Guns and roses

IN 1916, the women prisoners were marched up the street behind the men and into Dublin's Kilmainham Gaol.

There was no lighting or heating because the Volunteers had cut off the gas supply. Prison diet included biscuits which were too hard to eat but which did nicely as door stops. These biscuits have stood the test of time, for you can see one of them at the fascinating exhibition which was opened yesterday in Kilmainham Gaol by the President, Mrs Robinson.

Entitled Guns And Chiffon, it brings into focus the role of women both in the War of Independence and in the Civil War and, in particular, looks at the time many of them spent in Kilmainham Gaol.

After the 1916 Rising, there were 77 women in the gaol but at the height of the Civil War there were 300 female prisoners, aged 12 to 70. The increase can be explained by the fact that, in 1916, the British army never suspected the women were up to anything, whereas by the time of the Civil War everyone knew they were!

During the weeks leading up to the Easter Rising, the women played out roles which were as ingenious as they were varied. Dispatches were hidden in hair buns and long plaits. Patrick Pearse O'Daly still remembers the day, when, being wheeled in his pram by his mother, Catherine O'Daly nee Wisely - there is a photo of her in the exhibition - they were stopped in the street. Her fear and agitation - transmitted to the 2 1/2 year old - had always been a mystery to him until he learned that, at the bottom of the pram, 20 rounds of ammunition were concealed.

Elizabeth O'Farrell was one of the bravest women of Easter Week. Given the job of conveying news of the surrender to outposts including Boland's Mill, she was accompanied by a British army officer - as far as Butt Bridge where he turned back, leaving her to brave the sniping. By dusk, she had completed her task and was later arrested.

The exhibition is packed with the details of these women's lives: there's a battered box for donations to prisoners' dependants, a love letter from Joseph Plunkett to his darling Grace, a handwritten prison concert programme: hornpipe, recitation and mandolin solo. There's Constance Markievicz's wedding veil and alongside it her lethal little Browning. There's the coffin pall lovingly sewn, in Kilmainham, by Cumann na mBan prisoners - and which has been draped over many a coffin since. Although they were all entitled to a State funeral, many of them refused, saying: "Sure all I did was hide a rifle or carry a dispatch. Sure that's not much."

There's a photo of Civil War prisoner Sighle Bowen on her Harley Davison and one of the lovely, tragic May Zambra, at 17 the youngest prisoner to go on hunger strike. (She later died, aged 23.) May Coghlan was imprisoned at 15, arrested while visiting Erskine Childers's widow. Katherine Folan was also 15 when the soldiers came looking for an older sister and took her instead.

Conditions were cramped in the prison and exercise restricted. However, one exuberant young woman was eventually allowed to visit the padded cell where she bounced away to her heart's content - using up her excess energy.

Curator Sinead McCoole, in mounting this exhibition, has done a service to us all but especially to the unsung Mna na hEireann epitomised in Bridie Halpin who died in America at the age of 85. Under her bed, her nephew found a case full of Kilmainham mementoes, including a detention order dated 1923, declaring her to be a dangerous woman. And all the time, he'd thought she was just dear old spinster Auntie Bridie!