A headstone marking the grave of the suffragette Meg Connery will be unveiled in Mayo later today.
Margaret Knight Connery was an Irish suffragette and feminist activist who was born near Westport, Co Mayo in 1881.
Known as Meg Connery, she was an advocate of women’s voting rights, through public speaking, lobbying, protesting and publishing articles in a variety of publications, especially in the Irish Citizen.
A leading figure in the Irish Women’s Franchise League, she heckled and disrupted political meetings, and was a believer in the use of physical force to pursue votes for women.
She underwent periods of imprisonment for breaking windows in the London War Office, in the Customs House, Dublin Castle and underwent two hunger strikes and beatings in her pursuit of voting equality for women.
After spending most of her life in Dublin, her final years were difficult, blighted by failing health and poverty. She died in 1958.
An unmarked grave has been located in Mount Jerome Cemetery which is the final resting place of Meg Connery (and her husband Con).
The Meg Connery memorial committee has fund-raised and erected a headstone on her grave which will be unveiled on 5 April by the granddaughter of Meg Connery’s great lifelong friend and ally, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, founder of the Irish Women’s Franchise League.
