“Queer” Women?

I have chosen to use the word queer as it encompasses a range of sexualities and gender identities. To label these women as lesbian, bisexual, or pansexual would be anachronistic and has the potential to be incorrect, as those were not the words they would have used to describe themselves.

Navigating the Archive

At the start of the archive is a timeline which features several documents from the year 1916. Since this archive seeks to highlight the individual women involved in the 1916 Rising, documents are grouped by person, whether they be the author, recipient, or subject. I have also situated the women who were in a relationship beside each other in this archive. For example, Dr. Kathleen Lynn is above Madeleine ffrench-Mullen and Elizabeth O’Farrell is just before Julia Grenan. In order to highlight the presence of these women in the archive, their names have been made bold in the document transcriptions. You can visit the archive here.

Selection Process

Because of the scarcity of digitized documents written by or about these women, the selection process was largely determined by what was available online. While creating this archive I tried to locate as many original documents written by the women of my project as I could, especially witness statements, diary entries, and letters to friends and relatives in order to obtain their perspective on the Rising.
If there are gaps in the archive, it is because the relevant records (such as the writings of Julia Grenan) are not available online.