Affected by scenes of poverty, at 16 Mayo's Kathleen Lynn vowed to become a doctor
By Tom Gillespie
SINN Féin politician, activist and medical doctor, Kathleen Florence Lynn, was born in the townland of Mullafarry, near Killala, in 1874.
She was so greatly affected by the poverty and disease among the poor that followed the years of the Great Famine that, aged 16, she decided to become a doctor.
She was educated in England and Germany, before enrolling in the Royal University of Ireland, a forerunner to the UCD School of Medicine.
Following her graduation in 1899, Lynn went to the United States, where she worked for 10 years, before returning to Ireland to become the first female doctor at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital (1910 to 1916).
In 1919, she founded St. Ultan’s Children’s Hospital.
Kathleen was born on January 28, 1874, to a clergyman, Robert Young Lynn, and his wife, Catherine Wynne, and was the second eldest child of their four children.
The family, according to Wikipedia, moved to Co. Longford where her father took over as the clergyman of the Ballymahon parish.
In 1886 Kathleen and her family moved to Cong where her father's parish was being funded by Lady Ardilaun of Ashford Castle. She was distantly related to Countess Markievicz through her aunt's marriage.
Lynn was active during the 1916 Rising. A member of the Irish Citizens Army, she taught first-aid and also used her car to transport guns into the capital.
As Chief Medical Officer, she was on the ground at City Hall, where she treated the wounded. Her efforts saw her arrested and imprisoned.
Lynn's family didn't approve of her role in the Rising. The family were so disgusted with her activities that they would not let her return home to Cong for Christmas.
She instead had to spend Christmas 1917 with her aunt Florence in Dublin. She did the same the following year, though she longed to spend Christmas with her family in Mayo.
This personal split was eventually settled before her father's death in 1923.
Lynn lived in Rathmines from 1903 to her death in 1955, sharing her home with her life partner Madeleine ffrench-Mullen. Lynn's diaries and letters provide an insight into this loving and long-lived relationship.
Lynn died on September 14, 1955, and is buried in the family plot at Deansgrange Cemetery.
In acknowledgement of the role she played in the 1916 Rising and the Irish War of Independence, she was buried with full military honours.
Lynn's personal diaries for the period 1916 to 1955, and the administrative papers of St. Ultan's Hospital, are held by the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland archive.
In 1891 Kathleen Lynn went as a boarder to Alexandra College, Dublin, from where she matriculated in 1893 from the Royal University of Ireland. From October 1897 she took classes at the Catholic University of Ireland’s school of medicine in Cecilia Street, Dublin, and in the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. In 1898 she won the Barker anatomical prize awarded by the college.
She graduated MB BCh BAO from the Royal University of Ireland in 1899. Lynn conducted her internships at Holles Street Hospital (1897/9), the Rotunda Hospital (1899), the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital (1899), and at the Richmond Lunatic Asylum.
In 1898 Lynn was appointed the first woman resident doctor at Dublin’s' Adelaide Hospital, but staff opposition to her appointment meant she did not take up the post.
She completed postgraduate work in the United States in the early 1900s before working as a duty doctor at hospitals in Dublin as part of her wider general practice, based at her home at 9 Belgrave Road, Rathmines.
Lynn became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in 1909, and was promoted to clinical assistant in the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital in the same year.
She was a member of the executive committee of the Irish Women’s Suffragette and Local Government Association (IWSLGA) from 1903, and remained on the executive until 1916.
Lynn was a member of the radical British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) from 1908 and she was also said to be on friendly terms with the suffragist Sylvia Pankhurst.
She was part of a mass meeting in 1912, demanding that women's suffrage be included in the Third Home Rule Bill the of that year.
Lynn supported the workers during the 1913 lock-out and worked with Constance Markievicz and others in the soup kitchens in Liberty Hall, becoming close to Markievicz and James Connolly.
In 1913, at Markievicz's request, she treated Helena Molony, who was active in a number of political movements, and stayed with Lynn in her Rathmines home following an illness. As a result of the influence of Molony and Markievicz, Lynn became an active participant in the suffragist, labour and nationalist movements.
For her part in the Rising, Lynn was imprisoned in Kilmainhan Gaol with her comrades Markievicz, Molony and Madeleine ffrench-Mullen.
Lynn remained active in the Nationalist movement. She was elected vice-president of the Sinn Féin executive in 1917 and, in 1923, was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Sinn Féin TD for the Dublin County constituency at the 1923 general election. In accordance with Sinn Féin policy of the time, she did not take her seat which she lost in the June 1927 general election.
Lynn claimed, many years after the 1916 Rising, that it was suffrage that converted her to republicanism, saying: “I saw that people got the wrong impression about suffrage and that led me to examine the Irish question.”
She was given a gold fibula bone-shaped brooch as a token of gratitude from the Irish Citizen Army for her help in the medical preparation for the Rising.
Lynn eventually left politics in 1927, increasingly frustrated by Sinn Féin’s refusal to embrace social reform and health care.
After Lynn's death, Éamon de Valera set up the Kathleen Lynn Memorial Committee, which lasted for eight straight years and resulted in the opening of a surgical unit at St. Ultan’s Hospital in 1964, which eventually shut in 1975 due to funding difficulties.