MABEL ESMONDE CAHILL / US Open tennis champion, writer, actor

Image source: International Tennis Hall of Fame

Mabel Esmonde Cahill, 1863–1905

US Open tennis champion, writer, actor

Mabel was twelfth of the thirteen children of landowner and barrister Michael Cahill of Ballyconra House, Ballyragget and his wife, Margaret Mangan. Margaret died in c.1875, and Michael married Elizabeth Netterville a year later. According to Michael’s will, Elizabeth had ‘shamefully deserted’ him by 1877. When Mabel and her siblings were orphaned, she and at least two others were attending Roscrea School; three older brothers had previously emigrated to California.

By 1886, Mabel had moved to Dublin and was actively involved in the genteel sport of lawn tennis. Twenty-six-year-old Mabel arrived in New York City in October 1889. Shortly afterwards, she joined the city tennis club, and quickly gained notice. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle stated, ‘the severity of her play is the terror of opponents of her own sex.’ In 1891, she entered the US Open tennis championship, but lost the final to the defending champion, Ellen Roosevelt. She was vindicated in the following year, when she became the first non-American–and the only Irish person ever–to win a US Open title. She also became the first player ever to win the singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles in the same year, and was described as‘the foremost racquet wielder in America.’

Tennis fans may have been disappointed that she did not defend her titles in the 1893 US Open and that, by 1896, she had ‘dropped tennis entirely for equestrianism’. It is not clear how Cahill supported herself financially. While she may have had a stipend from her father’s estate, this cannot have been substantial due to the size of the family. Her writing may, therefore, have been a response to financial need. In 1891, she published a romantic novel, Her Playthings, Men, followed a year later by the shorter works Carved in Marble( 1892) and Purple Sparkling (1892). Playthings was light and insubstantial, and its commercial failure may have disappointed her. She had little more success as a journalist, publishing articles on‘The Art of Playing Good Tennis’ and ‘Arranging a Tennis Tournament’ in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1893.

In 1896, she took a lawsuit against a New York police officer who refused to take seriously her complaints about repeated harassment and physical assaults by gangs of small boys. In evidence, the defendant said that ‘the boys called her a new woman [...] and that she wore a striking costume.’ Whether due to poverty or illness, Mabel spent the final years of her life in a manner very different to her genteel upbringing. A woman of the same name and similar age is recorded in various English workhouses in 1897, 1900, and 1905.

Attempting to support herself, she continued to publish occasionally in magazines, and acted on the London stage, taking a case against a theatre manager over earnings. A woman of her name, age, and occupation (journalist) died in the workhouse at Ormskirk, Lancashire, of phthisis laryngeal (tuberculosis of the larynx), on 2 February 1905. When, in 1936, the Irish Lawn Tennis Association placed an advertisement in the national press requesting that she, or a representative, claim a gold medallion struck in her honour, it took three months for a family member to come forward. The medal was never struck. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1976. Despite her standard-setting record,her life story was, until recently, shrouded in mystery.

Sources: Early California Wills (The California Society, 1952), I, 78, transcribed at Cal Data Nook, SF Genealogy, http://www.sfgenealogy.org; Mark Ryan ‘Mabel Cahill’, https://www.tennisforum.com/59-blast-past/1042881-mabel-cahill-lawn-tennis-champion-writer-stage-actress.html; Dictionary of Irish Biography online edition;Wright & Ditson's Lawn Tennis Guide (1892), 173–4;Irish Independent, 1 Aug. 1936;Kilkenny People, 5 June 1937; International Tennis Hallof Fame, ‘Mabel Cahill’, https://www.tennisfame.com/hall-of-famers/inductees/mabel-cahill

Research by Dr Angela Byrne, DFAT Historian-in-Residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. Featured in the exhibition 'Blazing a Trail: Lives and Legacies of Irish Diaspora Women', a collaboration between Herstory, EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

SARAH ‘FANNY’ DURACK / Olympic swimmer and world-record holder

Sarah ‘Fanny’ Durack, 1889–1956

Olympic swimmer and world-record holder

In July 1912, four Irish suffragettes went on trial for breaking windows of Dublin’s public buildings. In the same week, the daughter of Irish immigrants to Australia won the first gold medal in women’s Olympic swimming, creating a scandal of her own when she rejected a thick, modest woollen swimsuit with ‘as much drag as a sea-anchor’ in favour of a close-fitting suit in which she won the 100m freestyle.

Votes for women had been won state-by-state in Australia, thanks to the efforts of women like Monaghan-born Mary Lee (also featured in this exhibition). However, the advances in women’s participation in political life did not translate into other areas of Australian life.

Sarah ‘Fanny’ Durack won her first State swimming title in 1906, aged 17. At that time, the New South Wales Amateur Swimming Association banned women from competitions where men were present. However, Fanny’s many successes inspired the public, who demanded that she be allowed to compete in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. The Barrier Miner editorialised, ‘if there is any athlete in Australasia who should go to the great contests it is this young Sydney swimmer,’ and, listing her constellation of 56 medals and 100 trophies, noted, ‘If this formidable array is not a record that Australia should be proud of in one of her daughters, then there is no such thing, as national pride.’ The ban was lifted, and a public appeal raised the funds necessary for her to make the journey.

In Stockholm, Durack broke the record for the 100 metres free-style with a time of 19.8 seconds. She also won gold for the 100 metres, the only individual event for women, setting a new record time for the event. She made a triumphant return to Sydney. When she stepped onto the platform at a Ladies’ Swimming Carnival in February 1913, draped in an ‘Australasian cloak of green’, spectators burst into applause; on this occasion she broke the world record for the 100 yard crawl. She now held the world record for all distances in women’s swimming. In March 1914, she broke the record for swimming a crawl in a mile of open water, 52 seconds better than the existing New South Wales’ men’s record.

In 1912–18, Durack broke 12 world records. This success took her on tours of Europe and the USA, accompanied by fellow Irish-Australian swimmer Mina Wylie. However, they were dogged by controversy. Arriving in the USA in 1918 without official sanction, they were then banned by the Amateur Swimming Union of Australia. In 1919, the pair refused to swim until their manager’s expenses were paid – in response, the USA Amateur Athletic Union threatened to suspend their amateur status. Other athletes protested their treatment.

A week before the Australian team were to travel to the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, Durack underwent an appendectomy. Her recovery was marred by typhoid fever and pneumonia, forcing her to withdraw from the competition.

In January 1921, Durack retired from competitive swimming due to long-term ill-health. Shortly afterwards, she married Bernard Martin Gately, a horse-trainer, and thereafter dedicated herself to coaching children. She died of cancer at her home in March 1956.

A self-taught swimmer, she pursued the sport despite an enduring nervousness about the dangers of deep water. Nevertheless, together, she and Mina Wylie blazed a trail in the early days of women’s international competitive swimming.

Sources: Irish Times, 13 July 1912; The Times, 15 July 1996; Australian Dictionary of Biography online edition; Barrier Miner, 4 Mar. 1912; The Times, 10 July 1912; Sydney Morning Herald, 24 Feb. 1913; Cairns Post, 10 Mar. 1914; Sydney Morning Herald, 5 July 1919; Sydney Morning Herald, 8 Jan. 1921; Argus, 28 Nov. 1956; Sydney Morning Herald, 25 Mar. 1914.

Research by Dr Angela Byrne, DFAT Historian-in-Residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. Featured in the exhibition 'Blazing a Trail: Lives and Legacies of Irish Diaspora Women', a collaboration between Herstory, EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 

SHEELAGH MURNAGHAN / Politician / Lawyer / Sportswoman / Civil Rights Activist

 SHEELAGH MURNAGHAN

 Politician / Lawyer / Sportswoman / Civil Rights Activist

NATIONALITY:  BRITISH

BORN MAY 26TH, 1924. DIED SEPTEMBER 14TH, 1993.

 "In Northern Ireland politics, I don't know which is the greatest obstacle, to be a woman, a Catholic, or a Liberal. I am all three."

                   - Sheelagh Murnaghan


Sheelagh Murnaghan was born in Omagh, Co Tyrone, Northern Ireland on May 26th 1924. She was the eldest of eight children and came from a family immersed in politics and the law. Sheelagh was educated at Loreto schools in Omagh and Dublin before attending Queen's University Belfast where she read Law and served as the first female President of the university's Literary and Scientific Society (The Literific). Called to the Northern Ireland Bar in 1948, she was the first practising female barrister in Northern Ireland. She was a member of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for Northern Ireland and in1953, compiled a table of all cases and a consolidated index of every court case heard in Northern Ireland since 1925.
           

A keen sportswoman, Sheelagh played hockey for Instonians, Ulster and Ireland. She captained the Ireland Team in 1955-56 and 1957-58, and toured South Africa and the United States with the team. Reporters described her as "A diminutive but ferocious fullback." On one occasion she played at Wembley Stadium before nearly 50,000 cheering schoolgirls and television cameras. She continued to referee matches into the 1970s.

In 1959 she joined the Ulster Liberal Party-a cross-community organization with links to the UK Liberal Party. In November 1961 she was elected to the Northern Ireland House of Commons to represent Queen's University. She was one of just eleven women to serve in the Northern Ireland Parliament during its 51-year existence. Throughout her parliamentary career she was a voice of moderation and reason in a deeply divided society and a passionate defender of all those denied equality. She brought forward a bill seeking the abolition of the death penalty in Northern Ireland and she campaigned for the rights of Travellers. In 1967, she helped set up a school for Traveller children in Belfast. On one occasion she gave a tramp a room in her attic.

     In June 1964, Sheelagh put forward the first Human Rights Bill ever presented in a British or Irish parliament. Modeled on the United States Civil Rights Act and on Canadian Human Rights legislation, the Bill proposed the outlawing of discrimination on grounds of creed, colour or political belief. The Bill was rejected by the Northern Ireland Government. Sheelagh brought forward new versions of the Bill in 1966,1967 and 1968. She sought to end the discrimination in housing allocation, employment and voting rights, which existed in Northern Ireland then. She told the Commons: "There are degrees of citizenship in this country. In my opinion discrimination is not something, which should be lamented and forgotten about. It is something to be angry about. While there is one case of discrimination people should be concerned."
     

In her Human Rights Bills, Sheelagh also sought to end pay discrimination against women in the workplace. "This is something which cannot possibly be justified. I cannot conceive of any just argument in the case of a job, which is clearly the same job with exactly the same conditions and everything else, for paying someone less merely by reason of the accident of sex."

   Four times the Human Rights Bills presented by Sheelagh were rejected by the Northern Irish government. Many people from across the political spectrum have voiced the belief that if Sheelagh's proposals had been accepted the whole history of late 20th century Northern Ireland could have been very different. Sheelagh's parliamentary career ended at the 1969 Northern Ireland General Election when the Queen's seat was abolished. She served as a member of the Community Relations Commission from 1969 to 1972. Following the introduction of Direct Rule from London in 1972, she was appointed by Northern Ireland Secretary, William Whitelaw to serve on his Advisory Committee. From 1970, she chaired Industrial Tribunals. She was outspoken in her condemnation of the violence, which erupted in Northern Ireland from 1969. In February 1970, her Belfast house was bomber by Loyalist paramilitaries. She refused to be intimidated. She told reporters that she was not afraid, cleaned up the wreckage and carried on with her work.

     In 1983, Sheelagh chaired a Tribunal which heard the very first case of sexual harassment brought before a court in the UK or Ireland. The case involved a female apprentice mechanic who had been subjected to harassment by male colleagues. In her ruling, Sheelagh found that "the main reason for the harassment was the fact that she was a female in a man's world, and that it amounted to Sex Discrimination." The barrister who appeared for the plaintiff, Noelle McGrena QC, has stated that:

   "In making such a finding, Sheelagh Murnaghan paved the way for others in sexual harassment cases within these islands, earning herself a place among the pioneers who have properly influenced society's attitude to women in the workplace generally."

   Sheelagh's ruling helped pave the way for sexual harassment to be made a criminal offence in the UK and influenced employment law in the Republic of Ireland as well. The American feminist historian, Constance Rynder credits Sheelagh with demonstrating "the potential for utilizing existing mechanisms to incorporate sexual harassment into the general ban on sex discrimination."

    Sheelagh was seen as a slightly eccentric figure, who smoked cigars and drank brandy. She loved dogs and would arrive for Tribunal hearings with a pile of papers under one arm and a dog under the other. The dog would sit under the table while Sheelagh fed him treats. The Traveller women affectionately called her "the cigar lady. "She never married and was sometimes lonely, but she was "the linchpin" of her large family of siblings, nieces and nephews.

   Sheelagh Murnaghan did not live to see the Peace Process or the Good Friday /Belfast Agreement. She died on September 14th 1993 from cancer at the age of just 69. She once told a colleague that"Nobody could have a greater sense of failure than I have." She was too harsh on herself. While she could nor persuade the government of the day to accept her Human Rights Bills much of what she campaigned for did become law within a few years. Brilliantly described by the Queen's University scholar, Dr Charinda Weerahardhana as: "the wise doctor of Ulster's ills", Sheelagh Murnaghan deserves to be remembered and honoured.

Thanks to herstorian Ruth Illingworth for this week’s herstory.

Rerferences for further reading:

RYNDER CONSTANCE: "Sheelagh Murnaghan and the Struggle for Human Rights in Northern Ireland."   (IRISH STUDIES REVIEW  VOL 14.2006 ISSUE 4.)

RYNDER CONSTANCE :  "Sheelagh Murnaghan and the Ulster Liberal Party". (JOURNAL OF LIBERAL HISTORY: ISSUE 71,SUMMER 2011.)

NEWMANN KATE:  "Sheelagh Murnaghan" (DICTIONARY OF ULSTER BOIGRAPHY)
www.newulsterbiography.co.uk.

WOODS C.J    "Sheelagh Murnaghan" (DICTIONARY OF IRISH BIOGRAPHY: VOL 6) (Royal Irish Academy 2009).