Dr Kathleen Lynn
Sarah Fitzgibbon is a GP and primary care clinical advisor with Cervical Check. She is also the founder of the Women in Medicine in Ireland Network (WiMIN) which promotes, supports and encourages female doctors and medical students in Ireland. Her unsung heroine is Dr Kathleen Lynn.
“Dr Kathleen Lynn was tenacious, lived an unconventional lifestyle; and made it possible for Irish female doctors to have a very fulfilling professional life at a time when there were very few opportunities for them.
“Born in Mayo in 1874, she set up St Ultan’s children’s hospital with Madeleine ffrench-Mullen in 1919. This was the first hospital to be run almost entirely by women, and they were very keen to help women and children living in poverty at the time. St Ultan’s was very much involved in the roll-out of the TB vaccination, which was a huge public health innovation for a country that was so ravaged by TB for so long.
“Politically, she was very active. She was involved in the Irish Citizens Army in 1916, she was a suffragette, she was elected as a TD, and she didn’t shy away from any opportunity to make changes which she felt were for the benefit of society.
“However, the fact that she came from a Protestant background was a difficulty for the Catholic hierarchy, who did not want a children’s hospital run in a non-Catholic ethos. When Crumlin children’s hospital opened under a Catholic ethos, all of the work that Kathleen and Madeleine had done in St Ultan’s was almost forgotten. There is, however, a campaign for the new children’s hospital to be named after her.
“Thinking of contemporaries today, someone who comes to mind is Dr Patricia Scanlan, who does a huge amount of work for children with cancer in Tanzania and is very active in raising awareness of the inequalities that exist around cancer treatment. The survival rates for children with cancer in Tanzania are hugely deficient compared to what we have here. She is doing fantastic work.”
Kathleen O’Rourke
Clodagh Finn is a journalist and author of Through Her Eyes: A new history of Ireland in 21 women. Her unsung heroine is Kathleen O’Rourke.
“My unsung heroine is fitness pioneer- and so much more- Kathleen O’Rourke.
“In 1934, she set up the first branch of the Women’s League of Health and Beauty in Dublin. This was the first mass keep-fit system developed by women, for women, established in 1930 in London by Dubliner Mary Bagot-Stack.
“However, its arrival in Ireland created anxiety among Catholic leaders, with then-Bishop John Charles McQuaid- who was her cousin- meeting Kathleen several times to insist that the women attending wore skirts over their shorts, as well as requesting that the word ‘beauty’ be removed from the name, and changes made to the ‘risqué’ logo (showing a member leaping through the air-wearing shorts!). Despite such demands, however, the organisation flourished.
“But after the polio epidemics of 1948 and 1950, Kathleen- a remedial gymnast and a member of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists- began to see children in her own flat in Dublin, where they were carried up three flights of stairs and treated on a dining room table covered in blankets to bring them to the right height to receive rehabilitation therapy. She would later co-found what became the Central Remedial Clinic.
“She also set up the Dublin College of Physical Education [now Thomond College, Limerick] and was the first person to run ante-natal classes in Dublin. And the Women’s League- now known as the Fitness League Ireland- still runs more than 60 weekly sessions in Dublin; with the original logo re-instated!”
Madeline McKeever
Kate Ryan is secretary of the Irish Food Writers’ Guild, founder of Flavour.ie and a freelance food writer on all aspects of Irish food, from farm to fork.
Her unsung heroine is Madeline McKeever.
“My unsung hero is Madeline McKeever, organic seed farmer and founder of Brown Envelope Seeds.
“Madeline, 63, a botanist by profession, established her seed farm 20 years ago because commercially available Irish-grown organic seed didn’t exist.
“From Turk Head in West Cork, McKeever performs vital work producing vegetable, herb, cereal, and tomato seeds on just half an acre of land and two polytunnels. It sounds possibly too small, but then you don’t need to grow much to collect plenty of seed.
“Talk of food, farming, and the future of both doesn’t give enough consideration to beginnings. The humble seed is not so humble at all. Without it, there is no food for humans and no feed for animals. “Ireland’s ability to produce its own seed, open-pollinated and free from chemical interference, patents and other proprietary gate-keeper-y, is the foundation of food sovereignty. Seeds are key to food security and decrease our dependency on other nations to feed us.
“Ireland should be awash with seed farmers like McKeever, but we aren’t, so she’s developed Seedie.ie, an Etsy-style webshop where amateur horticulturalists can sell their carefully saved seeds. It’s McKeever’s legacy to every person on this island, providing a resilient way forward for when she eventually gets around to retiring.
Marian Keyes
Andrea Mara is a best-selling Irish crime writer. Her latest book, No One Saw A Thing (Bantam Press), will be released on 11 May. Her unsung heroine is Marian Keyes.
“Out and about recently, I suddenly spotted my ultimate literary hero. Awestruck, I scribbled a post on Insta Stories to say that I’d just seen an international bestselling author who also happens to be Ireland’s Queen of Fiction. I didn’t say who it was, but dozens of replies flew in, and all but one person guessed immediately who I meant. It was, of course, Marian Keyes.
“I have such clear memories of reading my first Marian Keyes book, in my childhood bedroom, 25 years ago. Wondering how this author was somehow in my head, how she knew exactly what it was like to be in my early twenties, growing up in Dublin, in a house full of sisters – and still ?in my childhood bedroom. Her books were like nothing I’d ever read before – sharp, funny, poignant, relatable, and set in suburban Dublin. There were other authors doing this too, of course, but she was the first one to come across my radar. And with her books selling in the millions worldwide, Keyes showed that it could be done – Irish women could write contemporary novels about life and love and family and friendship; books that could be critically acclaimed and hugely successful commercially.
“She has blazed a trail for writers everywhere, and is uncommonly generous in her support of other authors. She’s a feminist, outspoken in her support of a woman’s right to choose – what we read, how we look, what we do with our bodies. She bangs the drum for menopausal women, she says, because life doesn’t stop when we turn 40. She’s spoken up often about book-snobbery and misogyny and the notion that novels about relationships and family are deemed ‘guilty pleasures’ when really, they’re simply pleasures.
“She’s a household name, so certainly not an ‘unsung’ writer, but to me, she’s also a hero – paving the way for writers, for women writers, and for writers of commercial fiction. And on the subject of books, she says crime is her comfort read. What’s not to love?”
Mary O’Hara
Brídín McGowan is a contemporary folk harpist, singer and composer based in Co Sligo. Her debut album Brídín is available on vinyl and CD and to stream now. Her unsung heroine is Mary O’Hara.
“My unsung hero is soprano and harpist Mary O’Hara. I think she’s such a legend.
“She was born in Sligo in 1935 and really did modernise the harp, becoming famous in America and across the world. Back then, the harp was a masculine thing, associated with composers like Turlough O’Carolan in the 1600 and 1700s. Mary O’Hara- who was part of the folk revival- took it on; and took it to another level. She made it glamorous and cool. There have been other people since who have progressed it, but I think she was really a turning point.
“My grandad was also born in 1935 and he’d know all of her songs. Her records would have come back from America and the UK and for that age group, she was like Madonna! Back then, for a woman to be doing anything like this was just wild! My grandad has a gramophone and it’s so lovely to listen to her on that.
“I genuinely think she is responsible for the harp being where it is now. When you look at other traditional music around the world, it has not progressed much in many places. Whereas Irish traditional music has progressed so much through the years. It’s all because of new people coming on board with their ideas and showing people that you can push the boundaries and do something different.
“Who knows where it would be without the likes of Mary O’Hara?”
Rediscovering Ireland's forgotten goddesses
Polio survivor ‘I lost the vocabulary of family; the hospital was my home’.