Irish lives

Marjorie Hasler (c1887-1913)

Hasler, Marjorie, suffragist, was born in Ireland; nothing else is known of her early life. In July 1910 she joined the Irish Women’s Franchise League (IWFL), which had been founded two years earlier by Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and others as a militant suffrage group. Four months later she was among the Irish deputies who went to London to give support to Emmeline Pankhurst in her petition to the prime minister, HH Asquith (November 18th, 1910). This saw police violence against the crowd and became known in suffrage circles as “Black Friday”. Hasler suffered injuries; her head was apparently knocked against a stone wall, causing her intermittent headaches, and her spine was allegedly weakened. In November she was back in London, breaking government windows, for which she spent 14 days in Holloway prison. She felt that if women had the vote, they would be free to fight the evils of society.

For her part in the protest in Dublin in June 1912, which involved smashing the windows of the GPO, she was one of eight suffragists, including Sheehy Skeffington, sent to Mountjoy prison after a sensational trial. In the Irish Citizen(June 22nd, 1912) she compared suffragists to Land Leaguers and wrote: "We don't like smashing windows any more than men like smashing skulls, but in both cases there is, I believe, a strong feeling that something must be broken before a wrong can be righted." Fined £10 and sentenced to six months, she served four months – the longest single sentence served by any of the eight suffragists – and was released November 10th, 1912, after a petition signed by 10 of the jurymen who had convicted her. According to Sheehy Skeffington, she could have been out earlier but refused to allow the IWFL to petition on her behalf. She apparently emerged in a weakened state of health – though Sheehy Skeffington's recalled her doing athletic feats in prison – and died suddenly in London on March 31st, 1913, after contracting measles. The Irish Citizen,said police brutality and prison had ruined her health, and she was "the first Irish martyr for the cause". Sheehy Skeffington described her as "singularly beautiful, her face clear-cut as a cameo, with flashing brown eyes, framed in short brown curls" ( Irish Citizen, April 12th, 1913).

Adapted from the Royal Irish Academy's Dictionary of Irish Biography. See dib.ie