Kathleen Florence Lynn (28 January 1874 – 14 September 1955) was an Irish Sinn Féin politician, political activist and doctor.
Lynn was so greatly affected by the poverty and disease among the poor in the west of Ireland that, at 16, she decided to be a doctor. She was educated in England and Germany, before enrolling in the Royal University of Ireland, a forerunner to the UCD School of Medicine. Following her graduation in 1899, Lynn went to the United States, where she worked for ten years, before returning to Ireland to become the first female doctor at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital (1910–1916). In 1919, she founded Saint Ultan's Children's Hospital.
In 1882, the family moved to Shrule in County Longford where her father took over as the clergyman of the Ballymahon parish. Later on in her young life, in 1886 Lynn and her family moved to Cong, a village bordering Mayo and Galway, to where her father's parish was being funded by the Lady Ardilaun of Ashford Castle. She was sent to the Alexandra College, of which Lady Ardilaun was the patron, in Dublin, which she attended till she was sixteen years old. She was distantly related to Countess Markievicz through her aunt's marriage. Growing up in the aftermath of The Great Famine (1845 – 1852), She was deeply saddened by the deadly diseases and poverty suffered by the people in her local area. This led to her desire at sixteen, when she left school, to become a doctor.
Lynn's family didn't approve of her role in the Rising. In fact, at the time, Lynn's family were so disgusted with her activities that they would not let her return home to Cong, County Mayo, for Christmas. She instead had to spend Christmas 1917 with her aunt Florence in Dublin. She did the same the following year. This personal split was eventually settled before her father's death in 1923. Lynn lived in Rathmines from 1903 to her death in 1955, sharing her home with her life partner Madeleine ffrench-Mullen. She also had a holiday cottage in Glenmalure, County Wicklow - not far from Glendalough where a number of her Wynne cousins lived. She left the cottage to An Óige, the Irish youth hostel association, on her death.
Lynn wrote a diary from Easter 1916 until 1955, beginning with her involvement in the 1916 Rising until two months before her death.
Lynn supported the workers during the Dublin lock-out and worked with Constance Markievicz and others in the soup kitchens in Liberty Hall, becoming close to Markievicz and James Connolly. In 1913, at Markievicz's request, she treated Helena Molony. Molony, who was active in a number of political movements, stayed with Lynn in her Rathmines home following an illness. As a result of the influence of Molony and Markievicz, Lynn became an active participant in the suffragist, labour and nationalist movements. "We used to have long talks and she converted me to the National Movement," Lynn wrote. She joined the Irish Citizen Army and was chief medical officer during the Easter Rising. She described herself as "a Red Cross doctor and a belligerent" when she was arrested. Eight Women of the Easter Rising The New York Times, 16 March 2016
For her part in the Rising, Lynn was imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol with her comrades Markievicz, Molony and Madeleine ffrench-Mullen. Lynn remained active in the Nationalist movement; she was elected vice-president of the Sinn Féin executive in 1917 and in 1923, Lynn was elected to Dáil Éireann as an anti-Treaty Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin County constituency at the 1923 general election. In accordance with Sinn Féin Abstentionism policy of the time, she did not take her seat in Dáil Éireann. She lost her seat in the June 1927 general election. She unsuccessfully contested the August 1927 by-election for Dublin County. Lynn claimed, many years after the 1916 rising, that it was suffrage that converted her to republicanism, saying: "I saw that people got the wrong impression about suffrage and that led me to examine the Irish question." She was given a gold fibula bone-shaped brooch as a token of gratitude from the Irish Citizen Army for her help in the medical preparation for the Rising.
During the Irish War of Independence, Lynn assisted Michael Collins in evading capture by the British. Joseph Connell, 'Michael Collins’s women: spies, couriers and mothers'. The Irish Times, 6 May 2017. Retrieved 29 May 2024.
Lynn eventually left politics in 1927, increasingly frustrated by Sinn Féin's refusal to embrace social reform and health care.
After Lynn's death, Éamon de Valera set up the Kathleen Lynn Memorial Committee, which lasted for eight years and resulted in the opening of a surgical unit at Saint Ultan's Children's Hospital in 1964, but ended in 1975 due to funding difficulties.
Four diaries recorded by Lynn between 1916 and 1955 were transcribed over two years by librarian Margaret Connolly. The detailed diaries chronicle her medical, political and social life and were donated to the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland archive by her family in 1997, which also holds the administrative papers of Saint Ultan's Hospital. They provided source material for the 2010 documentary entitled Kathleen Lynn – An Dochtúir Reabhlóideach by Loop Line Film and director Sé Merry Doyle. The Diaries of Kathleen Lynn: A Life Revealed through Personal Writing edited by Mary McAuliffe and Harriet Wheelock were published in October 2023.
Historian Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh wrote her biography, Kathleen Lynn, Irishwoman, Patriot, Doctor (Irish Academic Press, 2006). The Irish Times Obituary of Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh, "Distinguished and prolific historian of women of Ireland"
Lynn is used as a character in the novel The Pull of the Stars (2020) by Emma Donoghue, set in a Dublin hospital in 1918.
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