Irish activist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington Speaks in Pittsfield, Masachusetts on November 11, 1922

On Sunday, November 11, 1922, Irish activist Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington spoke at the MacSwiney Club in Pittsfield, MA, to report to American audiences on the condition of Ireland, and the Irish Civil War underway between Free State and anti-Treaty forces.

According to the North Adams Transcript, Sheehy-Skeffington was "in this country at the special request of the late Dr. John F. Kelly of Pittsfield, noted Inventor and authority on Ireland." Kelly was also the founder of the MacSwiney Club in Pittsfield, and had invited her to speak before he died.

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.

Photo: National Museum of Ireland

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.

The MacSwiney Club, whose papers are housed at the Boston Public Library, "was founded in memory of the Irish revolutionary and playwright Terence MacSwiney (1878-1920) who was arrested by the British for sedition and imprisoned in Brixton prison where he went on a hunger strike and died. His death brought international attention to the Irish struggle.

"The MacSwiney Club of Massachusetts was located in Pittsfield and was one of many related clubs throughout the country that supported the Irish Republic," according to the BPL.

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