Rosamond Jacob was an Irish writer and political activist.
16 Facts About Rosamond Jacob
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Rosamond Jacob was a lifelong activist for suffragist, republican and socialist causes and a writer of fiction.
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Rosamond Jacob was born to lapsed Quaker parents, Lewis Jacob and Henrietta Harvey, in Waterford, where she lived until 1920.
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She, along with her brother Tom, was a member of Sinn Fein from 1905, and it was Rosamond Jacob who opened the first branch of Sinn Fein in Waterford in 1906.
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Rosamond Jacob remained active in Waterford, supporting and leading groups such as Friends' Relief, a Quaker charity group, and she was elected secretary of the Committee for social reform in Waterford, which sought to address local problems such as gambling and alcoholism.
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Rosamond Jacob opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and supported cause the Anti-Treaty IRA in the Irish Civil War she sought peace above all, as did many in the labour movement.
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In 1923 Rosamond Jacob was arrested and imprisoned at Mountjoy Prison upon the government discovering that Sinn Fein's publicity department was based out of Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington's house, where Rosamond Jacob was living.
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Rosamond Jacob became close friends with Macardle and shared a flat in Rathmines with her later in the 1920s.
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Between 1920 and 1927, Rosamond Jacob was secretary of the Irishwomen's International League, which had begun life in 1916 as the Irish branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
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Rosamond Jacob was among the organisers of the congress held in Dublin in 1926.
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In 1927 Rosamond Jacob resigned as secretary of the Irish branch of the WILPF but went on to attend the organisation's congress in Prague in 1929 accompanied by Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington.
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Rosamond Jacob joined the International Disarmament Declaration Committee as well as tried to create an organisation to oppose Capital Punishment in Ireland.
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Rosamond Jacob played a leading role in the political campaign to secure Ryan's freedom from Nationalist Spain, and later worked to defend his reputation after news of his death in Nazi Germany became known.
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In 1957 Rosamond Jacob wrote The Rebel's Wife, a historical memoir written from the viewpoint of Wolfe Tone's wife Matilda, but she was unable to find a publisher for it until she rewrote it as a historical fiction.
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Rosamond Jacob lived in the Rathmines area of Dublin from at least 1942, firstly in Belgrave Square.
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Rosamond Jacob kept a diary almost all of her life, and there are 171 of these diaries among her literary and political papers held in the National Library of Ireland.