and were widowed at the same time,
left to pick up the pieces.

In his last hour on Earth, Eamonn
Ceannt wrote to his wife Aine,

to tell her, "Men and women
will vie with one another

to shake your dear hand.

You will be, you are the wife of one
of the leaders of the revolution."

But the reality for these women
would be radically different.

Much about their stories
isn't unusual.

Theirs is the social and political
history of many women

as Ireland moved from revolution
into the new Free State.

The widows of Easter 1916
didn't die for Ireland.

They had to keep on living
for Ireland.

What would this new free Ireland
be like for them, and for all women?

Would it actually have
a real place for them in it?

In many respects, the 1916 Rising
represented a high point

of the idea of equality
for Irish women.

And nowhere is this more evident than
in the proclamation of the republic.

A truly radical document that
addressed Irishmen and Irishwomen.

Insisting on equality of the sexes,
freedom of religious expression

and equal economic opportunity.

To quote it, "The Republic guarantees
religious and civil liberty,

equal rights and equal opportunities
of all citizens."

This was the proclamation
that these women's husbands

had given their lives for.

This and the republic that it
declared Ireland to be

would become a touchstone for the
widows for the rest of their lives.

Time and time again,
they would hark back to it

and remind others of it too.

But following the executions,

the women also had other things
on their minds.

Can you just tell me, Sinead,
about the immediate aftermath?

They're still in this
very fluid situation,

their husbands have been executed
and many have small children.

I mean, it was absolute chaos.

I mean, Dublin is destroyed.

The gas to the city
had been cut off.

There was that whole reaction
to what had happened.

It all plunged into a public realm.

Their houses had been raided
in most cases.

There's mass arrests.

(EARNER―BYRNE)
Immediately after the Rising,

many of the widows were plunged
into s struggle for survival.

All of them, with the exception
of Grace Plunkett,

had small children to feed.

And only Maud Gonne had independent
wealth to fall back upon.

The family of Lily Connolly,
for example,

wife of executed leader
James Connolly, was left destitute.

A letter survives written
by Lily Connolly's daughter,

Nora Connolly, in which she recalls
their circumstances at the time.

"We were in dire straits," she wrote.

"We had no money whatsoever
and no means of getting any.

Daddy never had any money to spare.

The last few pounds he'd had in his
wallet were taken from him

after his arrest."

You know, many of them didn't have
the opportunity to earn money

because of the nature
of Irish society at that time.

But even for those who did,

for example, Aine Ceannt,
who ran a private fee-paying school,

she came back to her home
after the Easter Rising,

her husband had been executed.
She had dependents to look after,

including a child.

And that school had been ransacked
and destroyed.

So her source of income was gone.
Her husband was gone.

And she was left with no support
in the immediate aftermath

to try and deal with that reality,
with her own grief, her own loss,

and also, the lack
of any financial support.

Widows, as with other single
mothers,

had very little access
to the workplace,

they had issues of childcare.

Many of them had to rely upon
charity and philanthropy

as there wasn't any welfare.

(EARNER―BYRNE) Just how harsh life
could be for widows at the time

and how limited their options
sometimes were

is illustrated by the holdings found
in the National Archives of Ireland.

The National Archive preserves
the memory of the state.

So, we hold all of the records that
relate to the modern Irish state

bin terms of government records
from 1921 onwards.

But we also still do have holdings
relating to the period

when Ireland was under British
administration.

So, really the holdings
tell a range of stories

in terms of the political stories,
the social stories,

the economic stories,
the cultural stories,

that shaped and framed the nation.

So, really, Orlaith, before 1922
and the foundation of the Irish State

apart from charity,
what would a widow rely on

in terms of relief or welfare?

Very little really. The workhouse.

(EARNER―BYRNE) At the time,

workhouses were the only official
help available to the destitute.

In the workhouses, families were
separated from each other,

and conditions were often grim.

As a result, only the most desperate,

those who had no other choice
would go there.

We have ledgers here in the National
Archives from the workhouses.

They clearly show that it's widows
who are turning up.

In each line, you've got "widow,
widow, widow, widow, widow."

Pretty bleak.

(EARNER-BYRNE) Many widows faced
destitution and the workhouse

following the loss of their husbands
who were often

the sole or main breadwinners.

The families of the men involved
in 1916 were no exception

and an immediate charity drive
was started to help them.

There's initially fundraising
to provide assistance

for the widows of those killed
in the Rising,

also for those who were jailed.

And this becomes the Irish National
Aid and Volunteer Dependence Fund.

And it's really fronted
and initially administered

by the widows, particularly
Kathleen Clark

and Aine Ceannt.

They start fundraising, appealing
to the people of Ireland

to raise money to support
the prisoners and the families

of men who were killed
during the Rising itself.

This rose into a really successful

charitable welfare-driven
organisation

that raises money all over Ireland,
across the Irish Diaspora,

and the money that's
raised in Ireland

is dwarfed by huge amounts that come
in from America, in particular.

And in that fundraising initiative,

is the story of the widows
part of the propaganda used?

The widows are, sort of,
front and centre, and the children,

in this propaganda
to raise the money.

The story of the widows of 1916
and their children

became a powerful tool for raising
public sympathy and money

for their families.

But it had another effect
on them too.

The widows, despite their own
intense personal grief

and financial struggles

had to get used to the glare
of the public spotlight.

In the wake of the 1916 Rising
and the execution of their husbands,

there was significant international
and national interest

in them and their children.

Indeed, the nationalist movement
had to exploit that interest

in order to both change the initially
hostile reaction to the Rising

but also to bring in
much needed funds

so that the movement
could regroup and continue.

As a result, the women found
themselves at the forefront

of the nationalist publicity effort.

Remember, this is during
the First World War,

so, the British state
has very heavy censorship.

You've got the
Defence of the Realm Act, DORA,

so the newspapers are heavily
censored.

You can do anything political
in them.

What you can do
is much more emotional.

And appealing to the emotions,

talking about the lives of the men
or the lives of their widows.

An example of this is
the 1916 Christmas edition

of the Catholic Bulletin,

that featured pictures of many of
the 1916 widows and their children.

(WARD) The photographs,
in particular,

that are included
in the Catholic Bulletin

subvert the censorship

because people take the photos
afterwards

and use them as part of the
fundraising drive

and use them as pamphlets
about the rising.

It must have been very tough to have
been so much in the spotlight

at a time of such intense grief.

While many of the widows
threw themselves wholeheartedly

into raising awareness of the cause
their husbands had died for,

some of them reacted to the intense
scrutiny in unexpected ways.

The American newspapers pick up the
stories of the widows of 1916,

particularly the romantic story

of Grace Gifford
and Joseph Plunkett.

Grace and Joe had been married
in a last minute ceremony

in Kilmainham Gaol.

Within hours, he was executed
and she never saw him again.

It was a story that gripped
the public imagination.

An American newspaper reporter came
to interview Grace,

the grieving widow
and got a bit of a surprise.

If you can imagine walking through
Ireland in this period

and you would see a lot of women
wearing black

and what were known
as "widow's weeds,"

which you wore
for a period of time,

so it was a very public
demonstration of your grief

and your widowhood.

And then when this American
reporter, Irish-American reporter

Eileen Moore comes to interview her,

she's already telling her readers
that

I was expecting to have this woman

who was going to sob her way
through our meeting and interview

and out she emerges in this white
outfit holding a kitten.

She's wearing all these rings
on her fingers

and she's got bushy red hair and
she's wearing the dress of the day

but she's just vibrant.

And she's an artist, she's trained
with William Orpen

so she's very aware
of what she looks like

and she's deliberately
playing to the journalist who comes.

She doesn't want to be seen
through this filter

because she's reacting,
because she's already becoming

a caricature of herself.

Some of the widows
were also uncomfortable

with the public spotlight.

In the years after the Rising,

Lily Connolly tried
to keep her life private,

leaving the public activism
to her children,

especially Ina, Nora,
and Roddy Connolly.

Maud Gonne was also often left out of
the publicity around the widows,

but for very different reasons.

She was set apart from the other
widows in so far as

she was not living with her husband
at the time of the Easter Rising.

They had separated
some 10-11 years previously

in acrimonious circumstances
and she was living in France.

John MacBride, by the early 1900s,
was a hero of the Boer War,

having commanded the Irish Brigade
during the Boer War.

He after the war ended,
couldn't get back to Ireland,

so he came to Paris which was a
centre for exiles and Irish emigres

through the 19th century
and into the 20th century.

And they met, Maud Gonne
and John MacBride,

married in a whirlwind romance.

Things quickly went wrong.

And they were told by many of their
friends,

Arthur Griffiths said,
"Don't do this, please!" Yeah.

Maud Gonne sought a divorce
from her husband

citing complaints of cruelty
against her,

of physical abuse while
she was pregnant, of drunkenness.

And as it turned out, there was
an explosive allegation made

that John MacBride
had sexually abused

her ten-year-old daughter, Iseult.

It wasn't clear at all
that a divorce could be granted.

These people were not married
under British law

or Irish law at the time.

The question of their citizenship
was also quite complex.

John MacBride had been stripped
of his citizenship

by having taken up arms
against the Crown.

And in the end, they weren't able
to be fully divorced

so it was a judicial separation,
in the end.

Maud Gonne was afraid
to go back to Ireland.

She was worried that her husband
would reopen proceedings,

would take her son away,

and so, John MacBride's name
in Maud Gonne's household

was a name to be scared of.

And then in 1916, after the Rising,
all that changed completely.

John MacBride became a name
to be honoured,

he was a martyr,
he died for Ireland,

"He has given my son
a name he can be proud of,"

that was something she wrote.

And she took the name back on.
Yeah.

Embraced widow's weeds, wore black
for the rest of her life.

Very... You know, full mourning
for the rest of her life.

Despite fully embracing
her dead husband's legacy,

a sense of moral taint clung
to Maud Gonne MacBride,

a result of her attempt
to divorce him.

This was an era where a woman could
not claim either charitable help

or the moral high ground
if she was seen

as anything other than respectable.

As a result, Maud was often
not included in publicity

with the other widows.

.

The publicity generated by the widows
and their children was crucial

in bringing public opinion
around behind the 1916 Rising.

But women actually played
a much bigger role

in sustaining the nationalist
movement itself.

(BORGONOV) So, after the executions,

the movement has been essentially
decapitated.

There's martial law
and there's censorship.

Things are really in disarray.

The widows really step in.

Kathleen Clark had been really given
a succession plan

by her husband who was head

of the Irish Republican Brotherhood
military council.

She had a pot of around three
or four thousand pounds,

and she really
starts the ball rolling.

The key to all this was the Irish
Volunteer Dependence Fund

was really the only public face

of what becomes
the independence movement.

It really becomes a parish by parish
national organisation

at a time when there
is no Sinn Fein political party,

when there is no other ways

of getting involved
in the independence movement.

And everywhere across the country

where you have these activists
gathering

they eventually become the first
branches of Sinn Fein.

They're predominantly led
by women.

And the widows are really at
the coalface of this organisation.

Which is really important because
you've got a moment

where things could have died.

It could have been successful,
the executions and imprisonments,

they could have decapitated
this movement.

Do they bring in new people?

One thing that Kathleen Clark does
is she hires an administrator.

And Aine Ceannt is also involved in
this decision.

And the person they choose
is Michael Collins.

Michael Collins had been released
from prison at Christmas.

He has IRB backgrounds.

The decision to hire Michael Collins
is really key

to his development
as a national figure.

It's the first time he really lives
and works in Dublin

and really gets access
to this independence movement.

Had Kathleen Clark not wanted
to hire him,

he would not have gotten
that position

and we don't know
how he would have ended up.

(EARNER-BYRNE) Kathleen was to pay
a further personal price

for the huge workload she took on
in the wake of the Rising.

Years later when she was asked what
was the first thing you did

after the 1916 Rising,

Kathleen Clark answered simply,
"I lost a child."

She already had three small boys
by 1916

and in August of that year,
quite late in her pregnancy,

she miscarried the child that she
hadn't told her husband about.

She simply said, "I didn't want
to add to his burden or worry."

It's interesting that that is what
stayed with her,

it wasn't the fundraising
that she threw herself into,

it wasn't the drive to survive.

It wasn't the role she played
in the really important task

of rebuilding the nationalist
movement,

it was the fact
that she'd lost a child.

(EARNER―BYRNE) Someone else who may
have lost a child

in the aftermath of the Rising
was Grace Plunkett.

(O'KEEFFE) Grace Plunkett's
sister-in-law alleged

that she suffered a miscarriage
at Larkfield,

the Plunkett family home
in Kimmage after the 1916 Rising.

Grace and Joe had only been married
for a couple of hours

before he was executed.

There was no unsupervised
opportunity

to consummate the marriage

so if she was pregnant,
it was before the 1916 Rising,

and before they were married.

I don't think that it's possible
to substantiate that rumour

that Grace was pregnant. The only
source was Geraldine Plunkett.

I don't think there was very much
love lost between those two women.

But if it was true, it would have
had significant ramifications

for Grace's moral standing
in the community.

It would have meant the
relationship was consummated

before the wedding.

But it would have also meant
that that marriage

had much greater significance
for both of them.

It would have meant that it was vital
for Grace to get married

before Joseph's execution

as unmarried mothers in those days
were particularly vulnerable.

They often lost the support
of their families,

their claim to being respectable
and their social status,

making it even harder
to survive on their own.

A last minute wedding
in Kilmainham on the eve

of Joseph's execution could have been
a way for Grace to avoid such a fate.

(SEAGULLS CRY)

In 1917, the National Aid Committee

paid for a holiday in Skerries
for several of the 1916 widows

and their families.

Present were Agnes Mallin
and her children,

Lily Connolly and her children,
Aine Ceannt and her son,

Muriel MacDonagh and her daughter,
as well as Grace Plunkett.

While there, tragedy struck Muriel.

(MCCOOLE) She went swimming.

Although Muriel is a really,
really strong swimmer,

had won awards for long distance
swimming,

the area of Skerries is notorious
for currents

and she was trying to get out
to the island,

she'd been told by others
not to go to the island.

Grace raised the alarm very quickly
because one of the children

Seamus Mallin had run back
to the house.

So it was very immediate and they
were very alarmed from the outset.

But unfortunately,
when the boat went

there was no sign of her,
and tragically,

her body was washed up
the next morning

and obviously, she had drowned.

It all happened so quickly.

Even with all the families there,

it must have had such an impact
on them all,

but most of all, of course,
Barbara, her little daughter,

and Donagh, her son who was
in hospital at the time.

What happened to them afterwards?

The story I recall first
and foremost

is that Don was lifted up
to the window in the hospital

and he remembers looking
out of the window

and seeing horses with the black
plumes dancing on their head.

Years later it came back to him

that he was watching
his mother's funeral.

After the MacDonagh children
were orphaned

due to the execution
of their father

and the subsequent drowning
of their mother

the National Aid Committee became
involved in their welfare.

Largely as a result of something
that Thomas MacDonagh

had written when he declared,

"My beloved Muriel
and my beloved children,

my country then will treat them
as wards. I hope."

The National Aid Committee was
the same fundraising organisation

that was set up to look after the
families of those who fought in 1916.

It decided to take a very literal
approach to MacDonagh's words.

(MCCOOLE) In his last letter,

Thomas MacDonagh has used the term
"wards of the nation."

And this phrase that he uses because
he's using it the context

that he hasn't made much money
and so he's making the case

for them to be looked after
by the wider nationalist community.

But instead, the National Aid
set up a committee

to look into who's going
to look after these children.

The issue of who the MacDonagh
children should live with

was complicated by religion.

Muriel's family was Protestant,
while the MacDonaghs were Catholic.

At the time, sending Catholic
children,

especially the children
of a dead nationalist hero

to Protestant families
was highly disapproved of.

And then it becomes a pull and push
between both sides of the family.

And the children are moved
from place to place, you know?

Their lives are turned upside-down

by almost the possession of them
by the nation.

This was during a period when
religion was assuming

an ever increasing importance.

This is illustrated by the fact

that every single one
of the Easter widows

ended up Roman Catholic.

Four of the Easter widows
were initially Protestant

and all four converted
to Catholicism.

Maud Gonne MacBride converted
in 1903,

just prior to her marriage
to John MacBride.

And she wrote to WB Yeats about
that time describing herself

as an "Irishwoman."

She said, "I want to look at the
truth through the same prism

as my country people. I wanted
to convert to Catholicism."

In the case of Grace Gifford,

from the unionist/loyalist
Gifford family,

her conversion happened
just prior to her wedding

to Joe Plunkett in 1916.

Lily Connolly converted
to Catholicism in August 1916.

In her case, she was fulfilling
the deathbed wish of her husband.

The last of the widows who converted
to Catholicism was Muriel MacDonagh.

In her case it was May 1917,

poignantly, the first anniversary
of her husband's execution.

In many ways, they were embracing
the faith of their executed husbands

but more than that, it underlined
the increasing association,

intertwining of nationalism
and Catholicism around this time.

(EARNER―BYRNE) In 1917, things
changed for many of the women

involved in the nationalist movement,
including some of the 1916 widows.

Many of the men who had been
imprisoned in England

after the Rising began to return home
changing the status quo.

So while the Proclamation in 1916
had the promise of equality,

and gender equality for women
and men in it,

after many of the men begin
returning home in 1917,

it becomes apparent to a lot
of the women

that they're going to have
to advocate for themselves.

The men of the political movement
are coming back

and the women are fighting really
hard to say

we're also part
of the political movement.

(MCAULIFFE) In the General Election
of 1918,

the first election
with women voters,

albeit over 30 with
certain property qualifications,

Kathleen Clark really wanted
to run as a Sinn Fein candidate.

But she is stymied by the men.

The men wanted to put in the men
that are still in prison

and the male heroes of 1916
into those seats

and Kathleen was side-lined.

And you begin to see this
is happening again and again

that side-lining of the women.

And so even a widow,
like Kathleen Clark

has to battle for her position.

(EARNER-BYRNE) This pushing out of
women from the public sphere

was a theme that would continue
into the new Irish Free State.

But first, Ireland had to win
her independence from Britain.

In 1919, the War of Independence
broke out in Ireland.

The Republican forces were determined
to carry on what was begun in 1916

and strike a decisive blow against
the British Crown forces in Ireland.

During the War of Independence
what happened to these families,

to the women, to Kathleen Clark
and her children

and the other widows
during this period?

How active were they and how
difficult was that period for them?

It's women who've come
from a more political background

that are the ones that have
become more involved.

Like Kathleen Clark, who's a justice

in the Republican Court,
for example.

She's also a member
of the second Dail.

You've got Aine Ceannt
living with her sister Lily.

Their house in Oakley Road
must have put up half the men,

the prominent men in the movement,
they gave safe houses all the time.

And they, of course, are well
known for having done that.

Grace Plunkett is much more somebody

who hasn't been particularly active,
but what she is

is a very skilled artist
and cartoonist.

And that's her talent, and that's
what she's used

during the War of Independence
to great effect.

In terms of propaganda.

As part of the propaganda movement.

Lily Connolly is elected in the
local government elections in 1920

and becomes a local government
councillor for a period of time,

but really, is never involved
in the movement.

She's got young children
to look after,

and I think a lot of her time
is based on survival.

She gets money and hopes
to set up a boarding house

in order to keep her and her family.

And that's really important.

That's quite a common thing
for widows, boarding houses.

It's something that you can do
where you live

and look after your children.

A major feature
of the War of Independence

were violent raids
by the British Crown forces

on the homes of women and children.

The first thing the family
would hear

would be a loud bang on the door

and that would quickly be followed
by armed men entering the home

pushing and physically assaulting
the people inside,

who invariably were women
and children.

Smashing up the house.
Highly personalised attacks.

Mementoes of their husbands
being taken.

So every time the loud bang
came on the door,

there was of course the anxiety,
there was of course the worry.

Is that the time you're
going to get killed yourself

and your children left without you,
having already lost their father.

The Crown forces knew
who they were raiding.

They knew these were the widows
of the Easter Rising's leaders.

And that was played out in the way
in which these attacks happened.

(COLEMAN) The home of Eamonn
Ceannt's widow

was raided by the Auxiliaries
in February 1921.

They took away Sinn Fein flags,

they took away what they described
as seditious literature.

They also took away what were
described in a report

as musical pipes. I take that to be
Eamonn Ceannt's uilleann pipes.

But it must have been quite
emotionally traumatic for her

to have these belongings, these,
I suppose,

relics she had of her husband
taken from her

by the Crown forces for no reason.

What did they think these were?
Some sort of weapon or something?

Even women like Agnes Mallin
who isn't involved

is raided several times.

And the fact that she has the
memorabilia

from Michael Mallin's time
in the British Army

like his ceremonial sword.

Things that they're trying to hide,
things they don't want taken away

because they're keepsakes
and mementoes,

so just because you're not involved
doesn't mean...

You're not targeted.
...you're not going to be harassed.

Because you're a name.

You know for the widows
who had young teenage sons

there was, of course, the danger
that they would be killed.

People had been killed during raids
on multiple occasions.

Sometimes, ten times in the one
week, there would be violent raids

on these homes.

So it was this almost inexorable
punishment for the widows

of the Easter Rising leaders
and their families

that really continued throughout
the whole War of Independence.

.

(EARNER-BYRNE) The War of
Independence ended

with an offer of a treaty
by the British in December 1921.

This treaty offered Ireland the
status of self-governing dominion

but not a full republic
as declared in 1916.

Immediately, this treaty caused
outrage among many nationalists

including the widows of 1916.

The attitude of the widows of 1916
was one of horror and rejection

and disbelief. They had fought
so hard to get so far

and now, as far
as they were concerned,

their leaders, who were all men,
were selling them out.

I think that they were very much
dedicated to upholding the ideas

of the Easter Rising
and the Proclamation.

All of their husbands had gone out
to fight for those ideals.

Many of them had been executed

after putting their names
onto the proclamation

which promised full sovereign
independence

and equality, basically,
across religion and gender lines.

And so I think that they took
those ideals very seriously.

All of the women say that they were
not fighting for dominion status

they weren't fighting to be part
of the British empire.

They were fighting for a republic

that was going to give them
equal rights,

equal opportunities, equal suffrage

and that was what was
so important to them.

Pro-treaty political leaders,
basically, tried to pigeonhole

the women as hysterical,
as bloodthirsty,

as demanding vengeance.

Essentially being irrational,
that's how they explain it.

Here's a quote from PS O'Hegarty
who's a real prominent supporter

of the pro-treaty side. He said,

"They have become practically
unsexed,

their mothers' milk blackened
to make gunpowder.

Their minds working on nothing
save hate and blood."

Wow. So it really gives you a flavour
of this visceral reaction

to the women and this idea
that somehow it's their gender

which is irrational.

But what's actually going on,
do you think there?

What they're doing is they're taking
their status as widows

and basically saying that they can't
possibly be rational

because of this loss
they've suffered.

It's a real neat political trick

to take your opponent's
greatest strength

and turn it into
their greatest weakness.

(EARNER-BYRNE)
Civil war broke out in 1922

between the pro-treaty Free State
forces

and anti-treaty Republicans.

All the widows of the men executed
in 1916

took the anti-treaty Republican side.

And immediately began
to pay the price for it.

(O'KEEFFE) Maud Gonne MacBride,
Kathleen Clark

and Grace Plunkett were all arrested
at various stages in 1923.

Maud Gonne famously went on
a 20-day hunger strike.

And Grace Plunkett, who was arrested
in February 1923,

was lodged in Kilmainham Gaol,

the very place where she'd been
married seven years before,

the very place her husband had faced
an execution squad.

Many of the children of the 1916
widows were by this stage

old enough to take part
in the anti-treaty side

against the Free State.

They too were arrested at a time
when the Free State

was starting to execute prisoners

in reprisal for attacks
on their forces.

Seamus Mallin is
the son of Michael Mallin.

He's the son of Agnes Mallin.

He's arrested.

Sean MacBride is the son
of Major John MacBride,

the son of Maud Gonne.
He's arrested.

Ina Connolly, Nora Connolly,
Roddy Connolly,

the children of James Connolly
and Lily Connolly, they're arrested.

And all of those people are subject
to potential execution.

We know that Sean MacBride
could have been executed

but for a decision by the Free State
that it would backfire on them

to execute the son
of an Easter Rising leader.

The same with Seamus Mallin.

But that didn't do anything
to allay the fears

of their mothers during that time.

So there's a tremendous irony
in the experience

of the widows of 1916 across
the entire revolutionary period

because all of the widows
of the 1916 leaders

take an anti-treaty position.

It is remarkable how quick
the pivot comes

and they now become
enemies of the state.

They become enemies of the state
that, in many ways,

was born out of the sacrifices
of their husbands.

They become enemies of the state
that continues to invoke

the names and the memories
of their husbands

while viciously attacking
their widows.

(EARNER-BYRNE) The Civil War ended
in 1923

with the Free State forces winning.

However, they now faced the challenge
of building a new state.

The new Irish state like many others
struggled with a real increase

in widows and orphans after almost
a decade of conflict.

Indeed, many Irish contemporaries
saw how the state

was going to treat widows as a test
of what kind of country it was to be.

As one official commented towards
the end of the 1920,

it was a real source of shame
to see Irish widows

parading their poverty.
Forced to beg from charities

and various sources
to scrape together an income.

We know that widows were the single
biggest category in need

in the new Irish state.

But we also know that the assistance
they received

was rarely enough and often
ungenerously given.

The evidence for the new Free State's
first attempts

to deal with the problem are found

in the Military Service Pensions
collection

in the Military Archives in Dublin.

The Military Service Pension
collection is an archive

of interrelated administrative
file series

recognising the service
of those who fought

during the Irish Revolutionary
period.

It is the biggest collection
in existence

covering that period of time.

Starting in 1923, the Irish Free
State enacted a series of legislation

that granted pensions to certain
people who were wounded

and the dependents of people who were
killed during the Irish Revolution.

Qualifying for a pension
was often quite difficult.

The difficulty in getting pensions
is really set

by the restrictive nature
of the legislation.

There's not a lot of money
to go around.

You know, the Irish Free State
starts poor.

You can see that had a pension
been given to everyone,

the spending would have been
completely out of control.

We were, and I quote here,
these are not my words,

"If we were to give a pension
to everyone who served a cup of tea

during the War of Independence
it would be untenable."

So they are restricted.

Many applicants had to go through
a difficult process

to prove their military service,
their financial circumstances,

and that they were
who they said they were.

There were often long delays

before an application was rejected
or approved.

For the widows of the dead in 1916,

they are set apart
from the very beginning.

Yet there are still delays,
there are still frustrations.

We have a letter
on the James Connolly file

from General Mulcahy who was then
minister for defence,

basically, why is it taking so long?

And I quote,
"It shouldn't take one day

to verify that James Connolly died
in 1916.

And it shouldn't take one day to
verify that Lily Connolly

is his widow."
What's the wait?

So the frustration is there also
on their side.

But it is a lot more
straightforward.

The pension process was more
complicated for Agnes Mallin.

Even though her husband Michael
Mallin was executed

in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising,

he hadn't actually signed
the Proclamation.

As a result, Agnes and her family
were treated differently

to the widows and families
of those who did sign

and she got less money as a result.

The signatories were ones
who were singled out

as being the widows of the nation,
if you like,

and the ones who got more
compensation

for the death of their husbands.

So it wasn't really based
necessarily on need,

but on the, kind of, status.

Agnes Mallin had
a really difficult time.

She had very little money.

Later on, she does work, you know,
she works as a night nurse,

she works
as a school truancy officer

but she's always, throughout her
later life,

in difficulty for money.

While we know quite a lot about what
happened to Lily, Grace, Aine,

and the other widows

because they were the widows
of the men executed

after the 1916 Rising,

what about the thousands
of other women

who became widows
during this period?

What were their experiences,
losing their breadwinner

and possibly having small children
to raise.

The widows ran the risk
if they asked for help

of having their children
taken into care

and possibly sent
to an industrial school.

In the end, we can't know
about all these stories

but the stories of the 1916 widows
give us at least an insight

into the human dimension of
bereavement during the early decades

of the 20th century.

(SOMBRE MUSIC)

During its early years,
the new Free State

had to grapple with
a lot of instability.

It needed to restore order
as quickly as possible

and it also need to assert what
its new identity was going to be.

In terms of morality, for example,
and behaviour,

what sort of sense do you get
about what people were expecting

or hoping for from the Free State?

The Free State had to reassure the
conservative elements in society,

the church, the morality
you've traditionally upheld

is our morality,
we're determined to do the same

we'll be a lot better than the Brits
ever were at this.

Like any nationality, the Irish
people thought they were better

than anybody else, and certainly
better than the English.

And the English, you know,
had this Anglo-Saxon materialism.

And they were very corrupt,
they had very low morals.

One of the ways the new Free State
differentiated itself

was by leaning more
into Catholic ideology.

This impacted in several ways.

Increasingly, nationalist
and Catholic identities

were becoming one and the same thing.

And central to maintaining
this identity

was a particular idea of the family.

(BUCKLEY) The new Irish Free State
was very much centred on the family.

And there was a particular
type of family

where there's a male breadwinner

and women are primarily
within the home.

And the way that that is endorsed
is through legislation

which is really influenced
by Catholic social teaching.

So divorce is made illegal,
even though it had not really

been an option for many women
and men prior to that.

Women's bodies and their
reproductive rights

are being curtailed.

Laws are used to ban the sale
of contraceptives.

What this is doing is curtailing
women and it's putting forward

a very idealised version
of the Irish family.

And so, the Free State that is setup
is very conservative,

social values are predicated on
class and middle-class values.

For the widows of 1916,

and for all of the political women
who had campaigned

through cultural nationalism,
feminism, militant nationalism,

this Free State is not the state
they wanted.

This is not the state
they had fought for.

In many ways,
the state that came into being

was a huge disappointment
to them.

But a lot of them realised
that they have to continue fighting

and they do that differently.

They do it as social activism,
they do it through local politics.

They do it through campaigns
on healthcare,

on social housing.

And then you have women
like Kathleen Clark

who do it through national politics.

Firstly as a TD,
and then in the Senate.

And she consistently is a voice

harking back
to the Proclamation of 1916.

And I think for a lot of the women,
we come back to that again and again

and that promise of equality,

that promise
of a republic of equality.

Despite the efforts to push them out
of the public sphere,

and relegate all women to the home,

many women campaigned on, especially
in the area of social care.

Some of their efforts paid off,

and in 1935, the Irish government
finally enacted legislation

designed to provide financial
assistance to all qualifying widows.

So, Orlaith, we have
the 1935 Pension Act there

introduced by the Widows and Orphans
of Ireland.

What difference did it make to them?
Was it a very generous scheme?

It wasn't a very generous scheme,
it was 10 shillings a week,

but in a way, it was,
for many women,

a liberation from, you know,
the hard slog that it was

when they had to go from charity to
charity, small job to small job

to small job.

It created a foundation whereby
it was never going to be enough,

and I think it was such,
that it would never be enough

and they'd have to supplement
their income.

But in a way, it created some kind
of a solid basis

whereby they could ensure

that there was food on the table
for their children.

This, in many ways, is the
culmination of those female voices

and those female activists
after the revolutionary period

who continued to be activists,
albeit in the realm of social care

and social reform.

This Act is the state's
demonstration

of its recognition
of what went before

but also of its responsibility
to what will come afterwards

in terms of supporting
the most vulnerable

but in particular, our widows
and orphans in Irish society.

The executed leaders
of the Easter Rising

will always be icons
of modern Irish history.

But for the widows
of the Easter Rising,

their execution was slow.

Their execution went on for years.

And they carried with them
through all of that

their own personal grief and loss,

their responsibility
as lone parents,

their responsibility for
their own political commitment

which was really important to them,
and then,

this additional responsibility
of being almost surrogates

for the symbolic presence
of their husbands.

These women's names should be as
recognisable as their husbands'.

Lily Connolly, Kathleen Clark,

Maud Gonne, Agnes Mallin,
Aine Ceannt,

Muriel MacDonagh and Grace Plunkett.

They are hugely important figures
in Irish history in their own right.

As the role of women
in the Irish Free State

became increasingly contested,

the not insignificant contribution
of the Easter widows

and other women like them
was airbrushed out of history.

The official record recording only
the activities of their husbands

and the other men
who fought in the Rising.

The new Ireland that their husbands'
deaths helped to create

turned out to not really have a place
for the widows of 1916 after all.

It didn't really have a place
for any other women either.

The promise of equality as enshrined
in the 1916 Proclamation

became an ongoing
and unfinished project

that still continues to this day.

When reflecting on her parents' role
in history,

Agnes Mallin's daughter once wrote,

"I've often thought it was my mother
who was the heroic one."

A different definition of heroic
than that we've come to associate

with the 1916 Rising,
but every bit as true

when we consider the lives
that these women lived,

their sacrifices, resilience
and courage.

Perhaps it was every bit as brave
for the widows

to keep on living for Ireland
as it was for the men to die for it.

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