Letter about Countess Markievicz: Part 2

Part 1 here.

Irish Independent

Saturday June 10 2006

Kevin Myers repeats his allegation that Countess Markievicz “fired her Mauser into” the unarmed Constable Lahiffe (Irish Independent, May 31), again using Caulfield’s unsourced and dubious account. I cannot find a reference to the incident in the paperback edition of Charles Townshend’s ‘The Easter Rising’, so I cannot understand Myers’s deference to that authority, but I believe a satisfactory account of events can be pieced together using a variety of other sources. It appears that Markievicz was originally appointed as liaison officer between the GPO and St Stephen’s Green. It is logical, therefore, that she would not have arrived with Michael Mallin’s Stephen’s Green contingent.

Markievicz related that at 12 noon, the time that Constable Lahiff was shot, she was delivering supplies to City Hall by car with Dr Kathleen Lynn.

Dr Lynn’s statement to the Bureau of Military History confirms the detail and times given in Markievicz’s account.

Maire Nic Shuibhlaigh related in her biography that, as the Jacob’s factory contingent prepared to occupy the building, she saw the car go past, Markievicz shouting encouragement at them. When Markievicz arrived at St Stephen’s Green, the occupation was well under way.

As I have already related (Letters, May 12), Diana Norman discredited the story of the St Stephen’s Green killing, revealing that it was based entirely on innuendo and that no witnesses backed it up – aside from Caulfied’s anonymous source.

Another Markievicz biographer, Anne Haverty, also casts doubt on the story.

In fact she offers clear evidence of the Countess having in fact intervened to save the life of a British soldier who had mistakenly entered the College of Surgeons thinking it had already surrendered.

In a separate instance, Frank Robbins of the St Stephen’s Green contingent related that, as the College of Surgeons was being occupied, the doorkeeper let off a shotgun blast, nearly hitting Robbins.

Markievicz’s intervention saved the man, whom Robbins and the others considered shooting.

Brian Barton has shown that false rumours of Markievicz’s supposedly craven conduct at her court-martial were circulated alongside the rumour that she had shot PC Lahiffe.

Miss Mahaffy, daughter of Trinity College’s Provost, who recorded them, unconsiously revealed their object: Markievicz was, she observed “the one woman amongst them of high birth and therefore the most depraved . . . She took to politics and left our class . . . “

This campaign of vilification is, Diana Norman believes, “an extreme example of a process by which women are denigrated until they disappear from history”.

It is only necessary to bring to mind the example of Muriel MacSwiney, who has up to lately been maligned on the basis of false rumours and innuendo, to give credit to this assertion.

CLAIRE MCGRATH GUERIN, CO TIPPERARY

Letter in Irish Independent concerning Countess Markievicz

12 May 2006

The Countess at the Green

Kevin Myers states (Irish Independent, May 5) that Countess Markievicz shot an unarmed policeman, Constable Lahiff, during the 1916 Rising. I replied to his previous iteration of this theory in the Irish Times when I stated:

” . . . This story first appeared in print in Max Caulfield’s ‘The Easter Rebellion’ (1965). Caulfield’s account does not state the evidence on which it is based.

If, however, Lahiff was shot ‘within five minutes’ of the occupation of St Stephen’s Green, as both Caulfield and The Sinn Féin Handbook both state, it was not Countess Markievicz who shot him. Several witnesses saw her, accompanied by Kathleen Lynn, delivering supplies to City Hall at the very time that Constable Lahiff was shot.

Diana Norman, who collected the evidence in her book ‘Terrible Beauty – a Life of Constance Markievicz’ (Poolbeg, 1988 ) states (p.140) ‘What is significant is how willingly the story that she shot an unarmed man has been received and the tenacity with which it has been remembered since. It may be that some flawed, unconsious logic has been going on in the male Irish mind.

‘Two rules of gentlemanly warfare were broken at Stephen’s Green on Easter Monday: a helpless man died and a woman displayed a joy in battle, therefore the woman broke both rules, QED Constance shot PC Lahiff.’

The former keeper of State papers, Breandan MacGiolla Choille, informed Ms Norman that he had come across no evidence in his research among the State papers to indicate the truth of the rumour.

If Mr Myers has some compelling evidence to indicate the contrary, I will be pleased to follow it up. If not, as this is a matter of justice, I hope he will acknowledge his allegation is baseless.

Mr Myers did not, to the best of my belief, acknowledge this challenge, neither did he repeat the allegation during the remainder of his tenure at the Irish Times.* I again challenge him either to substantiate or to withdraw his allegation. Otherwise, there might seem to be a certain irony in his position that the nationalist view of 1916 is “blinkered”.

CLAIRE MCGRATH GUERIN,
CO TIPPERARY

*This is incorrect: Myers repeated the allegation. The journalists Ruth Dudley Edwards and Stephen Collins have also chosen to repeat the allegation as proven fact in spite of its highly dubious nature.

Follow-up to this post.