Sustainability and equality
As we consider which collections we can and should preserve for the future, we must ensure that gender equality and representation is one of our collecting priorities.
The Special Collections and Archives Department at UL holds a number of key collections relating to the history and experience of women in Limerick and all over Ireland.
Today’s images are taken from three collections, examples of the women represented in our archives.
(click image to zoom)
Frances Condell (1916–1986)
Frances Eades was born in 1916 in Limerick, and married Robert Condell in 1936. Frances worked as a teacher in Villiers School from 1955 until 1959, when she was appointed welfare officer for the Shannon Free Airport Development Company. She entered local politics in 1960, when she was elected as a non-political and first ever female Councillor to Limerick City Council. She was nominated and elected mayor of Limerick in 1962, the first woman ever to be officially voted into this position in Ireland. She was re-elected as mayor in 1963, during which term she was to host several visiting dignitaries, most notably President John F. Kennedy, Senator Edward Kennedy, President Kaunda of Zambia, Cardinal Browne, and ‘Lady Bird’ Johnson, wife of president Lyndon B. Johnson.
Kate O’Brien (1897–1974)
A pioneer in Irish fiction, Kate O’Brien was born in Limerick on 3 December 1897. She graduated from UCD with a BA in 1919, and moved to England where she worked as a free-lance journalist, and later, taught at St. Mary’s Convent in Hampstead. Her sister Nance married Stephen O’Mara, who would later be elected Mayor of Limerick during the War of Independence. O’Brien spent the early years of the Second World War in Oxford and London, working for the British Ministry of Information. Spanning nearly fifty years, Kate O’Brien’s literary career commenced in 1926 with the play ‘Distinguished Villa’. Her first novel, ‘Without My Cloak’, established O’Brien as a significant Irish writer. Her book ‘Farewell Spain’, while her works ‘Mary Lavelle’ and ‘The Land of Spices’ was banned in Ireland. Kate O’Brien died in Kent in 1974, aged 76, leaving behind a body of unfinished work including her memoirs and what would have been her tenth novel, ‘Constancy’.
Nan Quin (1899–1990)
Nan Quinn lived in Bessbrook, Co Armagh, and was introduced to Irish dancing by a nun in Bessbrook Convent in c1911. She established a traditional Irish dancing school in Bessbrook in 1933. She was a member of Cumann na mBan and a committed republican, and was highly regarded in traditional Irish dance and republican circles.
© All images held at Glucksman Library. Please contact us for copyright information and permission to reproduce.
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