31 Facts About Muriel MacSwiney

Muriel MacSwiney was an Irish republican and left-wing activist, and the first woman to be given the Freedom of New York City.

Muriel MacSwiney was the wife of Terence MacSwiney, mother of Maire MacSwiney Brugha and sister-in-law of Mary MacSwiney.

Muriel MacSwiney spent most of the 1930s in Paris, France and from 1940 onwards lived in England, where she still occasionally involved herself in left-wing and republican causes.

Muriel MacSwiney Frances Murphy was born on 8 June 1892 to a wealthy Cork family.

Muriel MacSwiney's father was Nicholas Murphy and her mother Mary Gertrude Purcell of Carrigmore, in Montenotte, Cork city.

Muriel MacSwiney was sent away to school, to a convent in Sussex.

Murphy witnessed Muriel MacSwiney give a public speech at a Manchester Martyrs meeting, but didn't meet him personally until Christmas 1915 when she attended an evening at the Fleischmann.

Murphy's family was horrified by the courtship and discouraged it every step of the way, nevertheless, after Muriel MacSwiney was deported to England immediately after his release from prison, Murphy joined him there.

Muriel MacSwiney's bridesmaid was Geraldine O'Sullivan while his best man was Richard Mulcahy.

Muriel MacSwiney wrote privately that she "did not approve of hunger strike although entirely for the cause".

Muriel MacSwiney returned to Cork in June 1918 to give birth to their daughter, Maire MacSwiney Brugha, but by August brought Maire with her to visit Terence in a Belfast prison.

Muriel MacSwiney was physically unable to return to Ireland for the funeral, which was attended by 10,000s of mourners.

The death of Muriel MacSwiney's husband dealt a huge impact on her life, being a public event as well as a personal loss.

Muriel MacSwiney was catapulted into the spotlight as the mourning widow of someone the Irish nationalist movement was now holding up as a martyr.

Along the way, Muriel MacSwiney headed a delegation of widows Irish women, including Mary Muriel MacSwiney, who visited major cities such as New York and Boston en route, where they delivered speeches at public meetings intended to rally Irish Americans to the cause.

The American tour ended up lasting nine months total and was a major success in swaying both the view of the American public and American politicians towards the Irish, and saw Muriel MacSwiney becoming the first woman in history to receive the Freedom of New York City in 1922.

Muriel MacSwiney returned, exhausted, to Ireland in January 1922, just after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921.

Muriel MacSwiney took the anti-treaty position; a letter expressing her opposition to it was read in the Dail by William Stockley and in June 1922 was part of the garrison in the Hammam hotel led by Cathal Brugha.

Muriel MacSwiney left her daughter Maire in the care of the family of the O'Rahilly.

Muriel MacSwiney returned to Ireland in the summer of 1923; by that point, the Irish Civil War was fizzling to an end in a decisive defeat for the Anti-Treaty IRA.

Muriel MacSwiney publicly declared herself an atheist and began supporting, and eventually joining, Jim Larkin's Irish Worker League.

Muriel MacSwiney continued to be sporadically involved in left-wing causes and married a German left-wing activist with the surname Pullman, which led to the birth of a second daughter, Alix, in 1926.

In 1932 Maire Muriel MacSwiney attempted to return to Ireland alongside her aunt Mary.

In turn, this led Muriel MacSwiney to believe that de Valera had conspired with Mary to kidnap Maire.

Muriel MacSwiney blamed the influence of the Catholic Church for the decision, although the Judge did seem to seriously consider Maire wishes and the apparent uncertainty of Muriel MacSwiney's lifestyle.

Muriel MacSwiney was particularly active in the Ligue de l'enseignement, a non-sectarian teachers' union that she recruited Owen Sheehy Skeffington, an Irish socialist who was living in Paris at the time, into.

Muriel MacSwiney evacuated France for England in 1940 upon the onset of the Battle for France, and she began working in a hospital in Oxford.

Muriel MacSwiney argued any memorial to Terence should be built in Ireland, on a non-sectarian bias, and that it should serve the poor.

Muriel MacSwiney never resolved her relationships with either Maire or the rest of her family.

Muriel MacSwiney was living in Tonbridge in Kent with her daughter Alix near the end of her life.

Muriel MacSwiney died on 26 October 1982 at Oakwood Hospital, Maidstone.