Linda Kearns MacWhinney
Linda MacWhinney (née Kearns; 1 July 1888 – 5 June 1951) was an Irish nurse and Fianna Fáil politician.
Two days after the insurgents seized the Dublin GPO during the Easter Rising in April 1916, the County Sligo-born Kearns, a nurse, took over an empty building on North Great George's Street. She hung a Red Cross flag above the door and welcomed casualties of the fighting, from both sides of the conflict. However, as she had treated republican volunteers during the uprising, the British Army ordered Kearns to close her unofficial hospital.[1] She did so, with great reluctance.
She had not been interested in nationalism or republicanism prior to the Easter Rising.[2] She realised she had skills that could be useful in times of war. After the Rising she went into private nursing.[3] She was the nurse to the O'Connor Morris family in Tullamore and traveled extensively with them.[4] In October 1921, she famously escaped from Mountjoy Jail with Eithne Coyle.[1]
She was elected to Seanad Éireann on the Industrial and Commercial Panel in April 1938. She was defeated at the Seanad election of August 1938.[5]
See also
References
- ^ a b Ó Fallúin, Donal. "The Great Escape - Nurse Linda Kearns". Come Here to Me!. Retrieved 28 July 2010.
- ^ O'Riordan, Tomás. "Countess Constance Markievicz". Multitext Project in Irish History. University College Cork, Ireland. Retrieved 27 July 2010.
- ^ McCoole, Sinéad (15 October 2003). No ordinary women: Irish female activists in the revolutionary years, 1900-23. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 177. ISBN 978-0-299-19500-7.
- ^ Ó Duigneáin, Proinnsíos (2002). Linda Kearns: a revolutionary Irish woman. Drumlin Publications. ISBN 978-1-873437-26-1.
- ^ "Ms. Linda Kearns MacWhinney". Oireachtas Members Database. Retrieved 22 March 2009.
External links
- In times of peril: leaves from the diary of Nurse Linda Kearns from Easter week, 1916, to Mountjoy, 1921, edited by Annie M.P. Smithson, held at Villanova University's Falvey Memorial Library.
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