| Countess Markiewicz was born as Constance | | | | Irish Citizen Army, designing their uniform and |
| Gore-Booth in 1868 in London. Her father had an | | | | composing their anthem. During the 1916 Rising, |
| estate at Lissadell in the north of County Sligo, | | | | she was second in command to Michael Mallin in |
| Ireland; the children grew up there and Constance | | | | St. Stephen’s Green. Under sniper fire from |
| and her sister Eva were childhood friends of WB | | | | the surrounding buildings, including the Shelbourne |
| Yeats whose artistic and political ideas were a | | | | Hotel, they retreated to the Royal College of |
| strong influence on them. Constance went to | | | | Surgeons. When the leaders of the Rising |
| study art at the Slade School of Art in London, | | | | surrendered, she was arrested, incarcerated in |
| she became politically active and joined the | | | | Kilmainham Gaol, she was sentenced to death but |
| National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. | | | | the sentence was later commuted to a life |
| She moved to Paris, marrying Count Kazimierz | | | | sentence. Under the general amnesty she was |
| Dunin-Markiewicz, a Ukranian aristocrat. The couple | | | | released in 1917 and in 1918 she ran in the general |
| settled in Dublin where Constance established | | | | election becoming the first woman elected to the |
| herself as a landscape painter and helped found | | | | British House of Commons, however in line with |
| the United Artists Club. Socialising in artistic and | | | | Sinn Fein policy, she refused to take her seat. She |
| literary circles, she met and became influenced by | | | | later served as Minister for Labour in the Irish |
| revolutionary patriots. In 1908 she joined Sinn Fein | | | | cabinet becoming the first female cabinet minister |
| and the revolutionary women’s movement, | | | | in Europe. She left government in 1922, opposing |
| Inghinidhe na hEireann; she also began to perform | | | | the Anglo-Irish Treaty, fighting actively for the |
| in plays at the Abbey Theatre. In 1909, she | | | | Republican cause during the Civil War. She again |
| founded Fianna-Eireann, an organisation that | | | | won election to government in the 1923 and 1927 |
| instructed boys in military tactics and the in the | | | | general elections. She died in 1927 and is buried in |
| use of firearms. She joined James Connolly’s | | | | Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. |