Doing My Bit for Ireland: Illustrated - Paperback

by Margaret Skinnider (Author)

When the revolt of a people that feels itself oppressed is successful, it is written down in history as a revolution-as in this country in 1776. When it fails, it is called an insurrection-as in Ireland in 1916. Those who conquer usually write the history of the conquest. For that reason the story of the "Dublin Insurrection" may become legendary in Ireland, where it passes from mouth to mouth, and may remain quite unknown throughout the rest of the world, unless those of us who were in it and yet escaped execution, imprisonment, or deportation, write truthfully of our personal part in the rising of Easter week. It was in my own right name that I applied for a passport to come to this country. When it was granted me after a long delay, I wondered if, after all, the English authorities had known nothing of my activity in the rising. But that can hardly be, for it was a Government detective who came to arrest me at the hospital in Dublin where I was recovering from wounds received during the fighting. I was not allowed to stay in prison; the surgeon in charge of the hospital insisted to the authorities at Dublin Castle that I was in no condition to be locked up in a cell. But later they might have arrested me, for I was in Dublin twice-once in August and again in November. On both occasions detectives were following me. I have heard that three days after I openly left my home in Glasgow to come to this country, inquiries were made for me of my family and friends. That there is some risk in publishing my story, I am well aware; but that is the sort of risk which we who love Ireland must run, if we are to bring to the knowledge of the world the truth of that heroic attempt last spring to free Ireland and win for her a place as a small but independent nation, entitled to the respect of all who love liberty. It is to win that respect, even though we failed to gain our freedom, that I tell what I know of the rising. Margaret Skinnider one of the few female snipers of the Irish Rebellion.

Author Biography

Margaret Skinnider (28 May 1892 - 10 October 1971) was a revolutionary and feminist born in Coatbridge, Scotland. She fought during the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. Her part in the Easter Rising was all the more notable because she was a woman, a sniper and the only female wounded in the action. She was mentioned three times for bravery in the dispatches sent to the Dublin GPO. Sadhbh Walsche in The New York Times refers to her as "the schoolteacher turned sniper." Operating variously as a scout, message runner (often dressed as a boy and sniper Skinnider took part in action against the British Army at the Garrison at the College of Surgeons and St. Stephen's Green under the Command of General Michael Mallin and Constance Markievicz. Skinnider was reportedly an excellent markswoman. She was seriously wounded when she was shot three times attempting to burn down houses on Harcourt Street to try to cut off the retreat of British soldiers who had planted a machine gun post on the roof of the University Church