WHO WAS ROSIE HACKETT?

REMINDER: Bring along 100 Years book as an example of current

Lockout literature

Maeve Casserly

Good evening ladies, I would like to thank you so much for

asking me to speak to you tonight about Rosie Hackett. I’ve

titled this lecture simply ‘Who is Rosie Hackett?’, because I

feel that a lot of people are curious to find out about this

woman, who seems to have shot up into historical stardom,

almost over-night. Rosanna Hackett, affectionately known as

Rosie Hackett throughout her life, was a person whose

significance in Ireland’s labour, class, womens and

nationalist history I wasn’t fully aware of until recently.

Like many of you, I hadn’t really heard of ‘Rosie Hackett’

until May of last when her name emerged on the shortlist for

the naming of the new Luas Bridge connecting Marlborough

Street with Hawkins Street. Rosie Hackett’s name appeared

alongside such looming figures of Irish history as James

Connolly, Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats. The only other woman

that made it onto the top five shortlist was Kay Mills. Kay’s

claim to fame was that she holds the record for leinster

titles and all-ireland titles, having won 14 leinsters and 16

all-ireland titles for Dublin.  On this list of who’s who in

20th C Irish history, Rosie was for me, a curve ball, the

underdog if you will.

However I think is appropriate to acknowledge this one

woman’s life’s work in such a symbolic object as a bridge. As

for me, after further research into her life and legacy, Rosie

Hackett acted as a bridge across many different and important

causes in 20th Century Irish history. Rosie Hackett bridged the

divide not only across gender and traditional women’s roles,

as being one of the few women in a man’s world of trade

unionism and nationalist politics, but also between her own

class, coming from a poor tenement family, and the group of

women who were actively involved in politics that were

traditionally upper-class suffragettes and extreme, militant

nationalists.

Context: Dublin 1913

Before I get into the specific details about Rosie Hackett’s

life and legacy, I’d just like to give you some historical

context, and paint a picture of what the Dublin of Rosie would

have been like at the beginning of the last century.

I think a lot of people will be familiar with the Dublin that

Rosie Hackett grew up in from James Plunkett’s Strumpet City. The

book, originally published in 1969 was serialized by RTÉ in

1980. Familiar actors from stage and screen were used with

David Kelly staring as the tragic and destitute Rashers

Tierney, Bill Murray as the upstanding Fitz and even Peter

O’Toole as Big Jim Larkin himself. In recent times, the book

was named as the One City One Book for 2013, part of Dublin

UNESCO City of Literature, NLI. Perhaps some of you also made

it along to the Abbey’s recent adaptation of the Plunkett’s

play The Risen People, which received mixed reviews from theatre

critics and the public alike.

The life of the tenement dwellers is the main theme of all

these literary pieces, and although the awful conditions on

stage and on screen may seem to be exaggerated for dramatic

effect, the harsh truth, was that they were in fact very close

to reality. Between 1843 and 1914 the number of tenement

houses in Dublin rose from 353 to 1200, as the richer

population of Dublin city centre moved out into the suburbs

for greater space. Their formerly grand Georgian homes were

split up and by 1914 there were 90,000 people living in

tenements in Dublin.

Labour in the city was equally a contentious and painful

issue. During this period around 25,000 men depended on casual

labour for their families income. During the Lockout itself

20,000 men were locked out by 400 employers who had sided with

William Martin Murphy. Murphy was an extremely powerful figure

in Dublin and was the owner of the Dublin Trams Company and

one of the biggest employers in the capital.

Now I would first likely to give you a brief account of

Rosie’s early life, growing up in inner-city Dublin, and then

move onto her role in the 1913 Lockout and the 1916 Easter

Rising. She was on born 25 July 1893 in the Dublin inner city

to Joseph Hackett and his wife Rosanna Mary Dunne. Joseph, Her

father, was believed to have been a barber, but he died

September 1895 when Rosie and her younger sister Christina

would have only been 2 and 1 years old respectively. Looking

into the first written record of Rosie’s existence in the 1901

census, it is clear to see the difficult living conditions in

which she grew up. From the census records it can be seen that

in 1901 she was living in a two-room tenement flat at 27

Bolton Street. In these two rooms Rosie lived alongside her

mother, her two uncles John and James Dunne, her aunt

Catherine Dunne, her younger sister Christina, who had been

born in 1894, and a male lodger. According to the census her

mother was the principal earner of their household and worked

as a housekeeper. Ten years later, in the 1911 census it can

be seen that Rosanna Mary Hackett had re-married, to a man

called Patrick Gray. Patrick Gray was recorded as being a

warehouse caretaker, and Rosanna Mary Hackett Gray was now

also listed as a warehouse caretaker. The family had moved up

in the world to a small cottage on Old Abbey Street. In the

ten year interim Rosanna and Patrick Gray had three sons

together. Thomas was born in 1904, Patrick in 1908, and Denis

in 1910. As well as these three new additions to the family,

James Dunne, Rosie’s 32 year old uncle, still resided with the

family in the cottage on Old Abbey Street. In the 1911 census

Rosie, 17 at the time, and is listed as being employed.

However, interestingly her younger sister Christina, who would

have been 16 in 1911, was still a student in school. Because

Rosie was the eldest of all the children, she had from a young

age, dropped out of school to join the workforce and

contribute to the family income. Therefore she was exposed

early on to the harsh working conditions of the casual

labourers of Dublin city and was

As a teenager Rosie Hackett worked as a packer in a paper

store, and in 1911 (when she would have been 17 years old) she

moved to a job as a messenger for Jacob's biscuit factory on

Bishop Street. From an early age she was involved in the

trade-union movement, and was one of the first members of the

Irish Transport and General Workers' Union (ITGWU). The ITGWU

was founded by Jim Larkin in January 1909 as a general workers

union and played a pivotal role in the Lockout and the Irish

Labour Movement.

As early as 1911, shortly after Rosie had moved to her

new position in Jacobs’, she had her first experience of mass

industrial action when the men of Jacob's bakehouse went on

strike. Rosie was one of the main organisers of the women's

sympathy strike on 22 August 1911. Jacob's was the principal

employer of women in Dublin at the time, and over 3,000 female

employees withdrew their labour in pursuit of a pay claim.

Following this showing of trade union power, the dispute over

the pay claim was conceded by Jacob's in less than two weeks.

Within the fortnight, on 5 September 1911 Rosie co-founded the

Irish Women Workers' Union (IWWU) the first and most durable

women's trade union in the country. Alongside Rose, Delia

Larkin, Jim Larkin's sister, played a key role in the

foundation of the IWWU. The IWWU was located on Great

Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street), and Delia Larkin was its

first general secretary. Delia was scathing of the poor pay

and conditions female employees had to endure, insisting they

were ‘weary of being white slaves who pass their lives away

toiling to fill the pockets of unscrupulous employers’. Among

those who spoke at this first meeting on Great Brunswick

Street were Jim Larkin, James Nolan, Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington

and Constance Markievicz. From its outset the IWWU was linked

to its counterparts in the ITGWU, the Dublin Trades Council,

and the suffragette movement.

The task of the industrial organisation of women was

difficult and membership of the IWWU never grew to more than a

few thousand, with most of the membership based in Dublin,

though small branches were also formed in Belfast, Dundalk,

Wexford, and Cork. With an office provided by the ITGWU at

Liberty Hall in Dublin, Delia and Rosie made themselves

available seven days a week and championed the cause of

domestic and factory workers, waitresses, printers, and dress

makers. Professor Mary Daly writes that in 1912 there were 18

different suffrage societies in Ireland numbering an estimated

3,000 suffragists principally led by women of middle and upper

classes – women with time on their hands.

Over the next two years Rosie Hackett was a leading

member of the IWWU, which played an integral role in the fight

for the rights of women workers. On Mayday 1913 she, along

with other representatives from the IWWU, marched in Dublin

for the first time. Rosie was also among the crowd that

gathered on Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street) to hear

Jim Larkin speak on 30 August 1913. The events of that day

became known as Bloody Sunday. During Larkin’s speech the

crowd was charged on by the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and

two people were killed and over 300 were injured. The events

of Bloody Sunday were re-enacted on August 30 2013 to

commemorate the centenary with trade union members alongside

actors dressing up in contemporary clothes. The baton charge

by the Metropolitan Police was also re-enacted.

But back to 1913. Two days later on 1 September 1913 two

female workers at the Jacob's factory were dismissed because

they refused to remove their union badges. Later that same

day, Rosie Hackett was among the 300 other women who were

fired from the factory, after they had also refused to remove

their union badges. The Dublin Lockout had initially begun

when the Dublin tram workers, employed by William Martin

Murphy, had gone on strike in August 1913. Their example was

quickly taken up by unions across the city leading to a series

of strikes and lockouts which lasted until January 1914.

During the height of the action, some 25,000 workers were

locked out by their employers.

There were no means of support for all these men and their

families. The strike pay given to those men on strike was not

sufficient to sustain them, and eventually ran out. As a

result poverty and hunger were widespread in the city. Rosie

was one of the many women who helped run the Liberty Hall soup

kitchen which was integral in helping people to make it

through the harsh winter of 1913. She also played an essential

part in organising a relief fund for the strikers and their

families. The Irish trade unionists received approx. £150,000

worth of aid from the British Trade Union groups. Alongside

Countess Markievicz, Delia was in charge of welfare operations

in Liberty Hall during the 1913 Dublin lock-out and was

involved in attempts to arrange foster homes in Liverpool for

children of striking workers, efforts which were vigorously

opposed by the catholic church. In the same year she also

organised a six-week tour in England of the Irish Workers

Dramatic Company which she had founded along with the Irish

Workers Choir, believing the role of a trade union was not

just to protect workers' rights, but to foster the general

development and provide for the social needs of its members.

After she lost her job in Jacob's factory, Rosie took up

a position as a clerk in the IWWU shop, also based in Liberty

Hall. Here she came into contact with activists such as Helena

Molony actress, republican, trade unionist, and feminist, was

born 15 January 1883 at 8 Coles Lane, off Henry St. Orphaned

at an early age, she had an unhappy relationship with her

stepmother, whom her father had married shortly before his

death. Helena probably received a catholic secondary-school

education. During the 1913 Dublin lock-out, Molony made up the

disguise of James Larkin as an aged clergyman, and, posing as

his niece, accompanied him into the Imperial Hotel, where from

a balcony he briefly addressed a crowd in Sackville St.,

resulting in the ‘bloody Sunday’ police baton charge (31

August). Rosie also met Madeleine ffrench-Mullen [nationalist

and social advocate, was born 30 December 1880 in Malta,

eldest child of St Laurence ffrench-Mullen, a Royal Navy

surgeon. While she was a child, her father moved the family

back to Ireland and they lived in Dundrum. Both of these women

worked Rosie alongside in the soup kitchen at Liberty Hall. A

workroom was also established in Liberty Hall, and along with

many other women who had lost their jobs because of the

lockout, Rosie made articles of clothing to sell in the shop.

After Delia Larkin’s brother James's imprisonment in

October 1913 she increasingly became the public face of

Liberty Hall and frequently spoke at rallies. At the end of

the lock-out in January 1914, 400 members of the IWWU were not

reinstated. The union embarked on a tour to Liverpool, Oxford,

and London to raise funds for their relief, but the response

was disappointing; it was also unsuccessful in trying to

establish a shirt manufacturing co-operative to employ

victimised workers. Festering tensions at Liberty Hall were

exacerbated by Delia's increased militancy, the exile of her

brother James, and the IWWU's rent-free occupation of the

largest room in the building. As well as clashing with James

Connolly, Delia also had to deal with an unsuccessful court

case initiated by a former clerk of the IWWU who claimed she

had not been paid. Therefore In August 1915 when the Irish

Women Workers' Union (IWWU) was reorganised as an affiliated

branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union

August 1915, Helena Molony, on the recommendation of James

Connolly, was elected general secretary.

Rosie would have been privy to this difficult

relationship between Delia Larkin and James Connolly as she

also trained as a printer with the Liberty Hall printing

press, and through her work she became a close confidante of

James Connolly. During the lockout Connolly founded the Irish

Citizen Army (ICA), a workers' militia trained to defend

workers against police attacks. It was also an essential

morale boosting device. Women made up a substantial proportion

of the ICA, and Rosie Hackett was an active member from its

outset. When the strike finished in 1914, she continued to run

the co-op shop and printing press at Liberty Hall. During the

interim years between the end of the Lockout in 1914 and the

build up to the 1916 Easter Rising the ICA and Liberty Hall

acted as a community base for nationalist and socialists

alike. As well as taking part in the weekly training in First

Aid, drills and marching Rosie also organised dances and

events to entertain members of the ICA, the ITGWU and the

IWWU.

In 1916, two weeks before the outbreak of the Easter rising,

the shop at Liberty Hall was raided by the police. Rosie

Hackett was working alone in the shop that day and tried to

stall the police; she told them ‘Wait till I get the head’

then went to the printing press located in the back of the

Liberty Hall building, to inform the men working there that

Connolly must be found immediately. The police had raided the

shop looking for seditious papers such as the Spark and the

Nation. Connolly arrived to find the police behind the counter

with the subversive papers in their hands; he simply said,

'Drop them, or I'll drop you,' as Rosie Hackett later

testified. Helena Molony was also there with her rifle at the

ready, in case Connolly was attacked. The police left, but

returned later that afternoon with a warrant. However, they

found none of the inflammatory papers on the premises as Rosie

Hackett had hidden them all.

As a result of the raid there was a general mobilisation

of the ICA. There were a great deal of ammunitions supplies in

Liberty Hall in the build up to the rising, and any raid at

that stage would have caused serious problems for Connolly.

From that day until the outbreak of the rising Rosie noted

that there was a permanent guard of plain clothed ICA men kept

on Liberty Hall. The preparation for the Rising by the ICA

intensified. Women, along with the men of the ICA, took part

in the night time marches and drills. As well as this, along

with many other women in the ICA Rosie had also been training

for the past six months under Dr Kathleen Lynn in First-Aid.

Dr. Lynn was herself an active suffragette, labour activist

and nationalist.

During this time leaders of the Irish Volunteers such as

Patrick Pearse, often called on Connolly in Liberty Hall. The

Irish Volunteers had been founded in 1913 in answer to the

foundation of the Ulster Volunteer Force. They were formed to

‘secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the

whole people of Ireland’. With the outbreak of the first world

war in 1914, 90% of the Irish Volunteers joined the National

Volunteers and enlisted in the 10th and 16th Divisions of the

British Army. This caused a great divide in the Irish

Volunteers and the movement split, leaving the extreme

militant organisation of the IRB, led by Pearse, Eoin

MacNeill, The O’Rahilly and Thomas MacDonagh back in charge of

the Volunteers – now numbering around 13,500. The moderate

majority of approximately 175,000 men renamed themselves the

National Volunteers and were closely affiliated with James

Redmond and the Irish Parliamentary Party. In the months

leading up to the rising Rosie Hackett would secretly show the

leaders of the Irish Volunteers the work being done at the

printing press and direct them to Connolly's office. She later

noted in an interview given with the Miltary Bureau how

surprised they were to find a woman at such an important

position in Liberty Hall.

Rosie recalls that at least one week before the rising

they were terribly busy in the Liberty Hall workrooms. They

made up knapsacks for the man as well as first aid kits for

the nurses. They also prepared the food, as the scout boys

went around collecting the bread, other people got ham, cooked

them and brought the meat to Liberty Hall, where the

sandwiches were made up for the ICA men. On Easter Sunday 1916

she went on a final route march with other members of the ICA

which culminated in a rousing speech by Connolly. Rosie

remembers that he ‘was very serious in his speech’, he said

that ‘every man, woman, that every boy and girl that had

marched this day were now soldiers of Ireland and would be

confined to barracks’ He then pointed to Liberty Hall and said

that no one was to the leave the building without permission.

Every Sunday night, the ICA would usually host a dance for its

members, this particular night was not hugely different with

Rosie helping to prepare tea for between three and four

hundred ICA members. During the dance she would usually stand

at a stall in the Hall selling minerals and chocolates.

However that night Rosie was sent several times with messages

to and from Connolly about the printing in Liberty Hall of the

Easter proclamation. She admits that she was never privy to

the contents of the messages but surmised their connection

with the proclamation because the type was being fitted at the

time. She recalls how some of the men in the printing Hall

were and I quote, ‘astounded that I should be allowed in’.

Going in and out of this secret meeting through the dance hall

she often forgot to say the password. When the guard would say

‘Who goes there?’, she would simply answer ‘It’s me!’

At 8 o'clock on Easter Monday morning (24 April), while

Rosie Hackett was preparing breakfast for the ICA soldiers she

was sent for by Dr Lynn to go to her surgery in Liberty Hall.

She was given a white coat and dispatched as a nurse to the

ICA garrison stationed at St Stephen's Green. In the Military

Bureau interview she fondly recalls that the coat was far too

big for her – it was dragging on the ground – and that she

looked like a child in dress up with her gun. She says and I

quote ‘I remember Plunkett and some other men were laughing

at the coat touching the ground.’ She was still only 22 years

old.

Rosie was stationed in St Stephens Green under Michael Mallin

and Constance Markievcz. The position itself was a poor

choice. Although they dug trenches all along the fence of the

green, the Green was surrounded on all sides by buildings with

high vantage points and was easy to fire upon. Rosie was

stationed in the first-aid post in the park – even though the

group marked the post with a red-cross, it was not recognised

and they continued to endure heavy fire from the Shelbourne

Hotel. They came under even heavier fire from Tuesday morning

and the group escaped via the grounds-keepers lodge and moved

to occupy the Royal College of Surgeons, where Rosie continued

her first-aid work. Rosie recalls that when they ran between

the Green and the Royal College the surrounding crowd moved to

attack them, and one man was severely wounded on the steps of

the College.

It was difficult to continue the first-aid work as Rosie

and her team had to leave all of their equipment behind in

their hasty escape from the Green. Stretcher bed, mattresses

and other make-shift bedding was brought in from the nearby

Turkish baths. Rosie recalled a close encounter she had, and I

quote

‘On one occasion I was lying down on one of the beds resting myself...the people

upstairs sent for me to go for a cup of tea, and Miss O’Daly insisted on my going as I

needed it. I had only left the bed, when a man named Murray, casually threw himself

down onto it, and whatever way it happened, this bullet hit him in the face. We

attended him there for the whole week. He was then brought to St. Vincent’s Hospital

where he died after a week. They remarked that had I not got up then for a cup of

tea, I would have got it through the brain, judging by the way the bullet hit this

man.’

She tells of when she came across Countess Markievcz seated on

the stairs crying. And I quote,

‘I found Madam [she always refers to the Countess as Madam]

sitting on the stairs with her hands in her head. She was very

worried but did not say anything. I just passed on as usual,

and she only looked at me, but I knew something was wrong. Mr.

Mallin went round shaking hands with everyone. He took my

hand, but didn’t say a word. He was terribly pale. I thought

his face was drawn and haggard. Of course I realised these

things afterwards.’ Mallin and Markievcz had just gotten the

news of the surrender of the rest of the Rising leaders, but

they kept it from the rest of the men and women in the Royal

College, because they knew they would be reluctant to give up.

‘Mr. Mallin’, Rosies says, ‘had to insist, and explained that

they were orders which had to be obey.’

After the surrender of her garrison she was arrested and

marched through a hostile crowd to Dublin Castle. At the

castle, the women were separated from the men, and first

brought to Richmond barracks. Later that evening they were

moved again to Kilmainham jail. Rosie Hackett spent ten days

in Kilmainham after which she was freed, along with 75 other

women, under a general amnesty. Those who were deemed more

dangerous, like Markievcz, were sent to Mountjoy to be kept

under lock and key.

After her release, Rosie Hackett, along with Helen

Chenevix and Louie Bennett reorganised the IWWU. Helen

Chenevix was a trade unionist, suffragist, and social

campaigner, and she was born 13 November 1886, at Ivy Bank,

Blackrock, Co. Dublin. She was educated at Alexandra College,

Dublin, and went on to TCD, where in 1909 she graduated BA.

Early on she became involved in labour and social issues,

though it was as a suffragist that she first came to

prominence. In 1911 she co-founded, with Louie Bennett the

Irishwomen's Suffrage Federation. Louie Bennett was also a

suffragist, trade unionist, and peace activist, and was born 7

January 1870, in Garville Avenue, Rathgar. She was brought up

at Temple Hill, Blackrock, and educated at Alexandra College,

and later at an academy for young ladies in London, where she

and her sisters formed an Irish League. Rosie also re-opened

the soup kitchen in Liberty Hall with Helena Molony, which

acted as a cover to allow the ICA and the Volunteers to

continue their seditious activities.

On the first anniversary of Connolly's death, on behalf

of the ITGWU, Rosie Hackett and Helena Molony hung a large

banner from Liberty Hall that read, 'James Connolly, Murdered

May 12, 1916'. The banner was quickly taken down by the Dublin

Metropolitan Police. Rosie Hackett along with Helena Molony,

Jinny Shanahan and Brigit Davis hastily printed another

script, climbed to the top of Liberty Hall and hung it from

the roof. This small group of women barricaded the windows and

blocked the door with coal. Over 400 policemen were mobilised

to remove them, but they remained on the roof with the banner

until 6 o'clock that evening.

Rosie Hackett continued her work with the IWWU for the

next forty years. At its peak the union organised over 70,000

women. She also ran the ITGWU shop on Eden Quay until its

closure in 1957. In 1970 she received a gold medal for

recognition of her sixty years of work for the Irish trade-

union movement. She never married and lived with her brother

Tommy in Fairview until her death there on 4 July 1976. She

was buried in Glasnevin cemetery, with full military honours.

In September 2013 it was announced that the new light-rail

Luas bridge in Dublin, linking Marlborough Street with Hawkins

Street, would be named after Rosie Hackett. It is the only

bridge across the Liffey to have been named for a woman.

I am currently taking an M.Phil in Public History in Trinity

College, and my background is in History and Political

Science. I am really interested in the correlation between

current politics and the approaches to commemoration that is

taken both by the state and academic circles as well as grass

roots interest groups. My own Masters Thesis is on ‘The Ethics

of Commemoration’ and I plan to critically analyse the

different forms of commemoration taken of the 1913 Lockout

compared to the beginning of the First World War in 1914 in

Ireland. Since we are in the midst of the ‘Decade of

Centenaries’ I felt it would be appropriate to take a step

back and ask just how all they commemorative ceremonies are

decided upon. I would like to address the imbalance of

commemoration ceremonies by the state, given that Labour is

currently in government, for the Lockout centenary. As opposed

to this I am interested in seeing how this year develops in

terms of the commemorations of the Great War. I was at a

conference held in the Abbey a couple of weeks ago, called the

‘Theatre of Memory Symposium’, which addressed the

relationship of history and memory in the Republic. In his

opening speech President Michael D. Higgins insightfully said

that ‘The Great War has always represented a great gap in the

Irish narrative.’ You need only look at the neglect of the

Irish National War Memorial Gardens, situated all the way out

in Islandbridge (3km from Dublin City Centre) to see the value

previously been given to Irish soldiers that fought and died

in the Great War. I think the general attitude has however

shifted in recent years to one of openness and acceptance, and

I hope this year will be as varied and fruitful for forms of

commemoration from the ground up.