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BOOK OF THE DAY:Petticoat Rebellion: The Anna Parnell StoryBy Patricia Groves Mercier Press 256pp; €14.99
IN LATE September 1911 Mrs Rowe from Ilfracombe in Devon attended a funeral. Mrs Rowe brought her sister and two friends, and the manager of the Tunnels Baths made five. This small congregation came to bury the woman they knew as Cerisa Palmer. Mrs Rowe came because she was the dead woman’s landlady; her sister and friends only came to keep her company. The manager of the Tunnels Baths was there because the dead woman had drowned after being swept out to sea from his establishment. It was a rather sorry end for the woman once described as “a very Joan of Arc”, for a woman who was once deemed worthy of burning in effigy by her adversaries one Guy Fawkes night. It was a rather sorry end for the sister of Charles Stewart Parnell.
