Memorial garden plan for pioneering Mayo doctor

PLANS are in the pipeline to create a memorial garden commemorating Dr. Kathleen Lynn in south Mayo.

Cong Tidy Towns Committee propose developing the garden in the village in memory of the Mayo native who was a suffragette and chief medical officer in the Irish Citizen Army during the 1916 Rising.

Imprisoned after the rising, Kathleen Lynn was later instrumental in the opening of St. Ultan's Hospital in Dublin, which played a huge part in tackling the rages of TB, which was rampant at the time.

The memorial garden proposal was outlined to members of Mayo County Council's heritage committee in a report on the Decade of Centenaries programme in the county.

The point was made by county librarian Austin Vaughan that there is a campaign to have the new national children's hospital named after Kathleen Lynn, which the committee should support.

Born in Killala in 1874, Kathleen Lynn 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 chief medical officer of the Irish Citizens Army, based at City Hall, during the Easter Rising. Following her death in 1955, she was buried with full military honours for the role she played in the Rising at Deansgrange Cemetery, Dublin.