FANNY JENNINGS / The duchess nun

FANNY JENNINGS, Duchess of Tyrconnell

St Albans / Dublin / St Germain

1647 – 1730

Fanny Jennings, was an intriguing woman whose sobriquets included ‘the duchess nun’ and ‘the white milliner.’ Born near St Albans in England in 1647, at sixteen she was appointed maid of honour to Anne Hyde, Duchess of York. Miss Jennings quickly earned a reputation as one of the fairest and most beautiful ladies ‘who robbed men of their hearts, women of their lovers, and never lost herself as she moved through the glittering court of Charles II, in unblenched majesty.’ Noted for rebuking the advances of James Duke of York and his brother the king, Fanny Jennings married twice.  Her first husband was George Hamilton whom she married when she was seventeen and with whom she had at least three daughters. After George was killed in battle in 1676, Fanny was left a young widow of little means.

As one of the most ‘conspicuous ornaments’ at the Duchess of York’s court, it was not long before the widowed Mrs Hamilton remarried.  From the multitude of eager suitors who fawned over her, Fanny married Richard Talbot in 1679. In 1685, Richard was sent to Ireland to take command of King’ James II’s forces and to support the Roman Catholic influence. Fanny and her three daughters from her first marriage, went with him.  While in Ireland, the king created Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyrconnell.  As Duchess, Fanny held ‘her state as vice – queen with much state and magnificence’.

At Dublin Castle, she entertained the king with ‘French urbanity and Irish hospitality’ in 1689. Following his defeat at the Battle of the Boyne the following year, King James returned to the castle where it is alleged, the Duchess in ‘all the splendour of court etiquette’ greeted him at the top of the staircase in her full robes and ‘with all her attendants’ knelt on one knee and ‘congratulated the king on his safe return to Dublin, and respectfully inquired what refreshment he would be pleased to take at that moment’.

After James’s defeat, the Tyrconnells followed the exiled court to St Germain, where Fanny remained for several years.  Following the death of the duke, Fanny once more found herself impoverished. Records of the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre in Liege, note the demise of the widowed duchess’s finances. She was also among recipients of a pension which James II received from the Pope, her share amounted to no more than 3,000 crowns or £400. 

By 1705, Fanny resorted to desperate measures and hired a stall under the Royal London Exchange, a fashionable haunt of wealthy ladies, from which she sold hats and some small items of general ‘haberdashery.’ However, keen to hide her identity, Fanny wore a full length white dress and a white lace mask to conceal her face. Her experience was dramatized in the 1840s as a successful play, ‘The White Milliner’ and performed at Covent Garden.

The following year, Fanny returned to Dublin and eventually obtained some of her deceased husband’s property.  Her days of entertaining the king at Dublin Castle were long gone, and Fanny, a widow, poor, penniless and proscribed, withdrew from the world she once knew, and took up residence in her husband’s former house on North King Street where she established a nunnery for the Poor Clare sisters.

As a devout Catholic she travelled with her many books of devotion, and endowed the Scots College in Paris for the saying of masses for ever, for the souls of her dead husbands and herself. 

In Ireland, she was among a coterie of women whose names became associated with the ‘gallant efforts that were made by religious orders of women to offset the worst effects of the penal laws in the field of education for the children of the Irish Catholic aristocracy’. Some years before her death, Fanny became a nun with the Poor Clares, some of her granddaughters subsequently joined the same order.  In the late 1680s, Fanny had incurred a debt with a ruthless creditor from whom she borrowed for the ‘purpose of helping out the newly founded Royal Benedictine Community of Benedictines’ at Ship Street in Dublin. 

The celebrated beauty and remarkable lady that was Fanny Jennings, ended her days as a nun with the Poor Clares on North King Street, where she died aged eighty-two on 6 March 1730. Her body was laid to rest across the city in St Patrick’s Cathedral three days later on 9 March.

Thanks to herstorian Damien Duffy for this herstory.

Sources: D.L. Kelleher, The Glamour of Dublin, (Dublin, 1920).

Leon O’ Broin, The Irish ecclesiastical record: a monthly journal under episcopal sanction , Ser. 5, Vol. June, 1962.

Angela Bourke et al, The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, Volume 5, Irish Women’s writing and tradition, (New York, 2002).

Anna Jameson, Memoirs of the beauties of the Court of Charles II, volume II, (London, 1838).

MARY AGNES LEE / Women's suffrage campaigner

Mary Agnes Lee, 1821–1909

Women’s suffrage campaigner

Born in Co. Monaghan in February 1821, she is now remembered as one of the most prominent Australian suffragists, but she also advocated on behalf of women workers and asylum residents.Following the death of her church-organist husband, Lee and one of her daughters emigrated to Australia in 1879 to care for her terminally-ill son.After his death,Lee remained in Australia,because she could not afford to return to Ireland and had grown fond of ‘dear Adelaide’.

Freshly liberated from domestic obligations at almost 60 years of age, Lee threw herself into politics.She first became secretary to the Social Purity Society, lobbying for the Criminal Law Consolidation Amendment Act (1885) that raised the legal age of consent to sixteen.Historian Audrey Oldfield described how a‘large and enthusiastic’ public meeting convened to institute the South Australian Women’s Suffrage League on 21 July 1888, rejecting any limitation of age or property on women’s suffrage. Lee was elected co-secretary to the committee of 13 women and 15 men, quickly proving herself a fiery orator and becoming the best-known champion of South Australian women’s suffrage. Lee herself stated, ‘If I die before it is achieved, “Women’s enfranchisement” shall be found engraved upon my heart.’

Lee was a suffragist, meaning she preferred constitutional means to secure equality of franchise. She seems to have been less concerned about enabling women to run for elected office;she declined an invitation to run for election in 1895. Nevertheless, her emphasis on social justice and her concerns for working women posed a threat to the establishment. She supported the foundation of women’s trade unions, and was secretary to the newly-formed Working Women's Trades Union in 1891–3. She visited the clothing factories in which women workers ‘sweated’, convincing employers (with varying degrees of success) to set union wages. She also distributed food and clothing to the impoverished.Lee corresponded with New Zealand suffragists, who had achieved their aims in 1892. She organised a petition of 11,600 signatures from across the colony of South Australia in 1894. The 122-metre-long document was presented to the House of Assembly in August 1894, while women swamped MPs with telegrams, and filled the galleries of the House.In December 1894, South Australian women became the first in Australia to gain a parliamentary vote on the same terms as men. This was a landmark moment in international suffrage and was achieved with both middle-and working-class support. It is important to remember, however, that neither male nor female Indigenous Australians would have equality of franchise until the 1960s. In 1896, she became the first woman appointed as an official visitor to asylums, a role she conducted for twelve years with great compassion for the patients.

Lee’s activism was recognised in her lifetime. On her 75th birthday, Adelaide town hall presented her with 50 sovereigns from public donations; a public address praised her leading role in the suffrage campaign. However, her later years were marked by financial difficulties, and her pleas for further public aid fell on deaf ears, despite the great personal sacrifices she had made during decades of activism. One biographer suggests that her ‘sharp tongue and uncompromising attitude’ left her with few friends–evidence that, while women had secured voting rights, they were still expected to conform to certain behavioural norms.She died at her home in Adelaide in September 1909 and her tombstone bears the words: ‘Secretary of the Women's Suffrage League’. Its understatement forms a sharp contrast with the passionate campaigning that consumed the last 20 years of her life.

Sources:Australian Dictionary of Biography online edition; Audrey Oldfield,Woman Suffrage in Australia (Cambridge University Press, 1992);Dictionary of Irish Biography online edition; James Keating, ‘Piecing Together Suffrage Internationalism: Place, Space, and Connected Histories of Australasian Women’s Activism’,History Compass, 16, no. 8(2018).

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.

EVA GORE-BOOTH / Suffragist, Trade Unionist, Poet, Mystic

Eva Gore-Booth, 1870–1926

Suffragist, trade unionist, poet, mystic

Eva Gore-Booth led a rich and active life beyond what might have been expected of her–not because of her gender,or her aristocratic background, but because of her physical frailty and susceptibility to illness. She collected 30,000 signatures for a suffrage petition in 1901, campaigned for the rights of women to work as barmaids and acrobats, was a member of the executive committee of the North of England Society for Women's Suffrage, and was a vegetarian and animal rights advocate. She has long been overshadowed by her more famous sister, Constance Markievicz; even in childhood,her governess recalled, Eva was ‘always so delicate ... rather in the background’.

Eva met her lifelong partner, Esther Roper in 1896 in an Italian olive grove; wordlessly, a lifelong connection was made. Roper was a Manchester suffragist and trade unionist; inspired, Gore-Booth established the Sligo branch of the Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association. In 1897,Gore-Booth left Lissadell to join Roper in Manchester, where Constance Gore-Booth got her ‘first taste of political campaigning’ when she went to help Eva and Roper in Manchester in the 1908 by-election. She also helped with Eva’s campaign in support of barmaids. In the same year, Gore-Booth published her first book of poems. Gore-Booth and Roper were a team, both believing in the need to marry trade unionism and suffrage, not least because in Lancashire, cotton factory work–and therefore union membership–was dominated by women. They were joint secretaries of the Women’s Textile and Other Workers’Representation Committee, and jointly ran the The Women’s Labour News. Together, they campaigned for pit-brow workers, florists, and barmaids, bringing large numbers of working-class women into the suffrage movement–a radical, unprecedented move.

In 1914, Gore-Booth threw herself into pacifism and the Committee for the Abolition of Capital Punishment. Despite her enduring ill-health, she travelled all over Britain with the Women’s Peace Crusade and attended the courts-martial of conscientious objectors.Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington recalled how, in the aftermath of Easter 1916, Gore-Booth travelled to Dublin to plead for leniency for the Rising’s leaders.

The historian Sonja Tiernan has done much to restore the commitment of Roper and Gore-Booth’s partnership, in every respect, to the historical record. Roper and Gore-Booth’s loving written tributes to one another bear every mark of devotion and tenderness. Roper wrote that ‘Even simple everyday pleasures when shared with her became touched with magic’. Eva, for her part, dedicated her poem ‘The Travellers’ to Roper :‘You whose Love’s melody makes glad the gloom’. In addition to their tireless work for women’s suffrage and trade unionism, Gore-Booth and Roper publicised gay and trans issues. In 1916, together with trans woman Irene Clyde, they founded the periodical Urania, publishing articles on transvestitism and advocating for a genderless society. Gore-Booth died of cancer in January 1926, in the home that she and Roper shared. In a final testament to their partnership, they are buried in the same grave.

Sources:Poems of Eva Gore Booth, ed. Esther Roper (Longmans, Green and Co., 1929);Sonja Tiernan, ed.,The Political Writings of Eva Gore-Booth(Manchester University Press, 2015);Anne Marreco,The Rebel Countess([1967] Phoenix Press, 2000);Sonja Tiernan, ‘Challenging Presumptions of Heterosexuality: Eva Gore-Booth, A Biographical Case Study’,Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, 37, issue 2 (2011); ‘LGBT History Month’,https://wearewarpandweft.wordpress.com/stature-project/lgbt-history-month/

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.

CONSTANCE WILDE (HOLLAND) / Campaigner for suffrage & rational dress

CONSTANCE WILDE (HOLLAND)

Campaigner for suffrage and rational dress, and wife of Oscar Wilde

London

1859 – 1898

In Oscar Wilde: a Summing Up, Lord Alfred Douglas, the love of Wilde’s later life, wrote about Wilde’s marriage to Constance Lloyd. He characterised it as ‘a marriage of deep love and affection on both sides’. Oscar described Constance as ‘quite young, very grave, and mystical, with wonderful eyes, and dark brown coils of hair’. His mother thought her: ‘A very nice pretty sensible girl-well-connected and well brought up’. Yet Constance, who had a troubled adolescence, could appear shy and lacking in confidence.

A recent upsurge in interest – exemplified by Franny Moyle’s excellent biography Constance: the Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde and my own Wilde’s Women - reveals a bright, progressive and politically active woman who was as loyal and true to her errant husband as her name suggests. Newspaper accounts of the time pay tribute to her beauty but also cover her campaigns for the greater participation of women in public life, and praise her aptitude as a public speaker.

Constance spoke excellent French and Italian. She was also a remarkable accomplished pianist. Her strong views on dress reform led her to join the committee of the Rational Dress Society in order to campaign for an end to the ridiculous, restrictive fashions that prevented women from leading fulfilling lives. In ‘Clothed in Our Right Minds’, a lecture she addressed to the Rational Dress Society in 1888, she advocated the wearing of divided skirts, insisting that, as God had given women two legs, they should have the freedom to use them. She broadened her argument to suggest that women deserved a wider role in all aspects of life. 

A member of the Chelsea Women’s Liberal Association, Constance campaigned to have Lady Margaret Sandhurst elected to the London County Council. Addressing a conference sponsored by the Women’s Committee of the International Arbitration and Peace Association on the theme ‘By what methods can Women Best Promote the Cause of International Concorde’; she stressed the importance of encouraging pacifist ideals at an early age and insisted: ‘Children should be taught in their nursery to be against war’. Her speech ‘Home Rule for Ireland’, delivered at the Women’s Liberal Federation annual conference of 1889 was praised in the Pall Mall Gazette.

Yet, Constance’s world fell apart when her husband was arrested and imprisoned for gross indecency. Obliged to flee abroad with her young children and to change her family name to Holland, she did everything she could to help Oscar. Tentative attempts to effect reconciliation were brought to an end when she died as a result of a botched operation performed in an Italian clinic in April 1898. She was thirty-nine years old. Regrettably, Constance is often portrayed as a figure of pity. In reality, she was strong and courageous, warm and true, and she met the many challenges she faced, including debilitating health problems, with steely determination.

Thanks to herstorian Eleanor Fitzsimons for this herstory.

Sources:

Eleanor Fitzsimons. Wilde's Women. (London: Duckworth, 2015)

Franny Moyle. Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde (London: John Murray, 2012)

JOSEPHINE HART / NOVELIST, POETRY EVANGELIST & THEATRE PRODUCER

JOSEPHINE HART

Novelist, poetry evangelist & theatre producer

1942 - 2011

Mullingar / London

“Poetry, this trinity of sound, sense and sensibility gives voice to experience in the way that no other form can.” Josephine Hart, born and raised in Mullingar, Ireland was an extraordinary and gifted woman; poetry aficionado, captivating wordsmith and artistic Director – and that’s just grazing the surface of her remarkable life.  

Born 1 March 1942, Josephine spent her early years attending a convent school at Carrickmacross, County Monagahan, where she was encouraged by the nuns to recite verse at Irish Festivals. It is here, that she admitted to discovering a great love of poetry: “I was a word child. Poets were not only my heroes, they were indeed the gods of language.” 

Josephine had a particularly tragic childhood that gave her an overt and unpleasant familiarity with death. At the age of 6, she lost her 18 month old brother, Charles. Then, when Hart was 17, her younger sister Sheila, who had been brain damaged as a result of meningitis and paralysed from the age of 2, passed away. Six months after Sheila’s death, her brother Owen was killed whilst experimenting with chemicals – leaving Josephine and her brother Diarmuid as the only remaining siblings of the Hart clan. Leading Josephine to remark, “It sounds a very strange thing to say, but when I was really young, when I was 17, I had to look at life really hard and say, ok, I will continue to live.” Josephine then stayed at the family home in Mullingar for four years, immersing herself in reading as a replacement for University, which was her original dream.

Josephine moved to London in 1964, working in telesales and studying drama at evening classes. Fantastically, much to Josephine’s delight, just like her favourite poet, T.S. Eliot, she worked in a bank for a short while. Josephine eventually moved to Haymarket Press and became the firm’s only woman director. She married her colleague Paul Buckley, and had a son, Adam. The marriage lasted 7 years, however when Maurice Saatchi came to work in the firm, he romanced Josephine. The pair had an affair and married in 1984. Maurice and Josephine had a son, Edward. 

Josephine, who became Baroness Saatchi when her husband’s Baron status was initiated in 1996, was madly in love with Maurice, and he, her. They had a private relationship that was a meeting of minds as well as passions. Ed Victor (Josephine’s literary agent and friend) commented on their relationship, “I have never seen a couple more intertwined than Maurice and Josephine.”

It was Maurice who encouraged Josephine’s creative career. Having listened to his wife complaining of the lack of poetry events in London, he suggested she started one herself – and thus, the Josephine Hart Poetry Hour was born! From 1987 onwards, Josephine organized incredible poetry readings at the British Library, occasionally visiting the National Theatre or the New York Public Library. Josephine would read about the life and work of the poet, with high-profile actors reading the verse. The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour library now celebrates 16 great poets, with actors ranging from Ralph Fiennes, to Charles Dance, to Bob Geldof to Juliet Stevenson – and beyond. Most recently, her Poetry Hour took to the Abbey Theatre in Ireland with Bob Geldof, Lisa Dwan, Sinead Cusack and Peter Campion reading W.B. Yeats to a standing ovation. All of the readings from the incredible Josephine Hart Poetry Hours can be found at thepoetryhour.com.

Josephine’s poetry collections, Catching Life By the Throat (2006) and Words That Burn (2009) were sent free of charge to all secondary schools in England. Her first two novels, Damage and Sin, were re-published as Virago Modern Classics in 2011, with Damage being adapted for film by Louis Malle, and Sin adapted by Theatre Blu.  Her other novels include, Oblivion, The Stillest Day and The Reconstructionist, which was later filmed by Roberto Ando. Her last publication was The Truth about Love, which was published in 2009. 

The award-winning The House of Bernarda Alba by Lorca saw Josephine’s West End theatre production debut. She also directed, Noel Coward’s The Vortex, Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince and Let Us Go Then You and I at the Lyric Theatre. Josephine staged the first ever West End production of T.S. Eliot poetry. 

In 2011, Josephine was to put on a weeklong poetry event at the Donmar theatre. Without her friends having known her fight against illness, to everyone’s shock, she was absent at the opening night. She passed away on 2 June from primary peritoneal cancer, two days into the Donmar run. She died in her prime from a horrific and rare disease, all whilst remaining secretly strong – she was truly, truly remarkable and the Donmar performances will be remembered forever. Her death was a blow to literature, to her friends, but chiefly of course to her family. Her husband, Maurice Saatchi does not bother to hide or deny his grief. Five years on, he still sets a place at the table for Josephine every day ("Queen Victoria did it for Prince Albert for 42 years" he points out)

Her legacy lives through her husband’s devotion. The Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation is having great success amongst education and with their website, whilst Maurice’s Medical Innovation Bill has just been passed through government. Josephine will be remembered eternally, as will her passion, flare for life and gratification of verse. “Poetry, this trinity of sound, sense and sensibility, gives voice to experience in the way that no other art form can”.

A special thanks to Eleanor Carter, Former Director of the Josephine Hart Poetry Foundation, for this wonderful biography.

ADA REHAN / COMIC ACTRESS

ADA REHAN

Comic actress

Limerick / New York / Rest of the World

1860 – 1916

Ada Rehan was once one of Ireland’s most celebrated actresses, yet she is barely remembered by us today. Born Delia Crehan in Shannon Street, Limerick on April 1860 22nd (or possibly, 1857 according to varying sources), Rehan moved to Brooklyn with her family when she was still a child. A mistake made early in her career by the manager of Arch Street Theater, Philadelphia who billed her as Ada C. Rehan inspired her stage name. She adopted the new name and earned an international reputation as an excellent Shakespearean actress, lauded particularly for her roles in his comedies.

Statuesque, with striking grey-blue eyes and rich brown hair, Rehan’s appeal was much celebrated. According to theatre critic William Winter: “Her physical beauty was of the kind that appears in portraits of women by Romney and Gainsborough—ample, opulent, and bewitching—and it was enriched by the enchantment of superb animal spirits.”

Of course, there was far more to Ada than her looks. Oscar Wilde described her as “that brilliant and fascinating genius.” In 1879, Rehan joined impresario Augustin Daly’s New York based theatre company where she enjoyed leading lady status for twenty years, enjoying enormous success on the stages of America and Europe. For a time, she was considered a worthy rival to the great actress of the time, Sarah Bernhardt.

In 1891, when Wilde was assembling his cast for the first production of Lady Windermere’s Fan, he wrote to Daly requesting that he consider the part of Mrs. Erlynne for Ada, insisting that: “‘I would sooner see her play the part of Mrs. Erlynne than any English-speaking actress we have, or French actress for that matter.” Daly turned him down.

Years later, Wilde, recently released from prison, was negotiating with Daly to write a new play for Rehan. Sadly, Daly died unexpectedly during these negotiations. For Rehan this was as much a personal tragedy as a professional one and she was touched by Wilde’s kindness afterward.

Rehan took over negotiations and agreed to pay Wilde an advance of £100 with the promise of £200 on acceptance in return for ‘a new and original comedy, in three or four acts’. Once he realised that the deadline agreed was wildly optimistic, he offered to return the £100, which he had spent, but he was dead before raising the required sum.

Rehan retired from the stage in 1906, and lived in New York City until her death in 1916. Obituaries were published in the New York Times and the Limerick Chronicle, and she was commemorated two decades later when a US Navy cargo ship was named the USS Ada Rehan.

Thanks to Eleanor Fitzsimons, author of Wilde's Women, for this fabulous biography.

Sources:

Letter to Augustin Daly, August 1897 in The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart Davis (Eds) (London: Fourth Estate, 2000), p.489

W. Graham Robertson. Time Was, the reminiscences of W. Graham Robertson (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1945), p.231

Russell Jackson, ‘Oscar Wilde’s Contract for a New Play 1900’ in Theatre Notebook, Volume 50, Number 2 contained in Volumes 50-52 (Society for Theatre Research, 1996), p.113

LADY MARY HEATH / AVIATOR & ATHLETE

LADY MARY HEATH

Record-breaking aviator and athlete / Campaigner for women’s rights

Limerick / London

1896 - 1939

This pioneering aviator’s early life was marked by tragic circumstances that, in all likelihood, shaped her character as a person who always resisted gender inequality.

Sophie Peirce-Evans was born in Limerick to violent alcoholic John Peirce-Evans, and his housekeeper, Teresa Dooling. When Sophie was 13 months old, Evans brutally murdered Dooling. He spent the rest of his life in Dublin’s Central Mental Hospital, while Sophie was raised by her grandparents.

In 1914, Sophie enrolled in Dublin’s Royal College of Science. She was an excellent student, active in the hockey club and the Agricultural Debating Club, and edited the school magazine, The Torch.

In 1916, she met and married Captain William Davies Eliott-Lynn. She postponed her studies to become a motor dispatch rider in France in 1917–19, while her husband recovered from malaria contracted on service in South Africa.

In 1919, she returned to Dublin to complete her studies while her husband established a farm in east Africa. He ordered her to find paid employment, so she worked briefly as a zoology demonstrator in Aberdeen before moving to London. She visited east Africa for several months in 1922–3 and 1924.

In London, she became involved in athletics and by 1921 was ranked 2nd in Britain and Ireland in the high jump. In 1922, she became a founding member of the British Women’s Amateur Athletic Association; by 1924, it had 23,000 members, and Sophie was its president. She represented Britain in the Women’s Modern Olympic Games in Paris in 1922, competing in front of over 30,000 spectators.

By late 1923, Sophie shared the women’s world record for high jump (1.485m) with American Elizabeth Stine. She published articles on athletics and, in 1925, read the preface to her book, Athletics for Girls and Women in a BBC radio broadcast. She presented papers on women’s sport at the 8th Olympic Congress in Prague, citing childbearing as evidence of the capabilities of women’s bodies.

A turning-point came in August 1925, when she became one of the first members of the London Aeroplane Club. She persisted with flying lessons despite financial difficulties, and received her private pilot’s licence on 4 November.

Lady Mary Heath by Séan Branigan of Storyboard Workshop

However, in April 1924 the International Commission for Air Navigation had passed a resolution banning women from operating commercial aircraft, treating menstruation as a disability. Sophie joined forces with journalist Stella Wolfe Murray to win a difficult campaign against the resolution, detailed in their book, Women and Flying (1929). Sophie thereby became Britain’s first officially recognised female commercial pilot, paving the way for other women to follow and performing public flight demonstrations and stunts. She was elected a member of the Royal Aeronautical Society, but as a woman was not permitted to attend meetings. The Society brushed off her letters of complaint.

After the death of her first husband, she married 75-year-old Sir James Heath, a wealthy collier owner and MP. She was henceforth known as Lady Mary Heath.

In autumn 1927, the pair set off by steam liner for Cape Town with her brand new Avro Avian safely stowed in the hold. She launched her famous south–north flyover of Africa on 5 Jan 1928, landing in Croydon on 18 May. For this feat she was elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an honour reserved for the most intrepid explorers.

Thereafter, her star went into decline. In 1931, she divorced Sir James and married her Jamaican lover Reginald ‘Jack’ Williams, who she met in America; the marriage lasted only four years.

In August 1929, Lady Mary was seriously injured when her plane crashed through a factory roof in Ohio. She never fully recovered, and it was probably as a result of long-term head injury that she died after falling from a London tram in May 1939. The tenacity of her early victories for women in athletics and aviation remain, however, to secure her pioneering legacy.

Sources: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edition; Lindie Naughton, Lady Icarus: The Life of Irish Aviator Lady Mary Heath (Ashfield Press, 2004).

The Queen of the Skies will be celebrated in a new play entitled ‘I see you’, written and performed by Amy De Bhrún as part of the Herstory programme. 

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.