On November 13, 1922, Irish Activist Hanna Sheehy Skeffington Speaks in Massachusetts about the Irish Civil War

Photo: National Museum of Ireland

Irish activist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington spoke to 1,000 delegates of the Irish Republic and Defense Committee of Massachusetts in Corinthian Hall on Washington Street in Boston on November 13, 1922. She was in the United States to describet on-ground conditions in Ireland during the Irish Civil War and to raise funds for anti-Treaty prisoners.

She had just arrived in Boston from Pittsfield, MA, where she spoke in front of the MacSwiney Club, and the day after her Boston appearance she was returning to New York for more lectures.

Speaking about the Irish Civil War underway at the time between Free State and anti-Treaty forces, Hanna told her audience that "plans are underway to deport 10,000 Irish political prisoners to Schelles Island off the coast of Africa and that British General Nevil Macready is still in Dublin Castle directing the military operations of the Free Staters as he did those of the Black and Tans," according to The Boston Globe.

She illustrated the hardships that Irish women had to endurer by the following experience: her house was recently entered in the night and her young son ordered out of bed see if you were old enough to be shot.

"The women of the Republican Mission are appealing for funds for the Irish prisoners dependence. Mrs. Skeffington and Miss Kathleen Boland will close their mission at a mass meeting in Boston the first week of January under the auspices of the Irish Republican defense Committee of Massachusetts," reports the Globe.

Hanna was the widow of the well-known Irish editor and pacifist Francis, who was murdered by British Soldiers in the Easter Uprising of 1916, and one of many envoys of the Irish Republic reporting on conditions in Ireland during this time. She was also heavily involved in the women's suffrage movement.

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