THE ONLY WOMAN wounded in action during the 1916 Rising is set to be honoured by having a road named after her.
Margaret Skinnider (1892-1971) was a sniper and a feminist who operated as a scout and message runner under the command of Countess Markievicz and General Michael Mallin.
She also smuggled detonators and bomb-making equipment into Ireland before the Rising and often dressed as a boy during her time as a rebel.
Born in Scotland, she joined Cumann na Mban and smuggled detonators and bomb-making equipment into Ireland before the rising.
The Glasnevin Trust says that during the rising itself she took up her position as a sniper in the Irish Citizen Army on the roof of the College of Surgeons.
She was an excellent markswonman having learned to shoot in a rifle club.
Skinnider was seriously wounded when she was shot three times attempting to burn down houses on Dublin’s Harcourt Street. She was trying to cut off the retreat of British soldiers who had planted a machine gun post on the roof of the University Church.
She was mentioned three times for bravery in the dispatches sent to the Dublin GPO.
The rebel had argued strongly with her commanding officers that she should be subject to the same risk as men who were involved in military action and her words were quoted by Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams in his Presidential address to his party’s Ard Fheis in 2006.
After the rising she was active in the War of Independence and was imprisoned before becoming paymaster general of the IRA during the civil war.
In later life she was a schoolteacher and became President of the INTO in 1956. She died in Dublin in 1971.
Now the Monaghan Municipal District of Monaghan County Council is considering a motion to re-name the North Road in Monaghan the Margaret Skinnider Road.
Local Sinn Fein Councillor Brian McKenna has welcomed the proposal.
“Margaret Skinnider, as most people in north Monaghan would know, was actually born in Scotland but her parents were from the Tydavnet area and she spent many of her childhood summers in the Tydavnet area,” he said.
“Margaret took part in the 1916 rising and we haven’t a connection with many people in the 1916 rising in Monaghan other than from James Connolly,” he added.
- Additional reporting by Rónán Duffy
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