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No one ever seems to ask whether MacDonagh and MacBride, Connolly and Pearse (never mind de Valera and Collins) happened to fire shots at an unarmed individual, policeman or a. But whether Constance Markievicz shot an unarmed constable at St Stephen\u2019s Green is the question on which the public judgment of her character hangs.<\/p>\n
By the afternoon of the first day of the Rising, six policemen had been shot, two fatally, and at least two of them were unarmed. The young Abbey actor Se\u00e1n Connolly\u2014who was the first among the rebels to die, and whose last moments have been recounted by witnesses and historians in tragic detail\u2014shot an unarmed constable who stood guard at Dublin Castle. The righteousness of this act seems to be unquestionable. Yet, partly because she had the audacity to survive the Rising and its aftermath, Markievicz\u2019s identical sin has plagued the public imagination.<\/p>\n
One witness, district nurse Geraldine Fitzgerald, recorded in her diary that as she was returning from duty to the nurse\u2019s home, located at the southwest corner of the Green, she saw:<\/p>\n
“A lady in a green uniform, the same as the men were wearing (breeches, slouch hat with green feathers etc.) the feathers were the only feminine feature in her appearance, holding a revolver in one hand and a cigarette in the other, was standing on the footpath giving orders to the men. We recognized her as the Countess de Markievicz \u2013 such a specimen of womanhood. There were other women, similarly attired, inside the Park, walking about and bringing drinks of water to the men. We had only been looking out a few minutes when we saw a policeman walking down the path from Harcourt Street. He had only gone a short way when we heard a shot and then saw him fall forward on his face. The Countess ran triumphantly into the Green saying \u201cI got him\u201d and some of the rebels shook her by the hand and seemed to congratulate her.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Fitzgerald gives details of Constable Lahiff\u2019s wounds: he had been \u201cshot in the lung, close to the heart and was bleeding profusely. A doctor arrived at the same time as we [the nurses] did\u201d. Lahiff was sent to hospital, where he died half an hour after admission. The death certificate attributed the cause to \u201ca bullet through both lungs and left arm\u201d.<\/p>\n
Max Caulfield and subsequent historians of the Rising have reported that Lahiff was shot three times in the head. Such circulation of factual errors exacerbates the confusion surrounding the event. Markievicz\u2019s later insistence that she did not shoot a policeman further obscures the truth.<\/p>\n
Seven months after the Rising, in November 1916, Constance told her sister, Eva, \u201chow she held a revolver at a policeman\u2019s chest but could<\/u> not shoot when it came to the point\u201d because \u201cshe recognized him & had known him before\u201d. However, this was just one policeman among many; she also recalled that she may have \u201chit one in the arm as he jumped\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 This was probably Lahiff. It appears that Markievicz understood \u201cshot\u201d to mean \u201ckilled\u201d. Since Lahiff did not die at the scene, Markievicz had no way of knowing that what appeared to be a wound to the arm had been fatal.<\/p>\n
The facts of the incident and a rational explanation of Markievicz\u2019s denial of the shooting may do little to influence public opinion, which continues to be governed by emotive and fallacious accounts. If Markievicz\u2019s death sentence had been carried out, would historians or the general public view her actions with more sympathy? Possibly. But probably not. Her execution would not have affected the account offered by W. E. Wylie of her Court Martial, which holds so much sway. Nor would it have stymied O\u2019Casey\u2019s vitriol or changed Yeats\u2019s verdicts. A clue to the reason lies in nurse Fitzgerald\u2019s diary: \u201cthe Countess de Markievicz \u2013 such a specimen of womanhood<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Lauren Arrington is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool. She is the author of Revolutionary Lives: Constance and Casimir Markievicz<\/em>, published this month by Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Lauren Arrington No one ever seems to ask whether MacDonagh and MacBride, Connolly and Pearse (never mind de Valera and Collins) happened to fire shots at an unarmed individual, policeman or a. But whether Constance Markievicz shot an unarmed constable at St Stephen\u2019s Green is the question on which Continue Reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irishhistorians.egino.opalstacked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irishhistorians.egino.opalstacked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irishhistorians.egino.opalstacked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irishhistorians.egino.opalstacked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irishhistorians.egino.opalstacked.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/irishhistorians.egino.opalstacked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"https:\/\/irishhistorians.egino.opalstacked.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irishhistorians.egino.opalstacked.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irishhistorians.egino.opalstacked.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irishhistorians.egino.opalstacked.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}