Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington (1877–1946)

Published 3 November 2026

Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington was the leading figure of militant suffragism in Ireland and one of the most consistent campaigners for women's rights in the first half of the twentieth century. Her life connected the suffrage movement, the revolution and the early decades of the independent state.

Early life and education

Johanna (Hanna) Sheehy was born on 24 May 1877 in Kanturk, County Cork, the daughter of David Sheehy, later an Irish Parliamentary Party MP, and grew up in Dublin. She was educated by the Dominican nuns at Eccles Street and took a BA (1899) and an MA (1902) in modern languages through the Royal University of Ireland, at a time when women's access to university education was still a matter of public controversy. She worked as a teacher.

In 1903 she married Francis Skeffington, a writer and campaigner for pacifism, socialism and women's rights. Each took the other's surname, becoming Sheehy-Skeffington, a gesture that itself made a point about equality in marriage. Their son, Owen, became a senator and lecturer at Trinity College Dublin.

The Irish Women's Franchise League

In 1908 Hanna and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, with Margaret and James Cousins, founded the Irish Women's Franchise League. It campaigned for votes for women in any Home Rule settlement and, unlike some earlier societies, was willing to use militant methods. In June 1912 she was among the members who broke windows at government buildings in Dublin; she served a prison sentence and was later imprisoned again and went on hunger strike. She was also central to The Irish Citizen, the suffrage weekly that Francis edited from 1912. See the Irish suffrage movement.

The Irish Citizen carried reports of meetings across the country, debates on militancy and on the relationship between suffrage and nationalism, and articles on women's working conditions, education and the law. It gave Irish suffragists a forum of their own, separate from the British suffrage press, and it continued to appear until 1920.

She was critical of nationalist organisations that asked women to wait for equality, including Cumann na mBan in its early years, while sharing their goal of independence.

1916 and the death of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington

During Easter Week, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, who opposed the use of force, was trying to organise a citizens' group to prevent looting when he was arrested by British soldiers. On 26 April 1916 he was shot without trial at Portobello Barracks on the orders of Captain J. C. Bowen-Colthurst, along with two other men. The killings caused outrage. Hanna's persistence forced a public inquiry, and Bowen-Colthurst was court-martialled and found guilty but insane.

She refused an offer of compensation from the government. Late in 1916 she travelled to the United States, where she lectured widely on the events in Ireland and published an account of her husband's death, British Militarism as I Have Known It. In January 1918 she met President Woodrow Wilson and presented a petition asking for recognition of Irish independence.

Revolution and the Free State

Back in Ireland she joined Sinn Féin, was elected to Dublin Corporation in 1920, and served as a judge in the republican courts. She opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty and supported the anti-Treaty side during the Civil War. She was briefly a member of the executive of Fianna Fáil after its foundation in 1926, but left the party when its deputies entered the Dáil. She continued to write and to work as a journalist, and in 1933 she was jailed in Armagh for entering Northern Ireland in defiance of an exclusion order.

Opposing the 1937 Constitution

In the 1930s she became one of the most prominent critics of measures that restricted women's rights in the Free State, including the marriage bar and limits on women's jury service and employment. She opposed the articles of the 1937 Constitution dealing with women's place in the home and in the workforce, and she helped found the Women's Social and Progressive League, formed in the late 1930s, to campaign on women's political and economic rights. In 1943, aged 66, she stood unsuccessfully as an independent candidate in the general election, campaigning on women's issues.

She died in Dublin on 20 April 1946.

Legacy

Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington's long career makes her a central figure for historians of Irish feminism: she links the suffrage campaign before 1914 with the women's organisations that challenged the conservative state of the 1930s and 1940s. Her papers, held by the National Library of Ireland, are one of the main sources for the history of Irish women's activism.

Sources and further reading

• Dictionary of Irish Biography (Royal Irish Academy): "Sheehy-Skeffington, Hanna".
• National Library of Ireland: Sheehy-Skeffington papers.
• Margaret Ward, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: A Life (Attic Press, 1997).
• Leah Levenson and Jerry H. Natterstad, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: Irish Feminist (Syracuse University Press, 1986).
• Rosemary Cullen Owens, Smashing Times (Attic Press, 1984).

More on Irish women's history

• Cumann na mBan: the Irish women's council, 1914–1923
• Women in the 1916 Rising
• Constance Markievicz (1868–1927)
• The Irish suffrage movement: how Irish women won the vote
• The marriage bar in Ireland
• Elizabeth O'Farrell and the surrender of 1916