A Brief History
On December 28, 1918, Countess Constance Markievicz was elected to the British Parliament, the first woman to achieve that feat. Incredibly, she was in jail for anti-conscription activity when elected!
Digging Deeper
Constance Gore-Booth was born in London to minor nobility, a Baronet of partially Irish heritage, and his lady, and was somewhat privileged in her youth. She later married Count Casimir Markievicz, a Polish playwright.
Constance was active in social causes such as Women’s Suffrage and various Irish nationalist organizations. Not only was she elected to Parliament in an historic election, but she was also later elected Minister of Labor in the First Dáil, the parliament of the revolutionary Irish Republic.
Constance died at the age of 59 in 1927 due to an infection caused by an appendix operation. A portrait of Constance was given to the British House of Commons by the Irish Parliament in 2018.
Question for students (and subscribers): Did you know Constance Markievicz was also the first European woman to serve as a Cabinet Minister? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
If you liked this article and would like to receive notification of new articles, please feel welcome to subscribe to History and Headlines by liking us on Facebook and becoming one of our patrons!
Your readership is much appreciated!
Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Haverty, Anne. Constance Markievicz Irish Revolutionary. The Lilliput Press, 2016.
McGowan, Joe. Constance Markievicz: The People’s Countess. Constance Markievicz Millennium Committee, 2003.
The featured image in this article, a photography by William Murphy from Dublin, Ireland of St Stephen’s Green, a public park in Dublin, Ireland, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
